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wisdoms are old.” But this young fellow thought he knew best. “Not so,” he said. “Listen to what has happened to me. I was walking in the city one night. I was lost. I was a little drunk. I found an old skull hidden in some bushes. I lifted it up and asked, ‘What brought
you
here?’ And the skull replied! It said, ‘Talking brought me here.’ Have you ever heard of such a marvel? I came straight back to the village to tell you about the skull that talks.”
    ‘Well, his father and friends had a good laugh.“The city has gone to your head,” they told him. “Did you get knocked down by a lorry? Or is the city drink too strong for you?” But the young man was insistent. What did they know about the big, wide world? He’d show them up for what they were! Ignorant bumpkins. He’d bring the skull to the village. Then they would eat their words. “Bring it, then,” an uncle told him. “But don’t forget the way you have insulted us. Don’t come back without your talking skull or you will bring shame on yourself and your family.”
    ‘So he returned to the city. He went to the spot where he had found the skull and, yes, it was still there, exactly as he had left it. “What brought you here?” he asked. Silence. Silence. “What brought you here? What brought you here?” Still the skull was silent.
    ‘Our clever young friend returned each day and tried to strike up conversation. No luck. What could he do? How could he return home without his talking skull? How could he remain in the city without the support of his family? All he could do was persist with the skull. He went without food and work and shelter. Nobody helped him. Why should they? He was a stranger, a crazy stranger who talked to bones. “What brought you here? What brought you here?” He got hungrier. Dirtier. Thinner. Weaker. More desperate. And then, of course, he died, dropping to the groundnext to the old human skull. Now, at last, it opened its yellow jaws and asked, “What brought you here?” What do you suppose the young man’s corpse replied?’
    ‘Chatter,’ says my father.
    ‘“Talking brought me here”,’ I recite dutifully.
    My father’s friend has embarrassed me to hide his own embarrassment. His is more than just a social visit. He has come on business. His passions are in tumult. On the one hand, he is a man shamed by a wife so sick of pregnancy that she refuses to share his bed. On the other, he is a vaunting lover with designs on a local widow. How to succeed with this woman, half his age? ‘Let me take something with me, old friend,’ he says, ‘to win her heart.’ My father makes a great show of thought and then he advises a cunning double application of freemartin milk. What else?
    ‘Passion between men and women is a complicated matter,’ he explains. ‘Who can unravel such a tangle? My milk can help – but who can say why or how? You’ll make your head ache looking for answers. Just trust in the experience of a thousand others. Take one jar for your widow. Add it secretly to her fresh milk. She will begin to think of love. But her love will be indiscriminate. My milk cannot work miracles. I cannot make her prefer you to all others. But if you are constantly there, well then, when she grows tender you will have the advantage. The second jar is for your wife. Maybe she will reconsider.’
    My father’s friend takes banknotes from his saddlebag and puts them under the almost empty bottle. ‘Make sure you give me only the freshest and richest milk,’ he says.
    It is almost midnight and these two old friends drag an unwilling freemartin out of her sleep and into the light of the stables. She is ugly and malformed and resentful. My father stoops and tugs at her shrunken udders. He works hard in his own shadow, his back blocking his friend’s view. Eventually he turns to show a bowl half full of some opaque liquid, a little urine, perhaps, mixed with thick bovine secretions. The cow’s udders are rough