Tomorrow is the next day

THREE

 

In February I already had a good feel for the field. It is a rectangular plot but with more width underneath. The house is also rectangular, with a hipped roof, one floor and with a folded roof. That's where it all happened. Everything also with the drowning and the tightness of one meter eighty by its highest part, where the crossbeam of the trestle. Then it has four rooms and a living room with a fireplace of red refractory tiles. Everything has a formica stitch and in old vanilla color. The furniture has held up well and hardly creaks when you sit down or open a cupboard. There is a lot of knick-knack decor. My mother says that when you have another house on the beach or wherever, eventually it ends up being a storage room, and all the mortar that is left over from the apartment, serves for any corner or wall of the second one.

The kitchen is also spacious and apparent. With a folding table and two chairs as soon as you enter. They imitate in green a wood with a very long and tight grain. Pedro left it very clean; no plates or glasses in the sink. And everything in order, hung or put away. It is an L of combined ochre and sienna tiles, with two windows, a larger one facing the orchard area and a smaller one at the back. Both with pink tulle curtains, gathered with cord clamps. And above the bandos, also pink, covering the drawer of the blinds. Pedro's mother has two framed pictures next to the silversmith; one is of John Paul II with a white trevira mitre and the two infulas in old gold, and the other, a poster of Felipe Gonzalez from the elections of 1982, with a diagonal look to the sky.

Pedro introduced me to several neighbors the same day we came. There are no inhabited fields bordering his property. Not even on weekends, not even by grandchildren or nephews for birthdays or Christmas Eve. Neither the ones across the street nor the ones next to it. The first one we visited was El Zorruno. Pedro told me that everyone told him El Zorruno but I didn't know why. The lane takes two jumps after the two fat pines and then takes a curve. From the curve to the gate of the pitas it's the El Zorruno.

• And how much are you leaving for?
• For the time being it will be two years.
• And your mother? With your brother?
• Yes, she is with him. She's fine. She has her things, you know, but fine. She doesn't want a lot of fuss since my father, but fine.
• Well, we are here, son, for whatever you need. I don't come every day, but whatever you need, if it's in my hands....
• Thank you -I looked at Pedro and the old man and shook his hand as if in a hurry-, I say the same to him. I'll come when I can. This man has left me this job in the orchard," Pedro and I laughed, "and let's see how it goes.
• Good. That's not much of a science. Dig the purslane and the four grasses that come up and keep an eye out for them. And dig out the slugs and snails when they arrive.
• Yes, let's see if we can get a stall -I tried to laugh, but I only got a sluggish throat clearing and neither Pedro nor El Zorruno followed me.
• Well, let's go on, Aurelio. I want to show Samu about Jacinto.
• Well, with God -El Zorruno he turned slowly like an old dog and picked something out of a window.Jacinto's camp is bigger than the others. All well managed and clean. Above, he has several rows of peach trees with a pruning that is almost the same. Then, next to the pool, the furrows start halfway to the bottom. Pedro wanted to introduce me to Jacinto because of the seedlings. Now it is what gives him his livelihood. He has some of his pension but very little. When he had his daughters, some scumbag from a bank gave him a loan with a usury that left him fried. Before it was a salary and he managed to pay it, but now it's a pension and he can't make ends meet. He sells you by the bunch depending on what it is. If they are tomatoes you get less than if they are chives, but the price is always the same. The only thing he charges you more for is the trees. He has them in polystyrene pots on low tables in the back, next to the fence. If you want one, or three or twenty, he takes them out carefully and wraps them in wet newspaper.
• Jacinto has the whole of the sunniest part of the field lined with seedbeds of everything. Like small soccer fields; eight rows with five beds each. All of them with a hooked stake in each corner and a net on top. The ground is always wet. You don't sink in and it's not mud, it's the perfect wetness, like a big carpet of moss. It has a rubber at the beginning. The water comes to him by pressure from the pool, and next to the rubber a donkey of sheaf with two buckets inside. With a very perforated can of the kilo can, he puts the water in the buckets and waters. It is like a slow rain.
• Jacinto is also one of the first neighbors; very thin and very wrinkled. Pedro told me that he is very good and very unhappy. That his two daughters came out sluts and got hooked on him. First the older one and then the younger one. The married couple lost two premises and the house in Aljaraque paying for the girls' therapies and relapses. Half dead of grief and ruined they came to the country. The eldest girl was left to fend for herself in Seville. Then it was the girl's turn; she came back with no strength at all and with a hepatitis of the signed and delivered kind. Pedro told me that she spent three or four months in the Juan Ramón Jiménez Hospital and that she was ready. He also told me that less than three years ago his wife was killed driving on the old road to Cartaya.
• Jacinto's is almost a kilometer away from Jacinto's. El Zorruno. Before arriving, Pedro saw an open gate in a field to the left of the lane. It is a medium-sized house with a roof, whitewashed and with exposed stones in the corners imitating a mountain building. To its right is a cork oak with a huge crown and a cork that has never been removed. Pedro confidently walked in and greeted a girl with a baby. They kissed and talked about parents and siblings and how long it had been since they had seen each other. Then they pulled out their phones and seemed to change their numbers. Before saying goodbye, Pedro pointed at me and the girl raised her hand to wave at me. I did the same.

Photographers: Stefano Majno