A Year in the World

by Frances Mayes

  For lunch, we’re alone in the family dining room, presided over by a portrait of the señora who must have decorated these rooms. She’s austere in a modest ballgown, no jewelry except for a thin bracelet. Her hair is cropped, her gaze direct, and she is not smiling. She merely looks in charge of her destiny, way back in the 1940s when she sat for this portrait. She chose to hang the walls of her living room with paintings of matadors and famous bulls, probably from this hacienda. Gracious white-gloved women bring us lunch. We don’t order; they just bring on the roast pork and platters of potatoes and vegetables. “Are we the only guests?” we ask.

  “Sí, but the family arrives this afternoon. You see, in this period we are closed.” We contemplate this odd reply while we eat. Our reservation must have been a mistake.

  Instead of siesta, we settle by the fire with a tiny glass of sherry and read, glancing up at the looming bulls and elegant matadors who have been at home here for so long. When the light drizzle stops, we emerge into the washed afternoon. On our walk, we find wild asparagus, violets, and irises. We startle a jackrabbit in the olive grove, and a troop of seven wild boars startles us. They are so comical looking and seem to take themselves so seriously.

  When we come into the living room at the dinner hour, the family has arrived. They are the early middle-aged daughters and sons of the woman in the portrait, I assume, with their various spouses. No children. They look exactly the way I imagined aristocratic Spaniards in the country would look. They must have been outfitted since infancy in those fancy riding stores in Sevilla with the flat hats, shawls, fine gloves, tooled saddles, and chaps cut in patterns like paper doilies. They sip sherry and talk quietly. Tweed, leather, boots, and big hair. Any one of them certainly could gallop across plains, Bolero or not. Not one of them could dance flamenco. They nod to us but say nothing. They’re intent on themselves; perhaps they have not been together in a while. On all the tables, framed photographs of them as children and of their ancestors stand guard. We’re the interlopers, content to observe. We sink into a sofa and begin talking about the next few days. The family moves into the dining room, where a long table under the eyes of the señora is set with candles and silver. In a few minutes one of the white-gloved maids comes to get us for dinner. We’re shown the way, passing the seated family, and not one of them smiles or looks at us. “That would never happen in Italy,” I say to Ed. We’re relieved to be taken to a smaller, private dining room, where we dine happily on soup, venison stew, and orange cake.

  At breakfast they’re nowhere in sight. We’re served tortilla-sized pastries wrapped in waxed paper, stamped in red with the name Ines Rosales from nearby Castilleja de la Cuesta. She has made this from wheat, olive oil, essence of anise, and other ingredients the Oxford Spanish Dictionary did not see fit to include: matalahúga and ajonjolí, which I think means “sesame.” Nice words to say aloud. The thick coffee (“undrinkable,” Ed says) with the aromatic pastry takes me with a Proustian jolt back to Majorca, where my friends Susan and Shera and I rented a house one summer and walked all over the island, with the sea wind stirring the perfumes of shrubs along the coast.

  Walking all over Sevilla gave us a sense of intimacy with the city; driving in Andalucía gives us a broader sense of place and of how the larger landscape psychologically imprints those who live here. Vega—the wide sky, the home, home on the range, the big sun slipping under the horizon, pulling down a profound darkness. We’ve found local people cordial but aloof. Is it the xenophobic fear of the stranger on horseback, or a remnant of Franco’s cramped society? Vast, vast, endless olive groves carpeted with yellow oxalis puzzle Ed. Where are the houses? The land rolls on, without a dot of human habitation, only those spirits, the majestic, twisted, and sparkling olive trees. Even in January workers are beating the limbs, shaking the trunks with machines, and gathering the fallen drupes from the nets. In the first village we stop to look at Moorish walls and a herd of goats crossing a bridge. The owner of a dusty gift shop tells us that workers commute to the groves and always have. Unlike the Italian system, with a family share-cropping the amount of land they can handle, these seemingly infinite groves are owned by absent landlords but are managed and worked by local teams. Although Spain produces excellent olive oil, much of its exported oil has suffered ruination from bad processing. I’ve opened some wretched bottles, even when I rented the house on Majorca—thin and tainted with harsh industrial aftertastes. Fine artisan oils exist, if you search. I wish they didn’t beat the trees, but if you own a million, something other than the slow human hand will have to get those olives to the mill.

  The open road—almond and plum blossoms are beginning to shake, rattle, and roll. We’re heading to Italica, a Roman city settled near the Guadalquiver when the river’s course flowed nearer. Hadrian and Trajan were born here. Again, the geography unfolds naturally. A quick orientation, and it is easy to visualize the town flourishing in the second century B.C. on streets wider than Sevilla’s. Though only mosaic floors and foundations remain, the reconstructed city rises easily in the imagination, much more so than at all the other hundreds of archaeological sites I’ve tramped across. We have Italica almost to ourselves, that bonus of travelling in January. The mosaics, mostly in black and white marble, lie intact. Why do we like to walk ancient streets? Curiosity, contemplation, for the surprise of history. These Romans paved their floors with tromp l’oeil squares that become stars. I’m ahead of Ed and call back, “Here’s Medusa surrounded by geometric swastikas.”

  “Too bad Hitler ruined that design forever. Here’s a scene for you—The House of the Birds.” Bordered squares divide the floor. Each of the thirty-two depicts a different bird. We find Greek key borders, Bacchus, astrological figures, the days of the week mosaic, then the House of Neptune with its reminder of the town’s founder, Publius Cornelius Scipio. He’s better known to us as Scipio Africanus for his sojourns in Africa, where he defeated Hannibal’s Carthaginians and caused Spain to be awarded to the Romans.

  Italica, the first Roman town in Iberia, was settled for Scipio’s wounded Italian soldiers. There must have been mosaicists among them who fought in the African campaigns. Almost cartoonish squat black warriors with big lips climb palms, ride astride alligators, stand behind shields, and arch, poised to throw arrows. Exotic cranes and ibises intermingle with the border design. In the inside field, fish, seahorses, and mythological sea creatures cavort. The overall effect is muscular, ribald—a pygmy is poked in the rear by a heron, another opens a crocodile’s mouth. Perhaps an oral epic was translated into mosaic, if only we could read it.

  A workman mops the mosaic floor of one house open to the four winds. He swishes soapy water, then throws down a bucket of clear water. How many thousands of times has someone mopped these sturdy floors! Their makers set each marble chip on a layer of plaster, on top of a layer of lime and earthenware fragments, on top of a layer of lime and stone, on top of a pebble layer. The word mosaic comes from the Greek meaning “a patient work worthy of the muses.” The first mosaics must have been bits of stone stuck into clay walls to keep them up, to keep them from dripping, to provide a bit of sparkle to a drab room. Then came the incorporation of pieces of lapis lazuli, jasper, onyx, marble, travertine, malachite—pretty colors for making designs and displaying the prosperity of a family. Who can know which is older, rug weaving or mosaics? The designs in mosaics often recall rug patterns and vice versa. As the workman washes, the colors of the stones shine. We take in the blue—fresh as when it was set. So it was always thus; after rain in the uncovered atrium, the family observed how gorgeous their courtyard floor looked when wet.

  We have spent the past few hacienda days driving around to small towns where donkeys prove useful. We ate in workers’ cafés, searched out Arab doorways on Christian church grounds, walked in back streets where flowered sheets and orange towels flapped in the breeze and dogs didn’t open an eye when we passed. The street life in Carmona reminded me of Cortona’s. Babies were admired in the pl
aza, where boys played ball and clumps of people stood visiting in the sun. A large passing truck stopped, and the driver leaned out to pick a few oranges, then drove on. Like Cortona and all other Tuscan towns, these Andalucían towns have their masterpieces and mysteries. Carmona has many. Sitting in the winter sun, we ordered tortillitas de bacalao, cod fritters, and oven-roasted vegetables, and a plate of cheeses as we watched little girls playing with their dolls on a park bench. The cheeses were addictive. We’d known manchego in California, though in Spain the taste is saltier, creamier, with a barnyard overtone. The sides are imprinted with a pattern from the grass mold where they’re aged. I’m a fan of blue cheeses and have ordered cabrales several times. A blend of ewe, goat, and cow milk, the strong flavors are mellowed by the accompanying little dish of quince paste.

  The morning seemed to melt seamlessly into an afternoon of exploring the old city. We happened upon the quintessentially Andalucían church of Santa María. Built on the ruins of a mosque, it retains a patio of orange trees, where ritual washing took place. On a column in this peaceful courtyard, we find inscribed a Visigoth calendar of holidays. Again and again these three cultural layers abide, abide.

  I'm sure we are not the first to sing “Help, help me Rhonda” as we drive into the fabled white town of Ronda, perched on either side of an impressive abyss. We check into the parador, one of the government’s chain of inns, usually in historic buildings. Our room lacks charm, but the location can’t be matched. Right out the balcony door I look down at the bridge over the canyon and all the small streets and white houses of the old town. The inn’s terrace overlooks the gorge and distant mountains. Ronda has all the makings of a bad painting—the whitewashed, geranium-laden, perched tiled-roof town against blue-gray mountains and green fields. The main streets are depressingly jammed with tourists up from the coast on day excursions. Some hefty specimens, scantily clothed, provide their own kind of scenery. Real spring must bring a nightmare of people who in the privacy of their own backyards should never wear shorts but go on tour with their rumps and hams in full view.

  Off the main streets we yield to Ronda’s beauty. Lanes that once were goat paths wind up and up to quiet and serene residential neighborhoods. These are more appealing to me than casas colgadas, the hanging houses so named because they’re perched right on the lip of the 525-foot-deep canyon. I’m too insecure to live there. We stop for a lemonade and a look at maps and books. I’m struck, once again, by the strange flattening of a guidebook—town after town, and each one seemingly equal. But the essence of a place, the part of it that picks you up and puts you down somewhere else, cannot be given to the reader through factual description. And maybe not at all. You have to find your own secret images. The slow fall of a coin into the gorge with the sun catching the copper only for a moment, and the fall into nothing says more about a sense of place than three pages of restaurant and hotel descriptions, or dry summations of history that are so compressed they make you dizzy.

  I’m tired in Ronda. We both want to retreat for a couple of days and spread out our novels and prop our feet on the low table, or nap, take notes, sip blood orange juice, and partake of the breakfast buffet that features local specialties such as migas, a basic country dish of spicy breadcrumbs, chorizo, and garlic, along with platters of fruit and hot churros. Breakfast is such a key to the culture. An Italian nipping an espresso, an American chowing down on cereal, eggs, and bacon, the Frenchman grabbing a croissant—breakfast speaks to all the rhythms of the other meals and to the rising and sleeping and working motions. This basic Spanish meal links to people who were heading for hard work and who made do with a bit of meat and leftover bread—whatever was at hand.

  The paradors emphasize regional cuisine. So do many local restaurants. Last night we had white almond gazpacho, followed by kid chops and partridge stew. The tapas mania of Sevilla subsides in the country. Hearty food that hunters would like, and plenty of it, seems to be the approach.

  The full moon rises out of a pink sky and dangles itself over the gorge—the biggest moon I have seen in my life. I feel the gravity of fullness. So low and enormous, this moon hanging above the canyon. It could plunge into the river below. Moon, my daughter’s second word. She was a one-year-old pointing to the sky, sensing space and spirit. We lean on the balcony watching the slow trajectory. The Spanish moon has duende.

  To Marbella and Puerto Banús, just to dip down to the coast. As we drive south, the countryside goes wilder—escarpments and waterfalls, and mountain goats scrambling from rock to rock. “Are they trapped?” I wonder. Peering down from impossible outcrops, they look puzzled as to how they got there. Help, help me Rhonda. Hawks transfix in the air over prey. In Italy, this motionless hovering is called Il Santo Spirito because the hawk resembles the holy spirit.

  Through a pass, we see the coast and sea. Soon we’re zipping by odd developments that look as if they’d landed here by mistake. Wintering English and German tourists pack into these condo and apartment blocks. This is not the ruined western Costa del Sol. The Marbella area is merely overdeveloped, American style. “Are we in Fort Lauderdale?” Ed says. “Look at all that ersatz Tuscan-Mediterranean architecture.” But then we find Marbella’s lively outdoor cafés around the Plaza de los Naranjos, the nice shops with fine soaps and French sheets, a purely Arab balcony outfitted with a plaster Mary, and again the charm of the air blessed with the scent of orange blossoms. We pass several consignment shops whose windows are filled with Armani and Gucci and Jil Sander. People on vacation must change their minds about what they packed in their suitcases and unload their mistakes rather than take them home. Or maybe they opt to wear less in the lovely sun. In a fancy children’s shop, we buy a pair of hand-knitted booties for our Mister X.

  Down the road at Puerto Banús, many of the international rich are idling away their January. The yacht harbor, mamma mia, is a many-splendored thing. The cool jangles of the rigging and the wavering reflections in the water always give me an adventurous rush, probably that old encoded human desire for quest, for pushing off and heading into the open sea. But these Argonauts seem tightly tethered to land. Boys in crisp shorts polish and buff, flemish ropes, and touch up minute scratches, while portly owners speak into cell phones on the deck. Two women totter in pastel pants and high-heeled sandals across a gangplank. The rings on their fingers are the size of ice cubes. They’re laden with jewelry. “We’re just seeing a stereotype,” I tell Ed. “Down below someone is reading Heidegger, and over there on the bow of Stardust Destiny, someone is writing a villanelle.”

  “Dream on. He’s working a crossword puzzle, at best. Why tax yourself in this place?” Ferraris slowly cruise the street. We inspect the menus of the seafood restaurants lining the harbor and choose one where the crayfish, crab, and prawns thrash on ice and the fish look bright-eyed. Next to us a German woman orders a Tia Maria on ice after her lunch of grilled fish and white wine. She’s tan as a saddle, probably around seventy, with a magenta scarf wound around her neck and hair. Ed asks if she lives here, and yes, she bought a condominium five years ago and has joined book clubs and investment clubs but finds herself bored, hence the second Tia Maria, I assume, and besides the weather (seventy-five degrees today) is frigid but better than the iron-cold of Stuttgart. I fear retirement in places where the climate is the lure.

  From Ronda, via Antequera and Archidona, we make our way to Granada, city of García Lorca. Snow tops the surrounding mountains—a Xanadu setting. As we drive closer, we’re suddenly lost in dismal sprawl and dirty air. By the time we find our hotel near the Alhambra, we’ve gone quiet with disappointment. Granada, I’m not falling under your spell. Poetry, roses, nightingales, water gardens, Gypsies—no one’s fault but mine that I imagined a fabled city. Or perhaps it is the fault of the Nicaraguan on the lawn at Princeton, leafing through Lorca’s poems, stopping at “Ballad of the Three Rivers.” The book was worn leather (cordovan, I suddenly realize—from Córdoba). Guadalquiver, high tower/and wind in the ora
nge groves . . ./It carries olives and orange blossoms,/Andalucía, to your seas. The breeze riffled the pages, tissue thin like an old Bible. Marienoelle, his little daughter, learned her first word that afternoon. Agua, she shrieked, agua, splashing in the plastic pool. I leaned against a tree, arms folded. From the lips of the Nicaraguan, I learned that Granada has “two rivers, eighty bell towers, four thousand watercourses, fifty fountains.” I lost a gold ring that belonged to my husband’s family, and I looked in the grass for hours. The poet said nothing about pollution headaches.

  We arrive late. From the hotel window, the snowy mountain-ringed city below spreads into endless lights and the wavy slush of traffic noise. To compound our first impression, we face a greasy dinner in the small restaurant highly recommended by the hotel’s concierge. Ten o’clock, and the place is empty except for a silent couple having tapas at the bar. The owner nips at a large glass of wine on a sideboard each time he ducks into the room from the kitchen. He seems distraught when we ask for anything. “Must be the concierge’s brother,” Ed whispers. The uphill route back to the hotel takes us through ominous streets. Federico García Lorca, modest dreamer and son of water, I believe you said Granada is made for music. Please forgive me, but your Granada is a disaster. We’re relieved to see the hotel looming at the end of the street. Pseudo-Moorish, it is drafty, tiled, and old enough to have character. We chose it because Lorca gave his first poetry reading here. His guitar accompanist was Andrés Segovia. Two young men are getting out of a car. Federico and Andrés? Striding into the lobby, young, full of ideals?