Sinning Across Spain

by Ailsa Piper

  I didn’t know whether to kiss Angel or Amalia. Angel repeated that it was only his job, his pleasure, his responsibility. It was nothing. De nada.

  They always said that as they did something remarkable.

  Amalia showed me how to open the heavy doors and double locks, and left. I crossed the threshold. The room could have held forty of my closest friends, if only they had been there. Its gold walls glowed in the late sun. There were sofas and standard lamps, and a table with six chairs should I decide to invite the ladies of the village for cards.

  Upstairs were the bedrooms, each with four or six colonial-style beds sporting checked coverlets and access to gleaming bathrooms. I chose a bed on the railway line wall, next to a door that opened onto a terrace. I photographed myself grinning at the countryside, which grinned back at me, knowing how gorgeous it was. I washed clothes and grinned. Rubbed my leg muscles and grinned. Watched a train pull in to the new station and grinned.

  At dinner, I couldn’t stop grinning. Amalia presented me with salad, bread, olives and a glass of wine, and when the meal was over, she handed me a thermos of coffee for the morning, because I was so far from the village.

  Apparently she had converted the railway station, but because there are so few pilgrims on the Mozárabe, it was not worth opening except for pre-booked tourist groups. Amalia said many people, even residents, still didn’t know there was a pilgrim trail through these parts. She wanted to know how people made a go of it in albergues on the Francés. When I explained the pilgrim numbers her eyes almost popped.

  As I bedded down, I thought of Herr Theologie, who had texted the previous day to say he’d taken the train because there was no accommodation in Campanario. He must have stood on the platform, not knowing paradise was over his right shoulder. I wished him good rest, wherever he was, and snuggled in as the last train swept past.

  Next morning, I soared.

  Deep-pink sunrise, deep-red roads, deep-green sward. Storks in lakes, dipping and scooping. Storks in the air, gliding and soaring. Shoes off to wade. Shoes on to walk. Flowers and wheat shimmering to the horizon. Granite amid grass. Swallows and swifts. Swift swallows.

  Far below, a pilgrim walked on a winding dirt road. Sometimes she wept as she grinned. High above, I was tethered to her but never felt chained—that airborne sensation for which I may never find words.

  After ten kilometres I came to earth on approach to the village of Magacela. Three old men waited in the middle of the road, one on a mule.

  ‘Hola, Rubia,’ they croaked, roaring with laughter at their joke.

  ‘Hola, señores. Qué día hermoso.’ Beautiful days demand acknowledgement.

  They asked where I was going. ‘Santiago? No! Alone?’

  Yes, yes, yes. A thousand times yes.

  ‘Then you need my mule, Rubia. Very cheap.’

  The mule in question swung his head around.

  ‘Yes, little mule. Wouldn’t you like to go to Santiago with this lady pilgrim?’

  The mule stamped his feet and the ancients laughed again. There was not a full set of teeth between them.

  I thanked them and walked on, chomping the apple they’d insisted I take. When I looked back, the mule curled his lip at me. Too late, I realised the apple was his.

  Workers harvested asparagus, bent low over the thin stalks. They shouted encouragement as they straightened to stretch their lower backs.

  Ahead was a lung-busting climb.

  Magacela perched at the top of a pyramid-shaped hill, the only interruption to miles of flat green. I’d watched it looming for over an hour. The ascent to its centre was reminiscent of my first day’s climb to Moclín. Vertical torture.

  Near the top, red-faced and panting, I passed two women exchanging the news of the day. I became a headline.

  ‘Going where? From where? No husband? Mother of God, so brave. So crazy!’

  ‘Here, you need this. Fruit. Yes, take it. And this juice. It will make you strong.’ Hugs, kisses, encouragement and laughter.

  Downhill, singing a medley of ‘sunshine’ songs in time with the feet, the walking poles and the sway of grasses, I felt guilty that I couldn’t fix on sin. All I could feel was happiness. In a surge of gratitude, I decided to say ‘gracias’ as I walked. I called my thanks to the powder-blue sky for health, rescue, beauty, space and time. Then for my home village.

  I wanted to thank everyone I’d ever loved. But how?

  The Organiser stepped in. Alphabetically, of course.

  I recalled each person, beginning with Aarne, moving on to Abbe, and so on. I considered what they had taught me, their particular gifts, and I thanked them. Talked to them. Conversations I had always meant to have. Sometimes I backtracked. An ‘S’ reminded me of an associated ‘B’ I had neglected, who sent me to the linked ‘D’. Twice I got lost on backroads and had to turn back, so deep was I in conversations. No matter. The road slid by in a refrain of thanks, my village walking with me across mushy fields and flinty roads. Kilometres vanished.

  I should have kept watch on my body. I was speeding again, and when I landed in the village of La Haba, my feet were throbbing and my map had deserted me. Somewhere out there in the land of gracias, the pages that were to direct me to Mérida went walkabout.

  De nada. Yellow arrows were leading now, though there were times when they felt like weapons, designed to wound.

  Bitumen. Highway. Carretera. Each fiery step threatened blisters on the soles.

  Cars. Trucks. Buses. Every one that roared past was a punch to the stomach, and there were many.

  Plod on, pilgrim, and hope for drivers with eagle eyes. Hope for softer paths. Hope for road’s end. Plod under power lines and over ditches. Plod through endless, heartless, characterless outskirts. Plod and hope. Plod for sinners. Plod.

  Restoration came in the centre of Don Benito, where shoppers promenaded, grandpas chin-wagged and purses opened. Grace, elegant proportions and prosperity were the order of the evening, despite the For Sale signs I’d seen walking in. The Church of Santiago was closed, but I did sight some angels: skipping children chanted rhymes, a backlit fountain sparkling behind them. Their mothers murmured encouragement as jumping heels clicked on stone. No matter how hard the yards, sitting for an hour in a Spanish plaza in golden sunlight will ease cramps and soften any callous.

  So I did, before sleeping the sleep of the virtuous.

  Rain on waking. Rain on walking. Rain on the highway. Rain on the pilgrim.

  The rain it raineth every day.

  To Medellín. Roman, mediaeval, modern. Castles, churches, history.

  And closed bars in the early morning.

  On I went through sodden fields, the squelching of my socks and rustling of my plastics unable to cover a plopping sound that followed me. What was it?

  Looking down, I saw hundreds of frogs flinging themselves into irrigation channels at my approach. I sped up but still they leapt. Storks clacked their beaks at me like jackhammers. Tut tut tut.

  There were no snails though. Had they all been rubbed into the skin of the women of Don Benito, where I’d seen moisturiser made from them in a farmacia? Poor little caracoles, mixed with aloe and vitamin E.

  Trucks thundered down Highway 430, laden with groceries and goodies, spraying and buffeting my plastic-clad frame. Head down, I forged on, wondering if they were punishment for neglecting sins the previous day. The rain sheeted and the wind swept.

  A lorry approached at warp speed. Close. God, so close. No. No! Too close!

  The force of its slipstream flung me against the highway’s metal guardrail like a crash-test dummy, a tangle of walking poles, pack and pilgrim. Wet steel and bitumen met soft flesh and fabric, resulting in searing pain. I picked myself up as cars sped by, and when I found my feet I screamed after the long-gone driver. You want to know anger? I’ll show you anger.

  A
long with obscenity, blasphemy and, yes, the wish for vengeance. Bring it on.

  Let me pin him to the asphalt with my walking poles while I dance on his bones in my waterlogged boots. Let me scrape his hands on stones until they bleed, and see how he likes it when he tries to pick himself out of the mud with ten kilos on his back.

  Rage kept me upright, but eventually I cried. Tears mixed with rain as I put one foot down to test it. Yes, okay. Then the other. Only just okay. I gathered my treasures. Hiking poles, mobile phone, camera, water bottles. All accounted for. Stamina? A bit damaged. Pride? Returning.

  I limped. There was nothing else to do but keep on walking, off the freeway, into fields and onto farm tracks. The rain stopped, the sun peeked out and the earth was made over in primary tones. A wide sky of vibrant blue was bisected by white jet trails and a yellow balloon floated above me dodging clouds, weightless, as I longed to be.

  I stopped. At my feet, a trail of ants crossed the path. Seen from that balloon, I must have looked like an ant. From the jets above it, the balloon and the monster trucks would have been toys. And from space … from farther out?

  The ants didn’t stop to wonder. They just got on with their job.

  Perhaps it was perspective that lifted me but I shouldered my pack and tramped on, body throbbing and steps slowing. Heart sagging. Hips nagging. Suburbs looming. Traffic booming. Boots drying. Still crying …

  Rational thought must have been left on the road where I crashed and I kept walking long past sanity or safety. I kept on past the sad-eyed girl in the empty bar at Torrefresneda, where cigarette butts piled up with peanut shells at her feet. I kept on past the closed albergue at San Pedro de Mérida, and the truckstop on the autovía. I kept on walking with nothing in my stomach but toast, juice, coffee and trail mix, because it was the one thing I knew how to do.

  For forty-three kilometres.

  It was after six when I hobbled into Mérida, where the Mozárabe meets the Via de la Plata. Four hundred kilometres in thirteen days. A third of the way to Santiago.

  Mérida.

  Ancient city of Roman marvels and the end of my solitary road.

  Crushed from the marathon and from pounding the streets to find room at an inn, I checked into the fourth hostal on the tourist office’s list, paid a whopping twenty-five euros, signed an agreement and took the key.

  Mould and bites finally broke me.

  It was a concrete cell with a steel door. The bedding was damp and stained and I swear the fungus in the bathroom moved. The fleas on my ankles certainly did.

  I had walked too far, too fast, and had not paid attention. I should have looked at the room before handing over money. You don’t always find good places, I told myself. You have to stay conscious.

  Praying the bites were fleas and not bedbugs, I picked up my ten-tonne mochila and left. I’d learned a big lesson. A hard one. Trust must not be given carelessly and not everyone is an Angel.

  But they were out there.

  In case I needed reminding, Barcelona called as I closed the door.

  ‘Estoy segura,’ I heard myself say. I am safe.

  ‘Estoy en Mérida.’

  I’m in Mérida.

  14

  Mérida

  Leaving the Mouldy Flea hostal, weary and teary and fretting about my lost euros, I wandered among crowds, hoping to be led. I had no guide for Mérida, having lost those pages back in the fields of gracias. A road opened into a sunny square, the Plaza Constitución, planted with fruiting orange trees, and bordered on one side by a pristine white edifice. Flags flew along the façade and a stork nested in one of its turrets.

  The ayuntamiento.

  I stumbled in, filthy and tear-stained, to find a tall, suited man behind a dark wood counter. Showing my credencial, I asked if he could help me find a bed.

  ‘Por qué no aquí?’ he said. Why not here? ‘Es muy agradable.’

  I looked around. Yes, very nice. Clean, silent, smelling of polish and luxury.

  But there were no desks. No municipal offices with room dividers. This clearly wasn’t the Town Hall. To my left, I saw a rate sheet. Then I saw a name. Parador de Mérida.

  I was in one of Spain’s famous state-run, five-star hotels!

  ‘Muy caro,’ I squeaked. Very expensive. ‘Gracias, gracias. No es posible.’

  I backed towards the door.

  ‘Señora,’ the man called. ‘Un momento.’

  He rounded the counter, took my pack from me and extended his hand.

  ‘Soy Angel,’ he said. I am Angel.

  He ushered me forward, inspected his ledger, and then said he could find me a room and it would cost sixty euros. It was a huge discount, but still a fortune by pilgrim standards—five nights’ accommodation costs, when I’d already squandered good money at the Mouldy Flea.

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Sí, peregrina?’

  There was ample credit on my phone and I would just eat less.

  I handed over my passport. ‘Sí. Muchas gracias.’

  Angel led the way up a staircase, along a corridor and around two corners. The building had been a convent and I wondered if my legs could carry me to my distant cell, but I was happy, so happy, for thick walls and carpet. Finally he stopped, opened a door, placed my pack down and handed me a key.

  ‘I am Angel,’ he said again. ‘Call me if you have a problem.’

  I stepped inside.

  Room 110 was vast with a vaulted ceiling. Twin beds boasted precision-ironed coverlets. Armchairs nestled by a marble coffee table. A window framed by curtains and shutters let in a glimpse of pink sky. Chocolates beckoned from a bowl. The in-house magazine featured a pilgrim on the cover.

  I bent to remove my boots, joints creaking like a crone’s, and tiptoed over tiles to a wooden door. Behind it was a gleaming full-length tub, polished tapware, two sinks, bath-towels, hand-towels, face-towels and bathmats. And toiletries! Spice-smelling conditioner, shampoo, moisturiser and even cologne, for a woman who had been relying on olive oil and a cake of soap.

  And there was a mirror.

  I looked. Looked again. I turned on a light and looked closer.

  My eyes belonged to someone else. They stared, perplexed by the strange creature with raw red skin and straw hair looking back at them. Slumping onto the edge of the bath, I saw the creature in the mirror grimace in pain at the tenderness of her bruises.

  Then I cried. Really cried.

  I had walked over one hundred kilometres in the preceding three days, in all weathers, and on testing surfaces. Sins had weighed on me—mostly my own.

  But the tears were not for any of that.

  They were for kindness and beauty; for the miracle of a hand-towel, like those at home; for the pleasure of shampoo, taken for granted in my normal life; for surfaces cleaned with care; and for plump chairs in a room all my own.

  A home.

  I undressed. My body was a patchwork of blues and purples, cuts and scrapes—and there would be more coming after the battering by the lorry.

  No matter. Get on with it.

  I laundered every article I had in twin sinks and chose hanging places from an array of possibilities. I doused my boots in peppermint and ti-tree oils and bid them rest. I tipped unguents into the tub, said a prayer to the water-gods asking forgiveness for my excesses, and turned on the taps. I let my numb feet linger under hot water as the bath filled, and finally I lowered myself into deep, bubbling water, taking up residence as the sky turned black outside the square window.

  Mérida cranked into life while I wallowed, oblivious to the fact that the city had been overrun by thousands of partying teenagers for the European Festival of Greek–Latin Theatre. I lay in watery silence, skin wrinkling, remembering words from a poem by my compañero, sent before my departure:

  they talk about arrival

  i
think they mean that it

  feels like when you

  walk in your front door

  and smell the feeling of home in

  your bones …

  When at last I moved, my steps were like an invalid’s. Snail-slow to the toiletries. Slow to the novelty of a hair-dryer. Slow, slow to complete the marathon to bed, to pull back the cover, to slide between sheets so tightly tucked I was barely able to insert myself between them.

  I was, however, able to sleep. I dreamed of home, on the other side of the world, where it would have been four in the morning. Still and silent.

  Home.

  It’s my favourite word in the English language, even if sometimes I feel confused as to where it is on the planet.

  I love the house where I live. It holds years of dreams and striving, the best and worst of me. It overflows with colour and sunshine.

  I love Melbourne. I grew up in the west of Australia, and lived happily in Sydney for a time, but Melbourne was a home-coming: instant and deep recognition.

  My love of Australia is visceral. The bush of my childhood is both real and mythical for me. I know it in my bones, but these days I only meet it as a visitor, like most Australians. Yet I never cease to be overcome when I return, flying over the continent to my lower right-hand corner, with all those dot paintings below me. How did Aboriginal artists know what the landscape looked like from above, thousands of years ago?

  It’s a land steeped in mystery, exposed by sharp, white light.

  A friend once said that in the beginning, we love ‘because of’, but in maturity we love ‘in spite of’. That’s true of my feelings about Australia.

  If home is where we locate those we love, then I have many homes. I am ‘at home’ all over the world, whenever I am eye to eye with an intimate. As my compañero’s poem also said:

  … arrival is the interaction between

  your deepest self