Out in the Open by Jesús Carrasco Read Free Book Online Page B

flask. He would then whistle to the dog and carry on walking.
    Finally, when the sun’s heat had become unbearable, they stopped. A few yards away from a reed bed, on the edge of what must once have been a pond, stood two exhausted alder trees, their leaves all shrivelled. Along one side, beyond the main clump of reeds, grew a thin line of pale, parched foliage, like a barb piercing the plain. On the other side, lines like isobars were etched on the dry, cracked bed of the pond, witnesses to its final death throes, grubby traces left by the water and which the process of evaporation had imprinted on the now dry mud. The hot midday breeze made the reeds rustle, filling the air with a sound like delicate wooden bells. Coarse heads of hair waving like Tibetan prayer flags, albeit unadorned by spirited horses, jewels or mantras. Cries addressed to the heavens which, instead of bestowing blessings, seemed to call upon the sun to bring down still more fire with the help of a piece of glass or a lightning bolt.
    The goatherd led the donkey over to the alder trees and there began to unload it. The boy watched him absently, driven almost mad by thirst or perhaps by their sudden arrival at a resting-place he had lost all hope of finding. The pustules on his face had grown redder. The old man turned to him, his hands resting lightly on the donkey’s rope bridle. The boy, covered in dust, stood there petrified.
    â€˜Boy.’
    The goatherd’s voice dragged him back out of the abyss into which he had fallen and, almost without realising it, he turned towards that voice. The old man had stopped what he was doing and was, for the first time, looking him in the face. He was squinting in the bright light, his eyes shaded by the two bony arches protecting his milky corneas. The old man’s penetrating gaze restored him to normality, like a surgeon setting a fracture with one precise, decisive movement.
    â€˜Boy.’
    The second time the old man spoke, the boy sprang into action and went to his aid. He took the various objects the old man passed to him and placed them under the trees. When they had unloaded the donkey, the man took one of the flasks and plunged into the reed bed, pushing the reeds and bulrushes aside with his hands. The boy watched him disappear and saw how the goats followed down the path he had opened up. Then he uncorked the flask left in one of the panniers and tipped it into his tin. Not a drop. He looked over at the gap in the reeds into which the goatherd had vanished and, squeezing the tin hard in his hands, he cursed him roundly.
    He sat down and leaned his back against the trunk of one of the trees and studied the landscape. He thought of the
reguera
, the stream into which the village poured its sewage. He remembered how it stank, remembered the clumps of bulrushes, the ailanthus trees and the reeds growing along its banks. He regarded the pale little copse of alders as if it were a fossil, then stood up and walked along the edge of the reed bed. The dog remained where it was, lying in the feeble shade provided by the trees. Walking over the surface of the absent water, he felt an unconscious impulse to roll up his trouser legs so as not to get them wet, a desire for cool, clean water that was felt, rather, by his cells, with their different way of perceiving reality. He found signs of moisture at the foot of a willow. A multitude of tiny channels, like a miniature delta, flowing towards the now absent pond. An attempt that led off beyond the shade cast by the reeds only to be frustrated by the sun and the rain-starved earth. A pointless exercise inscribed on the soft, sandy sediment.
    When he got back to the encampment, the old man had already sorted out the goats, who, crammed together among the reeds, only stayed there for a while, their noses in the mud, until the old man felt they’d had enough to drink and shooed them out, slapping them on the back. Like a shoal of fish, other goats