SO UP I GO to the chestnut ‘finca’, 50 yards max from our front door on the narrow lane. Three or four fine chestnut trees,towering over a little scrap of land with rocks and flattish terraces. There’s an old agricultural shed at one corner which we use as a garage. Only quite narrow vehicles need apply.
It’s been raining steadily ever since we got back from a working jaunt to Andalucía. The rain patters down all round. The mist is down, too. We are living in a cloud.
Then one morning the sun comes out and the world is gleaming. I’ll pick up a few chestnuts if the neighbours haven’t been there before me, I think. They should be dry enough. Or maybe Victor will have been up and secured the best of the harvest for his house and ours. Even though his horse can’t get up the steep steps to eat the grass, he feels a mysterious responsibility for this little patch of land. For which we are profoundly grateful.
Well, I can’t find any chestnuts worth bending down for – plenty of husks so somebody has had the bigger ones already. Then, as I go up a little gulley, I start to find clusters of fine, glossy nuts, half hidden in the grass, bursting out of their prickly husks. Wonderful nuts. I bend down to gather them one by one, into an unromantic plastic bag, and slowly become aware there are hornets in the air – one, three, one again, then five, suddenly. They are going in and out from what looks like a hole under a big root at the base of one of the trees. They are definitely taking an interest in me. Neutral so far, I’d say. But there’s a nest here for sure, perilous for children, animals – and adults. I pick up as many nuts as I dare and slip away down the steps into the lane.
Next afternoon the mist is back. Victor comes by with a sack of chestnuts, rain running down his nose even when he comes indoors.
‘These are yours’, he says.
He’s picked them up in our finca while we were away, accounting for the empty husks. He and his sister have their own supply and he doesn’t like chestnuts very much anyway, he says.
He’s the rough-spoken, one-armed horseman whose riding style we so much admire and he’s done this one-armed harvesting out of pure kindness.
We hang the sack over a railing in the garage-shed to keep off mice and rats.
‘And what about the hornets’ nest?’, he says. Victor always knows more about our various handkerchiefs of land than we do. This time I’m up to speed.
‘I’ve had a couple of go’s at them’, he says ‘but they are still in action’. Quite so.
‘Have you got any insecticide?’
I’m worried about indiscriminate slaughter – one day I’ll probably post a horrible story about local wolves, right here in Fuente Fría, back in the old days – but maybe it’s OK to kill the hornets, beautiful as they are. I bring up a canister of the indoors insecticide, which we have no qualms in using on house flies.
‘But you can’t use this in daylight’, I said. ‘They’ll come out and get you. You’ll have to wait till after dark’.
‘No’, says Victor, ‘it’s perfectly safe. They’ll be atontados, stupefied’.
But even so he wont let me up on to the terrace by the gulley where the nest is. I’d better stop at the bottom of the steps, on the road, he says, taking care of me as usual.
So there I stand, very stupid-feeling, while I watch Victor give the can a great shake, then dart in on the nest and open up with a burst. A cloud of gas around the tree base. He darts back again, almost dancing. It’s clear he can’t see the enemy too well – but I can. I’m looking up through the trees; against the sky I can see big specks zooming about, lots of them, not at all atontados.
Soon Avelino’s dad comes by, in a beret, rain running off his shoulders. We watch Victor speculatively, as if we were watching a war movie. He’s in and out, in and out, out and in again with the insecticide, like a man throwing hand grenades. He’s dancing, gesticulating, seemingly avoiding invisible foes by sheer speed.
Now another old man shows up, even older, very thin. We know him quite well, always ready with a long, incomprehensible story when we meet him up the lane. We always miss the point.
So Victor has an audience of three. Frankly, we watchers are a little nervous too, doubting our capacity to run for it fast enough. And it looks like Victor is beginning to feel he has pushed it far enough already. There are still hornets in the air, visible to us observers, when he comes down. ‘Well, that’s enough for today’, he says, handing me the can. And the four of us saunter away downhill as if our nerves have ben perfectly steady all along.
I’ll have to go back up again tomorrow.