‘We fell asleep. We have to go.’
He had only slept for about a quarter of an hour, but when he sat up, he felt as if he had spent the whole night resting on a good wool mattress. He thought about the old man, about his moans and his tears, and for a while he wasn’t sure whether that had really happened or if he had dreamed it. He cupped one hand and filled it with water from the flask, then splashed his face with it before standing up to peer over the wall of the tank. The morning breeze made his damp skin feel still cooler, and for a moment, he felt as if he were walking up a hill with the wind from a new valley beyond coming to meet him. A non-existent valley, unless one considered that endless plain to be the bottom of something bounded by the mountains to the north and by some other unknown mountain range to the south.
‘Hurry up, boy.’
The boy collected together their few belongings, rolled up the old man’s blanket and helped him onto the donkey. He rounded up the goats and they went back to the road. Once there, they both simultaneously glanced to right and left, as if not having found the cripple had left them with nothing to do. The old man scratched his beard, then indicated with a nod of his head that they should go north, and they set off. Four hours later, they reached the oak wood near the deserted village and, without a word being exchanged, plunged into it.
When the old man was comfortably installed next to an oak, he instructed the boy to make a corral out of a rough circle of trees, filling up any gaps between the gnarled trunks with fallen branches. Once the goats were safely inside, the boy unloaded the donkey and sat down with the goatherd, awaiting new orders.
‘We have to leave.’
‘We’ve only just arrived.’
‘I mean we have to leave the plain.’
‘You can stay. I’m the one the bailiff’s looking for.’
‘Look at me.’
The goatherd opened his jacket to reveal his body.
‘I have my own scores to settle with that man.’
His lacerated body made it clear enough what those scores were, although it did not even occur to the boy to ask if the old man was referring to the recent beating he had received or to some earlier offence. In such a sparsely populated area, it was quite likely, he thought, that the two men’s paths would already have crossed.
The old man told him that they would escape into the mountains to the north, because it would be easier to hide there and he was sure that the bailiff would not take his pursuit of them into territory so far outside his jurisdiction. He explained, too, that it was an area where water could be found all year round and that, with luck, even the goats might improve. The boy listened in silence, nodding his agreement.
The journey would be long and dangerous and it was important that they start as soon as possible. He also said that they would have to travel at night so as to avoid meeting other people. They would need all the food they could lay their hands on.
They agreed that the boy would go down to the inn to see how the land lay. If the cripple wasn’t there, he would come back to the wood and they would go down to the inn together, take the food and continue on their way north.
‘And what if the cripple is there?’
‘Then you’ll come back here and we’ll think of another plan.’
10
SO AS TO avoid the path, the boy decided to take the same route across the fields as he had two nights before. The old man watched him go and, initially, heard the loose sole of his boot flapping on the ground, carving a leaf-free trail of its own. Before the boy left the shade of the trees, he turned and met the goatherd’s eyes, but neither he nor the old man could possibly imagine the brutal nature of what awaited them.
Once out of the woods, the boy crawled the first few yards, his knapsack clasped to his side, until he had reached a point where he had a fairly clear view of the village. He stayed there for a while, watching for any signs of life. He would have preferred to spend more time scrutinising each of those houses in turn, but the memory of his last bout of sunstroke began to beat like a pulse on the back of his neck, and he decided to carry on. Head down, walking briskly, almost running, he got as far as the cemetery, but this time he didn’t stop there. He continued running, not in a straight line, but in an arc so as to take early advantage of the church as a screen between him and the inn. During all that time, he kept his knapsack clutched to him and his eyes permanently trained on the village. When he reached the church, the muscles in his neck were stiff with tension and the base of his skull ached. He leaned his back against the wall and slid down it, causing bits of whitewash to flake off. A microscopic snowstorm in the desert. The sun was almost immediately overhead now and, for a moment, he was tempted to wait there until the sun had proceeded on its way and provided him with a little shade from the building. From where he was, he could see the grey, earthy colours of the oak trees and he thought of the old man leaning against the trunk where he had left him only shortly before. He recalled the goatherd opening his jacket to show him his bruised torso, the wounds in his sides and the suppurating scar between his ribs similar to the wound Christ must have had on the cross. He had a sudden vision of the old man, which emerged from some unknown place inside him and which, in the middle of that godforsaken wasteland, filled him with cold fear. The field he had just crossed was like the image of some deeply painful experience. For the first time since he had met the goatherd, he felt he was losing touch with the one solid piece of ground that had sustained him in the midst of that sea of shifting sand. He wanted to go back to the oak wood and even placed his hands on the ground and made as if to move away from the wall. Then he stopped, because there was more salvation in the cripple’s cured meats than there was in his fear that he would never see the goatherd again.
Keeping close to the wall, he walked round the church and concerned himself solely with watching the far end of the village where the inn was located. He did not expect to see many signs of life from a man as badly disabled as the cripple. At most, an open shutter or a little smoke from the chimney. He felt a grumbling in his intestines, as if someone inside him were boiling a pot full of rubber bands. During the time he had been standing there, the shade from the acacia tree next to the porch had reached as far as a large clump of agaves at the entrance to the village. Hunched down and still without taking his eyes off the inn, he made his way over to that clump and again waited. This was the last bit of shelter before he would be forced out into the open. He once more weighed up his options and, although he had seen nothing to indicate that the cripple was in the village, the fear of another encounter with him nevertheless gnawed at him. Around him, the stems of the agave flowers stood like dead spears, their papery blooms like withered bouquets. He rubbed his face with his hands, grimacing and screwing up his eyes. His wounds had grown dry with salt and fear.
For a long time, he was gripped by doubts, in a state of the most terrible tension. Not even the sun beating down on his head could get him to move. Faced by the open space between him and the inn, he was somehow hoping that his legs would start walking of their own volition, but this didn’t happen until the headache brought on by the sun grew unbearable. Then he crawled out from behind the agaves and very gradually straightened up and began to run unobserved towards the backs of the empty houses.