“Little Head of Garlic”
A Castillian story about passion and work
“By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.” Genesis 3:19
My uncle Cándido worked on the fields of Castilla his entire life. He was a remarkable man. On a few occasions my parents would leave my brother and I to spend a weekend with him and my aunt. I remember him with his short-tail, black beret fit to his head, Basque-country style; fine-cut tobacco ready in his pocket and the rosé glass on the table. A cigarette always hung on his lower lip, even while he was recounting one of his stories. He was a Castillian Master, every one of his anecdotes was a step closer to enlightenment; you didn’t have to think about them. You just felt them. And instinctively knew they were relevant, natural and true.
Cándido was indeed a candid man, but never bitter or regretful about his hard life working the land. He was always telling jokes and stories about local people. He was a man of the land and his family ate by the sweat of his brow.
One night before going to bed, uncle Cándido lit another one of his hand-made cigarettes and with a mischievous look asked if we wanted to hear the story of “Cabecita de ajo” — Little head of garlic. Eagerly we waited.
On a hot summer day Cabecita was working tireless hours trying to finish the barley harvest on a particular piece of land. This was not his only property. He owned much more land and he had been harvesting non-stop for the last several days. So much had he worked that he hadn’t gone back home to see his family, rest or get a warm meal. He wouldn’t leave the fields until he finished the work.
It wasn’t the first time that Cabecita disappeared for days but this time the family grew worried about his well being. He was certainly a temperamental man and his wife and kids didn’t dare to interrupt him. They called on his best friend to check on him and see that nothing had happened.
Aurelio took his mule and cart and set off in the middle of the day. The heat was unbearable, the dry air cracking his skin. He found his friends’ mules lying under the trees near the well. Aurelio looked for the man and found him on the edge of the property rhythmically swinging the scythe. Like there was no tomorrow.
“Cabecita? Cabecitaaa? Aurelio belted out his name. “What?” came the reply. As predicted, Cabecita was annoyed by the interruption. Aurelio was undeterred. “What is going on with you? It has been days since you left home and we don’t know anything about you. Your family is worried sick.” With a good measure of Castillian sarcasm, his friend stopped only for a moment to say “What else would I be doing? I’m working! Isn’t it obvious?” Between the long trip, the heat and the scornful answer, Aurelio didn’t hold back. “Let me tell you something, my friend. While you are here killing yourself, your children are getting ready for the village fiestas. If you continue working like this, I am not sure you are going to last much longer. And when you kick the bucket your children will waste every last cent you broke your back for.” Cabecita had returned to working and without missing a beat, smirked and said, “You’re right. They probably will. But let me tell you something, in spending it, they won’t have even a hint of the satisfaction I had while watching the pile grow under my mattress.”
My brother and I looked at each other. Neither of us had made much sense of the story at that time. And it showed. Uncle Cándido burst out laughing and told us, “When you have two eyes on the goal, you have none on the path.” His final statement didn’t do much to help us understand. But like any good Zen tale, the meaning dawns on you only when you are ready for it.
Here in my beloved Castilla, work is part of your character. We are what we do. Our town is mid-sized. It has survived for centuries thanks to farming and hospitality; both infamous for long-hour-working days and unpredictable profits. How many visitors you will have is just as hard to predict as the weather and changeable prices. Even today, these industries meticulously carve the character of gregarious, hard-working and, extremely conservative inhabitants of my Ribera home.
Being hardworking is intrinsically connected to being worth something. Worth your salt. Being Castillian means no matter how thick your mattress, there is a sense of pride in maintaining a poor man’s mentality. You have to earn money and save most, but above all, you must never stop working. And for the love of God you have to enjoy the work. Or, at the very least, be grateful for a job even if you hate what you do from the bottom of your heart.
After having worked on three continents over the last two decades, I learned what many of my compatriots haven’t. I came to understand that not everyone shares the same view of work. And I finally saw just how wise my old uncle was. See, he knew the difference between the goal and the journey in a time and a place where few others did and tried to share that knowledge with us.
Work, like everything else in life, should be only about the path; the process your gut tells you to follow. Very few people swing the scythe anymore. Our world of work looks nothing like it did for Cabecita. But the goal has stayed the same and so has our mentality about work. I can only hope that the biggest sweat my generation will break would be in the labor of breaking the chains of our cultural DNA.
