by Guy Stagg
So now I had reached Tuscany.
Departing from Canterbury, I thought I was leaving the world behind. At first the solitude was exhilarating, because I did not know how I would cope alone. Walking in the Alps seemed heroic – the first winter pilgrim to cross the pass in decades – but the Apennines spoilt any sense of adventure. In the rain that same solitude was punishing, an empty space where my doubts could amplify, and I began to feel trapped by the very isolation that I once sought. Fortunately, at the mission house in Siena, I met my first pilgrims.
It was part of a convent – Convento Figlie della Carità di San Vincenzo de’Paoli – with a soup kitchen on the ground floor and bedrooms on the first. The walls downstairs were painted grey, and sacks of donated clothing sat in the corners. A group of single mothers lived upstairs, either looking for jobs or finishing college courses.
Sr Ginetta was in charge. She wore a blue fleece and a pleated blue skirt, and as we marched round the house she asked quickfire questions. How long had I been walking? What route did I take? All alone? All the way to Rome? You like walking? And Tuscany, you like Tuscany?
This, roughly, was how I answered:
After leaving the Apennines I went south along the Tyrrhenian Sea, past orange groves blushing with new fruit and marble yards stacked with uncut rock. The Apuan Alps rose to my left, quarries cracking the heights like still-lying snow. Strips of suburb bordered the mountains – towns, villages and coastal resorts sprawling into one another. Then I turned inland through a landscape of small valleys, small farms. The hills were hatched with cypresses, and the fields had the brushed look of suede. I packed away my gloves, my fleece, and walked upright into the warming weather, stopping each evening at the monasteries and presbyteries of medieval towns: Lucca, San Miniato, San Gimignano, and Colle di Val d’Elsa. Their buildings were stooped, their streets narrow, and their painted houses formed uneven ranks of amber and peach, ochre and cream. I told Sr Ginetta it was the most beautiful scenery I had seen this far, and just a little bit dull. She laughed and slapped her thigh.
One of the convent’s first-floor rooms was a dormitory, with metal-framed bunk beds and starched sheets. Two pilgrims had already arrived, both dressed in Lycra sports gear. Giacomo was in his mid-sixties, a stocky man with a savage face. His left leg was kicked against the wall, while he massaged the hamstring between two balled fists. Oscar, his son-in-law, was about forty, his arms and chest fat with muscle. He lay on a bed, groaning and rubbing his eyes.
The two pilgrims left Lombardy a fortnight ago. ‘We keep to the tarmac,’ said Oscar. ‘We don’t stop to rest. Forty kilometres, forty-five, every day.’
‘Why so fast?’ I asked.
Giacomo swaggered towards me, standing too close and breathing in my face. His skin was red. His jaw bristled. The tendons on his neck stuck out like fiddle strings. ‘Pilgrimage is not a holiday,’ he said.
He started asking questions. With each answer I gave, his expression grew more and more contorted. No, I did not spend an hour a day begging for food. No, I did not recite a rosary while I hiked. No, I was not travelling as penance. No, I had not seen any miracles en route.
Oscar got off the bed. ‘He’s like me. He’s an athlete.’
Giacomo scoffed. ‘So why walk to Rome for Easter?’
I opened my mouth, shut it. My journey was neither a leisurely holiday, nor some marathon fitness session. Instead, as I tried to explain, I wanted to learn about religion by taking part in a ritual.
‘No, no,’ said Oscar. ‘You’re an athlete. You love to race.’
At that point a third pilgrim arrived. The pilgrim’s features were handsome but damaged: his face long, his jaw strong and his broad nose broken several times. Grey hair spooled down from his nostrils, and his eyebrows were fringed with grey fibres. Meanwhile his rucksack was torn, the canvas sewn together with string, and another tear, in the left leg of his trousers, gaped to show a knee joint strapped in gauze.
When the stranger stepped through the door, Giacomo shouted: ‘Lorenzo! We thought you gave up! We asked the hospitals, the police—’
It turned out that father and son-in-law had overtaken the new pilgrim earlier in the day. He walked too slowly, Oscar explained, much too slowly.
‘An ordinary speed,’ said Lorenzo, face creased with frustration. ‘Four kilometres, five kilometres an hour.’
‘We asked the nuns, the priests,’ Giacomo went on. ‘We thought maybe you turned back. Maybe you went home.’
‘An ordinary speed,’ Lorenzo said again. ‘Not too fast, not too slow.’
The convent’s dining room was downstairs. Three women stood round the table, laying out bowls of soup, pasta and salad, as well as plastic cutlery and paper plates. One was from Kosovo, another from the Ivory Coast, and the third from a village south of Naples. Ines, the African woman, spoke to me in French as she sliced her son’s food. Meanwhile, her daughter skipped laps of the table, until Giacomo started conjuring sweets from behind the girl’s ears. Oscar sat with the other women, telling stories about how far he had travelled, how fast. ‘Look at my beard,’ he said, raking his fingers through a fortnight’s rusty stubble. ‘Look at my feet,’ he added, removing his socks to show pulped flesh. ‘Two hundred and sixty kilometres to go!’
Lorenzo’s expression was scornful. ‘Why are you racing?’
‘I don’t have time to walk slow.’
‘You have time.’
‘I have a job.’
‘Quit your job.’
‘I have a family.’
‘Take a bus to Rome.’
‘I’m an athlete.’
‘Or a bike.’
‘A pilgrim has to walk.’
This went on for the rest of the meal. Occasionally Giacomo tried to interrupt, but the two men kept quarrelling, until they were simply parroting phrases at one another: An athlete, an athlete . . . Not too fast, not too slow . . . The three women were quiet now, and Ines’s daughter had crawled beneath the table, hands to her ears. Then Giacomo rose from his chair to propose a toast. ‘Habemus Papam!’ he cried, smiling his savage smile. Last week, on the second day of the papal conclave, white smoke had gone up from the Sistine Chapel. An Argentine cardinal had been appointed pope: the first pontiff from Latin America. But the decision was popular here too, because his family were originally Italian.
Oscar stood as well. ‘Mario Bergoglio!’ he shouted. ‘From Piedmont!’
Lorenzo remained seated, muttering, ‘Pope Francis, St Francis, the poor man of Assisi.’ At the same time, the three women began clearing the table, their movements rushed as if anxious to get away. I hurried to help them, trying to distance myself from the other three pilgrims.
Every day the nuns provided lunch for 120 people. When our meal was over, Sr Ginetta brought out a plastic crate of lettuce and ham, and a bin bag full of buns. We formed an assembly line: Giacomo unpacking the ingredients, Oscar slicing the buns, Lorenzo layering each one with lettuce and ham, while I wrapped the whole lot in clingfilm. As we worked, the atmosphere in the room calmed. Oscar sang football chants, and Giacomo rushed ahead. Lorenzo took his time, counting out 120 parcels of food, until Sr Ginetta drummed the table and the children clapped him faster.
The athletes left Siena not long after sunrise. By nine o’clock Lorenzo and I were also away. Heading south from the Porta Romana, there was blossom by the roadside – pinkish petals lacing the cherry trees.
Lorenzo asked whether I knew the date. I wasn’t sure. If we arrived in Siena on the fifth Sunday of Lent, today must be . . . Passiontide?
He shook his head. ‘Today is the first day of spring. Today nature forgives our sins.’
Soon we were clear of the city, climbing onto duneshaped hills of sandy yellow and corduroy brown. The grass on the hillsides waved in the wind, the dunes shifting over the earthbed. We followed a chalk path, a tarmac cycling track, and a potholed road between farm buildings converted into holiday homes. Swells of green lapped the road – moss
green, olive green, mint green too, crested with strands of gold. Lorenzo was right. Spring was on its way.
Usually I walked quickly and stopped often. My companion walked at a steadier pace, breaking every two or three hours. I had no practice hiking in tandem and grew impatient trying to match him – my legs tense, muscles pent, movements crabbed as if cased in armour. Lorenzo showed no sign of moving faster, however, only muttered his favourite mantra (‘An ordinary speed! Not too fast, not too slow . . .’) and slapped at imaginary insects.
I was hoping that, after a few days together, we would be firm friends. One-on-one conversations, stretched out over hours, were what I liked best. But my companion spent the whole morning lecturing me on Movimento Cinque Stelle, the protest party that won a quarter of the seats at the last election. He told me that Cinque Stelle was against politicians, against lawyers, against armies and energy corporations and banks. The party’s leader was a comedian called Beppe Grillo – ‘A funny man for a crazy time!’
Was this the reason people voted for him? I wondered, but Lorenzo shook his head. ‘Grillo speaks for us all. Like a prophet. Lorenzo is his number one fan. His number one fan.’ Did I know that Cinque Stelle was founded on 4 October, the feast day of St Francis? And that the followers of St Francis were the first environmentalists? That’s right, said Lorenzo, the best way to help the environment was to imitate St Francis. The mendicant life – travelling on foot, living off charity – that would save the planet.
‘Is that why you’re walking to Rome?’ I asked.
‘I walk as protest,’ Lorenzo replied. ‘Pilgrimage is protest.’
That afternoon he talked about motorway construction and industrial fishing, about tidal energy and the Chinese space programme. Some vague conspiracy linked these subjects, but I could not follow its logic. Yet I understood where it was heading, because each time Lorenzo stopped speaking – when he checked his map, or admired the view, or paused to pee behind a thicket of laurel – he would murmur the phrase, ‘Il Diluvio universale.’
Around teatime the hills shrugged down to a winding stream called the Arbia. Our route slumped too, sinking between a railway track and a ditch slick with rainwater. Wildflowers chequered the sides of the ditch, teams of tiny frogs diving into the water when we passed. They left no wake as they slipped beneath the surface, only a faint pattern of hoops and coils. By now Lorenzo was rambling about the islands of plastic floating in the Pacific, while I nodded my head and longed for silence. Worried that I would have to listen to him the whole way to Rome, I also began plotting my escape.
At five o’clock we stopped in a village called Ponte d’Arbia, where the disused school had been turned into a pilgrim refuge. The assembly hall contained the remnants of a botched renovation: clotted paintbrushes, cracked tiles, scraps of carpet and scuds of Polyfilla, as well as sun-faded curtains and rubber bands stretched white with use. Upstairs, the classrooms were furnished with three beds each, their sheets clammy and the walls mildewed. Dust clumped the cobwebs, and a smell like damp towelling lingered in the air. I asked my companion if he wanted a room to himself, but he insisted we share.
Later that evening an odd thing happened. Lorenzo showered first and then wiped the bathroom with a mop. He asked me to do the same, so after showering I picked up the mop and began to clean. Its shaft was a tube of foil-thin metal with a welt across the middle, and when I pressed it to the floor, the whole thing folded.
Bother.
I went into the bedroom and asked Lorenzo if there was another.
‘What’s wrong with the mop?’
I tried to explain.
‘You broke the mop?’
I tried once more.
‘You think Lorenzo broke the mop?’
I tried a third time. It was no good.
‘Why would Lorenzo break the mop?’
He seized the folded metal from my hands, knelt in the bathroom, and swabbed the floor. As he worked he muttered, ‘Il Diluvio, il Diluvio.’ Then he got into bed and started reading the Bible, holding the pages very close to his face. When I offered to cook us a meal, he told me no, no food, he was fasting for the night.
That broad nose. That proud expression. Oh Lorenzo, I let you down.
Next morning I woke around five to the sound of packing. Sitting up, I saw my companion fastening his rucksack onto his shoulders. When I asked if he was leaving, he told me he wanted to walk alone. When I asked why, he barged out the door. I called after him, but heard no reply, so I turned over and went back to sleep. We were both glad to be alone again.
That was not my last encounter with Lorenzo. Two days later I reached a spread of clay hillocks called Val d’Orcia, where there were no trees, no grass, nothing but aged vines tying together the ruined earth. At the end of the valley a granite ridge rose to a thousand metres, marking the southern border of Tuscany. One of the peaks had a crumbling castle set upon its cusp. Below the castle stood Radicofani, a stone village facing south towards Lazio. From here the even greens of Tuscany became a grey landscape of lakes and calderas and crests of volcanic rock.
Opposite the church I found a flat for pilgrims. The shelves were stacked with crockery and the cabinets crowded with games – packs of playing cards, boxes of draughts and a strategy game called RisiKo!, its broken board stuck together with tape. The dining table was long enough to seat twelve, the surface stinking of polish. A guestbook lay open at one end, containing entries from previous pilgrims. Lorenzo’s was the first that I saw. He gave no address, only his name, his age, and a brief essay about il Diluvio universale. Oscar and Giacomo had stayed the night before, their message boasting that they would rise early and complete Lazio in a single dash.
I kept turning the pages, going back through the entries. Some of the messages I could translate, the rest only guess their meaning. A single word was repeated in every language: Roma . . . Rom . . . Rim . . . Rome . . . Róma . . . Rzym.
One pilgrim had been walking for seven years, ticking off half the shrines in Europe. He filled two pages with the list of towns and cities he had visited, but left no name or destination. Instead he left a drawing of a scallop shell and a single sentence: 30,000 chilometri per Christo.
I flicked forwards to an empty page, wondering what to write. All winter I had travelled alone, and though at times I wished for company, I learnt to feel content by myself. Then I met three other pilgrims and that contentment came apart. My pilgrimage was not penance, not protest, not a race to Rome. And I was embarrassed by the real reason: a nonbeliever hoping a ritual would heal him. Yet, looking at the guestbook, I took some comfort from all the names. Hundreds of people must have hiked this way without knowing why. There was humility in this: setting off in the hope that the journey would make sense by the time you arrived. And honesty too, for who could travel all this distance without doubting their own motives?
Part of me wished Lorenzo was still here. I wanted to apologize, or else try to explain. But I knew we would never meet again, so I wrote my name at the top of the page and the words thank you in every language I could remember.
It was Friday morning. Holy Week began the day after tomorrow. Although I would miss Palm Sunday in Rome, I felt no disappointment as I dropped from Radicofani, only a restless anticipation. Entering Lazio, I stretched out my stride and gulped down the air, beaming at every person I passed. The capital was a hundred and seventy kilometres away, but I could count the stops between: Acquapendente, Bolsena, Viterbo, Sutri, Campagnano di Roma, and then the slow slog through the suburbs. So how long until St Peter’s? A week? Less? Determined to make it in just six days, I walked hard all afternoon and that evening reached Acquapendente. Five days to go. One hundred and forty kilometres remaining.
On Saturday I was off early, hiking over deformed hillsides and through scraps of woodland. By midafternoon Lake Bolsena was in sight, the water wide as the horizon, like a second sky fitted beneath the first. A town extended along the shore, also called Bolsena, centred on a rambling
church named Basilica di Santa Cristina. Its interior was pale marble, its ceiling braced with beams, and its tiles had the pinkish tint of scrubbed skin. A poster hung in the south vestry, showing an image I recognized from France: a boat, a cross, and the words Annus Fidei printed beneath. The north vestry communicated with a chapel, a round Renaissance folly painted puffy yellow. After that came another chapel, and another, burrowing into the hillside, while the frescoed passageways weathered to worn plaster and raw tufa.
In the last chamber, a low catacomb, I found a statue of the saint laid on a bed of solid stone. The air was damp, the light dim, and my breath echoed off the ceiling. I thought of cells and crypts, of caverns and vaults, of sinking seven storeys into the earth. Then I closed my eyes and the tomb was dark. That was the fifth day.
I left Bolsena on Palm Sunday and climbed out of the lake basin. A road sign on the hillside marked one hundred kilometres to Rome. Then my path descended through fields of budding wheat.
Around six I stopped at Viterbo, a medieval town built from battered stone. One of the wall towers – in the gardens of an Augustinian monastery – had been converted into a pilgrim refuge. On the ground floor was a kitchen and a dining room, on the first floor a bank of showers. Two flights up was a dormitory containing eleven beds and a pair of west-facing windows. Through the window I could see the road to Rome scored with headlights.
I stood and watched the Sunday traffic rush towards the city. The capital was an hour’s drive away, but the Via Francigena had another eighty-five kilometres to run. As evening deepened, the far-off lights became bright. One by one they blinked, flashed and fled into the dusk.