In February, Pepe the gardener suddenly started to put in an appearance and began cutting down some of the smaller olive trees, some of which weren’t producing and some of which were. I didn’t understand the method of selecting trees for culling, but it made the olives easier for me to get hold of and I wouldn’t be there the following year to worry about the drop in olive production. I could now collect lots of juicy olives directly from the branches strewn over the ground where the tree had been felled. One Sunday he turned up with his extended family and they did more of their ‘heavy pruning,’ stopping briefly for a picnic at mid-day. They massacred the trees, cut the logs into chunks with a chain-saw and then carried off trailer-loads of wood. They were scrupulous about not leaving one piece of leña behind.
A few days later, I went to the back of the vast garden, to a part not visible from the house, thinking I would collect the olives from the ancient olive tree at the back; I hadn’t been there for a week or so and it had been windy, so I knew there would be plenty of olives on the ground. I was astonished to see that this ancient tree (it could have been 500 years old or more) had been completely chopped down and was now a metre-high stump; all of the wood had been taken away. I was furious. To think that there would now be no more olives from this beautiful ancient tree. I had heard it said that sometimes these ancient trees were transplanted to take to some wealthy person’s estate and could fetch prices of over £20,000. I didn’t know if that was true, but in any case it was a priceless tree. It would grow over time; maybe in a century’s time, it would be back to its former glory.
The next time we were in town we went in to report this to the letting agent, as we felt the owner had a right to know that their tree had been butchered. We spoke to the letting agent’s assistant, David. ‘Oh, that’s not a problem,’ was David’s response, ‘we’re aware that Pepe has been doing some pruning.’ ‘You don’t understand,’ I retorted, ‘you couldn’t call this pruning.’ ‘No, it’s not a problem,’ he insisted, ‘but thanks for letting us know.’ It wouldn’t be necessary to tell the owner. ‘Well, he’ll have a lot of wood now to sell,’ I added sarcastically, ‘but maybe the owners think it’s fair enough as they don’t pay him to cut the trees.’ ‘Who told you that?’ David asked. ‘Pepe did,’ I replied. ‘Well, it’s not true. He does get paid. In fact, he’s just left rather a hefty bill.’ It was a very lucrative double-whammy. I felt sorry for the owners who were being conned, with a man selling their wood (we’d even found him some other British customers) and charging them for the privilege of chopping down an ancient tree.
The conversation ended on quite a stroppy note as we spelt out how Pepe was running this racket and making fools out of the owners and the letting agents refused to see it as issue. We now had another set of people to ignore in the street. I wasn’t going to waste my energy on them. There was a real myopia, according to which one must never criticise the locals and the non-Spanish letting agents went along with this, although they should have known better and they should have reported Pepe’s activities to the owners, who were their clients, after all. It was a ridiculous, desperate attempt to fit in and be accepted. Well the Spanish in that town wouldn’t accept the foreigners in a thousand years. All they would ever do was take off them and the British were too dumb to see it. ‘Well, it’s their lookout,’ Adrian said to me as we walked out of the office. The owners would be lucky to have a garden left by the time they came over in March.
A week or so later, I heard voices in the garden. Two men – I thought they were gypsies – were busy chatting and collecting little sticks. ‘What are you doing?’ I said and without waiting for a reply, continued, ‘Every time I come into my garden, I see strange men.’ In the last couple of months there had been other young gypsies, a mule, countless dogs, a cow and a goatherd with about 50 goats. I said, ‘I’ve got two small children and I don’t want strange men in my garden.’ ‘No pasa nada,’ (it’s okay) they replied, ‘your children will be safe with us around.’ ‘Well, I’m not happy about it,’ I said, and then noticed that they were giggling; they seemed to find my accent and Spanish pronunciation amusing.
‘Oh,’ I said to them in Spanish, ‘how many languages do you speak, then?’ And then I said in English and in German, ‘Come on, how many languages do you speak? Ich spreche auch Deutsch.’ I knew they wouldn’t understand me; that was the point. I only just stopped short of demanding them to get out. What right did they have to be in my garden? Was it something that their ancestors had done for centuries? Was it a good thing for the garden? The goats had annoyed me; I thought they’d just eat the grass, but they’d chewed up all the olives on the ground and then spat them out! So, they were little ruined squashed things. They’d also emptied their bowels everywhere and it was hard to distinguish between their pellets and the olives. I started to feel both the people and their animals were taking the piss out of me. Maybe that’s how the Spanish saw us; as a soft touch, people whom they could do things to that they wouldn’t do to other Spaniards. Not being sure how things worked, I didn’t know if I was being paranoid or blindingly astute.
