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were talking to the man’s wife, the other owner.

      “Excuse me,” he said as soon as we entered, “this man comes hungry, you have to take care of him.”

      Apologizing to the two ladies who were there eating something that I couldn’t identify, his wife turned around and went into what I assumed must have been the kitchen.

      “Good morning! Excuse me,” I said, “what is it that you’re eating there? It smells so good”

      Looking at me, one of them answered with a smile:

      “And it tastes even better, believe me.”

      I went to sit at a table close to where they were seated. The rest of the dining room was empty and I didn’t want to be so alone. I’d been on my own the whole time I’d been walking around without talking to anyone and I wasn’t going to clear up many questions that way. I saw that they’d not minded that I had sat close to them, so once I sat down I asked them:

      “So where are you both from?”

      “From Spain, well from Madrid,” replied the one who seemed older.

      “I never would have guessed,” I replied, “you speak Portuguese very well.”

      “And where are you from? You don’t seem like you’re from around here either,” she asked me.

      “No, I’m not from Portugal, I’m Galician, from Santiago de Compostela,” I answered.

      “Also Spanish, well you can’t tell, you also speak Portuguese very well.”

      “Well, it’s easier for us to learn, it’s almost the same as our Galician, but you speak it very well, and I think having understood that you’re from Madrid, that’s quite unusual,” I said.

      Looking at me, they both said at the same time:

      “We’ve come here so many times.”

      We all laughed at the coincidence.

      “But you don’t learn the language just by visiting a place,” I said when the laughter had died down.

      “No, of course not, that’s true, but when one has an interest in the things that have happened in that place, it’s best to learn how they speak in order to find out more about those things, wouldn’t you agree?” the older one asked me, trying to engage in a bit of chat, or so it seemed to me.

      “Are you here alone?” the lady who appeared to be the younger of the two then asked.

      “I am,” I answered a little surprised by her question.

      She turned to me and said, “You can eat with us, if you feel like it.”

      “No, don’t worry, I don’t want to bother you.”

      “No, you wouldn’t be bothering us at all, it would be better. That way we can talk a little. Well, if you don’t mind.”

      I got up and was changing table when the lady came out of the kitchen. She was holding a steaming dish in her hands and when she saw me she said:

      “You’re changing table? What’s wrong? Did you not like the one you were sitting at?” and she stood there with the dish in her hands.

      “It’s just that these ladies have invited me to join them so that I wouldn’t be sitting alone, is it a problem?” I asked.

      “No,” she said, smiling, “that way would be better, I’ve never liked eating alone either.”

      She set down the plate that she had brought out for me. I looked at it and I saw that there were vegetables with an exquisite smell, but I also looked at the plates that were sitting in front of the two ladies and asked:

      “What about what they had? Is there any left?” and I pointed to the dish that was in front of the lady next to me.

      “Don’t worry, when you finish your soup, I’ll bring you a big helping of cod with cream,” she said smiling, “it seems you’re eager, that’s good.”

      “Did you say cod with cream? How bizarre! I’ve never heard of that.”

      “Yes, but don’t you like cod?” she asked me a little surprised.

      “Is that what they’re eating?” I asked, looking back at their plates.

      “Yes, that’s the cod with cream,” she said.

      “I’ve never tried it, but it looks delicious, and given how hungry I am today, I would eat it no matter what it was.”

      “Of course!” she said with a slight tone of annoyance, “says he to whom it occurs to go out without any breakfast.”

      “Ah, so you’ve not had any breakfast today?” the older lady asked me, “I’ve had so much that I can hardly move. You’ve served us a truly delicious breakfast. I can’t imagine anyone refusing anything we had in front of us, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,” she said, looking at the owner:

      “Tomorrow, please just a coffee with milk, otherwise you’re going to make me fat,” she fell silent and kept eating.

      Not even a minute had passed when she said:

      “How can this be so scrumptious?”

      Once the meal was finished, I thought I’d go and lie down for a little while as I usually do, but it turned out to be impossible. The post-meal conversation lasted until well into the afternoon. When the owner of the place finished serving us food, she brought us a coffee each, and asked for permission to have her coffee with us. The three of us had said:

      “Be our guest!”

      I was actually quite surprised, what confidence! As she sat, she said:

      “I don’t like to drink coffee alone and now that nobody needs me, would you mind if I spend some free time here with you?”

      “Not at all,” said the older lady, “sometimes we need to rest and you must have been on your feet all morning non-stop, with so much hustle and bustle.”

      “Yes, as I am every day,” she answered, “it never stops here, although less people have been coming recently, probably because of the rain.”

      I was keen to finish and leave, so I started to get up and said:

      “Well, I’ll leave you for now.”

      “No,” the three of them said, “stay a little while longer, the company will be good for you too, because I’ve seen that you came alone,” the owner of the place added.

      I sat back down a little disgruntled, but the feeling dissipated immediately, as soon as I heard the older lady saying to the owner:

      “Now that you’re no longer rushing about, we could talk for a while, and you can tell us things you’ve heard in passing.”

      I opened my eyes and thought, “Well, this is surely the kind of thing I came looking for,” and I kept quiet to see what would become of the subject.

      The owner, as a decent small-town resident, and without the intention of offending anyone, liked to gossip about what went on in her town. She began to talk and talk, she knew a lot and she knew everything first-hand. She was not one of those people who tell you that they found something out, or that they’ve been told something. No, she had seen it, she had experienced it, and she told us so much, that I couldn’t keep up. I was so happy, here I had the subject I wanted, first-hand experiences.

      “Well, since I don’t know what you’ll know about all of this, I’m going to refer to something you might not know, because nobody outside the town knows about it,” she began.

      She told us so many things that she spent all afternoon talking without realizing it, and we’d sat there listening to her spellbound.

      At a certain point, when the lady got up to bring a jug of water and some glasses,

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