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sherry company, not some third uncle. “And the other drinks the Tio Pepe the second one makes. But tell me one thing,” he said, eyeing my bicycle. “This bicycle is yours?”
    I said that it was.
    â€œMany years ago, on one of our farms, a Frenchman came through with that very bicycle. He slept in our barn during the rain. We heard later he was a famous man.”
    â€œThis bicycle is very old,” I explained. “Older than me, I think.”
    He looked at me and then back at the bike and, politely, said nothing.
    â€œWhere are you going, señor?” he asked.
    â€œTo Scotland.”
    â€œON THAT?”
    â€œYes, all the way.”
    This begat a long series of stories of dangers of the road, some of which were true, or possibly true—cousins lost in rainstorms, never to be seen again, brigands on mountain passes who lived in caves and hoarded gold and diamonds, and, finally, the legend of a beast “north of here” who had eaten another cousin, or a friend of another cousin, or perhaps it was the friend of his cousin’s friend.
    Why, he wanted to know, would I undertake such a journey. “There is a train from Cádiz that will take you to Córdoba,” he explained, kindly. “From there, it is possible to get to Madrid, and from Madrid you can go anywhere in the world, it is said.”
    â€œThere are no beasts on that train, and no sunlight.”
    â€œThat’s why you should take it. I advise you,” he said.
    Before he left we began to talk about writing. There was some confusion at this. He told me he too was a writer, un escritor , and it took a little discussion to figure out that what he meant was that he knew how to write. I asked him if he would write his name for me and extracted my notebook and a pen and opened the page flat on the table. He arranged his chair, took the pen in hand, threw out his arm to lift his coat sleeve and flattened the pages with his left hand. Then leaning close, in slow, labored, circular strokes he inscribed his name in my book.
    â€œAntonio Romero Rincón.”
    I watched his old gnarled hands all creviced and glowing in the afternoon sun. I admired the gray stubble on his cheeks, his fine, black eyes that had seen, no doubt, during the Civil War, the horrors of starvation in this poor district of Spain where peasants of his species killed priests and ate the fighting bulls of the finca owners. I wanted to reach out and clap his neck in affection for his downright bravery at simply staying alive, but I thought it would be taken in the wrong way and kept my hands tucked under my legs while I watched.
    â€œThank you, I will keep this signature,” I said. “It is very well crafted.”
    â€œYou will be careful on the passes.”
    â€œI will.”
    â€œYou will tell them in Jerez that you know Antonio Romero Rincón. People will take care of you there. After that, after Jerez, you are on your own.…”
    By the time I left the café I decided it was too late to push on, and so, having traveled all of ten or fifteen miles, determined to give up and spend the night here. Among other things I knew that finding a room on a weekend at this time of year in Andalusia might not be easy.
    I had been in this town once before and remembered a small pension called something like Loretta, so I set out to find it from memory. This begat many wrong turns in the warren of streets, which, after some meandering, brought me back to the town square. I had spotted a few likely pensions on my quest and miraculously on the way back to one of them found the Loretta. I unhitched the panniers from my bicycle and carried them up to my room, a sleepy, whitewashed little broom closet overlooking an interior courtyard, where I smelled cats.
    The two women who ran the place dressed in dark cardigan sweaters buttoned to the neck even though it was warm. They were most concerned for the safety of my bicycle and