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noble homes on the square. Those large stately mansions maintained a certain ascetic, almost monastic, style. They still bore the heraldic shields of the old noble families, the stones from the era of the reconquest, and were reminiscent of seminaries, with their enormous windows.
    María ducked into a side street, escaping the hustle and bustle of the square. An old woman was running a broom over the paving tiles. She brought her hand to her face like a visor, covering her thick eyebrows as she watched María approach. She had glassy, indolent eyes.
    “Where is there a taxi stand?” María asked her.
    The old woman pointed with the broom handle toward an isolated house about fifty yards away.
    “At the bar.”
    A faded Pepsi-Cola sign swung from the facade. Beneath the frayed awning there was a parked taxi. María surveyed, with a bitter expression, the entrance to the bar and its empty tables, the rough, poorly whitewashed walls, and the dirty terrazzo floor. It smelled musty and was dark. The television played the theme music to the news. At one end of the bar a customer sipped on a beer after wiping the edge of the glass with his fingers. He smacked his lips, not sure where to place his gaze. He and the barmaid were alone in the small tavern. She was a thick woman with a wide rack that rested on the bar. They both looked at María with curiosity.
    “I’m looking for the taxi driver.”
    “Well, you’ve found him,” said the man, accentuating the wrinkles on his forehead and the folds of his mouth beneath a bushy red beard with a solemnity that seemed comic. He looked like a minister on Sancho Panza’s isle.
    “I need a ride to San Lorenzo.”
    The man looked surprised.
    “I don’t do such long trips. Going up to the mountains would take me all day, and today is market day. I’d lose all my customers.”
    The barmaid let out a derisive little laugh.
    “You haven’t left that stool all morning,” she said. The man shot her an angry look out of the corner of his eye, but the woman pretended it wasn’t directed at her. She turned up the volume on the television. Adolfo Suárez was about to declare something important.
    “I’ll pay you for the return trip, too,” said María, raising her voice above the president’s. He had begun with his well-known catchphrase, which everyone had heard so many times in those frustrating years that they were sick of it: I can promise and I do hereby promise …
    The taxi driver ran a hand over his bony face, run through with red veins. He lowered his eyelids.
    “It won’t be cheap.”
    “That’s okay.”
    He put on a dirty beret, gulped down his beer, and got moving.
    “Let’s go, then.”
    *   *   *
     
    The snaking road, poorly paved and damp, was like a tunnel through time where a moment from the past had gotten trapped. Ancient trees were overgrown in every direction, allowing the daylight in only in the brief clearings. The car, an old Mercedes, climbed with difficulty through the rocky terrain. On the steepest slopes the engine groaned like an asthmatic at the limit of its capacity, burning gas and leaving behind a thick black cloud, but it kept climbing.
    “Don’t worry, the Germans are good at what they do. In twelve years, this wreck has never left me stranded,” commented the cabbie, violently scraping through the gears without blinking.
    As they gained altitude there was more deforestation, but the reward for such devastation was a lovely panoramic view of the entire valley.
    In spite of the driver’s confidence in German machinery, the car broke down. When they got to an area of understory covered in ferns, smoke started coming out of the hood. The cabbie didn’t get nervous.
    “It’s old, and it gets overheated. But it’ll be fine in a few minutes.”
    María got out to smoke a cigarette. Evening was falling, and the cold of the mountains was starting to bite. She raised the collar of her coat and walked a few yards away. She had a