The Crossway

by Guy Stagg

  I walked on the flat with the wind in my face, staring at the stark blue sky. Spring was here, yet the sunlight was stale, and warm gusts grazed the back of my throat. Salt flavoured the air, along with the smell of stagnant water, and the sea flashed in the distance. It was Wednesday 17 April. Twelve kilometres to go.

  At midday I skirted an industrial estate made up of storage units, kennel cages and rows of ageing warehouses. Their windows were fixed into frames, but the glass was so scoured with sand that it looked opaque, like a cataract clouding an eye.

  Next came a set of skips brimming with junked electronics. After that was more rubbish: shrivelled cartons and plastic casings, heaped in bluffs or spread on the ground. Five caravans formed a half-circle in the middle of the dump, with a woman squatting beside them, rinsing clothes in a red tub. Behind her a group of men lifted a crank generator from a wooden crate. They stopped work as I walked by, watching me with fists on hips.

  Three or four children played football in a clearing beyond the caravans. Two more children stood in the road: a girl aged ten or eleven, her black hair tied in bunches, and a boy – her younger brother, perhaps – holding a teddy to his cheek. The girl was carrying a sack so heavy it tilted her to one side. As I approached, she let go of the sack and tins of food spilled onto the tarmac. Then she started asking questions. No, I wasn’t American. No, not Albanian either. English. England. It’s north of Italy. Go over the Alps and – never mind. No, I wasn’t married. No, I didn’t have any cigarettes.

  The girl kept miming cartoonish puffs to make sure that I understood. Eventually she said, ‘You’re a priest. You have to give me something.’

  ‘I’m not a priest.’

  ‘Fr Tomasso always gives me something.’ She kicked the sack. More tins fell onto the floor: tinned pork, tinned tomatoes, tinned beans. ‘Fr Tomasso will be angry if you don’t.’

  She held out a hand. Her arms were tanned and scratched and thin as twigs.

  ‘It’s a sin,’ she said.

  I gave her a packet of dried fruit – what remained of the goody bag from the nuns in Anagni – and she stuffed it into her sack. Then she collected the tins from the ground and disappeared between the bluffs. I was hoping for some gesture of thanks, but her face showed only scorn, and I turned away feeling cheated.

  There was more rubbish spread on the streets of Bari.

  Franco worked in a sweet shop opposite the Cattedrale di San Sabino. He had a ragged beard, wore ragged robes, and when he smiled he turned his face to the sky. This shop was owned by the parish, its sweets piled in chests like pirate treasure, while a gang of eight-year-olds ran circuits round the room, snatching at rainbow lollipops and bowls of sugared almonds.

  The cathedral office had sent me here because Franco was in charge of pilgrims. I told him that tomorrow I was catching a boat to Durrës and walking to Istanbul – any chance of a bed? He crossed his arms and clucked his tongue, before taking my arm and marching me out of the shop.

  Parish buildings lined the piazza, my host leading the way into a tangle of corridors and courtyards. Sometimes he opened the door on an unlit chapel or a lightless cupboard, glancing inside before moving on. Eventually we stopped at a dingy room containing two beds and a desk covered in aftershave bottles. The scent of sandalwood filled the air, and the bottle caps glinted in the half-light. There was a suitcase under one of the beds and three polo shirts arranged on top in electric shades of orange, pink and green.

  ‘You can share with Jacopo,’ said Franco. ‘He is a good man. An unlucky man. So maybe keep your passport in your pocket – understand? Jacopo is a good man, but he is unlucky.’

  Jacopo arrived that evening. He was in his late thirties, skinny and pasty, his black hair glossed back with gel. He had been living in the parish for almost a month.

  ‘Thank you for sharing,’ I said, as we shook hands. ‘Only one night.’

  He gripped my fingers. ‘Stay longer. It’s better not to be alone.’

  There was a television above the desk, the aerial wired through the window. Jacopo fiddled with the control panel, trying to fix the static, but could not make the picture work. After a few minutes he gave up and played music on his phone instead – East Coast rap two decades out of date. He knew the lyrics by heart, without understanding a single word.

  Sitting opposite, I wondered if Jacopo was trying to impress me. And there was something dignified about this little man, with his folded polo shirts and bottles of scent. Maybe the rest of his life was chaos, but here he was lord and master.

  It was still early when Jacopo put on pyjamas and got into bed. I suggested we turn off the light, but he shook his head. Then he began telling me about his marriage. Each stage of the story had a prop: a photograph of a child – a girl aged six or seven – that was torn at the corner where his wife had ripped her face from the frame; a box file of letters from lawyers and priests, from welfare officers and child protection charities, and from family members related in ways I could not follow; texts his wife had sent, asking for a laptop or a washing machine or a car, because the last one was towed, crashed, broken beyond repair; as well as letters Jacopo had written in marker pen, begging to see his child – letters she returned without ever reading. And there was more. Answerphone messages left late at night, the voice sodden and screaming. Trousers and shirts with blue holes bleached into the fabric. At one point Jacopo lifted his pyjamas to show a greasy scar on his ribcage, claiming this was where she stabbed him. When I asked why, he told a confused story involving a birthday party, his wife’s best friend and a visit from the police. Watching him arrange the props with practised gestures, I wondered how much to believe. And, as his tone of wounded pride became pleading, my sympathy gave way to suspicion.

  The cathedral chimed ten, eleven, but Jacopo kept talking. A few times he suggested we escape to the Balkans, as if he had guessed my real motive for walking – seen through the rucksack and boots, the unkempt clothes and uncut hair, and glimpsed a reflection of himself. I stopped trying to tell him otherwise. I stopped even trying to listen. Finally, around twelve, I asked if we could turn off the light.

  My companion sighed and switched on a desk lamp. The bulb was covered in cloth, glowing rash-red in the corner.

  ‘It’s better, yes? Like a chapel, yes?’

  Later that night I heard Jacopo calling out in his sleep. There were no words, just shapeless sounds escaping his throat, but I could guess what he was saying. It was a pained and frightened noise. It was confession.

  Next day we went for a meal together. The parish served lunch to fifty or so unemployed men in another building off the main piazza. Franco stood by the door, dividing the queue in two: Italians this way, foreigners that. I sat with three men from Ghana – Emmanuel, Stephen and Daniel. They spoke English mixed with an Akan dialect and wore suits that looked as if they were made from carpet. They were discussing visas: applying for them, renewing them, buying, selling and losing them. Daniel, the one on my left, had a leather briefcase balanced on his lap. When a nun said grace, he crossed himself. When the students serving food asked if anyone was Muslim, he raised his hand.

  Our first course was pasta soup. After the plates were cleared, Franco came over, grinning at the ceiling. Each day one of the tables remained behind to help tidy, he explained. Today was our turn.

  Emmanuel frowned. Stephen frowned. Daniel covered his face with his hands. ‘I never should have come,’ he said. ‘I never came here before.’

  The three men began to mutter objections, but Franco was firm. Today.

  Daniel stood to leave. Franco asked him to sit. ‘I can’t understand a word you are saying,’ Daniel cried, hugging the briefcase to his chest.

  ‘He says you stay,’ Emmanuel explained.

  Daniel started shouting. ‘Can’t you see I’m sick?’

  Franco asked him to sit a second time, but he kept shouting – ‘Speak English! What’s the matter with you?’ – so Franco asked me to translate.

>   ‘He wants to leave—’ I began.

  ‘Tell him I’m sick!’ Daniel cried. ‘Tell him I never came here before!’

  ‘He says he’s sick.’

  Franco’s shoulders slumped and the expression melted from his face. Watching his features droop with disappointment, I felt as if I were to blame. I wanted to apologize – wanted somehow to rescue the situation – but already he was stepping back to let Daniel go, murmuring ‘Basta, basta.’

  After lunch the students threw wet rags onto the ends of brooms and raced them across the floor. Two of the volunteers, two brothers called Nico and Bruno, wondered why I was here. When I mentioned the pilgrimage, they looked anxious. Nico started listing reasons why it was too dangerous to hike in Albania. Bruno began telling stories about hold-ups in hotel rooms and murders on mountain roads. But, when I asked how many times the two brothers had visited the country, they laughed.

  ‘No, no,’ said Bruno. ‘We’re not stupid.’

  I returned to the room and packed my bag. Jacopo was waiting for me, stretched out on his bed. When I wished him luck, he clutched my hand, asking if I would buy him a ticket to Albania. As I made excuses, he nodded his head, for he already knew my answer. I felt ashamed that I could not help him, after so many strangers showed trust in me. It seemed the pilgrimage was making me no kinder, but grasping as that gypsy girl outside Bari, or impatient as my neighbour at lunch. And the humility I had learnt over the winter was giving way to harshness. However, it was too late to repair the mistake, so we shook hands a second time and I left him alone.

  In Bari’s old town every street looked the same. The houses were built from pale stone, draping the pavement in blue shadow. Teenage boys sat on their heels in the shade, selling phone chargers and used handsets, while old women haggled in the doorway stalls, faces wrapped in black headscarves. That afternoon, exploring the old town, it was as if I had overstepped the Balkan Peninsula to arrive in a crusader port on the shores of the Levant.

  Basilica di San Nicola stood in the northern corner of the old town. The church resembled a Norman fort, straddled by a squat pair of towers. Its exterior was made from plain slabs of sun-bleached stone; its interior was antique white. Three arches crossed the nave midway up. Above that a tier of round-headed windows let in a dazed afternoon light. Above that the wooden roof was inlaid with canvasses, showing a heavenly host descending from the clouds. Intricate foliage framed each painting, the whole ceiling frothing with gilt. It was a gorgeous sight, like a box of jewels spilling from the sky, but utterly out of place beside the bare granite masonry.

  Downstairs I found a crypt chapel. The saint’s tomb lay at the back, dressed in a gleaming necklace of oil lamps. Nicholas was the gift-giving bishop who inspired Santa Claus and a favourite wonderworker of the Eastern Church. In the late eleventh century Italian merchants stole his relics from Myra, southern Turkey, and brought them home to Bari. Yet pilgrims from the East still visited the saint, praying at the Orthodox shrine on the far side of the room.

  I went over to the shrine, an alcove half-hidden behind a wickerwork of candles. Angels decorated the iconostasis, their heads ringed in haloes no bigger than penny pieces, with portraits of saints embedded into the wood.

  The basilica seemed tethered between the Eastern and Western churches, pulling both ways at once. Its ceiling recalled a Venetian palace, its crypt a Byzantine sanctuary. But, as I stood among the gilded darkness, I felt no thread connecting these two, only a daunting sense of the distance covered.

  How long had I been walking? Sixteen weeks ago I left Canterbury and caught the ferry to France. Calais, Amettes, and the little house where the patron saint of pilgrims was born: I struggled to remember them now. Yet I remembered that Benoît-Joseph Labre stopped at this tomb while he wandered Italy. Bari was the farthest he ever went from home, the edge of Latin Europe. I also remembered the excitement of those early days, when I first realized that I could cross a continent on foot. That excitement soon turned to anxiety as I struggled into the mountains, the snow mounding higher, my thoughts beginning to stray. Reaching Italy, I felt confident once more, until that sodden week in the Apennines when I wanted to hitchhike. And again, in Rome, when I could not cope with the Easter crowds. Despite Sunday mass at St Peter’s, the draw of mass devotion – of flagellants, of Jubilees – remained a mystery to me. Maybe faith was fear turned inside out, or hope spread wide among strangers, but collective ritual seemed oppressive. Next I would travel to a region where I spoke none of the languages and knew little about the local religion. After two thousand four hundred kilometres I felt more removed than ever from the faith I was trying to understand, but closer, much closer, to the depression I was trying to escape.

  I wanted to remain in the crypt a little longer. I thought some epiphany might be waiting for me, if only I were patient. Nicholas was the protector of orphans and scholars, travellers and thieves, and all those who journey by sea. I stood opposite the shrine where he was buried, watching the candle flames knit and fray, but it never came. So then I left the basilica and went down to the port.

  PART THREE

  At first I found no shelter in Durrës. Neither at the white wedding cake of the Orthodox cathedral, where the gardening priest bowed his head and repeated apologies. Nor at the Catholic church in the narrow alleyways of the old town, where the doors were locked, the windows dark, and the presbytery long abandoned. Nor at the Missionaries of Charity mission house, where a nodding nun explained that their beds were reserved for pregnant women, or homeless women, or women escaping their husbands. But eventually I had some luck at the Dominican church, a breezeblock hangar with a concrete dome, a tapering bell tower, and a disused hall next door. Dust filmed the floors, and the walls were florid with damp, but there were three bunk beds in the back room and the priest said I could stay as long as I wanted.

  I spent all weekend in the city, buying maps and asking for advice. My plan was to head south to the River Shkumbin and then follow the river east until the border – a week’s walk across the country’s waist. However, the idea met with little support. It could only be done by car . . . It was impossible by car . . . Three days . . . Ten days . . . There were bad men . . . There were bears . . . There were no Christians past Elbasan . . .

  Most people wondered why I had come on holiday here. I told them about the Via Egnatia, the Roman Empire’s trunk road, which scored a line through central Albania, southern Macedonia, northern Greece and western Turkey. This was the road the Apostle Paul travelled to Rome, and a thousand years later it carried half the armies of the First Crusade to Constantinople. But, when I said that I was hiking its length, my listeners looked alarmed.

  Hiking? In Albania? No, no, there was no hiking in Albania.

  I left Durrës on Monday morning and marched down the coast. My boots were still sore – soles bruised, toes crushed – and I had only a road map to guide me. Banks of pastel-painted hotels faced the road: Hotel Bonita, Hotel Dolce Vita, Tropikal Resort and Grand Hotel Pameba. No blossom in their gardens, no flowers in their forecourts, and their pastel paint dissolving in the drizzle. Between each hotel I glimpsed a strip of beach: grey sand, grey sea and a great grey sky.

  At lunchtime I stepped onto the beach. There was a restaurant near the water with walls of clear plastic and a corrugated roof. Inside, three men in checked jackets sat toasting one another with shot glasses. Round the back, a waiter stood under an umbrella, grilling crabs on a barrel barbecue. The crabs made a creaking noise as they cooked, the flesh steaming and the shells cracking.

  Seawashed rubble clustered on the beach. Oil-slick puddles made rainbows in the sand. Dilapidated breakwaters lay out among the surf, and the waves flopped, flopped against the shore. Breakwaters, rubble, puddles, waves – and the smell of industry clogging the air. What a dismal place.

  Behind the beach a railway skirted a row of rough-sawn cliffs, with concrete bunkers sprouting from the heights like monstrous mushrooms. I followed that railway for mu
ch of the afternoon, as it curved onto the coastal plain. Grass grew up between each sleeper, but the track was still busy: men on scooters, boys on bikes, and an ageing couple dragging a carthorse. The only surprise was the diesel engine that trembled past around teatime, dragging three striped carriages and a wagon of freight.

  Grey skies gave way to diluted sunshine, and the seaside resorts became drab little towns. Villas styled like gangsters’ palaces bordered the towns – a mess of rococo gates, mansard roofs, Classical porches and Gothic turrets – standing among skeleton building sites. These sites were made up of twisted iron frames packed in concrete and balanced on precast columns, the whole structure then stacked three or four storeys high, its ground floor bricked and mortared, plastered and carpeted – becoming a family home, say, or a restaurant with a lino floor – but its remaining storeys left undone, with rusted strands of iron poking up from the concrete. A few of these shells housed crates of tools, or dismantled cars, or toddlers asleep under tarpaulin tents. The rest were littered with rubbish, with polythene bags and aluminium cans and hessian sacks of sand. But my entire time in Albania I never once saw a builder at work.

  I stayed on the plain all that day, and the next day, and the next, hiking along the hard shoulder. Old men sat by the road, selling engine oil and tiny pots of polish. As I walked past, they would tweak their thumb and forefinger together, gesturing a question: Where was I going? What was I doing? Sometimes men with shaved scalps drove by in pristine Range Rovers, shouting offers of a lift, while at other times tractors little bigger than armchairs overtook me – Massey Fergusons six decades out of date – the farmers waving from behind shuddering engines. Every second car was a Mercedes, a boxy number from the 1990s painted beige, fawn, camel, buff, khaki, pewter or tan. Although these drivers honked their horns as they passed, I never could tell if this was encouragement, or surprise, or some kind of warning.