Epilogue

Robert returned to Avilés six months after that initial arrival with Marlene. He spent two weeks visiting with his relatives, and meeting others he had missed the first time. He enjoyed getting to know them without the pressure of the original encounter. Then he went down to Oviedo, the capital of the modern Principality of Asturias—as it was of the medieval Asturian Kingdom—and he walked the Camino Primitivo, the original ninth-century Way of St. James.

Over two weeks and more than 200 miles, the Camino de Santiago carried Robert through the heart of Asturias and Galicia. When he set foot for the first time in the homeland of Antonio Rivas, on a gravel hillside trail in the rain, powerful sobs exploded from him unexpectedly. One second, he was merrily tromping up the trail, savoring the foggy, windy solitude. The next he was gasping and weeping with an intensity he had never experienced.

Robert placed a white stone for Antonio on the cairn marking the border. From his backpack, he pulled a plastic bottle he had filled with local red wine in the village where he had spent the night before. He raised the bottle and toasted his great-grandfather and Galicia. He suspected that under the stern exterior he had seen in the photos, Antonio would have been delighted. He hoped so anyway.

He returned to Berlin after the Camino, feeling as if he had closed the circle which opened a hundred years before with his greatgrandparents’ emigration. But he quickly grew restless again, and his thoughts drifted often to Asturias. Six months later, Robert moved to Avilés, planning to live there for a year. He had to know this land and his family there better. His previous visits felt like they had only been an introduction.

Robert passed many carefree hours and days with his relatives, especially Antonio, Marina and Jorge. His cousins were happy to have him around, and they took him on frequent excursions to every part of Asturias. He grew closer to them than he imagined possible.

Every chance he got, Robert hiked the coastal trails alone, through the fragrant eucalyptus groves and along the high crags overlooking the sea. He went often to Arnao and stood in the sun and stiff wind on a bluff looking down at the castillete—which was now a museum of the Real Compañía mine—and across the small bay to the smelter where Antonios Primero and Segundo met and became friends.

He rented an apartment on Calle Rivero, where the street entered the Plaza de España. The Franciscan Brothers’ was his parish church. Robert loved how its cut sandstone blocks were rounded unevenly at the edges and ridged horizontally—like a seaside escarpment—by the centuries of buffeting from ocean winds and rain.

Robert attended mass only occasionally, but he stopped in the church every time the door was open when he passed. He always knelt and said the same prayer, as he had at each church and chapel along the Camino de Santiago: “Thank you for this. For this day and this place. And for my family and for Marlene. Please keep them healthy and happy. Please help me always to listen. To know the way and to have the wisdom to follow it. And please keep me strong.”

On a summery September day, a month after Robert moved to Avilés, he and Marina’s son Arturo were strolling back toward Robert’s apartment. They had spent the afternoon, in Asturian style, eating well and drinking well to celebrate the wedding anniversary of Marina and Arturo Sr., who had married six days before Robert was born.

“Let’s get a beer over there, at Ochobre,” Arturo said as they came across the Plaza de Carbayedo, where the old livestock market had been held until the 1940s. The compact, two-storey house in which the bar was located resembled a small fortress, with its thick walls of uncut stones, small windows and narrow wooden door. “This is one of my favorite spots in Avilés,” Arturo said after they bought their bottles of Mahou and sat down in the sun on the elevated walk looking out over the grassy and treed square. “I think it was one of the first houses built on Carbayedo, back in the sixteenth century. The family who ran the livestock market lived there, and they used to sell beer and cider on hot days from the ground floor window.”

Robert felt at home. “Thank you for inviting me today, Arturo. It meant a lot to be to be there.”

“Of course we invite you,” Arturo said, a bemused look on his face. “You’re not just some American relative who dropped in for a visit. You’re a member of the family.”