The now faint light from the fire made the shadows dance like black flames. The boy peered round the cactus plant, trying to get a better look at the man. Something pricked his arm and he drew back. The buckle on his knapsack clinked. The dog immediately opened its eyes and pricked up its ears, then got to its feet, sniffing the air in all directions. The boy kept a firm grasp on his arm, as if the treacherous limb had a life of its own and was again about to hurl itself against the cactus spines. The dog began to move towards him, keeping close to the goatherd at first, then widening the radius of its search and slowly getting nearer to where he was standing. Watching the dog approach, the boy did not think it seemed terribly fierce, but he knew that one can never trust that kind of dog. In the village, people called them garulos: mongrels, which, through years of cross-breeding, had grown ever smaller, any distinctive racial characteristics now an unrecognisable blur. When the dog was just a few feet away, it stopped and focused all its senses on the clump of prickly pears. It again sniffed the air, and then, for some reason, relaxed and walked all around the intruder’s hiding-place, wagging its tail and clearly curious. When it discovered him, it showed no alarm and did not even bark. On the contrary, it went over and licked the placatory hand the boy had held out to keep it from barking. With that gesture, the boy’s fear of betrayal evaporated. It was as if the smells of earth and urine with which he was impregnated brought him closer to the world of the dog. He grabbed its head in his two hands and stroked it under the chin. For a while, the boy kept the dog quiet with his caresses, the time it took to decide whether or not to cover the few yards separating him and the bag lying at the man’s feet.
He opened his own knapsack and took out the remaining half-sausage — all he had left. Leaving the dog busily gnawing at the dried meat, he emerged from his hiding-place and began to creep towards the bag. The light from the fire cast a gothic shadow over the prickly pears behind him.
As he approached, he felt afraid and would have liked to go back where he came from, to withdraw to some safe place and wait for daylight in order to reconsider his options. However, behind the prickly pears, the dog was devouring the only food he had and he knew there was no turning back.
He returned to his first plan, as simple as it was terrifying. He would go over to the bag and gently drag it towards him by the strap amidst a surrounding chorus of bleating. He would definitely not attempt to uncover the man’s face, because that would be both wrong and provocative. Apart from the food that the dog was now eating, he had never stolen from an adult and was only doing so now because he had no alternative. At home, the very stones of the walls were the guardians of an ancestral law according to which children must keep their eyes firmly fixed on the ground whenever they were caught doing something they shouldn’t. They must present their executioner with the back of their neck as meekly as if they were sacrificial offerings or propitiatory victims. Depending on the seriousness of the crime, a slap on the back of the neck might be all the punishment they got or, equally, it could merely be the preamble to a far worse beating.
Standing very near the man now, he was again gripped by doubt and even considered not stealing the bag. He would simply wait by the fire until the man woke up. Then he would reveal himself to him as he was: a defenceless, unthreatening child. With luck, he thought, the man wouldn’t be from around there, but had come in the hope of finding some stubble for his goats. Accustomed to solitude, he might even be grateful for some company. The man would offer him a little food and something to drink, then each would go his own way.
Suddenly, he heard a snort immediately behind him and was petrified. He didn’t move. All his strength vanished into the void that fear had opened up before him. The goatherd disappeared, along with the bag and the herd of goats, swallowed up by the darkness where his mind had once been. He trembled and his stomach gurgled into life again as he felt something hard pressing against the small of his back and, despite himself, turned round. The dog was poking him with its nose. Between its teeth it was carrying the piece of string from one end of the sausage. The boy took a deep breath, knelt down on the ground and returned to his task.
The bag was made of thick leather. It smelled of dried onions and sweat. He hooked two fingers round the strap and gave a gentle tug. When he felt the weight of the bag, he threw all caution to the wind. His mind filled up with images of food, and everything around him was replaced by what he imagined to be the contents of that bag. He managed to drag his booty a few inches more in almost absolute silence until one particularly greedy tug sent the stiff body of the bag — as if it were a drum skin — thudding over the pebbles.
‘Where do you think you’re going with that?’
He froze at the sound of the gruff voice coming from the other side of the fire, which lit up the grimace of fear that was now his face, the face of a silent-film actor or a child caught red-handed for the first time.
‘I’m hungry, sir.’
‘Didn’t anyone teach you to ask nicely?’
At that moment, he would have liked simply to run away with the bag and leave the man there, talking from underneath his blanket. He wondered if perhaps the dog was not as friendly as it had seemed. He knew nothing as yet of loyalties or of the time that passes between man and beast, knitting them together ever more tightly.
‘Help me up, boy.’
The boy dropped the leather strap and approached hesitantly. A couple of yards away, he stopped and studied the man’s body. His face was still covered by the blanket, but his legs were now visible from the knees down. The man stirred feebly beneath his blanket, perhaps trying to fasten his trousers or feeling for his lighter in order to light his first cigarette of the day, and by the time his head appeared, the boy was once more hidden behind the prickly pears. In the time he remained there, the very faintest glimmer of light began to illumine a few corners of the encampment. He saw that he had been right in thinking that the trees were poplars and could see the effects of the drought on their topmost leaves. He counted nine nanny goats and one billy goat. He also noticed a construction he hadn’t seen before: a kind of pyramid-shaped shack made out of branches cut from the nearby trees. From its walls hung straps, ropes, chains, a metal milk churn and a blackened frying pan. It was more like a tabernacle than a shelter. Separating the hut from the poplar trees was a woven fence held up by four posts hammered into the ground.
The goatherd had by then sat up and rolled himself a cigarette. It took him several minutes to get to his feet because the blanket had become tangled around his legs and elbows. Although the boy could still not really make out the man’s features, he assumed from the way he moved that he was old. A scrawny old man who slept in his clothes. A dark jacket with wide lapels, a dishevelled mop of grey hair and what looked like a white brush stroke that covered his face from his nose downwards.
The goatherd saw the boy reappear from behind the prickly pear, but barely noticed him because he was too busy blowing on the wick of his rope lighter. When the boy was about six feet away from the man, he stopped. From that distance, he could see the goatherd’s hair full of straw, and the holes in the elbows of his jacket. He was sitting on the ground with the blanket covering his legs, and the boy was surprised that he could sit comfortably like that, his back bent. The old man glanced up and sat staring at the boy. He had placed his cigarette behind one ear and was cupping the orange rope wick with the palm of one hand. Then the goatherd made a gesture that the boy would often see him make in the weeks to come. With the tips of thumb and index finger he wiped away the saliva from the corners of his mouth. Then he did the same with just his index finger, as if to smooth aside any hairs from his unruly moustache.