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As a photographer, the morning of my second
day in Ibiza had been an exciting one. There had been that
wonderful Christmas shot of the benign police-Santa directing
sleepy traffic in an island of gifts, the Polaroid print of
which had so astonished the locals: but, as a person, the
afternoon was to prove even more exciting. For in the late
afternoon the boat from Barcelona finally arrived. And on
it were the friends who were to be my hosts during the next
ten days. We were to go on from Ibiza town to their house
on the island’s west coast, well up from San Antonio
Abad. It was sited in a lonely stretch of coast at the base
of a massive, rocky promontory which jutted boldly out into
the sea. Adjacent to it and just north of it was a lovely,
very private, quite small cove. And still further up the coast
was a much larger, very grand Cala. A place which was to figure
importantly to me in the next few days. The friends were the
people in whose Parisian apartment we had met about a month
earlier and who had invited me to what I thought would be
a Christmas party in Ibiza. They had told me their house was
in a beautiful and solitary location. They had also told me
that it was the first time they had opened the house in the
winter. The chilly implications of that information had entirely
escaped me and were only to be fully understood in due course.
The scene at the quay when their ship docked
was much like the one when I had arrived. There were masses
of welcoming people and I had the same impression that I had
had before, viz., which the whole town turned out to meet
these incoming ships bringing their cargoes of goods and people
from the great outside world. In the quiet life of Ibiza town
the arrival of the ocean going ships was a communal affair
of the first magnitude. People would plan to meet them in
the same way they might plan to have a picnic. They would
organize themselves into family - or friend-groups and then
become active spectators of the docking scenario. They would
join in with the waving, welcoming throngs, even if they were
not expecting visitors of their own. They would join in the
occasional and spontaneous crowd singing, much like that of
the fans at football spectacles. The arrivals of the ships
were to be celebrated by one and all. And so they were.
This particular arrival saw my new friends
struggle carefully down a shuddering gangplank lugging baggage
and a child-in-arms. There was the Madame herself, dressed
in that special Parisian fashion which immediately identified
her as a woman of discriminating taste. There was her long-time
companion, Jacques, about whom more later. There was her stunning
daughter, Catherine, a youthful matron carrying her beautiful
baby daughter, Sandra. And there was Catherine’s young
husband, Alberto, a poetic Columbian type who was manfully
shouldering the heaviest of the luggage pieces. When at last
they were all safely off the uncertain gangplank and standing
solidly on the quay, there were embraces all around and a
powerful sense of homecoming. Ibiza, it seemed, was as much
home to them as was Paris. They had met Flipper before, of
course, and their reunion was a delight to see. Baby Sandra,
especially, was enchanted by him as he was by her. Because
my Renault was full of my things and could never have held
us all in any case, I had ordered one of the very few cabs
available in those days - which had proved to be no simple
matter since my Spanish was not up to telling its driver where
I wanted him to take us. But finally, I had prevailed. So
we all moved off slowly to the cab with the crowd noises still
ringing loudly in our ears. In the end the two cars travelled
westward together, towards San Antonio Abad, the cab leading
Flipper and me in our Renault. I was now entirely in the hands
of my friends. The Delfín Verde soon became only a
memory.
The road westward began to rise just before
we reached the mid point of the island’s waist, at San
Rafael, and the climb became steeper as we went on. It was
so late in the afternoon or so early in the evening, that
shadows were falling on both sides of us. Farm houses would
at one moment be standing in glaring whiteness and in the
next, look dark and alone in the tilled fields surrounding
them. Here and there small clusters of sheep, or goats, would
be moving slowly homewards. It seemed a perfect picture of
the pastoral. Most notable of all, to my urban eyes, were
the olive trees. Some of these trees presented a calendar
of the island which must have been a thousand years old. They
stood massively in their places, their knurled trunks sometimes
a meter in diameter. They had seen the migrations of the Ancients;
now they were to see the coming of new waves of unexpected
people. The writers and the painters and the poets were soon
to be joined by the flower people, and a new life style would
begin to replace the old. In the end, with the coming of the
tourists, the old ways would be forever lost. And so would
most of the olive trees. But not all would go. To this day
the island still cherishes the few that remain.
And then at San Rafael, we reached the top
of the rise and began to negotiate a long downward slope which
took us almost to San Antonio Abad. But not before we had
one of those revelatory views of the island which, at the
same time, startle and shock with their beauty. Suddenly,
as we topped a minor rise in the roadway, the entire plateau
on which San Antonio sits, and the sea which boarders on it
to the west, burst into view. It was as if a stage curtain
had been abruptly withdrawn revealing a gorgeous vista of
green-blue sea, a vast open sky, a sleeping fishing village
and gleaming, well groomed country farms. Flipper, hearing
me catching my breath, jumped up from his cushion, put his
paws on my shoulder and furiously wagged his tail. It was
his way of reassuring me, of saying that everything was all
right.
It is common knowledge that taxi-drivers
anywhere in the world are leery of bad road conditions. Our
taxi-driver was no different. The downgrade access road to
my friends’ house in those days can only be described
as having been an automobile torture test. It took all of
her charm for Catherine to persuade our reluctant driver to
override his fears for his suspension. Finally, a compromise
was reached. To relieve the strain on his springs, the passengers
all absented themselves from their seats in the cab and, on
foot, dutifully followed its cautious, snail-like downhill
approach to the house. I followed them in the Renault, with
Flipper yelping in indignation at the site of his friends
stumbling along. The descent took us twenty minutes and during
its passage we found ourselves in a brooding pine forest.
It had become early evening and the sombre ambiance under
the trees, and amid their resinous fumes, proved a proper
introduction to the house itself. It heightened our senses
and sharpened our vision. And when at last the house came
into sight, with the sun beginning to set, the vista proved
to be another of those magical Ibiza moments that are so hard
to forget. Suddenly we broke through the last of the pine
forest and into the open. We had reached the sea…and
the house.
There it stood virgin white and indigenous
to the ancient rock shelf out of which it seemed to grow.
Solitary in the gloaming, no other human thing in view, it
gazed forever west, to the sea, to the burgeoning sunset,
the radiance of which embraced the vast dome of the sky and
flamed the almost invisible horizon. Just below the house
lay the deep purple of evening water saying farewell to the
day, while high overhead a small flight of silently soaring
seagulls, saluted the setting sun.
It was a large structure, simultaneously
affirmative and authoritative, its commanding impact not diminishing
in the least its proffered warmth of welcome and its gift
of impregnable security. It seemed two storeys high, with
ample girth to carry the upper mass. There was a convincing
logicality to its exterior presentation which strongly implied
that the inside of this architectural apparition on a lonely
beachside, would be correspondingly logical to comfortable
human habitation.
I stood struck with wonder at the huge complex
of circumstances which had been woven together to create such
a phenomenon as this house in this place at this time…and
with me, there, to see, touch, smell, hear, and, yes, to taste
it all! How had it happened? How had it fused together to
find me and Flipper standing in this place at sunset on Christmas
night with new friends and a new life ahead of us? Suddenly
I felt a familiar pressure on my right foot. The little dog
was sitting on it. He had read my feeling, as usual, and had
come to say he understood. He was the only element of my past
life in America that was still with me. I knelt down and patted
his little head.
The speculation I had made about the nature
of the interior of the house was well borne out. The layout
and build quality were extraordinary for a building created
in the early 1930s. We had entered from the rear into what
was really a central utility area, walking on lovely old tiles.
On the right was a kitchen of primitive character. There was
a heavy stoneware sink supplied with sparkling fresh cistern
water by a built-in hand pump. There were two foc a terras,
small charcoal burning cookers made of heavy, natural earthenware.
These stood on the left, at right angles to the sink, on an
ample, waist-high platform. There was work surface enough
to satisfy the most space-wasting of cooks. And everything
such a cook might need seemed ready to hand. The kitchen,
though primitive, was utilitarian in the extreme.
Back in the central utility area, and opening
out from it, were a bedroom to the left and another one to
the right, just after the kitchen. But the chief architectural
feature was a great arched entrance, into what was the main
and central living space. The arch was so fashioned that it
displayed the structural nature of the walls. These were no
less than 50 centimetres thick and had been built of large
rocks concealed and locked in place by mortar, not cement.
This was the same material and construction style of the island’s
casas payesas. Some of those old country houses were six hundred
years old, still well preserved and in use. But what took
the eye most, was the two-storey height of most of what was
really the living room. The feeling of light and air and spaciousness
that resulted was enchanting. The two storey ceiling portion
permitted of a sleeping balcony reached by a curved staircase,
with a small bedroom located underneath it. The balcony was
ample for its purpose and was supplied with a south-facing
window and a doorway opening to the west, onto its own pleasant
terrace overlooking the sea. Two massive exterior wooden doors
protecting two framed, interior, glass doors, comprised the
main entrance of the house, and gave out onto a large terrace
facing westward to the sea.
It was bitter cold as we stepped inside
and entered the generous living room. In it were two comfortable
old cushion chairs - still in place forty years later - set
close to the walls, while the central region was occupied
by a low table around which stood six chairs seemingly designed
for children. They were very small chairs, indeed. I discovered
later that they were typical of Ibicencan households. In the
master bedroom, which was wide open to the living room, being
closed off when appropriate only by a full sliding curtain,
was a handsome fireplace fringed with old tiles. It was begging
to be lit…and it was not long before it was.
Flipper stood in the middle of the living
room, his tail wagging a bit uncertainly. I stood there with
him, chilled to the bone. It had begun to dawn on me that
there was not really to be a party, as I had expected, but
rather a first-time Ibiza family gathering in winter. Madame
came over to me, a sweet smile on her face.
“Welcome to my house!” she said,
and kissed me on both cheeks.
Harold Liebow
haroldliebow@ibizahistoryculture.com
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