teapotmonk.com

‘Let me tell you something about ‘Manolo el Loco’. Jose poured out my manchada, his darting eyes flickering around the bar to see who else was listening. The only other occupants were three farmers engaged in yet another endless debate on the drought and its effect on the olive crops. Jose coughed, then cleared his throat. The men continued to ignore him until he kicked a box of crips across the floor towards them. ‘ Hey you two! Im just telling this guy about
when we all changed our old Land-Rovers for the new 4x4 Nissan Truck, …you remember when el ‘mad Manolo’ refused?’
‘Yes, we remember Paco’ said one of them, immediately returning to the rainfall discussion.
‘You see Pablo, ‘continued Jose, ‘even though we all had subsidies form the Co-op, your neighbour decided he wasn’t going to buy anything that polluted his land! Nor something that drank so much fuel.’
Jose, owner of the appropriately named Bar Basico, pushed the glass of milky coffee towards me, shaking his head and tutting: ‘He says to me: “Jose, I want something that can re-use its fuel, and I want something that is small. What do I want a big truck for? I only need to carry my tools, my packed lunch and the dog.” So I say to him: hey Manolo what are you saying – you want us all to go back to living in the last century with horses and carts huh? You want us all to join Greenpeace or something?’
And you know what he says to me? He says, “Jose, there is the answer!. Maybe its time the dog learnt to walk!” I mean, what sort of answer is that? But you know what I think now?’ continued Jose, ‘ El Loco is not so loco, that’s what I think...’
‘So what did he buy?’
‘…because he pays no road tax, no MOT bill…’
‘So what did he buy?’
‘…no insurance, no petrol, garage bills nor parking fees…’
‘So what did he buy?’
‘Guess.’
I shook my head. ‘Don’t know Jose. You tell me.’
‘No, go on Pablo. Guess!’ Jose’s tired eyes suddenly flickered in rhythm with the fluorescent tube above the bar. It was time to play along.
‘A space-hopper?’
The rainfall debate trailed off. A worrying frown appeared on Jose. His mouth re-organised itself into the shape of a question, but he then seemed to think better of it. ‘ Okay, I give you a clue. It’s a very, very safe sort of vehicle. Something that if it ran over you, you would just get up again, maybe a bit dusty, maybe a bit angry, but you would get up. Come on Pablo? A proper guess this time…and none of this ‘open- espace’ business’
‘Pogo-stick?’
Jose grabbed my half-finished coffee and threw it into the sink muttering: ‘God help me with these foreigners! A mule Pablo, he sold his car and got a mule! Now you tell me Pablo, how long it take to get to your house in your van, huh? 20 minutes, more or less, no?’
‘Maybe the way you drive Jose.’
‘Well it take Manolo two and one half hours with the mule! And another two and a half hours to get back. Hah ! And I think you crazy to buy that burnt, dry, useless hillside of yours! Everyone has gone crazy round here!’

I awoke one morning, later that week, to the unusual sound of someone singing to a snort. My sleep was forever being disturbed by identifiable intrusions: mountain goats amongst the vegetables, wild boar scavenging amongst the compost, or the cat bringing me a gecko to eat at 5am. But this duet was new to me. It wasn’t that it was an unpleasant sound. On the contrary it was rather an enjoyable composition, a not incongruous melody to the hi-hat rhythm of the cicadas call. I staggered from the bed to wedge my head between the rejas - the obligatory iron bars that protect these Iberian houses – and caught a glimpse of a blue chequered shirt, straw hat and the swishing tail of a four footed beast. As they disappeared behind the olive trees beneath the house they left behind their assorted sounds, suspended like the flies and paper wasps in the heavy June heat.
Curiosity hastened my normally leisurely breakfast of coffee and toast. I even forgot to brush the bread with garlic as I had observed Jose doing for his special customers. I sipped my manchada and watched Manolo far below the house starting work.

Whilst most of my other neighbours appeared every month in their shiny new trucks to ‘spray and go’ with their cocktails of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers, Manolo, I was informed by the regulars of Bar Basico , came just twice a year and yet his trees and olives appeared the healthiest on this side of the valley. Was Manolo’s ‘less is more’ approach to life paying off in terms of quantity and quality of yield? Or did his 5 hour trek mean that ‘more was in fact more?’
I began to scramble down my arid slopes of slate and rock, weaving between the fresh shoots that were emerging from the charcoal tomb-stones that littered my land, the recent graves that now were returning life. The un-dying limbs that reached for the sky with their fragile fingers appeared to sway to Manolo’s song on the faint coastal breeze.
‘A la derecha La Española , un poco más, así es, ¡arrímate! Manolo spoke and the mule snorted replies. She hauled a large metal plough skilfully between olive roots and tumbling stone terraces. When they reached the end of the terrace, Manolo conducted a skilful 3-point turn whilst “La Española” helped herself to a thistle caught between the straps of her harness. Then they came back towards me, ploughing a parallel strip that would bury the exposed weeds beneath the grey-brown earth. Manolo would sing a note or click his tongue and the mule would stop, he would click again and she would move a little to the left or a little to the right. All the time he would be praising her as they worked: ‘That’s it my beauty, well done, just a little more and then we’ll turn back, keep going now, keep going’.

I stepped out from under the shade of one of his trees and waved at a safe north European distance: ‘Buenos dias Manolo . My name is Pablo and I live just up the track.’
‘Buenos dias hombre. At last. Good to meet you’. He unstrapped himself from “La Espanola” and with that characteristic charm of the elder Spaniard, lurched towards, shaking my hand, giving me a hug, squeezing my shoulders and pinching my cheek – harder than I thought really necessary. To stop him further assaulting my fragile body I side stepped over to the mule and stroked her behind the ear and tried to look casual and unbothered by the proximity, size and number of her enormous teeth.

‘So Manolo, is it true that you sold your car for this beast?’
‘Of course I sold my car. Everyone sold their car. But then they all bought new ones and will still be paying for them when La Española and I are retired! Anyway what do I need a car for? If I came in a 4x4 I would have to pay for a machine to widen the road and then pay to maintain it every year. I’d need to pay for weed killer on the tracks to keep it passable and pay for fuel to keep it going! And the cost of fuel these days! , No, too expensive. And these machines they go so fast. Too dangerous Pablo. I prefer to take my time’.
‘Some people might say buying a mule is going back in time’
Manolo stepped towards me and waved a finger in the air: ‘ Some things Pablo, we did better before.’
I stepped back from the finger. ‘But why a mule, why not a moped? A moped would still get you here in a fifth of the time and you could still carry the same things?’
Manolo lifted both arms out to the side, hands facing up, shoulders raised to his ears. ‘You can’t plough with a moped! A moped doesn’t fertilise the land as it goes. A moped doesn’t eat the weeds between the terraces! Anyway, I like to spend time over things Pablo.’ He dropped his arms and stepped towards me. ‘I like to give affection. A mule needs a bit of affection and she will be good for 25 years’ he replied, ‘and of course you need to giver her plenty of food. If you hit or shout at her, she will say ´¿Que es esto?´ And won’t work well. You have to talk to animals and you have to treat them well.’ He wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead, and suddenly thrust his lips towards me. I stepped back expecting another amiable display, but instead he whistled a strange note and out from under a tree came a dog the size of a hamster.
‘And this is Bartolomo. Come Bartolomo’. He whistled again and the dog leapt up into his arms and licked his bristly chin. Manolo grinned. ‘We don’t spend enough time with animals Pablo.’
‘Maybe we don’t spend enough time with mopeds Manolo?’ His eyebrows shifted position, and Bartolomo froze in mid-chin lick. ‘Why not just use a tractor on the land – it would take one morning to plough this land instead of how long?’
‘Three days Pablo. But you know, I like taking my time. I notice more things’.
He raised a weathered arm and pointed at our other neighbour’s land, where not a single plant lived between the olives. It was sprayed regularly and the earth was denuded, stony and parched. ‘Over there Ricardo uses a tractor-machine, look what has happened to the old walls. Nothing is left of them – the tractor runs straight through them. When it rains the water just runs off. His stone terracing has been lost forever. And look what his pesticides have done to his soil. His earth is dying’
‘Is that why you won’t use pesticides?’
Manolo clicked and La Española shuffled to his side. ‘ Why would I want to kill the grass between the trees when she can feed on it? Why would I poison the earth? People today poison everything…we even poison ourselves.’ His arm rose again and pointed to the sky. ‘Look what we have done to the cities Pablo!’
I looked up. ‘What have we done to them Manolo?’
He raised a finger to me and then paused: ‘I don’t know. I’ve never been to one in my whole life. But they are full of machines, and machines break down.’

I strolled back up to the house. The track was so dry, just dust and slate. Over-spill spraying had killed off everything that would compete with the trees for the scarce water reserves deep below the earth. The whole countryside was a tinderbox of abandoned land by a generation of children choosing the construction and service industries over agriculture. Life here, like the earth between Ricardos trees, was certainly hard. The few remaining farmers that hadn’t converted to plastic green-house growth, were employing chemicals rather than their extended families. And the rural strip behind coastal Spain was now facing yet more challenges from property speculators, construction companies and shopping malls. Would someone like Manolo be able fit into this new fast paced world? It seemed about as likely as La Espanola getting an ipod for her birthday.

The following Sunday Manolo invited me to eat with his family at their cortijo further down the valley, tucked in amongst the fruit hills of the Rio Verde that snakes its way down from the Granada sierras to the sea. Upon arrival Manolo introduced me to his family and then took me on a slow tour of his vegetable gardens. We spent a moment foraging for lunch, weighing up the ripeness of a fruit or the benefits of mix-bed planting and then entered the cortijo. It was a simple three-roomed building built for storage and shelter during the hottest part of the day. He insisted on showing me in great detail each paint-flaking, window-less, mould-gathering room. I couldn’t imagine living there, but of course no-one did. This was not a country villa. That was soon to come. At last we all sat around a huge plastic table and fed on fresh goats cheese and bread and our recently picked salad coated in Manolo’s own olive oil. We drank wine from a two-litre Fanta bottle and finished on custard apples and banana. I tried my best to steer the conversation towards the valley and the future of Manolo’s land, but was constantly brought back to more serious subjects: Had I met the Queen of England? Was Charles being purposefully kept off the throne? How could I have lived in London with some much fog? Manolo’s family clearly shared his love of travel.
When the meal was finally cleared away, I was left under the shade of the grape vine whilst the family returned to their chores. Like Manolo, they had worked from dawn collecting fruit to be packaged and sent up to the village warehouse. Unlike Manolo they all held full time jobs in the shops, markets and hotels in town. When Manolo and the season dictated, they would work the weekend too. But I detected no hint of resentment. They constantly joked or told stories or sung to each other as they stacked the crates of fruit, but never complained.
I approached the eldest son Paco, who was dressed in an English football shirt and baseball cap. ‘ What will happen to the land when your father retires Paco?’
He will never retire Pablo. He is like your olive trees. You think they are all but finished, but they carry on, and on, and on.’
‘Will you one day work the land?’
‘Me, no. I earn more in one day on the building site than I can earn all week working the land.’
‘Then what will happen to all of this?’
‘It will be sold. People will build houses.’
‘And you will have to buy your vegetables, your cheese, meat and olive oil form the supermarket!’
‘I do now Pablo. But don’t tell him.’

I strolled over to where Manolo was hanging up the dried chillies. ‘ Hey Manolo, what’s La Española getting for her birthday?’

“Carrots, as usual’.
Part of me felt disappointed. I could picture her with the white ear phones.
Manolo climbed onto the roof of the store shed and started refilling a black plastic pipe with water. ‘It’s just a black plastic irrigation pipe.’ He said. ‘I fill it with water and it heats up in the day with the sun. By the evening its hot enough for me to wash with before heading home with La Española and Bartolomo.’
At the sound of his name Bartolomo emerged from inside an old shoe at the back of the shed. I looked down at the wagging dog and then up at the plastic pipe. I looked across at Manolo weaving the chillies together and the family’s constant coming and goings.
‘I like the shower set-up. Better than a machine, huh Manolo? But still, it’s a long day for you. There always seems so much to do’.
Manolo looked over and paused. ‘That’s true’.
‘Isn’t it hard work’’
‘You could say that’
‘Couldn’t I help in some way?’
‘You are my guest. That wouldn’t be right.’
‘But there is so much work for you to do Manolo. It never ends. Your family must be tired. Even La Española looks as though she could use a nap. Wouldn’t you prefer to sell up to some silly foreigner and say goodbye to the campo for a while. Get a nice new flat in town near the shops. You wouldn’t need to work another day in your life! Think of all the free time you would have! Think of all the free time your family would have! Think of all the things you could buy!
Manolo looked over his shoulder at his now grown up children sorting the avocados and custard apples. They were arguing about football. His wife and daughter-in law could be heard chuckling about something as they emerged form the goat shed carrying two large Fanta bottles, this time of creamy goats milk for me to take home.
Manolo removed his hat and placed it slowly across his chest. La Española snorted and shuffled protectively to his side. A chicken clucked noisily at his feet and pecked a beetle of one off his socks. I watched him, unsure if the conversation had finished or was merely on pause. He leant towards me, lips first. ‘Sell’ he whispered into my ear, looking furtively over his shoulder in case an Estate Agent should be hiding in the chicken coop. ‘Sell’ he repeated. He looked La Española squarely in the eye, and then glanced back over to his family.
‘What could I possible buy that I don’t already have in abundance?’

© Paul Read