THE GOOD SHEPHERD

THE GOOD SHEPHERD

I was walking along that barely visible path on the west face of Mount Andros. It was getting dark, and I had to hurry or I wouldn’t reach the crossroads shelter.

In my haste I took a bad step and hurt my right foot. From that moment on, the path became painful for me. I wouldn’t reach the shelter before nightfall.

At the top of a crag I saw a dog that barked at me. I wondered if it belonged to some shepherd. I didn’t have to ponder much longer because its owner appeared right away. He greeted me. And he noticed that I was limping.

“What happened?”

“A bad step. I wanted to reach the crossroads shelter.”

“Not like that, you won’t get there before the night catches you.”

The expression unsettled me: the night catches you. As if it were a predator. And I its prey, its dinner.

“Come with me. In half an hour we’ll be at my house. And you can rest that sprain. I can apply an ointment I know how to prepare. Works like a charm, I swear.”

The man protected himself from the mountain sun with a wide black cap, like a beret but with a broader brim. A square face, a gaze that seemed to penetrate far into the distance. He was grazing a small flock and gathering herbs. I reached him. The dog sniffed me and I rewarded it with a caress.

“Don’t make too much fuss over him or then he wants nothing else.”

He looked like a strong man. I don’t think he was much older than me, and I already have gray hairs.

“Does it hurt a lot?”

“I can manage if I go slowly.”

“At the house we’ll fix it.”

I liked his lips, like a juicy delicacy surrounded by a coarse beard of several days. I don’t know if he noticed. To my mind, yes.

Calmly, talking about the landscape and how beautiful it looked in that early spring, we reached his house, which was wedged between two rocky crags that you couldn’t quite tell whether they protected it or threatened to crush it.

The mixed flock of sheep and goats was left in a rear pen, somewhat cool but more sheltered. We went into the house, modest but warmed by a fire slowly consuming a holm oak log. The shepherd stirred it a little and threw herbs onto it, which soon gave off a scent somewhere between aniseed and violets.

He helped me take off my backpack while saying, “fuck, it’s heavy,” and invited me to sit down. He removed the shoe from my painful foot and felt it. His touch, I don’t know why, filled me with a sensation of warmth that invited me to close my eyes and let myself go.

“It’s nothing much. With my ointment, tomorrow you won’t even remember it hurt.”

He applied the balm he kept in a clay jar. His hands spread it in a caress that reached me like waves of a sensation I had forgotten: desire for another skin.

“If you keep on like that,” I told him, “I’ll end up l...