The doctor said the girl had influenza and was malnourished. Don Santiago told his cook to give her something to eat, instructed his housemaids to prepare a bath and bed for her, and the stable boy to go first to Santa Fe and find the doctor, and then to look for the goats before someone stole them. Leaving her where she was, he hurried on and called to one of his laborers, who carried her to the house. Even so, the effort almost killed him, and after a few steps he gave up. One winter’s day, when he came upon her crouched shivering in a ditch with her three goats, soaked from the rain and flushed with fever, Don Santiago tied up the goats and slung her over his shoulder like a sack, thankful she was so small and weighed so little.

The professor and the little goatherd established a strange friendship based on the lessons in culture he gave her, and her desire to learn. It was enough for him to exchange a few words with her to realize that she possessed a lively and inquiring mind. Roser was about seven years old when on one of his walks Don Santiago saw her looking after a few skinny goats. In the village she was known as the Gentle Lunatic, and that’s what she was: she didn’t cause any problems, apart from her tendency to get lost as she set off toward the horizon, and to paint the walls with her own excrement. His wife was lost in the labyrinths of dementia, and spent her days being cared for inside the house, creating monsters with paper and paint.

He went out every day, in the fierce August sun and the icy January winds, walking for hours with his pilgrim’s staff, battered leather hat, and hunting dog. He had been a professor of history at the Central University in the days of King Alfonso XII, and remained quite active despite his advanced years. Guzman, from an illustrious family that had fallen on hard times thanks to generations of lazy sons who squandered money and lands, was spending his last years in an isolated mansion surrounded by mountains and rocks, but full of sentimental memories. The most outstanding pianist among Professor Dalmau’s students was Roser Bruguera, a young girl from the village of Santa Fe de Segarra who, had it not been for the generous intervention of Santiago Guzman, would have shepherded goats all her life.

A long petal of the sea