EXCERPT FROM SARA’S JOURNALFebruary 5, 1999
Huerta Santa Maria
Near Galaroza
Today is our last day at Santa Maria. I awake to the familiar
sound of Javier below my window, working. He is cutting back a large tree, and digging
holes for new ones.
It is the brightest and the hottest. February is warmer than January,
we can see this already. The sky is that summer cobalt, the kind that makes you forget
there was ever a winter.
Chucha and I, we lie beside the small swimming pool that floats with a
winter’s ecosystem (no sheep remnants). We lie quietly together there, for an hour or
so.
Rich remains in the greenhouse for the better part of the morning. He
sits in the chair that Bob found, at the table near the thermometer. Thirty degrees
Celsius.
Charlie arrives. Javier gets down from a ladder and we pile into
Charlie’s little Renault. Valdelarcos is a village at the tail end of a snake at the
edge of a cliff. Valdelarcos has the best tapas around. Charlie takes the winding
road with exuberance. In the centre of the village there are two men standing. These men
are aware of the goings on in Valdelarcos. They tell us the bar is closed today and we
must go to Fuenteheridos.
Fuenteheridos is the village with the square and a phone booth. The
phone is the one we used to call Javier one month ago. We called Javier and he met us in
the square and took us to Santa Maria for the first time.
The bar is empty except for one table. At the table are two men,
obviously foreigners, but like most foreigners in the Sierra, they are long-timers with
tattered clothing and fluent Spanish. The first is an Englishman. His Spanish has the
twist of dandy English nobility. He is wearing an oxford shirt, brown corduroys and a
woolen tweed jacket. Over this he is wearing a second houndstooth jacket, extra tattered,
with holes in the sleeves. His ensemble looks as though it has been through a car wash, a
wind tunnel, and a steamroller, then dragged in the dust for a hundred kilometres. Charlie
tells me the Englishman is an artist and he has been wearing his outfit since the day he
came to the Sierra, which was many, many years ago.
The second man has the bluest eyes I have ever seen. I am captivated
until I regain ocular control and peruse the rest of him. He is grubbier than the first.
Charlie calls him "The Crazy German". He hair is a nest of tangles. He is young,
but his teeth are old. His hair-nest is wiry with salt and pepper. The men sit with a
small plate of shredded-and-fried-something.
It’s time to plant our trees. For me, Javier chooses a pomegranate
(Granada). Rich is a flowering peach.
"C’est la fin de les Canadiens".
Javier tells us to skip the formal goodbyes and instead to return at
anytime for a visit or comidas (lunch). We drive away with the feeling that he,
with his chapel, is one of the great people.
