Sacred Sierra

by Jason Webster

  There had once been scores of these neveras, or ice houses, dotted over the hills and mountains. The Romans, then the Moors, had a tradition of gathering and storing snow and ice for use in the summer, but it had really taken off from around the sixteenth century.

  ‘This one was built in the seventeenth century,’ he said, tracing the round arches in the air with his finger.

  The ice-men, nevaters, would work through late winter and early spring shovelling the snow from the mountainside and dropping it in from the top. Then it would be compressed by foot, like the pressing of grapes, until it turned into ice. Different sections were made by placing a layer of straw and soil as a kind of packing, before more snow was placed on top and the process would start again. Once the summer came the nevaters would become transporters of this precious material down to the cities and the coast. The Valencia area had been one of the biggest consumers of ice in the past, as its doctors, once the most famous in all Spain, had used it to treat all kinds of ailments, from inflammations to haemorrhages and fevers. The ports had also been a place of great demand for the ice, to help preserve the fish brought in in the mornings, while the rest of the population enjoyed the frozen drinks and sherbets to cool themselves down in the summer sun.

  ‘The nevaters would set off from here after sunset and travel by night so as to lose as little ice through melting as possible,’ Faustino said. ‘The boxes were packed with more straw and felt to stop the heat from the mules ruining it. They used to follow the camí dels nevaters – the ice-men’s route. Passes down very close to your mas before connecting with the river and ending up down on the coast.’

  Some of the ice hadn’t even finished up there, he said. Much of it was taken to the port and exported in special ships to the Balearic Islands, or North Africa.

  I looked up at this great man-made cave. It felt like a crypt of a church or cathedral: the last thing on earth I would have expected to find here in the middle of this underpopulated land of abandoned farmhouses and empty pine forests. And here thousands of tonnes of compacted snow must once have sat, a great refrigerator serving the people of the coast. The ice that had cooled an overheated brow, or been drunk in the shade of a patio flavoured with lemon and sugar and cinnamon, wouldn’t have been plucked from a nearby freezer plugged into a wall. It would have started its journey right here, trekking through the night on horseback, past our farm, heading for its final destination, perhaps even on the other side of the Mediterranean. All this water, travelling so far.

  ‘It’s an amazing thought,’ said Faustino.

  It had all come to an end towards the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, when artificial means of creating ice had been introduced. No one had use any more for the ice from the mountains: they could make it themselves. And so the ice-houses had been abandoned one by one. Many had been lost or forgotten, some had fallen down, but a number were still to be found around the mountains in good condition, a testament to a different, distant way of life.

  We stepped out through the small entrance and into the forest again. It had grown quite chilly in there and I was almost thankful to come out to a more normal temperature.

  ‘The sad thing is,’ Faustino said, ‘that even if you wanted to go back to those old ways, there wouldn’t be enough snow to make it viable any more. Yes, it snows up here in the winter, and how. But not like it used to. Not enough.’

  He coughed again, and spat.

  ‘Think of all the ice that they could gather and store up here back then. Keeping it safe until it was needed and then taking it out and distributing it, pouring it out like rain. The land needs more of it, more than ever, but we’re running out. We have to look after what we’ve got, use it well.’

  It didn’t need saying, but I knew that by talking of ‘water’ and ‘ice’ he was also referring to his stories. They were what moved him most, even if he would never have admitted it. If there was a link between stories and water, then this ice-house would mean much to him. I imagined the trail of the ice-men, trekking over the mountains and down to the coast, like ancient camel routes or the Silk Road, streams of stories, legends and folk tales rushing under the feet of the merchants with their wares as they crossed the land. This place had once been a fountain, a source, for the people in the cities, a direct link between themselves and the mountains that rose in the west. The connection had been lost. Now the fountain itself had all but dried up.

  Faustino walked back to the top of the mound and sat down near the hole. Fishing into a pocket he pulled out a hip flask and took a swig.

  ‘It’s not a good idea to have a smoke out here,’ he said looking around at the dead, dry wood and pine needles on the ground. ‘Not at this time of year.’

  He handed the flask to me and I sat down next to him. It was odd to think there was a bloody great vaulted hallway right underneath us. But for the hole in the ground, which was almost covered in grass anyway, there would simply have been no way of knowing. I lifted the flask to my mouth and drank. Truffle-flavoured brandy powered its way down into my belly: it felt like smoke was pouring from my ears.

  Faustino stared out into the trees. Something was on his mind, but it seemed best to let him be for the time being. He was the kind of man who only ever said what he wanted to say: there was no point trying to push him at all. We sat like that for some time, watching the occasional bird dart in and out among the trees, listening to the breathing of the forest as the sun moved overhead, lengthening the shadows that crossed over us, protecting us from its rays. It was a good place to be, to sit and do nothing. So much could happen by simply keeping still. My mind wandered, dreaming of the ice-men and their watery trails. Where else had they gone from here, I wondered. Inland, perhaps? North and south, as well as east to the coast? It felt like a hub of some sort. My imagination flew, and I could see trails spreading out in all directions from where we sat, crossing the landscape like a vast spider’s web, droplets of water like dew glistening along each path. And each droplet was a story, the stories spreading out, soaking into the land to give life, then slowly joining together again like beads of mercury to form a lake, a sea. And there the water stayed, waiting, waiting … until the process could begin once again.

  After a time Faustino stirred a little and I was brought out of my reverie. He shuffled where he sat, then took another drink. I could hear the brandy sink through him as he gulped, his Adam’s apple twitching down his long, fragile throat.

  ‘It’s time I was going,’ he said, not making a move. ‘Time to leave.’

  He looked at me with his piercing blue eyes.

  ‘There are plenty more stories out there,’ he said. ‘I’ve hardly told you any. If you want to hear more it looks like you’ll have to go out and find them yourself.’

  He put the hip flask back in his pocket and got to his feet.

  ‘My wife is very ill,’ he said. ‘She can’t come up here to the mountain any more. I have to go down to the coast and look after her.’

  I got up and stood next to him.

  ‘It worked for a while, her coming up here at weekends, but it’s come to an end. I was never a very good hermit anyway,’ he said. ‘Only ever did it part-time.’

  ‘You’re going for good?’ I said.

  He nodded.

  There was an awkward moment when neither of us seemed to know what to say. I had never met his wife, and was never really sure if she existed. Was he really as close to death as he sometimes looked? Perhaps the story of looking after his wife was really a way of talking about himself. He would never say what was wrong with him, and sometimes when his energy had surged you felt he was healthier and stronger than most people. Yet there was always an air of terminality about him, a sense that he wouldn’t be around for much longer. Whether we would find him dead in the mas one day, or else he’d disappear, I could never tell.

  ‘I’ll drive you back to your house,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to go that way.’

  He waved his h
and. ‘I’ll walk,’ he said. ‘It’s not far. There’s a shortcut if I go this way.’

  I waited for a moment to see if he wanted to add anything else, perhaps an invitation to come down and see him on the coast if ever I was around those parts. But he remained silent.

  ‘You can always …’

  ‘Right, okay,’ he said, turning to leave. ‘Hasta la vista!’

  He didn’t even give me a chance to shake his hand.

  ‘Nice day to walk to the top of Penyagolosa,’ he called out as he disappeared into the trees. ‘Just keep going straight.’

  I watched his back, the streak of grey where his ponytail fell down his shoulders, the light, almost skippy walk, with his paper-like frame, his feet barely making an indentation in the ground.

  He turned down the path, not looking back, and was gone.

  *

  The wedding was set for the end of September. Salud and I headed back down to Valencia for a few days to work on the preparations. The city was blissfully deserted and tranquil at this time of year as most people were still away on holiday, and for a while we simply revelled in the change from our country life. When it was like this the city was idyllic, with just enough spark and life about it to stimulate without smothering you in its noise and overcrowding. The streets were almost empty, many of the shops closed. On one afternoon we jumped in the car and just drove around the place, taking in some of the sights, free now from the walls of cars and smog and stress that ringed them throughout the rest of the year. I loved Valencia: I had been living there for some seven or eight years, but I was glad I now had somewhere else to call home.

  First news of the fire came on the twenty-eighth of the month. Somewhere around Les Useres, the village of the Pelegríns, a blaze had taken hold in the fields nearby. One of the beauty spots, a wooded gorge, had been reduced to ashes. The strong Ponent from the west, blowing hot, dry air from across the Spanish plains, was fanning it, making it hard to bring under control. I consulted a map: although uncomfortably close, the fire was blowing away from our farm. For the time being I stayed put.

  The next day the news seemed to improve. Salud switched on the radio as soon as we got up and the reports spoke of the fire being almost under control. The firemen expected to be able to put it out over the course of that day. But the temperatures were rising – already 40 degrees up there – which was making their job more difficult.

  I’d been used to 40-degree heat down on the coast: there were usually a handful of days some time in August when the thermometer hit this unbearable temperature. But I hadn’t ever expected it to reach so high up there in the mountains. The Ponent, as ever the ill wind, was bringing more pain and destruction.

  We followed the news over the rest of the day. It seemed we were all right: everyone was confident that in a matter of hours it would be extinguished. And besides, it was still moving away, not towards, the farm.

  I was woken up the following morning by the phone ringing: it was Concha.

  ‘Cariño! Where are you?’ she said frantically.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I said.

  ‘The fire.’ She was almost gasping. ‘It’s moving towards Penyagolosa.’

  ‘Are you sure? I thought it was going in the opposite direction.’

  ‘It’s been started deliberately,’ she said. ‘Burn all the land so they can build on it afterwards. They’ve been wanting to do this to Penyagolosa for years.’

  Salud was already listening to the radio. Her face had dropped.

  ‘The wind changed direction overnight,’ she said. ‘It’s moving towards our village. Completely out of control.’

  Minutes later I was in the car driving as fast as I could back to the farm, a feeling of panic gripping me by the throat. For over an hour it was as if I were unable to take a single breath, my body suspended in a taut, brittle state as I battled with visions of the farm and the mountainside going up in smoke. It had always been there: the threat that one day, just as had happened some fifteen years before, the whole area might disappear in a forest fire. I had had to live with the idea: now it was becoming a reality.

  I sped up the motorway and reached the turning to head inland. Coming over the top of a hill the whole of the sierra stood in front of me and my first vision of the hell that had come to our little patch of the country. Helicopters moved silently from this distance like flies over the plumes of smoke that streamed up into the air from four, five, six different points on the scorched mountainsides. Even from here it was clear that a large area had been affected. But above it all sat a vast black cloud, as though a thunderstorm were blowing in and was about to break over the flames. It was so big and dense it took me a while to realise that this was no rainstorm about to save us all, but the accumulated smoke from the fires that were now eating away at the land, sitting like a fat, evil genie smiling down at the destruction beneath.

  I drove on, the black, death-like blanket blotting out the sun as I drew closer. Planes and helicopters were now flying low overhead, dashing to the nearby reservoirs with their buckets and then racing back to the mountains, a trail of spray spilling behind them in an elegant curve. Fire engines charged up and down the small country roads, while policemen stood in groups at strategic points, watching the smoke through black binoculars.

  Just before arriving at the village I caught sight of the flames for the first time, bright orange and red against the deep green of the pine trees they were consuming. Old farmers with walking sticks stood at the edge of the road and looked up helplessly at the spreading inferno.

  The village was awash with soldiers and members of the emergency services, but I pushed through and kept on to get to the farm. The air was thick with smoke and breathing started to prove difficult. The whole of the area to the east of our valley was on fire: it was only a matter of hours before it reached us.

  Still hardly able to breathe from the panic and now the poor air, I finally reached the chain at the bottom of our drive. But I couldn’t open it: someone had tried to force the padlock and now there was no way of getting it open.

  I stood breathless for a moment. Flakes of white ash were falling all around like snow. The fire was moving in on us. I had to get up to the farm, if only to see if there was anything I could do. And yet now, at this crucial moment, my way was barred. There was no time to think who it might have been: thieves? Hunters? Perhaps one of the teams of forestry officials, looking to see if there was any water up there to help fight the fire.

  Cursing whoever it was, I jumped back in the car and sped towards Concha’s. Driving up over the far side of the valley, I stopped for a moment to look back in the direction of the blaze. And panic became cold fear. The whole of the landscape on the other side of the Talaia mountain was on fire, and the first flames were becoming visible as they reached the crest of the ridge just behind. It was moving towards us and it was coming very quickly. There was no time to lose.

  I found Concha on her own, quietly tending her garden, coughing as the smoke caught in the back of her throat.

  ‘The last time there was a fire round here,’ she said, ‘I stopped it right here at the edge of the house by clearing out some brambles that had grown up there. Would have taken the house with it otherwise.’

  She seemed strangely calm, if a little pale. The experience of having lived through this before showed, I thought. Was I overreacting? I had seen the flames, and it looked very much as though they were about to engulf everything I had worked on over the past year. An icy determination had virtually possessed me: I had to get up to the farm, no matter what. I explained about my broken padlock.

  ‘Take the metal cutters,’ she said. ‘Pau kept a pair. He left them behind when he went.’

  She helped me find them: great heavy pincers of the kind used by firemen or professional burglars.

  ‘Are you sure they’ll work?’ I said.

  ‘Pau always said they could cut through a chain like butter,’ she said.

  ‘You can’t stay u
p there, cariño,’ she added as I was driving off. ‘There’s only one way out. If you get caught up there …’ She raised her eyebrows. The back wheels of the car kicked up stones and dirt as I sped away.

  Pau was right, and it was worryingly simple and quick to cut through the steel of the padlock loop. Within less than five minutes I had managed to open the chain and was speeding up to the farm.

  The view was terrifying. The whole of the eastern half of the sky was black with smoke, stretching from the Talaia all the way to the village. A squadron of planes flew in low from the west, passing so close I could almost see the pilots before they crossed the valley and moved over towards the centre of the blaze. Much of the land was already turning an odd grey colour with the amount of ash that was falling, while the smoke changed the sunlight to a dirty, grubby shade of orange. I tried to take a deep breath as I worked out what to do. The house, the farm, everything was under threat. I had to do something, however small, as a gesture, as a way of telling myself that whatever happened I had at least tried the best I could to save our mountain home. Concha’s story about saving her house the last time stayed in my mind: I would clear some of the bushes and debris close to the house. If the flames did pass this way, then at least we could keep some kind of distance between them and the actual house. I thought of the wooden beams holding up the roof, the wooden floor. There was much to burn here. Anything I could do to reduce the risk must surely be of help.

  The trees and bushes close to the house suddenly changed from being pleasing, shading garden features to dangerous, treacherous beasts sitting waiting for their moment to come. There was so much to do, too much to do, and so little time. I scrabbled around for a few moments picking up bits of rubbish, scraps of firewood, weeds and building materials that had been left lying around waiting for another day to be cleared away. That day had come, but after just a quarter of an hour I was finding it hard to breathe, my pulse surging in my veins like a ticking clock.

  Sweating profusely, I stopped for a moment and looked up. The black cloud still hung overhead, great eruptions of smoke bellowing angrily from behind the mountain. At the bottom of the valley helicopters swirled and groaned as they cut through the air.