Repasando el pasado. Los higos chumbos
Well, I don't know if what I'm doing is reviewing, rethinking, or re-ironing the past.
Whatever I'm doing, my earliest memories are from when I was three years old. I have no memories before that. And those earliest memories are linked to Felanitx and Son Sard de Cas Concos; they're not linked to Palma (my earliest memories of Palma are from when I was already four), despite having been born in our house in Palma. As for people, my earliest memories are of my grandfather (in our house, we were taught to call our maternal godparents "grandparents" and our paternal godparents "godparents"), my mother's younger sister and her boyfriend, and a cousin of my father's who was a Trinitarian nun in Felanitx, not my parents, as it might seem. And I remember these early memories with such vividness that it seems as if they happened just yesterday (the truth is, they happened more than 75 years ago).
I remember my early childhood as if I were living in my maternal godparents' ancestral home on Calle Nueva in Felanitx, and not in our house in Palma (although I've been told that, as I said before, it's here, in our house, where I was born). From Felanitx, we went to Son Sard very often, and sometimes we even stayed overnight. Son Sard was a large estate with several buildings: the small apartment where the family lived when we visited, the owner's house where the owner and his wife lived, a house called "Casa Paula" that was unfurnished and used as a wheat store, the stables where the horses were kept, the hayloft, and above it, a building that housed a wood-fired oven and pigsties. The owner's house and "Casa Paula" (the wheat store) were in the middle, the small apartment on one side, and the stables and hayloft on the other. Between them were two paths that converged at the oven. Actually, the path between the houses and the stables continued, along the left side of the oven, towards other parts of the property. The path on the right passed between the small apartment and the houses, turned left, passed between the owner and the oven, and joined the path on the left.
Further back: The little apartment we used to go to
In the middle, from left to right: The Oven, Ca l'Amo, Ca Madò Paula
In the foreground: The hayloft and the stables
The farm's land was full of almond and carob trees, and fields of wheat. There was also a threshing floor. I remember many times during this period, wandering alone along the two paths, past the oven, the pigpens... I remember the animals that lived at Son Sard: horses, cows, sheep, which roamed the fields during the day and were gathered into baskets at night, pigs in the squalid places, chickens, and rabbits.
I also remember the men (several of them) beating the almonds with long poles, shaking the tops of the almond trees. The almonds fell onto tarpaulins they had laid on the ground beneath the trees. They collected the almonds and took them to a shelling machine. They poured them in from the top, and most of the almonds came out shelled from the front. Some came out poorly shelled or with part of the skin still attached. These unshelled almonds were taken to a table where a group of women shelled them by hand.
On the left: Almonds being beaten with sticks. On the right: Women peeling almonds by hand that were poorly peeled by the machine. In the background, in the center, the almond peeling machine.
But what I remember most is that, at the time, the master would pick prickly pears, put them in a bucket, and lower it down to the fresh water of a well (in Son Sard there were two or three cisterns of clean, clear, and fresh water, and a well with fresh, clean water, but it wasn't suitable for drinking). I couldn't understand why the prickly pears didn't float out of the bucket, considering that the bucket was submerged and uncovered. The next morning, after soaking overnight in the very fresh water, the master would take out the bucket and the prickly pears and go to a dung heap where he would peel them. First one side, then the other, then he would make a crosswise cut in the skin, open the skin on both sides of the cut, and in the middle there was the perfectly peeled prickly pear. Then, with a fork, he would pierce it and put it on the large plate, and he would do this again and again until the plate was full. When he had finished this task, he carried the plate full of fresh, peeled prickly pears to the apartment and left the plate behind the right-hand leaf of the door.
The small apartment and the door through which we went up and down to/from the house (number 92) and behind the right leaf where the master left the plate full of fresh and well-peeled prickly pears.
I remember one day I woke up early, before the godparents had finished their sleep, someone dressed me, possibly put a smock over me, and sent me for a walk around the paths, fields, the threshing floor... of Son Sard, warning me, as always, not to go near the holes. When I went down the stairs and reached the last step, I reached that plate of peeled prickly pears, possibly my favorite fruit. I couldn't resist taking one and savoring it with relish—so good, so fresh… While I was finishing it, I already knew I was going to take another, but I told myself, "I'll have one more, but only one more." Sure enough, I took another, but I didn't keep to the "one and no more" rule. So I took and ate the fourth. When I finished the fourth, I looked at the plate and said to myself, "Well, it's clear some prickly pears have been removed, so I'm bound to get in trouble. I might as well eat them all," which I did, leaving the plate completely empty. I don't remember if I was scolded or not, or if it was a lot or a little, or if the prickly pears agreed with me (I think they agreed with me very well). I also don't remember if I had gone to Son Sard with my mother and godparents. If it was just with the godparents,... I only remember the pleasure of eating the figs and the reasoning I used to justify taking and eating the next one, and I also remember that completely empty deep plate.
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