The Boy Who Stole Attila's Horse (4 page)

I
MPRISONED NOW
for an entire lunar cycle, hunger and desperation have broken both communication and their sanity. Big gets on with his exercise plan. Meanwhile, Small has descended the last steps of madness into a cellar devastated by hallucinations. He hums to himself repeatedly: popular songs whose lyrics he twists, making them obscene. He gives absurd speeches, which his brother has stopped listening to, whether out of boredom or a feeling of wretchedness.

‘I think no one hears our cries because they mistake us for animals. You and I haven’t noticed till now, but for days we have been talking like pigs. Tomorrow we’ll shout in Latin. So they understand us.’

On other occasions he remains in silence for hours until an idea or rational thought snaps him out of it and compels him to shout out odd words, barely human sounds, nonsense poems.

‘Today might be the eve of my self.’

Skeletal, unmoving and shamefully underfed, he cannot collect food like before, and now his brother undertakes
this role, with the determination of a father. A sensation of bestiality governs them. The hunger in Small’s stomach is so intense it rumbles like thunder and Big plugs his ears with two lumps of clay, modelled from earth and damp weeds, so as not to hear him. He only removes the earplugs for a couple of hours a day in the hope of hearing any noise in the forest that might signal help. But every night, driven half mad by the scandal going on in his brother’s intestines, he puts them back, visibly saddened. He knows that with the earplugs in not only does he smother Small’s voices, but also that crusted layer of guilt that he carries, and which eats away at him.

Small asks unnecessary questions:

‘Why are we here?’

‘Is this the real world?’

‘Are we really children?’

Big never answers.

‘
Y
OU SHOULD KNOW
, brother, that I am the boy who stole Attila’s horse to make shoes out of his hooves, and in that way ensure that wherever I set foot the grass would no longer grow. The vilest of men fear me, as they fear the scourge of the gods, because I dried out their land and their seed in my vast wanderings across the world.’

‘Did you do it alone?’

‘With the Huns.’

‘Who are the Huns?’

‘Attila’s soldiers. When he died many of them tore pieces of flesh from themselves. I’m also missing pieces of flesh, only you can’t see because they’re missing from the inside.’

Big sighs and puts his earplugs back in. His brother has fallen into one of his trances, more frequent of late, in which he doesn’t seem to know who he is or where he has come from. The night before he spoke for a long time about human nature, explaining that men were marine beings before becoming land animals; he argued that for this reason it is important to look at the sea, because in doing so mankind can return to the origin of its species.

Later he took it upon himself to describe in the finest detail how certain feelings appear as he sees them in his mind. He arrived at some unbelievable conclusions, such as: the structure of hate is pyramidal and rotatory; or that boredom has a viscous inconsistency. Last thing before going to sleep he announced that every number could correspond to a word, and that one day he would be capable of expressing himself only through numbers. Those hellish monologues were unbearable for Big, since they confirmed the enormous, likely irreparable damage caused to his little brother by the fevers and deprivation.

‘At first my feet hurt. I had to scoop out the insides of the hooves with a spoon and later stick them together with strips of black hide so that when I walked my feet could bend. They smelled like the shell of a dragon’s egg, or like the skull of an idol. And they hurt my feet a lot, so much so that my heels bled and the nails came away from my toes. But when I got used to it I began to walk all over wearing the hooves, and I crossed entire lands that later turned to deserts. People ran away from me and I was happy. When I covered the same ground twice it went black. I walked for years all over the world, and you could see the footsteps of my pilgrimage from the sky like a dreadful wound that wouldn’t heal.

‘Then I wanted to find out what might happen if, instead of walking in my shoes over paths and forests, I walked
over people. I chose a camp where everyone was sleeping and I jumped from body to body in a game of bouncy hopscotch. At first nothing happened, but later they began to wake up, screaming and vomiting, their skin shrivelling up like grapes which left yellow stains on the floor. Their bodies turned brown and red. It looked like a poor man’s rainbow: lustreless, born out of a candle and a puddle of urine. I felt important, like a painter. I noticed that the adults dried out quicker than the children, and that the children didn’t weep when they saw death approaching, but received it peacefully, understanding it. I continued along my way, crushing towns and races, and I know that an entire language fell out of use because I jumped excitedly—excited enough to nearly cause myself an injury—on the last man who spoke it.

‘When I grew old, a few years ago, I took off my shoes for the first time since I was a boy, and I saw that my feet were still small. They were clean, unmarked; they even smelled good. I placed the shoes in a golden box, which I placed in a silver box, which I placed in a bronze box, and I buried them in a well in the forest that is half a day’s distance from my old house, and in there I left two of my children so that nobody could ever take them away.’

S
OME NIGHTS
Big finds he cannot sleep, whether for the nightmares tangled up with painful memories, or because of his quiet dreads, fuelled by the forest’s sounds and the thick air of the darkness. Having now spent over five weeks in the well, insomnia is just another routine in the small and ridiculous perimeter of his life. It’s natural, he thinks, for men to lose the ability to sleep when their world is becoming choked up. That’s why revolutions by injured peoples take place at night, like plagues.

In restless moments like these, he lies on his back and counts the stars. Alert to any little sign of flight or breath or moan, he has no other means to bring on sleep. Nor does he want to disturb his brother’s rest; fragile, like the skeleton of a butterfly.

And so it is that in the distance, with ears so wide they could hold an ocean, he hears branches bending, then the sound of fumbled walking through the forest shrubs and potholes, followed by a few hovering steps on tiptoe which, on arriving at the mouth of the well, stop and turn—first one then the other, agile and devious
like fox feet—edging towards a lookout onto a cage of children.

Big does nothing. He doesn’t move, or speak, or breathe. He just listens so that he can fix his eyes on the exact spot. His pupils are so large they could make out the very eyelids of a crow as it circled the moon. He knows where to look:

There.

A head appears and looks down inside the well.

Big knows the features of that face.

Someone returns his gaze.

Then, no one.

Big remains silent, though his breathing has quickened and his heart is pumping acid. He locks his jaw hard, grinding his teeth and making the nerves in the gums between his teeth ring. It’s a pleasant kind of pain, which suppresses the scream building up inside him. A scream like a lump of food in the stomach after a heavy meal.

And willing the wind to carry consonants and vowels across the night, and for his words to penetrate further than any scream could reach, he whispers:

‘I’m going to kill you.’

B
IG HAS HIS CLAY EARPLUGS
in and he can’t hear the shouts coming from his brother, but he senses a change of direction in the air streams around him. When he turns around he finds Small scratching his arms, eyeballing him like a lunatic and opening his mouth in desperation. Big takes out the earplugs and listens:

‘Dungo sat! Dungo was goswun!’

Big doesn’t understand. He thinks it must be another of his brother’s deliriums and goes to put his earplugs in again. Small, though, stops him with a shove and goes on shouting, pointing at his throat with trembling hands.

‘Nu wemee? Wemee bunder? Dungo was menhaman! Menitimo!’

The urgency in Small’s voice is a sign that something is not right. It isn’t a delirium. It’s as if he had just learnt to speak. Like when one cuts a piece of paper into strips and tries to put them back together but can’t form a rectangle, only a misshapen page.

‘Cunnard burds, un cunnard fesis, nemnay! Nemnay fa wampus! Saired!’

After so many weeks listening to Small’s crackpot monologues Big can’t help but see the irony in the strange process that has overcome him, and for the first time in a long while he sees a funny side, and has to discreetly stifle a laugh.

‘It’s all right. I’ll mend the wampus for you, don’t worry. The wampus is under control.’

And the second he utters the phrase he explodes in a snort of laughter, loud like a collapsing quarry. And just like a landslide he can’t stop it, not even when he sees the dagger eyes his brother is throwing him.

‘Forgive me. I’m sorry. Don’t get angry. It’s just the wampus…’

And again he bursts out laughing, beside himself now, out of control, the fits feeding themselves on more fits in an endless cycle of wampus. He laughs so hard that he falls to his knees clasping his middle, his belly, his jaw and his throat hurting. Small, too, is beside himself, but for other reasons: rage, puzzlement, fear; he is seized by a new kind of loneliness, and for a few seconds drastic thoughts race around his head: he might never speak properly again, might never be able to write or leave his mark. He might box his brother to death, stamp over his spine until it crunches underfoot, and leave him paralysed. He might never be able to say goodbye, or say I love you, or throw insults. Pointing his finger at Big, still on the ground on all fours, he screams:

‘Raturl! Filffif doan gon hurtul! Gon hurtul dop unterme! FOTON DUCRUZZER!’

Like adding fuel to the fire. Small’s accusing finger, the indignant look on his face, and the insult that the words ‘foton ducruzzer’ are clearly meant to represent are too much for Big. Doubled up in stitches he tries to find some words of comfort for his brother. Small launches a useless assault, hitting him with a few weak blows, and Big makes an effort to calm him down.

‘Don’t hit me. I’m sorry. I’ll stop laughing now.’

Small hits him again.

‘Stop it! I’ve told you I’m sorry. Let me get up.’

Small makes as if to throw another punch, but instead he says:

‘Yefonk!’

Big suppresses a fresh attack of the giggles.

‘Yes, I fonk. Don’t worry. I know what’s happening to you.’

‘Luno wonsat neme? Nenay.’

‘You’re suffering from a kind of speech defect. It’s not serious. It will pass.’

‘Surro?’

‘Yes, surro. Believe me. You have to rest and try to relax. You can’t keep thinking all the time like you have these last days.’

‘Nime der ra. Me ra. Holenark fut inun wound ma vote. Shelling, or darjung.’

‘I know, I know.’

Big puts his arm around Small, who receives the display of affection with a shudder, then bursts into tears, letting his trembling body fold into his brother’s. Between sniffles, Small says:

‘Amam cor.’

A few hours later, Small is practising speaking under his breath, like a slave learning how to write in secret with old exercise books. He thinks ‘brother’ and his mouth utters ‘furo’. He thinks ‘donkey’ and says ‘kenko’. Exasperated, he decides to start by repeating the simplest words, those with a single syllable. He thinks: ‘sun’.

‘Crun.’

‘Faa.’

‘Sato.’

‘Sot.’

‘Sonn.’

‘Sonn.’

‘Sun.’

He can hardly believe it as he speaks the word. He repeats it, louder:

‘Sun.’

‘Sun!’

‘SUN!’

He erupts with joy. Getting to his feet he cries ‘SUN’
and sploshes around the well with his arms raised, clenching his fists and his eyes, ‘SUN’ and ‘SUN’ and ‘SUN’. Big, who until that point was sleeping peacefully, is wrenched from his dream by the revelling gladiator.

‘What about the sun? It’s already night time!’ he says, his eyes bleary. Small just smiles, satisfied.

O
VER THE FOLLOWING DAYS
the aphasia gradually fades. Small can pronounce the simplest words without a problem, but those that are more complex still defeat him, especially when he tries constructing elaborate sentences or speeches. An inexact means of communication, which must recover the very kernels of understanding.

‘Hunger.’

‘You’ll eat what is strictly necessary.’

And yet, Small is right. Food is becoming scarce, almost certainly as a result of the brothers’ continued plunder of every inch of the well as they forage for roots and insects, small eggs and maggots. What’s more, Big’s decision over the distribution of the food means that Small can barely move, and he spends all day prone on the floor like a vegetable, growing deep ulcers between his buttocks and on his legs. Although skinny and pale, Big retains a certain vigour, the result of a more balanced diet and the obsessive repetition of his exercises. He knows that in these deprived conditions his brother’s time is running out, so in the hope
of finding something for him to eat he sinks his hands into the last crevices of the well, delving shoulder-deep into the hard earth. He spends hours like this, then comes across an earthworm, a significant portion of which he loses as he pulls apart the earth to reach it. He hands the worm over and his brother bolts it down without saying a word or moving anything but his tongue.

Small savours the earthworm and imagines he is sucking on a magic pill. There and then he develops superhuman powers: he can fly like an eagle, be as strong as ten men; he is capable of understanding every language on the planet. He decides to leave the well and starts flapping his arms. He lifts up off the ground, one, two, three hands high. He comes across fresh roots. His brother becomes small. And just as his head emerges and he sees the full magnitude of the forest, a rough stake jabs him out of nowhere and he plummets down. He gets up, in pain, but now more sticks appear, walloping him in the nape of his neck and on his arms, and again he falls. His pride is injured now, and he rises up, carried on a typhoon of hate, faster and faster, and at the summit he is showered by a hundred, a thousand sticks that strike him like the keys of a mute organ. He zooms about, blindly smashing into them—a mosquito trapped inside a swarm. Yet, he doesn’t fall. The blows keep coming and he doesn’t fall. In the end, with nothing
to lose, he decides to test whether, among the various gifts that the earthworm bestowed on him, immortality is one of them, and he declares war. An armed mob confronts him. You have no right to fight, they tell him. Next thing, Small attacks.

In the afternoon Big gives up and sits down next to Small. The hunger remains. One of the brothers struggles to remove the latent idea of cannibalism from his head. The minutes slide over them as if the well were a courtyard of abandoned statues in the vault of mother earth.

A plump bird lands at their feet, cawing.