Sinning Across Spain

by Ailsa Piper

  I mimed sins, stabbing at the air with my walking poles and stamping my feet while repeating the word ‘anger’. He watched, amused.

  I decided to attempt Spanish, asking if he knew the phrase ‘sin pecado’.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he said, his laughter stopping.

  ‘In English, that means “without sin”,’ I said.

  ‘Without sin?’ He stopped in the white dust road. ‘Without sin.’

  He was silent a moment, then chuckled.

  ‘I see. Yes, I see. But, of course! Language. It is such a problem! You are trying to be SIN SIN, yes? Sin sin. Without sin. Do you understand?’

  He laughed again, waiting for me to share his joke.

  I managed a smile. It had taken such effort to reach understanding that my funny bone had turned to mush. As we walked into the commercial hub of Alcalá la Real, towards another Moorish castle, he was still chuckling.

  ‘Sin sin, without sin.’

  My hopes for insight into the Seven Deadlies appeared doomed.

  The main boulevard, with its multi-storeyed buildings and post-lunch bustle, was a culture shock after a day in the fields. We were hunting for an albergue when my telephone rang. Leonardo. Checking in.

  I told him about my companion and he was tickled that I found myself so close to the Pope—only two degrees of separation. He insisted it was fate. I must consider Herr Theologie a blessing.

  I battled to see Herr T in that light as he followed me in and out of possible lodgings awaiting my decision about where best to sleep. I was mired in just the kind of guilt one of my sinners felt about her aged parents. Her endless stream of comforting understanding was a long way off.

  After locating a cheap but clean hostal, I closed the door and sank onto the bunk. Silence. Even hand-washing in my miniature in-room basin was enjoyable, conducted in the bliss of solitude.

  My mind wandered back over its struggle for equilibrium through that day of constant company, and with my hands turning blue in the freezing suds I remembered the most practical definition I’d ever heard of the words extrovert and introvert.

  It was a psychologist, his name lost in my personal mists of time. He was speaking on radio, his Brooklyn-accented voice explaining that an extrovert is someone who is nourished by contact with people, whose energy is restored by company. An introvert is someone who is nourished by solitude, topped up by time spent alone. It’s impossible to tell by meeting someone whether they’re an introvert or extrovert. It’s totally reliant on how they fill their tank.

  When I heard that, it made sense to me. I don’t appear introverted. I forge connections easily, have worked in the collaborative environment of the theatre and relish my sprawling circle of friends, but if I don’t get some solitude I can’t manage any of it.

  I’m an introvert.

  I’m not sure if that was self-justification, selfishness or a white lie, but I promised my sinners I would try to commit less of their sins and be a more personable pilgrim. Then I took myself out to explore sola!

  In Spanish, the word for heaven is cielo. It’s also the word for sky. It was easy to imagine Alcalá’s evening sky as paradise.

  A billboard displayed necrológicas—obituaries—for Doña Antonia, Doña Maria and Doña Mercedes. It featured crucifixes, Madonnas, and requests for prayers for the repose of the dead women’s souls. Were they sin sin?

  In the old part of town, roads narrowed and shadows deepened. A tiled plaque proclaimed the birthplace of Juan Martínez Montañés, el portentoso imaginero. The portentous imaginer? It turned out he was a sculptor. El Dios de la Madera. The God of Wood. He had a high forehead and an imposing moustache, and glared at me as though he knew the contents of my heart.

  I sped away.

  The street opened onto trees and a square in front of a church. In the forecourt were girls in taffeta dresses—electric blue, lime green, lipstick red, ruffles, corsets, corsages. They clustered around an older woman swathed in magenta silk, her coiffed hair dwarfed by the towering black lace mantilla she wore. The mother of the bride. I told her she was magnífica and that I would like to photograph her. She smiled, inclined her head and posed.

  Inside the church, Madonnas in black brocaded robes stared into space, tears streaming down their cheeks. Candles flickered, still burning from the wedding. I remembered being a little girl, racing to find candles when the generator failed or storms came; an adolescent, telling spooky stories with friends; the erotic charge of a bedroom with shadows flickering on bare skin; birthday cakes and time passing; ‘Light a candle for me …’

  Palimpsesto.

  But all my wishing, asking and thanking in churches and chapels never answered my burning question: is there anyone listening?

  I dropped coins into a metal box and lit a candle for my sinners, just in case.

  Across the square, among sunglasses, scooters and non-essential oils, the Hiperbazar China offered a plastic figurine of Christ wearing a thorny crown. He cried red tears. Another depicted the saviour holding a palm frond in one hand and a grinning pet rock in the other. Behind him was a four-slice toaster.

  The fortress peered down over town matrons clustering around fountains and stone crosses, watching their grandchildren at play. Bartenders waited for cheer squads to arrive for the big clash between Barcelona and Real Madrid. There could be no question about my loyalties there.

  Other loyalties were less certain.

  Back in my quarters, I stared at a postcard from the Caravaggio exhibition. It showed John the Baptist alone in the wilderness, his skin pale and luminous, his red robe no protection from predators. He was self-focused, brooding, melancholy. But he believed.

  ‘It’s easy for you, John,’ I whispered. ‘You’re alone.’

  John didn’t even have the grace to squirm under my gaze. He had sermons to give, sinners to save, a message to deliver. He had certainty.

  I picked up my pen and scrawled on the reverse of the broody image.

  ‘It’s hard to be sin sin. Today, I failed.’

  I rolled onto my bunk to watch my washing dry.

  9

  Rehab

  Before turning in, I’d told Herr T I might meet him at seven, to walk out together. I woke in plenty of time but lurked until he was gone.

  I lied.

  I’m not even sure it could be categorised as white. I told a black lie. I wanted solitude, so selfishness won out.

  Two sins before breakfast. I was going well.

  Worse, I’m ashamed to report that I was rewarded with intense pleasure. Yes, there were miles more olives, but the walk through them was ecstatic. The groves were ordered and kempt. The day was mild. Workers were out, pruning, burning, singing and laughing. Their chainsaws called to each other in a mechanical symphony, punctuated with a cuckoo-like birdcall and a repetitive bell sound that followed me down the road, challenging me to find lyrics to sing along. I was belting out my rendition of Van Morrison’s ‘Bright Side of the Road’—probably completely unrecognisable to Van!—when I turned a corner and walked smack into a group of men piling olive cuttings onto a fire.

  ‘Hola!’ they chorused.

  They asked where I was from, where I was going. As smoke rose in dense plumes, I told them I was from the bottom of the world and I was walking to the stars. A tall man wearing a red bandanna said I had duende.

  It was a new word for me.

  ‘No entiendo,’ I said.

  ‘Es una fuerza,’ he said. It’s a force. A force you can’t see with your eyes, but a force you can feel.

  Another chimed in to tell me that it’s like when the olive leaves move without wind. That is duende.

  ‘And you, lady kangaroo, you have this duende,’ the first man said, shaking my hand. I thanked him, and stepped out again onto the path, invisible forces swirling around me.

  Duende.
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  It may have been the most beautiful word I’d ever learned. It was certainly a memorable classroom.

  A city of caterpillars crossed my path, moving calligraphy against the white dirt. They were determined to cross from left to right and I was equally determined not to squash them. I didn’t need murder on my conscience.

  Roosters spruiked business for cafés. ‘Boc-a-dill-o,’ they crowed, conjuring images of overstuffed bread pockets.

  Palest fruit blossoms inclined towards me and wild hyacinths poked through cracked clay underfoot. Yellow arrows appeared to show me the way but my feet seemed to know it. My eyes already touch the sunny hill …

  I made a pitstop after fourteen kilometres at Bar Manolo in Ventas del Carrizal, downing a coffee under a low-hanging grapevine while two boys delivered the Páginas Blancas—White Pages—along the opposite side of the road. The pueblo was in full market mode. Stalls crowded the main square, selling everything from plumbing supplies to skeins of lace. I bought dried figs and mixed nuts, and talked with locals and stallholders who wanted to know why I was alone.

  ‘Hola, Rubia!’ Hey, Blondie!

  It was a greeting I would hear constantly over the coming weeks.

  ‘Sí, sí, siempre camino sola …’ Yes, yes, I always walk alone …

  Okay, not always. But a small lie. Very pale. And it was definitely my intention.

  Leaving town, I was stopped by a woman on a ladder scrubbing her windows. She wanted to know where I was going.

  ‘Santiago? No, no. Muy, muy lejos …’ Yes, I know, it’s a long, long way!

  ‘No es posible.’ It had better be possible.

  She said her name was Lucia, that she would like to go with me, but she was too old now and her back was bad. But one day. In a car or bus, maybe. But never alone … never … but perhaps I could say a prayer for her in Santiago?

  I promised I would as she kissed my cheek in farewell, wishing me a walk with God. I turned to go but she ran after me, dragging me back.

  ‘Venga conmigo, peregrina,’ Lucia insisted. Come with me, pilgrim.

  In her kitchen, I smelled bleach and effort. She wrapped two large salami-type sausages in foil. A loaf of fresh bread sat beside them on the bench, cooling.

  ‘Regalos!’ she said, advancing on me. Gifts!

  Before I could protest, she pushed the sausages into my pack’s side pockets and was attempting to undo the top buckles for the bread. I backed down the hall, laughing, thanking her, trying to explain there was no space.

  At the door, I asked her to pose for a photograph.

  Her black eyes regarded the world from under lids wrinkled by care and laughter. She wore a pearl stud in each ear—a little vanity, even for window cleaning. Her curly hair was red-tinted above greying eyebrows and her lips compressed in a smile that held back tears.

  She kissed my cheeks. I kissed hers. We both laughed.

  ‘Gracias, gracias,’ I repeated.

  And I walked, my heart and mochila both close to bursting.

  I was convinced that Lucia had made me a better person by her charity. I felt rehabilitated from my state of ‘sin’, and was sure I could meet up with Herr Theologie and offer him companionship and grace.

  My steps quickened.

  Seven kilometres later I stopped, unable to resist the temptation of a high stone wall in the shade of a sprawling tree. To my left was a yellow and white villa surrounded by olives and palm trees. To my right, more olives. And above, the twittering, hooting, cheeping and squawking of birds.

  I had killed no caterpillars, told no lies and wished no evil.

  That said, my journal reflects that I berated myself long and hard for not giving Lucia anything in return for her gifts. I thought of my first donation, of my friend’s vehemence. Of my pride.

  ‘Don’t think. Just say thank you.’

  If humility was the Contrary Virtue I needed, I still had a way to go to find it. I whispered ‘Gracias, Lucia’ to the wind, and vowed not to turn the act of receiving into a negotiation, ever again. Then I lay back to survey my realm. Pleasure outweighed pain by a country mile, and I knew what a country mile felt like. I dozed, and dreamed.

  The haze of Australian summer creates mirages, and although I hadn’t seen any in Spain, I sometimes felt as if I saw a kind of mirage self when I walked. She was up ahead, stronger and sin-free, with the real me in her wake, trying to tidy my mess. Then she was behind, grimacing and whining, while the real me floated above, trying not to laugh.

  Walking changes our perspective, enlarging aspects of self and highlighting dark corners. It’s a magnified microcosm of a life. Magnified, because experiences are writ large. So much is intensified by the up-close-and-personal nature of it, by placing yourself literally on people’s doorsteps or in their path. There’s no hiding in the bubble of a car or the anonymity of public transport. It’s a microcosm, because it compresses all the aspects of self and demands they be examined by that same self, even when not hauling sins. It’s almost impossible to walk long distances without getting a wake-up call about foibles or weaknesses. Physical challenges can provoke emotional ones, and they arrive close together, affording little recovery time.

  The camino roads serve many purposes for pilgrims: meditation, vacation, provocation. One of the most fascinating, though, is a service to the wider community: rehabilitation.

  Going right back to the Middle Ages, pilgrimage to holy places has been used as punishment for sins. In 1283, John Pecham, then Archbishop of Canterbury, visited a parish priest who had reportedly been fornicating with women, then repenting of his sins, then fornicating again. The Archbishop ordered him to go as a pilgrim to three shrines: Santiago, Rome and Cologne. I don’t know if walking dulled the priest’s lust or if pilgrimage cleansed his immortal soul, but he must have had some impressive blisters.

  Along the Francés I was repeatedly told of a man carrying a full-sized cross to Santiago. I was sceptical. It seemed like a performance rather than a private contract between a man and his God.

  Herr Theologie and I talked about the idea of penance and camino rehab when we met at day’s end in Alcaudete, another town with a fortress watching over its entrance, this one still intact from the tenth century.

  He found me writing in my journal. Pointing out the chunky red plastic of the Crocs I was wearing, he laughed, saying my feet looked like a clown’s.

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘They’re as ugly as sin.’

  If he was annoyed that we had not walked together, he didn’t show it. He beamed at the prospect of Lucia’s salchichas, so we ordered a salad and settled in. He told me that when he walked the Camino del Norte, along the Bay of Biscay in the north of Spain, he had seen a group of young delinquents with a guardian, walking in lieu of a prison term. They slept in tents and carried their own cooking equipment. Herr Theologie thought it a bad idea because they were likely to escape and make trouble; they shouldn’t mix with ordinary people walking the road; they should not be placed in a position where they could affect others or, presumably, be affected by them.

  I thought it an inspired solution, particularly for those whose crimes were minor and whose ‘sins’ might have been exacerbated by circumstances such as poverty, lack of education or peer pressure. It might encourage offenders to become reliant on their internal resources rather than what they could take from others, a chance to formulate new visions of themselves and their possibilities.

  Herr T was unconvinced.

  ‘There are some who cannot be rehabilitated, my dear. Some are born bad.’

  ‘Surely you don’t believe that?’

  Herr T didn’t blink. ‘Of course. Some people have evil. It is in them. They cannot be changed.’

  ‘I don’t agree. It’s education, opportunity. Yes, humans have tendencies, good and bad, but we can learn to override them.’

  ‘You are too s
oft, Miss Pilgrim. Too sentimental. Perhaps it is where you grew up. In my country, we have had to look into the darkness of the human heart. Evil exists. That is fact. And some cannot be taught the difference between good and bad.’

  ‘I’m not soft,’ I retorted. ‘I believe we have instincts, like animals—to eat, to make shelter, to protect our territory, to procreate. But we can be educated to get those things without hurting people. We can learn morals and ethics. This is nurture.’

  ‘But where is your evidence that we learn? Not history, dear girl. Of course good and evil exist, and they are always at war.’

  ‘That makes it sound like it’s outside of us, outside of our ability to change. I think that if we offend, it’s because, somewhere, society has failed. Whether it’s parenting or schooling, government or community, we can learn to make better choices than the ones we make purely by instinct.’

  Herr T broke open a bread roll and smiled.

  ‘I think you have some way to go to understand human nature, my Australian friend. How might you explain two brothers, like Cain and Abel, raised in the same circumstances, and one is good while the other offends?’

  ‘Free will, perhaps? I don’t know. I’m not saying that—’

  ‘Believe me, there are those who do not want to learn, who cannot. There are those who are simply evil. And yes, of course, as a species we must learn. We must learn to see these people. It is our duty to recognise them, my dear. To be strong enough to face them.’

  I wanted to say that I believed goodness would assert itself if we gave it more of a chance. ‘Look at Lucia,’ I wanted to say. We were eating her food, given for no reason other than kindness, the Contrary Virtue to envy. But they were emotional arguments, and I was attempting to keep myself on track.

  ‘Then … if we don’t believe in the possibility of rehabilitation, what is the point of repentance?’

  Our salads arrived before Herr T could reply. I joked with the waiter, who gave us instructions about the best way to leave town the next morning. Herr T passed olive oil across the table. We ate.