Sacred Sierra

by Jason Webster

  When we were heavy with food and sipping glasses of Pacharán with ice, the Truffle King joined us and started talking about truffles. He’d been planting truffle trees and harvesting them for over twenty years, long before anyone else in the area had caught on to the idea. The biggest black truffle plantation in Europe was in Spain, to the north, in the province of Soria, but round here cultivation was in its infancy, although the land and conditions were perfect.

  I told him about the trees I’d planted, and how I’d lost some in the winds.

  ‘You did right,’ he said when I mentioned about removing the plastic protector tubes. ‘Waste of time. Won’t protect them against anything anyway.’

  I told him about the truffle conference I’d been to.

  ‘Not interested,’ he said, cutting me off.

  ‘Victor likes to be his own man,’ El Clossa said.

  The Truffle King waved his hand dismissively. ‘Amateurs,’ he said. ‘Lots of talk and lots of reports and working in laboratories. But the only real laboratory is that one out there.’ He pointed at the fields outside. ‘You only get to learn by actually doing it.’

  ‘Andando se aprende a andar,’ Salud quoted the Spanish proverb. ‘You learn to walk by walking.’

  ‘She understands,’ the Truffle King said with a smile.

  He looked at El Clossa and winked, then got up and went to talk with his wife. Moments later he was back at our table, putting on his coat, a small black dog sitting obediently by his feet.

  ‘I’ll show you something,’ he said.

  We drove out of the tiny village, past a little hermitage and up into the mountains behind. Cutting along a dirt track leading off the main road, we continued for another five minutes before driving up to the edge of a field. We jumped out, El Clossa the first out of the car. We were surrounded by a forest of old, craggy trees, their leaves turning a heavy brown and littering the sand-coloured earth beneath our feet. To our right the wedge-shaped peak of Penyagolosa was silhouetted against the pale-blue sky of late afternoon: we were nearing the winter solstice and the light had an almost ghostly feel to it. In front of us were three narrow terraces cut into the hillside and there, in neat rows, stood several dozen young saplings. I recognised them at once as holm oaks, like the ones I was planting back on our mountainside. But these were well over five years old – perhaps even ten.

  ‘Six metres between each tree,’ the Truffle King said. Another mistake: some of mine were only three metres apart.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said when I explained. ‘They’ll be fine.’

  He pointed down at some of the older trees.

  ‘Look how there’s nothing growing around those ones,’ he said. I noticed a circular barren patch around each one, with no weeds or grass.

  ‘That’s what we call the quemado,’ he said. ‘That shows that these trees are already starting to develop truffles on their roots. Wipes everything else out – doesn’t allow it to grow.’

  Salud was bending down and stroking the dog. ‘Hola, tontolín,’ she said affectionately.

  ‘That’s how you know if a tree’s got truffles, see?’ the Truffle King went on. ‘Naturally occurring ones and plantation ones alike. Not all the saplings you plant will produce truffles in the end. But it’ll be clear depending on whether they’ve got a quemado or not. Have to wait ten years or so first, though.’

  He whistled and the dog suddenly pulled himself away from Salud and stood poised on the edge of the field.

  ‘¡Busca!’ he called. ‘Go search!’

  The dog was immediately trotting around the field, his nose to the ground.

  ‘It’s still early in the season,’ the Truffle King said. ‘Best time is January and February. But there might be a few around.’

  He stepped down into the field while we stayed on the edge, watching as the dog scampered about, going in one direction first, then quickly changing and turning back on himself as he caught then lost the scent. For a moment it seemed he’d lost interest and had decided there was nothing there to be found, but after another call of encouragement from his master he put his nose back down again and resumed the search. Then he stopped, almost pressing his face into the soil. Scraping away with his front paws for a moment, he sat back and looked proudly up at the Truffle King. Victor pulled out a biscuit from his pocket and gave it to him as he bent down with a trowel and started digging. After a couple of seconds he was holding up a medium-sized black truffle, covered in dirt, about the size of a ping-pong ball.

  He climbed back up to where we were and handed the truffle to Salud, crumbling the soil off it with his thumb.

  ‘Bad year this year,’ he said. ‘Not enough rain. Price has gone up – seven hundred euros a kilo.’

  We walked back to the car, the dog jumping and skipping between our feet, enjoying himself now that his day’s work had been done. It could be quite fun being a truffle farmer, I thought, even if we did have to wait another decade for our first crop. Might have to find a dog with a sharp nose and train it first, though.

  I felt a hand on my arm as I was opening the car door. I turned: the Truffle King was looking at me intensely.

  ‘Whatever you do, you must promise me something,’ he said. From his expression it was clear he was being deadly serious.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  His hand gripped tighter around my arm, fingers pressing into my skin.

  ‘Don’t ever, ever tell anyone round here you’re planting truffles trees,’ he said. ‘No one must know. This is black gold, I tell you.’

  He seemed to be imploring me, his eyes filled with a strange horror.

  ‘It can drive a man mad with greed.’

  The Story of the Devil and the Carob Tree

  ONCE UPON A time there lived a poor farmer at the bottom of the valley, halfway between the mountains and the sea. Every day he diligently worked the land, ploughing and sowing, tending his crops and then harvesting them when the time came. Along with wheat, for making bread, he grew oranges and lemons, while carob trees provided food for his horses and mules. Yet despite all his hard work and long hours, the farmer was always poor, barely able to make enough for himself and his family. Whenever there was a drought or a flood he always seemed to be worse affected than any of his neighbours.

  Finally, after many years like this, he decided he could bear it no longer, and picking up an old hemp rope, he walked out to the biggest and tallest carob tree on his land with the intention of ending his life.

  ‘Oh Saints in Heaven!’ he cried out in desperation. ‘If you cannot help me then all I can do is ask for aid from the Devil himself.’

  Just as he was about to tie the noose around his neck and sling it over a branch, he caught sight of a well-dressed gentleman coming along the road towards him.

  ‘Well,’ thought the farmer, ‘I might as well wait and see what this fellow has to say for himself. I’m not in a hurry, and I shan’t have anything to lose.’

  At that point the gentleman strode up towards him. Despite his elegant appearance, the farmer couldn’t help but notice there was a curiously unpleasant odour about him.

  ‘Well, you called – and here I am,’ said the stranger.

  ‘You mean you’re the Devil – el Dimoni in person?’ asked the farmer.

  ‘The very same,’ said the Devil with a yellow-toothed grin.

  ‘But what can you give me to relieve my misery?’

  ‘This purse should do the trick, I should say.’ And he held out a leather bag temptingly in his hand. ‘No matter how much money you take out of it, you’ll always find it full.’

  Now the farmer might have been poor and at his wit’s end, but he was no fool, and it didn’t take him long to see what was going on.

  ‘That’s very kind of you, good sir,’ he said, laying the rope to one side. ‘But people rarely give something for nothing. Am I to expect you would exact a price for such a gift?’

  ‘Why, of course, now you mention it,’ said the stranger. ‘S
hall we say … your soul in return? It’s what I usually ask. Cheap at the price.’

  ‘I see,’ said the farmer, thinking this through. ‘But I would want some time to spend my new riches first.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said the Devil. ‘But really, I can’t just wait until you die of natural causes. Might be years. I’ll come for you, er …’

  ‘When this carob tree no longer has any fruit on it?’ said the farmer. And he pointed to the tree by the side of the road from which he had been about to hang himself.

  ‘Yes, fair enough,’ said the Devil. ‘Agreed.’

  And with that he disappeared in a puff of sulphurous smoke, leaving behind him a large leather purse stuffed with gold coins.

  Now it was a hot day that afternoon, and the farmer struggled to lift the gold, but eventually he managed to pick it up and took it home. His wife was delighted when she saw the shiny yellow coins spilling out on the dirt floor of the kitchen; and her husband explained that he had found the treasure buried under a tree. His wife didn’t care where the money had come from, and within a short time they were enjoying the benefits of their new-found wealth.

  The months passed and fairly soon it was harvest time again. The farmer hadn’t forgotten his agreement with the Devil, and expected him to appear again any day soon.

  Then one day, just as he was taking a well-earned drink after picking the last of the carobs from his biggest carob tree, el Dimoni himself came in a flash.

  ‘Right, let’s go. Don’t keep me waiting,’ said the Devil without any preamble.

  ‘Our agreement,’ said the farmer without batting an eyelid, ‘was that you would take me once this tree no longer bore any fruit. Am I right?’

  ‘Yes I know,’ said the Devil. ‘And I’ve just seen you pick the last carob from it. Now off we go. I’ve got a busy day.’

  ‘But there still are carobs on the tree,’ said the farmer. ‘Come with me and you’ll see.’

  ‘Ridiculous!’ said the Devil. ‘You’ve just finished harvesting it.’

  ‘But look,’ said the farmer. And he lifted the leaves of the carob tree, and there, clear for anyone to see, were the buds of the next year’s fruit, already in place.

  ‘They may not be ripe now, but they will be twelve months from now. Everyone knows that around the feast of St John the carob tree produces its new fruit, before the ripe crop has been picked.’

  The Devil was speechless.

  ‘I believe,’ continued the farmer, ‘our agreement still holds. I’ll be yours the day this carob tree no longer bears any fruit. But until then I don’t want to see you round here again, understand?

  For a moment the Devil didn’t move, then, finally realising he had been outwitted by the farmer and that there was nothing he could do, he flew up into the air in a screaming rage like a tornado before disappearing over the horizon.

  And because the farmer tended his trees well, and because the carob tree lives for many hundreds of years, the Devil was never able to return and claim his soul. And the farmer and his family lived happily ever after, and were always very generous to anyone who was as poor as they had once been.

  JANUARY

  The Latin month Januarius is called Kanun el-Tsani in Syriac, and in Persian Bahmanmah. It is made up of thirty-one days, and after the twentieth the Dark Nights are at an end. The winds grow still, the humours begin to circulate in the trees and the bees begin to procreate. It is a time for harvesting oranges and lemons. Water freezes over and the weather gets much colder. Now is a good moment for clearing land of weeds and dry grass. This should be done during the time of the waning moon, that is to say from the sixteenth day of the lunar month until the new moon. Birds celebrate their weddings and frogs begin to croak. They say that wood chopped on the twenty-seventh of this month will not suffer from woodworm.

  This is a busy time for those who look after trees: they dig up the soil around the base of the trees and replace it with fertiliser.

  Ibn al-Awam, Kitab al-Falaha, The Book of Agriculture, 12th century

  EARLY JANUARY, AND it is still very hot in the sun. Today we cleared around the house, pruning the roses, the vine outside the front door, the apple trees and fig trees. Despite the air being chilly, you can happily strip down to just a shirt, or even less. Once the sun goes over the hill – at just after four at the moment – you notice the change very suddenly, but the heat from the sun itself is intense – more so than down on the coast. People are talking about a record hot year on the way – no snow in the Alps etc. Here we seem to have skipped from autumn into spring, judging by the way the brambles are beginning to take off again. And yet still there is no sign of rain. Record heat and no rain … I wonder how the trees are going to cope. They need a proper winter to establish themselves before spring arrives. Now might just be all right, but February? March? There is an ever growing sense of urgency. Miss this opportunity and I’ll have to wait till next winter before being able to plant anything else.

  Planting the truffle trees seems an endless task. The Truffle King mentioned the best time for planting was now, after the ‘change’ of the January moon, i.e. after the full moon has passed and it begins to wane. I asked Arcadio what he thought.

  ‘Any time’s a good time to plant,’ he said, ‘because you’re planting. And that’s good.

  ‘Answer’s in the land, in the soil,’ he said. ‘Listen to the plants, to the land: they’ll tell you what they want in the end.’

  *

  I recognised Sergio as one of the hunters who had been up to the farm, spinning the wheels of his red and white Mitsubishi four-wheel-drive as he sped up and down the mountain track, curly black hair greased to his scalp.

  ‘Glad you could come,’ he said in a high, strained voice as he shook my hand. ‘Arcadio said he’d bring you along.’

  We stood inside an unpainted breeze-block garage with a cement floor, the doors open wide to let in a shaft of light from the afternoon sun. Six or seven men dressed in the usual hunter’s garb stood in a circle in the centre; they greeted the ancient Arcadio warmly, then nodded in my direction.

  ‘Thought it might interest him to see this,’ I heard Arcadio explaining to them. Their faces relaxed: there was a reason for my being there, and although Arcadio wasn’t a hunter himself his age and knowledge of the land meant he was more than enough of a guarantor.

  ‘Got this one at midday,’ Sergio said with a lardy smile. ‘Ninety kilos.’

  From a beam in the centre of the garage hung the body of a wild boar, its hind legs tied to a piece of wood which was hooked up to a chain. Its eyes were partially open, staring down at the floor, but lifeless and dulled, its exposed belly making it look vulnerable, defeated.

  ‘The shot went through here,’ Sergio said, pointing at a gash-like wound in the animal’s shoulder, barely visible through the thick brown hair. For a moment it felt like a forensic examination of a murder victim.

  ‘Right,’ he said rubbing his hands. ‘Call Teresa. Let’s get started.’

  There were shouts from inside the house next door and presently a portly woman wearing an apron, with glasses and a face that looked as though it had been crushed between two rocks, came out from a side door, flanked by two other women. In her hands she brandished a knife.

  ‘Let’s get this over with,’ she said, expertly slicing the knife up and down a sharpener.

  ‘Sergio’s wife,’ Arcadio explained as the powerful little woman approached the dead animal in a resigned, businesslike manner. ‘She always does the skinning.’

  ‘Get those two a drink,’ Sergio called to a young lad hovering in the background, who scampered off, bringing back with him a bottle of wine and some glasses. He had something of the same, vertically challenged face of the woman with the knife.

  ‘Sergio’s son?’ I asked Arcadio. He nodded.

  I noticed that the others had knocked back a few glasses already, their faces pink, splashes of wine on the floor where they’d been less careful when pouring.
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  ‘Help yourselves to whatever you want,’ Sergio said grandiosely. Outside, in the yard beyond the garage a group of youngsters, perhaps friends of Sergio’s son, were lighting a fire on the ground, the scent of wood smoke drifting in on the breeze as crackling flames began to lick the twigs and kindling.

  Teresa wasted no time. Stepping up to the boar, she started making deft cuts in its skin, as though slicing through butter. First on the legs, then up the belly and around the head, across the back of the neck.

  ‘We’ll keep the head for a trophy,’ Sergio said, ‘although it’s not very big, this one. Got a whole collection inside. I’ll show you after. Been hunting all over the world, me. Just got back from South Africa a couple of weeks back. Great hunting there.’

  From the speed and efficiency of her movements, it was clear that Teresa had done this many times before. You still heard people speak of the matanza del cerdo – the annual ritual killing of a pig in each Spanish household, a ceremony dating back hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. It had become particularly important during the time of the Reconquest and the terror of the Inquisition in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when proving you were a Christian, and not a Muslim or Jew, by eating copious amounts of pork, could mean the difference between life and death. The tradition was largely dying out now, but Salud had told me how her mother had still followed it until quite recently, giving it up only in the past twenty years or so. Out here, deep in the countryside of Castellón, it was still very much alive. Although today it would be boar’s meat going into the sausages and pâtés that would be produced over the course of the rest of the afternoon and evening.

  Teresa finished slicing up the boar and reached up to its hind legs. Grabbing hold of tufts of hair, she began to pull, and the skin started to peel away, exposing a white, pinkish underneath. With a couple of tugs it stripped to around halfway down its back with a wrenching sound, before she stepped up, cut away some more between the flesh and the skin as though to loosen it, and then heaved again. Finishing her slicing around the head, the whole skin was soon ripped from the animal’s body.