Below the Bancal

…and Abuelo sold that good piece of land; “put the money on

the maquinista…build an olive press…”

 

i. Maquinista

 

Gonzal hasn’t planned to star in his own film; a maquinista,

a machine operator, isn’t prepared for the rigours of

 

method acting, but he finds he’s a natural; his Goya cheekbones

are the stuff of matinee idols, his aquiline nose, quintessential

 

machismo – the way he can hold a cigarette in one hand,

operating the machine with the other, narrowing

 

his eyes against the spiralling column of smoke as he admires

the glistening golden oil seeping through the cylinder,

 

a cascade that streams faster than honey from a comb, the Toledo

granite cones of the press setting off his pale indoor skin,

 

his black, black hair cropped close to his skull with the casual

sexiness of a young Dean Martin. His shirt sleeves

 

rolled up, reveal sinewy forearms as he peels the rich pulp

from the straw mats, stacks them, one-by-one,

 

but the hand-held camera skims too fast over his flat belly,

lean buttocks…

…dancing on the oil-soaked floor,

with a torero’s skating steps…

 

His screen debut was filmed just days before his maimed body

was pulled from under a tractor, bundled onto a stretcher,

 

carried down from the bancal. Years later, his widow will not

watch the film: prefers to remember him leaning

 

in the doorway of their kitchen, pouring a second glass of wine,

drinking deep, soaking the bread in his own virgin oil.

 

ii. La Viuda

 

The dawn chorus wakes up his widow as early as four

on summer mornings when her window is open wide

 

so she can breathe. Sometimes she misses the first

hesitant notes of the hungriest, which she knows

 

to be the smallest; birds, who like her smallest babies,

cannot store enough sustenance to hold them

 

through even the shortest nights. She remembers

how they’d wake with a sharp cry – ravenous,

 

but here, as soon as the birds broadcast their empty

bellies, the tractors start up: the roar

 

and belch of their diesel engines, the thrum

of their tires, basso profundo on the cobbled street,

 

blotting out the avian food song, the avian gossip,

as they start their daily run to the risky slopes

 

of the bancales. Too often she cannot find sleep

for remembering Gonzal – his tractor’s plunge

 

from the terraces that scale the hillsides in lazy

ripples, ready to topple the most macho men

 

            …like olive berries--trapped, crushed, coughed up

            in shiny, oily blood-- back to the soil…

 

She turns over in her bed to where the curve

of his naked back is not -- the spine outlined

 

in sweet dark hair – prays for a few more minutes

of blesséd rest, for the selective deafness

 

ear plugs have failed to provide, listens again

to the growl of the engines before she swings her feet

 

to the floor, pushes her greying hair off her face --

Ave María Purísima sin pecado concebida --

 

flicks the switch on her television, tunes in to its colour,

its volume, loud enough to drown out the street.