‘Boy.’
The goatherd’s voice dragged him back out of the abyss into which he had fallen and, almost without realising it, he turned towards that voice. The old man had stopped what he was doing and was, for the first time, looking him in the face. He was squinting in the bright light, his eyes shaded by the two bony arches protecting his milky corneas. The old man’s penetrating gaze restored him to normality, like a surgeon setting a fracture with one precise, decisive movement.
‘Boy.’
The second time the old man spoke, the boy sprang into action and went to his aid. He took the various objects the old man passed to him and placed them under the trees. When they had unloaded the donkey, the man took one of the flasks and plunged into the reed bed, pushing the reeds and bulrushes aside with his hands. The boy watched him disappear and saw how the goats followed down the path he had opened up. Then he uncorked the flask left in one of the panniers and tipped it into his tin. Not a drop. He looked over at the gap in the reeds into which the goatherd had vanished and, squeezing the tin hard in his hands, he cursed him roundly.
He sat down and leaned his back against the trunk of one of the trees and studied the landscape. He thought of the reguera, the stream into which the village poured its sewage. He remembered how it stank, remembered the clumps of bulrushes, the ailanthus trees and the reeds growing along its banks. He regarded the pale little copse of alders as if it were a fossil, then stood up and walked along the edge of the reed bed. The dog remained where it was, lying in the feeble shade provided by the trees. Walking over the surface of the absent water, he felt an unconscious impulse to roll up his trouser legs so as not to get them wet, a desire for cool, clean water that was felt, rather, by his cells, with their different way of perceiving reality. He found signs of moisture at the foot of a willow. A multitude of tiny channels, like a miniature delta, flowing towards the now absent pond. An attempt that led off beyond the shade cast by the reeds only to be frustrated by the sun and the rain-starved earth. A pointless exercise inscribed on the soft, sandy sediment.
When he got back to the encampment, the old man had already sorted out the goats, who, crammed together among the reeds, only stayed there for a while, their noses in the mud, until the old man felt they’d had enough to drink and shooed them out, slapping them on the back. Like a shoal of fish, other goats immediately filled any vacant spaces. When the goatherd saw the boy return, he pointed to the alder tree where the donkey was grazing. Next to it were two flasks. The boy went over and shook them. Then he uncorked one, filled his tin with water and drank. The water tasted muddy. He could feel the grit in his throat and between his teeth, but he didn’t care.
They ate, sitting leaning against the tree trunks, surrounded by the goats, the donkey and the dog, who all crowded in under the trees as if, beyond the shade, lay a deep abyss. When they had finished eating, the old man got up and moved a few yards off to urinate, his back turned to the camp. He didn’t return immediately and, from his place in the shade, the boy saw him bend down and fiddle with something on the ground. He thought he must be tying the lace on one of his boots. The old man returned, however, carrying a thick aloe leaf. He sat down in the spot where they’d eaten and, with a penknife, peeled the skin off the broad base of the leaf and handed it to the boy so that he could apply it to the burns on his face.
They spent the siesta hours beneath the trees, the boy smearing his burns with the transparent jelly from the aloe leaf and the goatherd carving a new wooden hook for the donkey’s cinch strap. Later on, when the sun had lost some of its heat, the old man picked up a sickle and asked the boy to follow him over to a clump of esparto grass growing on the far side of the pond. Before they reached it, though, the boy felt uneasy and stopped. The old man turned, expecting to find the boy behind him. Then, with the sickle in one hand, he beckoned him over. The boy, standing some way off, shook his head. The man shouted:
‘Watch me.’
He crouched down in front of a clump of grass and with two short blows cut off a thick tuft. He held it up so that the boy could see, then put it down at his feet along with the sickle. The goatherd then went back to the camp, and when he passed the boy, told him to make eight or ten bundles of grass and take them over to the alder trees. The boy turned and waited until the old man had disappeared again behind the bulrushes. Then he walked over to the sickle and for a moment contemplated the countryside around him: the little islands of scrub and the stony paths that ran between them. He went hunting for the largest clumps of grass, and when he found what he wanted, set to work. He hadn’t said anything to the goatherd when the latter had shown him how to cut the grass, but this was a job he knew how to do well because, at home, he had always been the one who kept the ground around the house cleared.
The boy concluded his labours as evening was coming on. He gathered up the grass and started carrying it in bundles over to the shade. He left the first bundle next to the goatherd and went back for more. The old man, who was milking a goat, briefly stopped what he was doing, then immediately resumed his work. No thanks, no reward. The law of the plain.
They dined on bread and milk and, afterwards, the boy applied more aloe jelly to his face. He fell asleep watching the goatherd making ropes by plaiting the grass he had cut that afternoon. He didn’t even hear the distant sound of hooves crossing the dark plain. Nor did he see how the goatherd’s hand trembled, startled by this sudden noise cleaving through the arid plain like a stone sword. The only thing he felt, when the time came, was the old man’s boot prodding him in the back and his voice telling him to get up.
He did as he was told, thinking that it must be dawn already and that the goatherd would again have prepared his breakfast for him. He felt around him for the bowl, but the only thing he found was the blanket he had slept on. Everything else, including the bundles of grass, was already loaded onto the donkey.
‘Pick up the blanket. We’re leaving.’
The crescent moon was still only a yellow sliver on the horizon. The old man tugged at the donkey’s bridle and strode off, with the herd following behind. The dog came and went in the darkness, retrieving any stray goats. Clinging to the donkey’s halter, the boy stumbled after them. When they left the encampment in the middle of the night, the boy had assumed they were leaving before dawn in order to avoid the crushing noonday sun. To judge by the route followed on the previous days, the boy had assumed that the old man knew the region well and would again stop at midday beside some copse or stream. But as time passed and the darkness failed to lift and the pace at which they were walking remained undiminished, he realised that they were no longer in pursuit of pastures new.
At dawn, they stopped at the foot of a sun-scorched hill, whose top concealed the horizon. The goatherd let go of the bridle and walked on ahead for a few yards. He went first in one direction then in the other, raising and lowering his head as if searching for something among the shadows. He rubbed his face with his hands and massaged his eyelids with the tips of his fingers, all the while huffing and puffing. He closed his eyes and raised his face to the sky to breathe in the faint breeze coming down from the hill. He sniffed at the invisible door opening before him until he found, among all the other smells of daybreak, the thread that had brought them there.
Seeing that they were stopping for rather longer than expected, the boy sat down on the ground to rest. He felt the weight of his body seeking the earth. He would have lain down and slept right there on the baked clay, but a foul-smelling breeze brought him to his senses. He stood up just as the goatherd came striding back. The old man glanced behind him, checked that the herd were all there, then set off again. They climbed up the slope, weaving in and out of long-since withered vines. The wild tendrils twined about each other, weaving a futile, fossil web.