‘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.