Sacred Sierra

by Jason Webster

  This, El Clossa explained, had been where the local goatherd – a man I had come across often as he traipsed up and down the valley, sometimes passing with his animals by our mas – had been born. Probably the last person to start his life up here before the houses had all been abandoned.

  ‘What I really want to show you, though, is something else,’ he said. ‘Up there by those rocks.’

  Twenty minutes later, after a stiff climb through the fields, we came across a towering cliff-face cutting across our path – an outcrop of rock at the foot of the Cabeço Roig. Jutting almost straight up from the ground, and a darker, browner colour than most of the stone around, I imagined the cliff to be some geological anomaly: a chunk of former seabed from some other period thrown up by a freak earthquake tens of millions of years before. El Clossa put me straight, though – it was Cretaceous, just like everything else round here.

  ‘The curious thing about this place,’ he said, ‘apart from some of the fossils I’ve found round here, is that over there.’

  Where he pointed I noticed an odd, smooth feature in the rock, something that didn’t seem to fit. Stepping forwards to get a closer look I realised a stone wall had been built here, closing off a cave inside, with an old door opening through to it.

  ‘This,’ El Clossa said with a triumphant grin, ‘is an old hideout of the maquis.’

  After Franco crushed the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, many left-wingers fled the country for France. There, they barely had time to find their feet before the Nazis invaded in 1940 at the start of the Second World War. Many Spanish fighters, with their previous experience of warfare, joined the French Resistance, which adopted the name ‘maquis’ from the low shrub-like woodland of Corsica and other areas of the Mediterranean – an ecosystem not unlike the one where we were now. Once the Nazis had been defeated, many of these veterans tried to take the fight back to Spain and reignite a civil conflict to overthrow Franco. Right-wing regimes had become unfashionable, they reasoned, and so the Allies would help them rid Europe of the last remaining fascist leader. Many, therefore, crept over the border back into Spain to set up or join guerrilla groups, bringing the French name ‘maquis’ with them. What they hadn’t grasped, though, was the change in the political landscape after the defeat of Hitler, and the new threat of a conflict with the Soviet Union. Britain and America were in no mood after 1944 to help aid a group of communists bolster Moscow’s influence in Western Europe. So the maquis fought alone, unaided and often divided, shooting policemen, blowing up buildings and creating fear among the populace, tapping into a long-held Spanish tradition of bandoleros and outcasts swarming over an untamed countryside. They created pockets of mayhem, but were rarely more than a nuisance. After five or six years most had either been killed or imprisoned by the Guardia Civil, a police force set up especially in the nineteenth century to deal with rural crime. One of the areas where they had been operating, I now learned, was right were we were standing.

  I scampered up the rockface to the cave door and it opened on rusty, grating hinges. Inside it was black, the daylight barely making it through. It was just about possible to make out the sides of what looked like a cave stretching back some way, although how far was difficult to tell.

  ‘There’s nothing left here,’ El Clossa said stepping in behind me. ‘Been emptied by curio-seekers ages ago. But this was one of their dens, to hide from the Guardia Civil.’ He flicked on a cigarette lighter and a grey gloom brought some of the cave into focus. There was a stone floor, while the ceiling, just about head height, sloped towards the back before curling down and touching the ground. At a guess it seemed no more than about fifteen or twenty square yards in size, although it was hard to say from its irregular, almost triangular shape. Above, what looked like black smoke stains marked some of the walls. It reminded me of the abrigo we had seen near the start of our walk, where the masovers had sought shelter during storms.

  ‘That’s what this would have been, originally,’ El Clossa said. ‘Then the maquis would have taken it over. They probably built the wall, although no one’s certain.’

  I tried to imagine what it would have been like living up here, perhaps half a dozen men and women huddled together for warmth, planning raids on the nearby villages and towns, fearful that their hideout might be discovered at any moment and at the prospect of a shootout to the death with the police. The threat, the danger and the sense of simply being alive must have been a heady mixture.

  ‘Look at this.’ El Clossa brought me in close to one of the walls and bent down. There, scratched into the rock, as he traced his finger over it, a crude hammer and sickle came into view.

  ‘I’ve scoured this place. That’s all there is – all to show they were once here. But you talk to some of the locals and they remember it – lived through all that as kids. The maquis would trek down to the Mas de les Roques at night to steal food, beating up the masovers and sometimes raping their women, while the Guardia Civil would come up during the daytime and do exactly the same. The masovers were always at the bottom of the pile, being shat on from both sides. You won’t find them too often reminiscing fondly about “freedom fighters”.’

  The group that operated up here was eventually flushed out in an ambush in the late 1940s – two of their members were killed over in the next valley and the others caught. Few people round here had mourned their demise, even if they hadn’t been particularly fond of the Guardia Civil either.

  I had come across other local tales of the maquis. Juana la Pastora had been one of the more colourful characters leading the movement in this part of Spain. El Clossa now told me she had been operating a few miles further north, in the Maestrat, but people still remembered her name. Born in Vallibona, Juana was a hermaphrodite. The local doctor had advised her parents to bring her up as a girl, it being easier for a girl to hide her modesty while avoiding such potentially embarrassing situations as military service. But Juana was a tough mountain type, and over the years became more ‘male’ than ‘female’. With strong left-wing beliefs, she joined the maquis in the 1940s and became one of their leaders. Eventually, however, she was betrayed by someone who owed her money, and was captured. At first the authorities placed her in a women’s jail, but after a more thorough medical examination, they decided she was actually a man and packed her off to the harsher male prison where she lived out her lengthy sentence. It was said that when she finally got out, she changed her name to Florencio, married a local woman and spent the rest of her years in obscurity as a man. Only recently had it emerged that she – now a he – had died a few years back, in 2004, aged eighty-seven. Mystery still surrounded much of her life but a local historian was said to be writing a definitive biography, soon to be published.

  We walked back down towards the Mas de les Roques, retracing our steps before heading home. We would have to hurry: there were only a few hours’ daylight left and the air was already beginning to cool on our faces. I looked around at the mountains and valleys, forests and gorges surrounding us. To the south I could just make out the crest of land that marked the top of our mountain and the cliff-face that fell down to the farm. So many new hues and colours seemed to come to life in front of me, a landscape now peopled by Iberians, masovers, anti-Franco guerrillas and merino sheep farmers. It was a land of fossils, of Cretaceous seabeds – the fig trees at the farm, the magnolia I had bought and was going to plant in the garden, and the bees soon, I hoped, to give us our first crop of honey, directly descended from plants and insects that had emerged at that time. Slowly, first through the plants, now through glimpses of the history, I had a sense of discovery, of burying my hands in the earth and uncovering wonders and secrets. There was more – far more – to learn, I felt sure. But for now, as the falling sun cast a more golden, richer light over us, I marvelled at the vibrating, living earth.

  *

  Fierce blustering gales came from the north-west. The mountain rising behind the farm gave us some shelter from the worst of it,
and we would sit in the kitchen watching through the window as the trees and bushes on either side of the valley above were beaten mercilessly by the growing storm. At night, the winds keeping the sky cloud-free, we’d glance up, half-expecting the stars themselves to be tossed around as we were. But they’d sit there, high above it all, maintaining their own cycles to a slower and more lasting rhythm.

  Having an appointment to keep in the city, we packed a few things, jumped in the car and drove off, feeling concerned but confident that things would be all right. The houses had stood here for centuries. No harm could come to them now.

  We were right – up to a point. When we returned, two days later, the older buildings were still the same – untouched and in place. What had changed was the new, still unfinished section of the house we had been building and working on.

  Despite being such a large and important part of any structure, it took some time for me to register that the roof was missing. At first all I could see was one of the windows, still in its frame, lying on the ground outside with its glass smashed. The doors and windows we’d installed had a sentimental value, having been handmade by my father, rediscovering his carpentry skills in his retirement. Confused, I leaned down to pick it up. The hinges were twisted into strange, torn shapes, while the five-inch bolts that were meant to keep it in place, keying it into the structure of the building, were bent like the necks of swans. Nothing of what I was seeing made any sense. No force I was aware of could have done such a thing.

  It was then that the warning signals inside me began to make themselves heard. The light was wrong as I peered at the hole in the wall where once this window had been. I stood up and walked over. Looking up, I saw that the sky was visible from the inside of the house. Even at that point, though, understanding that the roof was no longer there was slow in coming. Finally I heard myself say, ‘The roof’s gone’, as though some other, more conscious part of me had temporarily managed to wrest control of my voice. Seconds later, Salud was standing beside me looking up, open mouthed. ‘Oh,’ she said.

  Trying to pull myself out of the stunned, hypnotised state I seemed to have fallen into, I started walking around the house, looking for any signs of the mysterious roof. Where the hell had it gone? But there was nothing, no scraps of wood or beams anywhere. Surely a roof couldn’t go very far. I knew how heavy the thing was, having put it up there myself. Had someone come and stolen it while we were away? The idea was too incredible. But if not, where was it?

  I slumped down the hillside falling away to the east of the house, down through fields of untended olive trees belonging to some absent neighbour, now long since abandoned. If there was to be any sign of the roof, it would be down here, I reasoned. I jumped down from terrace to terrace, but still there was nothing in sight, just the usual peaceful scenery now that the winds had died down: a loving blue sky smiling down on a harmonious, bucolic world.

  It was only after I had made it as far as the track leading to Arcadio’s fields that the first signs of debris began to appear: it looked like the scene of a plane crash: pieces of splintered wood and nails, scraps of roofing felt and insulation, chipboard panels smashed into pieces all lying along a trail where it must have hit the ground.

  Incredible as it seemed, the gale had blown the roof 200 yards eastwards down this mountainside. Beams that were so heavy they had needed three men to lift, had been tossed away like so many matchsticks. Now they lay broken on a distant terrace amid the long grass and rock roses. Realisation of what had happened eventually sank in: the wind must have dipped down into the hollow in front of the farm on the other side before circling and whipping upwards at an almost unimaginable speed, catching the roof like a sail, ripping it away from the house before letting it drop further on down here. The roof had been waterproofed and was virtually finished, but had yet to be tiled, so it was lighter than it should have been, while a few tiny gaps in the walls still waiting to be filled must have been enough for the wind to get inside and pick the whole thing up from underneath. It would have been a spectacular sight, but I was deeply, deeply grateful that we hadn’t been there when it happened.

  I inspected the scattered remains down on the lower terrace, trying to work out if anything could be salvaged, wondering how on earth I was going to haul it all back up. The farm was beginning to feel less like a house and more like a ship. The weather here didn’t come in halves. Whatever we did here – to the houses, the garden, the land – would have to take anything the elements could throw at it, like a boat battling through treacherous currents and storms.

  Salud was back up at the house, looking slightly pale and shocked but composed.

  ‘Did you find it?’ she said as I dragged myself back up the slope towards the house. I wondered if anyone had ever been asked that question of a roof before, and told her where I’d found the remains.

  ‘Any other damage?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s as though nothing had happened,’ she said. ‘Except for the window and the roof – the ex-roof – you wouldn’t have known there’d been a gale.’ She put her hand on my arm. ‘Drink?’

  We sat for a while in our new alfresco kitchen, staring up at the sky, nursing glasses of warming, soothing brown liquor. I felt overwhelmed, beaten. First the bees disappearing, then the wild boar digging up the truffle trees, now this. What was the point of it all if anything we did just turned into nothing? The age-old question.

  It didn’t matter: what mattered was momentum, moving forwards somehow: that in itself was reason and motive enough. Screw the wild boar digging up the oak trees and screw the wind blowing off our roof. We’d just have to press on: set up a new makeshift kitchen in another part of the house and then start thinking about remaking what had been lost. And better this time: in my mind I imagined great iron bolts tying and holding the thing down. The bigger the better. With big heavy terracotta tiles pressing it all down so that it would never escape again. Why had none of the older buildings suffered? It was obvious. They hadn’t been skilled masons or artisans, the men who’d built these farmhouses, but they knew what they had to do to make something weatherproof: small windows, thick walls, bloody heavy roofs.

  You made mistakes, you learned and you moved on: wasn’t that what this was all about? How else had we imagined life out here would be like?

  ‘If you go in for big projects you’ll get big problems,’ Salud said, still looking up at the now darkening sky.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said.

  ‘You know the proverb: Burro grande, ande o no ande,’ she said. ‘It’s got to be a big donkey, whether it can walk or not.’

  I laughed: she knew me better than I knew myself.

  Part III

  Water

  The Story of the Parrot

  ONCE THERE WERE two friends who lived in the mountains. One day one of them decided to go and make his fortune abroad, and he asked the other if he wanted him to bring anything back for him.

  Now his friend had heard people talk about parrots.

  ‘That’s what you can bring me,’ he said. ‘Bring me back a parrot.’

  So the first man went off abroad and was away for many years. When he sailed back home he realised he’d forgotten his promise to his friend in the mountains. So he went to the city and searched and searched for a parrot. But he couldn’t find one.

  ‘I know,’ he said to himself. ‘My friend’s never seen a parrot in his life. I’ll just buy him an owl instead.’

  So he went to the bird market, bought an owl and had it sent up to the mountains to his friend’s mas.

  Some time later he travelled up to the mountains himself and he went to visit his friend.

  ‘Did you get the parrot?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said his friend.

  ‘And does it talk?’ he said.

  ‘Well, not exactly,’ said his friend. ‘But when he hears you talking, he listens and stares at you intensely as though he was really trying to understand.’

  MARCH
/>   There now follows the season of spring, which is made up of three months, the first of which is known by the Latins as Martius and is the first month of their year. In Syriac the month is called Adar and in Persian, Farvardinmah. It is made up of thirty-one days. During this time the days are of the same length as the nights, it being the time of the vernal equinox. Now is the time for working the soil around the base of trees, to clean them of weeds. It is also good for planting and pruning vines. According to Azib in his Book of Astronomy, this is the month for planting beans, as well as wheat and barley if the rains are late in coming.

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

  A FINAL EXPERIMENT with a remaining scrap of truffle – truffle gratin, from another Elisabeth Luard recipe. We had about half a truffle left, already slightly mildewy from having sat in the fridge for some time. Potatoes are sliced thinly and then placed in a flat dish which has previously been rubbed with a split-open garlic. Laced with butter and salt, the sliced truffles are then placed on top before a final layer of potato is laid over them. An hour and a half in the oven at 150 degrees covered in foil and with a tight lid. Flavour? Elisabeth Luard talks about the smell of truffle as you remove the lid after cooking. Our lid probably wasn’t tight enough … Some flavour was detectable, but not much. A subtle one, not quite up there with the scrambled egg, but good nonetheless. The quality of the truffle might have had something to do with it, although I noticed as I was preparing it that the smell was even stronger than when it was fresh, as if there was a slight whiff of rot in there. Going over Luard’s recipes again, I noticed that almost all of the ones for black truffles involved eggs in one form or another. White truffles might be suitable for pastas and salads, but for the best results with black ones, I don’t think anything beats an egg.