Once the panniers were nothing but a heap of incandescent threads, the bailiff went back to the entrance to the tower and again gazed upwards. He finished his cigarette and stubbed it out on the ground, then told his men it was time to leave. However, the red-headed man joined him at the entrance to the tower and listened hard. He came out and whispered in the bailiff’s ear that perhaps they should wait a little longer. His boss looked annoyed, but with a resigned wave of his hand, once more sat down on the stone and rolled himself another cigarette. The red-headed man went back to his companion and continued talking to him in a low voice, one of them keeping watch on the tower and the other on the plain towards the south. They were like relatives waiting impatiently for a funeral service to be over so that they could get back to the bar for a drink.
When the bailiff had finished his cigarette, he threw it down next to the first one and stubbed it out with his boot. He adjusted his hat and walked round the wall, without saying a word. The man watching the tower nudged his colleague and together they followed their boss. At that moment, their horses were grazing alongside the goats, and the old man was praying, his eyes shut.
6
THE BOY STAYED in his hiding-place long after the wild bleating of the goats, the men’s voices and the roar of the departing motorbike had ceased. The toxic cloud of smoke had finally gone, and the boy imagined the pigeons’ eggs ruined by the fire: their blackened shells and, inside, the half-hatched chicks. His legs ached after hours spent crouched on the sill, but he decided to put up with it for a while longer, wanting to be absolutely sure that when he did come down the bailiff would not be waiting for him outside. Smoke-blackened but alive, he allowed the hours to pass, unable to interpret the meaning of the torture to which he had been submitted. Had they set fire to the tower because the goatherd had directed them there or had they simply considered the tower to be the only possible hiding-place?
Through the arrow slit, he watched the evening coming on and was conscious of his horribly taut skin and his gurgling stomach, but now, after so long in one position, he could no longer feel his bent legs or his cramped muscles. There was no sound from the goatherd. He fell asleep.
A noise woke him in the middle of the night. A muffled cry that rose up from the foot of the tower. The walls smelled of stale smoke, his skin still felt uncomfortably tight and his mouth dry. He squinted out through the arrow slit. In the pale light of the crescent moon, the plain was almost blue. The voice calling to him grew louder, but no clearer.
‘Are you there, boy?’
It was the old man. The boy heard a cough and, shortly afterwards, the dull thud of a body falling to the ground. In the darkness of the tower, the stones felt greasy to the touch and he had to use the hard tips of his boots to feel for places stable enough to bear his weight. He took longer to descend than he would have liked and, when he finally reached ground level, he found the old man lying inside the base of the tower. He tried to wake him by tugging at his sleeve and moving his head from side to side, but received no response. He pressed his ear to the old man’s chest to see if his heart was still beating, but could hear nothing. When he touched the old man’s chest, it felt wet and sticky. He decided to drag him out of the tower by the legs so that he could see what was wrong with him by the scarce light of the moon. After great effort, though, all he could manage was to drag him as far as the entrance to the tower. Once outside, he put his face close to the goatherd’s mouth and was able to confirm that he was at least still breathing albeit very feebly and irregularly. He could still not establish the exact cause of his collapse.
He spent the night next to the old man’s motionless body. A warm breeze was blowing, bringing with it the bleating of a few nervous goats. The man’s forehead was burning hot and he kept moaning in his sleep, a dull, continuous drone.
The boy was so exhausted that he woke only when it was already late morning. That was when he realised what had happened. The old man was still lying motionless by his side, covered only by the tattered remains of his clothes. Before beating him, the bailiff and his men had removed his jacket, leaving only his shirt. Where they had beaten him hardest, the cloth was stuck to his skin. His face was smeared with dried blood. His poor lips were covered in sores and red gashes, his closed lids as swollen as ripe figs. His limbs were bruised and the red weals on his side resembled extra ribs. The boy again tried to wake him, but the man did not respond. He pulled hard on his arm in an attempt to get him to sit up, but it was as if the old man’s body were nailed to the floor of the tower. He slapped his face, and only then did the old man give any sign of life.
‘Don’t hit me, boy. I’ve had quite enough of that.’
In the old man’s prostrate condition, with his eyes closed and his voice blurred, it seemed as if it wasn’t him who was speaking, but his mind. The boy shook his head in a gesture that, far from releasing the tension he felt, only increased it. Then he covered his face with his hands and ran his rough palms over his skin. Incapable of taking in what had happened, he felt an urge to burst into tears, to cry out or even to inflict harm on himself.
‘Bring me some water.’
The boy ran off. On the other side of the wall, half a dozen goats, their throats slit, lay in the area that had been shrouded in shadow on the previous afternoon.Their fly-studded wounds were like broad chinstrap smiles. The flies, often mounted one on top of the other, swarmed insalubriously over the wounds, doubtless depositing both eggs and infections. The three surviving goats were grazing nearby, indifferent to the massacre of their fellows and focused entirely on the needs of their own stomachs. The donkey was standing some way off. There was no sign of the dog or the billy goat.
The contents of the panniers were scattered near the walclass="underline" the empty olive oil can, the frying pan, various rags, the crook and the shearing scissors; the plundered basket of raisins and the tobacco pouch turned inside out. He found the flasks uncorked and fallen on the ground. He tried each in turn, but only a few drops of water came out.
He carried them over to where the old man was lying and placed them upside down before him. The old man gave a snort of despair or resignation and seemed to want to close his eyes more tightly, as if this news made his weals burn still more intensely. In the face of this bottomless pit of pain, the boy felt that had the old man not been in such a state of extreme debilitation, he would gladly have killed himself.
‘Milk one of the goats.’
The boy decided not to use the method employed by the goatherd, imagining that it would take too long to fix the bucket firmly in the ground and tether the goat’s back legs to the rods. He found the tin where he had thrown it down when he first spotted the bailiff and the two men. He wiped it clean on the tail of his shirt and went over to where the goats were grazing. He crept up to one of them, but, as soon as the creature noticed him, it ran away. He went over to the next one, but with the same result. He spent quite a while chasing after them, but they slipped from his fingers like mercury. He went back to the wall to fetch the goatherd’s crook and tried to remember how the old man had used it. He put it under his arm as if he were Don Quixote with his lance and set off towards the goats. The crook, however, was heavier than he thought and, as he walked, one end tipped forward and became stuck in the earth. He picked it up again and, gripping it firmly with both hands, approached his prey from behind. He slipped the crook between the animal’s legs, but the goat took fright and fled. After several attempts, he resorted to the rather clumsier method of running after them and using the crook to trip them up. When this method finally succeeded, he threw down the crook, leapt on the goat and pinned it to the ground.