‘That bend past the turning to the watermill,’ he said, ‘where there’s a long steep drop on the other side …’ He waved his hand in the air to signify how frightening he found it now.
‘Must have driven along there thousands of times,’ he said. ‘Don’t remember it being like that. I tried to do it a week or so ago and had to turn back.’
That in itself must have been a hair-raising experience: there was virtually no room to make a U-turn there.
‘Almost makes me want to go to the hospital and ask for my cataracts back,’ he said pouring himself some water.
I offered to come down and pick him up myself. It was tragic that by giving him back his sight he should have been left off worse than he was before. What would he do if he couldn’t carry on with his everyday routines? The mountains didn’t feel the same without him pottering around pruning his almond trees, inspecting his beehives, and keeping an eye on things. But he refused.
‘My daughter’s on at me again to move into the village. Says I’m getting old and she can’t look after me properly if I stay out here.’
He paused for a moment and looked towards the door, as though expecting someone to arrive any minute.
‘Don’t like the village,’ he said. ‘Too many people.’
From his body language, though, it seemed that for the first time he might actually be contemplating the move he had been fighting. In the past the masovers used often to move into the village in old age to live out their last years in some degree of comfort after a lifetime struggling just to survive in the harsh mas environment. But now there was a proper tarmac road linking Arcadio’s house to the village; he had electricity, running water, a mobile phone. The only other thing he needed was some degree of autonomy and the ability to get around to check on all his fields and scattered pieces of land around the valley. But that was slipping away from him. It was the first time he’d come into contact with modern medicine. It had given him back his sight, but had taken something vital away from him at the same time.
‘I’d have to sell the Land Rover,’ he said almost under his breath. Then he raised his eyebrows a little and looked at me. ‘Interested?’
*
We were woken up this morning by the sound of something alive scrabbling around inside the house. As I drifted into wakefulness, it became it clear it wasn’t a mouse – the sound was too loud – and that whatever it was was desperately trying to get out again. Salud got up first and went to check and told me it was coming from the fireplace. We have a black iron stove there: it seemed a bird had flown down the chimney and got stuck there, where the flue joined the casing. After much heaving and pulling I finally managed to open it up to let the poor thing out. At first nothing happened, then with a great flapping of wings, the blackened bird came flying out, dashing itself against the doors and windows of the kitchen. It looked like some kind of harpy, its claws outstretched, its eyes bright yellow against the unnatural tone its feathers had adopted from the soot inside the chimney. It flew so fast and frantically I couldn’t see what kind it was: perhaps a thrush. Eventually, though, we managed to herd it towards one of the open windows and it flew away. I only hope it can clean itself and survive.
Living on our own up here, with so much contact with a natural – and sometimes supernatural – world, these things start to feel like omens.
*
Jordi rang up to say that a large box had arrived for me and was taking up space inside his tiny office. I drove down to the village and found him glum-faced, sweat patches spreading from under his arms as he sorted the mail.
‘Air conditioning’s packed up again,’ he said. ‘And the holidays are coming.’
Surely, I thought, that was something to look forward to, particularly for one so workshy.
‘What am I supposed to do over the whole of August?’ he said, pleading. ‘I need something to keep me busy. Can’t just sit on the beach the whole time.’
‘Why don’t you come back up to the village,’ I suggested, ‘and do some moonlighting. Taking the post out to the masos so we don’t have to drive into the village, for example.’
‘Can’t do that,’ he said. ‘Years of strikes and workers’ blood went into winning us our annual holiday.’
I unburdened him of my package and took it eagerly back to the farm. I had been waiting for this to arrive for over a week.
I opened the box: inside was a brand new bright copper still. With its bulbous form and curiously shaped lid, it looked like the dome of a Persian mosque, or Russian Orthodox church. I lifted it out and placed it on the table. It was a thing of beauty, wonderfully crafted, with little brass handles. For a few moments I simply stroked it, following the smooth contours with my fingertips. It was impressive enough just to sit as an ornament on some shelf or windowsill. But it was also fairly large, and was clearly meant to be used. Salud wanted me to make some essential oils using the herbs from the mountainside, but I was more tempted by the thought of employing it to make some mind-numbing and preferably illegal hooch. For a man with his own mountain, and now a still, there were no limits. It was time to think big. Perhaps we could even start a business – use fresh water from the spring, rosemary and thyme for a bit of flavour, all natural ingredients. People would buy it in bucket loads. Organic Mountain Moonshine. Acquavita de España. Webster’s Weed Killer. Possible names for the potion I was going to make had already started to form in the back of my mind.
But first I was actually going to have to produce something. The instructions that came with the still were basic, so I had to fish around for other sources of information on how to use it. I remembered a few experiments as a thirteen-year-old in the chemistry lab at school – in fact, probably the only thing I did remember from those classes. The whole process had been dressed up as a means of testing the different evaporation points of alcohol and water, but in reality was an excuse for our curiously small chemistry teacher to stock up on his supply of booze for the next end-of-term party. Along with the obligatory admonitions that what we were performing was against the law, we’d make pints of the stuff for him, only to see him siphon it off and place it in the locked cupboard at the back of the class ‘for disposing of later’.
From all this, two useful facts had stuck in my mind: 1) the evaporation point of ethanol, the good stuff, was 78 degrees, and 2) the evaporation point of methanol, the stuff that made you blind, was about 65 degrees. Still, I had something to go on.
After scouring my library, and calling a few people I thought might know something about the process, I came up with a rough idea of what I had to do. It was only a first try: best not to get too fussy about what came out at the end. There would be time for refinement. The problem was going to be keeping a check on the temperature. That way I could monitor what was coming out: whether it was ethanol or methanol. The still hadn’t come with a thermometer built in, so I had to improvise by placing one used for baking in a hole at the side and bunging it up with a cork, the dial poking out through the middle so we could read it. Many of the sources I had consulted suggested making my own brew first and then distilling from that, but I knew from previous home-brewing experiences that this could be a lengthy and sometimes dangerous process: one of my friends had ended up in hospital with a busted gut after drinking some of my ‘beer’ at a party. I decided instead to let someone else take care of that side of things: our first experiments would be carried out using some cheap wine picked up from the village, where they sold it in five-litre jugs. The resulting nectar would, I predicted, be a highly drinkable aguardiente, or firewater, the Spanish equivalent of grappa.
I emptied the jug of wine into the still and set it up over the hob. Again, I had been told that this was best done outside, with logs of holm oak for firewood as this kept a constant, long-lasting heat. But it was late July: not only would making a fire be uncomfortable at such a hot time of year, it was highly dangerous. At the first sign of smoke the local firemen would descend on us. I sealed all the pipes w
ith flour paste and then placed the cooling spiral and its container to one side with a pipe flowing in and out to keep the water circulating and prevent it from overheating.
If all went well the hooch would pour out of the bottom of the cooling spiral and drip down into a pan I had set on a chair just beneath it. I kept a cup to catch the first drops – the head – which would be thrown away. The still came with a special compartment which allowed you to place herbs above the evaporating wine, the steam catching some of their essence and thus flavouring the liquor. At the last moment I decided to add some, rushing out of the door and grabbing a few handfuls of thyme and some of the fennel stalks that sprang up all over the place.
I lit the gas, put it on a low flame, and sat watching the thermometer. For what seemed like a very long time it didn’t move. Then slowly it began to rise. The still was making an incredible sound, like a wheezing kettle, as it heated up. The beautiful copper colour of the outside was quickly being dirtied by the flames, but I liked the idea that we were actually using it rather than treating it as a decoration: this was what it was meant for.
After a lengthy wait the temperature finally began to move towards the magic figure of 78 degrees. I expected it to pause just before, at around 65 degrees, for a moment, when the first drops might start to form and spill out from the end of the cooling spiral. This, in theory, would be methanol. But nothing emerged at this stage, and still the thermometer kept moving up. So no poison, then. What would eventually drip out of the tube should be highly drinkable ethanol, flavoured, I hoped, with some of the herbs I had thrown in to steam with it.
The thermometer hit 78 degrees and nothing happened. Then 80, 85 … Still nothing. Finally, as it got close to 89 degrees, the first drops began to appear at the end of the tube and started dripping into the pan below. A strange smell began to fill the kitchen, and Salud quickly reached for all the remaining windows that weren’t already open. I was so excited, though, that I barely noticed. This was just the beginning, I thought. In years to come people would talk about this historic day when the first bottle of Maestrazgo Moonshine, as I had decided to call it in the end, was made. We could even write a little story about it and put it on the back label, along with claims about it being made from a secret recipe handed down over the ages, and how we only used local ingredients, with no pesticides or E numbers, or any of the other things we were supposed to jump up and down about these days. The fact that the basic ingredient was someone else’s plonk was a minor detail. We could get round that.
After about twenty minutes of evaporation, around half a litre of liquor was now sitting in the pan. I reasoned that the temperature was showing higher than it should because it was measuring the heat at the bottom of the still, nearest the flame of the hob, and not on the surface, which was where the alcohol would be evaporating. Or at least that was the only way it made sense. But now the temperature was rising again: we’d got through the ethanol and water was starting to evaporate instead. It was time to turn everything off. I took the pan and poured the contents into a bottle, then left it on the table to cool while I cleared away. It was at this point that I noticed that the smell in the kitchen was really quite strong, and not entirely pleasant. There was something sharp and yeasty about it. I only hoped it would blow away soon, or else my new career as a distiller of fine liquors could be short-lived, at least if Salud had anything to do with it.
Once the hooch had cooled to room temperature, I screwed on the cap and placed it in the freezer to cool some more. It would bring out the best of it, I told myself, if we drank it at the right temperature. Too warm and we could hardly be surprised if it was undrinkable.
After dinner that evening I brought it out, carefully picking up a couple of shot glasses from the cupboard and placing them on the table in front of Salud. She smiled nervously.
‘Do I have to?’ she said.
‘This is a great day. How often have you drunk home-made aguardiente?’
‘Too often,’ came the reply.
‘It’ll be fine,’ I said, and unscrewed the cap.
The liquid flowed out thickly, like vodka. Good sign, I thought. Then I raised the glass to have a sniff. To be honest, I couldn’t detect anything of the herbs I had thrown in to flavour it: all that hit me was a choking waft of alcoholic fumes.
‘Ho, ho,’ I said, ‘looks like we’re in for a fun evening.’
Salud’s eyes were watering just from the smell of it. We looked at each other as though for the last time before jumping off a cliff.
‘Here we go,’ I said. ‘To our first thousand bottles.’
‘I’m not sure if I should,’ she said sniffing it again suspiciously. ‘Remember what happened to Miguel when he drank your beer …’
‘It’ll be all right,’ I said. ‘I’ve learned from my mistakes.’
We raised our glasses, counted to three, and then knocked it back.
*
The mule was a bad-tempered animal which seemed to like nothing more than to nip viciously at Faustino as he led him along the path. His purple, swollen fingers looked as if they were painful enough, but Faustino simply laughed, looking for crumbs of something in his pockets to try to assuage him.
‘It’s still too hot,’ he said calling over to me as I followed behind them. ‘He thinks we should wait another hour or two to let the sun go down.’
It was already past six in the evening, but I was more on the mule’s side on this one. The heat of mid-afternoon still sat over us like a heavy cloud in the lifeless air, while every stone and rock was hot to the touch, radiating the energy of the sun absorbed over the course of the day. I wiped away drops of sweat forming on my temples – the first of many to come.
‘Don’t worry,’ Faustino said to the mule. ‘It’ll be fine once we get under the trees, and then we can cool ourselves down when we get to the spring.’
I tried to keep my distance from the mule’s hind legs: if he wasn’t satisfied with biting chunks out of Faustino’s fingers he was more than capable of taking a kick at me in his rage. The empty plastic water jugs Faustino had slung over his back made a deep drumming sound as they beat against one another with each step.
We crossed a grassy field – now quickly drying out in the intense summer light – and made our way down from the mas and towards the edge of the pine forest that stretched away down one side of a long, straight gorge. A mere half an hour from here, Faustino had told me, was a secret spring that no one knew about, where he grew his tobacco plants.
‘So I can water them easily.’
As soon as we stepped into the shade of the forest the temperature dropped, and within minutes I could feel the sweat on my brow begin to dry. The mule calmed down a little, and merely shook his head from time to time as the occasional fly buzzed around his eyes.
‘You’ll be glad of the exercise,’ Faustino said. ‘Don’t get out enough.’
The pine trees soared high above our heads: straight poles with an umbrella of foliage at the top forming a dark, green canopy to filter out the sun. The forests of the slopes of the Penyagolosa were well known for being rare ecosystems. There were supposed to be more than a thousand varieties of plants up here – more than in the whole of Ireland – and many of them unique to the area.
‘Some people say this forest is encantado – enchanted,’ Faustino said, as though reading my thoughts.
‘Is it?’ I asked. If anyone would know it would be him.
He turned round and grinned at me.
‘Don’t you find it enchanting?’
It was a special place: cool and still, and with that peaceful, contemplative quality that some forests have, sometimes captured and refined, you felt, in the great Gothic cathedrals, or in the mosques of the Islamic golden age.
‘When I die,’ Faustino said, ‘I want someone to bring my ashes up here, pack them in an almighty firework and then set it off from somewhere inside this forest.’
The mule stopped in its tracks, shuddered and then brayed
loudly, its pained voice echoing around the trees.
‘It’s all right, Bruno,’ he said, patting the side of the animal’s face. ‘You can come along as well if you like. We can’t let you end up in the dog-meat factory. They wouldn’t take you anyway: you’re too old.’
The mule blew hard through its nostrils and then reluctantly began to move on again.
‘That’s it,’ Faustino whispered to him. ‘Of course,’ he said turning towards me again, ‘they’d never allow it. It would be a fire risk, they’d say. I’ll probably end up getting toasted in the usual fashion and put in a neat little box somewhere.’
Silently I wondered how long he had left. He talked about it as though it was something he expected to happen in the fairly near future. Again I looked at his skinny form, the gaunt, drawn look in his face, his mysteriously swollen hands. The appearance of frailty about him was in such contrast with the essential vitality that seemed to radiate from him, and his physical strength. Anyone else who looked that weak should be lying down in hospital on a drip. Yet when I was with him he never stopped. Was knowledge of impending death giving him so much energy, some kind of psychological charge? Or was it simply that he wasn’t that ill in the first place?
We continued down through the trees along the side of the gorge. The pine trees were beginning to thin out and gnarled oak trees with oversized leaves took their place.
‘Roure reboll – quercus pyrenaica,’ Faustino said as he walked up to one and stroked the bark, giving the name in both Valencian and Latin. ‘One of our very own varieties of oak. You can tell it by its large leaves.’
The area had first come to botanists’ attention, he said, thanks to the research carried out two hundred years before by Antonio José Cavanilles, a Valencian natural scientist and leading figure of the Spanish Enlightenment. He’d spent time up here as part of the research into his magnum opus, Observaciones sobre la historia natural, geografía, agricultura, población y frutos del Reyno de Valencia, a botanical portrait of the old Kingdom of Valencia, the first of its kind to be done in Spain. Thanks to him we had a clear idea not only of the natural habitat of two centuries ago, but also a brief description of every town and village, with a rough idea of how many people there were and the crops they grew.
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