Read Online A Year in the World by Frances Mayes - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Frances Mayes
Tags: Biography
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be taken to a smaller, private dining room, where we dine happily on soup, venison stew, and orange cake.
At breakfast they’re nowhere in sight. We’re served tortilla-sized pastries wrapped in waxed paper, stamped in red with the name Ines Rosales from nearby Castilleja de la Cuesta. She has made this from wheat, olive oil, essence of anise, and other ingredients the
Oxford Spanish Dictionary
did not see fit to include:
matalahúga
and
ajonjolí
, which I think means “sesame.” Nice words to say aloud. The thick coffee (“undrinkable,” Ed says) with the aromatic pastry takes me with a Proustian jolt back to Majorca, where my friends Susan and Shera and I rented a house one summer and walked all over the island, with the sea wind stirring the perfumes of shrubs along the coast.
Walking all over Sevilla gave us a sense of intimacy with the city; driving in Andalucía gives us a broader sense of place and of how the larger landscape psychologically imprints those who live here.
Vega
—the wide sky, the home, home on the range, the big sun slipping under the horizon, pulling down a profound darkness. We’ve found local people cordial but aloof. Is it the xenophobic fear of the stranger on horseback, or a remnant of Franco’s cramped society? Vast, vast, endless olive groves carpeted with yellow oxalis puzzle Ed. Where are the houses? The land rolls on, without a dot of human habitation, only those spirits, the majestic, twisted, and sparkling olive trees. Even in January workers are beating the limbs, shaking the trunks with machines, and gathering the fallen drupes from the nets. In the first village we stop to look at Moorish walls and a herd of goats crossing a bridge. The owner of a dusty gift shop tells us that workers commute to the groves and always have. Unlike the Italian system, with a family share-cropping the amount of land they can handle, these seemingly infinite groves are owned by absent landlords but are managed and worked by local teams. Although Spain produces excellent olive oil, much of its exported oil has suffered ruination from bad processing. I’ve opened some wretched bottles, even when I rented the house on Majorca—thin and tainted with harsh industrial aftertastes. Fine artisan oils exist, if you search. I wish they didn’t beat the trees, but if you own a million, something other than the slow human hand will have to get those olives to the mill.
The open road—almond and plum blossoms are beginning to shake, rattle, and roll. We’re heading to Italica, a Roman city settled near the Guadalquiver when the river’s course flowed nearer. Hadrian and Trajan were born here. Again, the geography unfolds naturally. A quick orientation, and it is easy to visualize the town flourishing in the second century B.C. on streets wider than Sevilla’s. Though only mosaic floors and foundations remain, the reconstructed city rises easily in the imagination, much more so than at all the other hundreds of archaeological sites I’ve tramped across. We have Italica almost to ourselves, that bonus of travelling in January. The mosaics, mostly in black and white marble, lie intact. Why do we like to walk ancient streets? Curiosity, contemplation, for the surprise of history. These Romans paved their floors with tromp l’oeil squares that become stars. I’m ahead of Ed and call back, “Here’s Medusa surrounded by geometric swastikas.”
“Too bad Hitler ruined that design forever. Here’s a scene for you—The House of the Birds.” Bordered squares divide the floor. Each of the thirty-two depicts a different bird. We find Greek key borders, Bacchus, astrological figures, the days of the week mosaic, then the House of Neptune with its reminder of the town’s founder, Publius Cornelius Scipio. He’s better known to us as Scipio Africanus for his sojourns in Africa, where he defeated Hannibal’s Carthaginians and caused Spain to be awarded to the Romans.
Italica, the first Roman town in
At breakfast they’re nowhere in sight. We’re served tortilla-sized pastries wrapped in waxed paper, stamped in red with the name Ines Rosales from nearby Castilleja de la Cuesta. She has made this from wheat, olive oil, essence of anise, and other ingredients the
Oxford Spanish Dictionary
did not see fit to include:
matalahúga
and
ajonjolí
, which I think means “sesame.” Nice words to say aloud. The thick coffee (“undrinkable,” Ed says) with the aromatic pastry takes me with a Proustian jolt back to Majorca, where my friends Susan and Shera and I rented a house one summer and walked all over the island, with the sea wind stirring the perfumes of shrubs along the coast.
Walking all over Sevilla gave us a sense of intimacy with the city; driving in Andalucía gives us a broader sense of place and of how the larger landscape psychologically imprints those who live here.
Vega
—the wide sky, the home, home on the range, the big sun slipping under the horizon, pulling down a profound darkness. We’ve found local people cordial but aloof. Is it the xenophobic fear of the stranger on horseback, or a remnant of Franco’s cramped society? Vast, vast, endless olive groves carpeted with yellow oxalis puzzle Ed. Where are the houses? The land rolls on, without a dot of human habitation, only those spirits, the majestic, twisted, and sparkling olive trees. Even in January workers are beating the limbs, shaking the trunks with machines, and gathering the fallen drupes from the nets. In the first village we stop to look at Moorish walls and a herd of goats crossing a bridge. The owner of a dusty gift shop tells us that workers commute to the groves and always have. Unlike the Italian system, with a family share-cropping the amount of land they can handle, these seemingly infinite groves are owned by absent landlords but are managed and worked by local teams. Although Spain produces excellent olive oil, much of its exported oil has suffered ruination from bad processing. I’ve opened some wretched bottles, even when I rented the house on Majorca—thin and tainted with harsh industrial aftertastes. Fine artisan oils exist, if you search. I wish they didn’t beat the trees, but if you own a million, something other than the slow human hand will have to get those olives to the mill.
The open road—almond and plum blossoms are beginning to shake, rattle, and roll. We’re heading to Italica, a Roman city settled near the Guadalquiver when the river’s course flowed nearer. Hadrian and Trajan were born here. Again, the geography unfolds naturally. A quick orientation, and it is easy to visualize the town flourishing in the second century B.C. on streets wider than Sevilla’s. Though only mosaic floors and foundations remain, the reconstructed city rises easily in the imagination, much more so than at all the other hundreds of archaeological sites I’ve tramped across. We have Italica almost to ourselves, that bonus of travelling in January. The mosaics, mostly in black and white marble, lie intact. Why do we like to walk ancient streets? Curiosity, contemplation, for the surprise of history. These Romans paved their floors with tromp l’oeil squares that become stars. I’m ahead of Ed and call back, “Here’s Medusa surrounded by geometric swastikas.”
“Too bad Hitler ruined that design forever. Here’s a scene for you—The House of the Birds.” Bordered squares divide the floor. Each of the thirty-two depicts a different bird. We find Greek key borders, Bacchus, astrological figures, the days of the week mosaic, then the House of Neptune with its reminder of the town’s founder, Publius Cornelius Scipio. He’s better known to us as Scipio Africanus for his sojourns in Africa, where he defeated Hannibal’s Carthaginians and caused Spain to be awarded to the Romans.
Italica, the first Roman town in
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