bacalao al pilpil can send them straight up to heaven, the lucky souls. I read Francisco’s articles in the Sunday papers, again following in his footsteps, pursuing him, watching him. Leonor’s bacalao, woodcock cooked à la Leonor, ah, yes, la bécasse, Leonor’s bécasse. I know that, over time, her enemies began to call her La Bécasse, as her thin face and pointed nose grew sharper, her anorexia became more marked, first signs of the illness eating away at her flesh. I read about that in a newspaper article. Francisco told me that customers from as far away as the Basque country would come to eat there: every lunchtime, a dozen or so politicians and financiers would gather round the tables of the Cristal de Maldón restaurant: smelling and tasting and chewing over fashion, prestige, the avant-garde, feeling between their teeth the crunch of power along with the toast on which they spread the purée made from the woodcock’s guts. A few years later, the restaurant was awarded two Michelin stars, although I didn’t need Francisco to tell me that — besides, he and Leonor almost never came back to Olba, well, she never returned and he did only very rarely, for his father’s funeral, for family matters, to divide up the inheritance with his siblings. No, the two Michelin stars were reported on the evening news, and I read about them later over a coffee in the bar. It was in the morning newspapers too. I leaf through them every day when I’m standing at the bar. I encountered Leonor again on the TV while I was peeling an orange after lunch in my dining room, they repeated it on Channel 1 news and showed a brief interview with her, the first woman in Spain to be awarded two Michelin stars, an extraordinary achievement in the macho world of haute cuisine, in a publication as thoroughly machista as Michelin. (How many female chefs have been awarded two stars in France? Or indeed in the rest of the world? I can’t remember if they said there was one in France or not.) I saw her often after that, as chefs occupied more and more TV space, and as Leonor embarked on a series of programs about taste: the cuisine of aromas, the cuisine of the senses, molecular gastronomy. I would watch her, in her chef’s hat and white coat, posing behind a tray of fish, holding a bunch of asparagus, a bouquet of greens, or a porcelain dish on which lay a grouper, Leonor smiling, her teeth glinting under the spotlights as if she were in a toothpaste ad (do they use that tooth-whitening stuff on your teeth before they film you, you bitch?), and I would have to turn off the television before she finished preparing whatever it was she was demonstrating and before she answered the questions put to her by the presenter, because the image on the screen immediately fused with the pictures I still had stored away in my head and which suddenly leapt out, interposing themselves over and over, preventing me from seeing her actual image and instead dragging me back into a world of confused memories, both real and invented, and all unbearable. By then, Francisco, on his rare visits to Olba, no longer talked to me as a journalist or a writer; he talked to me about his powerful position on the magazine, his powerful position in certain wineries, his vital advice when it came to blending wines — what he called le coupage—choosing the casks, approving the labels and — most important of all — determining what he called “the philosophy of the wine,” which dictated its price. The more philosophy, the higher the price. And then there were his other businesses, Leonor’s restaurant, his various hotel projects, which involved hobnobbing with businessmen and politicians. The long nose of La Bécasse would appear on the screen, and what I would see was Leonor lying naked in Francisco’s arms. I can see her now. Leonor with her legs locked around him; Leonor’s face peering over that male shoulder, her eyes fixed on mine, her mouth half-open, and his ass pumping up and down, her feet drumming on them. Leonor on the front cover of a fashion magazine, holding a platter on which lies an intensely red, cardinal red lobster, which, when I look more closely, is actually a bloody doll curled up in a fetal position. I sit bolt upright in bed. I scream. I demand to be left in peace. Memories. The Francisco you see now, so good-natured and simple, playing a game of cards in the evening with his fellow villagers, out walking in the country, strolling along the beach at Misent, hiking up Montdor, using a stick to help himself along, because Montdor is all rocks and thorny shrubs, the perfect backdrop for one of those re-enactments of the Passion that many villages put on at Easter, it’s the most inhospitable place you can imagine, a vertiginous forty-five or fifty-degree slope, sharp, skittering pebbles among which grow thorn bushes of every variety nature can dream up: thistles, gorse, scrub oak, and God knows what else: I can see him on some mornings from the balcony of my house, heading for the mountain, panting hard, I imagine, climbing that steep slope, a born-again countryside lover and guardian of its traditions and symbols: the harsh sacred mountain, the earth fertilized by the bones of his ancestors, or, rather, the bones of the fugitives hunted down by his ancestors, by his own father, some of whom must still be there, their bones crumbling into the soil, a surf-and-turf landscape, irrigated and unirrigated land, against a backdrop of sea and marsh; our ancestors used to make that rich, succulent risotto with turnips, pig’s trotters and black pudding, more or less as we make it today, I suppose, and he records this in the book he’s writing, manifestations of the spirit of the race, the Volkgeist, the homeland to which the pilgrim has returned to take refuge: with what joy, my home, I now behold thee (that was the version we sang in the school choir, the song of the pilgrims at the end of Tannhäuser as they gaze down upon Rome: we also sang the Falangist anthem, Cara al sol and another Falangist hymn: Montañas nevadas; it was obligatory, and it drove my father mad, but there was no other school I could go to), the land appropriated by man, the culture that has grown up there: the rocky slopes and the risotto, the anisettes and herb liqueurs, and the groves of oranges and grapefruits and gardens full of climbing beans twining about canes, and the fields of broad beans bent low by the rain that the east wind draws up from the sea, and the green leaves of pepper and tomato plants; and the marsh, which was once the basis of our cuisine and is now an abandoned swamp that no one visits. He records all these things. There you have it: the endless lunches with local bigwigs, slippery Justino and the now vanished Pedrós; Carlos, the manager of the local bank, who says he chose to be transferred here rather than to Misent, so he can stay in touch with nature, but above all, although he doesn’t say this, because in Misent a house like the one he owns at the foot of Montdor would cost him a fortune; Mateu, the dealer in fruit and vegetables, who exports to half of Europe; Bernal, who contaminated the lagoon with his roofing felt (how many centuries does it take for poisonous asbestos to disappear?); the cardgames in the evening in the Bar Castañer, where the cream of Olba gathers, by which I mean the property owners, the car dealers, the owners of supermarkets and whole hectares of fruit trees; bank clerks, council workers; active participants in deals both clean and murky, a fauna as prickly as the shrubs on Montdor: all gathered around the marble tables that echo to the sound of dominoes being slammed down; the one who wanted to imitate the Kennedys and who has disappeared, carrying off with him all my savings; the trafficker of human flesh; the one leaving half the population of Olba homeless (ah, those mortgages so blithely taken out in a happier decade); the teacher who conducts the local band, and, sometimes, even the pleasant, absent-minded philosophy teacher from the secondary school in Misent, who lives in Olba because — and here the Epicurean philosopher and the ruthless bank manager agree — it’s a more peaceful, authentic place: once again, the homeland,