Almost immediately above him, he heard the sound of the schoolmaster blowing his nose. A loud, membranous explosion that used to make the teacher’s clean handkerchief shiver and cause the children to break out in a sweat as they struggled to suppress their laughter. The shadow cast by the teacher’s thin body loomed over the roof. He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth while the teacher peed onto the pile of twigs.
He allowed a long time to pass after the last voice had left the olive grove. He wanted to be quite sure that he would find no one there when he did finally lift the lid on his refuge, and he had determined to wait for as long as was necessary. Nothing, not even the hours spent underground or the teacher’s urine still sticky in his hair or the hunger which was, for the first time, pricking him hard, nothing was enough now to weaken his resolve, because the black flower of his family’s betrayal still gnawed at his stomach. He fell asleep.
When he woke, the sun was already high in the sky. The harsh noonday glare pierced the twig roof, faintly illuminating his knees with dusty needles of light. As soon as he opened his eyes, he was aware of the numbness in his muscles and realised that his own body had woken him from his slumbers. He reckoned he must have spent seven or eight hours in that hole and resolved to get out as soon as possible. He cautiously raised his head and felt his hair touch the roof. He sat up, pushed aside some of the twigs and peered about him, his neck as stiff as a rusty hinge, to make sure no one was there. He could leave now and head towards the north; he knew of a spring where the muleteers watered their mules, his plan being to hide among the reeds, wait until no one was looking, then smuggle himself aboard the cart of some trader, hide away among the frying pans and knickers, and wait until they were many miles from the village and it was safe to come out. He knew, though, that in order to reach that spring, he would have to walk through open countryside in broad daylight with only a few piles of rocks as shelter. Any local shepherd or hunter would be sure to identify his scrawny body as that of the lost boy, so his only alternative was to remain hidden until evening, when his wiry limbs could pass for a withered bush or some vague, dark shape silhouetted against the setting sun. He carefully replaced the twigs and crouched down again.
During his self-imposed imprisonment, he became familiar with his various companions in the hole: beetles, earwigs and, especially, earthworms. He felt behind him for the hollow he had made for his knapsack. He opened the canvas bag, took out a piece of sausage and chewed it slowly. He drank some warm water from the small wineskin that had grown as swollen as a dead cat after the several days it had remained hidden prior to his escape. It was not long before he felt his bladder fill up and become painfully distended. His hunched position put further pressure on it, and a few drops of urine occasionally leaked out, only increasing his discomfort. When the stabbing pains became unbearable, he tried to pull down his trousers. He struggled with his flies and his belt, but there was so little space, he could barely move. He considered climbing out of the hole for a moment, but was afraid of being spotted from a distance or of leaving some trace, however small, for the search party that was doubtless still searching for him. After a while, he managed to slide his trousers down over his bottom. He tried to push his penis back between his legs, away from his body, but so cramped was his hiding-place that he immediately became aware that his foreskin was touching his ankles and, at that point, he could hold it in no longer and simply let himself go like a wheel rolling downhill. He had spent so many hours lying in the hole that the compacted clay had become like a bowl in which the urine formed a puddle. The sulphurous atmosphere turned his refuge into a toxic pot. He reached up with his head towards the roof, pressing his mouth against the gaps between the twigs, trying to gulp down some fresh air from outside. He needed to escape, to burst through the roof and out into the olive grove as if his body were a cork suddenly liberated from the depths of a lake. He closed his eyes and clung to the roots reaching down into the hole. He lay for a long time, unaware of the tension in his muscles, and then, when he did become conscious of it, a sudden weariness overwhelmed him and his muscles relaxed, allowing his body to settle back into the shape of the pit. The damp heat in the hole dazed him, and the softened clay beneath the small of his back produced in him a kind of dull discomfort, a drowsiness that led him into sleep.
The light coming in through the roof had faded almost to nothing when he was woken by the sound of rustling leaves. Some small rodent, he thought. He desperately needed to uncurl, to breathe freely, to shake off the mud covering skin and clothes, to dry his trousers, to get out of there. He must first make sure, though, that the noise that had woken him was not some kind of threat. He sat up and, very carefully, with the top of his head, lifted the roof of branches just enough to create a gap through which he could see. Only a few inches from where he was hiding, a field mouse was snuffling around in the curled leaves fallen from the olive trees. Then he painstakingly dismantled his roof branch by branch, twig by twig, like nest-building in reverse. He peeped out, turning his head this way and that like a periscope until he had scanned the whole of the olive grove and found no signs of life apart from that field mouse, now scampering away past the piles of prunings. By the time he emerged from the hole, the light had taken on a dusty, reddish quality. There was no sun on the horizon, but a yellowish glow lit the plain from the west, casting long shadows over the fallow fields. He stretched his body in every possible direction: squatting down, standing up, stamping his feet, and, for a moment, he completely forgot he was on the run and didn’t even notice the geometric fragments of mud that detached themselves from the soles of his shoes. His trousers were still wet. He stood with legs apart and unstuck the fabric from his skin. If he had run away in winter, he thought, it would have frozen to him.
He had chosen that place months before because it was the wooded area nearest to the village. At the time, he didn’t know at what hour of the night he would be able to leave his house, nor how much time he would have to reach his hiding-place. If he fled in any other direction, the men would be able to spot him from hundreds of yards away. At least there he had the protection of the olive trees. Within the grove itself he had chosen the northern edge, because that would afford him the clearest view of the plain he would have to cross.
He took off his clothes and draped them over some low branches so that they would dry in the air. His skin felt swollen and uncomfortable. Wood pigeons were fluttering about in the tops of the trees, hoping to find a roosting place for the night. He rubbed his body with dry earth as if he were an elephant and immediately felt better. He removed his knapsack from the hole and walked the length of the olive grove until he found a suitable tree. He sat down naked on the ground and leaned his back against the knotty trunk. Small stones stuck to his buttocks and the bark pricked his back. Once he had made himself relatively comfortable, he felt in his knapsack and took out a piece of hard cheese and a crust of stale bread. He ate the cheese and watched as the night gradually took possession of the earth. Above him, the pigeons were cooing. He gnawed at the skin of the cheese. When he had eaten it down to the rind, he was about to throw the rind away, but something stopped him: the memory of those men’s voices calling him. He turned and glanced back into the olive grove, imagining the dark figures of the search party, silently shouting his name. He put the cheese rind back in the knapsack. He was still hungry, though, and again 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.