Out in the Open

by Jesús Carrasco

  He woke, feeling hot and agitated and with a feeling of dampness around his feet. He opened his eyes and found that his feet were buried in a heap of dung and urine deposited by the donkey, which was now standing a couple of yards from him, flicking away flies with its tail. He didn’t know how long he had been sitting in the sun, but into his mind came memories of the goatherd’s poultice and the dog licking his teeth. He felt slightly dizzy and, for a moment, his vision grew blurred. He leaned against the wall of the well to steady himself, and was filled with a sudden loathing for that beast of which all he had asked was a little shade, only to be denied even that. He strode over to the donkey and punched it hard on the muzzle. The animal merely shook its head, unmoved, whereas he felt a pain, like a cramp, shoot from his knuckles right up to his skull. He stood among those few ruined houses and gave an agonised cry which he kept up even when the pain in his bones had abated. A long howl that made him fall to his knees, exhausted, in the middle of the dusty square.

  ‘You don’t seem very happy.’

  The boy started to his feet and backed away from that male voice, which had emerged from somewhere behind him. He hid behind the well and stayed there utterly still, playing for time while he listened, ears cocked, for any sounds of movement. For a few seconds all he could hear was the cooing of the pigeons in the roofs of the houses. Then came a creak as if from an axle, which he identified as coming from some sort of wagon. He assumed the man was a peasant farmer.

  ‘Come out, boy. I’m not going to harm you.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything.’

  ‘I know. I’ve been watching you since I saw you up at the church.’

  The boy whirled around, as if expecting to see watchful eyes at every window.

  ‘Please, just let me leave.’

  ‘Come out, will you? Like I said, I’m not going to harm you.’

  ‘No, I won’t come out.’

  The boy glanced towards the entrance to the village and considered escaping down the street, but the street was too long, and if the man had a shotgun, he would prove a very easy target. And even if he didn’t get shot, walking to the castle in the heat of the day would be impossible. And if he returned with no water, the old man would die and so would he.

  ‘How do I know you’re not going to harm me?’

  ‘You just have to look at me.’

  The man had long, matted hair and a black beard, and wore only a tattered hessian tunic tied at the waist. His hands were not fully formed, and his legs had been amputated just below the knees. Frayed leather straps bound his thighs to a wooden plank fitted with four greasy ball bearings that served as wheels. The tension in the boy’s muscles dissolved at once when he saw that the threat he had imagined was no threat at all, and then, as if he were studying a painting, he stood, hypnotised, staring at that peculiar body, from plank to head. He observed him as if through a tunnel of caulked walls, at the end of which the man and his plank seemed to form one being. Both plank and man were equally filthy, and not even the stink of urine and creosote he gave off could distract the boy, his senses numbed both by the sight of that strange creature and by his own now dry effluvia of urine and sweat that had gradually been so absorbed into his pores that they seemed to form part of him.

  ‘Do you like my chariot?’

  The boy emerged reluctantly from his stunned state. After the initial shock, the blood was once more flowing aimlessly through his slack veins. The person talking to him proved so utterly inoffensive that the boy, confusing relief with rudeness, answered rather peevishly, forgetting that the man might easily be the owner of that well or have a pistol concealed beneath his tunic.

  ‘I only took a little water.’

  ‘That’s all right. You can take as much as you want. Except, of course, the water’s bad. It’s probably already given you the shits.’

  The boy said nothing, but instinctively clenched his buttocks.

  ‘What are you doing here all alone?’

  ‘I’m not alone. My father and brother are waiting for me in the oak wood up there.’

  ‘And they sent you to fetch water, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, go and get them. You can all eat at my inn. I won’t charge you much.’

  The boy looked around for some sign, some advertisement, but saw only houses that were either locked up or derelict. He pulled a sceptical face.

  ‘It’s over there,’ said the man.

  The cripple craned his neck to one side, indicating the road leading north out of the village. The boy thought he must be lying, because no one in his right mind would keep an inn in a place like that.

  ‘It’s true. You may not believe it, but this road leads straight to the capital. Once the drought ends, the traders and the travellers will soon return.’

  The boy looked in the direction indicated by the cripple. At the end of the street there was one not entirely dilapidated house, with its front door standing open. If that really was the inn, it must be very cheap indeed.

  ‘We’re in a hurry. We don’t have time to stop and eat.’

  ‘At least buy a loaf.’

  ‘I don’t have any money.’

  ‘At least take a few biscuits. I want you to remember me the next time you’re passing.’

  The boy didn’t want to go with him. He was afraid there might be someone else waiting in the house, but the cripple spoke so seductively of bread and biscuits. The boy’s mouth watered at the thought. He remembered the turrón they used to eat at Christmas and felt tempted to follow the man, but stopped himself. How could that man make biscuits, he thought, when he had only four fingers? He decided that he would keep a close eye on him while he continued filling the flasks, then go back the way he had come.

  ‘They’re made with almonds and sugar,’ the cripple added.

  The boy followed him down the street. The man propelled himself along with a pair of wooden sticks, which he gripped firmly, despite his lack of fingers. Halfway there, he got stuck in a patch of soft sand and had to reverse and skirt round the obstacle.

  ‘Sometimes I hitch up the pig and get him to pull me along. That’s much better. Using these sticks really wears out your hands and arms. What I wouldn’t give for a donkey like yours.’

  The boy imagined the pig in full harness, like a trotting horse, with the cripple behind him strapped onto his plank. The last time the boy had seen a pig was four winters ago. His father had slaughtered it with the help of another man from the village. His mother had made sausages from it while he and his brother stirred the blood with their hands.

  Outside the house was a rather stunted vine trellis beneath whose shade, according to the cripple, the muleteers used to sit. There was a window on either side of the door, with a stone bench beneath each window. A diamond-shaped pattern was pricked out on each leaf of the closed green metal shutters. The house was dark inside and, as he stood at the front door, the boy could see nothing of the interior. The cripple went in and disappeared into the gloom. The boy tethered the donkey to a metal ring next to one of the windowsills. He picked up his knapsack and, before going into the house, glanced at the heavily laden donkey. It occurred to him that, even if he would only be stopping for a short time, he should at least relieve it of some of the weight. He tried to lift one of the flasks, but, although he could lift it, he imagined that, if he removed it, the other flask, to which it was attached, might unbalance the load. Then he glanced down at his boot, still wet from the donkey’s urine, and then at his knuckles and remembered that sharp pain up his arm, which he could still feel, and the long time the donkey had left him exposed to the sun. No, you can wait, he thought.

  The cripple appeared round the door.

  ‘Are you coming in or not?’

  The boy nodded. The man went back into the house, and the boy cautiously approached the front door. As he stood under the lintel, he felt the cool air emanating from the dark interior, bringing with it various meaty aromas. You went straight from the
street into the main room, which was lit only by the tongue of light coming in through the front door. The room smelled of worm-eaten wood and dried intestines. The air was perfumed with olive oil and vinegar. Suddenly the cripple opened a shutter at the far end of the room and light flooded in, revealing the details of its hidden corners. Strings of sausages, shoulders of ham, smoked ribs, cured pork cheek. At the back, a couple of large sacks of flour and a barrel. Bowls of almonds and bottles of wine. A round wooden box full of salted sardines arranged like the spokes of a wheel and various slabs of salt cod hanging from a beam. Bags of dried chestnuts, black-eyed peas and sugar and, beyond that, behind a curtain, a door that promised still more food.

  ‘I sell provisions to travellers too.’

  The boy ate a slightly rancid cabbage-and-bean stew, wiping the enamel plate clean with large slices of bread. He asked for some water, but the cripple told him that the water in the barrel had not yet been boiled. Not wanting to wait for the boiled water to cool, he washed down his meal with half a tumbler of rough wine, which the cripple gladly offered him. Followed by some cakes, dates and honey-roasted almonds.

  While the boy was devouring all this food, the man explained that the few remaining villagers had left when the well stopped providing them with drinkable water. He spoke, too, about the traders who passed through the village and about the inn. It had been run by his brother, and he, his sister-in-law and his two nephews had all lived there. When the drought came, they told him they were going to the city to find work and would come back to fetch him in a cart once they were settled. ‘That was a year ago,’ he told him. While the man was talking to him about muleteers, wool merchants and goat’s cheese, the boy fell asleep at the table.

  He dreams he’s being pursued. The usual dream. He’s running away from someone he never sees, but whose hot breath he can feel on his neck. Someone who speeds up when he does and stops when he stops. He runs down the rain-wet streets of an unfamiliar city. Not that he had ever left his village or even seen photographs of a big city. Drenched, empty streets where the light from the streetlamps bounces off the cobblestones, which gleam black as polished coal. He runs round corners and down alleyways that grow ever narrower and darker, the footsteps of his pursuer always at his back. He goes into a house and walks down corridors lit by flickering gas lamps that give off a yellowish glow. The warm, sticky air clings to his clothes, slowing him down. He can hear someone breathing behind him. He goes into a room where the only light that exists is outside the windows. He opens doors that give onto low-ceilinged rooms of ever-diminishing size. Finally, he’s lying face down on a damp, insect-ridden wooden floor. The ceiling is so low that it touches his back. The air is like thick axle grease now. Immobile, trapped, he feels as if he were sinking ever deeper into the bowels of the earth, in search of molten magma. He is momentarily aware that he is lying in his coffin, then a sudden spasm makes his head thud onto the table.

  When he woke, he was alone, with his left wrist manacled to an iron pillar. He had a slight gash on his forehead. His head and his stomach ached. He felt an urgent need to empty his bowels, but couldn’t move more than a yard. The windows were closed again and the only available light came through the pinprick pattern on the shutters. He tried to slip his hand out of the manacle, but it was too tight. Stretching his arm as far as he could, he managed to reach out one leg and touch the window with the tip of one foot. This awkward position made him belch, and he felt all the acid from the food rising up into his throat, leaving a taste of bile in his mouth. He could tap the window very lightly with his boot, but not hard enough to break it. He groped around him for some helpful object, but there was only the wicker chair he was sitting on. He picked this up with his free hand and tried to use it to reach the window, but it was too heavy. Instead, he slipped one hand through the slats in the back of the chair and, gripping the seat with his hand, managed to raise it above his head. With eyes closed, he smashed it down on the table, breaking it into more manageable pieces. He kept on smashing until all he had in his hand were the two slats from the back of the chair and one leg to which these were attached. He used the leg to break the glass of the closed window and push open the leaves of the shutters. The light that entered was not the same as the bright morning light that had flooded in when the cripple had opened the shutters earlier, but it was enough to illuminate the room.

  The first thing he realised was that the donkey was not where he had left it. He saw, too, that the manacle around his wrist consisted of an iron ring with a padlock on it. He tried to break open the padlock by striking it on the table, then on the floor, but without success. He looked around him in search of something that might help, but could see only food and drink. Having trudged across that vast plain on a meagre diet of almonds and goat’s milk, there he was surrounded by food, but manacled to a pillar.

  He tried to think through his situation: he was a prisoner, the cripple had disappeared, and the donkey wasn’t where he had left it. Despite being possibly the only person in the province with enough food to last a whole year, the cripple had fled, leaving him a captive. He imagined the plank on its ball-bearing wheels being pulled along by the pig, just as the cripple had described to him. Or, the boy wondered, had the cripple’s desire for freedom been so great that he had abandoned everything and made off with the old donkey? At least he hadn’t killed him in order to do so. He thought of the goatherd. He imagined him lying at the foot of the castle wall, about to breathe his last. The crows perched on the head of the Christ figure or on one of the corbels, awaiting their moment. The goats maddened by the lack of water. He realised that if he didn’t escape, he might well meet the same fate. He would die of hunger and thirst, chained to that pillar. Seeking consolation, he thought of his family, but his family were the reason he was there.

  On the table was the plate from which he had eaten, surrounded by splinters of wood and bits of broken chair. With one hand he cleared a space so that he could sit down and only then did he notice something that his urgent desire to eat had prevented him from seeing before. On one corner of the table, next to an enamel bowl, was a tin ashtray. It contained a single brown cigarette end, the sight of which made the blood drain from his face and his stomach contract with fear. Then he understood why the cripple had fled, and the only thing he felt then was a need to get out of there and catch up with the man who was intent on betraying him.

  He tried to put his ideas in order. He didn’t know how long he had been asleep, nor how much time had passed since the cripple had left. All he knew was that he had to reach him before he found the bailiff. He again struggled with the manacle, trying various positions that would allow him to remove his hand, until the metal, cutting into his flesh, became too painful. He looked around for some useful implement, but the cripple had made sure to remove any object that could be turned into a tool. The only thing he could reach was the cured meat hanging on hooks from the wall, doubtless left there by his jailer in order to keep him alive until he returned with the bailiff. He wondered how much of a reward they were offering.

  He moved as close as he could to the wall in order to reach the meat. He tugged hard at a piece of salt pork, tearing it off the hook on which it hung. He squeezed and massaged the meat with his hands, rubbed the fat onto his manacled wrist and tried to extricate his hand by sliding it out – to no avail. He then energetically greased the metal ring itself, as if that might soften it. The rancid smell of the grease mingled with the stench given off by his own body. He then grasped the metal ring with his free hand and pulled with his trapped hand, meanwhile turning it inside the ring. He tried gripping the ring between his knees and pulling with both hands, but this proved so painful he had to stop.

  With his elbows resting on the table and the manacle slightly below his wrist, he then worked on flexing his thumb. He again greased and massaged the base of the joint, feeling for it much as his mother used to do when carving a chicken. Then, with his fingers squeezed together on either side o
f his thumb, and when both hand and brain were ready, he rolled up the napkin he had used earlier and placed it between his teeth. Finally, he hooked the ring over a metal fitting on the table and pulled as hard as he could. He felt the ring tearing the skin on his thumb and felt how his greased knuckles were pushed together to fit the ring imprisoning them. At one point, his hand remained stuck fast, and he couldn’t pull any more. His skin burned and the pressure was almost unbearable. Weeping, he placed the sole of his boot against the thick table leg and, grasping his manacled wrist with his free hand, gave one final tug that propelled him backwards onto the sacks behind him. He spat out the napkin and, sobbing loudly, held up his hand to examine it, but with the windows closed, there wasn’t enough light to see. He drew back the bolt on the street door and went outside where the late-afternoon sky was tinged with orange. His thumb was so thick with blood that he couldn’t tell how bad the wound was. He went back inside and made straight for the barrel of water. He removed the cork and allowed the water to run freely over the wound. He drank some of the water too, then put the cork back. A strip of wrinkled skin was hanging loose from his thumb. The iron ring had cut him to the bone. He pressed his wounded hand to his chest and, clutching it with his other hand, wept out of pain and rage.