Two Steps Forward

by Graeme Simsion

  ‘Murderer,’ she’d said. Camille and I left without eating.

  Even now, I could feel my skin prickle with the shame, for my mother and for what I’d exposed Camille to.

  ‘So she was my reason for coming to France,’ I said.

  ‘A long journey to create the problem and now a long one to heal it.’

  ‘Too late. My mother died before we could reconcile.’

  ‘It happens.’ The server put a wooden board of sliced pulpo sprinkled with paprika in front of her.

  ‘I could have done something.’ I thought of the anger that I had tried to deal with through meditation after Lauren’s birth. My mother had sent a card. Congratulations on your baby. Nothing else. I’d been insulted. But I could have seen it as an olive branch. A start. If I’d chosen to.

  Now, more than twenty years after her death, I told Renata what I should have done. ‘I could have sent her an invitation, asked her to visit. Sucked it up and told her I wanted and needed her.’ I could have shown up on her doorstep with my baby. I thought of Lauren telling me she missed me.

  ‘Regret,’ said Renata with her mouth full, ‘is a waste of energy. I have offended so many people that I have no one left who speaks to me. I am estranged from my family. Recently, my relationship broke up. It was only three years but I have been single since then. I had a big disagreement with the church a long time ago.’

  ‘Over?’

  ‘Politics. But everything is political. I am good with big causes, not so much with individuals. So, I walk seven hundred miles to change myself. By being alone.’ She laughed.

  ‘Does not play well with others.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘It’s a thing teachers say at school. About kids who are… independent. A joke when we use it for adults.’

  ‘That is me. I do not play well with others for long. But I am comfortable with myself. For me, this is more important than anything else. But tell me, how did you feel? In your story?’

  ‘I told you. Terrible. My mother disowned me and then…’

  ‘You must have guessed that would happen. I mean, you took your friend to your mother’s home after the abortion. I’m asking how you felt when you were driving this old car across America.’

  ‘Camille was so scared…’

  ‘I’m asking about you. You were young, you were on a road trip, you were helping a friend, rebelling—testing your mother—putting important things at risk. This was maybe the most courageous thing you have done. The best thing. The story that defines you. That’s why you chose it to tell me.’

  ‘But it had…consequences.’

  ‘Of course. Always big things have consequences. Pain, and things lost maybe forever. But this is why you are here, is it not? You came to France to find Camille. But you are afraid to do… to be what you were then. I think that for you is the hole.’

  66

  MARTIN

  Before setting out from Lugo, I had an early breakfast and waited for Paola. As I’d hoped, she came down alone, in keeping with her role as tour captain.

  ‘I gather you’ve a sick crew member,’ I said and she nodded.

  ‘Fabiana was ill. This is expected sometimes with travel and was not serious. We will still have time to finish. We are hoping to move again tomorrow. Renata has gone ahead—with my permission.’

  ‘Well, I’m off this morning, so I just wanted to say Buen Camino in case we don’t meet again. Maybe in Santiago.’

  ‘Sadly, we will not meet in Santiago. Tina and I go only as far as Melide. The tourist agent will meet the others at the end and we will see them in Madrid.’ She must have known an explanation was needed, and added, ‘My husband died in Melide without reaching Santiago. I stop there, in his memory, on every walk.’

  ‘Except this walk is different, isn’t it?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘You have your daughter with you. So, this time it is about the future rather than the past. If you want it to be.’

  Monsieur Chevalier did not have a monopoly on the heavy-handed dispensation of wisdom.

  I walked to Melide in two uneven days. On the first, the terrain was flat and I pushed past San Román de Retorta, my original goal, for another four and a half hours and fourteen kilometres, keeping myself going with the thought that every kilometre down was one less to do the next day. My muscles had benefited from the day off—my knee not as much.

  When I arrived in As Seixas, I got a more substantial boost—a long email from Sarah. It was mainly a list of tests and results, but the content didn’t really matter. What mattered was that she had written a letter, or at least the modern equivalent, to her father. The medium was the message. My relief at reading it eclipsed any feelings about my knee, the viability of the cart, and Zoe.

  On the second day, it took me twelve hours, starting just after dawn, to walk fourteen kilometres. I was taking double the recommended dose of the anti-inflammatories I had bought in Lugo, but my knee was blown up like a football.

  Coming into Melide, I stopped at the first hotel I saw. In front of me, at the reception desk, a slim woman of perhaps forty was checking in and asking, in a German accent, for her backpack, which had been transported.

  Her younger companion didn’t need to open his mouth for me to know where he came from. It was Bernhard. I watched it play out: one room, her credit card. Nice work if you can get it.

  Bernhard saw me as he turned. ‘You have injured your leg?’

  ‘How did you work that out?’

  ‘I saw you walking. Just a minute ago.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I did.’

  ‘I told you, the cart is not good for knees.’

  I walked—or at least limped—away, into the bar, rather than make a fuss by putting my fist into his face. I rested my knee on a chair and fired up my computer. There was an email from the Germans. The other Germans.

  We thank you again for the opportunity to make an offer for your invention. As agreed, that offer has now expired. We are also aware that a Swedish company is progressing with an almost identical design in association with a Chinese manufacturer. We look forward to seeing your future inventions.

  It was over. I didn’t need to guess who the Chinese manufacturer might be, and I had little doubt about who was behind the Swedish initiative. I was not in any position to launch legal action. The practicalities of suing a Swedish—or Chinese—company for a design that had not been patented and that was worth, on a buyout basis, only seven and a half thousand euros meant the project was effectively dead. I would not even achieve my worst-case scenario.

  My own fault. I had over-valued my design and refused what was in retrospect a generous offer. And, two days short of Santiago, with an injured knee, I had no reason to finish the Camino. I posted a blog entry to the effect that, though the cart had held up well, my knee had not, and I was finishing my journey. I cancelled my flight to Paris from Santiago: no need, no rush.

  I went downstairs and spent half an hour reading postcards that had been stuck to the inside surface of the glass door and adjacent wall. Every one of them recorded a journey in progress, from the minimum hundred kilometres to someone who had walked from Norway. What they had in common was that they all expected to reach Santiago in two days’ time or thereabouts, collect their certificate and celebrate a personal achievement. I went to my room, took a business card from my pack and added it to the display. It was smaller than the postcards, but it was marking a more important milestone. The end.

  Then I went to the hotel’s restaurant, and got good and drunk.

  In the morning, there was no doubt I had made the right decision to stop, German rejection or not. My left knee looked as bad as the right one had the day after I pulled out of the marathon. I would be lucky to avoid another operation, and luck had not been running my way.

  The streets of Melide were full of pilgrims. Now, more than ever, I did not want their company. But I had a hangover and nothing to do. After lingering over breakfast, I
went on a slow walk to the pharmacy, taking both of my sticks to keep the weight off my knee.

  I bought paracetamol and more bandages, then found a restaurant and had an early-afternoon Spanish dinner with a couple of glasses of rosé, and, in keeping with Spanish custom, crashed in my room. I was spiralling into a funk. A miserable two days short. The whole purpose of the walk blown, along with my knee. A pointless exercise. No money, house, partner. Zoe would be arriving in Santiago about now, without me.

  The last hurt more than I expected. I must have had a subconscious fantasy of us meeting up and arriving together.

  67

  ZOE

  CARTOON: A young man is sitting cross-legged on the edge of the road looking at his iPad, the soles of his shoes hanging half off. He is focused—so much so that he appears unaware of the truck coming down the busy highway and threatening to wipe him out. On the hill behind him a traditional pilgrim with cloak, staff and scallop shell is surrounded by birds and flowers.

  STORY: Who makes the rules? There is an unwritten hierarchy among walkers. Real pilgrims do it cheaply, regardless of what they can afford and the impact their stinginess has on the host countries. They stay in dormitories, carry their own backpacks, stop when they’re tired and rely on luck to find a bed. At the next level are the walkers who stay in pensiones or the increasing number of private rooms at the hostels, often booking ahead, but still walking all the way and carrying their own backpacks. Then there are those who have their packs transported—eight euros (about eight dollars) a day is the going rate. Below that: those who take the occasional bus for a tough or boring stretch, or when they’re tired or hurting. And finally, the tourists, doing occasional stages with a daypack to get a feel for it, or even driving between the Camino towns and villages.

  Chris, a twenty-six-year-old from Iowa, argues that the ancient pilgrims would have taken the fastest route between their lodgings in the abbeys and monasteries. Often he finds himself on the busy roads the Camino avoids, but which probably follow more closely the route taken in the Middle Ages. He is usually first to the hostel. But the Camino teaches the pilgrim to respect his own limits, and unless he learns this lesson his feet and knees will ensure that it is by the roads—on a bus—that he arrives in Santiago.

  Alongside the rules of walking are those that the pilgrims bring with them, and which they have to adapt—more or less—to life on the road, in another culture: what and when they will eat, who they mix with, what they share of themselves.

  Chris walks to prove himself, but the original pilgrims walked to find God, seek forgiveness or give thanks. Now, to earn their compostela—the certificate that recognises completion of the pilgrimage—pilgrims are expected to walk for a spiritual purpose, but that term remains undefined, for there is no one way to achieve enlightenment, atone for sins or recover from grief.

  There is only one formal, unbreakable rule: if they want their compostela, they must complete the last sixty miles (one hundred kilometres) on foot, or the last one hundred twenty miles (two hundred kilometres) on a bike.

  I would need to cut some words before sending it to Stephanie, but I smiled, thinking of Todd, whose first lesson on the Camino had saved me in the Pyrenees.

  The final day, from A Rúa into Santiago de Compostela, was thirteen miles. My Camino was almost over and, while part of me would be sorry, another part felt the pull of reality for the first time in many weeks. Monsieur Chevalier had made three predictions about the pilgrimage. Four, if you counted me finding what I had lost. It seemed that one wasn’t going to happen. The first had come to pass: I had gotten blisters. He said the Camino would change me, and it had, in many ways. But would I cry when I saw the cathedral? I had cried in Conques for my mother and in the Pyrenees for Keith. What did I have left to cry for?

  I walked with Marco and Felipe: given the number of pilgrims celebrating the last day, solitude wasn’t possible. Felipe rarely spoke anyway, and was even more withdrawn than usual. He had spent a lot of time with Fabiana, and might have hoped to walk in with her. I would have liked to be with Renata, so we could have commiserated together, but I hadn’t seen her since Melide.

  The other Brazilians were two days behind, resolving their problems. I had assured them I would send photos. I hoped they would make it in time to say goodbye before I caught my plane. I would have two nights in Santiago to recover before heading home and maybe see the swinging of the botafumeiro in the cathedral.

  It was, I gathered, a bit of a crapshoot as to whether they swung the big silver urn, the largest censer in the world. The local clergy pushed back on the tourists’ demands to have burning charcoal and incense waved over them by the rope-pulling monks—once a daily event, because the pilgrims hadn’t washed. I now had no doubt I would get there, but I would leave one thing to fate. I told Marco that if the botafumeiro swung on the day of my arrival, I would move to San Francisco to start my new life.

  The route took us through small villages with bars and welcoming signs as well as vending machines, incongruous among the rural cottages. Every bar had stamps—sellos—for my credencial. In the last sixty miles, the official requirement was to have two stamps a day instead of one: a half-hearted attempt to frustrate the taxi riders.

  We stopped at a roadside ice-cream stand on the outskirts of Santiago to wait for the remaining Spanish men to catch up. While Marco bought a drink and Felipe stared ahead, I watched the steady stream of pilgrims making the final descent. If I cried, it would not be for the joy of enlightenment that Monsieur Chevalier had anticipated. Somehow, I had managed to walk over twelve hundred miles and still not find what I had been looking for.

  My thoughts were interrupted by someone calling my name.

  I looked up and saw it was the person I least wanted to walk into Santiago with: Bernhard. No, that was too unaccepting. On the trail, familiarity counted for a lot. He’d been with me almost as long as Martin had.

  He was walking with a woman of about forty. He introduced her as Andrea, another German.

  ‘We have nearly done it, you and me,’ he grinned.

  ‘I guess so,’ I said. ‘I hear you and Martin had a race.’

  ‘We did. I won.’

  ‘That’s not what I heard.’

  He opened his hands and smiled. ‘I am here. He is not.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘He is still in Melide. Stopped.’

  Marco and Felipe had joined us, and Bernhard’s grin disappeared.

  ‘Finished. Done. The Buggy Man walks no more,’ said Bernhard pointing to his knee.

  I could not believe it. Martin was not going to let anything get in his way. He had planned to arrive today, at the latest, to catch his train to Paris. It occurred to me that my decision to arrive two days before my flight might have had something to do with that.

  ‘Just tell me what happened.’

  Bernhard smiled again and took out his phone. A minute later he thrust it in front of me. Martin’s blog. His knee had given out and he was unable to continue. Felipe took the phone from me.

  I had started this walk with Martin, however unintentionally. Among many paths, we had always taken the same one. Like it or not, our Caminos were entwined.

  I could see Santiago. The universe had looked after me—a ticket home, despite everything. If I walked on, I would reach the town and make my plane. I thought of the warm familiarity of LA, crisp white sheets on the bed, laid-back Californian accents and unsweetened cereal. A life ahead with children, grandchildren and a new job. After the Pilgrims’ Progress series, maybe I would find another buyer for my cartoons, ease into being a grandma and not live with either of my children. Maybe there would be another man in my life one day.

  If I went back to Melide, I would be spitting in the face of my good fortune. If I didn’t make my flight, I would have no way home and no visa. I hadn’t paid Martin back. I didn’t know when the Chronicle would pay me, and it wouldn’t be enough for a flight home when they did. If
I missed the birth of her child, Lauren would never forgive me. I wouldn’t forgive myself.

  But I wanted Martin to stop sabotaging himself—he had done it with his marriage, his relationship with his daughter and now with this.

  The universe wasn’t going to go back for him.

  The three remaining Spanish men had caught up.

  ‘Can you call your driver?’ I said to Marco.

  ‘She wants him to drive Buggy Man to Santiago!’ Bernhard was laughing.

  ‘Can you help?’ I asked Marco. ‘Some painkillers or something?’

  ‘He won’t walk,’ said Bernhard. ‘He’s given up. He’s—’

  Then Felipe caught Bernhard’s eye, stopping him mid-sentence. I saw just a glimpse of what did it: something compelling in Felipe’s expression. I had not thought of him as a big man, just tall, but I saw now that he was. It was more than that: a quiet, self-contained certainty. Bernhard got the full force. ‘Come with me,’ said Felipe. Bernhard followed him and they disappeared behind the ice-cream van.

  A few minutes later, the men’s own van pulled up. There was some animated discussion in rapid Spanish, some shaking of heads, then nodding as they looked toward where Felipe and Bernhard had disappeared.

  ‘We are all going back,’ said Marco, throwing my pack into the van. The Spanish Six piled in, along with, to my amazement, a subdued Bernhard. Andrea had gone on ahead. I sat in front as we drove back to Melide.

  Bernhard pointed out the hotel, but did not come in with us. As he began to walk away, Felipe stopped him and offered his hand. It took Bernhard a few moments before he shook it. Each of the Spanish Six followed and, lastly, Bernhard shook mine. ‘I apologise,’ he said. ‘I hope you are able to get him to Santiago.’

  I watched him walk back into the town, before I asked Felipe: ‘What did you say to him?’

  ‘He is walking the Camino because he wants to become a man. It’s not so easy. Even harder today for a young person. We know some things about this.’