The Boy Who Stole Attila's Horse (5 page)

‘
F
ILTHY SON OF A BITCH
.’

The bird was dead within the two or three seconds it took the brothers to surround and jump on top of it. Driven by his hunger, it was Small who moved fastest and clutched the bird by its neck, rendering useless any effort by the animal to fly off again. He grasped so tightly with his forefingers and thumbs that by the time the bird had suffocated its head was practically separate from its body.

‘You little pile of shit.’

It was then that the problems began. Small’s first instinct was to sink his mouth into the belly of the bird, but his brother stopped him, throwing him off with a hefty shove. Small fell flat on his back, switching from jubilation to shock, from shock to anger.

‘Miserable fucker.’

While blocking his brother’s onslaught, Big tried to explain to him that they would not eat the bird right then. Their shrunken stomachs wouldn’t be able to digest the raw meat of the animal, or its bile and intestines. They would have dreadful stomach pains, would vomit virtually at the
first mouthful and, without a doubt, what little they might manage to digest and pass through their intestines would come straight out the other end in the form of torrential diarrhoea.

‘Bastard.’

Small had other ideas. According to him, after having eaten insects and larvae and worms for weeks, his stomach could accommodate the raw meat perfectly well, kidneys and all—if the bird even had kidneys—and in spite of the fact that he never would have eaten kidneys at home, because they were repulsive. The only reason his brother wouldn’t let him taste even a morsel of the bird, he maintained, was because of the rigorous division of food he had decreed way back on that day.

‘Stingy arsehole.’

The right way to eat it, continued Big, in spite of his brother’s mounting rage, was to cook it. That is, to roast it or bake it. But the lack of utensils as well as the humidity inside the well prevented them from making a fire. And without fire it was impossible to cook anything. Nor could they smoke it, or salt it, or marinate it in vinegar or oil. There was no way around it.

‘If you died now, I’d piss on your corpse.’

But there was one option. An option that meant eating. And eating more than the sum of the last days’ fare put together. The problem, however, was that they would have to
wait a day or two, maybe three, before trying a morsel. That is: go on starving with the banquet laid out before them.

‘Shit-eater, deformed son of a whore.’

They needed to wait for the bird to decompose so that the flies, blowflies and maggots would come out to gorge on it. Small protested vehemently. Where was the justice in letting a load of bugs have their fill on the food that he’d been forbidden to eat? His brother explained that if they left the animal out in the air, without burying it, the decomposition process would be quicker, and that they could eat the flies and the maggots, hundreds of maggots, and that they would have food for days. What’s more, food they were used to and which would sit well with them.

‘You’re a little sack of shit.’

Though in no way in agreement, Small had to bow down to the superior strength of his brother, who guarded the dead bird with his whole body as if he were defending a fortress. Only once Small was sound asleep did Big succumb to the lightest of slumbers and rest. There was no doubt in his mind that, given half a chance, his brother would pounce on the bird and devour the whole thing down to its bones.

‘I’d like to rip your rotten face from your head.’

If the first night was hard, the day after was even worse. There were no civilities, no good mornings or routines, just unbridled, nasty violence. Tension and silence kept a pressure cooker of unease bubbling away: Big in one corner,
Small in another, the bird between them. The stench coming off the animal seemed to intensify the fury with which they watched one another. It was as if the clock had stopped, like dead time in a battle.

‘Sheep-shagger, son of a boar and a monkey.’

When a few flies began to buzz around the corpse, Big ate every one and looked at his brother with a triumphant smile. When a few more appeared, Small refused to eat them, despite the fact that Big was managing, painstakingly, to catch them and invited him to do the same. Your pride will kill you, he said, to which Small replied with insults.

‘Dickhead, idiot, freak.’

It didn’t take long for the maggots to creep out from under the wings, like roving tumours. The first ones were small, then succulent, ring-bound bodies sprouted out of the rotten flesh, moving in and out of its orifices. Big’s face lit up with joy. He caught one between two fingers as it pushed its way out of the bird’s neck. He put it in his mouth and felt an explosion of liquid and jelly as he chewed. He couldn’t recall having eaten anything so tasty in his life.

‘Screw your dead family.’

He ate a few more while Small watched and hurled insults at him contemptuously. Once Big had had his fill, he took the biggest maggot he could find and offered it to his brother.

‘Eat. It’s really good.’

‘I don’t want to eat your shitty maggots.’

‘They taste like chicken. And they’re not cold.’

‘Fuck you. Fuck off and die.’

‘You are the one who will die if you don’t eat.’

‘Which means I won’t have to see your scummy face.’

‘Eat.’

Small is so hungry that he can no longer control his body. He baulks, but puts out his hand, into which Big places a colossal maggot, as juicy as a ripe apple.

‘Abuser. Nasty pig. I hate you.’

Finally he eats. He chews the gelatinous fibre of the maggot a dozen times and the bitter juice that oozes from it dances on his tongue. He drools like a hungry dog. It doesn’t taste of chicken: it’s better than chicken. He bursts into tears like the little boy that he was.

‘You’re the best. I love you. I love you.’

The feast goes on all night.

‘
I
F I WANTED TO
,’ says Small, stretched out on his back with his arms open like a crucified man, ‘I could change the order of things. I could move the sun so that it fell on us in the middle of the afternoon and that way we wouldn’t be cold after our nap. I could go and collect the old smells from the village and fill our noses with freshly made bread, apple turnovers, chocolate. I could build a spiral staircase from inside the well right up to the trees and then bend it back so we can hop off it again without hurting ourselves. I could turn water into milk and insects into chickens and roots into liquorice. But I don’t want to. I don’t want to do anything. It’s enough to be here and for the universe to keep turning around me. It’s what happens to us who are dead.

‘The living… the living are like children: they play at dying. I lived among tough men who weren’t scared of death, and with smart men who cheated it, and with weak men who let themselves be dragged along by it, but none of them understood the minuteness, the insignificance of a world devoted to that cause. I don’t understand it. I
didn’t understand it till now… Look at me… Three big steps. This is all the distance I can cover before the walls cut me off. Three big steps. My world is as small as theirs; it’s a jaw that locks on to me and salivates, diluting me, as if it wanted to erase me, and my own battle is reduced to staving it off. Is this it? Must men live within walls with no windows or doors? Is there something beyond this life while life goes on? There is, brother, there is! I know it! Because in my head, in here, where no one can see, nothing can hold me back. It’s a land without walls, without wells, just for me. And it’s real because it’s changing me; the pain it gives me is different, the days are never-ending. Time is a crossroads nailed between my eyes. My whole childhood will happen tomorrow, I’ll take my first steps tomorrow, I’ll say my first word tomorrow. It’s a glorious feeling, when summer arrives… You think I’m ill? Ignoramus! You think I haven’t proved myself? I know very well that you pay no heed to my words, but this doesn’t make them any less true. If only you were able to see what I see, this darkness of days. But also this inexplicable warmth, so close to love… Don’t you see it? Don’t you feel the liquid engulfing us as if we were foetuses? These walls are membranes and we are floating within them. We move around in anticipation of our long-awaited delivery. This well is a uterus, you and I are yet to be born, our cries are the agonies of the world’s birth.’

Big has been listening to his brother in silence, barely understanding a word of what he says. Every day it gets harder to follow him, and he has the feeling that in the end he will be left behind, that Small will keep moving on his journey and won’t look back. Then he says:

‘When you were born the doctor couldn’t get there in time and it was me who pulled you from Mother’s belly. The kitchen was filled with blood and your pig-like squeals. I didn’t know how to make you be quiet, so I put one finger in your mouth for you to suckle on. Mother was asleep, and after a while you fell asleep too, but you went still and you were so tiny and your chest wasn’t moving. I thought you were dead. That I’d poisoned you with my thumb, or who knows what. I was so scared… I screamed at you, too much, and when you woke up I carried on screaming, and you must have thought that the world was a horrible place. I couldn’t sleep for weeks, for months.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘Because I want you to understand that I am not afraid of dying, I don’t base my life on the knowledge that one day it will all end. There are times when life presents circumstances where the only recourse is a radical move, an extraordinary sacrifice, and I can accept that. What I couldn’t bear, though, would be to see you grow up in a wasteland, like this well; a place to die with no peace,
all because of the apathy of civilization. A cemetery in which to wither, like a flower that won’t ever help the land to grow. It is the thought of you dying that makes the world so small.’

S
MALL HAS NAMED
himself Inventor and he organizes cultural activities for his brother, although really he does it because he cannot stop imagining.

He has perfected what he has called ‘osteo-vegetable music’, which is what comes from hitting certain bones with dry roots. He rehearses on his own body, above all with his knees, hips, torso and collarbone. But what he’d really love would be to somehow rotate his head and arms and rock out on his spine. His extreme boniness makes him look like a misshapen neighbourhood made up entirely of street corners, and this affords him an inordinate range of obscure, high-pitched sounds which come together as a tune when he strums his tendons and thumps his stomach and chest. The result is a series of concerts with a hard, repetitive bass line, but which boast brief flashes of harmony so that, skeletal origins aside, one can appreciate a certain musicality. Apart from the symphonies, Small takes particular pleasure from his elaborate overtures, where with great ceremony he takes up position—to play himself—and explains the contents of the works with such unfeigned
titles as ‘Kneecap and Ribs Song’, ‘Hungry Fingers’ and ‘At Night a Cranium’.

He also organizes outings to The Well Space, home to various temporary art exhibitions. He dedicates a lot of time to finger-painting on the walls: generally abstract pieces embellished with stones, roots and rotten leaves. Unfortunately he can only draw one or two works in the space available to him, and in order to make room for new installations he is obliged, much to his sadness, to delete the old ones. Had it been possible to preserve every one of them and arrange them chronologically, an astute observer would have picked up on his painstaking narration of life inside the well, a kind of pagan Stations of the Cross.
Wolves
Smelling Men, The Arrival of the Sea, First Worm
, or
The Bird of Virtuous Death
were acclaimed works and only just missed forming part of The Well Space’s permanent collection.

Energy levels permitting, his creativity extends to another kind of pursuit, one that requires greater exertions: gestural theatre, folk dances, human sculptures and contortionism, activities that Big also takes part in on occasion. But the privation of recent times has reduced the number of festivals, much treasured when they do go ahead.

At the end of the day’s line-up, Big spends a few minutes applauding, whistling and hear-hearing like a doting public. Afterwards, if he finds Small in good spirits, he calls for an
encore and bows in reverence until he gets one, at which point they fall about laughing at the unintended variations on the show, always unrepeatable.

A few hours later, famished and exhausted, they can hardly remember what they have done, seen or heard.

‘
W
HO ARE YOU?
’ asks Small.

‘You know who I am,’ answers Small.

‘How did you get here?’

‘The same way as you. Falling into the well.’

‘Where have you been these past weeks? I haven’t seen you before.’

‘I kept quiet.’

‘And now you want to talk?’

‘Let’s.’

Big is snoring like a wild boar.

‘Am I going to die?’ asks Small.

‘Yes. One day. Does that worry you?’ answers Small.

‘Sometimes. When I’ve got things to say it scares me to think I don’t have time to say them. My brother thinks I hallucinate, but he’s wrong. It’s sort of an emergency.’

‘You’re not special in that regard.’

‘Yes I am. I think things the others don’t think. I see
things the others don’t see, or if they see them they can’t interpret them correctly.’

‘You speak as if you know the truth.’

‘No. I speak as if I were tired of being wrong.’

‘And you’re not wrong anymore?’

‘No. It’s everything else that’s wrong. This well, the walls, the forest, the mountains. I’ve been confused for a long time, but I’m OK now.’

‘You don’t look OK.’

‘I’m going to die. I’ve never been better.’

‘Will we get out of the well one day?’ asks Small.

‘You, yes. In twenty-eight days,’ answers Small.

‘And my brother?’

‘The young boy sleeping over there will never get out. His bones will turn to dust here in this hole. Someone must die in order for you to live; you must know that by now.’

‘I don’t want him to die. He’s being strong for me.’

‘Many will be strong for you. You will show your gratitude when the time comes. To your brother, too.’

‘I don’t know how I ever could… I’ve got nothing to give them. There is a hole where other things should be.’

‘You can’t fight that. Nobody will be able to fill that hole, that hunger you feel every day. You can’t sate yourself.’

‘It’s like a prison sentence.’

‘I suppose it is. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry. I had options, but I chose this path.’

‘And what do you think you will find at the end?’

‘It doesn’t matter. Maybe a punishment, or a reward. Maybe there’ll be pain, nothing but pain, a searing white pain that will leave me blind. I don’t care. Life is wonderful, but living is unbearable. I’d like to pare down existence. To pronounce over a century one long, inimitable word, and for that word to be my true testament.’

‘A testament for whom?’

‘For whoever understands it.’

‘Do you think I will be remembered?’ asks Small.

‘Perhaps by your contemporaries, by your generation,’ answers Small.

‘That’s not enough. I don’t know if I belong to any generation: none of my loved ones are my age. I will be remembered by all, until not one man remains on the earth.’

‘And why should you be remembered?’

‘For what I know. For what I am going to do. For surviving the well. For my visions. Because my words are new. Because I am big.’

‘No, you’re not. You’re Small.’

‘That is only a name.’