When the old man had finished, he arranged his blanket on the ground a few feet from where the boy was sitting and indicated that he should lie down on it. The boy got up and swayed slowly over to the blanket, like a reed with a very plump thrush perched on top. The man had provided him with the packsaddle as a pillow. The boy carefully laid his head down and made himself as comfortable as he could on the threadbare woollen blanket. From there, he perused the Milky Way from end to end as he listened to the old man coming and going and to the goats moving about nearby. That brilliant, peaceful band of stars. He identified the constellations he knew and, once again, followed the edge of the Plough that pointed to the North Star. He wondered if he would continue to walk in that direction when he recovered. He felt the stiff poultices cooling on his face, a mask in which the old man had left openings only for eyes and mouth. The damp, waxy cloth had not yet permeated through to his skin, which still felt horribly tight. He thought about what had happened, about this initial misfortune, which, right at the very outset, had left him lying prostrate on a blanket belonging to an old goatherd.
The smell of baking bread wafted past his face, and he noticed his mouth filling with saliva. He searched for the origin of that smell and saw the old man stamping out the small fire and scattering earth over it to douse the embers. Then the man walked over to him and stood at his feet. In the middle of the night, he seemed uncertain whether the boy would be awake or asleep. He jiggled the boy’s leg with the tip of his boot, and before the boy had even moved, said:
‘Food’s ready.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Don’t call me “sir”.’
When the boy reached the spot where the fire had been, the old man was already eating, dunking bits of unleavened bread in a mug of wine. On a stone on the other side of the ashes stood an olive-wood bowl from which threads of steam were rising. The boy glanced at the man as if asking permission to enter his house, and with a lift of his chin, the old man indicated the bowl of fresh goat’s milk. The boy sat down on the stone and raised the bowl to his lips. Some of the milk ran down the waxy folds of the poultice. The boy noticed that the tension around his mouth was easing slightly and that he could now shape his lips to the bowl. For a while, he merely took tiny sips, studying the old man out of the corner of his eye, so that he could easily avert his gaze if the man noticed him watching. The goatherd, however, was too absorbed in his own supper and paid no attention. At one point, the boy noticed that half the loaf the goatherd had baked was still there in the pan. He assumed the old man had left it for him, but didn’t dare reach forward and pick it up. He made as if to get to his feet, but immediately fell back, gripped by embarrassment or fear.
‘Go on, eat it.’
The boy softened the bread in his warm milk just as he had seen the goatherd do. He found it hard to chew and swallow but, in the circumstances, hunger overcame pain, as it always would from then on. While he was wiping the bowl clean with his bread, he realised that this was the first time he’d eaten anything hot since leaving home two nights before, and that it was the second time in only a few hours that he had eaten in the company of a stranger. Still holding the bowl, he realised that he had failed to foresee such basic contingencies as a lack of food or just how he would survive alone on that arid plain. He had left no room in his calculations for perhaps having to ask for help, far less at such an early stage in his journey. The truth was, he hadn’t really prepared for his departure at all. One day, he had simply reached a point of no return and, from that moment on, the idea of running away became a necessary illusion that helped him withstand the inferno of silence in which he was living. An idea that began to form in his mind as soon as his brain was ready for it and which then never left him. Apart from taking the knapsack with him and planning his escape on a moonless night, he had made no other real preparations or calculations. He had merely trusted in his knowledge and skills to help him on his way. After all, he was as much a child of that place as were the partridges or the olive trees. During the nights preceding his departure, while his brother slept by his side, he imagined himself laying traps for rabbits at the exits to their burrows or hunting quail with his catapult. He knew how to train ferrets; indeed, he had gone ferreting with his father ever since he was of an age to do so. They used to scout around for a bank or a sunken path full of burrows and cover each exit hole with a net held in place with wooden stakes. Then they would slip the ferret under one of the nets and wait. It took only a few seconds for the ferret to reach the spot where the rabbit was hiding, and one bite was enough to send the rabbit shooting out of one of the exits and straight into a net, which would close around it like a bag.
Then, sitting beneath the stars in the gentle night breeze, he would skewer his prey and roast it over a fire like the one the goatherd had lit. It hadn’t occurred to him that he would need water or where he would find it. He hadn’t planned out an itinerary. His mental map ended at the edge of the olive grove to the north of the village and beyond which he knew nothing. He had imagined that, behind the hills, he would find infinite olive groves and that it would simply be a matter of going from trunk to trunk, from shade to shade, until he found a better place to live. However, beyond the last olive tree lay the plain, in the midst of which he now found himself. He didn’t know how far exactly he was from the village, and the only people who could tell him were either still pursuing him or, like the old man, barely spoke.
The goatherd rounded off his meal by gnawing on a wedge of hard cheese, then, when he’d finished, got up, walked over to the boy, cut another wedge of cheese and, without even looking at him, held it out. The boy took it and immediately started gnawing on it too. The old man turned then and, walking round the now extinguished fire, spread the blanket from the donkey on the ground. From the pannier, he took a couple of yellowing strips of dried cod. He scraped off as much salt as he could and placed the fish in a bowl, which he filled with water. Then, as if he were entirely alone in the world, he farted a couple of times and prepared for bed. The boy noticed that the goatherd had difficulty in bending down and in accommodating his bony body among the stones.
The boy remained sitting on the stone for a long time after he had finished his supper. It was as if he had once again entered a house full of rules and was waiting for someone to issue an order or give him permission before he could go to bed. On the other side of the fire, the old man’s snores mingled with the whirring of the cicadas and the crickets. High up, the breeze set the fronds of the palm tree dancing, and the boy watched them swaying above the accumulation of dead foliage hanging from the trunk. He lifted one finger in search of a breeze he could not find. Up there, he thought, the air would be purer than the air near the ground and he thought, too, that the palm tree must have done something to deserve that balmy air. He touched the waxy mask on his face, and his skin felt warmer and softer. He must have done something to deserve his burns, his hunger and his family. ‘Something bad,’ as his father never tired of telling him.