Sacred Sierra

by Jason Webster

  Now the King was aware that the clever girl was getting the better of him, and so he said to the charcoal-burner: ‘Right! Go and tell your daughter she is to come and visit me. But she must come neither dressed nor undressed, neither on the road nor off it, and neither riding nor on foot.’

  The charcoal-burner returned home with a heavy heart to pass the message on. His daughter slept that night, as usual, and the next morning she said: ‘Father, I want you to go up on to the mountain and catch me the wildest goat there.’

  When he was gone, she undressed and wrapped herself in a big piece of netting. Then, when her father returned, she got on the goat’s back and went to see the King. The goat was as wild as the wind, and it bucked and kicked all the way. Sometimes it stayed on the road, while at others it ran off it. And whenever it managed to throw the girl off its back she simply followed behind before leaping back on again.

  So as the King had commanded, she was neither dressed nor undressed, neither riding nor on foot, and neither on nor off the road.

  When he saw her, the King realised he was defeated, and he agreed they should be married. But he insisted that it would be only on one condition.

  ‘What is that?’ asked the girl.

  ‘That you may never give any advice to anyone else. If you do you will have to return to your father’s home in the forest.’

  ‘And may I not be allowed to take anything with me?’ she said.

  ‘Well,’ said the King, ‘you could take one jewel with you.’

  ‘And it wouldn’t matter how big it was?’

  ‘Any jewel you like,’ he said.

  So the King and the clever girl got married and they were very happy together.

  Time passed and one day a man came to stay the night at the palace. He had a mare with him and asked where he could stable her.

  ‘In there,’ said the King’s servants. ‘Next to that horse.’

  The next morning the mare had had a foal. But the King claimed it as his.

  ‘There was no other animal in the stable apart from my horse,’ said the King. ‘The horse must have had the foal.’

  The servants tried to tell him that the guest’s mare had been in there as well that night, but the King wouldn’t listen.

  ‘Don’t argue!’ he shouted.

  No one wanted to cross the King, but when the Queen found out about it, she went to find the guest to talk to him.

  ‘Take this fishing rod and go to that dry pond over there,’ she said. ‘When the King passes he will ask what you are doing. You must say: “Fishing for sardines”. When he asks how you expect to fish for sardines in a dry pond, you must answer: “It is as easy to fish for sardines in a dry pond as it is for a horse to give birth to a foal”.’

  The guest did as the Queen advised and went and sat with the fishing rod by the dry pond. When the King passed he called out:

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Fishing for sardines,’ came the guest’s reply.

  ‘How do expect to fish for sardines in a dry pond?’ laughed the King.

  ‘As easily as I expect a horse to give birth to a foal,’ said the guest.

  The King was furious.

  ‘Go on, take your foal,’ he said. ‘And never come back!’

  Now the King knew the Queen must have given advice to the guest and he went to find her in the palace.

  ‘You have broken our agreement,’ he said.

  ‘So that you would not do our guest an injustice,’ she said.

  ‘Never mind that!’ cried the King. ‘You must leave!’

  ‘Can we not have one last supper together?’ asked the Queen. ‘And I shall leave tomorrow.’

  Now the King had loved his Queen and so he agreed to this last request. But that night the Queen placed a powerful sleeping potion in his wine and he fell fast asleep. When she saw that he wasn’t going to wake up, the Queen ordered a carriage and drove him to her father’s home in the forest. There she lay him down among all the charcoal, with dust and cobwebs falling on his face.

  The King was shocked when he woke up in this small, dark place.

  ‘Where am I?’ he cried.

  ‘You are at my father’s,’ the Queen said, appearing at his side. ‘The agreement was that I could take one jewel with me should you ever force me to leave. So I looked around the palace, but the only jewel I wanted was you. And now here you are.’

  The King laughed loud and long when he heard this, and he realised the clever girl – his Queen – had outwitted him once again.

  And so they went back to live in the palace, and thenceforth the King allowed her to give as much advice to whoever she liked. And it is said they are still living happily together to this day.

  DECEMBER

  After autumn comes winter, which is made up of three months. The first of these is called December in Latin, Kanun el-Awal in Syriac and Deymah in Persian, and is made up of thirty-one days. During this month the days finally stop getting shorter and start getting longer, while the nights begin to wane. It is the time when the samayemo el-bardi phenomenon occurs – the cold, so-called Nights of Darkness, which are forty in number: the first twenty coming after the eleventh of the month, lasting until the end, and the second twenty stretching into January. Now narcissus appear, the citrus fruits ripen, and the early almonds blossom. According to Kastos and others, this is the time for laying fertiliser mixed with ash around fruit trees. Azib says in his Book of Astronomy that this is also the month for sowing leeks: they should be grown for one year before being pulled up for eating. Finally, this is also when white poppies should be sown.

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

  IT IS SLOWLY getting colder, but still the sun shines and no rain has fallen since early November. The river, which suddenly kicked back into life at the top of the valley, has dried up once again, only a few remaining puddles hinting at the underground currents that pass along this way. It is always a beautiful sound when the river flows as far as the turning to the house: stopping to open the chain before driving up the final stretch, you hear the gurgling of water just a few feet away on the other side of the pine trees, while in the evening frogs and toads croak along its banks. Water brings life to the area, colours trapped underground bursting forth all of a sudden.

  I’ve finally put my hand to rebuilding some of the dry-stone walls.

  Or, rather, I’ve tried rebuilding one of them, and it’s yet to fall over, so I’m judging it a success – of sorts. The stones are heavier than I’d realised, and the blood blisters under my nails pay testament to where I didn’t pull my fingers away in time as I plonked them down. It’s an intuitive process: the first section looks awful, and I’ll probably have to pull it down and start all over again. But during the second half it started to come together. And there were even brief moments when, as if in a state of grace, I bent down and picked up just the right stone for the gap I was looking at. You know when this is happening because the stone makes a very satisfactory whoompf sound as it falls into place, and it just stays there, not rocking or moving, looking every bit as though it had been there for years, or even centuries. This is one of the great things about a dry-stone wall: if it’s half-decently made, once it’s up it has an ancient, part-of-the-land feel about it.

  After about an hour the basic idea behind it seemed to make itself clear: the stones need to lean into the bank being built against, while if they have a flat face of some kind this needs to be facing the front. What happens at the back is unimportant, as it gets filled in with rubble and soil. And despite the temptation to place longer stones lengthwise, thus filling more wall space, I quickly learned that the structure benefited far more by laying them across the width of the wall, pointing into the slope. Viewed from above like this they look almost like teeth, and give a sensation of cutting into the mountain and holding the wall together. But building isn’t always an easy task with the stone we have here, which is rough and uneven. In other areas, p
articularly to the north and west of Penyagolosa, there are whole fields full of perfectly flat, smooth rocks that would make this task a doddle. We just have to make do with what we’ve got. It’s a start, though, and I notice now that when I’m outside my eyes instinctively start searching the landscape for dry-stone walls, trying to pick up tips and ideas to improve my technique.

  *

  With so much concentration on the almonds, and then on the truffle oaks, it was easy to overlook the fact that we had about a dozen olive trees hidden on a terrace below the house. Noticing in early December that other farmers further down in the valley were already harvesting their crops, we decided it might be a good time to have a look at our own. Only four trees actually had any fruit on them, and even then a couple of them only on a few branches. I wasn’t sure why the rest of them had no olives, although the lack of pruning and general tending to over recent years probably had much to do with it. It was only now that I gave them a closer examination that I realised they weren’t quite the squat, neat trees we saw on other people’s land, the olives never more than an arm’s reach away. Several of ours had grown quite tall. They probably needed a good feeding as well. Ibn al-Awam emphasised the need to fertilise trees, particularly at this time of year, but I wasn’t sure where I could get some good-quality animal dung. Perhaps from the local goatherd, but I hadn’t seen him for months.

  Still, we spent a couple of days beating, dragging and pulling off what olives there were. I was surprised at the variety there seemed to be: small green ones, arbequinas; large black ones, which Salud referred to as fargas; and small but longish and pointed half-green, half-purple ones, that grew on the tree in bunches, like grapes – possibly cornicabras.

  It was a slow affair, picking many olives off individually as a large proportion refused to fall to the ground when we beat the trees with special yellow rakes. Bit by bit the sheets of white plastic we placed underneath filled up with dots of green and black, occasional leaves and twigs joining them. There was a satisfying sound as the rake flew through the air, striking the tree before the olives started to fall. Whoosh. Thwack. Patter-patter-patter. It was a strangely pleasing and calming activity.

  Salud seemed to have got over the worst of the ghost scare, although I hadn’t mentioned to her what Arcadio had told me about the farmer’s son. I convinced myself it was because there just wasn’t time: our days were filled with endless tasks, from chopping firewood and keeping the house going to all the farm activities and planting trees: in the evenings, when we finally stopped, we were often too tired for much conversation, simply staring deep into the flames of the fire in a trance state before finally collapsing into bed. The real reason, though, was that I didn’t want to frighten her again.

  In the distance the hunters were back, chasing and shooting at a couple of wild boar, it being a Thursday. We could hear their shouts and cries from across the gulley, while the barking of their dogs sounded like a single beast with innumerable heads.

  And yet this time their presence didn’t really disturb us. It was as if we had entered a cocoon of our own – the two of us in some kind of communion with the olive trees, as though they themselves had the ability to induce in us a state of relaxation and peace. At one point Salud even started talking to the trees, congratulating them on having so many olives in the first place, despite having been abandoned over the past few years.

  In this unhurried, pensive frame of mind, I found myself wondering about the olive branch as a symbol of peace. Perhaps, a thought formed itself somewhere, we were absorbing some substance from the trees through our hands which calmed us somehow. Could this be the reason behind the mythological importance of the olive branch?

  ‘My grandmother always used to drink a glass of hot water with seven olive leaves in it before going to bed,’ Salud said when I mentioned the idea to her. ‘She said it was to help reduce her blood pressure.’

  I recalled how Arcadio had stopped the heavy bleeding in her finger by using a simple weed. Since then I’d started to find out a little bit more from him about the medicinal properties of the plants we walked past or over every day. I didn’t like to ask him straight out: it wasn’t the way he did things. But he seemed to have understood it was something I was interested in, and a few gems had appeared during our conversations: artichokes – of which we had one growing wild near the beehives – were helpful for diabetics and people with liver complaints; bitter chamomile, or botja, was an antiseptic and could be used to ease sore feet; rock tea, which grew near the spring, was good for almost anything – an anti-inflammatory and detoxifier, as well as being helpful for stomach problems. Meanwhile the savin juniper, which dotted the mountainside, light-green little cones bursting out of the rocks, had been used to rid farm animals of parasites, leaving branches from the tree to soak in water and then giving the water to the animals to drink. Woman had also been known to take it to abort unwanted children. Sometimes the mountains felt like a drugstore where all the prescriptions had been lost and the pharmacists had died or gone into hiding.

  Some herbs in particular seemed to have a special importance. Thyme, picked in April or May, when it was in flower, was a stimulant, and good for the circulation. Lying close to the ground and with dull green leaves, you often only became aware of it as your foot crushed it during a walk over the hillsides, releasing a rich scent pregnant with memories of roasted meats and grilled fish. It had strong medicinal properties, being good both for reducing bloating as well as soothing the nerves. The hunters drank thyme tea as a stimulant after a night out on the mountains. Arcadio recommended it to ease period pains, adding that its antiseptic qualities made it a common cure for coughs. Drinking it after a heavy meal also eased digestion.

  Rosemary, meanwhile, was the Queen of the Countryside, its pale blue flowers like droplets from the sky. Romero, para amor verdadero, people said, as they plucked a twig or two on a country walk to take back home with them: rosemary, for true love. No Spanish woman considered a walk out of her village or town complete without picking up some rosemary along the way – either for cooking (it is used especially in a paella, thrown in just before the rice is done to impart aroma to the dish), or to ward off the evil eye: Gypsy women make a habit of thrusting it in your hands in the hope of opening your purse, while the men can often be seen walking with a sprig of the herb poking from their mouths, almost like a cigarette, to bring luck.

  Rosemary, Arcadio informed me, had many medicinal uses. The flowers of the herb are soaked in alcohol for nine days; the resulting liquid was useful for all kinds of skin complaints, from rashes to cuts and bruises, while infusions of rosemary increased circulation and stimulated appetite. The smoke from the plant, placed on a hot plate or stove, was meant to ease the symptoms of asthma.

  Rosemary was often used to light a fire, and was highly valued as a firewood. A local Christmas carol, sung after midnight mass as everyone comes out into the cold night air, goes:

  Pastorets i pastoretes

  fue-me llenya, que tinc fred

  no me la feu d’angilaga

  feu-me-la de romeret.

  O shepherds and shepherdesses,

  Bring me some firewood

  Not just twigs from the gorsebush

  But nice branches of rosemary.

  We took the olives down to the press in a nearby village on the feast day of the Inmaculada – the Immaculate Conception. At the agricultural co-op, according to what I’d heard, you took your freshly picked crop, they weighed it and then you got a certain amount of oil based on how many olives you’d taken in; everyone’s olives were mixed together.

  We filled about three large rubber buckets – capazos – and drove them down. The co-op was in a warehouse on the edge of the village. Lights were buzzing against the dark winter air and a crowd of people and cars were huddled around. A tall, bald man in grey overalls showed us the ropes – we took a ticket and waited our turn. At the entrance to the warehouse was a large hole in the ground covered by a thick lat
tice grid. People drove their cars up to it, unloaded their crop, then tipped the contents down the hole, olives, leaves and everything. A conveyor belt picked it all up from the bottom of the hole and carried it towards a machine that separated the olives from the rest. Then another conveyor belt took the clean olives to a big metal container where they were weighed. From here a third conveyor belt took it up to a massive metal trench where all the olives were stored before being pressed. It looked like something Heath Robinson would have been proud of; the whole series of machines made a tremendous racket, while a sour, fruity, not altogether pleasant smell filled the place.

  There was great honking of horns and general chaos as cars reversed in and then drove away again with their loads: no one wanted to wait in the cold, so anyone holding things up was sharply reprimanded. One woman with short mousy hair and thick glasses tried to speed things up by helping the people ahead of her in the queue; she was almost poleaxed when the long steel pole she was using to prod olives at the bottom of the hole got stuck in the conveyor belt and snapped back at her viciously. She let go of it just in time, but quickly retreated: no more helping other people.

  Most of the others’ olives were black or deep purple, with only a handful of green ones. I wondered about those still sitting in the back of our car, waiting their turn to be cast down into this mechanical pit – they were almost all green, some quite hard and small. Perhaps we hadn’t given them enough time to ripen.

  After a long cold wait, in which we saw the locals pour bucket after bucket of fresh, ripe olives down the hole, it was our turn. In the harsh fluorescent light of the warehouse our crop looked even greener than it had back up on the mountain. Everyone around looked on with disapproval as we very quickly sent our paltry specimens down into the gaping mouth of the olive machine. They simply weren’t completely ripe, and our best efforts to clean the fruit of any encumbering leaves and twigs were a waste of time – there was a machine for that. Only a fool would waste hours on such a task. I walked over to the man in the grey overalls, who was standing at a grubby computer taking the measure of how much fruit we’d fed into his great machine.