The Olive Tree (The Olive Series Book 2) Page 9

  Mercedes, Simon’s wife, dressed like a widow in black slacks and black woolly zip-up jacket, was on her laptop when we entered the simple, comfortably furnished kitchen. She, by comparison, wore a worried frown, immediately apologising for being so preoccupied.

  ‘I’m a lawyer and spend most of my working life challenging Simon’s tax demands.’

  It was decided that we would drive to a neighbouring town to eat Sunday lunch. Rico, their handsome ten-year-old, fluent in both Spanish and English, accompanied us, with his Gameboy. En route, we stopped off in Cuacos at Simon’s office to drop my bags.

  ‘You can eat migas at the restaurant,’ said Mercedes as we toured the renovated town house. The ground floor had been converted into offices while the upper levels were rented out to tourists. In this instance, me.

  Migas was a traditional Spanish dish of crumbs, leftovers, that varied in its preparation from province to province. Here in the mountains of Extremadura, where the men were regularly away with their flocks, it was a shepherd’s breakfast of stale bread, fried in garlic and olive oil, and then jazzed up with spicy chorizo or ham. Simple fare. In modern Spanish society, it had become a fashionable appetiser in restaurants.

  I had grown tired of patatas bravas, potatoes smothered in lukewarm ketchup sauce, so culinary alternatives instantly whetted my appetite.

  The light was fading on the wet, remote, late afternoon when we finally arrived in Garganta La Olla.

  ‘The historic town of brothels,’ smiled Mercedes. ‘Look out for the blue houses.’

  The colour had signalled to the soldiers of Charles V that the building housed prostitutes. Mercedes could not say why they had chosen blue. A proportion of the district’s population, those with blue eyes and fair skin, were the legacy of all those illicit couplings.

  Hurrying in the rain along cobbled streets, across plazas, negotiating mud and streaming water, every restaurant, tavern and cantina was closed or full, save one. We settled there. The family proprietors found us a forgotten table at the back where we sat, dripping puddles round the hard wooden chairs. The other diners were locals. Mercedes and Simon exchanged niceties with several while Rico remained engrossed in his Gameboy and two white cats lay dozing on the wooden floor by a crackling chimney.

  I called for a bottle of the house red to fortify our damp spirits. Our orders were taken – migas was not on the menu, but Iberian ham from the acorn-fed, local black pig was. I opted for that while my hosts shared a steaming tureen of lamb stew. Simon told of his first migas, in the province of Castilla y León, north-west of the capital.

  ‘I was young, alone in Madrid. For fun, I offered to assist a shepherd with his transhumance. Did you know it’s a practice that originated before Christ in Arabia? Benito and I took a week herding the flocks up into the higher reaches of the Sierra de los Ancares, relocated for summer pasturing. I awoke after my first night, stepped out of the tent and was surrounded by two thousand sheep. The altitude, the sun rising warm on the June morning, the vista, boy, it blew me away. A couple of booted eagles were circling overhead, eyeing the livestock. Benito spotted them. I kept an eye while Benito fried up the migas over an open fire. I still recall the taste.’

  ‘It’s peasant food,’ Mercedes topped up her glass. Her third. ‘Originally cooked with manteca de cerdo, pigs’ lard, which is why it’s frequently dressed with bacon or ham. Mantequilla, butter, was for the aristocrats and was probably brought to the peninsula with Charles V and his royal soldiers.’

  ‘And olive oil?’

  ‘Originally, the Iberians cooked with pigs’ lard or goat and sheep fat. Then came olive oil from the east. Olive oil has been used here for two thousand years, but it would not have been available to the shepherds so far from home and at altitudes above the olive line.’

  I mentioned Simon’s paper, but he did not pick up on it.

  I spent three days in Cuacos de Yuste, more time than I had intended, partly because of coach timings and also because I was still awaiting answers from the scientist in Córdoba and the olive farmers in Mallorca. My next port of call depended on who responded first.

  On the second day, I managed to corner Simon. We took a walk in his groves.

  ‘Two hundred and fifty thousand hectares of Extremadura are dedicated to olive cultivation. It’s the third most productive region of Spain. The olive tree should be a model for drought tolerance in the Mediterranean, but its production is being abused. It could have a vital role to play in our future, but people are greedy and modern man underestimates it.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Over-intensive farming uses water reserves recklessly, damaging the soil, threatening bird and insect life.’

  ‘Why would anyone want to over-irrigate olive trees? They require so little.’

  ‘To use them exclusively as fruit-producing machines. The harder you water the greater the crop yield. It’s about making fast money and destroying the land into the bargain.’

  Simon’s own farm, growing manzanilla olives, was a ‘hands-off’ affair. Both the olives and wide-leafed figs were heavy with rain water while the trunks and branches from roots to upper crowns were coated in a silvery lichen that almost matched the grey-green of the leaves. It created a frozen magical illusion, but was surely sapping the trees of their force? Simon’s response was, ‘Lichen is extremely sensitive to pollution, therefore an excellent indicator of clean air. I see its role here as that of a meteorologist, a forecaster of a healthy environment. I choose not to perceive it negatively as a parasite.’

  ‘But it will erode the olive wood, surely?’

  ‘Eventually, yes. Do you know how it is formed?’

  I did not.

  ‘It’s fascinating; it’s a combination of an alga and a fungus. When the two grow closely together and intertwine they create an altogether new species, lichen, and, once mated, one might say, the two cannot be separated. They are a new material. The alga photosynthesises energy and feeds it to the fungus while the fungus leeches water from the wood and passes it to the alga. It is a remarkable marriage, an example of nature’s ability to harmonise.’

  ‘But why risk the trees? With a minimal amount of intervention you could prevent the trees from being sapped and your olives could still be here in a thousand years from now.’

  ‘Are you suggesting I coat them in fungicides?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I am fond of the olives and figs but I am equally attached to the lichen. Everything dies at some point, including olive trees. I prefer not to interfere. My philosophy is a hands-off approach to farming. When you go south you will see the diametric opposite at play and it might cause you to rethink. I am an olive farmer, but first and foremost I am an ecologist.’

  So, these acres of fruit bearers set among monolithic ancient stones, about which Simon knew nothing, all fended for themselves, and if drupes remained at harvest time then they were picked and pressed or, in the case of the figs, made into jam. If they were eaten by birds or bugs then, as far as Simon was concerned, it was all part of the ecological cycle.

  Was this the only alternative to pesticides?

  I attempted to engage him on the subject. ‘I never use any chemicals. My concern is the health of the planet.’

  ‘But surely, there are alternatives? A solution provided by nature?’

  ‘Water is the single most pressing issue. Intensive farming is the danger.’

  Was I missing the point?

  Even if Simon was reticent, non-communicative, Mercedes and Rico seemed eager to talk, grateful for the diversion of a stranger in town, who, in slate-black winter, was willing to listen. While Simon pottered about in his garage, Rico and Mercedes fought for my attention and I asked myself whether he had invited me all this way so that his family would be, if not entertained, then at least occupied. The rain rarely let up and, when it did, the wind howled like a banshee, reverberating against the mountainous granite slopes. It was a curious sojourn locked away in the middl
e of nowhere with this family. I slept alone in town and spent my days with them.

  When Rico found me wandering in the rain, juggling camera and brolly, he invited me to his palacio.

  ‘You can take a picture of me in it.’

  It was an ingenious construction of which he was very proud. Not a tree house, more a Dalíesque installation, created out of a gallimaufry, much of it filched from his father’s workshop, strung together between several olive trees. Here, weather permitting, he spent his days. Wooden bridges aided access from one area, one branch, one tree to the next. Chicken wire protected his olive seedlings in boxes on the ground. A bicycle hung from a branch, as did flowerpots. Lanterns to illuminate; a blue bucket collected rainwater; coloured plastic crates, upturned bottle containers, functioned as steps; a tarpaulin had been transformed into a sail flapping between branches; a woven basket contained sopping, inedible sweets. Its imaginative resilience was splendid. When I asked the boy what had inspired him to create his ‘palace’, his frank, straightforward reply took me aback: ‘To sail away from Dad’.

  Mercedes taught Spanish to two black African monks who were the sole remaining occupants at the Yuste monastery where Charles V lived out his last days. She invited me along to see the grounds. I was in search of ancient olive trees, I told her in the car, hoping she might know of a hidden grove of knobblies and suggest a detour. She shook her head.

  ‘The olive tree suffered during the civil war when thousands were felled for firewood to keep the refugees from freezing to death, not only in Extremadura but all over Spain. Many mills closed or were destroyed. Farmers, millers lost their livelihoods. For the marginally more fortunate, bread and oil became the staple diet. There was little else. Oil gained a reputation as “war food”.’ Later, Spaniards turned their backs on their precious commodity. They were ashamed of the poverty it represented. They needed to distance themselves from all reminders of hostilities. During the years of dictatorship, the olive industry fell into decline. ‘You will be very fortunate if you find ancient trees in Spain,’ she concluded.

  I recalled that Simon had described Mercedes’ parents as Francoists. I broached the subject gingerly, but she was open to discussion. She was nine when Franco died. She recalled how she and a girlfriend had giggled at the news. His body was laid in state in Madrid. Images were transmitted endlessly on a television screen in their local café. Her mother had been angered by Mercedes’ sacrilegious attitude: laughing at death, laughing at the loss of their leader. For a long time after, her parents had moaned that life without Franco was terrible, was worse, but lately they said nothing. They knew in their hearts it was getting better.

  ‘But nobody forgot the past,’ Mercedes muttered. Whenever news came of the demise of one general or another, there was a palpable reverberation of emotions. ‘What those emotions were depended on whose side you had fought on. Every village, every family,’ she said, ‘harboured secrets, did not whisper the past. In remote country areas such as this where farmers, olive producers, survived to be centenarians there were many who carried memories of the massacres, of the cruelties dealt between one brother and another.’

  Bells were pealing. Every quarter of an hour they were ringing somewhere. It was a constant reminder of Spain’s Christian supremacy, of the victorious hard-won history of its Catholic Church. It occurred to me that since arriving in Spain I had not once heard the muezzin calling his faithful to prayer. Spain’s Catholicism was sovereign.

  Mother and boy told me that in winter cranes crowded the skies, flying in from Eastern Europe, while spring was the finest time to visit. Then, the cherry trees blossomed into snowy canopies up and over the passes and valleys and buttercups in full flower gladdened the olive groves. In that season the crumbling, cramped stone walls and the slate-black hillsides grew beautiful. Towards autumn came the chestnut season, the gathering of the fruits for roasting, promenades in the chestnut forests and then the olive harvest …

  ‘The Extremaduran people,’ boasted Mercedes, ‘are proud of their cuisine. Legend has it that when the convents and monasteries were sacked by Napoleon, their recipe books were stolen by French soldiers and it was from those handwritten pages that the finest French cooking was born.’

  Before I said my farewells to this family, I walked miles through dripping olive groves, hunting for just one ancient example. Mercedes was with me, her skin pale as candle wax. I was wondering how, if so many thousands of groves had been destroyed during and after the civil war, Spain had reached its present position of production leader, but my companion had no answer.

  ‘Why don’t you return for Easter?’ she offered, heavy brows furrowed. ‘I promise to ask friends, neighbours about ancient trees, long-forgotten olive stories.’

  I explained that I had planned to be in Cádiz for Mardi Gras and, from there, the boat to Morocco. I sensed her disappointment and profound loneliness. She confided that there had been times when she had wanted to die; she had miscarried a little girl, their second child. I felt my stomach clench. This was a subject I knew a little about.

  Mercedes had spent a week in intensive care before her womb ‘exploded’. She knew then that she was dying and she longed to. Loss had overtaken her. Her life was saved by an Egyptian doctor who had visited her every morning. ‘You must look for reasons to live,’ he had counselled. ‘Only you can find them.’

  I turned to study her. Mercedes’ beauty was ordinary, earthy, unrefined. Broad of jaw, slender, yet with a restrained force. She seemed to be the very essence of la peña, grief, sorrow, regret.

  ‘And then I remembered Rico. He was my reason to live.’

  I wondered about Simon, with whom I had spent so little time, who had answered so few of my questions, who seemed so absent. Mercedes told me he loved it here, out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by his slowly dying olive trees, but both she and Rico longed for Madrid, dreamed of London, craved the beat and pulse of city life.

  I recalled my own loss and its ensuing crisis, and how nature and the creation of our new groves had given me my reasons, my impetus for this future.

  I returned to Cuacos de Yuste for my last evening. My bus back to Madrid with an immediate connection to Córdoba was departing early the following morning, the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin. There were no cafés or bars where I could find a meal so I settled for sliced sausage, bread rolls and half a bottle of Rioja purchased at one of the two grocery stores still trading at 7 p.m., where tomatoes whiskery with mould lay rotting in wooden crates. The rain had stopped and the sun had come out, but the wind had picked up. Still, it was a relief. As evening descended, I walked the village. Storks were nesting on the principal church tower. A local paused, watched me photographing the birds.

  ‘The tower was restored two years ago,’ he told me. ‘Split clean down the centre during the 1755 earthquake in Lisbon, it was. Most of the townspeople would have preferred that the riven original had stayed.’

  Lisbon. All Saints Day, 1755. Three earthquakes in quick succession. They all but destroyed the city and killed over 15,000 people. The shock and the tsunami waves were felt and experienced as far away as England and the West Indies.

  ‘Why keep the damaged original?’

  ‘A reminder of the power of God, the force of His anger.’

  Large farming women waddled across the squares in fur-trimmed slippers, carrying buckets of water, geese trailing at their feet. Dressed in black with headscarves, they reminded me of Muslim women and, like their Islamic sisters, they refused to let me take their pictures. The men, though, open-mouthed old codgers with not a handful of teeth between them, idling away retirement on stone benches, leaning on canes, hanging on to their flat caps, pressed against stonewalled façades, paying no attention to the wind rolling flotsam up and down the lanes, were perfectly delighted to pose for the camera.

  I returned to my little house with its hazy but pleasant view over the sodden olive groves and wintry hillsides. Simon arrived. I had not been e
xpecting him. He had come to request another night’s rent. I had left it on the table and offered him a glass of wine, which he refused.

  ‘I thought you might like to see the cellar,’ he announced.

  After the civil war the country was starving. Food shortages everywhere. To retain one’s own produce, particularly olive oil, was made illegal. Here in Simon’s house was an underground storeroom, a cave. We descended to the small rectangular space. Knocking through the foundations into the adjoining building, the proprietor from whom Simon had purchased his property had stockpiled tall urns of olive oil, lined up in rows against the lime-plastered stone walls of his neighbour’s home. Unfortunately, the man next door discovered the stash in the illicit cellar, his cellar by rights, and informed the Civil Guard. The oil was confiscated, the farmer was imprisoned and from that day to this the two families had not exchanged a word. Enmities ran deep. Grudges were harboured here.

  ‘For two or more decades after the war years, olive oil was the staple diet for millions of Spaniards, but once Franco had gone and the country seized its new beginning, many dug up their groves, either to plant crops with faster, less back-breaking returns, such as tobacco, or they sold the land off. They bulldozed the trees to make way for tobacco farms. Tobacco had already become a heavily subsidised commodity even before Greece negotiated with Europe. In the sixties and seventies, the virtues of the Mediterranean diet had not been discovered and the international market had minimum interest in olives. Its tree was of little worth; its oil sold for next to nothing. Tobacco was set to be the future. But when you go south you will see that the Spanish are reinstating their olive history with a vengeance, but without thought. It’s a fiasco. Go to Andalucía, and you’ll understand my deep concern.’

  We shook hands. I thanked him for this unexpected tour, and he confided with a note of desperation that Mercedes had expressed her desire to leave.

  ‘She wants to take Rico to live in England. England is full of those who haven’t left, who haven’t managed to get out. I don’t know what to do.’