Out in the Open Read Free

rummaged among the contents, knowing full well that, once he had eaten the cheese, all he had left was half a dry sausage. He took it out and held it to his nose. Closing his eyes, he allowed himself to be filled by the scents of pepper and cinnamon. He licked the sausage and was about to bite into it, but again he felt the shadows of those men pursuing him and had no option but to keep the sausage for some time of greater need, which, he was sure, would not be long in coming.
    He spent a long while running his tongue over his gums to allay the burning sensation left by the cheese. He bit off a chunk of bread, drank water from the wineskin, then lay down on the ground, resting his head on a tree root. The sky was a dark, dark blue. Up above, the stars were like jewels encrusted in a transparent sphere. The plain that lay stretched out before him gave off a smell of parched earth and dry grass as it slowly recovered from the rigours of the sun. A grey owl flew over his head and disappeared among the trees. This was the first time he had been this far from the village. What lay ahead was, quite simply, unknown territory.

2
    HE WAS HEADING north in the middle of the night, trying to avoid any existing paths. His trousers were still slightly damp, but this didn’t bother him now. He was walking across the fallow fields, taking care to step only on the stubble left from the last harvest. The occasional partridge flew up as he passed, and he heard the sound of hares fleeing from the crunching sound made by his boots. Once he was out of the olive grove, his one plan was to keep going. He could recognise the Milky Way, the W of Cassiopeia and the Great Bear. From there, he could locate the Pole Star and that was where he was directing his feet.
    Although he had not as yet spent one whole day on the run, he knew that more than enough time had passed for fear already to be racing through the village streets towards his parents’ house, an invisible torrent that would carry all the women of the village along with it to form a pool around his mother, who would be lying limply on her bed, her face as wrinkled as an old potato. He imagined the turmoil in the house and in the village. People perched on the stone bench outside, hoping to catch a glimpse through the half-open door of what was going on inside. He could see the bailiff’s motorbike parked outside: a sturdy machine with a sidecar on which he drove through the village and the surrounding fields, leaving dust and noise in his wake. The boy knew that sidecar well. He had often travelled in it, covered by a dusty blanket. He recalled the greasy smell of the wool and the cracked, oilcloth edging. To him, the roar of that engine was like the trumpet sounded by the first Angel, the angel who had mingled fire and blood and cast it down upon the earth until all the green grass was burned up.
    The bailiff was the only person in the region to own a motorised vehicle, and the governor was the only one to own a vehicle of the four-wheeled variety. He himself had never seen the governor, but had heard hundreds of accounts of the time he came to the village for the inauguration of the grain silo. Apparently, he was welcomed by children waving little paper flags, and several lambs were sacrificed in celebration. Those who had been there described the car as if it were a magical object.
    Tiny and dark in the midst of that still-greater darkness, he wondered if he might find something useful on the imaginary line he was following due north. Perhaps some fruit trees along the road or fountains of clean water or endless springtimes. He couldn’t really come up with any concrete expectation, but that didn’t matter. By heading north, he was travelling away from the village, away from the bailiff and from his father. He was on the move, and that was enough. The worst thing that could happen, he thought, would be to exhaust his limited strength by going round in a circle or, which