Driving Over Lemons Part 15

The same thing happened in Lanjaron, Baltasar's home town, but at last we were away, leaving the mountain roads of the Alpujarra and grumbling slowly up the long hills that lead to Granada. The cool evening had become a freezing night, so the heater was on and the car was full of soporific fug. Soon everyone was asleep except Baltasar, Manuel and me. Baltasar was awake because he was driving, Manuel was awake because he was holding forth in an unbroken narrative, and I was awake because I was too polite to go to sleep when someone was talking to me. The others had heard it all before.

Manuel is a curandero curandero something between a faith healer and a barefoot doctor. His speciality is bones, muscles and the nervous system. He is known throughout Andalucia and I have heard of his successes from Malaga to Jaen. He is a fine-looking man with a bearing of unpretentious dignity, and despite his tiny frame he possesses an almost supernatural strength as well as a limitless capacity for talking. He sat in front with Baltasar. It was his car, so he was accorded that dignity, although he never would presume to try and drive the thing. Like reading and writing, driving is the province of a younger, more advanced, technologically literate cla.s.s of person. something between a faith healer and a barefoot doctor. His speciality is bones, muscles and the nervous system. He is known throughout Andalucia and I have heard of his successes from Malaga to Jaen. He is a fine-looking man with a bearing of unpretentious dignity, and despite his tiny frame he possesses an almost supernatural strength as well as a limitless capacity for talking. He sat in front with Baltasar. It was his car, so he was accorded that dignity, although he never would presume to try and drive the thing. Like reading and writing, driving is the province of a younger, more advanced, technologically literate cla.s.s of person.

As he spoke he twisted round in the tall seat to address me and make sure I was still listening. 'Well yes,' he explained when I broke the monologue with a question. 'There was a doctor in the town shortly after the war, and he didn't like me practising at all. He made life as difficult as he could, got the Guardia Civil to hara.s.s us: he was friends with the town comandante comandante. The church doesn't like curanderos curanderos, you see, and the doctor, as well as being a second-rate pract.i.tioner who only attended the needs of the rich people of the town (and that badly) the doctor was a very churchy man. So I could only practise with the greatest difficulty. One winter, the Guardia locked me up in the town jail for three weeks no heating and not enough to eat and gave me a thorough beating, too.'

'But it didn't make you want to give up the healing?'

'No, it's a gift, the healing. Like the gifts of sight or hearing it's hard to stop using them. People come to me with their pains and their sicknesses and I know I can help them. So I do; I can't help it. I don't take any money for it, only what people want to give, but I do get an awful lot of pleasure from it.

'Anyway, late one night there was a knock at the door. When I opened it I found a woman wrapped from head to foot in a dark blanket. I led her in to the light, and as I turned to look at her I understood why she had covered herself so. She was the wife of the comandante comandante. She told me she was in great pain with her legs; she hadn't slept for weeks from the pain and the doctor had told her there was nothing he could do.

'I soon discovered what was wrong with her; it was trapped nerves, the poor woman could hardly walk. I treated her several times during the course of the week she always came at night and hidden, it wouldn't do for the wife of the comandante comandante to be seen consorting with to be seen consorting with curanderos curanderos and at the end of the week she was completely better, not a trace of pain. From then on I never had any more trouble with the Guardia.' and at the end of the week she was completely better, not a trace of pain. From then on I never had any more trouble with the Guardia.'

Manuel's stories were too good to doze through. He told them well, fluently and with a fine sense of balance and dramatic timing. Those who cannot read or write have the advantage in this; the ability to keep a long story in one's head tends to diminish with literacy.

He launched into another story about what happened to the doctor of course he got his come-uppance and I had no doubt that the story was true. Then he moved on to a tale about another doctor. Various people of the town, the butcher Sevillano, the baker, the cafe owner who had been nursed by a donkey, all wandered in and out of the narrative. He kept up non-stop, wriggling round every few minutes to see that I was still listening. I crouched forward to catch his quiet voice above the thrum of the engine and rumbling of the trailer.

As we turned east and ground up towards the Puerto del Lobo, I realised that the monologue had s.h.i.+fted into new territory. The workaday world he described was being infiltrated by new and unlikely characters. A fisherman appeared on the scene. Lanjaron is high in the mountains and twenty miles inland; one thing it does not have is a fis.h.i.+ng fleet. Then came elements that seemed somehow strangely familiar. With some surprise I realised that Manuel had moved seamlessly into the Tales of the Arabian Nights. The jealous doctor and the venal priests were soon eclipsed by a procession of princes and djinns and viziers and sages.

We swung through the main gate of the market not long after midnight.

'You're the first here,' said the half-frozen man in the gatehouse. 'Five hundred pesetas and you can have a pen right at the top, best position of all.'

'Marvellous,' I said, handing over the money. 'Good thing, getting here early.' Baltasar grunted. Everyone else was fast asleep.

We pulled across the empty concrete plain of the market yard and stopped by the top row of pens. Baltasar switched off the engine, stretched and groaned. I opened the door to get out and stretch my legs and immediately closed it again. I didn't know Spain got this cold. It wasn't till I read the next day's paper, which quotes Baza as one of the extremes of temperature for Andalucia, that I found out that it was ten degrees below zero.

Apparently the human body gives off the equivalent of a kilowatt of heat, so five of us ought to have heated up that car like a steam-bath. It didn't work. Everyone was awake within five minutes, teeth chattering, squirming this way and that, unbearably uncomfortable. 'Surely there's a bar or somewhere where we can go and sit in the warm?'

'Not till later.'

'Run the engine then, for heaven's sake, man!'

'Not now, I can't keep it running all morning.'

At four o'clock the bar opened. It was ten degrees below outside; it was ten degrees below inside. The bar was a huge, stone-floored, white, neon-lit shed designed to be cool on hot summer mornings. We left the door open; there didn't seem to be much point in shutting it. The bartender came in, s.h.i.+vering and complaining bitterly. We drank brandies to occupy ourselves while the coffee machine got up steam. The barman went out and returned with some olive logs with which he lit a barbecue in the corner by the kitchen door. We all edged towards it. A couple of girls stumbled in, just out of deep sleep and marginally on the right side of hypothermia. They stood by the now blazing barbecue and surveyed the customers with indifference.

At around four-thirty others started to dribble in. Heavily-swaddled lorry drivers and shepherds. A dealer, noisy in a sharp suit and quilted anorak, holding forth to his entourage of toadies. A short man in a leather jacket and beret limped in and sat on a chair near the fire.

'You've got a nasty limp there!' said Manuel enthusiastically.

The beret looked at him in astonishment, for although it is the custom in Spain not to deny people their afflictions, it's not usually done quite so directly. 'It is a nasty limp,' he said slowly. 'And what's it to you?'

'I take an interest in such afflictions. I make them better. What's wrong with the leg?'

'Well, they're both bad, been like it for twenty years now. The doctors say it comes from the cold on these mountains and they can't do anything about it.'

'Can you straighten them both out like that?'

'No.'

'Bend them like this?'

'No, not that way either.'

'What you need is to do exercises. I do them every day, and look at me; the cold hasn't even got to me yet.'

This was not an empty boast since Baltasar's family have the highest farm on the mountain above Lanjaron, a spot that enjoys truly gargantuan weather, and Manuel has spent most of his life working there. But the man in the beret looked dubious. He wouldn't do the exercises, I could see that. He hobbled off to get another brandy. Manuel set off to do a tour of the bar and see what other interesting afflictions he could find.

Domingo and I, leaving Baltasar to watch out for Kiki and make sure he didn't pull some stunt in the market bar, went to pen up the lambs and cast an eye over the opposition. Our pen seemed to be a long way from all the others. The action, such as it was, was taking place at the bottom end of the market. Here there were larger lots of lambs, a hundred, two hundred to a pen. My forty lambs were good, but a little smaller than most, and the fact of their being huddled up in a corner of the pen didn't show them off to their best advantage.

In the pen next to mine was a mixed bag of old goats, and on the other side a smelly billygoat milling about amongst a small bunch of ill-favoured lambs. Apart from us, all the other pens up our end were empty. It didn't take a lot of thought to work out that this was where they put the punters who didn't know the ropes. My neighbours were certainly not out of the top drawer of modern-thinking shepherds.

My five hundred pesetas had rented a concrete pen beneath a huge open shed. Here I displayed my wares to their best advantage, leaning on the door nonchalantly as if it were a matter of complete indifference whether I sold them or not. The dealers moved around the pens with an entourage of note-takers, purveyors of unsolicited advice, toadies and desperate shepherds. The vendors made their own deals with the buyers on the basis of whatever information they could pick up by listening in to the dealing at the other pens.

By six, the lower end of the market was seething with activity. It was the darkest and coldest hour of the night. I thought I had dressed warmly but it wasn't enough for this. Frozen solid from my toes to my ears, I could hardly talk I certainly couldn't get my mouth around sheep-dealing Andaluz. Domingo wandered up from the pens below.

'Bad news, the prices are getting lower. One of the shepherds in the big pens down there has just accepted seven thousand and his lambs are the biggest and best here. Smaller lambs are going for nothing. Also Luis Vazquez is down there and unless I'm much mistaken he has spread the word that n.o.body should take any interest in your lambs.'

'Why ever not?'

'He was angry because you didn't sell him your lambs when he came to see you . . . '

'Of course I didn't, not at the ridiculous price he was offering!'

'Well anyway, he and the other dealers of the Alpujarras are not pleased with the prospect of more shepherds bringing their own lambs to market. It'll put them out of business.'

'Good thing too.'

'Yes, but they're not going to take it lying down. Luis has been talking to all the dealers here in the market. They'll want to teach us all a lesson.'

Occasionally, as if to lend weight to Domingo's words, a dealer and his entourage would break away from the melee at the lower end of the market and saunter up past my pen, look at the lambs with a sneer and pa.s.s on without a word. Domingo did his best to engage them in conversation and draw attention to the advantages of my lambs, but to no avail.

I leaned forlornly on the wall, looking at the poor frightened creatures in the pen. How much longer would this ghastly ordeal go on? Everywhere I could see batches of lambs being shoved down the corridors to the loading-bays. Fat-bellied dealers were climbing into their Mercedes and sweeping away through the gates. It looked like I would have to endure the humiliation of taking the lambs home again, a wretched double journey as well as a night of cold and misery for them.

'We won't go yet, though,' said Domingo. 'It often happens that prices get better towards the end of the market. Perhaps some dealers won't have made up their quota and there'll be fewer lambs to choose from. We may be lucky yet!'

We weren't. The spasm of buying and selling had climaxed and ebbed. A feeble white sun crept up from behind the horizon and illuminated that horrid place with rays devoid of warmth. The big pens of lambs emptied and the big dealers disappeared one by one. In the carpark beside the shed, the village dealers and small-time operators cruised up and down the lines where those too canny to pay the five hundred pesetas for a pen plied their wares. Here were battered Renault 4s, their windows steamed with the breath of a dozen lambs, a goat trussed up and lashed to the back of a tractor, an old man standing forlornly with a couple of thin sheep on a rope. But n.o.body came even to look at my lambs. I felt lost and lonely, like a new boy at school.

I had a coffee with Baltasar, leaving Domingo to try and drum up some interest among the remaining buyers.

'It doesn't look like you're going to sell them today.'

'Yes, I suppose I'll have to take them home again.'

'You should be a little careful, you know; you've made some enemies among the dealers, and they're bad people to cross. You never know what they might try, not in broad daylight like this but on a dark night on a lonely mountain road . . .'

He left the sentence unfinished. I thought he was being a little dramatic, but maybe it was serious. I was breaking the mould, sticking my neck out. It was a foolhardy failure. We loaded up the lambs again and headed for home. As we pa.s.sed through Lanjaron and orgiva we made frequent stops to satisfy the curiosity of pa.s.sers-by. Some of them had already spoken to the dealers and they seemed to know already the minutest detail of our humiliating journey.

Predictably enough there was a flurry of interest among the dealers to see if they could get the unsold lambs for nothing. I would have to sell them; it wouldn't be long before they went past their best, and then I really would have to give them away. The man who gave me the most reasonable deal was a gypsy from orgiva called Francisco. He was such a small operator that he hadn't the wherewithal to go to the market in Baza. Domingo told me to watch him, as he was known to be a bad payer, but he paid me in advance as he took the lambs away in four batches of ten over the next month.

I have sold to Francisco ever since, and so far he has not let me down. Now I've come to like selling the lambs locally. It's by far the most ecological option; it saves the lambs a stressful journey, saves on transport costs, and it pleases me to be supplying the community in which we live. Occasionally people will come up to me and compliment me on the quality of lamb they buy at Francisco's stall in the market. Francisco himself is a firm believer in the superior quality of carne campero carne campero.

'No, this bringing the lambs up on high-protein feed in the dark is a modern notion. In my father's time as a butcher, a lamb wasn't considered fit to eat until it had grazed for a summer in the high pasture. The lambs were bigger and older then but the flavour was superb. My older customers complain that they can't get any good meat any more. The stuff they buy just shrivels to nothing in the pan. So I'm really pleased to see you producing carne campero carne campero. I'll buy whatever you produce.'

It was no October Revolution, leading the shepherds of the Alpujarras to cast away their chains, but for me, perhaps, things had turned out again for the best.

CHLOe'S CHRISTENING WHEN CHLOe WAS BORN WE PLANNED A PARTY TO CELEBRATE her arrival and thought we might combine it with a christening. Ana, having spent some of her school years at a convent, was convinced of the importance of baptism. I live in a state of confusion about the mysteries of the universe and was not so sure, but there was one advantage to having a christening that settled my doubts. We could ask Domingo to be Chloe's G.o.dfather.

Domingo is the sort of friend who hates to be thanked for anything. He carries his generosity lightly and dismisses the time and energy he unstintingly gives us as not worth mentioning. If I try to press the issue he grows brusque and severe. So to have a formal token at hand, one that would imply our appreciation and regard, was just too good an opportunity to be missed. I raised the G.o.dfather business with him the very day that we decided one might be necessary.

'What do I have to do?' he asked doubtfully.

'Well, not much. I think you just hold Chloe when the priest splashes the water.'

'I might just about manage that.'

'And then of course you have to see to her spiritual upbringing.'

'I'll be good at that too,' he grinned.

'Well then, will you do it?'

'I don't mind,' he said, seeming to mull it over. 'That's if I'm not doing anything else on that day.'

Domingo certainly knows how to take the wind from your sails. Still, he was clearly pleased with the idea, and Expira and Old Man Domingo were delighted. So, having sown the seeds, I set about bringing our plan to fruition. The first thing to do was to seek out the parish priest.

Don Manuel was usually to be found, outside the hours of Ma.s.s or siesta, in a murky little office beside the church. His house-keeper opened the door with a broom in her hand and on hearing my mission ushered me into his presence. He stopped shuffling the papers around his desk and got to his feet as I entered. He was a thin, dry sort of a man in slippers and a shabby grey suit and his hand seemed so small and delicate when I shook it that I wondered if he had really offered me all of its fingers.

'I'd like to know if you could christen my daughter?' I began.

'Are you a Catholic?' he asked, eyeing me up suspiciously.

'No, but I don't at all mind my daughter being christened a Catholic.'

'What religion do you belong to, then?'

'I suppose I was christened an Anglican, but I'm of an ec.u.menical turn of mind.'

'Oh so am I, so am I. But this christening I'm not exactly sure what the procedure is in these cases.'

He seemed to be addressing himself more to the bits of paper on his desk than to me, giving the impression that he was not overcome with enthusiasm for the project. It could well cause a lot more inconvenience than one small soul was worth. But for now he could be content with delaying tactics. 'I'm going to Granada on Friday,' he a.s.sured me, 'and I shall bring the matter up with the bishop then. Come and see me again next week.' So I went to see Don Manuel the next week, but he hadn't made it to see the bishop, and the week after that he forgot to mention the business, and the week after that the bishop was going to think the matter over and the week after that I forgot all about it. So we somehow let it slide.

What I was conjuring in my mind was, in any case, not quite Don Manuel's way of doing things. I had an idea of a romantic little ceremony at an isolated country ermita ermita or hermitage: Nuestra Senora de Fatima is a particularly pretty one, overlooking El Valero from the top of a steep cliff. I imagined a christening party setting out for the long climb to the or hermitage: Nuestra Senora de Fatima is a particularly pretty one, overlooking El Valero from the top of a steep cliff. I imagined a christening party setting out for the long climb to the ermita ermita on a procession of gaily-caparisoned mules with flowers in their manes. Arriving at the chapel there would be a brief but charming service with candles and incense and the contented gurgling of the baby Chloe, then home again to gather around a long table with snow-white cloths, laden with glimmering gla.s.ses and mountains of mouthwatering food and wine. on a procession of gaily-caparisoned mules with flowers in their manes. Arriving at the chapel there would be a brief but charming service with candles and incense and the contented gurgling of the baby Chloe, then home again to gather around a long table with snow-white cloths, laden with glimmering gla.s.ses and mountains of mouthwatering food and wine.

The lugubrious deliberations of the bishop in his Granada fastness and Don Manuel's earnest profession of ec.u.menicism in his dark little office by the church seemed to be heading in the wrong direction. So Chloe started off her life without the help of orthodox religion and seemed to flourish reasonably well in its absence. Expira and Old Man Domingo, however, were clearly disappointed and for months would steer the conversation round to the deferred christening in the hopes of discovering a new date. And then it slipped from their minds as well.

Almost three years had pa.s.sed when, one beautiful May morning, I found myself far from the known world on a botanising expedition, looking for plants from which to collect seeds in the summer. It was over towards Ventas de Zafarraya, wonderful seed-collecting country, miles from anywhere and locked in by soaring cliffs. I clambered and scrambled up and up along a goat-path, suicidally close to the fearful drop.

It was high, the air was thin and difficult to breathe, and it was as hot as a baking mountain can be in Andalucia in May. Reaching a spot where surely no man had ever trod before me, I was surprised, not to say a little piqued, to see a white-haired figure crouched in silent enchantment at the beauty of an iris. So lost in adoration was he that he didn't even hear me as I gasped and scuffled my way towards him.

At last he looked up from his reverie and, seeing me, slowly unfurled to his full six-feet-four. 'Buenos dias,' I said.

'Oh . . . do you speak English?'

'Not only that but I am English.'

'Marvellous. How delightful it is to meet fellow Englishmen in faraway places. Richard, Richard Blakeway-Phillips, and very pleased to meet you.'

We shook hands.

'Perhaps you saw me, but I've been admiring a most beautiful iris. It's either xiphium xiphium or or filifolia filifolia; it's often quite difficult to tell them apart.'

'Well, we'll soon sort that out. I just happen to have Polunin with me.'

'Ah, Polunin. Thank heavens for that, we're saved.'

Anybody who has ever looked up a flower in a botany book will know the name of Oleg Polunin. Even the most accomplished botanist would consider it foolish to venture outside their front door without one of Polunin's tomes beneath their arm. No matter where you go in the world, Polunin will have been there before you and identified, catalogued and described in meticulous detail the indigenous flora. He is one of the most prodigious and respected botanists of the twentieth century. He was also my biology teacher at school, where he was known as Ollie Pollie. I regret to say that I was not a natural biologist and, having no notion of just what an honour it was to be taught by the great man, frittered away the privilege by horsing around at the back of the lab. Now that through almost daily use I've come to know Polunin's work, I am suitably wracked with remorse.

Richard flipped with practised skill through the countless pages of the book and mumbled as he ran his finger along the relevant entry.

'Of course, the gold centre blotches on the falls chamaeiris chamaeiris silly of us. I suppose it was rather foolish of me to come up here unarmed so to speak . . .' silly of us. I suppose it was rather foolish of me to come up here unarmed so to speak . . .'

'Unarmed?'

'I mean with no Polunin.'

I chatted on about the botanist and my early school experiences, ending wistfully with my wish of meeting him again, though I could hardly suppose this would be mutual.

'I think it would be a little difficult for you to meet him now,' said Richard with what I thought was a censorious look. 'He died several years ago.'

So we fell to lamenting this loss, high among the tutubias and the genista and the cistus, and the Iris xiphium Iris xiphium, no, filifolia filifolia , while poring over Polunin. At such moments I love being English. I almost expected Richard to say, 'Would you care for a cup of tea? I just happen to have with me my tea-service and some Lapsang Souchong.' But he didn't, and it was the wrong time of day for tea anyway. I kept my sweaty leather wine-bottle out of sight. It seemed somehow to be letting the side down. , while poring over Polunin. At such moments I love being English. I almost expected Richard to say, 'Would you care for a cup of tea? I just happen to have with me my tea-service and some Lapsang Souchong.' But he didn't, and it was the wrong time of day for tea anyway. I kept my sweaty leather wine-bottle out of sight. It seemed somehow to be letting the side down.

Richard, or more properly the Reverend Richard Blakeway-Phillips, had been a vicar in the Midlands, but now he was retired and his great love was wandering the world botanising. That got me thinking, and as I darted to and fro, beelike, among the flowers and bushes, gathering specimens for identification and stuffing them unscientifically into my bag, my thoughts returned to the all but forgotten business of the christening.

I steered the conversation in the general direction of retired vicars and home christenings, and then enthused about the interesting botany to be found in the Alpujarras.

'We have a guest cottage on our farm. Maybe you'd like to come and stay, and while you were there perhaps you could christen our daughter.'

'Well, I must say,' said Richard, loosening his tie a little to combat the heat. 'It does sound very tempting and I should be delighted to christen your daughter.'

So the deal was done and I hurried home to tell Ana, feeling pretty pleased with myself.

Within a fortnight Richard arrived on the bus from Granada with his wife Eleanor. He folded himself neatly into the back of the Landrover like a huge gra.s.shopper, while Eleanor sat in the front and did the talking. She had accompanied Richard halfway around the world on his botanising adventures and had a habit of competently and discreetly taking care of each new situation they found themselves in. Without Richard's realising it, she acted as a forerunner, smoothing mountains into molehills and thus making possible such interesting undertakings as botanising in anarchic Albania, travelling on the local buses.