Sacred Sierra (35 page)

And so I’d set off to find him, curious, laughing: lusting for adventure and hidden knowledge. ‘Secrets of the Earth’? Who could resist that? And somewhere up that mountainside I’d found him, as they’d said, a hermit in a crumbling farmhouse. Long, grey hair tied back in a ponytail. Although he didn’t look quite so old.

‘Get out!’ he’d shouted as soon as he saw me. ‘Go!’

And without a word I’d set off back down the mountain again, back to the village, shrugging it off as just the ramblings of a loon. What did I want with secrets anyway? Probably all nonsense.

‘You’re right, he’s mad,’ I told the villagers on my return. And I’d left, and never gone back, just as he’d told me to.

The man led me to a sheltered patio outside the front of his house. I wasn’t sure if he recognised me from all those years ago when I had first been here, but, if he did, he showed no sign of it.

‘People are always welcome here,’ he said with a smile. ‘I have no secrets.’

Faustino had a quiet, unassuming ease about him. Of medium height, with long, slender limbs he looked as though he might easily snap in half, but was in fact immensely strong. His long, almost feminine neck stretched up to a neat, small head, a three-or four-day beard coating a protruding chin. A straight, sensitive nose sat between very pale, blue eyes that stared out gently from an open, lined face, their lightness contrasting with his dark Mediterranean skin. His smile was broad and frequent, with tiny dark gaps between each tooth when he grinned. This is how I always remember him in my mind’s eye: a light, almost mischievous expression on his face as he fed his animals, watered and tended his plants, or else rolled himself a cigarette from his home-grown mountain tobacco. His hands, dexterous and strong, were swollen and almost purple, and hung like beetroots at the ends of his skinny arms, loose, dark clothes flapping over his seemingly fleshless body.

His house stood at the bottom of the small group of buildings that made up the
mas
. The door was open and inside burnt a large fire, flaming from a single thick log placed on the stone flags on the floor. Curled up together in an armchair next to it were a large, short-haired mongrel and a white Persian cat, with intense yellow eyes, both snuggling themselves as deeply as possible into a knitted patchwork blanket thrown over the back. Above them in a cage, with the door wide open, was a pale-blue songbird. All three seemed to be enjoying the fire, and barely raised an eyebrow as we appeared. I sat down on a long leather sofa pushed against the outside wall underneath the
window
, shaded by the patio roof. Despite the cold air up there, the heat from inside seemed to soak through the stone walls and give the place a welcoming glow. Wind chimes hanging from the rafters tinkled as a breeze caught them.

‘You’re in luck: it’s a good day for walking – clear skies after all that rain,’ Faustino said. His voice was nasal and deep. ‘You can just make out the Columbrete Islands out to sea. Barbary pirates used to launch raids on the coastline from there.’

From his easy manner, and the curiously effortless way I seemed to slip into his world, it was almost as if he had been expecting me. Did living in the mountains make you like this? There was none of the formality expected on meeting someone in more ordinary circumstances: that could be dispensed with. I was welcome – at least today.

He went inside for a moment and I stared out at the view. The land cascaded down in waves before, in the far distance, reaching the sea, a great mantle wrapping itself around the globe. And beyond, lost on the horizon, small, rocky crags were just visible, tiny splashes of brown on an azure canvas. We were higher up than I had imagined, despite the steep climb to get here. To the east, the sea; Penyagolosa must be close behind us.

Faustino emerged from the house.

‘Here,’ he said, handing me an empty glass. Then he pulled out a bottle of russet-coloured liquid and poured some for me. ‘It’s truffle brandy,’ he said, and helped himself.

I raised the glass and took in the smell: the usual brandy flavours were there but this time overlaid with something else: a familiarly powerful and very earthy scent.

‘Chin-chin,’ said Faustino, and we touched glasses.

‘Do you live here alone?’ I asked.

‘People call me a hermit,’ he said. ‘Among other things.’ He sat down in a wicker chair pulled up in front of the doorway. ‘But I’m only on my own during the week. My wife lives down on the coast and comes up at weekends. So if I am a hermit it’s really only part-time.’

We both laughed. If he laughed too much I feared he might snap in two.

‘My wife doesn’t like the mountains; I don’t like the coast. So this is how we do it.’

‘How long have you been up here?’ I said.

He shrugged and smiled.

‘I forget,’ he said. ‘Months, years – they don’t mean too much up here.’

I sipped the brandy and felt it rushing from my stomach up to my head.

‘And you don’t get lonely?’

His pale-blue eyes rested on me.

‘Once you’ve been here a while you begin to realise you’re never alone. People live a more solitary existence in the cities. Being surrounded – or not – by others has little to do with it.’

He took a couple of large mouthfuls of brandy and started rolling a cigarette, plump, purple fingers nimbly prodding the tobacco into place and stroking it into shape.

‘Do you like my well?’ he asked, pointing at a small stone structure in a corner of the patio. ‘Built it myself. It collects rainwater – enough to keep me going all year.’

He drew the cigarette up to his mouth, licked it, stuck it together, then lit it and inhaled deeply.

‘We’ve got most of the things we need to survive around us. It’s a matter of knowing how to collect and gather them.’

I drank my brandy. It made me feel warm and giddy.

‘At first you’ve got your animals,’ he said. ‘Dog, cat, Dimoni.’ The songbird sang out, as though on cue, at hearing her name. ‘I let her out once in a while, but sometimes the cat goes for her. Can’t help herself. She’s happy, though, eating his seeds.’

I sank deeper into the leather sofa. The pine trees circling the house rustled in the breeze.

‘They keep you going for a while,’ Faustino continued. ‘And they talk to you, in their own kind of way. Manage to make themselves pretty clear sometimes.’ That broad smile again.

‘And then there’s the plants.’ He paused, as though weighing up what he was about to say, with almost a kind of sniff of the air to see how I would react. ‘And after a while you realise they’re talking to you
as
well. Quietly, mind, so it takes a while to hear them, and then understand what they’re trying to say. But they’re talking.’

I had heard, of course, of people who talked to plants. But not, as far as I could remember, of plants that talked to people. Various alarm bells started ringing, but I decided to ignore them: it was too soon to start passing judgement.

‘What are they saying?’

He looked at me and grinned, the grin eventually turning into a chuckle and a laugh. I felt he was examining me in some way. He bent down to pick up the brandy bottle from the floor, then leaned over and poured me some more. Sitting back in his chair, he gave me a fixed stare.

‘The plants,’ he said, ‘the animals, and the stones and the fountains, are all telling the
cuentos de la tierra
– the earth-stories that spring from the land itself.’

Part IV

Fire

The Story of the Horse’s Leap

JUST SOUTH OF
the little town of Llucena you’ll find a curious ravine, its vertical walls seemingly cut with a knife from the mountain through which it flows. These sheer limestone opposing cliff-faces, dropping over a hundred feet down to a rocky, dry riverbed, act as a gateway between the coastal flatlands and the inland mountains: from here on a clear day you can see the Mediterranean flashing deep blue out to the east, while behind you to the north-west the peak of Penyagolosa pierces the sky.

The ravine is known as the
Salt del Cavall
– the Horse’s Leap – and the story goes that it was formed quite suddenly – as if by magic – many, many years ago. At that time a fierce battle was taking place nearby, the Moors on one side, the Christians on the other. Now as everyone knows, St James the Apostle often used to appear miraculously to help the Christians in their struggles against the Moors, and for that reason he is called
Matamoros
– the Moor-slayer. But on this day, despite the holy saint’s presence, the Moors were too strong and they were beating the Christian army. The Christians, realising the fight was over, took to their horses and fled the battlefield, the enemy in hot pursuit. St James and a handful of knights tried to defend the retreating troops at the rearguard, but again the Moors’ numbers were too great.

Finally, seeing that all was lost, St James spurred on his white horse and led the Moorish army away from the Christians. Closer and closer they drew behind him, until they almost caught up with him and dragged him down. But just when it seemed his horse could gallop no further, the apostle struck the ground with his staff and an enormous gorge appeared beneath him, stretching far down into the depths of the earth. His horse made a final leap into the air and landed clear of the ravine, but the Moors following close behind were all lost as they fell to their deaths at the bottom.

And they say that if you look carefully enough, on the top of the
ravine
you may find the footprint of the white horse’s hooves, imprinted in the ground as it leapt into the air and carried the saint to safety.

JUNE

Now comes the season called summer, which is made up of three months, the first of which is known as
Junius
in Latin
, Haziran
in Syriac and
Tirmah
in Persian. It is made up of thirty days. This is the month when the days stop growing longer and the nights shorter, and start going into reverse. It is also the time of the festival of
Al-Ansara [Pentecost].
It is said that whatever is sown or cut on this day will not be infected with weevils. During the middle of the month, wheat is to be sown and sheep are sheared. Afterwards the males are placed with the females – and the same is done with the goats – for mating. Finally, all the measures we mentioned for the month of May can be applied in June as well
.

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

IT’S WARMING UP
now, and we’ve stopped lighting fires at night, sitting out on the patio instead and watching the waxing moon slowly cross the sky from left to right. All this night-time heat, however, has its downside: a remarkably loud crunching sound is coming from the beams of our new roof. It seems that we are infested with woodworm.

Or at least I’m hoping it’s woodworm and not termites. All I can imagine is that during the short time the beams were lying down on the mountainside after the storm, something got inside them and is now feasting on them, and enjoying the warmer nights to do so. The noise they make is unbelievable as the grain of the wood gets pulped in their nasty little jaws. When I spoke to a man in the village about how to deal with it he could barely believe we could actually
hear
them. ‘You must have very good ears,’ he said. Perhaps woodworm always make the same noise; you just need the silence of the mountain to notice.

Anyway, I now have several tins of expensive and highly deadly liquid to brush on to the beams. It was either that or some toxic smoke bomb which would have meant blocking all the windows and doors and then letting it off before leaving the house for about a week. We’ll see if this works. I was gladdened to find what looks like a tiny woodworm hole while applying a first exploratory coat. Termites, according to everyone I’ve spoken to, are much harder to kill. Perhaps in a week or so, when I’ve finished, we might be able to have dinner in peace again.

*

‘I don’t like it when people ask me how I am,’ Faustino said. ‘It always makes me wonder, Which part of me do you mean?’

After I’d found his
mas
up on the slopes of Penyagolosa, I’d been going back every so often, perhaps once a week, sometimes on my own, sometimes with Salud, who had immediately warmed to him. He preferred visitors during the week, leaving the weekends free to spend with his wife – when he was ‘off-duty’ as a hermit, as he put it. We’d go up just to spend time there: always taking something along – some food or some bottles of wine; and we’d end up chatting and drinking out on his patio, watching the sun drift slowly away and the first stars start to appear. He’d shown me a way of reaching his place by driving on a dirt track that wrapped around the hillside and entered the deep, dark forest: it would no longer be necessary to climb our mountainside and trek for hours across the fields on foot to go and see him.

And so we’d sit, and he would talk; sometimes the stories poured from him like rain, perhaps three or four in a row, while I listened, making the odd note, trying to remember them as best I could. Then on other occasions he wouldn’t tell any, or just the odd anecdote, preferring instead to talk about people and places from the local area, as though filling me in on all that I needed to know about the mountainous world we had moved into.