Virginity Despoiled

by Charles Brett

  "Where did you get that?"

  "In a Turkish-Arab shop in Montreal, opened by Syrian refugees. I think that explains the colour, though the owner insisted the skirt's split would need ties or something to constrain it if was to be worn in the more westernised parts of where she used to live."

  "It's quite lovely. You come alive, if you'll forgive my directness."

  Lili's expression turned sad.

  "I loved wearing this from the first time. It makes me feel special. Enrique hates it. It extracts from him some visceral reaction against it and thereby me."

  "It brings out a visceral reaction in me too, but of an approving form. Lili, you look sensational. Enrique is a fool."

  Saturday: Jaén Province

  By the fifth morning Oleg was bone weary. Driving a truck for long periods was new to him. Driving up to ten hours a day, four from Murcia, up to two dispensing the infected olives and finally four coming back was physically exhausting. Mentally it was much worse.

  The journeys to and from Murcia almost killed him with their tedium. Trundling down the autovia was bad but at least it demanded little concentration though being one of the slowest vehicles brought its own tensions. More accustomed to large, fast cars he found the tortoise pace of a lorry maddening. How did long-distance drivers cope?

  If negotiating main roads was simple, driving along the small country roads while the dispensers did their tricks required concentration, plus maintenance of a sharp eye out for people. Three times today alone he'd had to switch off his dispensers when other vehicles came up behind or towards him. As these appeared out of the blue, his reactions had to be quick to switch off in time.

  Oleg was grateful to Andrei for arguing they could not do both dawn and dusk distributions. Although he detested having to get up just after midnight each day, at least the roads were empty on the way down when the truck was loaded with infected olives. Empty, it rode better and faster on the way back.

  The travelling would have been much worse from Callosa with the drive being an hour longer each way. Why neither of them had spotted this in advance bothered Oleg. Probably because he had pushed Andrei to find places that were far from their target territory. But that separation was almost their undoing, except that the dispensers were working like magic – so far. He touched his head, it being the nearest equivalent to wood in this awful cab.

  Again Oleg congratulated Andrei on his solution. When the olives and their maggots needed warming they'd spent a week shuttling between the two sites, bringing the Callosa infected olives to Murcia. A secondary advantage was that the movement from the Callosa building to Murcia started the warming, enabling them to have two phases of distribution, one of Callosa infected olives and the second from their Murcia reservoir.

  Once the transfer was complete they closed Callosa to leave it behind for ever. Andrei wanted to set it alight in a final fiery end. Oleg dissuaded him. Fire always brought attention and intrusive questions with it. He proposed it was better to ensure that not an olive remained in the place prior to forcing the doors and breaking windows to simulate vandalism before letting nature undertake its own destructive course.

  A daily discipline had imposed itself on Andrei and Oleg. On arrival back outside Murcia they showered and cleaned up. Having eaten a proper meal, if you could call pre-packaged food decent, they reloaded the trucks and checked everything for the next night. After that it was sleep. In his case it was restless. He was envious of Andrei's snoring.

  At about six in the evening he worked from his laptop, ensuring his extra plans proceeded as devised. He needed to take daily actions. He'd prepared in detail each day's GPS routes and he'd prepared all else needing to be done and when. His automated notes ensured he completed everything on schedule. Without that he would be lost to this hideous, mindless exhaustion.

  While Oleg worked on his computer, Andrei headed to Callosa or further away to an anonymous supermarket to buy and prepare fresh food, including lots of vegetables and salad. If Oleg hadn't finished on the laptop, Andrei would put himself through a gruelling mini-weights regime that made Oleg ill the one time he'd tried to watch. In contrast, he would go for a run. But that was complicated because it involved leaving Callosa to minimise unwanted connections.

  Around nine they ate the fresh food before trying to sleep again. Both agreed, when they did more than exchange grunts, this sleep phase came with difficulty and too often occurred just before the alarm went off. For Oleg, the saving grace was his iPhone. He downloaded a variety of podcasts, in languages other than Russian and listened to these when driving. At night he used the Internet to listen to Moscow and sometimes St Petersburg local radio. This at least offered some connection to the motherland.

  He indicated right and, on rounding the corner, he encountered a policeman signalling for him to stop. He pulled over, apprehensive. Nobody else was being stopped. Cars were driving past unhindered.

  The policeman approached and demanded his papers. Oleg's Spanish was poor at best. He behaved as he imagined an unintelligent Romanian or Bulgarian labourer might. Again Andrei had prepared for this. The truck documents were all up to date and taxes paid. Their Bulgarian driving licences were forged, but to a high quality unlikely to be seen through. They had tested them before.

  The policeman checked the truck papers. He radioed the registration number somewhere and waited. All must have been okay because the policeman returned Oleg's papers without further comment or requesting his licence. He indicated for Oleg to drive on.

  Relief spread through Oleg, which surprised him. He hadn't realised he was so wound up. There were at least two more weeks of this. It would be tough. Trying two shifts on a Sunday had seemed a good idea. Now it did not. If anything they needed a day of total rest. But this they weren't going to have. The olive fly's reproductive cycle did not permit rests.

  He turned into the Murcia building's parking area and reversed up to one of the loading bays. Andrei had beaten him back, which was a first. The attraction of a shower was becoming overwhelming, as was a visit to relieve himself. He climbed down, stiff. He'd need to do some form of loosening up exercise or he would lock solid.

  Saturday: Madrid

  Ana sat with her tablet on her knee. She was dumbstruck. Out of the blue came an email from Davide. It didn't offer much, and was quintessential Davide. But it was contact, of a sort.

  Of course, this would have to arrive on the day when Enrique was in Madrid and had invited her to dinner, as if to reinforce her latent guilt. Enrique was there to have lunch with friends on Saturday and to see relatives on Sunday. He'd made it quite clear he was asking her out on a date on Saturday evening, not for a business encounter.

  Ana had initially dithered. He had placed her on an unwelcome spot, even having more or less dispensed with Toomas after her last Tallinn visit. It was ironic, with no Toomas and no planned visits to Úbeda and no Davide, she was missing male attention. She couldn't help laughing at herself. First no men, next a surfeit of them – even if not the preferred one – and now almost none again.

  Ana wished she could talk to someone. There wasn't anybody. Inma was away. In any case, their relationship had altered. Now a partner in Arenas Delarosa Consultores de Aseguros they shared a business equality not present when she was learning the ropes. Inma might be the principle partner but Ana's own signature carried weight, and she was beginning to build her own personal client base.

  What had changed? They behaved less and less like cousins and friends. Instead they were ever more business-like. No longer did Inma tease her about Davide or the Amazonian dinner. All came with tinges of formality.

  Ana regretted this. She liked Inma's company. Inma had rescued her, albeit at Davide's prompting, in her darkest moments after Davide's tio Toño had delivered his consanguinity bombshell. Inma provided a foundation that her grandmother could not, or at least until La Abuela had produced the truth about her mother's mother.

  Distracted, she thought for a moment about he
r grandmother. She was in decline. It was clear to herself and Inma. It was almost as if, peace made with Inma, she'd released the spring keeping her going. Or perhaps, once the family revelation was bequeathed to Ana, the same applied.

  In weeks she had become frailer. To visit meant doing things for her rather than talking. Her mental faculties were good, though perhaps not as sharp as six months ago. Ana comprehended that her time with her beloved grandmother would soon end. The inevitability of losing La Abuela to talk to horrified her. How would she cope? Inma appeared to be experiencing the same. Yet this was another subject where she and Inma shared less and less.

  La Abuela made everything worse by discussing her death. She knew her time was limited. She did not hide this behind any passing bush. She flatly refused Ana the use of circumlocutions. She was going to die and made it clear that she wanted Ana and Inma as executors. She'd warned them not to expect much. Little remained and, once distributed across the wider family, it would seem less.

  Ana reread Davide's email. It apologised for the silence after she had sent him the email describing La Abuela's revelation. He had wanted to respond but could not. Davide offered no explanation. Classic Davide, thought Ana. He never says more than he has to. He was finishing a project and would be in touch, 'hopefully sooner rather than later', gulped Ana. Precise imprecision combined with understatement were art forms he executed to perfection.

  Yet Davide re-establishing contact warmed Ana. This surprised her. She had thought she was inured to him by now. She wasn't.

  This raised questions. Should she reply, and if so, how? And Enrique this evening?

  Ana made herself a coffee, using the make-work to create reflection time. Tugged every which way, she was tense. In hindsight, the fling with Toomas, though fun, had been at best a salve. At worst it enabled her to delay. But could she have decided anything when Davide was 'in suspension' while La Abuela dug through the family dirt? And when the 'Get-out-of-Gaol-Free' card arrived he did not respond.

  Davide's subsequent email opened the door to talking with Inma about him, even about the infamous email on Inma's desk. Ana doubted this would produce any clarity but she would try.

  Enrique? What should she do about him? She 'liked' him, for all those reasons she had admitted to herself before, which was why she'd accepted the date. There was, however, a pressing downside: Inma's dislike of mixing work and pleasure. Going out with Enrique would fail that test, plus she wasn't sure how deep his appeal was for her.

  An additional factor, one harder to pin down, was her new found love for olives and making olive oil. Olive trees fascinated her with their dark green and silver leaf colours with the old twisted trees around for centuries. The new ones, deliberately fostered to grow as three trunks from one root ball to maximise production. Even Enrique's Super High Density ones intrigued. While nowhere near as handsome as each old, standalone tree, walking along serried trellises with their tremendous growth, conveyed moments of intense tranquillity. The combination was bizarre.

  The truth was Ana enjoyed visiting Úbeda because of the trees and olives. It was more than being with Enrique. He was a springboard. It was the olive that was becoming her inspiration.

  Six months ago she'd known nothing about olive oil or how it came to be. Now she had a library along with an abundant amount of book knowledge demanding to be applied rather than left to fester in her head. Blending cultivars, either as groves or as oil, challenged her imagination. Maybe this was how to crack the premium market?

  Not, of course, that Ana possessed an olive tree, never mind an olive grove, which brought back that possible inheritance. She had done some of the same research Inma had. Some available land might be suitable for cultivation. Was opening who knows how many cans of family worms worth it?

  Her mobile trilled. It had an annoying ring she must change, an experiment to reject. She crossed the room to where the phone sat charging.

  "Ana? It's your grandmother's neighbour, opposite. Can you come quickly? She's calling for you and Inma."

  Chapter Ten

  Early autumn

  Andalucía

  By early autumn Jaén buzzed. Alas, this was no longer the optimistic sound of a happy humanity ready to reap the rich crop from 100 million or more olive trees. Rather it radiated from millions of Bactrocera Olea on the loose and humming.

  The olive fruit fly is a natural pest. Olive farmers work hard to prevent outbreaks. At each season's end they try to remove all olives from trees and cast-offs from the ground. Old olives are the winter homes and breeding places for the next season's flies.

  With so many trees, spread over nearly a million hectares, no clean-up is ever complete. If the remaining olives are small in number, even with Bactrocera oleae from the previous season, the chances of a large infestation are reduced. Clearing, combined with hard winters, further contain the risk.

  The previous year had been notable for the minimal presence of Bactrocera oleae. Delighted olive grove owners had watched this year's crop burgeon. Fear of an olive fruit fly problem was diminished because of the lack of them the previous year. Instead, complacency, or an element of taking successful fly control for granted, crept in.

  No one anticipated a deliberate attempt to infect. To expect such a possibility was beyond the bounds of reason. Thus, each of Oleg and Andrei's twenty-plus trips occurred in a vacuum. No one noticed their 1,500 kilometres traversing Jaén's olive groves with the ejection of tons of infected olives via Andrei's ingenious dispensers. These olives dropped far and wide.

  Safely buried in last year's fruit Andrei's eggs became flies as temperatures rose. Once grown they escaped last year's olive hosts. Dispersed over a vast area, few people noticed the first generation appear. They bred. If anyone paid attention, no one said anything. Oleg and Andrei had also struck lucky. They'd dispensed their ill-gotten gifts into fields recently cleared.

  At a pessimistic guess, each ton of Oleg and Andrei's scatterings contained fifty to seventy thousand individual olives. Not all possessed Bactrocera oleae's maggots but sufficient did. From each ton fifty thousand or more viable flies emerged.

  More than half of this first generation bred. Once impregnated, the females spread in search of new growing fruit in which they deposited five to ten million eggs, one per olive.

  The second generation matured. It also bred. Five million more new females placed up to one billion eggs across a widening area, one which no longer encompassed the Provincia de Jaén, but delved into its equivalents in Málaga and Sevilla.

  Most producers remained oblivious. The area affected was big, the flies small. Those who saw something rarely mentioned it. No one wished to be a harbinger of disaster.

  By the time of the third generation they were impossible to ignore. Half a billion pests emerging in a fortnight started alarm bells ringing. Before any deployment of counter measures was possible, the third generation seeded its innumerable eggs.

  Not all flourished. They didn't have to. The damage was done. The predictions of an extravagant harvest now looked sick.

  Next, the markets heard rumours. They took fright, anticipating first 10, then 20, then 30 per cent of global production would spoil. Fears consolidated as market makers decided Spain's Extra Virgin Olive Oil would not only be in short supply but be of poor quality.

  If Spanish olive oil producers wept, so did their Italian customers. The Italians depended on high quality Spanish EVOO to add to the 51 per cent Italian EVOO they fed to Italy's premium markets with its high priced olive oil.

  Only those who held reserves from the previous season had cause for celebration. Those reserves rocketed in value as desperate Italian and Spanish producers rushed to buy. In a twinkling those reserves were allocated.

  In contrast, the cowboys smacked their lips at the prospect of tens upon tens of thousands of tons of inexpensive, possibly even free, oil. They foresaw producers offloading in desperation whole harvests of poor quality oil. The cowboys knew how to make this seem goo
d. Their only snag was finding sufficient EVOO to add taste to their over-processed rubbish.

  They didn't mind too much. The quantity to add was less than 5 per cent before bottling their delusions of decent olive oil. Fancy 'Extra Virgin Olive Oil' mislabelling mattered more than taste. After all, the average supermarket customer in Spain, Italy, France, or elsewhere knew no better, or even enough to care.

  Meanwhile, the fourth generation gestated ...

  Chapter Eleven

  Early autumn

  Úbeda

  Enrique was ruthless in his search for evidence of fly infestation among his tall, prized Super High Density trellises. Fruit by fruit he examined his olives. He sought the tell-tale, pinprick oviposition 'sting'. Even if nearly invisible, a small indentation or lump on a fruit's surface often accompanied discolouration. If found, this was a first indicator. Every now and then he pulled an olive off its branch to cut it open. Absolute confirmation was the presence of an opaque, creamy-white egg laid well under a fruit's skin.

  Two hours later his relief blossomed, or at least until tomorrow when he would repeat today's exercise, as he would every day from now on. To magnify his misery he imagined flies massing like a Luftwaffe poised to assail his precious trees. His fears drove him crazy. Already they had driven others so.

  Enrique tortured himself. Why did he spray the trellises with kaolin clay weeks earlier? A known fruit fly inhibitor, buying the kaolin base and spraying every four to six weeks was expensive. He could not explain to Lili or himself why he'd done it. He'd justified it using the trellis density as an excuse. More could be protected with less ran his argument.

  Lili resisted, pushing back at the cost. In the end she'd acquiesced, but only if he constrained application to the trellises.

  Now Enrique looked prescient. If the flies rejected the olives on his precious trellises, filmed in protective kaolin, the possibility existed that he and Lili might salvage something. All depended on the rapacious flies and whether the kaolin kept the trellis olives unappealing.