Sacred Sierra (9 page)

After a quick unsuccessful sortie around the few pines growing near the house, we headed out along the dirt track leading past the bend in the gulley and up towards the ruins of the old shepherd’s house. Arcadio had told me they had found the old guy dead up here a few years before, no one having seen him for about a month. He had lived on his own with a few animals, and judging by the chaos of remains left rotting in his house he seemed to have spent most of his time eating tins of tuna, praying to the Virgin Mary and looking at porn magazines – there was some vintage 1970s stuff lying around: black and white photographs and all the men with big bushy moustaches.

A stand of pines nearby seemed to have survived the fire, although they weren’t easy to reach: we had to cut a path through the wilderness,
jumping
down from terrace to terrace like mountain goats in order to get to them. It was fascinating to see how, in such a short distance from the house, there was a subtle but noticeable change in the flora – the trees seemed more luscious, somehow.

We spent about an hour looking for the
rovellones
. I’d never seen them in the wild before – only ever at the markets, all bright orange with green spots – and Salud had to point them out to me, bunched up around the base of the pine trees and hiding under tufts of grass. For some reason they didn’t look quite so brightly coloured out in the open. We only managed to half-fill her basket, so we pushed on further, forcing our way as best we could through the gorse, looking for more groups of pine trees, or just the remains of those that hadn’t survived the fire. Salud had some kind of sixth sense for them, and we eventually came across our biggest haul on the slopes of a hill where there appeared to be no sign at all of any trees. But we found some blackened stumps, and there they were growing by the dozen.

And so we had
rovellones
for lunch. The traditional way of cooking them, with fresh green garlic, is as follows.

Pour a few drops of very good olive oil in a frying pan along with a sprinkling of salt. The
rovellones
should be washed, dried and cut into strips about half a finger’s width. Chop the spring garlic finely, along with the green stalks. Place this first into the frying pan, with the heat turned up high. After about thirty seconds add the
rovellones
and cook until soft. Add more salt if required. When done, sprinkle with chopped parsley and eat immediately. The garlic and parsley help bring out the delicate flavours of the
rovellones
. Works well with chunks of fresh bread as a starter.

*

At eight o’clock one Sunday morning I was woken by the sound of gunfire very close to the farm. One of things we’d had to deal with living so far out in the countryside away from any towns or villages was an urban fear of isolation, so often expressed in subconscious images of wild axemen coming in off the hillside to do you in. ‘
On a mountain no one can hear you scream
…’ Typical horror-movie stuff. But these nightmares almost invariably took place in a night-time setting. I had never expected bloodthirsty killers to show up at this tranquil time of day.

Dragging myself tentatively out of bed, I threw on my overalls and searched for something I might use to defend myself. Nothing came to hand – all my tools were downstairs, out of reach. The only ‘weapons’ available were a couple of books, a pair of slippers and a bright orange collapsible umbrella Salud usually kept in her handbag. Cursing my luck, I realised I had no choice but to head out anyway: Salud was pulling the bedcovers up under her chin and looking concerned. It was my manly duty to go out and find out what was happening, armed or not.

I poked my head out of the door and saw nothing. The gunshot had come from the direction of the old oak tree behind one of the other ruined houses. It was there that I had to go.

Bleary-eyed, I tiptoed my way over, unsure if this sunny, clear Sunday morning was about to become my last. After we had bought the farm, a friend from Valencia told us that when he bought a similar place, out in the middle of an empty valley a few miles further south, the local police had paid a visit and told him simply to shoot and bury anyone if they came round giving him trouble; they wouldn’t want to know. A feeling of the Wild West about the area was growing stronger by the day, and I felt like a cowboy about to get into a gunfight. The only problem was I had no gun.

I turned the corner round the back of the ruined house and the oak tree and patio beneath it came into focus. Rubbing my eyes, I saw a group of men standing next to half a dozen four-wheel-drives, shotguns and rifles clearly and nonchalantly tucked under their arms. By their dress and manner – all dark-green clothing and an air of cockiness that seems to come over most people once you put a gun in their hand – I understood they were hunters, out for a jaunt with a view to taking out a few wild boar and perhaps the odd partridge or two.

The chances were they hadn’t come with murderous intentions – at least not towards humans. But as I began to breathe more easily, I realised there was another problem to deal with. These men were treating our patio as though it were some public square. And they were about to go hunting on our land, something I wasn’t entirely keen on them doing. But how on earth did I go about telling a group of armed men to clear off? I had no idea. Unsure as to the protocol, I decided to go in softly.

As I walked towards them, some of them spotted me out of the corners of their eyes and turned away guiltily, like naughty children caught out by the headmaster. One or two faces were familiar: they were local men, thickset, with short limbs and closed faces. I caught the eye of one of them, an old man with close-cropped white hair, and approached him. He had what looked like a twelve-bore shotgun in his hands, while a couple of grey hunting dogs were sniffing the ground near his feet.

He smiled nervously and started talking before I even said a word.

‘Those wild boar are ripping up your trees,’ he said with a forced chuckle. ‘Causing a lot of damage.’ And he pointed over towards our almond grove.

I understood: he was doing us a favour by bringing his hunting chums out here on a Sunday morning and waking us up with his gunfire. I’d seen the trees he was talking about, and the damage was considerable, but nonetheless I wasn’t too happy about encouraging him. I’d come across hunting types before – you gave them an inch and before you knew it they’d built a lodge on your land and were shooting at all and sundry.

By this point, though, the others in the group had circled around me and were staring intently. After an initial sense of guilt, they now realised they had some kind of upper hand. I wanted this to be resolved amicably, if possible. They’d obviously been hunting here for years. And they were the nearest thing we had to neighbours. I didn’t really want our relationship to get off on the wrong foot. Then there was that little thing about them having guns.

It was an impossible situation. If I wanted peace and harmony, it seemed I’d have to back down. Perhaps, I told myself, it would only be this once. There was plenty more mountainside for them to go shooting on. Let them do their hunting today, then they’d go and, I hoped, never come back.

I heard myself wishing them luck and returned to the house, totally defeated, Salud waiting anxiously for me upstairs.

An hour or two later, after we had properly risen and had breakfast to the sound of more gunfire, I headed out to do some chores. The hunters were still huddled under the oak tree, talking to others who
were
milling about among the almond trees speaking into walkie-talkies. Catching sight of them I grumbled. I had been beaten – in my own castle – and it hurt.

As I pottered about, however, a scream suddenly came from inside the house. It was Salud. In an instant I sprinted up towards the front door and arrived just in time to see the two grey hunting dogs come running out, pieces of what looked like raw chicken hanging from their mouths.

‘
Los perros!
’ Salud shouted, seeing me speechless in the doorway. ‘What are they
doing
here?’

It was the excuse I realised I had been waiting for. A line had been crossed and I saw red. Pruning shears in hand, I ran towards the oak tree where the dogs had disappeared with their spoils. If they hadn’t managed to catch any boar or grouse that day, I was damned if raiding our larder was going to be some kind of consolation prize for them.

The old, white-haired man was still there, along with three or four others. This time, though, I didn’t see the guns, or the fact that I was heavily outnumbered. They’d simply gone too far and it was time for them to leave.

I filled my lungs in preparation for the bollocking I intended to give them. Just as I was about to launch into my barrage, though, I heard a voice shouting from behind me.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? Get away with you! All of you.
Fuera!
’

I turned and saw Salud barking like a sergeant major, her normally slim dancer’s body now pumped up to make her appear almost doubled in size. Without my realising, she had followed me for this moment of confrontation. Standing on slightly higher ground than the rest of us she looked daunting and commanding.

‘And take those damned dogs with you!’

For a second the hunters looked stunned. It seemed they had never been talked to like this before, let alone by a woman. Within seconds, though, they were shuffling around, collecting their gear, mumbling under their breath and calling the others in from the mountainside. It seemed hard to believe, but they were clearly about to head off.

Minutes later we watched their convoy of 4×4s driving away down
the
road. Salud was still raging inside, but I sensed a growing pride in her. She was surprised by the strength of her own reaction. Heading back inside the house, I poured us both a congratulatory mid-morning brandy.

‘You’ve got more
cojones
than me,’ I said. ‘Always said you had.’

*

I have been cutting down about half a dozen abandoned almond trees which lie in the area above the track where I want to start planting some oaks. They won’t be dry enough for firewood for this winter, but probably for next year. I bumped into Arcadio in the village and he said you must always make sure you cut wood after the ‘change of the moon’, i.e., after the full moon has passed and it has started to wane.

‘Still got some wood stored away that I cut ten years ago,’ he said. ‘Did it during the waning moon and it’s still fine. Cut another lot during the waxing moon and within six months it was useless – rotten right through.’

He didn’t know why the moon had such a powerful effect, but said everyone in the past had always insisted it was true, and he’d managed to prove it himself.

Later, I checked the phase of the moon – we’re just in the waning phase. It seems I got it right, albeit unwittingly. I wonder if there’s a particularly auspicious time for planting trees according to the moon as well. Although I’m not entirely sure whether to believe it all. Is it just the moon? What about the planets? Do they affect plants as well? How far can you take this? I can already envisage a lengthy, complicated process of star-gazing and chart-drawing before you even cut the grass at this rate.

‘Best way to carry firewood back to the house is with a rope or string and then fling it over your shoulder,’ Arcadio said. ‘Don’t go trying to carry it in your arms: too heavy. Simplest is best.’

Sometimes I feel like a child taking remedial lessons for life in the country.

*

We had to collect our mail by driving into the village early in the morning and visiting the office of the postman in the town hall before
he
set off on his rounds: he only did the village and a few outlying houses; our
mas
was well beyond his range.

Jordi, the postman, was a small, intense, chatty man of about fifty, with short grey hair and a neatly clipped grey beard covering his pointed chin. Reading glasses were propped on the end of his nose, exaggerating the glare of his expression as he bent his head down to look over the top of them. He was also an anarchist militant.

‘Down with Capital!’ screamed the colourful posters plastered around the walls of his tiny, windowless office. ‘Worker! Do You Know Your Rights?’ It felt like a museum of propaganda from the Spanish Civil War. Jordi was still fighting the good fight of 1936, or so it seemed from the inevitable barrage I received whenever I popped in to check if we had any letters.

‘Have you seen what’s happening in Baghdad? Look at the newspaper! We’re organising a march next weekend: climbing Penyagolosa and planting a peace flag up there. We’re demanding an immediate withdrawal of Yankie troops and reparations to be paid. Oh, and we want a committee to be set up to examine the repercussions for the postal sector of the new pensions law.’

‘The Spanish pensions law? What’s that got to do with Iraq?’ I asked.

‘If we bunch together a few local issues – you know, closer to home – we reckon we can get a few more people involved, let them know about US imperialism and the danger it poses to the whole world. Wanna come along? I can get you a ticket half price.’

‘People have to pay to go on the march?’ I said.

‘Got to cover costs somehow. World peace doesn’t come cheap, you know.’

‘But I thought –’ I checked myself. Wasn’t this guy an anarchist? It made no sense, but I knew that if I asked him to explain I wouldn’t get out of there till at least midday.

‘I was wondering if there was any mail for us,’ I said.

He peered into a little wooden pigeonhole, pulling out a large wad of letters bound together with an elastic band. He flicked through them quickly, the names half-whispered through his open mouth as he did so, his bottom lip glistening under the strip lights from beneath his grey whiskers.

‘Nothing today,’ he said with a smile once he’d finished. ‘These are all for the other
masos
.’

‘Are there many with people living in them?’ I asked. Up our end of the valley, I knew there was no one except ourselves – all the other farms nearby were well and truly abandoned. But was that the case everywhere? Perhaps there were other people like us, quietly living in the countryside, doing up old houses and working on the land. It might even be a good idea to meet some of them.