by Adam Creed
‘It was a war and he was drawn to it,’ says Manolo. ‘It wasn’t his war, though. And yes,’ he looks daggers at Jackson Roberts, ‘Mother is still gone.’
Staffe wants to ask if that is why Rubio went mad. Instead, he says, fearing for his friend’s state of mind, ‘People don’t talk about the war. I thought it was taboo.’
‘We buried it. Buried it deep,’ says Raúl.
‘I can tell you plenty,’ says Manolo.
‘Not tonight,’ says Raúl, replenishing Manolo’s glass‚ and whispering to Staffe‚ ‘We have to talk, later – it’s worse than I thought.’
‘Worse?’
Jackson interrupts. Stirring the pot, he says, ‘Fuck the stuff of life and the stuff of art.’ He stands up. ‘Now, let’s stuff our faces.’ He lifts the lid from the earthenware pot with his bare hands and a cloud of steam bellows from the hearth. ‘Now bring your bowls.’
The fabada is thick and unctuous and pitted with chunks of chorizo the size of your thumb. The burnt spice of paprika oozes and the stew is blazing hot, all the way from the mouth to the belly. Each of his guests blows out with puffed cheeks and Jackson brings out a quart jug of the local wine – cloudy amber. ‘I put a few chillies in.’
And the wine flows.
‘I heard they had a way of killing in the war,’ says Staffe. It is a vague memory, from an article he read once about the war as they fought it up in the Basque Country. ‘They would bury a man in the earth – up to his neck and . . .’ As he talks, he remembers the African in the blue and yellow burnous, with no tongue to tell his tale. He closes his eyes, can see the African pouring the water into his open palm.
‘Go on,’ says Raúl.
‘They would fill him with water.’
‘I thought we weren’t talking about the war,’ says Jackson.
Manolo leans back from the table. He leans further and further back, grips the table as if to prevent himself from falling. ‘It was the fucking Communists who did that. The good guys did that. Ha!’
‘Your father would be too young to have fought in the war,’ says Staffe, to Manolo. ‘Like mine. They’re a lost generation, the men who never got to become heroes.’
‘His war was with poverty. He went to Germany. That’s where he found my mother. He fought for her.’ Manolo drinks his wine down in one and it goes to his eyes.
Raúl says, ‘I heard your brother is back. Does he see your mother?’
Manolo looks at Raúl quizzically, as if struggling to choose which reply to administer, but it seems that drink might have defeated him.
Jackson says, ‘Let’s get you to bed.’ He comes across, puts an arm around Manolo and helps him to his feet.
Raúl nods to Staffe, indicating that they should go outside and they leave Jackson and Manolo to it, both looking to the stars as they stand on the terrace. Up here, cloudless and with no light for miles and miles, the universe seems bigger.
Staffe says, ‘You said it was worse than you thought.’
‘I don’t know how much to tell you.’ Raúl plants a heavy hand on Staffe’s shoulder.
‘Tell me everything.’
‘Once you’ve been told, that’s it. There’s no going back.’
‘Was it a war killing?’
Raúl shakes his head. ‘He was . . .’
Inside the cortijo, something breaks. A plate or a bottle, and Manolo shouts out that Jackson is a cunt and that he is going to kill him.
‘He was what?’ says Staffe. ‘Tell me who was killed down there.’
‘No!’ comes the cry from inside the cortijo. It is Jackson.
Raúl says, ‘I was going to say, he was already dead. They didn’t drown him.’
‘No! Don’t!’ shouts Jackson.
‘We should go in,’ says Raúl. ‘Manolo has a dreadful temper.’
‘Tell me what happened down there in the greenhouse. Who was killed?’
‘Later,’ says Raúl rushing back into the cortijo, calling, ‘Manolo! Stop!’
‘Already dead?’ says Staffe, following Raúl, seeing that Manolo has Jackson Roberts pushed up against the fireplace. The flames from the fire are catching his trousers and his eyes bulge.
‘Let go of him!’ shouts Raúl, grabbing Manolo, but he makes no impression. Manolo’s shoulders aren’t hunched; they are broad like before and he has both of his thick-fingered hands around Jackson’s throat. Staffe tries to help Raúl pull Manolo off, but there is no chance. Jackson looks at him, pleadingly. Another twenty seconds and he will be dead, for sure. Staffe looks around the room, smelling the burning cloth of Jackson’s trousers. Picking up the pot, he empties the remains of the fabada onto the floor and holds the pot high, advancing quickly and bringing it down, as viciously as he dares, onto his friend’s head.
The sound of the pan on skull is hollow and it rings out, through the commotion. Manolo turns to look at Staffe, his hands still on Jackson’s throat, and Staffe thinks if he hits him again any harder‚ he might crack Manolo’s skull.
‘It’s all right,’ says Manolo. ‘I don’t want him dead.’ He relaxes his grip and Jackson gulps for air. Manolo’s eyes hood down and he wavers, unsteady on his feet. ‘Really. I don’t want him dead. Far from it.’
Jackson bends double, coughing and cursing as Staffe and Raúl lead Manolo back to his chair, ease him down before his legs give way.
‘Are you all right?’ says Staffe.
Jackson nods, quite vociferously. ‘It was nothing. Let’s forget it. Come on, let’s have a drink and then get to bed.’
Staffe clears the table and sweeps up the spilled fabada. By the time he is done, Manolo is asleep in his chair with a sad look on his downturned face, his arms hugging his big torso and Suki burrowed into the crook of his neck.
As he puts a blanket over his friend, Staffe catches Jackson taking down the landscape painting, placing it against the wall in the other room. ‘I never liked the fucking thing,’ he says.
Staffe notices Manolo’s knife on the floor by the fireplace. He picks it up and runs his fingers all around the intricate carvings of the goat’s head and horns. You’d think he would have had enough of goats.
The three of them sit up, drinking and talking about Barrington and all the while, Staffe waits for Jackson to leave, but instead he bunks down on the sofa. ‘You take the bed in the other room.’
‘No, it’s your bed. I came uninvited.’
‘I insist. As a guest, the least you can do is accept my hospitality. I won’t take “no” for an answer.’
‘Go on,’ says Raúl, on the verge of sleep in his chair. ‘We’ll talk tomorrow. You can buy me lunch – in Fuente.’
And with that, Staffe retires. He sleeps deep; so deep that not even Raúl’s snoring wakes him.
Eight
Staffe sits on the slate rim of the stone trough outside Jackson’s cortijo. He dips his feet into the icy water and the shorn edge of the slate cuts into the backs of his thighs. The sun is just up and, five thousand feet high, a chill from the night still clings.
He thinks about last night and what Raúl had said to him about things being worse than he thought. He cups his balls with one hand, edges himself off the slate with the other, sliding into the trough and it catches all his breath. He gasps, can’t help but whoop at the cold.
Lying in the trough, he soon becomes numb and for the first time in months, he cannot feel his wounds. He runs a thumb over his scar tissue and presses, can feel it a little, and he realises he has left his medication down at his house. Woozy, and almost in a trance, he sees the events of the past two days quite clearly, but he doesn’t believe it – not as presented to him.
His fingers and toes are all gone to prune by the time he gets out. Staffe had hoped Raúl would rise early and join him outside, tell him what happened down in the greenhouse, which for some reason he is intent on keeping secret from Jackson, and maybe Manolo, too. But as he gathers his clothes, a chorus of deep snoring comes from the comatose cortijo, where Jackson sle
eps alongside Raúl. Every now and then, Raúl snorts like a pig, just like he did the other night at his place in Almería. Staffe smiles to himself and makes his way down the mountain, wondering what more Raúl will have to say to him today when they meet for lunch in Bar Fuente. By the time he crosses the lateral track that runs to Mecina, he can see the old boys coming up the mountain, to tend their water. The campo is pitted with cortijos, like single bricks of Lego, and if you listen closely, even though they are still half a mile away, you can hear the old boys talking to each other, hundreds of yards apart.
In his first weeks in Almagen, before the wounds reopened and became infected, Staffe would come up here to spend a day with Edu. Edu runs the tiny Museo de Almagen, which is three small rooms above the ayuntamiento near Harry’s school. It opens Tuesday afternoons, saint’s day mornings for an hour after the misa and by appointment. When he’s not overrun with museum duties, proud Edu tries to stay off the local alcofilth by busying himself at his cortijo just above the village. He lives alone and always has, they say, and Staffe can’t quite work him out. He is from good stock, but is a loafer with a penchant for the Russian girls down on the coast. Above all, Edu is bitter.
‘You should choose your company more wisely,’ says Edu as Staffe approaches. His skin is tight and his eyes are bright. His nostrils are flared and his face has something of the baby about it even though he must be into his sixties. Life seems to have taken it easier on Edu than on most of the locals. He once confided to Staffe that his father did rather well under Franco. Rumours have it that his sister once had a thing for Barrington.
On the terrace, Edu pours coffee into shot glasses on an upturned plastic beer crate. ‘I saw you coming down the mountain. There’s only one person up that way.’
‘I was with Gutiérrez. Do you know him?’
‘I know plenty Gutiérrez.’
‘Raúl. He’s a journalist.’
‘Aah.’ Edu drinks his coffee down in one and turns away, fussing with his vine. It is trained over an iron frame to give shelter. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with these leaves. I need them bigger.’
‘He’s from Mecina, this Gutiérrez.’
‘And fancies himself as a little emperor. But you don’t get to be a little emperor without first being a big prick.’
‘That’s Edu’s Law?’ laughs Staffe.
‘Edu’s Law. I like that.’
‘You must remember him, when he lived up here.’
‘His mother was left stranded when her husband went to Germany. He went for work and money and got so much he never came back. Raúl was left with all the mouths to feed and he took them all down to Almería. This place was always too small for him if you ask me.’ Edu goes back to his vine and curses. ‘You know, it doesn’t do to mix. People here should stay here. I’m sorry, Guilli, but . . . These shoots aren’t good enough. The shade is ruined. Ruined to hell.’
‘How would Gutiérrez know the American?’
‘Tell me about your wounds. Are you recovered?’
‘And how would the American know Barrington?’
‘Anybody would think you are the Guardia‚’ laughs Edu. ‘All your questions.’
‘He’s a good host.’
‘I’ve known him thirty years and not so much as a glass of terrano from the cocksucker.’
‘Thirty years!’
‘What’s that?’ Edu raises his eyebrows, purses his lips.
‘Jackson Roberts has been here thirty years?’
‘Maybe more. Since Vietnam. But quiet, please. I can hear something.’
An engine is roaring, but Staffe can’t see where. Edu clambers up the small bancale to the bean field which stretches away up to the Mecina track.
‘Son of a whore!’ shouts Edu.
Beyond the beans, a cloud of dust plumes up, curving away to the left, but the sound seems to be coming straight at the house. The engine roar gets louder and louder and the partridges, caged at the back of the cortijo, start flapping and squawking, then a blur of red whooshes through the sound of the engine and is gone, leaving an imprint of the sound of ‘She Bangs the Drums’.
‘Stone Roses,’ says Staffe.
‘What?’
The dust comes across onto the terrace and the engine noise fades, but when it is gone, the sound of music remains, like a tattoo.
‘Gutiérrez,’ says Staffe.
‘What?’
‘That was his music. His car. But where does that track lead?’
‘He’ll have to go down to the bridge. There’s only one road across the Rio Mecina, but he knows that. He’ll be going to his family’s cortijo. They were shepherds. It’s in the blood, you know. Up and down the mountain like cocksucking goats.’
‘Like Manolo?’
‘That family!’
‘You don’t like Manolo?’ Staffe looks away from the diminishing cloud of dust, the engine roar now distant in the folds of the sierra. ‘Why is that, Edu?’
‘People should know their station.’
‘They say his father went crazy up in the mountains, living with goats and his brain frying in the sun.’
‘Rubio? He went away and he came back with that woman. That’s what sent him mad.’
‘A fatal unsuitability,’ says Staffe.
‘Fatal?’
‘A figure of speech.’ Staffe drinks his coffee, and the two of them look across the sierra to the clouds thrown up by the car. ‘You didn’t get on with Rubio either?’
‘A man should be able to control his heart.’
Edu looks up at the sun and dabs his forehead with a handkerchief. ‘This summer never ends. We need rain for the land. Look at my balsa.’ He points towards the circular, concrete water reserve which is three-quarters empty. ‘I have to tend to my beans.’
‘Rubio couldn’t control his heart? What about his wife?’
Edu looks at Staffe the way a kind-hearted man with empty pockets would regard a beggar. ‘You worry me, with all the questions. People here – they’re not going to like it. Here, the past stays where it is.’
Staffe wonders if he should ask Edu about Marie’s water, but he decides against it. Instead, he says, ‘It looks as if you’ll be getting your Academy.’
‘No Academy of mine. They’re all cunts – after money and not minding if they have to whore their history to someone else’s culture.’
‘But the Academy will honour the village’s traditions. It will help secure its future. Tourists will come.’
‘It’ll be all about that bastard Barrington, and nothing about our way of life.’
‘But it’s going to happen, isn’t it?’
‘Not if we can help it. We’re all right the way we are. Hey! If you want some real Spanish culture, you should come to my matanza – fuck the foreign painters. Wednesday, at nine sharp and bring some of your fancy whisky.’
*
Manolo puts his finger into her ear and Suki moans. She moves her head in a small figure of eight to get his finger just where she wants it and she gives off a long sigh of satisfaction. Then she licks Manolo and unplugs herself from him, jumps off the seat of his Bultaco and gambols up the hillside, but she soon runs out of steam. She’s getting on now and he remembers how he and his father came by her. She filled the gap left by Astrid.
The gap Astrid left had grown with time. She had disappeared before and‚ to begin with‚ this time seemed no different. It was autumn; the time she liked to go to Morocco. If she wanted winter, she’d never have left Germany, she said. So Octobers were for Tangier and Chefchouen. But this time she didn’t take Barrington because he was dying and Jackson remained, and her son‚ his brother‚ Agustín was already in Germany – reclaimed, it seems, by his and Manolo’s grandparents. Manolo never went, nor Rubio. They had the goats.
He can see Africa now, like a strip of lean in the fat of the tocino ham. He should have insisted on going with his mother; things might have been different. Astrid might be here now and his father not with the nuns
in the madhouse. At the very least, he might understand more why she abandoned them.
He thinks, how strange that Agustín should have come back. But then, not strange at all. He had to come back some time, but all he could talk about was Astrid and where she might be. Indeed, he seemed preoccupied with the notion that their mother was dead, which meant that Manolo couldn’t take him to see Rubio because, of all the things in his small world that Rubio can’t bear, it’s talk of Astrid.
Manolo knows that you can love someone too much. He knows that it is better to not be with someone than to love them too much, to make it impossible for them to live alongside you.
He looks across to his goats and knows they will be just fine. The winter was wet and there is plenty to go at, still, on the mountain. It’s Suki he worries about. And himself. He fears it is in his blood. He thinks of Astrid, who fawned on him and Agustín, telling them constantly that she loved them, but who would leave at the drop of a beret. Agustín disappeared, too, until he came back – brought running by death. Their maternal grandfather was dying in a foreign land, and his brother had come running, looking for mummy. That’s not how it should be.
Manolo looks up at his herd. Suki wants to be off, to tend them, but he doesn’t want her up the mountain alone, not with the wild dogs, so he picks her up and holds her tight. In the distance, he thinks he can hear music. Or a siren. Perhaps he is going mad.
*
Harry follows Rubén and the other boys down into the lower barrio. During his special Spanish lessons, when the nun leant over him, supervising the changing of a word and smelling of ham fat, he saw his uncle Will walk past the school and through the Plaza de Iglesia. Now, free, he is intent upon demonstrating to his uncle that he is getting on just fine with the village boys. However, Gracia is standing by the alleyway that leads to his uncle’s house.
Rubén shouts, ‘Arri! Are you going to play dolls with your girlfriend?’
Harry’s Spanish is good enough to get the gist, not quite good enough to make a riposte.