I was on my way down the hill, taking a bucket of cans and cartons to the recycling containers at the bottom of the hill. Marta was plodding upwards with a bucket of goat's milk.
'This thing about the foreigner!' she finally managed. 'Qué más triste, no? - isn't it terribly sad?'
'Which foreigner? What's sad?'
Marta frowned at such a silly question - how many foreigners are there in this village? 'Well, the other one of course, he who cycles like you.'
'Hans? What's sad about him?'
Astonished, Marta did a kind of whole-body gasp, making the milk dance in its bucket. 'You haven't heard? He's dead!'
Muerto. There's a dreadful resonance in that Spanish word. It takes longer to say than dead and conveys more roundly the finality, the despair and decay.'Muerto? Hans?'
'Muerto!' He had been found, Marta told me, lying by the side of the road next to his bike. 'He does too much at his age! They took him to hospital in an ambulance but he died on the way.'
'Marta, this can't be…'
'He was there in the mortuary this morning. Ana told me. She saw the gates wide open and foreigners going in and out.' She shook her head dolefully. Another visitation by the Grim Reaper.
'He does too much,' she repeated. 'Did too much. Always in a hurry. At a certain age it's best to take things more easily.' She nodded sagely, looking me in the eye, weighing up my chances.
A moment later she stepped backwards to avoid a bike whooshing down the hill, its rider waving cheerily through the rush of air as he passed. Marta watched in silence as he weaved his way down the road and disappeared around the corner.
'Mi madre! - good heavens!' One hand covered her heart protectively as her eyebrows ascended to hide beneath her straw hat. Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Her expression was one of - well, I'm not going to say disappointment, that wouldn't be fair, but death is a story like no other and this one had just been squashed flat as a beetle. Marta needed a moment to come to terms with that before relief and a smile took over. 'Well, thank goodness! He's still alive!'
These stories get around, we agreed. You can never believe anything until you see it with your own eyes. Rumours! Never trust them. People tell you nonsense, idiocies, they'll tell you anything. Etc.
So that was that. However, this particular rumour possessed the quantum-world property of parallel realities. It existed in different versions. Later that day as I cycled past a pavement cafe, someone sitting at a table saw me, said something to his companion and pointed urgently towards me. I waved and cycled on.
In town, one of our village neighbours approaching on a pedestrian street glanced towards me and stopped suddenly motionless, as in that party game 'statues'. Then started forward again looking bewildered, grabbed my elbow and squeezed it. 'You're okay?'
'Hola, José. I'm fine. Perfecto.'
'Gracias a Dios! I'd heard - uff!' José exclaimed, wiping his forehead. 'So it wasn't you.' He patted my shoulder with evident relief, which was very touching but a little troubling. He told me the story I'd already heard from Marta: the foreigner, the bike, the ambulance.
I heard it several times more that day - local news flies faster than sparrows in a gale and death in particular is broadcast instantaneously. What's more I fitted the reported facts even better - male, foreign, bike rider and significantly older than Hans. At my age, I should take things more easily…
Over the next couple of weeks the rumour recast itself as a joke and I was regularly congratulated on still being alive. The sad foundation for the story was that a foreigner had indeed died, an elderly man who visited the island only occasionally, staying in his holiday home not far from our village. He had suffered a heart attack while cycling.
Finally the dust settled but it left me feeling a little strange, as though I'd narrowly survived a mortal challenge. As Mark Twain famously commented when something similar happened to him: 'The report of my death was an exaggeration'.
While we're on this delicate topic: the ambulance service here is very efficient and anyone falling seriously off a bike is rapidly rescued. Visitors occasionally fall off footpaths too and if necessary are airlifted by helicopter, to be flown to the hospital in La Gomera or the big one in Tenerife.
The rumoured death of Mark Twain - whose real name was Samuel Clemens - came about because a cousin with the same surname fell gravely ill in London while the author was there on a speaking tour. News that an American called Clemens was on his deathbed in London reached a New York journal, which cabled for confirmation and thus provoked Mark Twain's immortal response. His cousin recovered and so did Mark Twain, but I'm sure it left him feeling a little strange.
