The Crossway

by Guy Stagg

  Or perhaps I was reading myself into the saints again. In truth, the inner lives of these martyrs remained a mystery to me. And any comparison was melodramatic now that the most dangerous part of the pilgrimage was done. The longer I waited in the chapel, the more I felt glad about setting off in midwinter, because if a new pope were chosen for Easter, I would reach Rome at a moment of history.

  There were windows on one side of the crypt, high enough to see over the snowline. The stars were rising and the moon shining off the snow. A few flakes cartwheeled by, but otherwise the night was still. The storm had ended; the crossing was clear. Tomorrow I would start walking again.

  PART TWO

  Six hot-air balloons, seven, eight, rising above Aosta. Some were ribbed red and white, some hooped yellow and green, like a packet of sweets spilled across the sky. They seemed to come from nowhere: launched off balconies, perhaps, or else shot from out of chimneypots.

  It was Wednesday morning, the middle of February. Men and women in suits and skirts hurried to work in the streets below. On a whim one of them would look up, notice the balloons, and stop to watch. Then another would notice and start pointing. Soon groups of spectators were gathering in the piazzas, heads turned towards the sky. More and more people joined them, until it seemed the whole city was watching.

  A breeze caught the balloons and carried them down the Aosta Valley. My own route ran along the valley floor, so I followed the parade east. Progress had been slow in the Alps, yet dropping from the mountains was effortless. My pack was lighter, my mood too, and the weather was mild below the snowline. Once more I felt the triumph of crossing a mountain border. Surely the walk would be easy from now on.

  The hillsides lining the valley were terraced, each terrace framed with a trellis, each trellis rigged in vines. In summer their leaves might have shaded my path, but that winter the canopy was bare. I could still see the balloons through the gaps in the lattice. Sometimes they raced, sometimes drifted, sometimes gathered close together and scattered apart like billiard balls, splitting the felt-soft sky. Most of the morning they were in front of me, but a few times I glanced up to see one balloon bobbing above my head, its wicker basket ringed in a bulging collar of orange and blue.

  By midmorning the orange-and-blue balloon was dragging. Just past eleven it slumped into a field on the far side of the valley, basket tumbling to the ground. I kept watching, waiting for the pilot to get out, but nobody stirred. Maybe it was unoccupied. A runaway balloon! Left behind, poor thing, as its friends fled towards Piedmont.

  The valley cut south, ending with the medieval city of Ivrea. Its cobbled streets looked polished, but the cobblestones were threaded with pulp. Every year, to celebrate carnival, Ivrea’s citizens fought one another with oranges. Though the mess had been cleaned several days ago, the air in the old town still carried a whiff of rotting citrus.

  A cramped cathedral stood on a hill in the middle of the city. Nearby I found a slouching set of parish buildings. One of these buildings was a homeless shelter, where I was offered a bed for the night. Inside it smelt like a charity shop: old blankets, used books, and the rubbery smell of second-hand shoes.

  In the last hour of the day ten more men arrived, greeting each other with nicknames. Although I hoped my walk would give us something in common, they responded to me with polite bemusement.

  Stefano, the oldest, was known as Il Papa. His skin was loose and his teeth in pieces. When he asked my job, I said that I was a pilgrim. Stefano frowned. I said that I was hiking to Rome and then Jerusalem. He kept frowning. I explained my route from here to the capital: east across Piedmont and Lombardy, south over the Apennines, and then south-east via Tuscany and Lazio. He cut me off: ‘You want to walk. Yes, we have a word for that. No, not a pilgrim. We say un randagio.’

  I took out my dictionary and looked up the word. Randagio (nm), stray. So now I had a nickname.

  There were twelve beds in the dormitory, with ageing frames that wheezed through the night. The bed next to mine was occupied by a middle-aged man wearing a leather jacket and a leather tie. His name was Aldo, his nickname Il Bagarino – the tout. Aldo had travelled round much of Britain and started listing cities to see if I had been too. His tone was earnest, severe, as if our whole conversation depended on my answer.

  ‘Stoke? Blackburn? Huddersfield?’ he asked.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Bolton? Luton? Wigan?’

  I wondered which one was his favourite.

  ‘London I did not like. My God, how I hated it. But Conwy? Conwy I liked.’

  I kept asking questions and eventually learnt that Aldo’s sister was married to a man from Yorkshire, a Sheffield Wednesday fan who had taken him to a half-season of away games. My neighbour’s opinion of each place was based on the outcome of the match.

  He went on: ‘Preston? Ipswich? Barnsley?’ Nope. ‘Stirling? Sunderland? Leith?’

  I told him I had spent a few summers in Edinburgh.

  ‘Edinburgh?’ He grimaced. ‘My God, how I hated it.’

  Aldo was puzzled by the pilgrimage. ‘You want to drive?’ he asked, unfolding my maps. ‘Seven hours. You want to walk?’ His finger traced the nine hundred kilometres between here and the capital. ‘Two months.’

  ‘I’m hoping to get there for Easter.’

  ‘Easter?’

  ‘The end of March. Five weeks.’

  ‘Two months,’ he repeated, now jabbing the map with his thumb.

  Supper was at seven. The wallpaper in the kitchen had been stripped, leaving sheets of pockmarked plaster. We sat at a long table with a vinyl tablecloth, while Stefano served eleven plates of tortellini. Tomorrow Italy would choose a new prime minister, and everyone had an opinion about who should win. They all spoke at the same time, however, so I could not follow what was being said. But, as one man pretended to throttle the candidates and another mimed pulling out his hair, I began to guess their opinions. Yet the more they gestured and shouted, the less I could believe they cared. The whole debate had the sham urgency of a performance, making me wonder if their bluster and noise was simply evidence of helplessness. But, surrounded by this show of anger, I felt like a pretender for the first time on my pilgrimage.

  During a lull in the argument I asked whether any of them would vote.

  ‘Why do the politicians want us to vote?’ Stefano shouted.

  Aldo slapped the tablecloth. ‘How many times have you voted?’

  Stefano kept shouting: ‘I tell you why. If I vote, and the man I vote for, if he wins, then what? Then I am to blame.’

  ‘I swear to God Il Papa never votes.’

  ‘Everything he does, I am to blame!’

  ‘Never knows how to vote.’

  Stefano folded his arms. ‘So tomorrow I will spend the whole day in church, and nobody can blame Il Papa.’ There was a moment’s silence; then more shouts, more cries, and the whole performance started again.

  Next day the country voted. The result was divided between the centre-left, the centre-right and a protest party led by a stand-up comedian. For the rest of my time in Italy the news was full of deadlock.

  Into the Po Valley, the great plain that stretches the width of northern Italy. The Via Francigena crossed the plain at La Padana Bassa, its lowest and most fertile region. This was marshland once, drained by Cistercians in the fifteenth century and dredged into paddy fields. Strips of stubble ran from the track to the horizon, divided by dykes, ditches and concrete canals, which netted the ground in strands of silver water.

  Entering La Padana Bassa I felt sure I was being followed. Whenever a breeze scuffed the path, I snapped round to see who was there. At one point I even climbed onto a sluice gate to scan for a figure in the distance. The sky was grey, and the earth was grey, and the waterways formed patterns like Nazca lines. Bleached light, starched soil and a vacant sense of space – of course I was alone. But, standing on the gate, I felt very small against the landscape, and the quick confidence that had carried me
off the Alps became a prickling uncertainty.

  Otherwise I walked fast with eyes to the floor. It was already the third week of Lent, and I needed to make up time. I did not believe Aldo’s claim that Rome was two months away, but I fretted about the days lost to snow. Although the weather was dry now, I saw no sign of spring, only a dead still that reminded me of midwinter.

  Each night I stayed in a presbytery or parish house. The priests who hosted me seemed preoccupied. They worried about Italy, worried about Europe, and worried about the Church, apologizing for the Pope’s resignation as if somehow responsible.

  The one exception was Fr Nunzio, whom I met at the Abbazia di Sant’Albino. The abbey remains lay outside the town of Mortara: a Romanesque church in front, some Gothic ruins at the back and a barn-shaped hall between. Two caretakers looked after the place, a fidgety couple in their mid-fifties. The wife was called Gigi, the husband Francesco.

  Antiques littered the hall’s interior, either lying on the floor or balanced by the wall, waiting to be hung. It was a tatty collection: an icon inked onto a wooden board, a longsword flaking with rust, and a metal standard with the flag torn loose. When I asked what they were for, Francesco twitched. He could not explain . . . It was best that I waited . . . Fr Nunzio would be here soon.

  The priest arrived that evening. He had sweeping eyebrows and a sagging smile, and when he spoke he flapped his wrists like a bird with a broken wing. We got to work: Francesco lifting the antiques to the wall, Gigi directing him with tuts and yelps, while I marked the place each one would hang. As we worked, Fr Nunzio invented stories about the items, telling us how the icon was marched through Lombardy by penitent processions and the standard carried to Jerusalem by crusader knights. And the sword? Why that was the holy blade of St Albino.

  Then we ate together in the kitchen. During the meal Francesco and Gigi listened to a radio report on the favourites for the next pope. Afterwards they discussed the candidates, lighting cigarettes and stubbing them out half-smoked. I had heard some version of this conversation in half the Italian parishes I visited. It ranged from Vatican banking practices to the birth rate in South America, touching on the politics of more than a dozen prelates: the Archbishop of Milan, the Canadian Primate, a senior member of the Curia and an Austrian cardinal who was also a count. At first I listened with interest, but this soon turned into boredom, for the discussions never reached any conclusion and there seemed little comfort in worrying the questions again and again.

  Eventually the caretakers went quiet and the priest spoke:

  ‘Some of my parish, they say we must have a black pope, like the President of America. Some say a young pope – forty-five, fifty, no more. My nephew, he is not yet eleven, but this morning he says: I will be pope! Me! And every day we hear on the news that another candidate is papabile. Today a cardinal from Africa, tomorrow from Mexico, Brazil. Why is that? I tell you it is because the journalists want the election to be politics. Then they take all the problems of the world – not just the problems of the Church, but poverty and sickness – and they say: Who will solve these problems? Who can fix the world? But we are not choosing a politician. We are trying to learn the will of God.’

  Francesco asked if there would be a new pope for Easter. Fr Nunzio’s eyebrows danced, but he gave nothing away.

  ‘Tomorrow we say goodbye to Benedict. We will have no pope, no prime minister, and no government. Italy will be like Belgium! Who can say how long it will last? You want to know my prediction? I predict God will surprise us.’

  Gigi smoked. Francesco twitched. Fr Nunzio flapped his wrists. The radio was still playing, but the signal kept fading, so we sat and listened to the static, as if awaiting some fateful news. Again I had the sense that I was acting the part of a pilgrim, because the Vatican politics seemed silly to me. And, though I wanted to interrupt my brooding hosts, I knew that nothing I said could surface them now.

  One day after the resignation I reached Pavia, a university town on the northern bank of the River Ticino. Its buildings were a dull shade of orange, its piazzas a bright shade of brown. Although I was planning to visit Basilica San Pietro, where St Augustine lay buried beneath a sky of glazed gold, I could not find the place. Every church I passed looked the same – facades of burnt brick with sandstone buttresses clamping the corners – and I spent an hour or more wandering between Duomo di Pavia, San Michele Maggiore and Santa Maria del Carmine.

  Eventually I came to a cobbled piazza north of the city centre and realized that the basilica was standing to one side, screened behind scaffolding. Its doors were locked, so I sat on my rucksack and waited. Three hours later I was still waiting.

  Sitting there, I read a newspaper report on the Pope’s last day. After leaving the Vatican Benedict was flown to Castel Gandolfo, where a crowd had gathered to wish him farewell. His words to the crowd were printed as a headline: From this evening I will no longer be a pontiff. I will simply be a pilgrim who is starting the final stage of his pilgrimage on earth. The newspaper also printed a profile of Benedict, explaining that, as a theologian, he championed the term pilgrim people of God for the Church. Then, as a cardinal, his coat of arms centred on a scallop shell, the pilgrim symbol. But my eyes kept catching on the date of Benedict’s birth: 16 April, the feast day of Benoît-Joseph Labre. Pavia, the Pope, the patron saint of pilgrims – everything was linked, like the webbed waterways of La Padana Bassa, but I was not high enough to see the pattern. Instead, as with the homeless men in Ivrea, or the caretakers in Mortara, I could only wait for the future to reveal itself.

  So then I hiked east along the Po. The earth beside the river was banked to protect from flooding, and my route ran over the embankment. Rough stone villages clustered on the hills to the north, but the floodplain was almost empty. Each morning began with mist, clearing by midday to reveal washed-out scenery like an abstract canvas.

  On Sunday afternoon I stopped at a hamlet called Corte Sant’Andrea. Nearby, a weatherboard landing dipped down to the Po. The water seemed shrunken, with a greyish sheen that reminded me of the grease on boiled meat.

  According to Fr Nunzio, pilgrims used to gather here to cross the river by boat, for there was no bridge before Piacenza. Fifteen years ago, after the Via Francigena was revived, a local boatman named Danilo Parisi began ferrying pilgrims across again. The priest had asked if I wanted a lift, but I told him I was supposed to be travelling on foot. However, he insisted this was the medieval route and rang the boatman to arrange my passage. At first Danilo was reluctant – Sunday was his day off – but eventually he agreed to meet me. Three o’clock. On the landing. Don’t be late.

  Danilo turned up around five. He was bulky and blushing, shouting apologies as he sped towards me in a dented motorboat. From the shouts I gathered that he had been hosting a lunch party which went on too long.

  As the boat slowed near the landing, Danilo held out his hand. His arms were massive, the fingers callused and the palms chalky.

  When I leant forwards, he pulled me on board. Then we swept into open water.

  The river was so low that the boat seemed to be slipping along the skin of the earth. A depth counter showed how close we were to the riverbed, flickering from eight metres to six metres to three. Danilo veered between the shallows, cutting the engine every few minutes to announce that we had beached, that I must climb out and push. Each time I refused – growing more and more irritated behind a fixed grin – he would sob with laughter and speed on. The rest of the time he told jokes, or sang songs, or repeated stories about the pilgrims he had ferried across before me. He mentioned a film crew from the Netherlands, a unit of Swiss Guard, and another British pilgrim travelling alone. That pilgrim spoke like me, but was older, fatter – my father, perhaps? When I shook my head, the boatman looked disappointed. And, when I boasted about reaching Rome for the new pope, he looked dismayed. Benedict was gone! Berlusconi was gone! Danilo’s heart was broken in two!

  Trees dragged along the bank, and the sides
of the channel blurred. The silt was the colour of putty, the shingle soft like clay, the water banded grey and blue, blue and grey. Above, the clouds reamed past and the sky stretched wide – as if the world was spinning faster, or the seasons streaming by.

  Four kilometres downstream, metal rungs climbed onto the opposite shore. After we moored the boat, Danilo led the way up the rungs. A pair of terriers were tied near the top, yapping with boredom. My companion asked if I wanted to see his home and then shambled off without waiting for an answer, the dogs tripping at his feet.

  The boatman lived in a bloated brick farmhouse crouched behind the floodbank. A bronze sign was pinned to the wall, smeared blue by the mist off the river. The sign gave estimated distances to Rome (588 km), Jerusalem (2,975 km), Canterbury (1,313 km), and Santiago (1,995 km).

  As I put down my rucksack, Danilo counted off the towns and cities before the capital: ‘Piacenza, Fidenza, Pontremoli, Pietresanta, Lucca, San Miniato, San Gimignano, Siena . . .’ He stopped speaking, started laughing. ‘Maybe if you hitchhike. All alone – nobody will know!’

  I laughed as well, but my voice sounded forced. Then I stopped laughing, because today was 3 March, the third Sunday of Lent. Twenty-one days until Holy Week. Six hundred kilometres to go.

  Three middle-aged men were left over from lunch, sitting in the half-timbered barn and sharing a bottle of wine. On catching sight of Danilo they cheered. He motioned me to join them and then went into the house, returning with two more bottles and a red leather ledger, the words Liber Peregrinorum stamped on the cover. As I signed the ledger, Danilo offered me some wine. When I turned him down, he asked if I was fasting for Lent.