Out in the Open

by Jesús Carrasco

  They spent the siesta hours beneath the trees, the boy smearing his burns with the transparent jelly from the aloe leaf and the goatherd carving a new wooden hook for the donkey’s cinch strap. Later on, when the sun had lost some of its heat, the old man picked up a sickle and asked the boy to follow him over to a clump of esparto grass growing on the far side of the pond. Before they reached it, though, the boy felt uneasy and stopped. The old man turned, expecting to find the boy behind him. Then, with the sickle in one hand, he beckoned him over. The boy, standing some way off, shook his head. The man shouted:

  ‘Watch me.’

  He crouched down in front of a clump of grass and with two short blows cut off a thick tuft. He held it up so that the boy could see, then put it down at his feet along with the sickle. The goatherd then went back to the camp, and when he passed the boy, told him to make eight or ten bundles of grass and take them over to the alder trees. The boy turned and waited until the old man had disappeared again behind the bulrushes. Then he walked over to the sickle and for a moment contemplated the countryside around him: the little islands of scrub and the stony paths that ran between them. He went hunting for the largest clumps of grass, and when he found what he wanted, set to work. He hadn’t said anything to the goatherd when the latter had shown him how to cut the grass, but this was a job he knew how to do well because, at home, he had always been the one who kept the ground around the house cleared.

  The boy concluded his labours as evening was coming on. He gathered up the grass and started carrying it in bundles over to the shade. He left the first bundle next to the goatherd and went back for more. The old man, who was milking a goat, briefly stopped what he was doing, then immediately resumed his work. No thanks, no reward. The law of the plain.

  They dined on bread and milk and, afterwards, the boy applied more aloe jelly to his face. He fell asleep watching the goatherd making ropes by plaiting the grass he had cut that afternoon. He didn’t even hear the distant sound of hooves crossing the dark plain. Nor did he see how the goatherd’s hand trembled, startled by this sudden noise cleaving through the arid plain like a stone sword. The only thing he felt, when the time came, was the old man’s boot prodding him in the back and his voice telling him to get up.

  He did as he was told, thinking that it must be dawn already and that the goatherd would again have prepared his breakfast for him. He felt around him for the bowl, but the only thing he found was the blanket he had slept on. Everything else, including the bundles of grass, was already loaded onto the donkey.

  ‘Pick up the blanket. We’re leaving.’

  The crescent moon was still only a yellow sliver on the horizon. The old man tugged at the donkey’s bridle and strode off, with the herd following behind. The dog came and went in the darkness, retrieving any stray goats. Clinging to the donkey’s halter, the boy stumbled after them. When they left the encampment in the middle of the night, the boy had assumed they were leaving before dawn in order to avoid the crushing noonday sun. To judge by the route followed on the previous days, the boy had assumed that the old man knew the region well and would again stop at midday beside some copse or stream. But as time passed and the darkness failed to lift and the pace at which they were walking remained undiminished, he realised that they were no longer in pursuit of pastures new.

  At dawn, they stopped at the foot of a sun-scorched hill, whose top concealed the horizon. The goatherd let go of the bridle and walked on ahead for a few yards. He went first in one direction then in the other, raising and lowering his head as if searching for something among the shadows. He rubbed his face with his hands and massaged his eyelids with the tips of his fingers, all the while huffing and puffing. He closed his eyes and raised his face to the sky to breathe in the faint breeze coming down from the hill. He sniffed at the invisible door opening before him until he found, among all the other smells of daybreak, the thread that had brought them there.

  Seeing that they were stopping for rather longer than expected, the boy sat down on the ground to rest. He felt the weight of his body seeking the earth. He would have lain down and slept right there on the baked clay, but a foul-smelling breeze brought him to his senses. He stood up just as the goatherd came striding back. The old man glanced behind him, checked that the herd were all there, then set off again. They climbed up the slope, weaving in and out of long-since withered vines. The wild tendrils twined about each other, weaving a futile, fossil web.

  When they reached the top, the horizon reappeared. Beyond, the plateau plunged downwards to form a valley from which there emanated, even more strongly, the same stench he had noticed at the foot of the hill. The boy tried to identify where the smell was coming from, but there was still not enough light at that hour to be able to make out the coral-like shapes of the bone pit that lay beneath them.

  They descended via a narrow track, trying to keep the donkey from slipping. The goats made the descent as best they could, scattering shards of slate, which skittered down to the bottom of the abyss. Axes fracturing gleaming white ribs. Bones in every possible state of degradation. Sediments of calcic dust, rows of bovine vertebrae, broad pelvises. Ribcages and horns. An eyeless animal, its skin still intact. A stinking bag of bones in the midst of the new day dawning. A lighthouse guiding them to a safe harbour.

  They set up camp some distance from the putrefying ox, in the arching shade of a hawthorn. The goats dispersed among the bones in search of grass, and only the donkey, the dog, the boy and the man remained, like figures in a nativity scene. They breakfasted on bread dipped in wine and lay down to rest. The boy fell asleep almost instantly, with a feeling that his muscles were softening and melding inside his body. Before he succumbed to unconsciousness, his final thoughts were of the sleepless night he’d spent, the drowsiness brought on by the wine, his filthy hands and the pestilential, walled-in pit surrounding him.

  When he woke, the old man was no longer by his side. He climbed up out of the crater and saw the goatherd kneeling on the highest edge. He was looking south, shading his eyes with both hands, as if he were wearing spectacles. The boy watched as he made his way gingerly back down the stony slope, half-crouching, half-sitting, so as not to slip. Some of the goats had lain down in the shade and others, unobstructed for the moment by any human presence, were standing on their back legs to reach the higher branches of the hawthorn.

  The boy wandered about in the shade to stretch his legs and discovered that, while he slept, the old man had plaited most of the esparto grass into ropes. He squatted down and tested the strength of the ropes and wondered what the old man could possibly want with so much of the stuff. The goatherd returned from his patrol and, without a word, sat down under the hawthorn tree again to continue his work. The boy said he was going for a walk.

  ‘Don’t go far.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  He had never seen a place like this before. There were skulls everywhere. Hollow, broken bones like the stems of giant fennel. The worn teeth of ruminants. Noticing the billy goat searching for food near the dead ox, he went over to join it. When he reached its side, however, the goat started and accidentally struck the body with its horns, causing a rat that had been hiding inside to peep out. The rat hid under the ox’s pelvis, nervously sniffed the air, then returned to its feeding trough. When the boy rejoined the old man, he told him what he had seen. The man stopped what he was doing, got to his feet and, taking a stick and a blanket, went over to where the ox lay rotting. The boy followed him to within a few yards of the cadaver. For a while, they crouched there in silence, observing the rippling movements of the skin. A crow alighted on the creature’s side. The skin undulated over the ribs like the softened hull of a ship. The animal had been emptied of its contents and was now a mere façade with only one opening where the genitals had been. The goatherd got up and walked in a silent arc round to the animal’s head. The crow flapped away. The boy watched the old man cover nose and mouth with one arm before walking the length of the corpse
to its rear end, using the blanket to cover the one opening in the animal’s hide. Then he stamped on the ribs with his boot and the rat immediately scampered out of its cave and into the trap. The old man beat the woollen blanket until the rat stopped moving.

  By evening, the goatherd had made some netting out of the esparto grass. He found four stout branches, cleaned them off and with the branches and the netting fashioned a small corral, into which, with the help of the dog, he herded the goats. Once they were all inside, he gave each of them some water to drink from a bowl. When they had finished, only a third of a flask of water was left. The boy asked the old man about this, and the old man told him not to worry. That night they would drink milk, and the following day they would set off in search of a new spring.

  Afterwards, the goatherd went to fetch a stool and placed it next to the one corner of the corral that could be opened. He fixed the bucket in the ground with the metal rods and turned to the boy.

  ‘You’re going to help me milk the goats.’

  ‘But I’ve never done it before.’

  ‘You just stand at the gate of the corral and let the goats out one by one when I tell you to.’

  They finished milking in a matter of minutes, and the boy was surprised at how little milk the goats had given. The old man explained that at this time of year, what with the heat, and the lack of water or any pasture worthy of the name, the goats didn’t have much milk to give.

  When night fell, the old man skinned the rat, splayed its body out on a cross made of twigs, and lit a small fire. The boy didn’t want to eat the rat, and so the goatherd shared it with the dog. There were still a few almonds and raisins in a small basket, but the old man didn’t offer him any and the boy didn’t ask.

  5

  THE OLD MAN woke the boy in the middle of the night. They left the bone pit the same way they had entered, then circled around it before setting off towards the north. Unlike the previous day, the boy felt rested and more reassured about what lay ahead. They crossed the plain beneath a moon that was not yet bright enough to light the ground they walked on. As the boy clung to the donkey’s halter, the animal’s swaying gait seemed to him like a litany as monotonous as the landscape they were crossing. Dark sky, dark horizon and dark, desolate fields. Guided by the old man and supported by the donkey, he abandoned himself to memories of the place he had come from. His village was perched above a river bed, where water had once flowed, but which was now just a long, broad indentation in the midst of an interminable plain. Most of the houses, many of them empty, were built around the church and the medieval palace. Beyond them, like a belt of asteroids, lay a scattering of crumbling walls, all that remained of the fields that had once fed the village. The streets were flanked by houses with whitewashed roughcast walls and gable roofs, with crudely made grilles at the windows and metal doors concealed behind curtains. The gates on yards were kept firmly shut to protect the wooden carts and threshing machines. There was a time when the plain had been an ocean of wheatfields and, on windy spring days, the ears of wheat rippled just like the surface of the sea. Fragrant green waves waiting for the summer sun. The same sun that now fermented the clay and ground it down into dust.

  He remembered the fringe of olive trees that extended along the north side of the river bed. The very olive grove in which he had taken refuge. An ancient, woody army tingeing the landscape with leathery browns. Often, each tree was supported by two or three gnarled trunks that reached up out of the earth like an old man’s arthritic fingers. It was rare to see an olive tree that really looked like a tree. Instead, there were endless knotty trunks full of deep cracks into which the rain had first penetrated, then frozen and split the wood open. A bunch of soldiers returned from the front. Wounded, but still marching. A march that had been going on for so long that no one could now testify as to their continued advance. They were not witnesses of the passage of time, but rather time owed its very nature to them.

  He mentally travelled along the railway line that traversed the village from east to west, following the axis of the old valley. It arrived raised up on embankments and sleepers and disappeared into the distance as if scissored out of the landscape. On one side was the village proper, with the church, the town hall, the barracks and the palace. On the other, a group of low houses built around an abandoned vinegar factory. The vaulted roofs on some of the warehouses had caved in and a pestilential smell percolated out from a rusty tank, little by little, day by day, like an unending curse. The time spent in the bone pit seemed positively pleasant in comparison with the invisible atmosphere generated by that place. Next to the factory, the single railway track branched off into three. Beside it stood the station building with its cantilevered roof and broken windows. In the centre was a platform like a large island lit by half a dozen rather feeble gas lamps and, next to this, a brick-built cattle-loading yard and two sheds with doors barred shut. Beyond that, above the last set of tracks, rose a faded-yellow grain silo crowned by a red sign bearing the word ‘ELECTRA’. A vast, imposing edifice that dwarfed everything else, and from whose roof one could see the mountains to the north marking the end of the plateau. A great hulk casting a dark, oppressive shadow.

  His family lived in one of the village’s few stone houses. It had been built by the railway company at one end of the station, just where the line was crossed by the road leading towards the fields to the south. Everyone called it the pointsman’s house. On summer evenings, the shadow cast by the silo completely covered the roof and part of the surrounding yard – an area of trampled earth that was home to a dozen or so hens and three piglets. Apart from the bailiff and the priest, no one else in the village kept animals.

  Before the drought, his father had been in charge of the crossing-gate and had helped the stationmaster with the points. Four times a day he would work the mechanism that lowered the gate with one hand, while ringing a bell with the other. A few truck drivers would turn off their engines, get out and roll themselves a cigarette while they watched the slow convoys heading off in the direction of the sea. Those were the days when the trucks would arrive empty and leave laden with oats, wheat and barley from the silo. Then the drought came, and the fields gradually languished, then died. The grain stopped growing, and the railway company either scrapped the wagons or simply abandoned them. They closed down the station and despatched the stationmaster somewhere further east. In one year, more than half the families in the village left. Those who survived were the few who had deep wells or had made money out of the cereal crops and others who had neither well nor money, but submitted themselves to the new rules imposed by that drought-stricken land. His family belonged to the latter category and stayed on.

  They stopped to rest near some old almond trees. It was a warm night, and they drank nearly all of the little water they had left. It seemed to the boy that, this time, the goatherd knew where they were going. At one point, they reached a wire fence and followed it until they came to an opening through which they passed over to the other side. They crossed a barren field that emerged onto a new path heading west. This sudden change of direction away from the north made the boy think that perhaps the goatherd still had no fixed destination and was merely wandering aimlessly. As long as they kept moving away from the village, that was all the boy cared about.

  At first light, they spotted the remains of a large building on the horizon. The undulating ground meant that, as they advanced, the ruin appeared and disappeared behind the withered crops. As they climbed the last steep slope, the details of this elusive edifice were gradually revealed: a high stone-and-mortar wall topped by crenellated battlements and separated from the path by stony ground. This solitary wall, marked by several putlock holes, survived only thanks to the round tower to which it was attached. On top of the tower someone had placed a figure of Jesus holding up his hand to bless the plain. From behind his head emerged three bronze rays of lights. The boy recognised the image and immediately recalled the legend that all the children in the
village would have heard at one time or another. According to the most common version, a castle had been built to the north or north-east of the village. It was inhabited by a man who, apart from his fearsome guards, lived entirely alone. This man spent his days and nights standing on the wall with one hand raised, warning travellers not to approach. Others said that he wasn’t raising his hand, but wielding a weapon, while still others said that from his head emanated rays of light that swept the plain in all directions. There was also talk of wild dogs and of how the guards would capture children and take them to the man so that he could inflict the most savage tortures on them.

  They descended via a gentle slope leading down to the castle and stopped midway to take a closer look. The path continued on a little to join a towpath that ran parallel to an old aqueduct, whose broken pillars shimmered in the hot air rising up from the earth. They could still see the vast ravine along which barges had once travelled, laden with timber and sacks of wheat. They left the path and crossed the area of stony ground, stopping, either out of caution or unconscious fear, at a point where they would not be crushed were the wall to collapse. For a long time, they stood contemplating the ruins, as if they were some rare marvel: the wall, the round tower to the left and, beyond that, the horizon from which they had come. To one side of the tower was a rounded arch containing a bricked-up door. On the highest part of the wall, above the keystone of the arch, was a machicolation supported by three corbels. For their part, the goats happily dispersed, guided only by their need for food in the form of dry tufts of grass. If the wall did collapse, it would kill almost all of them. The boy paused to examine the sculpture, which reminded him of the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the village church. Just for a moment, he felt a desire to go back and rejoin the other children in the school playground and tell them about his discovery and tell them, above all, that there was no need to visit a castle in order to be terrified, that terror rode the streets of the village in the form of a backfiring motorbike and clouds of toxic smoke.