To return to Trachi: his education was, by our criteria, strangely fragmentary. He learned Greek from the island’s shepherds, whose company he sought out now and again, despite his taciturn and shy nature. From his own observations he also learned many subtle and intimate things about grasses, plants, forest animals, water, clouds, stars and planets; and I myself noticed that, even after his capture and under a foreign sky, he could feel the approach of a gale or the imminence of a snowstorm many hours before it actually arrived. Though I couldn’t describe how, nor could he do so himself, he also felt the grain growing in the fields, he felt the pulse of water in underground streams, and he sensed the erosion of flooded rivers. When De Simone’s cow gave birth two hundred metres away from us, he felt a reflex in his own gut; the same thing happened when the tenant farmer’s daughter gave birth. In fact, on a spring evening he indicated to me that a birth must be taking place and, more precisely, in a particular corner of the hayloft; we went there and found that a bat had just brought into the world six blind little monsters, and was feeding them minuscule portions of her milk.

All centaurs are made this way, he told me, feeling every germination, animal, human or vegetable, as a wave of joy running through their veins. They also perceive, on a precordial level, and in the form of anxiety and tremulous tension, every desire and every sexual encounter that occurs in their vicinity; therefore, even though usually chaste, they enter into a state of vivid agitation during the season of love.

We lived together for a long time: in some ways, it could be said that we grew up together. Despite his advanced age, he was actually a young creature in everything he said and did, and he learned things so easily that it seemed useless (not to mention awkward) to send him to school. I educated him myself, almost without realizing it or wanting to, passing on to him in turn the knowledge that I learned from my teachers day after day.

We kept him hidden as much as possible, owing, in part, to his own explicit desire and, in part, to a form of exclusive and jealous affection that we all felt for him, and, in yet another part, a combination of rationality and intuition that advised us to shield him from all unnecessary contact with our human world.

Naturally, his presence among us had leaked out among the neighbours. At first, they asked a lot of questions, some not very discreet, but then, as will happen, their curiosity diminished from lack of nourishment. A few of our intimate friends were admitted into his presence, the first of whom were the De Simones, and they swiftly became his friends, too. Only once, when a horsefly bite provoked a painful abscess in his rump, did we require the skill of a veterinarian; but he was an understanding and discreet man, who most scrupulously promised to keep this professional secret and, as far as I know, kept his promise.