Out in the Open (8 page)

After breakfast, the old man asked the boy to use the blanket to make an awning to protect him from the morning sun. The boy stuffed two corners of the blanket into holes in the wall, then propped up the rest of the blanket on two poles. When he had finished, he sat down next to the old man, albeit out of the shade, awaiting new instructions, because this was how their new life together was taking shape. The goatherd, constrained by the growing stiffness in his joints, taking shelter from the inclement sky. The boy, like an energetic extension of the old man, prepared for whatever labours the plain and the elements demanded of him. For some time, they remained quite still, the old man leaning back against the saddle and the boy waiting in the sun. When the boy could bear it no longer, he got up, walked round to the other side of the wall and lay down in the torrid shade beyond, where he fell asleep. The sun again woke him as it rose above the top of the wall. He returned to the goatherd's side and they ate a few bits of cheese and a little of the remaining dried meat.

The old man spent most of the afternoon reading an ancient Bible with rounded corners, which he kept wrapped in a piece of cloth. He followed the words with one finger, pronouncing them syllable by syllable. Meanwhile, the boy set off to explore the ruins with the dog. He was able to map the plan of the castle from what remained of the foundations and he wondered where all the stones from the walls and vaults had gone. He discovered a few desiccated lizards and some pellets full of fragments of bone and fur. On the south-east side of the wall he came across feathers and bits of twisted skin which he interpreted as the leftovers from some owl's banquet.

At the far end of the area opposite the wall, he scrambled down a bank full of rabbit-holes. The boy went back to where the old man was lying and told him about the tracks and droppings he had found. He also told him about his experiences of ferreting and how closely it resembled the way the old man had trapped the rat in the bone pit. He spoke of days spent hunting on the railway embankments and how, when he caught a rabbit, he would kill it by holding it by its back legs and striking it with a stick on the back of the neck. ‘The rabbit goes like this,' he said, pulling a face and holding out trembling arms. According to the boy, July was the best month for catching partridge chicks. ‘You have to go out at midday, when it's hottest, and if you find a female with her chicks, you choose one and run after it. It soon gets tired.' Then, without mentioning his mother, he described, as if they were his own, his techniques for skinning a rabbit and breaking the neck of a young pigeon. Beside him, the dog was wagging its tail as if wanting to breathe life into the boy's adventurous daydreams. When the boy had finished, the old man said there was no point in hunting rabbits, because in order to cook them they would have to make a fire and that could attract the men who were looking for him. The boy felt deflated by this negative response, because he had thought that, for once, he had something to offer that man who seemed to know everything. Indeed, he was so discouraged that he didn't even take in what the old man had just said to him.

They spent the rest of the day apart. The goatherd with his Bible and the boy with the dog on the other side of the wall. As darkness fell, the old man used his crook to get hold of the food pouch, from which he took out a crust of bread and the last of the rancid almonds. While he was waiting for the boy to return, he tried to crack open the almonds with two stones. His hands were trembling so much, though, that he couldn't get the shells in the right position. On one attempt he hit his own fingers and the pain made him snort with rage. When the sun had almost set, the boy returned to the old man's side. He was carrying a stick in one hand and a rabbit in the other. The dog was scampering around him.

Despite his aching bones, it was the old man who took charge of skinning the rabbit. He weighed it in his hands and, for a moment, seemed very pleased with the specimen. Then he made a few cuts in the creature's legs and abdomen and pulled off the skin leaving the animal naked. He threw the innards to the dog, then asked the boy to help him to his feet. They went over to the tower and, while the old man was making a fireplace out of stones, the boy went in search of kindling. They roasted the rabbit just as they had the rat. They did not speak during supper, too busy gnawing every last scrap of meat off the bones. When they had finished, the old man rolled a cigarette and the boy took charge of dousing the fire and getting rid of the bones and skin. It was then, while he was burying the remains far from the castle, that he recalled what the old man had said about the dangers of lighting a fire. He completed his burial of the remains by scuffing up earth onto the grave with his boots, then he rejoined the goatherd. He found him standing with his back to him, a few yards away from his blanket, one hand resting on the wall while he urinated. The smoke from his cigarette wrapped about his head like a cloud of grey thoughts.

‘How did you know that some men were looking for me?'

The old man stood as still and silent as Lot's wife watching Sodom burn. The boy waited. Without removing his hand from the wall, the goatherd finished urinating and shook his penis dry. When he turned, the boy noticed that the man's trousers were wet and that the pink tip of his penis was protruding from his flies.

The boy fled into the night, his subconscious drawing him back to the place where he had buried the remains of the rabbit just minutes before. He stumbled on, skidding on the stones, running as fast as he could in the direction of the well. Then he caught his foot on the stopcock next to the water tank and fell. He lay in the darkness feeling the blood throbbing in his foot. Once he had calmed down, he crept over to the water tank and sat there, his back against the brick surround. From where he was he had only a very partial view of the wall and the plain. The image of the old man turning clumsily towards him completely filled his thoughts. The moist tip of the goatherd's penis, the skinned rabbit, the search party. He assumed that this stopping-place was merely a kind of meeting-point where he would be handed over to the bailiff. The old man, he thought, had been pretending to be in pain and had led him to those ruins so that he could be safely executed far from the village. He imagined the goatherd sitting at the foot of the wall calmly witnessing his martyrdom. He wished himself far away, wished he had been better able to bear his fate. The sound of distant goat-bells distracted him and, for a while, he gazed up at the castle, but could see no activity, no movement. Later, when he had recovered from running at full pelt immediately after eating, he allowed himself to be lulled by the sound of the bells and fell asleep, sitting up, his head drooping over his chest.

Just before dawn, he was woken by the dog pressing its cold nose against his bent neck. Still half-asleep, the boy pushed it away, but the dog insisted. The boy opened his eyes and the first thing he saw was the dog wagging its tail. Round its neck was the tin the goatherd had given him the first time they had met. The boy stroked the dog, then yawned and stretched. He saw the rusty stopcock he had tripped over the night before and, still without removing his boot, tentatively felt his injured foot, and although it still hurt, he didn't think he had broken anything.

At midday, the boy and the dog returned together to the castle. When they arrived, they found the old man still lying where they had left him, his eyes open. His trousers were no longer wet and there was nothing protruding from his flies. The boy remained standing some distance away and the old man said:

‘Sit down.'

‘I don't want to.'

‘I'm not going to hurt you.'

‘You know they're looking for me. You're going to hand me over to them.'

‘I have no intention of doing that.'

‘Your intentions are exactly the same as theirs.'

‘No, you're wrong.'

‘Why have you brought me here, then?'

‘Because it's a really remote spot.'

‘Remote from what?'

‘From other people.'

‘Other people aren't the problem.'

‘Anyone in these parts who sees you is likely to betray you.'

‘Which is what you're going to do, right?'

‘No.'

‘You're just like all the others.'

‘I saved your life.'

‘So that you could get a reward, I suppose.'

The old man said nothing. Standing ten or so yards away, the boy kept restlessly pacing round and round in a tiny circle as if disappointment made him want to pee himself. The old man said:

‘I don't know what you're running away from and I don't want to know.'

The boy stopped his pacing. The old man went on:

‘All I know is that the bailiff doesn't have jurisdiction here.'

The boy heard the word ‘bailiff' on the lips of the goatherd and felt the blood burning in his heels, felt the heat rising up from the ground and scorching him inside as only shame can. Hearing the name of Satan on the lips of another and feeling how that word tore down the walls he had built around his ignominy. Standing naked before the old man and the world. The boy retreated a few steps and crouched down. Leaning against the wall's warm, rough skin, he began to fit together, one by one, the pieces of the puzzle that the plain was handing him. He thought that in such a place, outside the jurisdiction of the bailiff and far from any inhabited villages, they could do with him as they wished. Only the stones would witness the inevitable brutal assaults and the death that would be sure to follow. He stood up.

‘I'm leaving.'

‘As you wish.'

The boy untied the tin from around the dog's neck and showed it to the goatherd.

‘I'll take this.'

‘It's yours.'

He poured water from the flask into the tin and drank. Then he put the tin in his knapsack, squatted down and stroked the dog under the chin. Before leaving, he tightened the piece of string that served as his belt and glanced around him. The sky was a clear, blue vault. He smoothed his hair with his hands and, without turning to look at the goatherd, began heading north, leaving the castle behind him. The old man sat up to watch him leave. The dog gaily followed the boy, as if they were simply setting off together again to explore the fortress and its surrounds. It kept running from one side of the boy to the other, then stationed itself before him and put its paws on his thighs asking to be petted. The boy pushed the dog away, and the dog then stopped pestering him and trotted meekly after him. When they had gone some fifteen or twenty yards, the goatherd whistled, and the dog, its legs tense, paused and pricked up its ears. Then the boy bent down, put his hands about the dog's neck and whispered something into the dog's ear that made the dog relinquish its herding instincts and happily return to the castle wall.

The boy stood up, brushed off his trousers and felt a breath of warm air on the back of his neck. He sighed at the uncertainty of what lay ahead, and it was then that he heard the sound of an engine brought to him by that same breath of air. He turned and, in the distance, spotted a cloud of dust on the towpath. The heat haze was such that he couldn't actually see the surface of the earth or make out the precise origin of the noise that was growing ever clearer. He instinctively glanced back at the goatherd and saw that he too was kneeling, one hand shading his eyes, straining in the direction of that cloud of dust. The same wind that was bringing those men closer was also turning the thin pages of the Bible that now lay open on the ground. The goatherd signalled to him to get down out of sight.

The boy looked nervously about him in search of some escape route, but there was none. Behind him were the goatherd, the castle wall and its rubble. In every other direction lay the endless, pitiless plain where he would find no shelter. He crept back along the way he had come. He passed the old man and continued on until he was pressed against the wall.

‘Hide.'

The boy lay flat on the ground and began to crawl along using his elbows. The pebbles dug into the skin of his arms and tore the sleeves of his shirt. He dragged himself along the whole wall round to the other side of the tower. Safe from the eyes of those men, he continued dragging himself through the rubble to the middle of the wall. The dog followed him, curious, waiting for the boy to throw it a stick or tickle it under the chin. It could so easily reveal his hiding-place. Squatting, with his back against the wall, he called to the dog and stroked it under the chin to pacify it.

When the search party left the towpath and headed up the track to the castle, the old man recognised the bailiff's motorbike. He was accompanied by two men on horseback, their horses' hooves striking sparks from the stones on the path.

The goatherd whistled and the dog stopped wagging its tail and pricked up its ears. It removed its head from the boy's hands and shot off round the wall to rejoin the old man, who was fumbling for something in the food pouch. As the men approached, the motorcycle engine backfired repeatedly, startling the pigeons nesting inside the tower.

The goats made way for the new arrivals. The old man dropped the last piece of dried meat at his feet. The dog sat down beside him and began licking and chewing that piece of sinewy flesh, which it would not take long to soften and swallow down.

The goatherd stood up to receive the men. He took off his hat and nodded a welcome. One of the horsemen returned his greeting, touching his cap. The other man, who had a reddish beard, was already looking about him. Of the three, he was the only one to carry a weapon. A double-barrelled shotgun with a fancy inlaid butt. The bailiff turned off his engine and, even though the goats were still bleating and their bells tinkling, the old man felt as if a sudden absolute silence had fallen. The man took off his leather gloves and placed them, one beside the other, on the edge of the sidecar, fingers pointing inwards. Then, without getting off his bike, he removed first his goggles and then his helmet. His hair was drenched in sweat. He ran his hands over his face as if he were washing it and used his fingers to comb back his wet hair. From the sidecar he took out a brown felt hat, fanned himself with it for a few seconds, then put it on his head, carefully adjusting it over his eyes.