Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Spain (8 page)

There was no stopping us now. We had running water, a heater, a cooker and a road. We were fast becoming slaves again to all the things we had come to this benighted spot to flee.

LOSTILLUSIONS

ANA AND I WANDERED ENDLESSLY AROUND THE FARM, EATING oranges and discussing what we might do with the various terraces and fields, what to change and what to leave, what to plant and what to grub up. Our relationship was already exhibiting signs of the primeval conflict between pastoralists and agriculturalists. Ana had visions of ordered rows of vegetables and fruit, neatly criss-crossed by well-tended walkways, a wilderness garden deep in wild flowers, with daffodils and cyclamen nodding on the grassy banks of the
acequia
. My heart was set on the idea of a flock of sheep scuffling across our shared idyll, with me the shepherd striding after them in a cloud of dust. I discussed the sheep idea with Domingo. The conversation left him looking thoughtful.

There was little we could do, however, in those winter months but look on while Pedro conducted the day-to-day running of our farm. Admittedly this didn’t amount to much more than feeding his pigs and then wandering around in the riverbed with the cows and goats. Yet he managed to inject such an air of industrious self-importance into these tasks that I felt inhibited and left out. I liked Pedro. I liked hearing his fund of odd stories and incomprehensible jokes, and the knowledge he passed on about the farm, but slowly and inexorably I began to move towards Ana’s point of view on how good it would be to have the place to ourselves.

Ana, for her part, had developed the habit of melting into whatever task she was undertaking, almost like a mirage, whenever Pedro happened to approach. This could have been dismissed as characteristic reserve on her part except that she was always open and attentive with the Melero family; taking time to stroll with Expira on her daily water-carrying trips to the spring, or listening with genuine interest to any gardening advice from Old Man Domingo. With Domingo, too, she discovered a natural sympathy. He seemed to forget his painful shyness in her company and they would talk animatedly together of plants, animals and country topics.

Pedro noted the distinction and it did little to improve the atmosphere of our immediate domestic circle. The evening meal, in particular, had become strained. Not that there was any spoken antagonism – everyone was scrupulously polite, passing round the
costa
bottle and offering first pickings at the oily potatoes – but it was beyond my social talents to prevent a cloying silence descending. Beaune did well out of these meals. Throwing scraps became our only light relief.

In the end it was Pedro’s refusal to try anything other than
papas a lo pobre
, and our hankering after more varied fare, that gave us the excuse to edge apart. Two camps established themselves. Pedro prepared his potatoes over his twig fire, while we concocted more cosmopolitan dishes on the new gas cooker. I still walked down to share a glass or two of
costa
with him at the end of the meal but never managed to rekindle the easy camaraderie of the summer. Pedro invariably would break off in the middle of some discussion about the farm and lumber off to the store-room where he now slept entombed among his hams and sausages and dried peppers.

While he took pains to avoid any actual talk of leaving, Pedro would haul out bits of his paraphernalia to load onto the Landrover whenever it looked as if we might be driving into town. Odd pieces of wood, bent rusty poles, tangled gobbets of wire and numberless artefacts made of esparto grass, rope, sacking, leather and string were carefully packed and placed in the back for us to offload with Maria at the other end. And with each journey Pedro’s presence diminished a tiny bit.

One day he piled his horse with flowers and pots – the place was festooned with gay geraniums, cacti and succulents, sprouting exuberantly from rusty paint-cans, oil-drums and breeze-blocks – and stuffed the panniers so full that I thought the poor horse would collapse. Then, clutching a favourite cactus in a terracotta pot, he heaved his own great bulk onto the top of the load, cracked his stick across the animal’s fleshless flanks, and lurched down the valley towards the town.

We didn’t see Pedro again for almost a week, and as the days passed I became aware of how daunted he made me feel. For the first time since we had arrived, we felt the farm was truly our own and the realisation left each of us almost light-headed.

Ana was the first to seize the initiative. She suggested we sow some vegetables. We ran a hose from the tank down to the terrace below the track and there decided to create our plot. Pedro’s system was an odd one; there seemed, so far as I could gather, to be different vegetables scattered about in different fields and terraces all over the farm. In his years at El Valero he had established which particular patch suited each vegetable best. So there was a patch of onions growing on the terrace by the Cádiar river; the peppers, hot ones, mild ones, bell ones, little leathery ones, grew in a triangle in the field above; potatoes grew down in the fields that bordered the other river and the garlic occupied an idyllic spot by the waterfall.

It gave the place an Eden-like quality, in that as you wandered among fruit trees, knee-deep in grass and flowers, you would come across a potato or perhaps an aubergine; these latter grew in a sunny spot beside the apricot tree. The disadvantage of the system was that it was impossible to work on the vegetables in any concerted fashion and it was a constant battle to keep the foraging beasts out of the crops. Pedro had weighed up the pros and cons and decided in favour of the Eden option. We decided to clump everything together on one terrace and see how it went.

The soil was stony and dry, and it needed a lot of hard chopping with the mattock to break down. It was heavy work but we attacked it with ferocious enthusiasm, and little by little transformed a part of the unpromising patch to a fine workable tilth in which to sow our beans. We both felt deeply satisfied with this first attempt to start running the farm along our own lines. With a long groan I straightened up to stretch my back and looked straight into the eyes of Pedro, who was standing, mouth open, on the track above us. Ana, kneeling beside me, bent her head lower to the task.

‘The Host! You can’t grow vegetables there.’

‘Why not?’

‘The soil’s wrong – too much
launa
on that terrace . . . and not enough sun. Look, it’s all shaded by those oranges and olives.’

‘Yes, but it’s half past five in the evening . . .’

‘And what’s that you’re sowing?’

‘Beans.’

‘What beans?’

‘Broad beans.’

‘They’ll be no good.’

‘Why not, for heaven’s sake?’

‘Wrong phase of the moon.’

Not a flicker from Ana as she trowelled in yet another bean.

‘Look at this, too – you don’t make ridges like that. Here, I’ll show you how.’ And down he came with his mattock, grunting with each blow as along went the ridge as if by magic.

‘You must sow your peppers this week,’ he said and disappeared up the track to the house.

All rural occupations in the Alpujarras have their allotted day, with the odd adjustment to accommodate the waxing and waning of the moon or the falling of a Friday. Thus the year always starts with the sowing of garlic on the 1st of January; then you prune your vines on the 24th or 25th depending on where you live. Most tasks are governed by the saint’s day, as are many meteorological and cosmic phenomena such as the disappearance on St John’s Day of the clouds of horseflies that plague the village of Fregenite.

The system is perfectly logical. It’s a lot easier to remember a saint’s day, which is something that everybody has had drummed into them from birth, than a mere date. Thus the enormous burden of information which unlettered peasants must keep in their heads is reduced. With the assistance of the saints they know by heart what should be done and when.

For one reason or another – bad organisation, forgetfulness, laziness – I don’t always get the day quite right. Last year I was pruning vines on January 29, rather pleased with myself for being so close to the right day. Josefina from the village was passing by. She stopped and watched me censoriously for a minute. ‘You should prune vines on the 25th.’

‘I know, but I’m only four days late. That’s not too bad, is it?’

‘We always prune ours on the 25th, rain or shine; that way we don’t get any pests or diseases.’

‘You mean you don’t have to use any sprays and chemicals?’

‘Are you mad? We blast them with every fungicide and pesticide we can lay our hands on.’

By which you can see how important it is to get the day right.

One morning, after a long time ratching around in the various sheds, stables and stores with which El Valero is honeycombed, Pedro turned up on our terrace where we were breakfasting on muesli, a thing he couldn’t abide. He had come to take his leave. Shuffling and looking bashfully down, he held out a couple of bits of wood adzed to a vague shape and notched at each end. ‘These are for you. You may have them as a parting gift.’

‘Well thank you very much, Pedro . . . what are they?’

‘Why, they’re
camalas
, of course. I made them myself.’

‘And what do you do with them?’

‘You hang your pigs on them.’

‘Ah – thank you.’

‘This too,’ he mumbled. ‘This is for you. I’ve wrapped it in a plastic bag for reasons of hygiene.’

I reached carefully for the gift he held in his outstretched hand. It was quite obviously a brick. ‘And what’s this?’ I asked, modulating my voice in keeping with the solemnity of the occasion. ‘It’s a brick,’ he said, as if he’d just given me the keys to his women’s quarters. ‘You put it there and it stops that window banging in the wind.’

‘Many, many thanks, Pedro, for these gifts. I shall always think of you when I use this brick and these . . . er . . .
camelas
?’

‘
Camalas
. . . ’

Then he turned to walk away.

‘Wait, Pedro,’ I cried, surprised to be confronted by his back while still fumbling for words of farewell. ‘You can’t just go like this.’

Pedro paused and studied me expectantly. So did Ana. I plunged on regardless. ‘You know you’re always welcome here with us. Why, you must treat this as your own home from home.’

Pedro grunted.

‘El Valero won’t feel the same without you. Isn’t that true, Ana?’

‘It won’t indeed,’ she answered a little ambiguously.

‘Bah! It’s time I was gone,’ he growled. ‘What use have you for an old man like me about the farm? I’d only get in the way of all these new plans of yours.’

He untied his horse and I followed him down the track, racking my brains for some way to inject some warmth into this leave taking.

‘Here, hold this while I get up.’ He handed me the headrope.

‘But surely you’ll come and see us?’ I asked.

‘Maybe, maybe not. I’ll send Pepe up for the pigs. Give them a bucket of figs each, will you? And don’t forget the water.’ Then he set off down the hill. I think he added ‘Walk with God,’ but I couldn’t be sure.

And that was it – no last piece of advice, no invitation to visit him in town, not even a farewell wave. I stood watching his large frame swing down towards the river, numbed by the abruptness of his departure. All manner of sentimental speeches surged uselessly to mind.

Ana broke my reverie by placing a consoling arm around my shoulder. ‘It’s time he went,’ she said quietly, ‘and it’s far better that he choose the moment than wait for us to ask him to leave.’

‘I know, Ana,’ I answered, ‘but I never expected him to go like this. He’s acting as if we’ve become strangers to each other.’

‘He’s piqued, that’s all. You couldn’t expect Pedro to give up his hold on the farm in good grace, could you? He did at least make some sort of effort.’

That Ana found his behaviour explicable while I was awash with confusion was hardly a comfort.

‘I’ll take him a flagon of really good
costa
on my next trip to Órgiva, he’ll like that,’ I promised myself and, cheered a little by this resolution, hefted my new mattock onto my shoulder and went off to clear some brambles. As he did with just about everything else I bought, Pedro had told me that my mattock
no sirve
– it’d be no good. Wrong-shaped head.

As it turned out I never did take Pedro that flagon of fine
costa
, nor have I ever visited him in town. Within days of his leaving the valley, I heard more than enough to destroy all my fond illusions about our friendship. Pepe delivered the first blow. He came with his tractor to fetch the pigs. Having helped him lash them to the trailer I invited him in for a beer and enquired eagerly how Pedro was settling into his home.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘I know Romero a lot better than you do, and I’m telling you that you’ve wasted more than enough time with the man. He’s just been taking advantage of you, I know because he’s been boasting about it in town.’

I couldn’t leave it there, I had to press him for details.

‘Well, he’s been saying that he’s had this stupid foreigner eating out of his hand and that he’s been helping himself to whatever he wanted from the farm for months because you were too soft to stop him.’ I stared at Pepe in amazement. He continued, but his next words were addressed largely to the dregs of his beer glass. ‘And he’s been saying things about Ana, too – crazy things. He’s got this notion that she fancies him and that you’re jealous about it . . . no, it’s serious,’ he added earnestly as I spluttered into my beer. ‘Of course, no one believes a word, but I really wouldn’t trust him up here again. It’s not fair to Ana. You should tell him to keep right away from the Cortijo.’