Aloe Foulcet

The Rambla of Tabernas. Part 3

Returning to southern Spain again, for one last visit in the desert of Tabernas. Having left Phil’s house we make our way across the desert to visit his friend Foulcet.

Part 3

It’s a short walk, on ground as flat as sieved sand, and before long, a wooden cabin comes into view. A man stands in the open ground with a brown horse beside him. He sees us and starts waving his sun hat in the air, calling out with a hoarse roar tinged with laughter in the hot, seething air.

“Ooolala, Phil, I’m happy to see you. I can’t do it anymore; that damn horse won’t move.”

He turns to the poor animal, its head hanging low in a look of unruly disinterest. There’s a rusted plough attached to him, its metal parts resting lifelessly against the hard soil. Foulcet is looking at the horse as though he’s disappointed in every expectation.

“I give up! I can’t get the idiot to do the last part.” His battered hat is back on his head, comically misplaced, as if barely his. He fishes a packet of cigarettes from his breast pocket and shakes one out. In one movement, he swings toward me, takes both my hands in his and presses them, then turns to the horse and screams, throwing his hands in the air again. The horse is going nowhere. “Phil, please do something.”

Foulcet’s face and legs are baked dark brown, as if he’s just stepped out of the Australian outback. His accent places him as Dutch, and he mixes English, Spanish, and his own language in random outbursts.

Phil steps in to help. He takes the rope, holds it close to the horse’s chin, and tugs once. The horse lets out a low groan. He pulls again, more gently, pats its neck with his other hand, and whispers into its ear.

“Ah, Phil, si, do your magic!” Foulcet says.

The horse sways its head a few times and steps forward. Foulcet springs to life, grabs the handles of the plough, and rocks it into position. “Wait, Foulcet, wait, have patience,” Phil urges, but Foulcet is already rocking back and forth on his feet, willing the horse to move. Eventually, it does, taking one slow, aching step forward. “Fantastico, Phil!” Foulcet screams. The plough begins cutting the last stretch of ground, the last arc of the circle.

They work together: Foulcet roaring and howling, Phil quiet at the front, whispering to the horse, letting any tension drop from the rope around its neck, and allowing the horse to choose the pace. They reach the end of the line, and Foulcet explodes in celebration, dropping the plough handles to the ground and giving Phil a great hug and a slap on the back. He hugs me as well, though I’d only stood aside and watched.

“Venga!, let’s have a drink,” he announces.

He leads us to the side of his cabin. Something is brewing outside. Three demi-johns are propped up on a wooden bench in the shade, and one has a tap. He takes three glasses from a tray, opens a small plastic chest containing ice, and lets a few cubes fall inside each glass. “I don’t live without ice,” Foulcet says. Absorbed in this ritual, he crouches over the glasses. “Phil,” he says, “I have a good feeling about this year’s harvest.” He fills them, then reaches out to a potted plant, plucks three tiny purple flowers, and drops one into each glass. With each passing moment, I lose the desire to drink this concoction, but then, with a smile that no heart could disappoint, Foulcet swirls around and hands us our glasses.

“To a successful harvest!” he says. It’s early afternoon, and this is clearly not his first drink of the day.

We clink our glasses and drink. It’s stronger than it looks. I feel as if I’ve been hit on the head with a lump of wood. My eyes close reflexively from the shock of fiery alcohol hitting the back of my throat as I try to steady myself. It sinks to my stomach, and I grasp my stool with one hand.

Foulcet roars with laughter, and Phil takes another sip. “Good, eh?” he says to me.

Foulcet continues talking, incessantly, like a cacophony of morning birds. His voice rises and falls with his thick Dutch accent; some words we catch, others drift away ungrasped. Yet there’s something endearing about his enthusiasm and acute madness. I struggle to keep up. He’s the antithesis of Phil, who speaks slowly and measuredly, choosing his words and letting them ease out, like giving slack to a line.

Foulcet pours himself and Phil a second drink, and I hide my glass between my knees, willing him not to fill it again. He’s in his stride now, talking energetically. “Once a year, I admit myself to a psychiatric unit just to have a rest,” he says. “It’s great; they feed you; it’s comfortable; they give you drugs.” Phil makes no comment on this. He’s heard it before, and a brief moment later, he confirms that it’s true. I consider my own sanity again and wonder how we might measure it, and to what benchmark.

I ask Foulcet about the land he’s ploughing.

“I’m planting an aloe vera farm,” he announces, as if it’s an idea to rank with the greatest ever conceived. “I met a beautiful African woman last year. She’s a real woman. She’s coming here in a few weeks to run the farm. I told her to bring all the women she wanted! I want to fill this place with women.” He laughs again. Phil raises his eyebrows and sips his drink.

“Are you looking to buy land here? Because I know some is for sale,” Foulcet asks.

That question again. I hesitate this time, considering my answer. Foulcet watches me expectantly.

“He’s just visiting,” Phil answers. “Oh,” says Foulcet, looking dejected.

My glass is refilled for a second time, and I worry I’m nearing the point of not being able to walk. Foulcet’s wildness is unsettling. My breath is stuck in my upper chest, and my nerves swim in more alcohol with each passing minute. He is self-declared mad, celebrating the fact, as if it’s the sanest way to live out here in the desert. Staying the night doesn’t feel like a good option, so I begin to consider how to say my goodbyes. I feel rudderless in the moment, while Foulcet darts around the back of the cabin, dragging out books on farming for Phil to look at.

“I need to go now,” I hear myself saying.

Foulcet pours me one last drink and drops a book in my lap. “Just look at this,” he says. Both men are talking about farming and planting aloe vera as I leaf through a book on African agriculture. I’ve no idea why he gave it to me. The book is old, faded, full of black-and-white photos showing people in fields, surrounded by ancient farming equipment. Little slips of paper where Foulcet has made notes dot the pages.

“You know what you need to do?” Foulcet says, pausing to make sure I’m listening.

“Let him be,” says Phil, picking up on my discomfort and increasing drunkenness, but Foulcet is undeterred.

“No, Phil, listen,” he insists. “This is good.” He turns to me again, face serious, smile gone. He sets his drink down, speaking more calmly now, relaxed. “What you need to do is hire a horse for three days and take the trip over the Sierra Alhamillas to Cabo de Gato. But before you go, you should eat some peyote, the sacred cactus. Then you’ll see there is only one hero in your life, and that’s yourself.”

Both men look at me, glasses of their strange blue drink in hand, the smell of alcohol thick in the air.

“Well,” says Phil, breaking the silence, “it certainly opened my eyes.”

“Yes!” says Foulcet, “It did, it did! I like to do that trip at least once a year.”

They chatter on and I distract myself with leafing through the book on my lap. I’ve put my glass of blue liquid aside, neither man notices, and transfer to sipping from my water bottle. There is offers to stay for food, to stay the night, to join the farm enterprise and work with Foulcet for possibly the rest of my life, but I eventually stand up and announce that I need to start walking back to town.

The men walk me out into the open ground. Foulcet places both hands on my shoulders, turns me 180 degrees, and points into the distance. “Do you see that distant peak? Just walk toward that.” “And”, he says, looking me in the eye again “If you ever want to hire a horse and make that trip, I know the man to ask!”

I say my goodbyes and depart. I’m alone again with the sounds of the desert. Alone with my own thoughts, with the rush of memories of the day that had just passed - of carving up a goat with Lawrence, visiting Phil’s hidden home and shackling myself to Foulcet’s deranged mind for an hour.

Just another day in the desert I conclude, and start walking home to I don’t know where.

The End

Before I go, I’m sure many of you saw the headlines of floods in Spain. I messaged my friend in Almeria to see if all was OK. Thankfully the valley I lived in their was spared, the area was shielded by the Filabres mountains in the south and the Alpujarras in the southeast. Not so Valencia, where 491 litres per square metre fell, that’s close to half a tonne of water per square metre of area. Catastrophic. Equally incredible were the images of hail stones the size of golf balls breaking car windows and denting the bodywork.

Stay safe and warm this Winter where ever you may be.

Until next time