Nothing Lasts Forever Anymore

GOOD NEWS

It began, at least, like any other day. The sun had not yet risen above the peaks of the Sierra Nevada, and only the white light from the moon and stars shone down on the little cortijo. The cock had already been crowing for an hour or so, and the crickets in the olive trees were chirping back and forth to one another.

Aurelio finished milking the two goats, and now he carried the milk in an old pail down the narrow pathway to the house. The rest of the family was still sleeping, and as he did every morning, so as not to wake them, the old man quietly put the pail down on the wooden table in the kitchen, turned and went back outside.

It was cool still, and he stopped just outside the door to make sure that the top button of his sweater was fastened. Then he walked back up the little pathway, past the barn and the chicken coop and the cages where the pigeons and rabbits were kept, until he came to the end of an old dry-stone wall. This wall had been built by Aurelio’s grandfather nearly a hundred years before, and had at last, just recently, begun to crumble. The old man and his son, Juanma, knew that if they didn’t mend it soon whole sections of the wall would be in danger of collapsing, and there had been plenty of talk of getting to it for some time. But as always there was more work on the cortijo than they and Concha, Juanma’s wife, were able to handle, and so the wall for the time being had had to wait.

Aurelio turned now and left the path. Stepping carefully so as not to trip on the rubble, he made his way along the wall until he came to a spot where it was still fairly sturdy, and where the stones along the top were relatively smooth. Then he stopped. He pulled a little piece of cardboard from his rear pocket, unfolded it, laid it flat across the smoothest stone and sat. It was from this spot every morning that the old man loved to watch the sun rise. He shifted his weight around a bit until he found the most comfortable position, and crossed his arms to shield himself from the morning chill. Then he simply sat there, hardly moving, waiting for the sun.

In front of him, stretching down the hill and toward the sea, was the family’s small olive orchard. As if in some sort of primordial challenge to the light from the moon and stars, each tree cast a long dark shadow onto the ground as if it were a kind of gauntlet. Aurelio’s own shadow, meanwhile, fell behind him onto the other side of the wall where it skirted the edge of the family’s little vineyard. It was from this vineyard that Aurelio and Juanma produced their vino del terreno, an unfortified, sherry-like wine of which the old man in particular was very proud.

Further up the hill, just beyond the vineyard, were three terraced rows of, respectively, avocado, lemon and blood-orange trees, while above and to the right of these stood the family’s small almond grove. Altogether they were able to raise nearly everything they needed to survive. And what they couldn’t provide for themselves, they bought with the money they earned by selling some of their olives, and most of their almonds, to the little market stalls in the nearby town of La Herradura.

For some time, as Aurelio sat there thinking, nearly everything in sight appeared to be one or another shade of blue. From the blackish blue of the Sierra Nevada silhouetted in the distance, to the pale blue of the whitewashed walls of the cortijo. Beyond the cortijo at the bottom of the hill the Mediterranean sea, the darkest blue of all, stretched out from the shore to the horizon, while in the distance the lighthouse across the bay at Torrenueva shot forth its intermittent beacon. A light from a small fishing boat would sometimes also pierce the darkness and, as if thrown by the hand of an unseen child, come skipping across the water like a stone.

Gradually at last one by one the stars began to disappear, the moon began to fade, and as if to take their place a wide array of colors began to spread out across the scene. The tops of the olive trees at first became a silvery gray, and then almost imperceptibly a muted green, while a fast-growing band of yellow and orange light appeared above the horizon. The night sky faded. It became pale, as here and there a small white cloud, already in the sun, turned to coral pink. Finally Aurelio could make out the red clay tiles on the roofs of the house and barn, and the red of the soil beneath his feet.

The air was beginning to get warmer now, and as it warmed the smell of wild thyme that grew along the wall and on the terraced slope above the vineyard grew stronger. It was a smell that always took the old man back to his childhood. As a young boy he had often helped his mother gather wild thyme in the nearby hills. Aurelio breathed in deeply now, closing his eyes as if with eyes closed he could see the past more clearly.

He could see his mother, young and beautiful, clutching her apron and laughing over her shoulder as she would race him along the pathway to the very spot on the wall where he now sat. There they would both pause, catching their breaths before racing the final leg to the house. Sometimes he would win, though years later he realized that was only when she let him, for by the time his legs were long enough, and he was strong enough to win on his own, he was no longer spending his days helping his mother gather herbs. By then his very strength had led to other more strenuous chores, such as helping his father with the mule, or trimming dead branches from the olive trees.

As Aurelio’s mind wandered back to the present, he noticed that the crickets in the olive trees had stopped their chirping, and in their stead now a variety of birds had begun to sing. The old man smiled to himself. For many, he realized, the day was just beginning. Meanwhile, from the bottom of the hill, as always, came the constant sound of the surf, as each wave wore away at the rocks along the shore, grain by grain by grain of sand, as if the sea was little more than a mighty hourglass.

Suddenly, as if in a violent dream there was a shattering explosion in the distance, followed by the roar of an engine. The birds stopped singing. Instinctively Aurelio’s eyes shot open. His head jerked a little to the right as he looked out over the tops of the olive trees in the direction from which the noise had come. There he could see not far away, jutting out into the sea, a large hill called the Punta de la Mona.

For as long as Aurelio could remember, that hill had been called the Punta de la Concepcion. However some years earlier, for reasons the old man did not understand, the name had been changed. And now the hill itself had also changed. To be sure, familiar rows of ancient olive and Cypress trees still rose along the crest, and giant boulders, interspersed with prickly pear cacti with their sweet fruit, still dotted the hillside. Also the stone watchtower that had been built in the sixteenth century was still there, looming over it all. Only now, beginning just below the tower and stretching down the side of the hill to the edge of the sea, and even beyond the edge of the sea, was the site of a major urbanization development. A large crane, taller even than the tallest Cypress tree, stood at the center of a sprawling complex. There were other machines, and great pipes and coils of cable everywhere.

The sun was beginning to rise above the mountains now, and already scores of men in blue overalls were milling about like ants on an anthill. About a dozen of them were scrambling through the cloud of dust that hung over the spot they had just dynamited. Close by, another group of men was clustered around a great yellow bulldozer. One of those men had climbed up onto the bulldozer and it was this that, following the blast of the explosion, had sputtered and was now roaring. The noise bounced off the rocks as the echoes seemed to come from all directions.

Aurelio’s eyes were still good despite his age, and he could see that the first group of men was preparing to detonate a second charge. Before the day was over, he knew, they would set off many such explosions. They had begun construction only the year before, and each day since Aurelio had been amazed at the speed with which they were able to build. It was as if time itself had somehow yielded to them.

He hadn’t minded the development at first. It had been interesting, and even fun at times, to watch them dynamite the side of the hill, level and then clear it, pour their cement foundations, bring in electricity, water, sewage pipes and all the rest of it. One by one houses and apartments, like so many crops in the field, sprang up from the ground. But then one day the old man noticed something that upset him.

For as long as he could remember, Aurelio had know not a silence per se, because there had always been the sounds of the sea below, and the wind in the trees above, but rather a sort of calm that only now and then had been broken by a noise: a seagull squawking, a mule braying, or his own family going about the business of their day. But since they had begun constructing the urbanization, during days there was only noise that now and then was interrupted by a calm. Aurelio called this the “new calm,” because even when the workmen were not working, at nights, during their midday breaks or on Sundays, he would find himself thinking of the noise, remembering it, and wondering when it would return. It was then, when the...