by Adam Creed
‘None of you have seen a day’s work,’ says Manolo. ‘Doing the devil’s work is all you can do – writing his lies for him.’
Gutiérrez takes out his wallet, slams it on the bar, shouts, ‘How much have you got? I’ll prove it. I know more about goats than you ever will. It’s in my blood, I tell you.’
‘Prove it, then,’ says Frog. ‘Go up the mountain with him.’
Staffe says, ‘I’m going home. I need to sleep.’ He puts a twenty euro down and Manolo picks it up, stuffs it down the neck of Staffe’s shirt. As he leaves, Manolo follows him and in the privacy of the square, he whispers, ‘Tell me, Guilli. When you went to the plastic, what exactly did you see?’
‘I told you, he was in a hell of a state.’
‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’ Manolo clicks his fingers and Suki runs to him, jumping, and Manolo scoops her up in one giant hand. He stands tall, his shoulders square, for once, and the blocks the sun from Staffe, who can’t see his friend’s face properly, being in the shade. In a deeper, stronger voice, Manolo says, ‘You should tell me, you know. There is nothing to fear from me.’
Staffe says, ‘I told you what I know. Ask your friend Raúl what went on. He knows more than he writes, wouldn’t you say?’
*
Staffe drifts off with the window open and in the fringe of his sleep, he dreams the dry rattle of Manolo’s moto is driving into his bedroom.
He jolts from sleep and walks unsteadily to his balcony, sees Manolo’s Bultaco Sherpa – a classic, competition trail bike but now clearly straining at every joint of its vintage red frame as it plies along the narrow road towards the cemetery. Behind, Raúl follows in the Alfa, with Suki in the front seat, jumping up and down.
*
Yousef removes the cardamom pod from the flame and places it on the large stone with the rest of the pods. He takes the smaller stone, rubs it on the larger, the roasted pods between. He makes slow circles, as he does four times each day, between prayers. The aroma overcomes everything else. It transports him to Moulay Idriss, to his family. He has no letterbox and they have no telephone. He scrapes the cardamom essence from the stones with the blade of his knife, places it in the small pot of warm milk, adds honey and takes a mouthful which ought to scorch him but doesn’t. He tips back his head and gargles. His throat makes a noise. The words in his mind bubble, float to air with hundreds of bursting pods of sound.
He was turned away from work this morning. Even though he got there at six-thirty, the sun still beneath the serrated horizon of the Cabo de Gata, the lorry was already loaded up. The foreman watched Yousef walk all the way down from the carretera, called him a lazy son of a whore; told him he shouldn’t sleep so much.
Sleep has always come too easily for Yousef. He turns from the world readily. But for three days now, he has struggled to find dreams. In his corrugated house, three metres by three metres, he lies out flat and straight on a bed of reeds, distilling the sound of the sea’s surf. The water washes over the beach. The water was lifted high by a hand.
Another hand had taken the man’s broken head, tugged it viciously, by the hair. Yousef knew he should have turned his back. Crouching, peering beneath the plastic of the greenhouse, he watched in spite of himself.
The buried man was up to his neck in the earth, and even though he couldn’t resist, they tied a strap to his head, tethering it to a stake so his mouth faced the sky. Then they shoved the bottle into his mouth and emptied it into him, refilling the bottle from the drum of NitroFos. They carried on filling him up with more water, even though the man seemed quite motionless. If they poured so much water like that, would it be like being trapped inside the sea? And then they stopped. Perhaps it was he who disturbed them, stopped them finishing whatever it was they had started.
But it was a day and a half before the police came in all their numbers, their wiry comisario in tow. And a day later, he saw that guirri. He made a recreation for him and thinks now that he was a fool for that. In the end, all he did was make his recreation with a hole in the earth and an open fist and a bottle of water.
He knows how to find the stranger. His sad friend in the grey van who bought seeds told him, and Yousef knows Almagen is two days’ hard walk. He hears the gypsies talk of how lush it is up there, because of how the Moors taught the Spanish to make orchards from dust. The gypsies would walk from Adra to Almagen and steal tomatoes and beans, beg for eggs. If they went near the goats, they would be shot.
When he was home in Moulay, he would look at the map, seeing El Andalus stashed like treasure at the bottom of Spain. He had believed everything he heard in Moulay about the wealth that was here; about it being a promised land, once theirs. It had been good to believe.
His mind tumbles, free, and he sleeps.
Six
‘Like a London bus,’ says Marie. Her hair is tied up in a scarf and she is wearing blue workmen’s overalls. ‘Don’t see you for a week and then . . .’
‘Very funny,’ says Staffe. ‘You look like one of those women from the town hall, sweeping the square.’
‘What is it with that? Why can’t the men lift a finger in this bloody village?’
‘Where’s Harry?’
‘Playing with Rubén, down at his house.’
‘He has a friend?’
‘Of course he has a friend. He’s got too many friends. Some days he’s not home until after supper.’
Staffe doesn’t know what to say. Surely, at his age, Harry shouldn’t be left to such devices, practically feral down in the village whilst Marie and Paolo lounge around up here on the mountain. ‘Where’s Paolo?’
Marie nods up the sierra. High above them, Mulhacen’s snowy peak juts up, like a smear of toothpaste against the azure and cloudless sky. ‘He put some Thai basil down. Reckons the sun won’t be too strong by the time they come through. The restaurants in Orgiva have said they will take it.’
Staffe looks through the telescope that Marie keeps on the veranda. It had been their father’s. He watches Paolo toiling away with a roll-up in his mouth. He works with a hand tool in his right hand and a bucket of goat shit in his left. When he has done a row, he goes back and substitutes the bucket of shit for a bucket of water. He scoops the water with a cupped hand, his back bent double. His smile is unerring.
‘You thought he’d fuck up,’ says Marie. ‘Didn’t you? Well, I had my suspicions too, if I’m honest. All we have to worry about is the water.’
‘There is plenty of water. You should get six hours every eight days, according to your deeds.’
‘There’s something wrong. The balsa’s low.’
‘Do you want me to look at it?’
‘Paolo says he’ll sort it out. Don’t tread on his toes.’
Staffe turns away from the telescope, reaches out for his sister and pulls her close. ‘I’m pleased for you, I really am. Believe me, there’s nothing would make me happier than to be wrong.’
‘About Paolo?’
Staffe nods, but he is thinking also about Harry.
‘Oh, Will.’ She holds him close. ‘You’re going to stay, aren’t you?’ She squeezes him extra tight.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing’s wrong.’
‘I know you, Marie, and something’s wrong.’ He holds her by the arms, leans away and weighs her up – deep in the eyes.
She shrugs. ‘It’s nothing. Just, when you were poorly, a few weeks ago – I thought someone was nosing around up here. That’s all. Just me being stupid.’
‘I can’t stick around doing nothing for ever.’
‘Someone tried to kill you, for God’s sake! You’ve got all that rent from your properties. You don’t need to go back to London and the damned Force.’ She stands back from him, holding his hands and looks him up and down. ‘I have a friend. You should meet her.’
‘Marie!’ He lets go of her hands. ‘I’ll find my own woman. All in good time.’
‘You already have, but you let her s
lip. You’re hopeless.’
He goes back to the telescope and scans the mountainside, tracking the edge of the high pine forest, down to the Rio Mecina’s gorge, and he follows it to Manolo’s stone-built cortijo. Out front, beneath his iron spit, he has built a fire but not set it. Hanging in the doorway of the cortijo is a goat, gutted; about to become choto.
There is no sign of Manolo, or Raúl, so he scans the mountain again, looking for Manolo’s flock. ‘Have you seen Manolo?’
‘He passed by with some burracho.’
‘A smartish kind of a fellow? Slicked hair and an expensive shirt?’
‘In a girl’s car. Stank of cologne.’
‘That’s Raúl. He’s a reporter.’
‘Oh shit!’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. Just, he seemed familiar.’
‘Spanish men of a certain age all look the same, don’t you think?’ says Staffe, laughing, ‘The waning libido; a last lunge in their loins.’
‘You’re right!’
‘Where did they go?’
‘Up towards Jackson’s place. Manolo must have gone up there – there’s nothing else between Jackson’s and the other side of the pass, but it’s a good two hours walk from here. You’d best set off now, while there’s still light – if that’s what you want?’
‘I came to see you, though.’
She goes to her brother, hugs him and says, ‘I know you, Will. You’re up to something. But don’t forget – you’re supposed to be taking it easy.’
‘He knows about mum and dad,’ whispers Staffe, into Marie’s hair. He whispers it softly, half hoping she won’t hear. She tenses up but says nothing, squeezes him a little tighter, and he says, ‘And you’re worried about someone sniffing around. What’s going on, Marie?’
Her arms and shoulders are rigid, like mortise and tenon. She says, ‘I’ve seen him before. I’m sure I have.’
*
It is dusk and he finishes the last of his water. At this altitude, it is already cold and only the peaks are getting the sun. He has no sweater and nothing to eat. His wounds are sore and he has left his medicine in the village, way down below in a crease of the mountains. The Med is a thin ribbon of blue, between the wide spread of plastic farming and the reddening sky. In this light, the plastic looks like salt flats, all the way from Adra to Almería. You can see Africa on a good day. Today is a good day and the clouds are low over the Rif.
The goat track takes him into a dark copse of chestnut trees. He can hear water, thinks he can also hear the scurry of animals. The locals tell terrible tales of the scorpions up here in the sierra and in the cool he suspects his fever might be coming back. He shouldn’t have drunk so much with Raúl yesterday. Was it only yesterday? The track swirls back on itself and he hears howling. This high, any dogs would be wild.
And then the track ends. He stands on a promontory, overlooking a waterfall. The thin river trickles twenty metres or so down into a pool. He squints, discerns – on the banks of the pool, perching on boulders – Raúl and Manolo with a man he has never seen before. It must be Jackson Roberts, the American: a wild old war vet; so they say. Staffe breathes deep, fills his chest with air and opens his mouth.
His body wants to call out, but he thinks twice. Raúl dangles his legs above the pool of wild water and Manolo is messing with his dog, Suki. The third man, fussing with a fire, calls out in an American accent, ‘You should have brought your fucking goat, man.’
Staffe climbs down towards the pool, holding onto the trunks of small, clinging trees, obscured from the men below but still able to hear them.
Manolo says, ‘You are the host. It is your party.’
The American drawls, ‘We can eat dog. We did in Vietnam.’
‘Korea’s where they eat dog,’ says Raúl, who turns to Manolo. ‘How can we trust anything this shit tells us?’
‘You’re drunk,’ says the American, who has a thick wad of hair, light brown but with streaks of gold. The jaw is strong. His bare-chested torso is lean, the pecs and abdomen well defined. All that gives away a life of decadence are his rosy, bloodshot eyes, the deep, treacly voice and the scrawn of his neck.
Jackson stands over Raúl, rests a foot on the journalist’s shoulder, who grips the edge of the rock. ‘Why would I lie? You’re the journalist.’
‘That article is shit, that’s for sure,’ says Manolo. He sounds morose and lies back, pulling Suki towards him, resting the animal on his chest. ‘I’m hungry.’
‘You should have brought that goat,’ says Jackson.
‘Why would I feed you, after all you have done?’
‘I have chorizo,’ says Roberts. ‘And the beans are in. I’ll make a fabada.’
‘And I’ll tend the bar,’ says Raúl.
‘I’m going home,’ says Manolo.
‘No!’ says Raúl. ‘It’s dark. We’re stuck for the night.’
They trundle off, muttering, and every now and again Raúl laughs. Roberts drawls into the night, but all the way, there’s not a peep out of Manolo as they make their way to Jackson Roberts’s cortijo, set low in a sheltered dell beneath a ridge which the locals call Silla Montar, the Saddle.
Staffe follows and sits above the cortijo until he can smell burning thyme. Plumes of smoke rise from the chimney. The sounds from inside are muffled and he looks down the mountain to the twinkling lights of Almagen and Mecina, like scattered stars. His wounds pinch, and he muses upon what secrets an all-seeing eye might witness from somewhere like here. It is completely dark now, and getting cold. Time to brace himself and go in.
Seven
Jackson Roberts nestles up to the fireplace on a low, wicker-seated rocking chair. Every now and again, he leans right forward and stirs the pot on the fire. The rest of the time, he rolls and smokes cigarettes – every other one a modest spliff.
Manolo is in the corner, his vast frame hunched in a dining chair and quiet now that he has finished berating Staffe for coming here – risking his health by walking all this way in his condition. Tonight, in Manolo’s brooding silence, Staffe senses deep disquiet.
Raúl cannot keep still. He tops up everyone’s drinks and mooches out onto the terrace and back again, waxing lyrical about how good the country life is; how this reminds him of when his father and uncles taught him to play cards and drink whisky in their cortijos. Raúl catches Staffe’s eye as he goes back out onto the terrace. ‘You’ll never see a night sky like the ones up here. Come.’
Staffe follows Raúl outside and together, they look up into the dark, star-speckled sky. Gradually, new stars begin to appear as their eyes adjust. The journalist says, lowering his voice, ‘There’s something I think you should know.’
The door opens and light spills onto the terrace from inside the cortijo, dimming their view of the universe‚ Jackson appears, lighting up a spliff. ‘Where’s your family cortijo, then, Raúl?’
‘The other side of the Rio Mecina.’
Jackson offers the spliff around and Staffe declines, but Raúl tokes heartily and often, giving Staffe a resigned look, as if to say his disclosure can wait a while. They finish the spliff and they all go back inside, Staffe saying to Jackson, ‘It’s good of you to put me up for the night.’
‘You’re Marie’s brother, right? How could I not?’ says Jackson.
‘I hadn’t guessed it would be so desolate up here. They could declare war out there and you’d never know.’
‘Not tonight,’ says Jackson, laughing quietly to himself.
‘This place could tell some stories, I bet.’ Staffe looks at an oil canvas hung on the undressed stone wall that leads into one of the bedrooms. It is a landscape, hued of red and yellow and in the middle distance, two hunters walk away. A woman and another man remain behind. ‘You sell them?’
‘Never.’ Jackson’s sculpted features warp in the fire-glow flicker. The only other light is from a church candle on the bleached wooden table made from planks of chestnut wood, and a paraffin light hanging
in the doorway to the terrace. ‘It’s for private consumption.’
‘Tell him who the woman is,’ says Raúl.
Staffe sees Manolo shoot Jackson a hateful look.
‘It’s from a long time ago,’ says Jackson.
‘When there were two artists in the village,’ says Raúl.
‘I’m no artist,’ says Jackson.
Manolo says, ‘He was never one of us.’
Staffe catches up with what they are talking about. ‘Barrington?’ he says.
‘They fucked our women and told the world lies. They don’t know one thing about us.’ Manolo finishes his glass of whisky, turns on Jackson. ‘You paint like him. Why so much red? Are you a commie?’
Raúl says, ‘I don’t care what you say, but Barrington could paint. He turned out some shit, but his best stuff . . . That’s how history will judge him.’
Staffe returns to the painting, looks at it hard.
‘That’s private,’ says Roberts, leaving his fire and offering round a plate of empanadas.
‘It has humanity,’ says Staffe. The painting appears to be a landscape, but almost lost in the folds of thick oil, the woman is clearly forlorn. Larger, in the foreground, a man carves a piece of wood in the shade of pines. Staffe pops an empanada in his mouth.
‘Come and sit down.’ Jackson looks back – long and hard at Manolo, his smile gone.
‘This is amazing,’ says Staffe, savouring the empanada.
‘Made them myself.’
‘Who is the man carving?’ says Staffe, running his tongue along his teeth, putting his finger on the taste: star anise amongst the filling inside the flaky pastry.
‘My father,’ murmurs Manolo.
‘It could be anyone,’ says Jackson.
‘What about your mother, Manolo? Still gone?’ says Raúl. ‘That was a fatal unsuitability.’
‘You don’t know how much he loved her. He couldn’t be without her,’ says Manolo.
‘Fatal?’ says Staffe.
‘A figure of speech,’ says Raúl. ‘You never met Barrington?’
‘I know he did his bit in the war,’ says Staffe. ‘Joined the International Brigade when he was seventeen. That says something about the man.’