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That hope for some kind of understanding -- or some reconciliation with my inability to understand -- brought me here, not long ago, to Spain's southern Costa del Sol, boarding an early-morning bus for Ronda. From what I had heard, Ronda embodied the enigma of Spain: At once romantic and sorrowful, a fortressed village whose views from craggy cliffs were both lovely and sad, carrying the weight of the town's shadowed history. I had also read somewhere that Rainer Maria Rilke, the Austrian poet, had lived in Ronda for a few months, in his mid-30s. I planned to visit the hotel where he had lived and to read the poetry that he'd written there. I thought that he'd probably grappled with questions about the Spanish similar to those I had.

The bus from Malaga to Ronda wound up mountainsides, past white clusters of towns. With each curve of the road, I felt myself curling back in time as we left the crowds of the Costa del Sol farther behind. I thought of what I knew about Ronda: A town perched at the edge of a mountain range and divided in two by the Tajo gorge. The Tajo drops 500 feet into a river whose roar, after the rains, can be heard from the streets above. In "Death in the Afternoon," Hemingway calls Ronda the perfect place, "if you ever go to Spain on a honeymoon or if you ever bolt with anyone."

But I had also heard about Ronda's less romantic side. There are many dark stories of this place, and here is one: Pedro Romero, Ronda's renowned 18th century bullfighter, discovered his wife, Elena, with a lover. He stabbed the man then carried his wife through the streets to the Tajo gorge, where he threw her into the void. (Prosper Mérimée would later base his "Carmen" on that story.)

As the bus approached Ronda, the town rose out of the morning fog, a Brigadoon that had slept for a hundred years and was about to awaken. We snaked through narrow streets and curtains of mist until we stopped at a small depot, and I stepped out. Obligations I had for the next evening left me only 24 hours in Ronda.

The Hotel Reina Victoria, where Rilke stayed, is a white turn-of-the-century manse at the top of Calle Jerez. I'd read that Rilke's room was open to visitors and set up just as he'd left it: a bed, a chair, a little desk, a few books he'd left behind. But when I inquired, the receptionist brushed me off.

"The key isn't here just now," she said. "Come back tomorrow." When I told her I was leaving in the morning, she shrugged. "Come back later, then."

Disappointed, and determined to gain entry to that room later, I went in search of other clues to the Spanish sensibility. I headed for the Tajo gorge.

The gorge drew me, I confess, more because of its gruesome history than its dramatic views. Besides the story of Elena and Pedro Romero, there was another intriguing episode in the gorge's history. Ronda is said to be the setting for the event, described in Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls," in which townspeople loyal to Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War were forced to run down the main street toward the gorge. They stumbled through lines of peasants armed with flails before being thrown over the cliff. (No one has proved that story true, but it is known that hundreds of nationalists were murdered in Ronda.)

I walked down the main avenue toward the gorge, the same street where Hemingway's doomed Franquistas ran. I reached the Puente Nuevo, the 18th century bridge that overlooks the Tajo. But there I was again disappointed, this time by an enormous crowd, thronging to see the view.

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