Everyone becomes obsessed by something. For Elvira, the Russian/Estonian writer and translator, it was an apartment overlooking the sea at the far end of Mojácar Playa. She had decided, at the end of the first week of the residency, to move here. There was little work for her as a translator of Estonian literature after the collapse of the Soviet Union. She felt, living in her apartment in Tallin, that she had become unconnected from things, a stranger in her own country. “Estonians, they do not want me to translate. There is no more work,” she would say, her chin in the air, her beauty startling. From then on, she could talk of nothing other than housing options in Mojácar—an apartment in the English end, a flat in the centre of town, the marina that might be built on the west end of the beach. We were even coaxed into visiting one with her. (which we then tried to figure how to diplomatically talk her out of buying). It was like the ultimate intimacy to come out of a residency experience. People weren’t getting married—someone was actually going to continue living here! We lived vicariously, and fretfully, through her real estate adventures.
For others, quite a few of us, it was the mountain. Mojácar Vieja, which towered above the foundation. Reputedly the old site of the town, it is covered in pottery fragments from the Romans, the Visigoths, the Moors, the Spanish. They abandoned it when the town overgrew its site. Fragments of walls, terraced gardens and mortar still remain. The whole thing is an archaeological site. It can be reached from the almond tree fields at the back of the house, where, despite drought, the earth was always damp and soft. The trees began blooming in earnest a week before we left. Almond entering the windows.
Francis, who lives in Northern Nigeria, fantasized about climbing it, and to our knowledge, never did. His discomfort with heights. Even a road with small cliff on one side could make him swoon. Kåre used it as solace and mini-gym, climbing to the top to read for hours. Jill, though she only made it halfway up, used to jog around a field at its base. ‘Trotting’, she called it, which we loved.
Hephzibah and I became obsessed with the mountain itself, and specifically, the almond, carved, in the Roman era, into its peak. Divesting it of its peak. Turning peak into flat top, into cistern, lined with rocks, mortar and plaster, creating an almond shaped hollow at the top—peak turned inside out, peak become basin, cradle. The whole town, as it was, lived off the water that was saved in the cistern. Hephzibah photographed the entire mountain, from every angle that she could walk to, and then painted each view. Stones from the top became tracings, mirroring each view, until a virtual compass of portraits grew in her studio. I wrote about her process, wrote about the almond itself, wrote about the day she stretched string from one end of the peak to the other, and then again at the radius, until a horizonal cross was made, from which she hung stones, finding, in a way, the centre of the mountain. The stones and the string were still there when we left. Something about its strange openness found its way into almost every poem I wrote in January.
Francis said he was going to climb the mountain on the last day, when he would be the last one remaining at the Foundation until his 7pm bus to Madrid. He would have found small piles of pottery, a kind of compass of stone, a metronome made of string, and stone piled high at the edge of the almond, where one former resident climbed down inside to paint a picture of the inner walls and was caught up for hours.
Oh, and Elvira decided in the end to rent an apartment for six months before committing to a purchase. Though it is a beautiful place, we northerns/westerners all breathed collective sighs of relief.
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