Obabakoak by Bernardo Atxaga Read Free Book Online Page A

All in vain.
    I was still caught up in these thoughts when, at the beginning of February, one month after Javier had run away, a pure white boar appeared in the main street of Obaba. To the great amazement of those watching, it did not withdraw before the presence of people, but trotted in front of them with such calm and gentleness that it seemed more like an angelic being than a wild beast. It stopped in the square and stayed there for a while, quite still, watching a group of children playing with what remained of the previous night’s fall of snow.
    The upper part of the fifth page is also damaged but not as badly as the page I have just transcribed. The dampness only affects the first three lines. It goes on:
    … but you know what our people are like. They feel no love for animals, not even for the smallest, which, being too weak to defend themselves, deserve their care and attention. In respect of this, I recall an incident that occurred shortly after my arrival in Obaba. A brilliantly colored bird alighted on the church tower and I was looking up at it and rejoicing to think that it was our Father Himself, who, in His infinite kindness, had sent me that most beautiful of His creatures as a sign of welcome, when, lo and behold, three men arrived with rifles on their shoulders… they had shot the poor bird down before I had a chance to stop them. Such is the coldness of our people’s hearts, which in no way resembles that of our good Saint Francis.
    They reacted in just the same way toward the white boar. They began shooting at it from windows, the braver among them from the square itself, and the racket they made so startled me that I came running out of the church, where I happened to be at the time. They only managed to wound the animal, however, and in the midst of loud squeals, it fled back to the woods.
    Since it was a white boar, and therefore most unusual, the hunt
ers were in a state of high excitement; they could already imagine it as a trophy. But that was not to be, at least not that day. They returned empty-handed, and, faint with exhaustion, they all ended up at the inn, drinking and laughing and with great hopes for the next day. And it was then, on that first day of the hunt, that Matías confronted them with these grim words: “What you’re doing is wrong. He came here with no intention of harming anyone yet you greet him with bullets. You’d be well advised to consider the consequences of your actions.”
    As you will recall from the beginning of the letter, Matías was the old man who loved the boy best and was so grieved by his disappearance that many feared he might lose his mind. And there in the inn, hearing those words and what he went on to say, no one doubted that this was exactly what had happened. For in his view, the white boar was none other than our lost boy, none other than Javier, who, because of the sad life he had led as a human being, had changed his very nature. It seems he argued his case as follows:
    “Didn’t you see the way he stopped in the square to watch the boys playing in the snow? Isn’t that just what Javier used to do? And, again just like Javier, didn’t the boar have a purple stain around its snout?”
    Those who were present say that the old man’s speech was followed by a heated discussion, with some hunters denying that the boar had any such stain and others passionately affirming that it had. Now tell me, dear friend, can you imagine anything more foolish? What kind of a person is it who raises not the slightest objection to the idea of the boy’s metamorphosis and believes, therefore, that it was indeed Javier hiding beneath the boar’s rough coat, and yet grows irate and argumentative over the incidental detail of a birthmark. But, as you well know, superstition still lingers in places like Obaba and just as the stars continue to shine long after they are dead, the old beliefs …
    The first ten lines of the sixth page are completely illegible and we