The Olive Tree (The Olive Series Book 2) Page 5

  Occasionally, the earth was a sharply metallic orange-red, iron-rich, sloped with olive trees, ancient terraces and oval or igloo-like stone huts that reminded me of the drystone walled bories in Provence, dated close to 600 BC. They are thought to have been built by the Ligurians. The coach flew by too quickly. Difficult to say whether these were the remnants of Iron Age oppida, settlements. Also a throwback to the Ligurians? Crossing from Italy by land, their route traversed southern France, ascending the Pyrenees to reach this northern section of the peninsula. The history of their presence here is obscure.

  Sleeping passengers, with the Basque-bereted pensioner snoring loudly at the rear. Beyond, deserted fields and hillsides, not a soul labouring. A quiet earth, its activities taking place beneath the soil. Here, too, the narrow riverbeds lacked water, dribbles working through loose, dry pebbles. In this first week of February. Was Spain facing severe water shortages? A lack of waterways? The Guadalquivir in Andalucía and the Ebro in Cantabria, the latter Spain’s longest river, flowing not far from this autostrada, remained the only two sufficiently water-bearing to be useful in navigation and irrigation.

  Ebro: a derivative of Iberia?

  Many of the passing farms were named Mas something or other. Mas – ‘country house’ or ‘farm’ in Provençal. Vau au mas: ‘I am going to the farm’. The fruit trees beyond the walled enclosures were pruned as in southern France, Provençal fashion: central branches lopped, leaving a ring of exterior boughs reaching upwards, curving at ten to two.

  The scent of pressed olives. Like a truffle dog, I was alerted to the aroma I knew so intimately. I leaned close to the window, scanning the countryside, but I saw no mills, nor drupes remaining on the passing trees. The sky was clear, watery blue. Yet threatening purple clouds hung low over the groves, rising like smoke whorls. Was it a result of spraying, of an insecticide?

  The landscape grew inhospitable, uninhabitable; a desert denuded of vegetation or homesteads, only blunt-headed rocks, beige bunions rising out of stony ground. To the right, a sign: Lleida. Somewhere here, the pueblo of Arbeca, population less than 2500, the village that gave its name to the arbequina olive. The capital of arbequina olive farming in northern Spain, the first to receive a DO for its oil. Here was where the arbequina oil business was facing crisis; where the arable lands were being abandoned. The return of fruits on trees irregularly irrigated was not a viable harvesting proposition. To install irrigation was expensive, logistically challenging. Gazing out, I saw a scrubby arid steppeland with barely a weed.

  From Catalonia into Aragon. Zaragoza (Saragossa), the capital, was founded as Caesaraugusta by the Romans in 25 BC. Later, it was a Moorish stronghold attacked by El Cid. Later still, El Cid fought as a mercenary for its Moorish king. The painter Goya, born in Aragon, spent his school years and apprenticeship in this capital. So, too, the filmmaker Luis Buñuel.

  The air had grown perfumed and sweet. The scents of Spain: I was alive to them. Olive groves flanked us before we became engulfed in clouds. Aragon claims the highest peaks in the Pyrenees, some reaching over 3000 metres. Fighting with the militia, George Orwell was entrenched within these ranges for months, Zaragoza and its city lights within his sight. His ‘ice-cold trench’ had been dug out of razor-sharp, limestone rock ‘like sand-martins’ nests’. He bemoaned the lack of action in ‘this cock-eyed war’. It was 1937, early days of the civil war. Water was delivered to the soldiers on the backs of donkeys who, when they refused to do as bidden, were kicked by the local Aragonese in the cojones, the testicles.

  Lunch break in the middle of high central plains; mountains white and chalky; the ground looked as if it had not known rain in centuries. We pulled off the motorway and swung into a newly constructed garage complex with a sign overhead written in large lettering and, bizarrely, only in English: WASH YOUR TRUCK. Lorries and coaches were directed to parking spaces by a bevy of short men in blue-serge overalls and orange safety vests. Our attendant was waving frantically in between pulls on a whistle chained round his neck. You could believe it was Times Square so rigorously were we regimented. Once at our stand, the driver announced a thirty-minute pause. If any passenger failed to be back on board by precisely ten past, they would be left behind. I looked out at the dust and several stacked bracelets of split tyres. What a place to be abandoned.

  ‘Absolutely no waiting for any stray pasajero,’ repeated the fat-bellied governor. ‘El coche will be gone and it will be demasiado tarde!’ Three times he called the number of our bus: 2200. I grabbed my bag, muttering ‘gracias’ as I stepped down. ‘You’ve got twenty minutes,’ he yelled after me.

  The interior of the cantina was a fuggy barn with Cellophane sandwich wrappings on the floor and half-eaten plates of food scattered at many of the unoccupied, plastic tables. Cigarette butts overflowed the ashtrays. My fellow travellers were already at the counter, calling for beers, hot food. So, too, our señor, also engaged in bear hugs and animated conversation with fellow employees from the bus company, each clutching a generous-sized glass of beer between podgy fingers. I bought a Serrano ham baguette, a quart bottle of red wine and a bar of Toblerone and wandered out of the smoky joint into the fresh air. In spite of the altitude, the day was mild but everything was covered in a beige film as though this were a quarry. I found a solitary olive tree planted in a pot and perched beneath it on a low stone wall. I bit into my sandwich; dust ground my teeth. I had coche 2200 in sight so was ready to step aboard. After a swift visit to los servicios, I returned to my olive tree, glimpsing through the cafeteria window as I passed, our driver with lunch companions now seated at a table surrounded by a clutch of half-consumed beer and wine bottles. The first compatriot was already waiting to board, the Basque octogenarian. Hoping to glean a little inside information about the changing faces of Spain over the years, I wandered his way, smiling ‘hola’, but he read my intentions and hobbled off on his sticks.

  It was gone two, over an hour since we had pulled in. Two of the passengers went in search of the driver. I wasn’t holding out a great deal of hope and my instincts were sound. The upshot of the merry lunch was that our fellow would not be continuing on with us to Bilbao and Santander. A replacement was on his way. We hung about in the parking for another twenty minutes. I was beginning to worry about my connection to Santillana del Mar when a uniformed employee with overnight bag marched purposefully towards our bus. He met nobody’s eye, determined not to get the flak for his colleague’s intemperance.

  And on we continued.

  Through a Basque countryside of alquerías, farms with steadings, outbuildings – from the Arabic al-garya, meaning ‘small town’. After a brief Bilbao stop, the coach pulled into Santander station at five to seven. My next bus was due to depart on the hour. I grabbed my rucksack and ran around the depot, arriving at the stand to see it disappearing. It was the last connection of the day to Santillana del Mar, I learned, but a coach to Torrelavega was leaving in ten minutes. Torrelavega: a neighbouring town where I would find a taxi. But this was a different company. I was obliged to buy my ticket in advance. Up stairs I flew, down escalators, dragging luggage, elbowing my way to the front of queues, wrong queues, until eventually I found the ticket office. Too late. The chubby, acne-faced girl with a scar of deep plum lipstick, ghoulish against pale skin, glanced at a monitor in her booth.

  ‘There it goes,’ she sighed.

  ‘And the next one?’ I begged.

  ‘Tomorrow, 10 a.m. Nothing for Santillana del Mar or Torrelavega tonight. You must stay in Santander.’

  The prospect of a night in this port city was not displeasing and, had I organised myself better, I would have opted for it, paying a visit to the old residential resort quarter of El Sardinero, fascinated to discover the origin of its name. Sardinero: ‘black sardine’? Had there been a BC fish-salting industry here, too, or were they exclusive to the Phoenician-Roman Mediterranean?

  In the city’s Museo de Bellas Artes hung a portrait of Franco, the last on display in Spain
. Another of Fernando VII, judged to have been a weak and cruel king, painted by Goya in 1815. This work had been achieved after the Inquisition had levelled charges of obscenity against the artist, decreeing his two fabulous Maja paintings shameless. Both canvases portrayed the same woman striking an identical pose; naked in one, clothed in the other. The charges were settled and Goya’s role as First Painter to the Court reinstated but, in the wake of the scandal, Fernando reduced the status of his position.

  It was a pity to miss out on these excursions, but my goal was Las Cuevas de Altamira, a series of caves first brought to the world’s attention during the late nineteenth century. Entrance tickets were impossible to come by, I had been warned months earlier in Paris. A nine-month waiting list, the hotel receptionist in Barcelona had confirmed, while a guide-book had predicted a ten-month delay. Only twenty-five people a day were given access to the caves due to carbon-dioxide erosion, so I had pre-purchased my reservation some time earlier. The lags and hold-ups with the coach meant that I would lose my precious ticket, booked for eleven thirty the following morning, if I could not find an alternative means of reaching Santillana that very evening.

  I hung around outside the station near the taxi rank but few vehicles of any description were passing by. An ample, middle-aged woman, gloves, hat, bags of shopping, puffed up beside me, quizzed me about my destination and then heartily dissuaded me from attempting the journey.

  ‘Slim chance of finding a car,’ she panted, dabbing her powdered forehead with her inner wrist. ‘Who’ll travel that distance at this hour?’

  I frowned. It was not yet eight. But this was Santander not Barcelona. I was in the provinces and all had gone underground.

  ‘Take a hotel,’ she cooed, ‘sample our delicious cuisine, hire a cab early tomorrow when the chappies are more cooperative, less expensive.’

  I thanked her for her concern and wandered from the stand to the street’s extremity, glancing at adjacent pensions. As I did so, a taxi rounded the corner beyond the station. I raised my arm, but my corpulent counsellor had already nabbed it.

  Seventy euros was the fare I negotiated with the Cantabrian driver, polite and thickly accented, close to double the bus ticket from Barcelona, but what alternative had I? It was nudging eight thirty. The journey of thirty kilometres would take fifty minutes. I had no hotel booked in Santillana del Mar. In I climbed, to a cabby keen to strike up conversation.

  ‘Where you from?’

  I never know these days what to reply. ‘England, Ireland, France …’

  ‘England! Tony Blell your governor, hah! Some governor, take you citizens to war. And give me your opinion on Hairy Edems?’

  ‘Who?’ I was exhausted from the day’s exercises.

  ‘Like our ETA movement in neighbouring Basque region. Dialogue is the answer. Tony Blell has done right with Hairy Edems. Talk him to.’

  ‘Ah, Jerry Adams.’

  ‘Sí, sí. Irish music and local here very semejante.’

  ‘Semejante, similar?’

  ‘Sí. Flute, Celtic. What think you Rolling Stones, John Lennon, Keith Richards? Better than Cara al Sol. Every damned day singing it in school.’

  I was having a hard time keeping pace. ‘Cara al Sol?’ Facing the Sun? Ah, the fascist anthem.

  ‘Keith Richards, la musica pura. Fantastico guitar but loco with coca. You take drugs?’

  I leaned forward and took a harder look in the rearview mirror, studying again the face of the man chauffeuring me. He was, as I had originally gauged, middle-aged, fifty-five. He did not wait for my response, which in any case was not forthcoming. Instead he began to eulogise marijuana. ‘Overlooking the sea, lights twinkling, a small glass of beer out the terrace, and a hoint.’

  I was struggling again. Ah, a joint.

  ‘Perfecto relaxation. Fantastico amor, pero …’

  Great lovemaking but the downside was he got the munchies very badly. Was this during the fantastic lovemaking, I was wondering, while attempting to glimpse a rather magnificent seaboard view passing alongside us. It was too dark. ‘And your wife?’

  ‘She smoke leettle, but happy with fantastico amor.’

  I had not expected such conversation. I reflected upon Franco and half a century of oppressive history. ‘It’s illegal here, yes?’

  ‘Sí.’

  ‘Difficult to come by?’

  ‘Sí, sí, but I grow weed in enclosure in jardín. My children come by, smoke with us, too. When they adolescent I didn’t encourage, but now in their thirties, OK. We not on south costa, not kilometres from Moroccan costa. Here, north, Atlantico, so we must grow hachís in garden. Smoke in house privacy, of course.’

  In my mind, arithmetic. He had been enjoying his indulgence for a couple of decades, perhaps longer. Had he been a joint-smoker when Franco was in power? I attempted the question but my Spanish was not sufficiently adept or my accent confused him.

  ‘Not do coke,’ he assured me. ‘Turns you loco like Keith Richard. Coco loco. You smoke hachís?’

  ‘My husband has never approved,’ I hedged.

  ‘But I bet he drinks whisky. Far better for his health to enhoy a hoint …’

  And so we arrived at Santillana, a pristine medieval market town. Traversing narrow cobbled lanes, solid stone buildings embracing us, we reached a big irregular square, the central plaza. My driver pulled up in front of the imposing wooden doors of the Parador Nacional, which, because I had not made a booking, my new dope-head friend suggested was my safest bet. As we shook hands, he bowed and wished me a good stay, requesting fifty euros instead of the negotiated seventy.

  ‘The run was quick,’ he grinned. ‘Enhoy the caves. They’ll blow your mind.’

  Over dinner, heavy boiled food with lashings of butter, in the hushed, ornate dining room, served by a waitress in a dark red and black local costume, I lifted my glass of Rioja, glanced about at the scattering of guests who looked mostly like archaeologists, and I spared a thought for the taxi driver who had recommended this conservative, state-run establishment, lounging on his terrace about now, getting gently high with his cool beer and ‘hoint’ and I tried to place him within my preconceived images of Spain.

  I checked out the next morning before breakfast, having walked round the corner and found another hostelry, far cheaper, friendlier and offering Internet access. I had been told at the Parador Nacional that a connection did not exist anywhere in the town. Once resettled, I strolled the streets and marvelled at how extraordinarily well preserved it all was, the red-tiled houses, the flower-filled wooden balconies and galleries, here and there fancy iron grilles, rejas, protecting the windows, but I found the neatness overly quaint; it made me claustrophobic. Traditional Spain, ‘a class and mode of life that is dying’, but it seemed to be thriving hereabouts, where the men were slight, fit as matadors and haughty, staggeringly rude, while the women were dumpy, middle-aged whatever their age, yet warm and accommodating. The bourgeoisie seemed to be alive and kicking in Santillana with its cumbersome wooden furniture and spruce window ledges and steps. Santillana is an abbreviation of Santa Juliana. In summer, this UNESCO World Heritage Site, settled by monks in the eleventh century bringing the saint’s relics from Turkey, must be heaving with tourists, but in February it was a ghost town and I felt as though I were touring a film set on a disused lot. I was also disappointed that Santillana del Mar, or Saint Juliana of the Sea, was several kilometres inland.

  I had asked at the Parador the estimated time to walk to the caves, las cuevas. The slender male night clerk had replied curtly, ‘twenty minutes’. In the morning, the podgy female receptionist in ill-fitting costume screwed up her face and shook her head. ‘Oh, don’t walk. An hour at least.’

  I paid my extortionate bill and said farewell to the Parador Nacional. It was time for the caves. Hard to describe my excitement and sense of anticipation.

  In 1875, Don Marcelino Sanz de Sautola, a Cantabrian landowner, lawyer and amateur anthropologist who lived in a rambling country
estate not far from Vispieres and the rolling countryside I was now striding across with its farmsteads and alquerías, learned from a hunter, one Modesto Cubillas (great name!), that in a neighbouring district, while quarrying for stone, locals had blasted the rocks with gunpowder and had unearthed some unusual caves. Don Marcelino, whose hobby was local history, decided to pay the quarry a visit. There, he discovered a pencil-thin aperture, released after millennia by the rockslides. This slender crevice allowed him entry into what, from the outside, appeared to be a vestibule. The cave of Altamira is 270 metres long, a little more than a quarter of a kilometre. It was damp within and must have smelt like hell after thousands of years without sunlight and fresh air. Negotiating his passage through dark, labyrinthine tunnels and spaces, he penetrated. From its principal chamber, the tunnels wound and turned, descending drastically in height in places from twelve to two metres. Remarkably, given the twilight conditions, he observed black markings on several of the rock surfaces. Don Marcelino had no idea what they were and certainly did not realise the profound significance of what he had stumbled upon.