Where Have All The Spaniards Gone?
Where Have All The Spaniards Gone? |
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Chapter 1: Green Wind Green Branches |
| I stand on a hill. I can see for miles
in every direction. Thirty miles away to the south-east is a mountain
rising out of the great Spanish plain; that massive table-land called
the meseta, or large table, that is home to those who see no reason to
live by the sea. To the north is flat; fields of stubble reaching as far as the eye can see. To the west the land drops gently away to the horizon. To the south-west the peaks of another range of mountains stick up. Another sierra. Which one is it? It cant be the Sierra de Gredos. There must be another one that I've forgotten. There are so many. But whichever way I look I can see no people, no villages, no towns. Where the heck are all the people who till this land? You can go for miles and miles and see no-one, and then suddenly there are thousands of them all milling around, blocking the pavements, jamming up the side-streets, and shouting at each other as if some frightful argument involving the whole town is taking place. *******
I am sitting at a table outside a cafe. The tapas have been ordered, there is a glass of rioja on the table. Two old men at a nearby table are talking about a restaurant down in Ayamonte, which is about thirty kilometres to the south. They are commenting on the cooking. Another man walks in, shakes hands, booms a greeting. There is much laughter. Yes, this is Spain. I know where I am. I recognize the language, the food, the gestures. And yet..... *******
I am standing on a roadway. It is dark. It is cold. There is a wet wind blowing at me from across the great open spaces. I stare to the north. There are lights everywhere. How many people are living out there for god's sake? The place was deserted when I last came here with my wife thirty years ago. We hitched along this road. It was empty. It was narrow. The first car came along after an hour and a half, and turned off onto a dirt track a hundred metres up the road. Now I cant hear myself breathe as the cars roar past me. I drive through the village of Consuegra with its castle on the hillside to the south. I remember wandering around the ruins and talking with the archaeologists digging for any evidence to corroborate the tale that this was the castle that Cervantes took for his stories of that crazy knight, Don Quixote. The place at night was dark. Every two hundred metres was a bare electric bulb to light the streets. Every house was lit by a gas lamp hissing in the middle of the room. Faces looked out thru the open doors as Ann and I walked past. This was a Spain I knew. This was what Spain had been like for years. This fitted with the stories in the books I read. This was medieval Spain, and Spain had been medieval for as long as anyone knew. *******
I am standing on the roof of a house. This house is for sale. I have added it to my website of unusual properties. It has been renovated, or, as they say in Spain, reformed. The reformation makes it look somehow absurd, out of place. It is modern, no longer rustic. The modernity has robbed it of all its character. It is just outside Granada. The rooms have been dug out of the soft rock. As the air reaches the newly exposed rock it hardens, and you have a house, with the chimney poking up thru the earth, with windows to the front, and a few shafts in the roof to the ground above. It is a cheap home, cool in summer, warm in winter, and it is easy to expand back into the rock. I walk across the roof, and look at the chimney. I look up at the sky. This house should not be a modern gimick. This house sits within a culture. You should be able to sit up on the roof. But there is something more. These homes are part of a folklore. I sit with my back against the chimney and start to recite the Ballad of the Sleepwalker written by Lorca seventy years ago. I speak louder and louder as I get into the poem. I translated it back in the sixties, and can remember most of the poem. I reach the part where the two men go up onto the balconies of the moon. They are standing on the roof of the house. I suddenly stop and a soft voice behind me carries on the lines of the poem. He reaches the end of the stanza. Green, lo i love you green.
Big frosty stars come with the fish of darkness that opens the road of dawn. The fig tree rubs its belly with a rasp of branches, and the mountain, a filching cat, bristles its angry spikes. The two friends go up to the high balconies leaving a trail of blood, and a trail of tears. Tiny tinfoil lanterns trembled on the rooftops. He reaches the end of the stanza, and pauses. Without turning round I start the next stanza, and then I reach the haunting refrain. We both speak it very softly together. Verde, que te quierro verde
verde viento, verde ramos el barco sobre la mar Y el caballo sobre la montaña. Green, lo i love you green; green wind, green branches; the ship on the sea and the horse on the mountain. It is only then that I turn round and smile. I get up, shrug my shoulders, and we walk down to a cafe and drink coffee and remember the old days, and look at the moon and remember the smuggler with his dreams that cannot be fulfilled. ******
I am in the car park at the Alhambra. I look around. There are coaches everywhere, and concrete. There are fences and offices, and guards with guns. Somewhere may be an Alhambra, but it isn't here. This is a shop; a very modern shop; and there are no gardens of Spain here. They were scrubbed, gift-wrapped, and destroyed years ago. But although Spain has gradually eroded into something European, maybe the Spaniards are still here, if only I could find them. |
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