The rest of the day Antonio made several house calls. He set broken limbs, pulled abscessed teeth, shut an old man’s eyes and also an old woman’s eyes for the last time, and made it to the tavern mere minutes after sunset. A tiring day, but his first drink restored him. It was all the encouragement he needed. He drank “b” (“a” and “c” being unavailable in these parts) and played cards with some of the other regulars, the baker, the schoolteacher. Later, the blacksmith. In the early hours he left the bar, feeling more sober than the night before, which didn’t prevent the same nonsense from recurring. He was singing Como me gusta el vino, when a voice up ahead joined in. Como me gusta beber una copita con los amigos. He ran to it, and there it was — the same bottle.

But it wasn’t about to interrupt its performance, which now included hopping around as if it had legs. A dizzying, entrancing dance. For the finale, the bottle performed a pirouette and vaulted into Antonio’s hands.

“How did you get out?” he shouted, half-expecting an answer.

But it wasn’t about to interrupt its performance, which now included hopping around as if it had legs. A dizzying, entrancing dance. For the finale, the bottle performed a pirouette and vaulted into Antonio’s hands. There were beads of moisture on its neck, and on Antonio’s forehead. Walking home, he concocted a number of explanatory theories — different stories, including one with his wife as the prime suspect. None, however, explained how a bottle could sing. It was a drink-induced hallucination, he told himself and the bottle, and that seemed to keep panic at arm’s length.

This time Marta wasn’t waiting by the door; she wasn’t waiting at all. She was asleep in bed and not faking it. He set the bottle down by the bed and got in beside her.

Mornings he usually tells Marta his dreams. This time she was spared. What he told her was worse. Just as he’d done the day before, he reported the strange goings-on with the bottle. He raised his cup of coffee to his mouth and stopped. “By the way, where is it?”

“How should I know?”

“I didn’t notice it by the bed when I got up. That’s where I left it.”

“I haven’t seen it,” she said. “Are you sure you didn’t dream all this?”

“Of course. There’s only one place it can be.”

Yes, there it was on the porch, looking for all the world like an innocent bottle. He picked it up and took it indoors.

“Unfortunately, I didn’t dream up any of it,” he started. He took a deep breath and said, “Here’s what we’re going to do.” She sat up and smiled. She loved it when he was decisive, even when the enterprise was pointless. “You’ll come to the tavern with me this evening, and on the way back home, you’ll see what happens.” They hadn’t been out together in so long that Marta went along with his plan.

That day, too, he made many house calls. Once again, there were limbs and there were teeth. And only one death; it was making fewer calls than he was. In the evening, he stopped at home long enough to wolf down some bread and porridge and make sure the bottle was in a kitchen cupboard before setting off for the tavern, Marta in tow.

They had a surprisingly good time, mostly made up of reminiscences; she had a good deal to drink, and he had a good deal more. To some hand-clapping and a single guitar strumming, they performed a little dance, their bodies somehow remembering what to do. Throughout the evening, drinking companions came and went. At around midnight, they offered effusive goodbyes and left hand in hand.

They swayed as they walked, slapdash dance steps and languid embraces. The evening had rejuvenated them. A three-quarter moon lit their path. Unlike Marta, Antonio hadn’t forgotten. When he judged the time was right, he began singing: En mi casa siempre hay cerveza. As expected, it immediately became a twosome, but it was Marta singing along. He let her go on, Nunca nos aburrimos en su bodega, and kept mouth shut and ears open. Sure enough, seconds later, another voice joined hers. Marta suddenly fell silent, not the slightest trace of joy lingering on her face. The song went on but she plainly saw that Antonio was not singing. He was smiling. Now he was laughing. Roaring his head off. He took her hand, shouted, “Come,” and pulled her toward the singing. There it was, singing and dancing. An old hand at this now, Antonio scooped the bottle from the ground. Marta was in a state near shock, but (all she ingested helping) quickly recovered.

When the bottle stopped, Marta started. She wanted explanations. What evil medicine did he slip into her drinks? When did he learn to throw his voice? Where was her husband’s accomplice? Above all, what was the point of this rigmarole?

“Finally, a sensible question,” he said. “But I don’t have the answer. I don’t know how this can be happening and I don’t know why.”

When they got home, she took the bottle from him. She wore a look that was equal parts dismay and determination. She raised the bottle, and for a second Antonio was alarmed. But it didn’t come down on his skull: she was holding it up to the light.

“Maybe there’s a spirit in there,” she said.

Before he could respond that superstition was hardly the answer, she turned it upside down. A drop of black liquid spilled out.

The bottle never sang again. What exactly happened? Why did it happen? Was there a lesson to be drawn from this? These are questions Antonio asked himself. They didn’t lead to answers, however; they led — in the end, consolingly — to storytelling. The following evening instead of going to the tavern Antonio sat at the kitchen table with a notebook, a quill, and bottle of ink. He wrote an account of the events: first, in a letter to his youngest sister in Seville; later, a story he tried to sell to a newspaper in Madrid. Neither document has survived. Thanks to the stubborn custom of oral storytelling, it has seeped through three porous generations to me — a gift from one of the many unacknowledged practitioners of magic realism. My mother tells me that he was still recounting this story decades after it happened. He was well past 90 and well-preserved (in alcohol, as my grandmother used to say) when he died, the day before I was born.