Then, grabbing one of the goat’s hind legs, he dragged the creature over to the wall. Forced to walk backwards, the goat stumbled and fell every few yards, but the boy persisted, pulling at the goat as if he were lugging a great sack full of rabbits. Having wasted a lot of time just trying to catch the goat, he now had to milk it. He would have liked to present himself at the tower bearing a tinful of milk within minutes of receiving his orders. Just to prove to the old man that he had made good use of his time with him, and that, without him realising, he had been observing his every move and had absorbed some of his knowledge. However unconsciously, he wanted the old man to feel proud of him. He tied the goat’s hind legs together, then tethered it to a rock. Placing the tin under the goat’s udder, he knelt down. The first kick landed square in his stomach and the second on one cheekbone. The wound that had reopened when he’d pressed his face to the arrow slit began bleeding profusely. He fell back, winded, unable to fill his lungs. All the breath knocked out of him. He got up and, mouth open, managed to gulp down the air he needed. After several deep breaths, he recovered sufficiently to approach the animal again and give it a kick in the ribs. The goat bleated, then immediately resumed its search for food. The boy touched his raw cheekbone and his fingers slithered over a bone he could no longer feel. He looked at his fingers and saw that they were stained bright red. Like those gleaming toffee apples you buy at fairs. He didn’t really have time to think, but the throbbing in his face was a painful reminder of the hours he had spent in the tower. His skin smeared with soot, his cheekbone burning from being pressed hard against the stone arrow slit. His hair, which was now the texture of tow, stank of stale smoke, a stench that would take him a lifetime to get rid of.
On the other side of the wall, however, he heard the old man moan and immediately dismissed his own aches and pains. He searched about for some bits of straw and placed them before the goat, then he positioned the tin under its udder and again knelt down. He grabbed the teats with his bloodied hands and tugged. The teats stretched as if they were made of warm rubber, but no milk came out. He squeezed and massaged the teats. He spat on his palms and rubbed them together forming a film of blood, soot and saliva. He started again. His fingers moved roughly over the teats until a few drops fell onto the ground. The goat continued to munch on the straw. It took the boy quite a while to achieve anything resembling a flow of milk. The tin was too small and, at first, he couldn’t direct the stream directly into it, the milk dribbling onto the dust. He then held the mug immediately under the teat and milked using just one hand. When he had a couple of inches of liquid in the tin, he stood up and went back to the old man.
By the time he had caught and milked the goat, the sun had risen above the wall and begun to beat down on the tower. He found the goatherd lying, unprotected, in the sun. He appeared to be unconscious, and the boy feared that he had arrived too late. He jiggled the old man’s arm and again slapped his face, but this time got no reaction. He decided to drag him into the shade. He grabbed him under the arms and pulled, but the old man was too heavy. He paused for breath, filled by a feeling of utter exhaustion and by a desperate thirst that had been building for many hours, but which circumstances had prevented him from quenching. He drank down all the milk in the tin and, even when there was not a drop left, remained standing with the tin pressed against his face.
He set off across the dry clods of earth in search of the donkey, who was attempting to graze on what was now only a distant memory of ancient furrows. Evidence that someone had been there before them, trying to claw something out of the soil that the plain was still jealously keeping to itself. The ruined castle bore witness to that. He returned, pulling the donkey by the frayed rope that hung down from the halter. It was a resigned, docile animal, with ulcers on its pasterns where it had been hobbled. It had a few bald patches here and there and some remnants of dried mud on its hooves. The marks left by the pool that had once existed around the reed bed.
The rope was far too short to tie around the old man’s body; the boy needed something longer. He didn’t find what he needed, but next to the old man’s head, he found instead the bailiff’s two brown cigarette ends. He imagined the three men blithely smoking as they watched the panniers burn, and instinctively he gritted his teeth.
He tied the rope around the old man’s ankles, but the rope was so short that, when he had managed to tie a knot, the old man’s boots were almost level with the donkey’s mouth. The boy pushed against the donkey’s chest, forcing it reluctantly backwards. The donkey brayed right in his ear, and the noise drilled into his brain. They managed to move a couple of yards. The goatherd’s lifeless arms were drawn backwards in the process. Like the rough surface of a threshing board, the grit and pebbles from the crumbling wall stuck into the old man’s flesh. He groaned out loud, and the boy put his ear to the goatherd’s mouth and heard his irregular, but nonetheless encouraging, breathing.
He ran to the other side of the wall and returned with the saddlecloth. He tried and failed to place this between the old man’s back and the ground, and opted instead to clear away all the debris that lay between them and the shade. The sun making his scalp sting. The old man’s skin red and swollen. Flies like black teeth. He needed to stop and rest, but the old man’s need was greater. He crawled along on all fours, clearing a path through the dust, casting aside any pebbles or bits of mortar. Then he again pushed against the donkey’s chest and, at the first movement, the old man writhed helplessly, his groans now inaudible, his feet raised up by the rope, his back scraping over the ground and his arms flailing back and forth like unmanned rudders. A procession of the dead.
He placed the blanket on the ground in front of the blocked-off door to the castle, and dragged the old man over there. Pulling alternately on the man’s arms and legs, he managed to make him as comfortable as possible. He raised the old man’s head by placing a flat stone under the blanket and then prepared himself to hear whatever the goatherd had to tell him.
He granted the goatherd’s first wish with heartening speed and efficiency, swiftly returning with half a tin of milk. He prised open the old man’s mouth with his fingers and administered tiny amounts of milk. The goatherd’s Adam’s apple moved up and down beneath the worn skin of his throat, and the hairs of his beard moved too like a bed of seagrass at the mercy of the currents. Then, when the old man gestured to him to stop, he raised the tin to his own lips and drank what was left in one gulp.
With his back to the old man, he tried to pee into the tin, but with scant success. For days now, he had hardly peed at all. Nevertheless, he managed to produce a little dense, yellow liquid that stank of ammonia. He turned to the old man again and, using a tattered piece of cloth torn from his trousers and dipped in the urine, he cleaned the old man’s wounds. He felt the old man flinch at every touch and saw tears leak out from beneath his closed eyelids. At one point, the old man grabbed the boy’s arm, begging him to stop. The boy waited for as long as the old man maintained his grip, then, when his grip slackened, he resumed his work, which had been the goatherd’s second request. When he finished, he tried to get up, but the old man’s hand still held fast to his elbow. So he placed the tin on the ground, lay down beside the goatherd, and they both fell asleep.