While the man was eating, the boy remained standing, head bowed. His wet boots, his grimy skin, the smell of the food, an end to his bold adventure. He took for granted the coming nightmare and didn’t cry, because he had been here dozens of times before. It was a matter of indifference to him now whether the bailiff killed him or took him back to the village. His fate was decided, as was that of the goatherd.
By the time the man had finished eating, the pinprick pattern of light from the shutters had faded completely. He pushed away what remained of his food with one arm, then got up. He grabbed a handful of walnuts from a sack leaning against one of the walls and deposited them on the part of the table he had just cleared. He sat down again and cracked them open, sticking the point of his knife into the base of each nut and turning it until the shell split in two. Then, despite his large fingers, he managed to scoop the kernels out almost whole and put them in a bowl. All this time, the boy stood motionless. The puddle at his feet had seeped into the grouting around the tiles, but his trouser legs were still wet and he could feel a slight numbness in his calf muscles.
‘It’s important to do things properly.’
The bailiff made this remark while holding one half of a nutshell in each hand. Then holding each half between two fingers, he put them together so that they fitted perfectly like a brain with four hemispheres.
‘And you haven’t.’
The boy continued staring at the wall, transfixed by the magnetic presence of the bailiff and by his memories of him. Those memories swam around like catfish at the bottom of a well of black water.
‘How often have I told you not to tell anyone else about us?’
‘I haven’t said anything to anyone.’
The boy lifted his head slightly, and there was a note of almost childish complaint in his voice.
‘What about the goatherd?’
The bailiff took a bite out of a walnut, then returned it to the bowl. The boy said nothing, trying as best he could to play a role that was no longer his.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I mean the old man you’ve been travelling with these last few days. Or do you expect me to believe that you got here all on your own?’
Then the boy’s legs gave way beneath him and he sank to the floor, feeling utterly helpless, even more helpless than when his father had taken him to that man’s house for the first time and left him there, at the mercy of his desires. He shrank in on himself, as if trying to unite two wetnesses, the damp floor and his own moist eyes. The liturgy, so often repeated, was starting all over again: the bailiff sitting down, placing one foot on his knee in order to untie the laces on his boots, which he then picked up by the heels and placed neatly on the floor. Pushing the chair to one side and getting to his feet in order to unbutton his shirt. Walking over to him, bare-chested.
‘Stand up.’
The boy obeyed and stood before him, head still bowed.
‘Raise your head.’
The boy did not move, head down, fists and toes clenched.
‘I’m ordering you to look at me.’
Up until then, the boy had managed not to cry, but now he suddenly let out a sob.
With one hand, the bailiff smoothed the boy’s matted hair. He stroked his neck and ran the back of his fingers gently over the boy’s wet cheeks. The man then raised his fingers to his lips and tasted the mixture of salt and soot and tears.
‘Look at me.’
The bailiff tried to force the boy to lift his head, but again, the boy resisted.
‘Okay, if that’s how you want it.’
He then propelled him towards the table and ordered him to place his hands wide apart on the wooden tabletop. Tears spilled forth from the boy’s swollen eyes and rolled grimily down his cheeks into the bowl of walnuts.
The candle, which, by now, had almost burned down to nothing, cast harsh shadows of their bodies onto walls and ceiling. Behind him, the boy heard rhythmic movements and the bailiff’s heavy breathing.
Suddenly, the candle went out, and the man gave a snort of annoyance. In the dark, he fumbled around in the corner where he had found the candle, but, failing to find what he wanted, he went over to the pantry. He stepped over the cripple’s dead body and picked up the fallen curtain. He tore a couple of strips from it and went back to the table, twisting them in his fingers. He poured some olive oil onto his plate and arranged the two strips of cloth to form a cross, making sure these were thoroughly soaked in oil. Then, like someone twirling a moustache, he twisted the ends so that they stood upright to form four points. He felt for his lighter in his jacket pocket, flicked it on and held the flame to the bits of cloth until four small crackling flames appeared. The new light lit up the room, and the boy could see the bailiff’s boots next to his chair, his shirt draped over the back. The man again positioned himself behind the boy and was just about to start again, when someone knocked at the door.
‘Bloody hell, Colorao! Didn’t I tell you to leave me in peace? What the fuck do you want now?’
The bailiff’s voice echoed around the room as he turned his head towards the door. The door creaked very slowly open and the breeze from the street made the flames flicker. Standing on the threshold, holding the deputy’s shotgun, the goatherd cut a faintly ridiculous figure: his bent back, his baggy trousers and his face gaunt from exhaustion and years of hardship. He was so weak he could hardly stand and had to lean against the door frame so as not to fall over. He was breathing hard.
‘Go away, old man.’
The goatherd did not move, the eyes of the double-barrelled shotgun fixed on the bailiff’s head. He tried to say something, but choked and coughed. Without lowering the shotgun, he spat out a bloody gob of spit, then said:
‘Come here, boy.’
With the bailiff’s hand still grasping his shoulder, the boy did not move.
‘You’d better drop the shotgun, old man, or you’re going to regret it for what little remains of your life.’
‘Lie down on the ground, boy, and cover your ears.’
The goatherd’s voice sounded as firm as the handshake of a strong young man. It had a stone-hard quality that came from some hitherto unknown place inside the old man, a voice completely out of keeping with the spectral figure saying the words. An Angel of Fire come to break down walls. The boy obeyed that second order and very slowly shrank back, leaving the bailiff standing, his hand poised like a pincer where the boy’s shoulder had been. The bailiff was paralysed not by fear, but by astonishment.
‘You haven’t got the balls, goatherd.’
‘Don’t look, boy.’
A noise, cavernous and absolute, as if emerging from the end of a long tube. A buzzing in his skull and a deafness that would take days to disappear entirely. Many of the pigeons who soiled the filthy houses with their excrement escaped through the sunken roofs and flew off wildly in all directions. The boy felt the body fall at his side as the displaced air pressed up against him. The tiled floor received the man’s body and the boy felt the vibration. In his bewilderment, he heard the last sound the bailiff made, that of his skull hitting the ground. Like a very ripe pumpkin. The thick skin that yields only to the machete or the bullet, its filling of dense, tightly packed, floury pulp spilling out. A single blow and it was all over.