Sacred Sierra (11 page)

Anger and resentment mixed with a fatalistic pessimism seemed to kill the room. This was a cause for them, something to occupy them and bring them together. It was also based on fear – fear of losing the beautiful countryside in which they lived. But there was more than mere cynicism driving them, I felt. More than a desire for it not to happen on their patch. This shouldn’t be happening on any patch – anywhere. How many more Benidorms did the world really need? How many more golf courses and bathroom tiles? When did you say: that’s it, we’ve got enough?

And then there was something else, something unspoken, or less clearly expressed, but there nonetheless: not only dread of what lay in the future, but also a sense that something of worth, of real worth, was in danger of being lost. Something fragile, subtle, that didn’t belong to the brutal, hungry world invading these lands and imposing itself on them. Something to do with the way local workmen still made cloths, cheeses or espadrilles in the same way they had been made for hundreds
or
thousands of years. Something to do with the way children still played in groups out in the countryside. Something about old widows dressed in black sitting outside their front doors in the evening crocheting tablecloths and napkins. It was about all this and more: you captured it in moments or visions such as these, but it remained elusive: a timeless, human quality, one that had to be quietly nurtured and protected to survive. None there could give it a name, but I felt sure it lay behind all their talk of ‘witches’ and ‘spirits’ – and it was this that faced the greatest danger.

The Story of Old Mother Misery and the Pear Tree

OLD MOTHER MISERY
lived in a
mas
on the outskirts of the village, where she kept a few chickens running around in a yard, in the middle of which stood a large pear tree. When she wasn’t cooking, or cleaning, she used to go out and about sowing seeds of misery wherever she went, making people’s lives as wretched as she could – making shepherds lose their sheep, farmers lose their crops, children lose their toys and old people lose their wits. So it was no surprise that she didn’t have a single friend in the entire world.

Now Old Mother Misery was getting on in years, and she knew that sooner or later Death was going to appear one day at her door to take her away with him. So one night she sat down to think about what to do and came up with a plan.

The next day she went to Heaven to see God.

‘Oh me,’ said God when he saw her approaching. ‘It’s her again.’

‘God,’ said Old Mother Misery in her high, scratchy voice, ‘I need a favour. Little boys from the village keep coming into my yard, climbing the pear tree and stealing all the fruit! It has to stop!’

‘Well, what do you want me to do about it?’ said God.

‘I want you,’ said Old Mother Misery, ‘to make it so that if ever anyone climbs my pear tree, they won’t be able to get down again unless I go up there myself to fetch them. Just to teach them a lesson.’

Now it did seem to God that this was an odd thing to ask for, but Old Mother Misery had given him enough headaches in the past, and it didn’t seem like too big a task, so he said, ‘If I do this for you, will you promise to go away and leave me in peace?’

‘Certainly,’ said Old Mother Misery.

‘Very well then,’ said God. ‘Consider it done.’

Now about this time the Devil was down in Hell doing his annual inventory check to see how many souls he’d got and who was expected to be joining them in the near future.

‘Death,’ he called out to Death. ‘Isn’t it about time Old Mother Misery was making her way down here? She’s certainly getting on a bit. Why don’t you go and pay her a visit?’

So Death set off to find Old Mother Misery’s
mas
, where he knew she lived.

When he arrived he found Old Mother Misery tending her chickens in the yard.

‘Oh Death,’ she said when she saw his dark black shadow over her. ‘Is that you? Has my time come already? Surely you can spare me for a bit longer yet.’

But Death was implacable. ‘Come along now,’ he said. ‘You’ve been here far too long already. It’s about time we got going.’

‘Oh but please,’ said Old Mother Misery. ‘It’s going to be a long journey. Couldn’t we take something with us to eat in case we get hungry along the way. I’ve got some lovely ripe pears up in that pear tree if you’d be so good as to climb up and get some.’

‘Good idea,’ said Death. ‘You’re right, it is a long way, and doubtless I’ll be wanting something myself during the journey. I’ll just nip up and get those delicious looking pears up there at the top.’

And so it was that Death climbed the tree to pick some pears. But no sooner did he have the fruit in his hands than he realised he was stuck and couldn’t get down again.

‘Hah!’ cried Old Mother Misery. ‘I’ve got you now. You’re trapped, and you shan’t be taking me anywhere.’

Death cried out and cried out, but all to no avail. It looked like he was going to be there for a long time, perhaps even for ever.

Now with Death stuck up Old Mother Misery’s pear tree, nobody was dying: builders fell from their scaffolding and survived; sailors were shipwrecked at sea but didn’t drown; children went hungry but didn’t starve. After this had been going on for some time, back down in Hell the Devil began to suspect something.

‘Haven’t had any new batches of souls recently,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Come to think of, we haven’t seen Death around for quite some time … not since I packed him off to fetch Old Mother Misery.’

So he decided to set off to find out for himself what was going on.

Now up on Earth everyone was dancing and singing and having
fiestas
right, left and centre because no one was dying any more, so it took the Devil quite a time to push his way through the crowds before he reached Old Mother Misery’s
mas
. There, to his surprise, he found Death sitting up in the pear tree.

‘What’s going on? Why aren’t you working?’

‘I’m stuck,’ said Death despondently, for he had been there a long time and was feeling very sore. ‘I can’t get down unless Old Mother Misery comes up to get me.’

Just at that moment, Old Mother Misery appeared. ‘Ah,’ she said when she saw the Devil. ‘I thought we might be getting a visit from you soon.’

‘What have you done to Death? I need him urgently. Release him from there at once or I’ll drag you down to Hell myself!’

‘How dare you talk like that to me!’ she said in a shriek. The Devil was taken aback for a moment: he wasn’t used to being shouted at. ‘This is my house,’ said Old Mother Misery, ‘and no one will tell me what to do.’

‘But I need Death,’ said the Devil, more humbly this time. ‘Everyone’s out having parties all the time, while the fires of Hell need stoking with new souls.’

‘I’ll only get Death down for you if you promise to leave me in peace and never come back.’

The Devil thought it over for a moment. He wasn’t actually sure if he wanted the old witch down in Hell with him anyway, so he agreed. Old Mother Misery climbed up the pear tree and released Death, and within a flash the two of them vanished, and were never seen at Old Mother Misery’s
mas
ever again.

And that is why Misery still walks the Earth. Although some say that one day, perhaps soon, Old Mother Misery will get tired of being so old and causing so much sadness in the world, and that she will pop off down to Hell of her own accord, for a long rest.

NOVEMBER

The Latin
November
is called
Tishrin el Tsani
in Syriac and
Azarmah
in Persian. It is the last month of autumn and is made up of thirty days. Now is the time for sowing wheat, oats, beans and flax: start sowing from the middle of the month if Allah has made it rain at that time: thirteen days thence around the time of the setting of the Pleiades, what has been sown will already have taken root. November is the month for collecting acorns, chestnuts, myrtle berries and sugar cane. According to the writer Azib, owing to the threat of frosts from this time onwards, the roots of trees and plants should be protected with fertiliser. This is also the time for harvesting saffron
.

The cold begins to reach certain areas, and the first snow falls. Starlings, swallows, pelicans and other birds start to migrate south. It is a good month for planting trees. The writer Abu al-Khayr says the sap in trees settles at this time, causing leaves to fall. In Seville I have seen round radishes and the local lettuce – with pointed leaves – planted, for picking in January, and spinach, for harvesting in December
.

Ibn al-Awam,
Kitab al-Falaha
, The Book of Agriculture, 12th century

FOUR AND A
half thousand feet up a frozen mountain, I sat shivering in a school hall, waiting for the Third Annual Spanish Truffle Conference to begin. Huddled around an inadequate gas heater were three professors of ‘truffle-ology’, a handful of local farmers and Salud’s nephew and myself. Bizarrely, the tiny village where it was being held – an old Templar territory from the thirteenth century – had its own television channel, and the cameras were there to record this, perhaps the most important event of the year.

‘That’s Santiago Reyna,’ Vicente whispered loudly in my ear as we
tried
in vain to keep warm: there was no sign of autumn up here, I noticed, late summer having passed directly to midwinter by the feel of things. ‘He’s the biggest authority on truffles in the whole of Spain!’

I pulled my thin jacket tighter to try and keep in the heat: at that moment the only expert I wanted to see was one on thermodynamics.

I knew next to nothing about truffles, and was not even sure I’d ever tried one. But Vicente, a grinning twenty-year-old with an Afro of bright curly red hair studying forestry science at Valencia University, had assured me in no uncertain terms that this was the future – and an ideal venture for our new farm. Glancing around the hall at the dozen or so other participants, all wrapped up in scarves and hats against the cold, I had my doubts. If he was right, the rest of Spain had yet to catch on.

It appeared as if the organisers of the event were waiting for more people to show up, but after a delay of about an hour, they finally decided to start. Vicente pulled out his exercise book and pen, breathing on his fingers to try and warm them up.

‘I want to study with this guy,’ he said, his eyes glazing over as Santiago, a well-fed, middle-aged man with an air of authority stood up to address the meagre audience. ‘There’s nothing he doesn’t know about truffles.’

Over the course of the next couple of hours, he and his colleagues helped lighten some of the darkness of my truffle ignorance.

The most famous kind of truffle, I learned, was the white variety –
tuber magnatum
– which was only ever found in northern Italy. This is the one that often makes it into newspaper articles, where
x
(famous person or restaurant) is reported to have spent
y
(ridiculous amount of money) for
z
(tiny morsel of the stuff). It is very rare, being almost impossible to cultivate artificially or farm.

Black truffles –
tuber melanosporum
– sometimes called black winter truffles, are not quite as expensive but are very much sought after and can command impressive amounts of money. They are most commonly found in southern France and here in north-eastern Spain and are not to be confused with Chinese truffles –
tuber sinensis
– which look similar but taste of nothing and are often used by unscrupulous suppliers to bulk out their wares by placing a real truffle at the top of the jar for the smell so that no one can tell the difference. The
advantage
of black truffles is that – unlike their white cousins – they can, to some extent, be cultivated. Through a process called mycorrhisation, spores can be impregnated into the roots of a baby tree. Often this is a variety of oak, but hazelnut and other species can also be used. Several years after planting – anything up to ten years – they start producing their first yield. Specially trained pigs or dogs are needed to find this elusive crop, which grows a foot or so under the ground and is almost invisible to the human eye owing to its soil-like colour.

Thankfully, the speakers pitched their talks at the relatively ignorant, which seemed to be most of us in the hall. In France, we were told, truffi-culture was far more advanced. The French had set up websites selling this ‘black gold’, allowing them a huge mark-up on the wholesale price. They even had fluffy truffle toys for the kids of truffle-scoffing parents. Oohs and aahs of respect emanated from the huddled farmers around. Those Frenchies always were a clever, sophisticated lot. Trust them to have thought of something like that.

With that, and a couple more mini-talks on technical aspects of truffle cultivation that sailed right over my head, the conference came to an end. In that sleepy lull that comes immediately after a talk or lecture, I discovered that Vicente was no longer sitting beside me and was already barraging Santiago enthusiastically with questions. I picked up the pack of leaflets that had been handed out and made my way to the door, curious but far from convinced that truffi-culture was something I wanted to get into.