Travels with my Donkey

first cig of the day. 'But I have five years.' He lit it, sucked in, blew out. 'This is the best thing I can do. That anyone can do.'
    It wasn't a good time to expect positive reciprocation of this statement. The nocturnal goings-on had merely supplemented the groaning catalogue of bad things that were still better than what I was doing, a catalogue which when Shinto had started up again at about 2.30 was updated to include borstal and getting your face stuck in a badger set. Instead, I said, 'How do you get him over bridges?'
    Jean smiled, deepening a dozen already deep creases. 'It's not so much a problem. I attache the long corde, and I walk to the other side, and I wait.'
    'Wait?'
    'For fifteen minutes.'
    'Right, and then you pull like buggery.'
    Jean might have been Belgian, but he had a Frenchman's flair for facial outrage. 'No! He come across after five minutes.' He straightened his back, intimidating me just as Pilou had intimidated Shinto. 'Never pull a donkay.'
    There was an awkward silence here, but I'd learnt by now not to fill it with a blurted enquiry into what had inspired this epic mission. It was bad form to ask someone what their pilgrimage was about, on a first date at least. Particularly so in Jean's case: I found out later that the year before his wife had died. He'd had Pilou ever since, and despite knowing nothing about donkeys had trained him up himself.
    It was odd the way information passed along the line, a Chaucerian chain of news, tittle-tattle and, yes, slanderous, unfounded rumour. But at my speed you never heard who or what lay up ahead, only what was coming from behind, Chinese-whispered on by passing pilgrims. In the previous week I'd seen rival donkey crap on the camino and Shinto had certainly smelt it: the reason I hadn't heard about Jean and Pilou was that until the day before he'd been ahead.
    'You're saying I'm faster than you?'
    'Of course,' said Jean. 'I have five years. But also I don't walk on Saturday so much, and today, on Sunday, never.'
    More than that, we weren't alone. There was a German woman, said Jean, who he'd seen a few times. She had two donkeys and two young daughters. 'You think it is sympathique, yes?' he said, before elaborating in ostentatious detail exactly why it wasn't. The mother believed in eating only what she could find in the fields, which at this time of year meant living on grass. 'And also for her children! Grass!' Jean extinguished his tiny dog end with an angry boot. 'I see her some days before. She is looking like this at a wall in the refugio.' He held a horny-handed palm to his nose and fixed it with moronic intensity. 'For three hours!' That grizzled, ruddy head shook with bewildered rage. 'The teeth of the children... '
    It all sounded horrific, but at the same time I really hoped he wasn't exaggerating. Because if he was, what might he say about me? Especially now he knew I was a donk-puller.
    Pilou tried to get at Shinto one last time, but the knot held and after a very self-conscious loading procedure — 'Oh, he has not so much: Pilou is with 40 kilo' — we said our farewells. I picked up the rope and clicked my tongue, endeavouring both to affect easy professionalism and encourage Shinto out of the blocks at a healthy, face-saving pace.
    'Oh, but he is slow,' said Jean, because I failed.
    'Yes,' I said.
    'But then he has hunger!'
    'Yes?' I said.
    For fifteen minutes we watched Shinto browse the high grass, which at least allowed Jean the opportunity to inspect his hoofs. 'It's enough food,' said Jean, once he'd pronounced all four fully roadworthy. 'Now you see.'
    I led Shinto back out to the path. After fewer than a dozen despondent paces I was ahead of him and the rope was taut. Jean surveyed Shinto evenly, then did the whole pah, bof, sacré bleu thing with his hands. But it was important that as the sole bearers of the donkey flame — sole sane bearers, anyway — we parted friends, and so we did. 'Eh bien, all donkays are different. I know only Pilou.' We shook hands — ow — and with a heartfelt 'bonne chance' I turned to the west and left him.
    We passed through the brief western outskirts of Burgos at a crawl, Shinto's ears splayed flat in the 'fuck you all' handlebar position. A dead mole on the path, a French motorist whose photographic eagerness almost drove us into a river, a huge motorway viaduct over our heads. Abandoned factories,- a distant, watch-towered prison. Sunday cyclists.
    Then an hour of torpid nothing