Saturday, May 26, 2012
Muros

Sure enough, it rains during the night, and in the morning. I go over to Torres' for my morning coffee, computer in tow. I spend the morning and early afternoon packing for a likely Monday afternoon departure for Santiago. I also try to confirm my flight to Dublin Thursday, as well as my return to New York June 11.

I mistakenly erased my flight details earlier in the journey, and I now have no booking number for the Santiago flight, although I have one for Dublin. Notwithstanding, I can get nowhere on the Aer Lingus website. I try the number at the Santiago airport, but no one is there on weekends. At the suggestion of the recorded message, I try Dublin, but no variation on the number given gets me through on my mobile. I will have to try to straighten out the fights from Santiago on Monday or Tuesday.

Having done all I can, it is now three p.m., still early enough for me to bike to Muros. I dress for rain, and set out. There are parts of the road that rise and are harder peddling, but I make it there by 4:30 p.m., and head for the pulperia on the marina, where I had lunch earlier in the week.

It is closed. I go to the one next door, but the kitchen is closed.

"That's the way it is, I don't make the rules", says Angel, the young man behind the bar. You can try getting something at Macburger 200 meters away."

I thank him for the suggestion, but demur, asking if a bakery might be open: I can get some empanada gallega there. Angel tells me to go up Rua Ancha (Wide Street) and turn right: there is a bakery there.

I do as he says, and find the bakery, but no empanada. There are four bakeries in Muros, a town of 8,000 people, the baker tells me, and points me in the direction of the next one, down a back street. I am not sure I am on the right path, so I stop a man walking in the opposite direction. He shows me the way, and flirts a little, saying that it is just 200 meters away, but if necessary, he would carry me there. I laugh and go on my way.

I find the bakery, but there is no empanada for sale. I do see a rustic bar, two tables set flush against the wall under overhanging eaves that protect against the rain, and a few more beyond. The sign says Eladio and tapas, so I decide to give it a try.

The young man behind the bar has a big head of brown curly hair, and looks very much like the heavy set man with a pony tail wearing an apron, sitting outside. There is also a youngish woman, draped like an odalisque over a tall pile of boxes next to the kitchen in the back, perpendicular to the bar. When I ask her whether they would serve tapas, she says they only serve raciones, that is, large portions. No problem.

I ask if they have pimientos de Padron, but they don't. They don't have empanadas, either. They have shellfish. So I order a glass of tinto, chipirones a la plancha (grilled baby squid) and langostinos (king prawns), also a la plancha.

In a few minutes, out come the wine and the chipirones: they are bathed in golden olive oil sprinkled with minced garlic and onions, with lemon on the side. They are mouth-watering. The red wine sets them off very well.

Just then, who comes by, but the flirtatious man. He is about sixty, stocky, blondish, wearing eyeglasses in a contemporary frame. He stops right in front of me as I am eating, perches himself against the overhanging eave, and begins.

"You are beautiful, you know that? What are you doing here? Why don't you come next door --I will treat you to dinner. This is not my place, so why not come next door? --Why are you laughing?"

I am laughing because I have not heard this sort of patter since the last time I was in Galicia, and I recognize it as a relic of the old courtship pattern. We go back and forth this way for about fifteen minutes, with him every so often interrupting his song to say,

"I was a foreman on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico for a Houston company for thirty three years--"

"That's why you speak Gallego with a Texas accent", I return, and we are off again, with him uttering sweet nothings, and I breaking into laughter at them. His name is Jesus, and finally he gives up.

The chipirones demolished, I attack the langostinos, which are grilled with olive oil, minced garlic and paprika. LIke the chipirones, they are redolent of the sea. With your fingers you open the heads and suck out the juice and the roe, then pull off the tail, peel off the feelers and husk the shell to eat the body. You have to be dexterous, and even so, your hands and fingers become covered with the oily seasoning. As I am doing this, I am thinking "God made these creatures so we could enjoy them this way, His gifts to us from the sea", these fruits of the ocean.

When I am done and paid, I talk a bit to Eladio, who has returned to his chair after making me my raciones. I ask how the sofrito, the seasoning, is made, and he tells me. I praise the food and its freshness, and he tells me

"The chipirones you just had came off the boat an hour ago; And the langostinos were alive before I cooked them for you."

It has always been my memory that the Costa de la Muerte/Costa da Morte --the "Coast of Death"--, which begins here, has the finest shellfish I have ever tasted, and nothing has changed, only perhaps there is less reason to name Muros' streets Rua do Sufrimentos --Street of Sufferings; or the church on the heights Nuestra Senora das Angustias --Our Lady of the Agonies. Yet the collective memory remembers that, as my father used to say, in reference to its perils, "You have to respect the sea."

Nearby from where I had my feast at Eladio's, at the end of the marina, there is a life sized green bronze statue of an elderly woman, covered, from the kerchief on her head. to her skirts and shawl, in the traditional peasants' daily homespun, presumably in the black of mourning. She is sitting on a stone that might be in front of her house. She is looking out to sea.

Her features are careworn and furrowed with anxiety; and the look in her eyes, as she looks out, seem to reflect a knowledge that that the sea has turned before, and can turn again, against the men in the boats. Inscribed there, at the base of the statue in Galician, at the base's top, are the words

We fix our eyes on the sea, on the boat, on our...

Below this, at the bottom of the base, is another:

Homage of seamen who consider the sea a Holy Land...

Cast in 1995, it was given to Muros in recognition of the contributions of the seagoing families of the Coast of Death by the government of the Province of La Coruna, in honor of the men who work these most proliferous of sea beds.