Collette Sandrine - Nothing But Dust

To Jean-Michel,
joyful poet of the bikkie, of little ross and the whisk broom,
tireless surveyor of the winding trails in the Morvan,
of Schopenhauer, and above all, maker of blue sky.

B ecause he was the youngest, his brothers had gotten into the habit of chasing him around the house on horseback when their mother wasnt watching. As soon as the twins had grown strong enough to grab him by the collar and lift him up at a gallop from astride their criollos, it became their favorite pastime. They tallied points for whoever managed to drag him to the corner of the barn, or beyond the old gray wooden outbuildingsthen the dead tree, then the genista grovebefore depositing him in the dust.

The little brother always saw them coming. He could hear their shouts, which they emphasized to frighten him; and the sound of the horses breaking into a gallop, the iron shoes striking the ground and coming nearer, causing his stomach to flutter, as if the earth were trembling beneath his feet; and of course the brothers, perched high in their saddles, thought it was funny, their shrill laughter drowning the clatter of hooves.

He froze, one arm in the air, his hand still holding the stick hed been using to stir up waves in the drinking trough; never mind if the water was dirty. He stopped dead like a field mouse in the steppe, alerted too late by the rush of buzzards wings overhead; he, too, with a panicked look in his eyes, praying that his ears and mind and instinct had deceived him; but then they always fell upon him with only a few strides, raptors swooping on their prey, leaning from their mad horses. Standing there in the middle of the rear courtyard, the little brother did not have time to reach the kitchen, where his mother was chopping, carving, rushing around: hed barely learned to run when it all began. Once or twice he had tried to call out to her, he thought he could see her stern figure behind the windowpane, grinding meat or slicing vegetables, focused and angry as if she were slaughtering them, but she didnt hear him, didnt see him, even the day he managed to bang on the window before Mauro carried him offor maybe it was because she was so uninterested in his fate that he preferred not to think about it. Truth is, the only thing she did do was give him a thrashing afterwards, shouting that she was fed up with him wetting his pants. And the brothers laughed as they looked on, and shrieked, Bed wetter! Bed wetter! while she obliged him to run bare-bottomed behind her to go get changed, tossing his soiled trousers into the laundry basket with a gesture of furious exasperation.

In his mind he already knew that he would never escape from their terrifying pursuit; but he tried, against all odds, until the very last moment, even in vain, even when he felt his brothers fingers against his skin as they clutched his shirt collar. He waddled on his short little legs, desperately stuck where he was when he should have been jumping and leaping, and he whimpered in terror, which only made Mauro and Joaquin weep with laughter. In the beginning the twins, who were six years older, would join forces to harpoon him from on horseback, grabbing him by the shoulder from either side. It was only after they turned ten that they had the strength required to hunt him individually, and by then Steban, two years their junior, had joined in too, eager to have his turn at the sport.

Half strangled, his feet pedaling in the void, Rafael watched as the landscape rushed by at dizzying speed; he was being shaken like an old sack, deafened by the criollos frenetic race. Already defeated, his eyes half-closed in fear, he could sense the grass and bushes hurtling by, the pebbled path a blur beneath his legs, which he lifted up to keep from being twisted or caught beneath the horses bellies, and he quietly prayed that the brothers would not drop him. His cheeks were often sprayed with gravel, and he went home with bruises. His mother would berate him: What the devil have you been playing at this time.

One day he tripped as he was trying to escape, and his brothers missed him, because he was too low down. So he tried this again every time thereafter, sprawling his full length the moment they began the chase, scrambling to his feet now and again to make his way, between falls, back to the house. The horses would come to a sudden, almost squatting stop, pivot, and head back for him. Down hed fall again. Sometimes he was struck by a hoof, but only out of awkwardness, because the criollos did their best to avoid him, reluctant to trample on the little form huddled beneath themand the furious brothers would spur them back, kicking their flanks as they shouted insults, asshole, sissy, piece of shit, to be a man you have to be strong and stand up straight.

He was four years old.

The next season the twins had become more agile, and they scooped him up from the ground the way you pick up a ball, they arched against the girth of the saddle, which enabled them to lean down to him.

And the year after that, they fought over him during the chase. Whoever of the three of them managed to catch him would now have to fend off the attacks of the other two, making his horse dance from side to side, yanking at the bit, digging the spurs into its side to make it go faster. And if the little brother did not want to fall he would hold himself rigid, clinging to a leg or hanging from a strap, because the brothers needed both arms to fight among themselves. And as he heard them panting as they fought each other off, he swung against the horses shoulder, his fingers slipping over its damp mane, until at the last minute he was seized by whichever brother had gained the upper hand. And then the chase resumed, over two yards or twenty, and it all started again. Steban regularly managed to outflank the twins before they realized it, and hed nab the little brother from them over the last hundred yards; they were so unused to being surprised by the half-wit that it put them off their stride every time.

As the months went by the falls were ever harder. Joaquin had found a spiny thicket on the other side of the stream that he baptized Rafaels househe even wrote it in clumsy letters on a wooden sign, placed at the edge, in a spot where he was sure his mother would never go, because otherwise shed be bound to ask questions and make a fuss. But this far away they were safe, and with his brothers he crossed the stream at a gallop and cried, Ready to drop the rat in its burrow?

As for the little brother, he held his breath, not to swallow any water while they crossed the stream, and he curled up in a ball as they tossed him into the dense branches of the thicket. He would go home with a bloody nose, one eye half-closed, or his cheeks scraped by the thorns where hed fallen. Sometimes he had to walk for an hour to get home, because his brothers took him further and further away. Youve got time, they crowed, you dont do any work! So he sniveled the mixture of blood and snot, trying not to cry in front of them, and he watched them swing their horses round and set off again. He took the path back the way theyd brought him, through the pastures, along the green and orange fields shining in the sun in an expanse of dry grasses and fissured stone. An immense prairiethe steppe, said the mother with pride and a sort of resigned respectand where it ended the mesetas began, with their rocky plateaus and paths of wind-burned scree. On these prairies of close-cropped grass, barbed-wire fences marked off the thousands of acres where the herds wandered tirelessly, searching for food and covering mile upon mile in order to survive. Moorland as far as the eye could see, arid and flat, so dry even the trees had deserted it, to be replaced, somehow, by a few scrawny thickets youd think could not possibly survive with so little soil.