She and I were far from the only people in history to whom this has happened, and I bear her no ill will. And the painful little something was of the sort that comes and goes; indeed, the doctor said that it would appear and disappear with ever less frequency until it vanished altogether. This it proceeded to do until suddenly, many years later, the whole thing flared up again, like a long-dormant volcano, causing acute tenderness and a nasty swelling that not only put paid to any notions of amorousness but made it difficult to walk.
I mentioned the problem one morning to my Dutch neighbour Bernardo, who suggested that I might have ‘fallen prey to a wind-blown particle’. He then proceeded to show me a most villainous-looking infection on his ankle that had, apparently, blossomed from a tiny microbe blown there by the wind. The theory didn’t seem entirely plausible but, given my rural and monogamous state, it was as good as any other. So off I went, with my bandy-legged gait, to the local clinic. There, the doctor studied the affected area with little enthusiasm and sent me home with a pomada – a cream – that I was to slap on three times a day. Not that it was certain to do me much good, he added discouragingly.
Having bought his lotion, I set to studying the list of efectos secundarios on the packet. ‘Skin irritation’, it began. Well, I was used to that, though it did seem out of the frying pan into the fire. ‘Loss of appetite …’ It didn’t say what sort of appetite, but at my age you need all the appetite you can get. ‘Nervousness … depression … chronic depression …’ On and on it went.
It seemed manifestly unwise to apply this preparation to my person, particularly the more sensitive parts of it. So Ana consulted her herbal tomes and suggested the alternative of a saline solution.
This seemed innocuous enough, though you need a very strong solution. Seawater at 3.5 percent is not good enough, and even the 7 percent brine that you keep your olives in – the solution at which an egg floats to the surface – is not enough to deal with the maleficent microbes that can make life such a misery. No, to get those microbes scurrying for the hatches the solution must be no less than a ferocious 15 percent. For some days, morning and night, I applied this bestial solution to my person, and there was enough of a tang in it to make me feel that it was actually doing some good. But when I began to develop a sort of crystalline crust, not unlike the caramelised sugar on a toffee apple, it seemed wise to call a halt.
Next out of the natural medicine chest was an essential oil made from grapefruit pips. I applied this stuff daily, drop by drop, from the tiny bottle – but as a certain piquancy in the affected part started to become apparent, I belatedly consulted the label. Under no circumstances, it noted, should the product be applied neat. A dilution of 20:1 with almond oil or suchlike was recommended. By this time, the grapefruit seed oil had virtually flayed the flesh from my poor bone.
Finally, Ana came up with gentian violet. ‘It says here’, she announced, after another read of the herbal, ‘that it’s a gentle, uninvasive and surefire cure. I think we’ve got some gentian violet.’ Which we did, though it was rather more than ten years past its sell-by date. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ pronounced the wife. ‘It’s hardly going to go off, is it?’
What you do with gentian violet is drop a few drops in some water in a mug, and then hang the affected part in it for a bit. It has a gentle antibacterial action, though, if the truth be told, it didn’t seem to do much good, beyond dyeing my penis a spectacular, deep and more or less indelible purple.
It was at this moment of despair that I came across the journalist’s account of his trip. It was clearly my last and best hope.
I shillied and I shallied, and dithered a little, and then, after a few more days of bandy-legged agony, lunged for the telephone and rang the curandera.
‘Speak,’ she commanded. (This is what you say on the telephone in Spain.)
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Would you be the curandera?’
‘Yes, that’s me.’
‘Well, I have a bit of a problem, and I was wondering if you might not be able to help me …’
‘I’ll do what I can. What is this problem?’
‘It’s a skin complaint …’
‘That’s what I do.’
‘Yes, but … you see, well, it’s on … I mean … what I’m saying is that …’
I had not rehearsed this as I ought to have done. I was digging a hole for myself and getting in deeper.
‘You mean it’s a penis, perhaps?’
‘Well, in a sense, yes … it is a penis … er, do you do penises?’
‘Claro – no problem. Can you come tomorrow?’
As it happened, we had friends arriving for a few days’ holiday, but that was OK. This was a ball I wanted to get rolling. And after a great deal of thought, I decided to go on foot. Of course I could have taken the car and saved myself a lot of time. But that didn’t feel right; it wouldn’t have been portentous enough for an expedition of this nature. The curandera had told me that it wasn’t necessary to be a believer, nor go to church, in order to benefit from her ministrations, but even so, I felt that any element of spirituality that I could enlist on my behalf could only help. And the very act of walking has a certain spiritual dimension – more than driving the car, at any rate.
And so, thus determined, I gathered the dogs, and, with hope in my heart and my complaint hanging heavily upon me, set off up the mountain. I decided to take the dogs along because, although spirituality is not exactly their thing, they do manifest joy and transmit it to their human companions … and joy is a commodity of which one ought to take all one can possibly get.
As for the journey, well, placing one bandy leg in front of the other, time after thousands of times, and puffing and panting fit to burst my heart and lungs, I made headway through bright golden gorse and blue clouds of rosemary alive with diligent bees. I felt the elation that clambering amid mountains and raging rivers induces, and a tentative exuberance at the thought that I might soon be rid of my burdensome ailment … and also just a hint of apprehension. It was a complicated pot to keep on the boil.
Little by little I left the sounds of the valley below me, the roaring of the rivers swollen with winter rains, the sounds of cocks crowing and dogs barking. By the time I got to the aljibe, the stone-vaulted cistern that stands on the ridge between our valley and the next, there was nothing but the moaning of the wind in the broom. This is a sound of sinister portent, one that touches the darkest chords of our collective being.
I felt like a character in a Dennis Wheatley novel, the hapless protagonist in an imminent battle between the forces of good and evil. And things didn’t improve as I entered the village and made my way, as instructed, past the spring, left at the end of the alley, and down to the last house on the left. I stood collecting myself for a minute before the green wooden door. From inside came the sound of children’s laughter. That didn’t seem right; the last thing I needed now was children laughing … this was no laughing matter.
I thought for a minute of doing a bunk, calling the whole wretched thing off. I stood there vacillating, rocking back and forth, but then took heart and knocked hard on the door. The voices fell silent. Then a cry: ‘It’ll be your man.’ The door opened and a woman peered out, dressed in floral housecoat and carpet slippers. She had an interesting and intelligent face and kindly eyes. ‘Hello,’ she said. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Er … I hope so … I’m the person with the … you know, I rang you yesterday …’
‘Ah yes, you’re Cristóbal. Don’t mind all these people. Come inside.’
The door opened directly onto a small room, in the middle of which sat an incredibly aged woman in a straight-backed chair. ‘This is América,’ said the curandera, indicating the old lady, ‘and this is Carmen.’ Beside América stood a young hairdresser, making some adjustment to the few sparse strands of blue-grey hair that remained on the old lady’s wrinkled head. The tableau was completed by a motley assortment of babies and children, scampering or crawling about the ro
om, while a teenage boy sat in an armchair and glowered morosely.
At my entrance, the show seemed to have come to a stop: the scissors hovered motionless in the air while the hairdresser considered me with a bemused smile; the babies dribbled; the teenager offered me a sneer of dankest disdain; América looked me up and down with an expression of utter bafflement and increasing distaste, until all of a sudden she staggered half to her feet, opened her lipless old mouth and vomited copiously onto the cold tile floor.
I was hustled urgently through a door into a parlour and the door slammed behind me. I stood there alone, listening to the clattering of mops and buckets, the shrill cries of admonition to the children, the pitiful croaking of América.
The parlour was a whitewashed room – even the canes and beams were whitewashed – and I stood hesitantly next to a large TV until the curandera came in, pulling the door half-closed behind her. ‘Poor old thing,’ she said. ‘She’s ninety-five years old, you know.’
‘I … I hope it wasn’t my fault,’ I ventured idiotically.
‘What? The vomiting? Heavens, no! She does that all the time.’
She put her hands in the pockets of her housecoat and gazed at me in silence. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and squinted back. After a bit she said: ‘You’re the one that wrote that book, aren’t you?’
‘Er … yes.’
‘You live down there at El Valero, don’t you? I know all about you. She flapped her housecoat. ‘Now, what seems to be the problem?’
‘It’s my … er …’ and I indicated my crotch.
‘Alright, then,’ she said. ‘Out with the culebrina and let’s have a look.’ (A culebrina is a little serpent.)
This was it. I fumbled with the buttons of my fly, then bent over and reached in, gingerly coaxing the timid little creature from its lair for inspection. The curandera peered at it, aghast. It was not looking its best.
‘It’s a nice colour,’ she observed after a bit. ‘Don’t you worry … we’ll fix it up in no time.’ And so saying, she sprinkled some talcum powder on the affected part, and set to rubbing it with a gentle circular motion.
This was far from unpleasant – in fact it felt really rather nice. I strove to think about something disagreeable in order to discourage any untoward tumescence. But try as I might, the thoughts wouldn’t come. It was too nice a day: there was a beautiful low winter sun; I had enjoyed a long walk accompanied by joyful dogs to a lovely Alpujarran village; my penis was being rhythmically rubbed; and soon I would be walking back to a blazing fire and a delicious supper in the company of family and friends. I could feel blood creeping ominously about my body, looking for some empty space to fill, some erectile tissue perhaps, to make turgid … and turgid was the last thing I needed right now.
The curandera meanwhile was still rubbing. So I struggled to think of something dull and dispiriting. This of course is a tried and tested sexual technique; instead of meditating on, say, the beauty and sinuousness of bodies, or silk knickers, music and wine – lines of enquiry that can easily bring things to too abrupt a head – one considers the Spanish predilection for acronyms, or the lamentable decline in whale stocks, or the curious relationship between a liquid’s viscosity and its meniscus.
There are plenty of such things but it’s sometimes hard to fish them out when you need one. However, there was a silver crucifix on top of the telly, and this put me in mind of the mines of Potosí in Bolivia. Now there are few topics better conceived to banish impure thoughts than the horrific treatment imposed by the conquistadores on the indigenous populations of South America. My coursing blood was instantly stilled.
‘Can we talk?’ I suggested, thinking to lower the tension by means of some banal conversation.
‘Of course we can. What do you want to talk about?’ The curandera applied a little more talc.
‘You said that I don’t have to be a believer to benefit …’
‘No, no, not at all. It makes no difference. I’ve treated all sorts, all the local boys – and they’re not believers, I can tell you. The doctor sends them straight to me nowadays; he knows there’s nothing he can do.’
She went on to tell me how she first realised she had the ‘gift’. At the age of nineteen she had felt compelled to stroke the skin of a baby who was suffering from a painful skin complaint: ‘I don’t know why; I just had this urge, so I asked the mother if I could hold the poor thing. I picked it up and stroked it where it was sore, and it stopped screaming. I went back every day, and by the end of the week it was healed … I’ve been doing it ever since, about forty years now, it must be. People bring me all sorts of things to cure …’ She paused. ‘And I’ve seen an awful lot of penises. There, that ought to be done now; you can put it away.’
I buttoned up thankfully while the curandera returned the talcum powder to its drawer.
‘How does it feel now?’ she asked.
‘Well, I’d be lying if I said it was better, but that was very soothing, and I think it’s less painful.’ And I meant it.
‘Come again tomorrow morning, but not too early.’
‘It won’t be that early; it took me four whole hours to walk here …’
‘Walk? You didn’t walk all the way from down there!’
‘I did indeed.’
‘What on earth for? Why not drive like any sane person?’
‘Well I like walking, and … I thought it might be more appropriate for a thing of this nature, more … spiritual?’
‘I’ve never heard such nonsense. Heavens, no. Bring the car tomorrow; it’ll save you a lot of time.’
The next day I took the car. I wanted to be home for lunch, for one thing, and it meant I could take some gifts – homemade apricot jam, a sack of oranges and a bag of aubergines. The curandera’s village is too high for orange trees, and that year we had late aubergines.
After the third treatment, the inflammation had almost disappeared, and I asked how much I owed.
‘Come and see me one more time in a week and we’ll check that it’s all over,’ she said. ‘And, as for the money, you don’t owe me a thing. I don’t do cures for money.’
‘But … but,’ I spluttered. ‘Nobody does anything without money. Have you never taken money, then?’
‘I’ve never really thought about it, but it’s a gift, and it wouldn’t seem right to accept money for it.’
I looked around the little room. The curandera was far from being a wealthy woman. She had told me that she took whatever work she could get: cooking, cleaning, grape and olive harvesting and suchlike.
A week later, the day of the final checkup, I rose in the very best of spirits. A cool winter sun was pouring from a cloudless sky, and there wasn’t the slightest twinge of unpleasantness from my trousers. On such a day the only way to go was to walk, and I rocketed up the hill like a jack rabbit. Gone now the bandy-leggedness, no more the hoots of pain from the penis. There was a skip in my step as I entered the curandera’s village, where I found her sitting on a bench in the sunshine, passing the time of day.
After a last brief session with the talcum powder, we agreed that my ailment was good and gone, and sat in the kitchen for a while exchanging aubergine recipes. I gave her some olive oil from the farm and a box of home-made quince jelly.
On the way back, the dogs skipped about in the scrub, visible only by their tails held high – and if I’d had a tail myself, I think I’d have wagged it right off. We were all feeling that good. And as we breasted the rise where the long descent into our valley begins, I stopped for a bit to admire the lowering rays of sunshine making shadows in the folds of the sierras. The gentlest evening breeze rose from the bowl of the valley. It was the time and place, I reckoned, for a leak.
I looked about me and sought out a plant that would benefit from a warm watering with nitrogen-rich, pathogen-free pee. A tiny, perfectly formed juniper bush presented itself and I gleefully soused the little plant, while a million billion infinitesimal wind-blown particles
rose from the valley, bathing us in an invisible cloud … But what did I care? There was always the curandera up the river.
CHAPTER TEN
MANUALIDADES
‘TIMES ARE HARD AND GETTING HARDER,’ said Manolo, idly crushing a beer can. ‘People are eating cats.’ It’s hard to leave a statement like that hanging. I cracked a handful of almonds and looked him in the eyes.
‘Hombre, how do you know that people are eating cats?’
‘Because’, Manolo explained slowly, ‘Juan at the Venta was delivered a box of rabbits last week and four of them had no heads on.’ He leaned back with an air of finality.
I considered the information aghast, though still a little bit baffled. Finally I could contain myself no longer. ‘But what have headless rabbits got to do with the eating of cats, Manolo?’ Ana was all ears too, and we both looked at Manolo quizzically as he took the floor.
‘Everybody knows …’ he intoned in the manner in which one might address a halfwit, ‘… everybody knows that a rabbit without a head on is in fact a cat … or was.’ He regarded us with a smile of triumph hovering above his thick black winter beard. But we still didn’t get it.
‘Friends,’ he continued patiently. ‘A skinned rabbit looks exactly the same as a skinned cat except for the head – and that’s because of the ears. Cats’ ears are different from rabbits’ ears,’ and he looked at us in order to be sure that we were with him on this most basic of zoological points, ‘but apart from that they’re identical.’
I cracked another dozen almonds – crisp and clean, one stroke only with the hammer – and reflected that, cat-rabbits or not, Manolo was right: times in Spain are hard, and, as he says, getting harder. I was in a junk shop last month, and the owner told me that a man had brought in a pile of what was essentially valueless rubbish; nobody would have paid a penny for the lot. When the dealer told him this, he almost wept. ‘But I need money,’ he said. ‘My family has nothing to eat.’
Last Days of the Bus Club Page 11
