Right to Die

statues on the parapets. Food stores with hams and legs of lamb hanging in the windows, large whole fish staring blankly from beds of cracked ice. Men and women with lottery tickets attached by clothespins to strings around their necks, crying out extended syllables like 1930s newsboys hawking an extra edition. The entrance line for the Prado Museum , a clever entrepreneur plying the captive parents by block-printing the names of sons or daughters in the matador-of-the-day space on bullfighting posters.
    I slept a little during the train ride north to Gijón. A taxi strike was in progress when we arrived at six a.m. I wasted another couple of hours before Angel, a scholarly looking guy of thirty, befriended me. I’d had the foresight to cash two hundred dollars into pesetas before I’d boarded the plane in New York , and we agreed on a fair price for driving me where I wanted to go. Now, in the car, I found I had to focus on what Angel was saying to follow him at all.
    “You see, the Alcalde, how you say it, the major of the city?”
    “Mayor.”
    “Sí, sí, the mayor. He want to make the taxis to forty more, but the drivers, they say no. They have the huelga, the strike, sí?“
    “Right.”
    “Like from the beisbol?”
    “Same word, different meaning.”
    “Sí, sí.” Angel swerved around a piece of lumber in the road. “You will stay in Gijón when we get back?”
    “I’m not sure.”
    “You should stay in our city. Gijón is a better city from Madrid . No much expensive, good food, less persons. No crimes, you don’t lock the doors in the night. Most days, we have the rain, but for you, the sunshine.”
    We left Gijón behind and began winding through the countryside. Full morning light lifted the dew from green hills, occasional glimpses of the ocean to our right. Except for the curvature of the earth, I could have seen the south of England .
    We’d been paralleling the coast for a few miles when Angel pointed. “The corrida of Candás you ask me for.” A line of stone cabanas overlooked a jettied beach. Some small fishing boats were grounded on the sand, mooring lines swaying up to the cabanas. Part of the jetty curved around, creating an enclosure that might be dry at low tide.
    I said, “Slow down a little, please.”
    Angel did. A ritzy outdoor cafe was opening on the town side of the bullring, white tables and chairs under red umbrellas.
    “A man of great sculpture live here before they kill him. He was name Anton. There is a museo just for him. You have the time for it?”
    “Maybe later.” The cliff was rugged, dotted with gulls hovering and landing. The promontory rose about a hundred feet from jagged rocks poking through the surf. I didn’t see what I was looking for. “Can we drive around a bit?”
    “Around the town?”
    “Yes.”
    “Si. Candás is a nice town, you see.”
    We drove through narrow streets, cobblestoned walkways covered against the climate by the overhang of buildings. Little cottages of beige stucco under orange roofs, flower boxes and pots in the windows. A carefully restored theater commanded the main drag.
    “Can we drive up, Angel?“
    “Up? Sí, up.”
    We ascended and rounded a curve, and there it was. I let him go past, keeping track of where it was as we continued on.
    After a few blocks I said, “I’d like to walk for a while. Choose a bar to sit in, drinks on me.”
    “I can walk you, tell you some things.”
    “I’d rather try it on my own. Can I leave the duffel bag here in the car?”
    Angel shrugged and parked under a sign that said cerveza .

    I approached the house, catching just the perspective in the photo on Ray Cuervo’s bookshelf at the veal plant. Peeking through blinds, I couldn’t see anyone. I tried the front door. Unlocked.
    I entered the house of the late Dr. Enrique Cuervo Duran. A lot of dark beams contrasted with rough plaster on ceilings and some walls. Beneath my feet the reddish tile on the floor was set in black grout, the staircase Ray Cuervo had described stretching upward in front of me. I stood still long enough to be sure no one was moving in the house. Beyond the staircase I came into a room with a view of both the ocean and the bullring below, some gulls hanging and wheeling in the air currents above the cliff.
    On the lawn, Inés Roja lounged in one of two chairs, perhaps twenty feet from the edge of the drop-off. A small wicker table sat between her and the empty chair. On the table stood a dark green