by Ailsa Piper
‘It’s good, isn’t it?’ I said.
‘Yes, delicious,’ he said, but his eyes didn’t meet mine.
When our conversation resumed, it was about the birds that had called to me on the road. Herr T said they were indeed cuckoos, and the bell sound was made by frogs. He also told me that farmers were spraying to kill caterpillars. I didn’t mention my efforts to avoid them.
After dinner, I went out into the twilight. Alcaudete was deserted save for two elderly señors, seated on a stone wall in the plaza at the top of the hill. They stared out over the plain, sniffing the breeze and inhaling the evening cool. As I passed, they called to me to stop and asked why I walked alone. When I answered, ‘Estoy siempre sola’—I am always alone—they shook their heads. No, no, they could change my mind about that.
‘Siéntese aquí,’ they said, patting their knees. Sit here!
I resisted their charms and continued my gira of the town.
I found a church, but it was closed, so I picked up a leaflet asking for prayers of intercession. An image of the Virgin adorned it, a weary, middle-aged Virgin holding the body of her lifeless son. Her oversized crown could do nothing to offset the well of grief into which she had plunged. Her boy, her son, slaughtered. What comfort was it to her that he would save all mankind? Too much had been asked of her. Even her clothes were tired. The blue and white robes were gone, and she wore brown and beige. This was not what she imagined at the Annunciation.
In the main street, a shop window boasted a range of saviours in robes of many colours, with varying quantities of thorns and blood. A Jesus in midnight blue staggered under a black cross. Red drops fell from his crown, over his flesh and onto the supporting gold-plate plinth.
Images of suffering seemed vital to the Catholic faith. Perhaps that’s why we have come to associate sin with intense pleasure, because the opposite, intense pain, is associated with virtue. Could a life of pleasure be virtuous, then? Could a life of pleasure exist without sin?
Other shops displayed white First Communion outfits—miniature soldier and sailor suits for the boys, wedding-gown cut-downs for the girls, and extreme expense for the parents.
The façades of buildings were faded. Tiling chipped at the corners. Ornate exteriors hid abandoned interiors. Ochre paint peeled to reveal aquamarine underneath.
Palimpsesto.
I wondered about the layers, in that place that went back to the tenth century. The current residents were keen to proclaim their piety, if shop windows were any indication, but there were also doof-doof cars and flirting teenagers near the castle ramparts. Healthy young residents doing what healthy young animals do everywhere. Instinct asserting itself. Pleasures of the evening.
I walked back to the hostal, vowing to rehabilitate myself.
‘Mañana,’ I whispered to the first star. ‘Tomorrow, I will walk with my theologian, and I will do better.’
10
Road Testing
The camino gods didn’t give me a free ride with my new resolve.
We missed a turning after only an hour and had to hike across more olive groves with nothing but faith for guidance. Finally, a worker who was burning prunings pointed the way. We stumbled in ploughed ruts that seemed specifically designed to torture the ankles of pilgrims. We crossed a swollen river that was meant to be a dry creekbed, and as I plunged in I almost lost my guidebook. Not that it would have mattered, it was so out of date. We lunched on Lucia’s salchichas and dried figs. Herr T drank his litre of milk. We circuited a broad lake, after we realised the ‘path across the flat swamp’ would have entailed walking on deep water. We had no delusions of grandeur!
We endured a seemingly interminable stretch of white gravel under a threatening grey sky. We persisted along kilometres of asphalt past farms and factories. An olive-processing plant, with its pile of foul-smelling tailings, almost finished us, but we kept up our spirits by sharing the road’s wonders.
See there, the fields of solar panels, sunshine being farmed like wheat. Oh, smell the olive smoke from the bonfires, so bitter on the back of the throat. How clear, the reflection of those mountains in lakewater. Over there, an entire field of white daisies and yellow mustard flowers. Listen! The cuckoo. So faithful.
After covering twenty-seven long kilometres—more with detours!—in six hours, we stopped before tackling the suburbs of Baena, resting on a lone piece of flat stone outside a machinery rental business. We nursed knees, feet and ankles to the sound of roaring engines.
Herr T’s face furrowed and his shoulders curved in on themselves. He slumped. Not from physical exertion; his fitness was impressive. No, there was an interior hollow that he sometimes inhabited. Whenever I stopped to chat to a local, he would hang back, watching, smiling and nodding. He said that I ‘make people good’, and that he was not able to do that.
I didn’t understand, but I think it had something to do with his reasons for not choosing the priesthood. He spoke of the difficulty of genuine connection, and of wanting to be a ‘priest to the people’ as opposed to a ‘priest to Rome’. When he talked of religion, the furrows reappeared.
I reined in my emotions throughout that long day. I kept my euphoria in check, just as I managed to keep my temper from flaring. When we stopped for lunch I re-read the reflections of one of my sinners from my journal:
I want to support you to carry ‘anger’ on behalf of the wider world. I fear anger. It is such a destructive, negative emotion. It’s a natural, impulsive reaction which can lead to ugly words and deeds, irrational behaviour and pain … all of which is usually deeply regretted when the anger subsides.
Words on a page helped to prevent me from committing the sin. I’d experienced regret the previous day. It tasted like the pungent smoke from the olive fires, and I had no wish to sample it again.
In Baena, our stop for the night, we checked in at Pension Rincón and I took first turn in the shared bathroom, where the hot water softened my violin-string muscles. I saw a ninth-century castle (they were getting older with each town), an olive oil museum, a modern brick church with a high-pitched bell, and locals chatting without their esses.
Somewhere, I thought, there is a cave where the wind whistles ‘ssssss’ all day and night. The cave of lost esses.
I was tired. Clearly.
There had been no ugly words or deeds that day, and I hoped I had given no pain by silences or lack of consideration, but the effort to be good had exhausted me. Alone, I could channel my inner saint, but company tested me and my resolve to do better. With clean washing hanging over my head, I went to sleep pondering words from William Shakespeare:
If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces.
Next morning, breakfasting on café con leche and tostada while the man next to me downed a beer, my ritual reading of sins was interrupted by the news. An airliner had crashed in Russia, killing ninety-six people, most of Poland’s political and intellectual elite, including the president and the chief of the armed forces. Even more tragic was that they were commemorating the Katyn massacre of spring 1940, when Stalin ordered the execution of twenty-two thousand Poles. It was an episode that had remained covered-up for generations. In 1984, when I’d workshopped a play about Katyn, I was staggered to find no evidence of it in history books.
I tried to decipher the Spanish newsreader’s rapid-fire commentary. It seemed unthinkable that a nation could lose its best and brightest twice in the same place, seventy years apart. Coincidence or curse? The commentary from the newscaster hinted at the latter.
In the same bulletin, there was a report on the paedophilia scandal at the Vatican. No one in the bar looked up. I wondered how the Spanish faithful felt about it. The previous evening, they’d gathered at the block-brick church, kitted out in Sunday best on a weekday. They welcomed me with smiles and embraces, arthri
tic hands patting my cheeks. No mention was made there of the sins of the Padres. Maybe their faith was not connected to il Papa, but was about community and service, and consistency. Turning up.
It was time for me to turn up. Time to walk.
With only twenty kilometres to cover, I’d told Herr Theologie I would make a late start and catch him down the road. Such a short distance between two pueblos was rare on the Mozárabe—another reason why so few walk it. On the Francés, villages with refugios are close together, meaning ten- or fifteen-kilometre stages are possible for those who are not accustomed, or addicted, to walking, and there is no need to carry weighty quantities of food and water.
I left Baena under open skies as children were farewelling mothers at school gates and shopkeepers were sweeping the pre-opening pavements. The morning was a blur of sunshine, breezes, wildflowers and solitude.
And olives.
This was extra-virgin terrain, they’d informed me at the olive oil museum. Contorted trunks twisted out of unforgiving ground. Spilled drops from my water bottle disappeared in seconds. My feet marked time to snatches of mis-remembered songs, and I drifted out to the end of my kite string to fly above my snail-self. Sky-surfing.
Time stretched and contracted.
I grounded myself to watch two hawks circling for what seemed an eternity. Then, from nowhere, a smaller bird launched itself like a fighter jet, targeting the black monsters again and again. Eventually, its precision dive-bombing paid off and the hawks left. It landed on a wire to preen its peachy-red and blue plumage.
‘You’ve got duende,’ I called to it. ‘Mucho duende.’
At my feet, fire-engine-red poppies and butter-yellow daisies offset each other, the colours more intense for their proximity. I murmured more lines of Shakespeare emailed to me back in Granada:
And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
Will must have been a walker. He certainly knew about goodness.
It was a challenge to see the good in asphalt, but I distracted myself from the heat underfoot by meditating on the sin of gluttony, which is defined as the over-indulgence of food or intoxicants to the point of waste. While I love my food, and have a formidable appetite, I was using every bite of it in service to the kilometres I walked. I did wonder if it was possible to be gluttonous about the act of walking itself. Walking is an intoxicant for me and there were definitely times when I over-indulged in it.
Perhaps, rather, my walking was a symptom of greed, a deadly sin that no one had nominated, defined broadly as ‘an excessive desire to possess wealth or goods’.
But no. I decided I couldn’t possess walking, even if I could be possessed by it. I admitted to myself that I was greedy about solitude, and words, particularly when they shaped themselves as poems, but I didn’t see too much harm in either of those. Not that morning, anyway.
I wondered if there was harm for my sinner in defining himself as a glutton. It’s a harsh word; a harsh thought to have about oneself. I didn’t know if he consumed ‘to the point of waste’ but I could imagine there might be a lot of guilt in his ownership of that sin. I wondered if it was possible for him to freely enjoy the food he ate.
All I knew as I beat along the pavement was that walking gave me pleasure, even on broiling tar and with burning soles, and that food did too; and while I was sated for steps, I was hungry for my daily bread.
Castro del Río was my destination, and I reached its blossom-lined streets by lunchtime. I located a bar for coffee and a bocadillo, and removed my boots to rest the toes. Herr T found me and told me he had taken a room for the night. His knee was swollen after the asphalt.
Santa Cruz, the next town, was another twenty-two kilometres. I felt strong and there were hours of daylight ahead. To walk on to Córdoba would place me a day closer to news from home, and possibly, reports of how my sinners were faring. Should I continue or stay the night?
I waited for a sign.
Mind you, I was in no position to ask for intervention, having exhausted my quota of wishes for the day. In the last couple of killer kilometres, I’d prayed for a lift, and immediately, a man stopped in a van and asked if I wanted a ride. Perverse peregrina, I then told him I must walk.
The bar was emptying. I poked my head out the door. There were clouds in the distance and the air was cool. Walk, I decided. Walk on.
Six hours later, I was in Santa Cruz, devouring beans, bread and a red wine, or vino tinto. I’d walked a marathon over hills, highways, clay and bitumen. My feet throbbed. My knee creaked. But the grin wouldn’t leave my face.
Over my hermit’s dinner, I recalled the afternoon.
Wild blue irises, so expensive at home, grew like weeds out of the rocky ground at my side. Highways and byways of asphalt and concrete made my breathable Merrells into mini-saunas. Trucks and cars passed hard and fast.
Smaller roads soothed me. Hillier, but deserted, they invited speed. Fields of green crops waved me past and ranks of olives monitored my moves.
… but what we feel is the wind in our face …
Slow down, peregrina. Remember the snail.
A mirage farmhouse became real, and it even had shade. Boots off. Figs. Water.
From nowhere, a brown dog appeared. She snuggled, wagged and nuzzled. She plopped beside me and licked my toes. I gave her a morsel of salchicha and made a friend for life. We panted together into the silence.
My phone beeped, making my four-legged friend race for cover under a farm truck. There was a message from my husband, who had tried to call. Somehow, in all my dipping and winding, the signal couldn’t locate me. In danger of plummeting, I booted up and walked on, leaving dog and melancholy behind.
I sang to the sky, a noisy dot moving along a ribbon of shimmering black, and eventually I rose to observe myself traversing wide river flats, but somewhere around the thirty-kilometre mark, I crashed to earth again, sore and spent. And alone. Tears threatened with each burning footstep. Hot tar and thistles abounded. No one gave a damn. No one even knew.
I remembered my iPod. I’d debated bringing it, telling myself the music of the road is always enough; that the songs that find me are the right ones; that I remember what I need to hear. But at that moment, an external rhythm seemed a very fine thing, so I clipped in the earbuds and clicked Play.
A heavy-husked voice and a chiming guitar kicked in, along with an insistent drumbeat I knew well from other walks: miles and years of walks. The music was a hand in the small of my back, propelling me with a hymn to home and places beyond imaginings. It was a shot of walking palimpsesto. It was U2 singing ‘Walk On’.
So I did.
Off road, on a track so untravelled I wondered if I was imagining it.
In fact, I was off the camino. The recent flooding had meant detours. A man stood by a river far in the distance, his binoculars trained on me, tracking my progress. I waved. He lowered his glasses and climbed into a four-wheel drive.
The track became a path. The path petered out, eroded by rain and rabbit holes. The guide was no help but a yellow arrow gave hope, which was promptly dashed by the steepness of the next incline and biting briars at my ankles. I knew from the sun’s position that my direction was correct but I didn’t want any extra kilometres. All I wanted was to get somewhere. I was driven by the push of an inner voice, chanting ‘on, on’.
I recognised that voice. Both friend and foe, it urges me forward, but it can also do damage. Just in time I heeded the lesson of the snail and slowed for the final kilometres. When I hobbled into Santa Cruz, its streets bordered with flowering lemon trees, my left foot was bruised and screaming, my trousers stained, my shoes muddy, and my hair stuck out like straw.
‘Buenas tardes, Rubia,’ an old señor called. Good afternoon, Blondie.
The man with the binocul
ars! How had he passed me? Where was the road? It had been three hours since I’d seen him in the distance, the only other human all afternoon. He was like a found friend, chatting in the square with his amigos. He offered me a lift to a hostal in his four-wheel drive, and although it was less than a kilometre from one end of town to the other, I climbed aboard. His gentlemen friends waved as we cruised down the street.
‘Descansa, niña,’ were his parting words. Rest, child.
I had walked over forty-two kilometres. An all-surfaces marathon. I asked for olive oil when I checked in and mixed it with eucalyptus from home. I rubbed my aching limbs with the fruit of the two countries.
And I did rest, kind señor. Long and deep.
Next day, I walked through another world. No olives.
For over a hundred and forty kilometres they had been my companions, and now they were gone. I was in farmland, ploughed chocolate earth and vivid crops. Fences delineated solid blocks of unbroken green or yellow crop. White farmhouses broke the abstract shapes at irregular intervals, but mostly it was just me, snailing across the landscape.
Deep erosion confronted me, the track a series of gullies and washaways. Ants lugged twigs, working harder than me. Flowers swayed. Clouds sailed high into the swimming-pool blue.
Endlessness.
Somewhere the hum of a tractor.
A hill to climb. A descent to beware.
A bend in the track. Another hill. A yellow arrow.
An Andrew Wyeth painting with an Australian intruder in it.
A meseta.
No wonder my pace picked up and I began to sing. I made the day a particular offering for my slothful sinners and stepped out the miles on their behalf. Sole proprietor of all that space and light, I forgot body aches and let myself soar high, exploring perspectives—of the landscape below, of the landscape ahead, of the relief I wished for my sinners—all the way to the hilltop where I first spied Córdoba.