When he recovers, Big rinses the blood off his brother and cheerfully announces that apart from a few broken teeth and some bruises, it’s nothing serious. Small protests:
‘My whole body hurts. That didn’t work. And I’m hungry.’
Big feels responsible for Small’s injuries. He looks at him pityingly and ashamed, and then looks up at the spot against which he’d smashed him only seconds before. He gets up. Looking closer he sees the marks from the impact, the dent in the wall of earth. The cast has held the shape of the top half of his brother: the head, the torso, the arms. The missing teeth that they couldn’t locate are probably still biting into the hollow. A smile spreads across Big’s face. And though he knows he has had to use every ounce of his strength for that throw, a dark something awakens in him, a kind of mechanical resourcefulness that connects sequential layers of thought; a conspiracy of scattered images comes together and gives form to a pattern that is painful, but real. Afterwards, glowing with excitement, he goes back to Small. It’s been twenty-four hours since they fell.
‘I’ve had an idea,’ he says. And also: ‘But you have to make me a promise.’
2
IN THE BAG there is a loaf of bread.
When they go for food supplies, the brothers must take the dirt path that runs alongside their house up to the slope of bergamot trees, then rock-hop across the river and carry on beyond the wild cornfields. If they want to gain time, they must go through the forest. To do this means almost half a day’s walk; double that if you count the return journey.
‘I’m thirsty,’ says Small.
‘You can drink the water there on that side. I’ve already tried it. It’s fresh.’
‘But it’s dirty.’
In the bag there is a loaf of bread and some dried tomatoes. Big goes towards the corner where the water flows more heavily, kneels down and digs a small hole. After a while the water builds up in the hole until it spills over. Big then sinks his head in the little well and drinks loudly, imitating a thirsty dog.
‘It’s good. Try it.’
Small copies all of his brother’s gestures, including the nasty slurping sound.
‘It tastes like dirt.’
‘Everything here tastes like dirt. Get used to it.’
With his eyes on the bag, Small adds:
‘Now I’m hungrier.’
Big takes the bag, twists it, and throws it to the opposite side of the well floor.
‘I’ve told you already that we’re not going to touch Mother’s food. We’ll eat what we have here.’
‘But we don’t have anything here.’
‘Yes we do. You’ll see.’
In the bag there is a loaf of bread, some dried tomatoes and a few figs. Big inspects every millimetre of the well, every cranny, every root. He makes a fold in his shirt and in the hollow collects everything he can find. Small watches him blankly. Afterwards, with black nails, Big sits down in front of his brother and unveils his booty of squashed ants, green snails, little yellow maggots, mushy roots and larvae.
‘This is what we’re going to eat.’
Small can’t hide his disgust. He knows his brother is not joking, and that if he has made up his mind that they’re going to eat grubs and weeds, grubs and weeds he will eat. He bites his lip to hold in the rising nausea and says:
‘Fine.’
And he takes a handful of ants in his hand and tosses them into his mouth, swallowing them without chewing, almost without breathing. With his tongue he checks that there are none left between his teeth.
‘Maybe if we added a little piece of tomato they’d be tastier,’ he says with a weak smile.
In the bag there is a loaf of bread, some dried tomatoes, a few figs and a wedge of cheese. On hearing his brother’s suggestion Big upends his shirt, scattering the food everywhere, and smacks him across the cheek with the back of his hand. His hand being so big, however, and the cheek so small, the blow also reaches Small’s temple, his chin, and his ear. It connects, too, with his mouth and yanks the nerves in his teeth, pealing through the bone and making his gums flare. He falls flat on his back with half a lazy face, the flesh swelling with a pain so sharp it clouds his vision. And with his good ear he can still hear a voice bouncing between the walls, a deep echo that warns him:
‘The bag isn’t the solution. If you mention it again, I’ll hold your head in the dirt until I kill you.’
In the bag there is a loaf of bread, some dried tomatoes, a few figs and a wedge of cheese.
Small never again repeats the word beginning with bee.
3
BY THE THIRD DAY they have developed a routine. When the sun comes up they drink water and gargle, then spit it out on the other side of the well in the same hole that they have dug for their waste deposits. Afterwards they take turns to shout, calling for help for several minutes at a time until their throats burn from the strain. For the rest of the morning Small busies himself collecting all manner of insects and roots, which he mashes in his shirt until they form a thick paste. Meanwhile, his brother does his exercises. Big builds up his muscles, adhering to a fixed regime, with push-ups to exercise his arms and shoulders, sets of sit-ups and then squats, which he does until his legs no longer obey him and he has to stop. He moves on to resistance training, lunging at different angles, strengthening his back and spine. To finish he repeats the push-ups, the sit-ups and the squats, but with his brother in tow so the session ends with him lifting Small up onto his shoulders, as if he were a weight bar or a sandbag. He rests for fifteen minutes and in this intermission the two brothers go back to their shouting, only stopping when they can no longer utter a word. Afterwards, Big repeats all of the exercises.
If they are able to look up at the sky without the sun burning their eyes they agree that the morning is over, and with that the afternoon begins. The distribution of food is totally unequal. Big eats eighty per cent of what his brother collects, leaving Small with what little he can extract from a worm, a few insects and two or three roots. Both sate their appetite in silence, and keep aside a small portion for supper. Once they have finished, they drink all the water they can and repeat their chorus of shouts. Afterwards, Small tucks himself into the foetal position, barely moving, and Big spends a couple of hours doing stretches. With the last light of the day they eat the vestiges of food that they left aside, still observing the same rationing model, and then go back to shouting until nightfall. They lie down pressed together, each of them searching in the other’s body for some warmth to help him sleep. Meanwhile, the forest answers their daytime shouts with a nocturnal song. They await it restlessly, wondering whose they’ll hear first: the crickets’, the owls’, or the wolves’.
5
SMALL DREAMS about a swarm of butterflies and watches himself catch them with his long, retractable tongue. If they are white, they taste of bread; if they are pink or red, of fruit — a combination of strawberries and oranges; the green ones taste of mint and peppermint; if they are dark they don’t have a flavour — eating them is like licking windows.
The night before, a glow-worm fell into the well, which his brother devoured without batting an eyelid. In the dream, too, there are glow-worms, but they’re big and you can’t eat them, so he picks one and mounts her like an iridescent cavalryman. He is so hungry that he rides the glow-worm to a clearing set apart from the plain and when she stoops to let him down, he sinks his teeth into her side, tearing off pieces of luminous flesh, and drives his nails into her green haunch until he is in up to his hands, his elbows, the full length of his arms, and he slurps the glistening blood as if he were drinking raw egg out of the small crack in its shell. Satiated, and still atop the glowing body of his mount, he begins to cry, kicking himself, since without her, and in the terrible darkness that now covers him, he has no way of escaping the well.