The co-operative leased a small shop in town, which soon became a gathering point for the local alternative community. On sale were honeys and tofu and natural cosmetics made from avocado pears and other unlikely ingredients, but mostly mountains of rather unprepossessing vegetables. When it was habas (broad beans) season the shop would be crammed from floor to ceiling with habas. But of course everybody had their own habas, so nobody wanted to buy them. It was the same with artichokes – there’s only so many things you can do with an artichoke – and not much more promising for tomatoes, peppers, aubergines and beans. As for oranges or lemons, they were a complete waste of time, as everybody had trees of their own.
In order to breathe some life into the livestock sector, I stuck up in the shop what I considered to be humorous posters, advertising succulent locally produced lamb. The response was, to say the least, poor, because ninety-nine per cent of the membership was vegetarian – and if they weren’t that, then they were vegan, or were fasting.
Unsurprisingly I began to feel redundant at meetings and little by little my attendance dropped off. Paco, who had been voted president by unanimous consent, was so efficient and seemed so good at maintaining order among the co-op’s more anarchic elements that I felt sure I wouldn’t be missed. But before long, I heard of bitter disputes erupting about what constituted organic produce – did you have to grow it yourself or could you do things like import herbs and spices from India? Paco thought the group shouldn’t be too puritanical, but he was out-voted by the organo-fundamentalists and eventually expelled. And the co-operative he had so painstakingly set up slid down the tubes.
A revival of the Almond Blossom Appreciation Society, as Paco had dubbed our previous year’s outing, would be just the thing to rise above such setbacks. I consulted Ana about the possibility of being given a free day to go walking in the mountains with my friend. There was an element of suspicion in the look she gave me. I fear that women in general are unable to rid themselves of the notion that, when men go off on a jaunt together, they inevitably descend to boozing and licentiousness. I reminded her of how the previous year Paco and I had returned from our Almond Blossom Appreciation having imbibed nothing but water all day. I don’t think we even had anything to eat. Such was the purity of our motives.
‘Hmm?’ mused Ana sceptically. ‘Then why are you making such a point of asking me? It smacks of a guilty conscience.’ Which just goes to show how undervalued consideration and transparency can be.
Undeterred, I drove Chloë to school the next day, which gave me an early start. An Almond Blossom Appreciation expedition is a thing to be taken seriously, not an excuse to linger in bed till the middle hours of the morning. As I headed over the Seven-Eye Bridge and turned east towards Torvizcón, I gazed up at the three great snow-cloaked peaks of the Sierra Nevada. The early morning sun, just rising over the bulk of the Contraviesa, illuminated the high eastfacing slopes with a pale tinge of rose. Before long I swung round the bend into the Rambla de Torvizcón and saw the village lurking in its cleft down by the dry river. When the slopes above it are arrayed in almond blossom and the blue smoke from the village fires curls upwards into the bright winter sky, that’s the time to see Torvizcón. In the heat of summer, with the life and the colour baked out of the hills around, you’d best stay on the road and keep on going towards the Eastern Alpujarras.
I parked in the square and headed up the hill towards Paco’s house. It’s a stiff climb because Torvizcón is a steep village and Paco and Consuelo live at the top. I was panting hard by the time I got to the steep alley with its diagonal ridges to give a purchase to passing mules.
‘Hola, Paco!’ I called as I rounded the corner.
‘Qué dice el hombre?’ came Paco’s voice from the roof.
‘What are you doing up there, man? We’re supposed to be off on a walk.’
‘I’m just finishing off these few tiles…’
I looked up at what he was doing, then moved around a bit and, shading my eyes with my hand, looked some more.
‘You’ve got that all wrong, Paco. That’s not how you put tiles on.’ I was rather pleased with the way I’d rattled off this traditional Alpujarran way of greeting, rubbishing a man’s efforts. My command of the idiom was improving.
Paco looked down at me from his vantage point with what I took to be a withering look, though I couldn’t see his face as it was silhouetted against the sky. ‘Cristóbal, every single man in this village has passed by my roof and said exactly what you’ve just said. Now I expect that sort of conservatism from my stick-in-the-mud Alpujarreño neighbours, but I thought you, as a guiri, knew a thing or two about the wider world.’
‘Apparently not, then, Paco. Perhaps you could illuminate my darkness with an explanation. Also who is this pig and why is it rubbing against your railings?’ A sleek pink pig – a Large White, as it happened – with a red collar and a bell hung about its neck, had just slunk into view.
‘That’, said Paco, climbing down his ladder, ‘is the Public Pig and it has come for its breakfast.’ He pulled its tail in a friendly way. ‘It’s communally owned by the people of Torvizcón and fed at the public expense until the fiesta of San Antón…’
‘And what happens then?’
‘Hombre, then it gets raffled off and whoever wins it gets to eat it,’ he responded, before yelling, at the top of his voice, ‘Paz!’ (pronounced as a Yorkshireman would say ‘path’) to summon his daughter from inside the house. ‘Your pig’s here,’ he shouted.
‘Voy,’ came the reply – ‘coming’. The pig started to get frisky at the sound of Paz’s voice, and began hopping from foot to foot jingling its bell.
‘As for the tiles…’ continued Paco. ‘We were in Galicia in the autumn and I noticed that in some villages they have this singular way of laying them so that they look good and drain better. But I fear it may take a thousand years before the tontos of this village accept that it’s actually an improvement. I sometimes wonder if the evolution of ideas actually works at a slower pace in the Alpujarras than elsewhere on the planet, And I also think, Cristóbal, that perhaps you have been living here too long.’
Before I could offer a considered reply to this suggestion, Paz came through the door, dressed in regulation school uniform of baggy jeans, tight T-shirt and hooded top. She was carrying a bowl of slops and leftovers. The Public Pig nearly turned itself inside out with delight. Paz placed the bowl on the ground and the pig launched itself upon the gruesome-looking fare, its face suffused with ecstasy.
‘Hola, Paz,’ I said. ‘Qué tal?’ I wasn’t going to trouble an eighteen-year-old with Por dónde andas? or Qué dice el hombre?
‘Things are fine,’ she said, fiddling with a troublesome lock of her long hair. ‘Though the exams are a bit of a pain right now.’
‘What are you studying these days?’ – the typical old man’s question.
‘I’m specialising in Classics… Ooh and I’ve got to run – I’ve got a Latin exam today and my lift to school is about to leave…’
‘Best of luck, then. I’m sure you’ll do fine – and so will your pig…’
‘It’s not my pig, Cristóbal, it’s the Public Pig; but I think it likes me a lot.’ And she bent to scratch it behind the ear while the pig looked at her thoughtfully.
I was looking at Paz thoughtfully, too, surprised to the point of speechlessness by her gestures and voice. It wasn’t that there was anything unusual about them; in fact the opposite. She sounded exactly like my own daughter. The style of delivery, the intonations, the body language and gestures – they were exactly the same. If I were to shut my eyes it could almost be Chloë. Of course they were both products of the same school, the Órgiva bearpit, but they weren’t close friends or even part of the same gang; after all, Paz is eighteen and Chloë fourteen. It was humbling to reflect how the influence we have as parents is as nothing compared with the power of the peer group. I pondered this fact a little sadly, as I waited for Paco to finish cleaning his too
ls. Eventually he emerged, pulling on a light jacket.
‘Vamos al campo,’ he said. ‘Let’s head for the hills.’
We walked together down the rambla – the flash-riverbed – out towards the Cádiar river and the Almegijar bridge, stepping up the pace a little to warm ourselves in the cool of the morning. Parked on the bridge was a big vintage motorbike and, standing beside it, a boyish grin playing behind his moustache and spectacles, was its owner. ‘José, qué alegría – what happiness, what are you doing here?’ I called.
‘Oh, I forgot to tell you,’ said Paco. ‘I invited José Pela to come along with us.’
‘Hola, Cristóbal. Qué dice el hombre?’ – we repeated all the conventions. But I was genuinely delighted to see José, who is the teacher at the primary school in Torvizcón. He had came down to the Alpujarras from Santander in the north almost twenty years ago, with his beautiful raven-haired wife, Mara, and they had a son not long after Chloë was born. I had first met him at the inaugural meeting of the Amigos del Río Guadalfeo, a campaign group set up to stop the dam being built in the Guadalfeo River, and we had remained good friends.
José had never learned to drive a car. His beloved motorbike was a much more suitable form of transport for getting to the little school far up in the folds of the rambla, where he used to teach, and he was quite content to leave the driving to Mara. Then, one morning six years ago, on the quiet road above Puerto Jubiley, Mara’s Land-Rover jumped the crash barrier and rolled over the edge. Nobody knows quite how this could have happened but José was left alone with their six-year-old son, Aretx. They had been a very close family, and the two were left utterly desolate.
When José moved to the school at Torvizcón it was a foregone conclusion that he and Paco would become friends. They both shared a restless curiosity about the world and its ways and, although José had a rather different approach – his unassuming manner and knack of drawing other people out made him a sensitive and popular teacher – he thoroughly enjoyed Paco’s more passionate and extrovert ways. I like them both immensely and often think what a fine, albeit tiny, tertulia we would make. The tertulia is a peculiarly Spanish phenomenon where a group of friends will gather regularly to discuss a topic – be it politics, religion, music, poetry, literature, art or whatever. Although inevitably one drinks, as most tertulias gather in bars, it is the talk that is the thing. I had always wanted to be invited to join a proper long-established tertulia – Madrid has some that go back generations – but I don’t think Órgiva has such a thing… or at any rate I haven’t been asked to join it. I’m happy, though, to make do with Paco and José. They are opinionated, pleasingly radical and unstoppably loquacious, and our Almond Blossom Appreciation Society is, for me, about as good as a tertulia could ever be.
‘Last time I passed this way the path was somewhere here,’ said José, beating at some brambles with a stick. ‘But it’s got so overgrown. Nobody uses these paths any more.’ Nonetheless, after a bit of thrashing about, we found the cobbled old mule-path and began the long climb up to the village of Almegijar. Paco and José immediately launched into a torrent of animated conversation. As for me, I have always thought it unwise to talk too much when climbing steep hills, so I kept quiet and just slogged on.
It was not yet 9.30, but it was already hotting up and we soon stopped to take off our jackets and look at the view below us. ‘José is finally getting his act together and finding himself a new woman,’ confided Paco, wiping the sweat from his face with a spotted handkerchief. ‘He’s been on his own for long enough. I keep telling him it’s doing him no good. Eh, José?’
‘I suppose not,’ replied José, struggling to get his breath. ‘But sometimes I wonder.’
‘You can’t have doubts, man! You’ve got hordes of women lining up,’ said Paco with a grin. ‘They send him poetry,’ he added, turning to me.
‘Tell me more, José. What’s your secret?’
‘It’s the Internet,’ said Paco. ‘That’s the way things are done nowadays. José has put himself on offer on the Internet.’
‘I posted a notice a few weeks ago,’ said José a little shyly. ‘And… well… I got an awful lot of replies. I’m not sure quite what to do about it.’
‘It seems they’re all poets, José’s women – and they’re all desperate to marry him.’
‘Have you actually met any of these people?’ I asked.
José kicked a stone off the path and scratched his ear. ‘No, not yet,’ he said, ‘but I’m going to have to do something about it soon… You know, meet up with one of them.’
‘Would that be the medical researcher from Sevilla you’re thinking of?’ asked Paco, who seemed well informed on the subject. ‘She wrote him pages and pages of barely disguised erotic verse. I think she could be the one, José, no?’
‘Hmm, I mustn’t be too hasty, you know. It could all be a terrible mistake.’
‘Don’t be a fool, man. You’ve got to try them all,’ said Paco with a salacious smirk. ‘Although it’s romantic love with a view to marriage that José’s after. He’s not just some cheap cyber-Lothario like you or me…’
I was quite surprised by Paco’s irreverence when talking about what I reckoned must be really a rather sensitive subject for José, and tried to make my own comments more sympathetic. ‘Well, I think it’s a wonderful idea,’ I enthused earnestly, ‘and I hope it works out for you. I’d certainly do it in your position…’
‘So would I,’ said Paco. ‘In fact, I’m thinking of doing it even though I’m not in José’s position. The thought of all that poetry makes my eyes water…’
‘I can’t see Consuelo getting terribly excited about it,’ I said.
‘It’s amazing,’ said José, ‘All those people out there on the Internet, just desperate to get together with somebody. It’s been like an avalanche, it really has.’
We were all quiet for a while, thinking our various thoughts on the theme.
By now we had reached the terraces just beneath the village. The path here was one of those beautiful ancient ways, with broad steps of cobbled white river-stones. ‘Here’s our first almond grove,’ I said. ‘Let’s stop and contemplate it for a bit.’
If ever I find myself doubting the pleasure of living somewhere as abstrusely remote as the Alpujarras, I think of moments like these. The pale stones of the track were interlaced with bright-green spring grass and in the corners were clumps of luminous yellow oxalis – the pica-pica that children love to pick and eat for the sweet vinegary taste of its stalks. Above the pica-pica were stone walls, harbouring a population of tiny lizards darting from sunshine to shade. And overhanging the walls were the blossoming almond trees.
Now, an almond flower is quite the loveliest thing ever seen. There’s only the subtlest of scents, but, with the exquisite beauty of the pale pink petals, clouds of them against the burned black of the trunk, you hardly need a scent. And through the mist of petals, which hum with great blue abejorros or carpenter bees, you see the bright blue of the sky. It makes your heart droop with pleasure like a heavily laden branch.
We stood, the three of us, in this perfect place, drenched in warm winter sunshine. I sat down on a stone and squinted against the sun at the view.
‘Here, Cristóbal, drink…’ Paco nudged me with his bota.
A bota is a leather wine bottle and an essential accessory for any self-respecting rural Spaniard. It’s shaped the way you’d think a goat’s stomach would be shaped, and made of soft brown goat hide with a waterproof lining of pine resin tar. In the plastic cap is a pinhole, just enough for a needle-thin stream of wine to pass.
I was pleased with this opportunity to display my credentials, because I reckoned that Paco and José were looking forward to a snigger at my expense. But the truth is – even though I say it myself – long practice has made me pretty slick in this esoteric country skill.
The first thing to remember is that it’s quite unacceptable to put the spout in your mouth and suck it – which on
the surface seems the obvious thing to do. The Spanish tend to be delicate about sharing bottles of water or wine with the sort of person who wraps their lips around the spout to drink. They fear the backwash and floaters.
The technique for drinking from a bota is to tilt your head back, open your mouth and raise the bag about a hand’s breadth from your lips. Then you squeeze it enough to eject an accurate stream of wine into the back of your mouth, while you slowly move it away from you until your arms are straight. This aerates the wine and allows a little sunlight to enter as the fine stream arcs, glittering through the air. It’s essential to maintain a steady pressure, to allow for wind deflection and to swallow constantly with your mouth open – a physical refinement not everyone can master. All this is second nature to a man who knows the bota, but it’s endlessly amusing to watch beginners as they spray wine deep into their nostrils, in their eyes, all down their fronts and, on the odd occcasion when they do manage to get a squirt into their mouth, to see them hacking and coughing and incontinently blurting the wine up and out.
I thought it a little early in the proceedings to be starting on the wine, but entered into the spirit of the thing nonetheless and took the proffered bota. Paco and José watched with barely disguised disappointment as I took a long pull. The wine, the rough Alpujarran country variety known as costa, burned as it splashed onto the back of my palate, vapourising and filling my mouth with hot, tar-scented mist.
The Almond Blossom Appreciation Society Page 19
