Buen dia

The night before last Manolo came in late for dinner, after a session baling hay. He has the only large empacadora, or baler, in the village, and so he bales not only his own cut fields but those of others. Baling is a matter of timing, depending on moisture: in the mornings the dew is too heavy, while the midday sun renders the grasses too dry. The best hours are from just before sunset until a few hours after midnight—and so that is when Manolo works.

For la cena we had first a soup his mother made—like bean soup, but made with “titos,” which Manolo explained were similar to but not the same as frijoles. My dictionary was no help with this word. Manolo said that during the Civil War in the late 30s the local people ate “muchos titos” because there wasn´t anything else. His mother, who´s 79, nodded in agreement. Besides the soup we ate leftover huevos llenos and jamon. Manolo had opened a bottle of Rioja for me at lunch, and I continued working on that, while he drank the cheaper wine he has with every meal and to which he adds “agua con gas.” I´d tried to insist that the regular wine was fine with me, but Manolo said no.

After we were done, about eleven, I began to clean up but Manolo waved me off. Instead he had me drive him, in the Suzuki, back out to the field where the tractor and empacadora were waiting. We left town, turned off on a narrow dirt road, carefully crossed a set of railroad tracks, and after a mile or so came to the tractor. Manolo directed me into a field of already baled hay to turn the Suzuki around so I could go back the way I´d come. Fine, I can handle that, but then instead of getting back up on the two-track road, I went right over it in the dark (I just didn´t see it) and into the other, unbaled field. While I would like to every once in awhile perform competently, this is not my Spanish fate. We both laughed and I wrestled the Suzuki around once again. But when I came to the short embankment, ready this time to make the turn, Manolo shouted “piedra!” just as I nailed a big rock. Luckily just with the left front tire. I bounced back, reversed, then made the necessary turn and got back up on the road. No problem.

A hundred or so uneventful feet back down the road I pulled up next to the tractor and Manolo got out. I waited till he climbed in the cab and turned on the bright lights, then I set off for home, taking care once again—as Manolo had reminded me—at the railroad tracks. He baled hay until 2:30 in the morning.

The next morning when I asked if I could do a load of laundry, Manolo directed me to his mother, who was standing with us when I made the request. Apparently he doesn´t know how to use the washing machine (I´m not being sarcastic—he told me as much). She had come over the night before and asked if I needed anything washed, but I had said I no, expecting to do it myself. Not to be. She took the armful of clothes not only willingly but seemingly with great satisfaction.

When I asked to use the washing machine, I also asked about where I could buy some fruit, to take with me when I set off the next day. Here abuela (it would be impossible for me to call her by her name, Pura) once again intervened. After she started my clothes, she said, she would take me to the tienda.

At the small store, after abuela identified me as American and Naomi´s father, she and the woman behind the counter, Maria Jesus, immediately launched into a discussion of the Camino, and as usual the fact that I had on one day walked fifty kilometers was trotted out. Like others, Maria Jesus laughed at such absurdity. I selected oranges and bananas from baskets arrayed along one wall and put them on the counter. Maria Jesus weighed the fruit and asked me about Naomi (whom she knows) and her niños. When I tried to pay, abuela pushed my hand away and opened up her own small wallet.

My last day in Espinosa was beautiful, sunny and warm and fresh. Walking slowly back from the store, abuela said, “buen dia,” and I answered “si, si, buen dia.”

The generosity and solicitude of abuela and Manolo, of Montse and Maite and Sergio, has been unwavering, substantial, and humbling. Care is provided so unself-consciously, so naturally, as if to behave in any other way was simply not possible. I´m reading a book about Greece by Patrick Leigh Fermor, published in 1958, and he has something apt to say about the people he has met in small villages: “…hospitality has an almost religious importance. This is based on a genuine and deep-seated kindness, the feeling of pity and charity toward a stranger that is far from his home….” He writes that the villagers seek “to shelter the newcomer from the hazards and privations of solitude in a harsh terrain.” Certainly my own experience of Spain—a terrain if not exactly harsh at least strange (to me)—has been made easier and less lonely because of the wonderful hospitality I have enjoyed here in Espinosa.

Last night I drove out to the same field as the night before to pick Manolo up and bring him back for dinner. But he was having trouble with the empacadora, and so I sat in the Suzuki on the edge of the crickety filed, waiting and watching strange hawks hunt for mice. It took him two hours to fix the twine mechanism and bale the rest of the field in the dark. By the time he finished he´d decided there was no reason to come back. He drove the tractor back to town and I followed, without incident. At the house we had a companionable, if late meal together, our last for awhile.