I’m not thinking about China when I come back. I am back on a fall night with Mary in Spain at a hotel in a cave somewhere  beyond the  castle in the Velez Rubio. We stop on the way at the bar in the town to have a cafe con leche… the kind of place where Spanish men smoke and drink brandy with their morning coffee and, then, we wind up the steep, narrow road to take in the view from the castle. The car stalls, and we start to roll backward by degrees as I keep trying to get it going up the incline again. Mary gives me calm, exact instructions. Put on the emergency brake. Start the car. Put it in first. Ease off the clutch while easing off the emergency brake and lightly give it some gas. Mary is over 80 when we take this trip… a consummate, unflappable headmaster in the presence of a driving idiot who cannot decide whether to laugh uproariously or scream in terror at our jarring lurches backward down the mountain.

We are lost. I don’t have a map and Mary has forgotten the way. She tells me to drive until we see a sign. I look for a sign that says, “Nirvana this way,” but there are no such markers to meet the requirements of my attention. We do see signs miles and miles down the dusty road. She remembers which way to go and, later, we are driving up a hillock and, then, a scary, sharp right up to the hotel in a cave owned by a Frenchman who will cook us dinner. “After all,” Mary says, “Why would anyone drive all the way up here unless they could eat?”