Drought

by Ronald Fraser

  ‘For the furniture,’ he laughed, seeing Tío Bigote watching as he carefully folded the notes. He’d soon have enough for the nuptial bed and wardrobe, the chairs and table it was a man’s duty to provide.

  ‘Ay! When will it be?’

  ‘This time next year. Maybe …’

  Ah, what would she say now to postponing it until who knew when? He watched her at the village fair swinging back and forth to the paso doble, hips swaying, heedless of gossip about the break with her betrothed. Easy – no, hombre, no; he didn’t know how, never had. A writhing sense of longing that turned back on itself; he was better off as he was, mother, sister, no complications. A feeling of nearness, warmth that welled up from childhood: he and his mother, the others distant. The cornet blared out another paso doble and his eyes fixed on the swaying red dress, lost, reappearing in the crowd. Unnoticed these years, the girl suddenly become woman, unapproachable, different from others. Her eyes went boldly round the men; she would choose as she wanted, they seemed to say, she was free, sufficient to herself. Her difference tantalized him. Only a full-fledged man could be worthy of her … On the way down the track in the dark, he’d laughed and joked with Pepe to cover the longing. ‘Hombre, what you need is a woman,’ Pepe laughed drunkenly. ‘There’s Juana, how about her?’

  And she’d accepted him! The only woman he’d ever had the courage to ask! She’d be his wife. After three years he still couldn’t believe it sometimes. It was a miracle and he was humbly grateful to be walking at her side; humble but also raised up that she – she! – should have accepted him. In her eyes was reflected his self-validation, but her eyes … they danced, they flashed, then the next evening they were dark and still.

  ‘The land again, Miguel, what does it produce? Nothing but trouble. The weather is bad, there’s not enough water, always something. And the señorita, look what she takes.’

  No, no, she mustn’t talk of the señorita like that, it’s her farm, her right. And he told her about the terraces just seeded, the crop just sold, and she looked around to see who was walking out with whom. Laughing, she made him feel bad and it was his fault, he didn’t know how to talk of anything else. From one evening to the next he couldn’t tell what she was thinking, what she was going to say, and he withdrew into himself so as not to provide her with the chance of a sharp-tongued reply. She held him, she was the stronger; he needed her more than she needed him.

  His thumb and forefinger gripped the page, searching for comfort in the awkwardly written numbers and words. Down the centre of each page was a line: on the right, the señorita’s, on the left his. Balancing, exactly equal. Whatever she thought, however often she came down to look, here was the proof. He had never cheated her, not even a kilo, there was satisfaction in that.

  Here were the figures for the first calf raised five years ago. The trouble she made before she agreed. ‘And if it dies?’ she asked.

  ‘We both lose, señorita, for I shall have paid half.’

  She looked at him suspiciously. ‘No, you continue like your father, he was a good worker.’

  A year later, asking again, she agreed, as long as her half of the costs was paid only when the animal was sold. Now if it died … He hesitated, cursed, mumbled agreement. A trap. The ridicule if people found out. He told no one, not even Ana. Lacking the money to buy the calf on his own, he went to the bank. Within seven months, there it was written down: he’d paid off the loan and opened a savings account with his half of the profit. He smiled, mother never knew and thank God for that: she reproached him with nothing and yet a glance, a word from her could strike through him as though he were a child. She had nothing to thank the señorita for and wouldn’t have spared him if she’d found out; she muttered under her breath each time the señorita appeared on her donkey to see what had been stolen.

  Once, long before he died, his father said, ‘That’s how she is, the señorita.’ And he, Miguel, understood: the inevitability of her nature stood before him like nature itself, even more determinedly invincible. She had her rights, she owned the land and complaining about her was a waste of time, even when over his mother’s protests she exceeded those rights and searched the house for missing wheat.

  He looked at the sky drained of colour, then at the water. His eye followed the irrigation furrows; it would just be enough. And next time? Six weeks. Less if this heat kept up. The shout echoed down, his irrigating time was at an end; with a swing of the hoe he turned the water into the main channel to the farmstead below. He breathed in deeply. He’d tell Juana tomorrow evening he was making an offer for Tío Bigote’s land. But no, better to wait until the old man replied to the offer. Seven thousand, would it be enough? Across the watercourse on Madueño’s land he noticed the pink shirt of the foreigner who’d bought the farm. El Inglés. The people said another one had come … Yes, Tío Bigote’s farm, there weren’t many as good, it was better than Madueño’s land. Tomorrow evening after work …

  37

  Anxiety redoubled

  ‘It won’t last out,’ Pepe said over his shoulder. ‘I only irrigated four terraces last time.’

  ‘Ugh!’ he grunted, walking slowly behind.

  Pepe stopped. ‘The tomatoes worrying you? Hombre, there’s no good worrying. The village borehole’s always been unreliable …’ He looked at his friend, expecting a good-natured laugh at the folly of worrying when there was nothing man or God could do about it.

  ‘Yes.’ Miguel stared at Pepe and the space between them lost its density and in the void he saw himself and Juana, separate. She would go and he couldn’t stop her … Distantly, he saw Pepe pointing at terraces, at wheat that wasn’t graining. He wasn’t man enough to tell her she had to stay.

  ‘What’s the matter? Still thinking about those tomatoes?’

  In the vacant space hope crystallized unexpectedly. ‘Unless they strike water in the new borehole.’

  Pepe laughed. The señorita would make sure they didn’t start work on it again until the mayor had hit water; and with the señorita not paying her share there wouldn’t be money enough to finish it anyway. ‘Did you speak to her?’

  Miguel shook his head. There was nothing one could do about her. He wiped his forehead. Could he tell Pepe? No. What was there to keep her?

  She was smiling, he tightened his grip on her arm, other couples moved slowly, watchfully in the evening paseo. Her cousin had got her a job in a foreigner’s house on the coast. ‘It’s a good job, one hundred duros a month …’ The square slid away, forming a mist, and the houses, the people, the dry fountain floated in it, unreal to the core; and he foundered in the awareness that there was nothing to do but accept, because he had no weight in others’ decisions, as impotent still as the child standing in the same square.

  ‘She says she’s going to find work on the coast,’ he blurted out. ‘I don’t like it.’

  Pepe stopped. So that was the trouble! Of course he wouldn’t have worried about the crop. But Juana, yes.

  ‘She’s always talking about wanting to leave the village, saying that we should go to the town. To do what, I ask.’

  ‘Yes, to do what? No, hombre, don’t let her get ideas. That’s what a woman wants: to command.’

  ‘I know. I’ll tell her she can’t.’ Tell her he was going to buy Tío Bigote’s farm, tell her this was their village. A week before, as he’d promised himself, he’d been to see the old man.

  ‘It’ll have to be more than that,’ Tío Bigote said quietly. ‘Talk to Antonio Ríos, he can act for me,’ and this answer, which he only half-dared expect, had set him afire with hope. The old man hadn’t laughed at his presumption, hadn’t sent him away; by the red-washed cottage the sharp old eyes had scrutinized and found him sufficient. And he, like an inheriting son, thought of the improvements he was going to make.

  ‘A man who can’t keep his woman in line is no man at all.’ Pepe paused; in this alone Miguel, such a man for the rest, was different from others. ‘But you’ve got to know how to dea
l with a woman, it’s no good telling her “no” straight out, you see. I mean, come round to it a bit easy but then be firm.’

  ‘You know I don’t know how to talk.’

  Pepe saw the pain on his face. ‘Ah, don’t be a fool, Miguel, you got her for a novia, didn’t you?’ His friend’s hesitancy irritated him. He didn’t want to lose his respect for Miguel, the best farmer he knew, because of a woman. ‘Listen, you remember Manolo from Calahonda, he let his novia go down to the coast and she had an affair with a taxi-driver, didn’t she? And what did he do when he found out? Went down there and stabbed her and strung himself up in a tree, poor devil. It’s no good letting Juana go down there, I tell you. Isn’t the pueblo good enough for her?’

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t know what it is.’ He wiped the sweat from his face. Manolo from Calahonda – yes, he could say, I don’t want what happened to Manolo from Calahonda and his novia, eh? And laugh, make it a joke so she’d understand. Because if he told her now he was going to buy the farm she’d have even less reason for staying. Yes, that’s all he could do.

  But there was no word from Antonio Ríos. ‘Nine thousand, he won’t take less when he’s asking eleven,’ Antonio had said. ‘Look at the land, Miguel, five good fanegas, not rock and goat pasture like Madueño’s, which the Englishman bought. Twenty thousand he paid …’ and Miguel’s hand, reaching for the notebook, had dropped.

  ‘But I’m not a foreigner …’

  ‘The world’s changing, Miguel.’ Ríos squinted at him. ‘Land that wasn’t worth a peseta yesterday is worth ten today.’

  Could he mortgage his share of the tomato crop? Even so he’d be short. And if the water failed …

  Pepe’s voice cut through his thoughts. ‘Look, they’re fetching stone down to Madueño’s land. What’s the foreigner going to do – build himself a villa?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The piles of stone shone white on the far side of the watercourse; from El Mayorazgo he’d seen the mule trains bringing them down.

  ‘They say there’s another foreigner come, living in the sacristan’s house.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you see him?’

  ‘Yes, a blond, he’s been down.’

  ‘Looking for land? If enough foreigners come they’ll buy up the lot, eh? Not that your señorita will sell, she’ll hang on and try to smuggle it to heaven, if they’ll have her there.’

  Miguel didn’t reply. Behind his back the voices gathered strength, humiliation deepened. Not man enough, eh? Couldn’t keep his betrothed where she belonged. The unseen faces smirked the loss of himself in the people’s eyes through the loss of her. The pain was a warning, a summons to act.

  38

  Anxiety unassuaged

  Leaving Pepe in the square, he went away to Antonio Ríos’s house. Standing in the door, the middleman appeared to be waiting for him. ‘Eight,’ said Miguel, ‘six on signing, the rest after the crop. That’s my offer.’

  ‘I’ll talk to Tío Bigote, but I don’t hold out much hope. Eight to eleven is a big gap. Now if we were talking of nine …’

  ‘Eight,’ Miguel repeated. ‘He knows who I am. If it were a foreigner that would be a different matter maybe.’

  As though delivered of a burden, the sense of decision carried him down the street to Juana’s. But he didn’t tell her as they circled slowly in the evening paseo. For it was her decision that he was called on to respond to. She was going next week, she’d made up her mind.

  A wordless plea rose in his throat. Juana, don’t, I want you to stay … Instead, the words that came out stopped her slow pacing, and she stared at him while the people in the endless chain eddied around them.

  ‘Manolo of Calahonda! Ah, don’t be stupid,’ she replied coldly. ‘You’re not going to frighten me. Or perhaps you don’t trust me, eh?’

  No, no, he protested, sensing the danger, it wasn’t her but the people’s gossip.

  ‘Don’t worry about them, it’s a good job and I’ll be able to save. Isn’t that what you want?’

  Again an entreaty formed soundlessly on his lips. But she wouldn’t heed him, he knew. Then refuse her the right to go, as Pepe said – and hear her refuse the refusal? No. He was frightened of losing her for good, his self-validation. Her arm lightly held in his, she was smiling in the distance. ‘I’ll be able to save.’

  Save? ‘Yes, save.’ Sadness was closing in and she was trying to shake him free. ‘You don’t spend a peseta if you can borrow one.’ Laughing feebly, threatened, he saw an escape open up, the possibility of accepting the impossibility of her going. They’d need the money. Yes. He started to tell her about the offer he’d made, and things returned to their place, the square grew familiar again; while she, only half listening, giggled about something with a girlfriend.

  ‘So, of course, if you save …’ Yes, here was a reason, a justification to cling to until Pepe’s exclamation on the way down.

  ‘You mean she’s going, you let her go? Because of the money? Well, if El Mayorazgo can’t produce enough for one more then we’re all lost.’ And he knew it was true, the excuse would convince no one, not even when they knew he was buying the farm.

  ‘Pepe, I told her about Manolo of Calahonda.’

  ‘But Miguel!’ What was the matter with him? Couldn’t he talk to her like a man?

  ‘It’s my fault. I couldn’t keep her, Pepe. I’m lost.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. If that’s how she is it’s not your fault.’

  ‘It’s my fault because that’s how I am.’

  39

  A real loss, a partial loss

  Two days later she was gone, and the pain swelled and burst in his guts. Nothing existed but awareness of suffering, the part of him torn – gone, unimaginably absent in a foreigner’s house. The pain propelled him into wanting to walk down immediately to fetch her back. But it was too late, he hadn’t done what he should while there was still time. For five hundred pesetas a month he’d let her go.

  Self-recrimination surged through him; he thumped the hoe into the dry earth, feeling Culebra’s eyes fixed on him. The mask, so well contrived to hide insufficiency, clamped on his face. Spreading like a virus, the pain lay hidden under the skin.

  ‘And how will the foreigner get the water down to the dam?’ The old man’s hooded eyes glanced at Miguel. ‘If they strike water in the new borehole, that is.’

  Leaning on his hoe, he stared at Culebra in the olive’s shade: so this was what he had been driving at all along. His pain had blinded him to the words.

  ‘The señorita doesn’t like it,’ the old man hissed as the echo of an explosion in the watercourse rumbled through the hills.

  That was it, Culebra must have got it straight from her, they were as close as two fingers. There’d be no water, the tomatoes were lost. ‘We won’t irrigate then,’ and the look of puzzled exclamation fixed on Miguel’s face, a screen for his disillusionment.

  ‘No one is going to make the foreigner a present of a channel across their land, are they?’ Culebra grinned, showing three teeth.

  ‘It’s her own land,’ he mumbled, ‘it’s as dry as August.’

  ‘That’s right, Miguelito, it’s hers. They should never have allowed the foreigner to take over her share of the borehole. That was the mistake.’

  ‘Since she wouldn’t pay for the drilling to continue …’

  ‘Ah, you know her, she’d have paid once she saw there was going to be water. Then there’d have been no trouble about the channel. But now … The trouble is that dam the foreigner’s building, that’s the trouble, I tell you.’

  Culebra squatted, looking at the tomatoes. A good farmer, a likeable lad, getting a bit above himself though. A pity. You couldn’t go against your landlord, he’d have to learn the way his father had learnt. ‘How many plants have you got there?’

  ‘A thousand. So we won’t be able to irrigate?’

  ‘No. We’ll have to hold out.’ He’d made so much from last year’s early crop, the ol
d man thought enviously, that it had put ideas in his head.

  Miguel’s fingers felt the tops of the vines. They’d last another couple of weeks without irrigation, no more. Five thousand duros hanging on the fate of these vines. Was the señorita prepared to lose her half share? He pushed his hat back to wipe his forehead. Yes, she must be willing to lose two and a half thousand to make sure he didn’t earn them. She must know his plans and was wanting to punish him. Antonio Ríos hadn’t replied. And all the while the novia was in some stranger’s house.

  ‘Yes,’ came Culebra’s voice, ‘it’s the dam that’s the trouble. The foreigners are all right as long as they don’t mix in things they don’t know.’

  Miguel took the hoe to the next row of vines. There was relief in the force of the arms, in the shoulders bearing down on the earth. The clods broken up by the hoe, the soil turned friable, protecting the moisture from the sun’s metallic heat, which beat on his neck and shoulders, on his arms as he turned the earth.

  ‘And if the dam doesn’t hold? There was a dam burst somewhere once when I was young, about your age I was, and …’ Culebra’s voice circled slowly round the memory of disaster.

  ‘There’s no danger as long as there’s no water.’ The edge in his words was softened by a respectful glance at Culebra.

  ‘Ah, it’ll fill in winter, that’ll be when the danger comes. That wall he’s building, hijo, it isn’t strong. If it breaks, the water will sweep everything away.’

  ‘Yes?’ If the wall broke, yes, perhaps Culebra was right. Up high like that, the water would sweep over the farms. Casa Colorada. The dam was the root of the trouble, whatever the blond said, if it weren’t for the dam the señorita … He lost the thought, seemed outside, straining to catch it as he bent over the furrow.

  ‘That foreigner, the blond, comes down here a lot.’

  Miguel nodded.

  ‘Even before they started the dam, I used to see him down at Casa Colorada. Must be looking for land, eh?’