The Crossway

by Guy Stagg

  At midnight the corpses were placed in St Peter’s Square. Some could only be identified by their clothes, the features bruised beyond recognition. Others remained anonymous: cloaks ripped and tunics bloodied. How did Dante describe the eighth circle of hell? A chasm filled with new anguish, new torment – nova pieta, novo tormento – and sinners swimming naked in its depths – Nel fondo erano ignudi i peccatori. That circle was where Dante housed the simoniacs – all those who sold Church offices or profited from spiritual favours – and where he reserved a space for Pope Boniface VIII, father of the first Jubilee. As the grandest spectacle of medieval pilgrimage descended into tragedy, his words now read like prophecy. And, moving away from that monstrous pageant, I felt hollowed out by its history.

  Come midday I was on the Via Appia Antica, the old road south from the capital. I was leaving Rome.

  The road began at the Porta San Sebastiano and cut through the wide expanse of the Caffarella Park. From museums and townhouses to fields of grazing animals – a groove scored straight out of the city. The paving was a soft purple shade, rutted by the wheels of carts and carriages. Stone slabs lay along the edge, their corners black with lichen, and sunken tombs sat on the grass, beside toppled pillars and capsized watchtowers. In the distance I noticed the remains of an aqueduct, its arches fallen in like the broken links of a chain.

  At lunchtime the park was full of joggers and cyclists, but during the next hour their numbers thinned, and by early afternoon I was alone again. Planes shrieked from an airport behind the treeline, while from far off I could hear the low rumble of a motorway.

  Around teatime the paving ran out and puddles dashed the path. Then I reached a grove of trees and a wooden footbridge. Its deck was snapped in two, the gap a metre at most, but I hesitated as I came nearer. Although the water under the bridge was in shadow, I could just see my reflection on the surface. Below that I could see darkness like the night, see bodies massing in the cold, see the clotted grey of exposed skin—

  I took a deep breath and jumped.

  Sinking onto the opposite side, the weight of my rucksack carried me down, and with a sudden feeling of release, I ran.

  Anagni was a hilltop town seventy kilometres east of the capital. When I arrived on Tuesday afternoon the place was awash with rain, streets streaming and gutters flooded. On my first night in Rome, Gabriella had given me the address of a convent here with a bed for pilgrims. Asking directions, I was pointed towards a house on the fringes of the old town. Its lights were off, its curtains drawn, but I kept knocking until a woman about my age answered the door. Her hair was cropped and messy, her eyes full of light, and she wore a zipped black hoodie with sleeves twisted into her palms. Her name was Giulia.

  Giulia invited me inside and brought out coffee and cake, apologizing for her fluent English. She had been a novice at the convent for two and a half years, and in six months’ time she would take her vows.

  When Giulia asked what I wanted, I gave the standard answer – that I left Canterbury in January, hiked to Rome for Easter, and was pushing on to Jerusalem. But, when I said that I was hoping to stay the night, she shook her head.

  ‘In Rome I was told you had a room for guests—’

  ‘Not us. Maybe the Sisters of Charity?’

  ‘The Sisters of Charity?’

  ‘Next to the palace. The pope’s palace. They have a room for pilgrims.’

  Realizing my mistake, I began to apologize, but Giulia cut me off: ‘I’m happy you came to us. You are the first person I ever met who is walking to Jerusalem.’

  At that point the front door opened and four nuns stepped in from the rain. Now there was confusion: more coffee, more cake, a tour of the convent, a visit to the chapel, a goody bag filled with fruit and nuts, and a copy of a travel diary written by an Italian priest – Diario di Terra Santa. The photo on the dust jacket showed a handsome chap standing in a desert, wearing a safari suit, dog collar and cowboy hat.

  Giulia offered to take me to the Sisters of Charity. Sharing her umbrella, she led the way into Anagni’s medieval centre. Water splashed down the road, while a cobblestone sky closed over us. More water pooled in the piazzas, their buildings blotted out.

  As we crossed the crooked passageways of the old town, Giulia asked questions about my journey. How many days, how many countries, and how many kilometres? And please, was I in Rome for Easter? All her life Giulia had lived near Rome, but she had never been for Easter. Maybe I saw Pope Francis? Or the Way of the Cross? Or maybe I went to Sunday mass at St Peter’s?

  I said that I went, but had to leave.

  Giulia looked disappointed. ‘Why?’

  I ran through the reasons in my head. None of them answered her question. What did it matter if I was overwhelmed by the crowds, or if I doubted my pilgrimage could heal anything? In the end I did not reply, until Giulia suggested: ‘Maybe there were too many people? Or maybe, how do I explain, because everyone else was a pilgrim, you were left out?’

  Maybe. At the beginning of the pilgrimage I hoped that, by taking part in Christian rituals, I might better understand the beliefs. On Sunday morning that hope had faltered. Here was the resurrection, the miracle on which the entire Church was founded – yet I could not believe that death was defeated this day. For others in the crowd the ceremony meant salvation, but for me it was just a show, a sham. So I quit Rome and started walking again, but my sense of purpose was gone. If the ritual had no meaning, why keep going? Why not give up?

  That was what I asked Giulia.

  For a long time she was quiet. Then she said: ‘A few years ago I never went to church. I went to parties, went dancing – same as all my friends. I had a boyfriend – the same. But one day, I can’t say why, one day I wanted to go to mass. Like I had to go. In the church the priest said: Do you know that Jesus suffered on the cross so you could live? He died so you could live. And those words broke my heart. They broke my heart. Not where your feelings are, somewhere deeper than that. Jesus gave his life for me. What could I give for him?’

  The summer before, Giulia had volunteered at a school in Albania run by nuns. The simplicity of their lives seemed beautiful to her, and now the memory of that summer returned. ‘No way I wanted to be a sister. I wanted a normal life, a normal job. I wanted a family – normal. But every time I prayed was the same: Jesus gave his life for me. It took a long time – a lot of tough conversations with God – until I realized what I want is not the most important. What He wants is the most important.’

  We came to the gated entrance of a submerged courtyard. A palazzo stood at the far end, the loggia stained black by the rain. The stone archway on the left-hand side enclosed a wooden door.

  Giulia rang the bell and we stood watching raindrops riddle the puddles. While we waited, she said, ‘When I was twenty, if anyone told me: Giulia in five years’ time you will be a nun, I would call them crazy. Now it’s the opposite. If I make a plan for five years’ time, I’m the crazy one. I don’t know what will happen in five months. Maybe I will be a nun – but God decides. I have to trust him.’

  Then she said, ‘Sometimes I think it’s a mistake. I wish I was certain, like I always knew the future, but that means I wouldn’t need God. He makes me brave when I’m afraid what happens next.’

  Finally she said, ‘Or maybe that sounds crazy.’

  It did not. It sounded hopeful and full of humility. As Giulia spoke, it seemed possible to doubt, possible to despair, yet still believe. This was far from the triumphant spectacle I had seen in Rome – a longing faith much closer to loyalty. There was courage here, born not from self-confidence but from living small before the world. I wanted to tell her this, yet I struggled to find the words. I could not explain how her story moved me, nor confess my fear that the pilgrimage would heal nothing. Moments later the door opened and another nun invited me inside. Then my guide was gone, dancing through the puddles with umbrella held high.

  As you go south from Lazio, the architecture ages, Classica
l and Baroque churches replaced by Romanesque and Gothic. The landscape ages too, the plains weathering away and the mountains bowing down. Their summits were now topped with a scree of chopped-up rock, while their slopes were crude slabs of granite and lime. The pastures had also gone, replaced by fields of dust and the fretted canopies of olive groves. Farm workers stood in each grove, either pruning the trees or raking the felled branches into piles, before setting each pile alight.

  Although I was glad for the turning weather – the mornings milder, the evenings lighter – there was little warmth in the sun, as if the season was still making up its mind. Hiking east through the upper corner of Campania, I noticed only a few signs of spring: the primroses spotting a building site by Alife, or the almond blossom brushing the scrubland outside Telese, or the string-thin saplings in the low growth near Solopaca.

  Ten days after leaving Rome I reached Benevento, a crumbling city built from stone. An arch in the city centre marked the start of the Via Traiana, the Roman road to the Adriatic. I was planning to follow its course as far as Bari, where I would catch the boat to Albania. From there another Roman road – the Via Egnatia – would lead me through Albania, Macedonia and Greece, all the way to Istanbul.

  The Dauni Mountains lifted up beyond the city: a hinge of sandstone ridges marking the border between Campania and Apulia. The foothills were the colour of leather, and the grass on the summits made a scraping sound in the wind. A new road led into the mountains, but the work was not finished yet: in places I found asphalt, in places gravel, and in places a sandy track hacked from the hills. Discarded furniture lay by the roadside, mostly cabinets with charred panels or sofas with rotted stuffing.

  There were no cars on the upland roads, no people in the hilltop hamlets, only flat-roofed houses yellowing with age and fallow plots where the earth was clumped like rubble. Though I had been walking for a hundred days, my shoulders were still tender, my rucksack still heavy. And the new boots were a poor fit: their soles rigid, their toes cramped.

  My thoughts kept returning to that Easter weekend, trying to work out what went wrong. Aimless, left out, nagged with doubt – these were the reasons I had given Giulia for leaving Rome. True, after the giddy achievement of reaching the city, the Holy Week celebrations left me hollow. But this did not explain the panic I felt in St Peter’s Square. Although similar fits of anxiety – the weighted sky, the textured light, the voices piercing the air – had troubled the years I spent in London. And before that too.

  The fits began in my early twenties, when I was living in Buenos Aires. Walking into the Dauni Mountains, I was reminded of that city. The loneliness of the mountain range recalled those isolated months in the capital: no escape from the solitude, no distraction from myself. And, as I climbed towards the pass at Masseria San Vito, my mind tunnelled back to that time.

  Even now I cannot explain why I went to Argentina. I had vague plans to learn Spanish, to write a novel, to tour round Patagonia. I hoped to find some sense of purpose too, but instead I fell apart.

  I was staying in a studio flat on the fifth floor of a modern block. The bedroom was bare, with a plastic table and fabric blinds. Its windows faced a cemetery, Cementerio de la Recoleta, where the country’s grandest families were buried beside soldiers and politicians and scientists. Their graves were a mix of Classical and Gothic, Art Deco and Art Nouveau, Neo-Babylonian and Byzantine Revival. Each day I looked down on a riot of statues, domes, cupolas and spires, some shining, others polished, but most a polluted grey.

  My first weeks were spent exploring the neighbourhood. It was late August, early September, and though traffic jammed the roads, the cafes and restaurants were empty, the parks and plazas deserted. Whenever I got lost I grew frantic, walking faster and faster, trying desperately to retrace my steps. I struggled to ask directions or follow maps, struggled to use buses, taxis or the metro. A few mornings I struggled to leave my room, standing by the door and inventing reasons to remain inside.

  The real reason was simple: I was afraid of the city.

  I drank to calm the fear, every day a little more. Since university I had drunk too much and over time the habit hardened, until it was no longer a pleasure but a compulsion. Yet I was only twenty-two and assumed I was too young to have a problem. Besides, my evenings had an ugly glare that I mistook for glamour. One evening was spent sipping whisky with an American congressman and his favourite pair of prostitutes; another evening it was cocktails with a princess from one of the smallest kingdoms in Europe; and in the cigar room of the Alvear Palace Hotel I met polo teams and pop stars and the nephew of a general who commanded the Junta.

  No matter how late these evenings lasted, they always ended the same way. Alone in my flat. Sat at the table. Drinking until I fell to the ground.

  When the weather warmed, tourists filled the cemetery below my window. I watched them wandering between the graves, photographing carved angels and embossed plaques, or queuing to leave flowers at the tomb of Eva Perón. Soon I was going outside again, visiting museums and bookshops and attending mass at the Catedral Metropolitana. The archbishop was presiding, one Cardinal Bergoglio.

  That was the month of the first attack. It was the end of October, shortly after the death of the former president, Néstor Kirchner. I was crossing the Plaza de Mayo, a paved space at the centre of the city, where men and women queued to see the president’s body lying in state. Halfway across the square I felt the air tighten. I could hear my breath grating, hear the blood in my ears, see the buildings shiver, the paving sharpen. With each step I took, the noise in the square became louder, the contrasts violent, until I thought my eardrums would burst, my eyes burn white.

  This lasted maybe three minutes, maybe ten. Then I walked away feeling thin and brittle.

  A few days later it happened again, as I roamed round an antiques market in San Telmo. And again, as I watched a student protest in Avenida Córdoba. So I went back to my room, locking the door and staying inside. But after that things went wrong very fast. I drank and drank until my liver ached and bloated, until my feet puffed and went purple. I came to with wrists trembling, hands trembling, with fingers bruised and knuckles sheared – forgotten accidents from the lost hours of the night. The tremor lasted until I drank again, the glass rattling in my mouth as I tried to bite the rim.

  I had never known such isolation. Despite thousands of lives crammed close on every side, I experienced only the vast indifference of the city. The solitude became a cell, my thoughts hemmed in by the activity all around. I sought comfort in drinking, company too, and before long I was getting through a litre of gin a day.

  Climbing into the Dauni Mountains, those memories weighed on my mind. Rising towards the barren heights, I grew more and more angry with my younger self. What a waste! How willingly I let myself drown! But at the time I felt helpless to prevent it, for the drinking was something stronger than will, something animal and raw. Like the savage calling that inspired those pilgrim mobs. Like surrender.

  I never learnt Spanish, never finished the novel, never travelled outside the city. In all those months I never once visited the cemetery opposite the flat. During the last month I rarely left my room, though there was vomit in the sink, vomit in the bin – spirits mixed with stomach acid and the tin-tasting scum of blood. Though the air was yellow and reeking, the bedsheets stained with piss. Though there was ash on the tiles, on the tables and blind, ash on the windows, ash scattering the cemetery, on the domes and statues, spires and plaques, and ash on the angels’ faces. Yet no matter how much I drank, I could not leave my mind, nor dissolve the memories that were gathering there. Memories I had hidden; memories I had lied and lied to keep secret . . . A boy standing above a bridge. Darkness beneath like a pool of water. A train screaming through the darkness. And now the jump . . .

  By Christmas I was back in London, but I struggled to leave Buenos Aires behind. I panicked on buses and tube trains, on busy streets and congested roads. I went sober for one week,
two weeks at a time, and then I would drink until I wrecked myself. I tried to forget, tried not to think, but my mind was wayward now.

  Six months later I was lying in bed, turned from the window, dreaming of suicide.

  Approaching Masseria San Vito, I thought I could walk out the anger, but soon my heels were blistered, my legs burning. That anger was for the present as much as the past, because I knew this pilgrimage was no less childish: a wanton risk with my own well-being. Nearing the pass, I began muttering to myself in mocking phrases – clever boy; clever, clever boy – for what I had called healing was in fact a kind of punishment. Perhaps I never even wanted to recover, but simply to mask my suffering, to endure in silence.

  As I neared the abandoned summits, my mind bobbed up from the past. Downy oak lined the road near the crossing, their trunks black and their branches scarred. They emerged from the splintered earth like the remains of bombed-out buildings.

  Masseria San Vito consisted of a fortified farmhouse and a ruined chapel, the roof gone and the roof beams collapsed. Each piece of timber was sheathed in tarpaulin, resembling the ribs of an upturned umbrella. Outside the chapel a fountain flowed into a trough, water slopping over the edges and onto the ground. The damp earth smelt like a wound.

  After two hundred metres the road topped the ridgeline. From here I could see the mountain range reaching north, and the slopes to the south stitched with windmills. Though the wind was relentless, the turbines did not turn, standing still as sentries. A shining lake of solar panels lay at the base of the range, and beyond that was the Tavoliere Plain: green fields of tomato and wheat, grey terraces of walnut and almond, and then acre upon acre of olive grove, stretching towards Bari.

  Somewhere past the sweeping cloud shadows and the heat-hazed plain, much farther than I could see, was a pale stripe of light where the earth met the sky. It was the Adriatic – just six days’ walk away. After that the land tapered into a narrow finger of rock, pointing towards Jerusalem.