by Ailsa Piper
I did nothing but plod. It was wet. It was cold. My boots were soaked through and the path was dotted with dung of infinitely varied perfume and texture. I felt like excrement myself.
One ‘stream’ had swollen to a river. The path led straight to the water’s edge and took up again about twenty metres away on the other side. No bridge was visible. No people either. Cold had frozen me from my saturated boots right up to my brain and the only solution I could imagine was to strip off and wade across. The rain stopped, so I clenched my teeth, peeled off damp trousers and knickers, and stuffed them into the outer pockets of my pack. I tied my sock-filled boots in place around it, tucked my T-shirt up into my bra, hoisted pack and walking poles over my head, and walked towards the shallows, singing ‘Waltzing Matilda’ as loudly as I could.
Tadpoles and green fronds swirled about my toes. The current was not fast, so I stepped towards mid-stream, my lower body naked and goose-bumped. Frogs croaked in alarm while turtles swam close for a peek. I stopped looking down after I’d counted six of them, concentrating instead on not cutting my feet on any hidden stones in the icy mud that felt like custard between my toes. When the water reached my pubic hair, I let out a screech, but Matilda’s swagman didn’t desert me and, still singing, I advanced until the water reached my hips. I stumbled, shouting something most unladylike, but righted myself, and clambered out through slime and long grass.
There were no whoops of triumph. I was shivering so hard I could barely unclip my pack to get my handkerchief-sized towel. I dried off as best I could. My damp undies gripped my damp thighs before settling onto my damp bottom. My trousers stuck to my shins. Wet feet went into already-wet socks and boots. I pulled plastic outer layers on for warmth and looked back.
I was an idiot. It was only then that I registered the risk. I could have been swept away, could have slipped and drowned, could have lost my phone or my camera or my pack. But I didn’t, and there was no time to berate myself. I had to get moving before hypothermia set in.
Ten minutes later, a text came from Herr T telling me there was a bridge just past the place where I’d crossed.
Serve me right, I thought. Every squelching step was punishment for my selfishness, my gluttony for solitude, my impatience towards an older person. All I needed was a hair shirt to be in masochism heaven.
Occasionally the sun came out, lighting on poppies and mauve blossoms and fields of suddenly golden wheat. On a clear day, with dry boots, I would have marvelled at the cultivated green framed by distant mountains. But that day was grey and blisters threatened from walking on soles like overfull sponges.
Herr T texted again, saying to rest on the road because down on the fields is an inondation. I obeyed, and my penance continued. Highway 422 had no love for pedestrians. Semis sprayed water and fumes.
Pilgrim purgatory.
Leonardo called, the archangel of antipodeans, lifting me out of myself. I tried to make my steps an offering, though I still had no idea to whom. I thought of my sinners, of mediaeval pilgrims without rain gear. I trudged on.
Past a hermitage surrounded by parked cars and tents, where families huddled around fires as music blared. Past a doll strung up by the neck in a fig tree. Past the big hotel on the highway, where there was no room—the fiesta, don’t you know? Past factories and deserted industrial parks, into Hinojosa, where rooms were impossible and the ayuntamiento was closed. Just as I was in danger of slumping in total defeat, I was sent a miracle.
A group of plastic-clad hikers rushed toward me like I was a prodigal, overwhelming me with hugs and rapid-fire questions and congratulatons. With the help of a perpetually smiling Spanish–Australian called Monica, I figured out why.
They were the amigos from the Camino Association in Córdoba, one of the camino support groups. They’d been out in all that rain painting yellow arrows, a true act of faith when so few walk that road. To see an actual pilgrim was vindication.
I was a drowned Aussie rat with scarecrow hair grinning amid a sea of altruism. We talked of Gore-Tex and rain ponchos, and visited the Church of San Juan Bautista to get a sello. It shows a horse, or maybe a lamb, wearing plumage and resting on a large book. I’m yet to understand the symbolism.
Herr T appeared. He, too, had been unable to find a room. The amigos’ president located a policeman who could open the polideportivo for us. Herr T had no sleeping bag, so the policía said he would find blankets and return to collect us. More miracles.
Herr T and I waved off the amigos and settled onto the steps of the town hall to wait.
And wait.
And wait.
The town was empty. The wind was ice. The elements were indifferent.
The priest came out of the church, waved and drove away.
Herr T shivered. I made for a bar.
On TV, footage of flooding and volcanic ash confirmed my sense that the world was upending. Behind the bar a Romanian beauty called Adriana—an outsider with excellent Spanish—explained that the next town was thirty-three kilometres away, impossible in freezing darkness. No, there was no bus and no taxi. And yes, there was only one policeman, his first duty was the fiesta at the hermitage, and no one else could open the polideportivo.
We waited another hour.
Nada.
Adriana said I could stay at her place, but her hombre would not want another man in the house. Herr T was a huddle of plastic on the steps of the ayuntamiento. I couldn’t leave him. Could Adriana suggest anything else?
She rang friends. She petitioned the men at the bar. She said we could come in until closing time to be warm, but she was not the boss, so couldn’t offer us the floor for the night. I said she was kind. She said kindness cost nothing. She knew what it was to be without a place to sleep. She kept calling and eventually she located a man with a car who’d take us to the next town, for a price.
Herr T was transformed. ‘I pay, I pay,’ he said to me.
No. I wanted my slate to be clean. Maybe it was pride but we split the fare.
The headlights lit up yellow arrows along the entire road; the walk would have been all asphalt. Still, it was the exit from the province of Andalucía into Extremadura. I loved the idea of crossing that border on foot. I’d missed two stages. I still think of them, still hope to go back and walk them one fine day.
The car pulled into a darkened village and nosed its way along cobbled streets to a square of light. Was there ever such a welcome sight as the glowing Hostal Vaticano in Monterrubio de la Serena?
Yes! In the bar were four German pilgrims.
I wanted to sing. I wanted to dance. I wanted to drop to my knees and give thanks to that mystery listener in the cielo. In spite of my hard heart, I had been delivered. Other walkers! Company for Herr T!
Over a late dinner, and wearing blissfully dry clothes, Herr T detailed our day to them. Released from the strain of speaking English and Spanish, he smiled and held court. The others nodded and poured vino tinto. They made plans for the morning, inviting me, in English, to join them.
‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘I’d like to spend a Sunday in a village.’
Herr T smiled. ‘Of course. Some time for your own self,’ he said.
We wished each other good rest. I would catch him up, he said, squeezing my hand. We would meet in a day or two.
The last image I have of Herr Theologie is of the smile under his bushy white brows as he ducked into his room down the corridor.
‘Buen camino, peregrina,’ he called. Good walking, pilgrim.
‘Igualmente, señor,’ I replied. Equally, sir.
Our paths didn’t cross again.
13
Peregrina Sola
In room 102 of the Hostal Vaticano, I woke at six to pounding rain.
I rolled over.
I woke at eight to Herr T’s footsteps in the hall. He was late.
I
rolled over.
I woke at nine to silence.
I breakfasted in the bar on toast and tomato and considered walking. My back screamed. My legs throbbed. Over my second coffee, the señora said there was to be a big celebration that day.
Decision made.
The teenagers of the pueblo were making their Confirmation, where they become adults in the Catholic faith, responsible for their choices and their sins. In the sixteenth-century Church of Nuestra Señora de la Consolación, the girls wore very big hair to balance their very short skirts. The boys wore American hip-hop gear. One tall niño sported a white suit over a peacock-blue silk shirt. Elvis lived!
Pews were packed with fussing parents, smaller siblings and camera-toting aunts. At the sign of peace, when the congregation turn to each other and extend hands and cheeks, I experienced a mixture of inclusion and isolation. I was glad to be welcomed, hugged and kissed, but I knew I was not truly a part of the community. I had no right to be there, enjoying the fruits of the faith of others.
I watched the teenagers kneel to receive the sacrament. As the priest placed a wafer on each tongue, my thoughts drifted to a communion I’d experienced on the Camino Francés, on a day when the only clouds were art-directed wisps in a Hockney-blue sky and the road led through terrain that spoke of the toil of generations. A palimpsesto road.
Around noon, I’d met a group of workers who had downed tools for a picnic of cheeses, cakes and fruit. They invited me to share it with them. On learning I was Australian, they asked for ‘Waltzing Matilda’! I sang a few lines and they danced around me in blue overalls and yellow fluoro vests, spinning to the song of the swagman. We broke bread in the field and they offered me tastes of everything. Communion in the best sense. I sipped wine as sweet as honey, toasted their generosity, and stepped back out onto the road. Then, from nowhere, forgotten words flooded back: Behold the handmaid of the Lord …
In Catholic primary school, we little ones were taught catechism and prayers. I particularly loved the Angelus, recited daily at noon, and the idea that workers all over the world stopped in factories or offices to contemplate the angel announcing to Mary that she would be the mother of God.
It was an honour to be chosen to ring the Angelus bell. When it was mine, I’d gallop across the playground, past the Virgin’s grotto, and into the cool silence of the wood-floored church. I’d cross myself with holy water and tiptoe down the back to tug on the thick rope, relishing the delay between the action and the sound of the big bell.
Then I’d race back, the only moving creature in the midday stillness. In the classroom all heads would be bowed as the Hail Mary was recited and we pictured the towering angel with his outsized wings telling Mary she was going to have a baby.
Miracles. I was instructed in them. Certain of them.
At home, things were not so clear-cut. My mother’s childhood playmates had been Aboriginal children and she could recall her first sighting of another white girl when she was about six—astonishment and mild resentment! She believed in different miracles, wrought by the Aboriginal spirits. Things that confounded me. How could a bone kill someone, just by pointing it? How could a person be ‘sung’ to death? I never asked her why she sent me to a Catholic school when its teachings were so remote from her own beliefs. It also never occurred to me that the miracles she believed in were no less plausible than a Virgin birth.
Regardless, those Spanish workers feasting on the Camino Francés took me back to my little girl’s devoted heart, her head tilted to receive the body and blood of the saviour. The pleasure of certainty.
In the wooden pew in Monterrubio, that pleasure felt more and more remote. Growing up had taught me about contradictions and ambiguity and led me to the conviction that certainty is the only thing that isn’t possible. Perhaps the teens making their Confirmation needed certainty in order to navigate adolescence, but in time they too might find it didn’t tally with day-to-day living.
Storks wheeled overhead as we exited the church. A simple man of about fifty, with three teeth and a milky eye, told me that the priest had put a hand on his head, too, just like the Confirmation kids.
‘Yes, I see him,’ I said, unable to remember my past-tense conjugations.
The simple man nodded, then put his hand on my head. I waited for him to remove it but he stood a long time, looking into my eyes and grinning.
‘Confirmación,’ I said. He nodded again, his hand firmly in place.
Finally his mother, a stooped woman with tight grey curls, came and led him away. He was still smiling, still touching his own head.
Duende fled. I wept all the way back to Hostal Vaticano, undone by his gaze. He had seen inside me, but still gave me his benediction.
Card games were in full swing in the bar. It was a communal living room. The floor was littered with peanut shells, the air thick with smoke and stories.
Leonardo phoned, saying Ricardo was stressed. I had no idea of their family, health or financial situations, but longed to help.
I listened to the TV news, searching for words I knew.
Espero … I wait, or I hope …
Tormentas … storms …
Inundado … flooded …
The volcano, the weather, the skies, the destruction. Interrupted flights, ruined rail lines, house walls collapsing from water damage. Were the gods unhappy after all?
I put on my plastic jacket and went out into weak sun. Storks settled deep into their tub-sized nests at the church, and seeing them tucking in, I felt consoled. White-haired Lorenzo invited himself to stroll with me, recounting stories about when he lived in Germany many years before. I was aware of the whole town observing us, and when finally we separated, two matrons enquired if he had been telling me of Germany. I nodded.
‘Aahhhh!’ they said. ‘Siempre!’ Always.
I didn’t mind. The stories were new to me.
In another bar, six men played cards at a window table. They waved as I passed, hands full of hearts and diamonds. Dogs flopped from one doormat to another. Women looked to heaven and crossed themselves.
The next day’s walk to Campanario was thirty-six kilometres and every step had spring in it.
The morning was cocooned in fog. Under my feet: red soil. At my sides: lavender for buttonholes, wrists and hat. Poppies, margaritas and lupins appeared as the sun broke through. Swallows and wagtails got up close and personal. And welcome, most welcome, were my old friends, the olives. Distant mountains rose with the fog. Cobalt sky. Stone outcrops. Dogs. More dogs. And a wide white road bounded by flowering mimosa leading me towards Castuerta, where grey asphalt hurried me through its industry and suburbs, and cobbles stepped me through its heart at lazy lunchtime.
Back onto asphalt again and out of Castuerta, I stepped across the train lines, singing up to a bird on the wires. It tilted its head, its eyes ringed with orange liner. I broke into McCartney’s ‘Blackbird’, raising my volume as a tribute, but the bird only winked an exotic eye and lifted off. I sang on.
Singing releases endorphins. It gives the lungs and heart a good workout, too. It pumps the intercostals and diaphragm, because we’re sucking in more oxygen, energising ourselves. I can certainly vouch for the benefits of singing aloud into a Spanish sky. Sin is unimaginable.
Into Campanario I warbled, to find the pueblo dozing in sultry late-afternoon air. The owner of the first bar directed me to a house where a lady rented rooms. I rang the bell. Nothing. Rang again. Silence. Knocked. Nothing.
‘Hola, Rubia!’
Across the empty main road, two ancianos in three-piece suits patrolled, their walking sticks tapping in unison. After interrogating me about where I was from and where I was going, why I would do such a thing, and where was my husband, they told me the lady was not home.
Okay, the ayuntamiento? No. Cerrado. Closed. Too late in the day.
Hmmm … time to consi
der the church porch?
A police car pulled up and a man of about twenty-five emerged, in a navy and fluoro uniform. He wore metal-rimmed glasses and a wide smile. On his chest was the word Policía. His name was Angel. A policeman called Angel.
I showed my credencial and explained my plight.
‘No hay problema,’ he said. No problem.
He directed me to a park bench and told me to sit. He would find me a bed.
I sat. I read sins and poems. I journalled and wrote postcards. I sent wishes winging to Herr T, hoping he was safe on his path. I visited the church to light a candle, and the gracious Antonia stopped her sweeping to show me her favourite saints and to offer me a bed if Angel couldn’t find one. I watched teenagers pouting at each other in a plaza, oblivious to the plaque inscribed with the words of their famous writer, Antonio Reyes Huertas:
… my heart, filled by my village, sun, sky and fields, longs for a noble, simple life …
Angel found me, copying the Spanish words into my journal.
‘You have a bed,’ he said, ducking his head and grinning as I hugged him. He had been gone for over an hour—to the polideportivo, back to the woman with the room for rent, asking in bars, knocking on doors, making calls. He told me this as we drove out through town.
Eventually, he’d found the manager of the town’s closed albergue. He convinced her to open for one pilgrim for one night, and to provide dinner. We drove further, into fields. Where was this albergue?
At a railway line, a girl called Amalia emerged and handed me a set of keys. It took me some time to understand that the old railway station behind her had been converted into a refuge of two peach-coloured storeys with a white balcony and tall pines around it. I held the key to a mansion.