Sinning Across Spain

by Ailsa Piper

  and mine …

  My most profound experience of home is internal—the home of the self.

  At home with myself. At home in myself.

  It’s an interesting conundrum, linguistically.

  Spanish, Italian and French don’t really have an equivalent way of expressing those sentiments. Most of their expressions for home revolve around the idea of an actual house. Chez moi. Mi casa, su casa. There seems no single word that encompasses heart, belonging and soul in quite the same way as ‘home’. There’s no word like it!

  Regardless, home is where my heart is, and part of my heart will always be in Mérida.

  It was founded in 25bc as Augusta Emerita, a retirement village for the Roman emperor’s soldiers. It has more Roman ruins than anywhere else in Spain, probably more than much of Italy. It’s an open-air museum where history is alive and throbbing in mint condition.

  The Puente Romano embodies grace and glory. One of the longest Roman bridges in existence, it spans the Río Guadiana as though it were a trickle.

  The aqueduct is called Los Milagros—The Miracles—and it does look like divine intervention was involved in its design and construction. There is a circo romano outside the city and sections of Roman road in the pavements of the centre.

  In the first century bc amphitheatre, adolescent girls posed as classical heroines, unaware they were as beautiful as any goddess. Tourists ambled over millennia-old stones clicking digital photos, and lovers smooched in an archway where gladiators had waited to fight before crowds of up to fourteen thousand. An elderly Japanese couple picnicked in the stands near me as I did battle with a few of my own beasts.

  Was I a bad pilgrim for sleeping in a Parador? My intention had been to experience the road in the manner of a mediaeval pilgrim, reliant on humble lodgings or charity. Was I a real pilgrim if I slept between starched sheets?

  Not one of my sinners would have begrudged me my luxury. None of them wanted pounds of my flesh. It was my own rigid rules that weighed on me. On the Camino Francés I’d turned up my nose at peregrinos who stayed in hotels, used phones to book ahead or had their luggage transported. Tourists. Not real pilgrims like me.

  Pride again.

  Now I was having my fall.

  And what did it mean, anyway, to be a ‘real’ pilgrim? How was it possible to have a ‘mediaeval’ experience when trucks could run me down, I wore fancy hiking boots and applied factor-thirty sunblock?

  Did it even matter?

  Why not just accept that the road had led me to Angel and the Parador just as it might have led a mediaeval pilgrim to a soft bed? Why not let go of an expectation or two? Be grateful I could afford to accept the treat?

  I wasted a good hour grappling with being the recipient of kindness. I forgot the lessons of Lucia and of my first donation, and my journal was a litany of futile, ungrateful ramblings, rooted in my unbending nature. In pride. Yet again.

  Eventually, gales of laughter from the nearby theatre distracted me from pilgrim penitence. I strolled on a carpet of pink blossom to the Roman theatre, two storeys of columns, intact walls and detailed statuary.

  What a thrill to enter an auditorium packed to the non-existent rafters with an audience captivated by a Greek comedy! Aristophanes would have been agog to see kids pocketing mobile phones to laugh at jokes that were millennia old. The theatre holds six thousand and it must have been nearing capacity. I squeezed into a place near the back, unwittingly observing the original rules that people be seated according to rank, so women and slaves belonged on the high, narrow seats at the top.

  It didn’t matter. The view and acoustics were perfect.

  With enormous spongy breasts and a white afro wig direct from a seventies disco, the best of the players flounced about as an overbearing queen on sky-high platform shoes, dwarfing the cuckolded mini-king.

  Poor little king. He panted helplessly, his skinny red-stockinged legs trembling as the queen’s nubile slave girls whipped him into a lather of desire, only to leave him gasping and unsatisfied. His queen, meanwhile, shook her considerable booty at a handsome cuckolding villain.

  An age-old story. A perennial. There were double- and triple-takes, pratfalls during chase sequences, and laments as infidelities were discovered. There was remorse from the queen, and glee from the audience when she winked at her next potential lover. We all wanted the sinning to continue. It was much more fun than the prospect of virtue.

  Performances enlivened the stalls, too. The jet-haired boy in front of me slipped his arm under his girlfriend’s T-shirt as she played with the band of his designer underwear. Little chicas dressed as slave girls in filmy apricot raced up the central aisle after their dance, giggling at their triumph. To my left, a bloated Nero clapped too vigorously and had to adjust his laurel wreath. I saw him later, walking the main street, still in full costume, parading like a time-traveller.

  Palimpsesto.

  Sun shone. Birds flitted. The crowd laughed and roared its approval.

  I was home.

  The theatre can be fickle, but it also unites people. It’s relentlessly, deeply present. Performers, audience and technicians all breathe the same air at the same time. We tense up, sweat and gasp together. Skin tingles with excitement, guts knot with fear. It is belly-aching, heart-stopping and breath-taking. It is a place of union: a broad, welcoming church crossing time, space, race, religion, sexuality and sensibility. It’s where we tell stories to remind ourselves of our shared humanity.

  And wasn’t it a story that brought millions of pilgrims to walk the camino? True or false, in some ways it didn’t seem to matter whether people believed there was a saint or relics or miracles. A story of discovery and hope drew us to walk, a story written by millions of slogging feet and seeking spirits. In Mérida, I sat among kids from all over Europe. We didn’t share language, history or experiences, yet we were connected by story.

  The final act came to a close and after ten minutes of curtain calls and encores I returned to the Parador’s silence, opened my emails, and went home to my village.

  The sinner who’d confessed to sleeping with her friend’s husband was doing it tough. She was bedridden, forced into days of convalescence and recuperation, repatriation and contemplation. She wrote of being forced to surrender. She had set her clock to Spanish time so she knew when I was walking. In that coincidental way of Spain and camino, she and another sinner both sent me the lyrics of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’!

  One of my sloths sent quotes from the famous sons of Córdoba:

  Seneca: It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.

  Maimonides: The risk of a wrong decision is preferable to the terror of indecision.

  I thanked Rodgers, Hammerstein and the Córdoba lads equally.

  My brother wrote: Like you, we keep putting one foot in front of the other.

  Fungus and fleas seemed miniscule concerns when I read that.

  There were snippets of domestic lives … we have spent the day pottering in our garden weeding and planting some winter flowers. I was lying on my bed reading and realised I felt utterly happy.

  I wrote to them of my losing battle with the lorry and of my trepidation at joining the pilgrim-populated eight hundred kilometres of the Via de la Plata.

  I didn’t admit I was writing from a Parador.

  It wasn’t strictly a lie but was definitely a sin of omission.

  Finally, I asked if they’d like to walk with me on the coming Sunday. I loved the idea of joined dots in landscapes, a walking village.

  I went to rest under a thick blanket. It was nearing midnight in Australia. I tried to picture their faces but, mostly, I failed. It’s an intimacy to watch another in sleep, reserved for lovers and family. And even then, their dreams are secret. No matter how well we know someone, there’ll alw
ays be something unknown. We’re puzzles to each other, and more beautiful for it.

  The spice and amber scent of the Parador smelled like mystery, like the faces of sleepers I couldn’t see. I dozed.

  When I woke, it was late afternoon. At the Roman bridge, teenagers flirted on its footings, joggers ran over and around it, and one long-haired sylph did a Fred Astaire impression with an umbrella in the fading gold light.

  The town was jumping. Costumed performers jostled for café tables, disputing which ice-cream flavour was best, oblivious to signs asking them to join an anti-nuclear demonstration. They swarmed past the Temple of Diana, racing instead into souvenir shops and the instant-photo booth. Four toga-wearing nymphs crowded in, their sandalled toes visible behind the curtain as they shrieked at the images they were making.

  In the town square, tots kicked a football between palm trees while parents sipped aperitifs. Grandmothers held hands with mini-matrons decked out in patent leather and petticoats. Watching over them was the real ayuntamiento, three storeys of municipal spectacle presiding over the plaza like a Roman general. It made the Parador look like a foot soldier.

  Throughout the town, the scent of neroli tracked me again. On the Camino Francés I had smelled figs everywhere. Citrus was the signature of the Mozárabe.

  Returning to the hotel, I found Angel. He asked if I was better.

  ‘Soy una nueva persona,’ I said. I’m a new person. ‘Gracias, gracias.’

  He would have none of it. It was nada.

  ‘Un turista hace las demandas para muchas cosas. Un peregrino da las gracias por nada.’ A tourist makes demands for many things. A pilgrim gives thanks for nothing.

  I scurried upstairs to note down his words, wanting to live up to them.

  Before leaving home, I’d copied down the Seven Corporeal Works of Mercy from the mediaeval catechism. Snuggled in my armchair, I read over them:

  Feed the Hungry

  Give Drink to the Thirsty

  Give Shelter to Strangers

  Clothe the Naked

  Visit the Sick

  Minister to Prisoners

  Bury the Dead.

  I’d received many of them during Act One of my Mozárabe. I hoped I wouldn’t need the final one, but I felt sure that if I did, it would be taken care of too.

  I wrote a postcard to Leonardo and Ricardo. I wanted to tell them that Mérida is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage site, and that it was my third on the trail, after Granada and Córdoba. That I was on a walk of wonders.

  Vocabulary failed me. I wrote of love and of beauty. I can’t remember if I wrote of home, but I should have. Mérida restored me. Mérida, and its Angel, earthed me, reminding me that, sometimes, home feels like a hand-towel and sounds like an audience cheering a villain.

  15

  Pilgrims

  I left late the next morning, around nine, for a seventeen-kilometre saunter. The three-storey Roman aqueduct sprawled beside me, storks nesting among its arches and tut-tutting me on my way. A new cycle path led to a new road, which led to a new entrance to a Roman dam.

  I was a new pilgrim!

  The interval in Mérida had readied me for Act Two.

  I smelled of Parador unguents, laundry detergent and peppermint oil. My strides were long and even, in spite of the bruising from my tussle with the lorry and the tenderness of my feet. Too much highway walking had taken a road toll on my soles.

  Still, I wasn’t convinced that Act One of the Mozárabe had conformed to the tradition of the Francés. Undoubtedly there had been lessons from the body, but coping with Herr T, reading through the sins each morning, then scrutinising my actions in the light of both, had proved painful and exhausting. My mind was a punishing instructor. My intention for Act Two was to try to carry my own sins in the way I was carrying those of my sinners. View your failings with compassion and distance, I told myself. They are done and can’t be undone. Try to understand and improve, but not to flagellate.

  My Barcelona angels called to wish me ‘flores en tu corazón’—flowers for my heart. They were celebrating the feast day of St George when, according to a Barcelona tradition, men give women roses, and women give men a book. By day’s end, four million roses and eight hundred thousand books will have been sold. Viva Sant Jordi!

  I told them I was now walking on the Via de la Plata.

  I wanted to explain that purists insist ‘plata’ doesn’t refer to the Spanish word for silver, but to an Arabic word that means ‘broad-surfaced road’. I didn’t have the vocab for that. Instead, I told them the Via followed a Roman road from Seville to Santiago and that there would be other pilgrims about.

  ‘Bueno,’ they said. Sant Jordi was already looking out for me.

  They talked me all the way through the graffiti-tagged industrial fringes of the city to the Embalse de Proserpina—Proserpina’s Dam. The path around the reservoir was blocked by excavations that had uncovered the Roman foundations. All yellow arrows had been demolished but the workers kept me on track. I was skimming along a bank when I saw a figure loping ahead, a wooden staff in his right hand. Pilgrim alert!

  Over six feet tall, he had a full beard and wore a lime-green scarf around his head like a turban. He was lugging a bulging backpack and carried a circular object that might have been a drum.

  Two hours was a respectable first leg. I parked myself on a wall by a Red Cross lookout so he could put some distance between us. Despite the physical challenges, I had been much more peaceable within myself after Herr T left, and was in no rush to share the road again. Momentary connection was fine, but I didn’t want the responsibility of a fellow traveller.

  Hello selfishness.

  Looking out over the choppy surface of the embalse, I reminded myself of the story of Prosperina. I’d read it as a child, turning the pages of a book of Roman myths and legends, during a baking summer holiday. The exotic names and northern hemisphere landscape, rendered in vivid watercolour, beguiled me. Proserpina was the daughter of Ceres, goddess of agriculture and crops; and Jupiter, god of sky and thunder. For an Aussie country kid, that sounded pretty fine.

  Proserpina was picking flowers and playing with some nymphs at a lake, when Pluto, the king of the Underworld, emerged from a split in the ground, in a chariot pulled by four black horses.

  My mother rode a stallion no one else could mount and we’d recently had a major shake-up from an earthquake, so I recognised Pluto’s world. He stole Proserpina from her friends, so she could live with him in the Underworld.

  Ceres looked for her daughter in every corner of the earth. Grief-stricken, she stopped the growth of fruits, vegetables and grain crops. She roamed the wide world, leaving deserts wherever she went.

  Children lost in harsh bushland are part of Australia’s mythology and I could hear my mother’s anxiety in Ceres’ cries.

  Worried about humans starving on a barren Earth, Prosperina’s father Jupiter, the boss-God, ordered Pluto to free Proserpina. Pluto obeyed, but before he let her go he made her eat six seeds of the pomegranate, or granada. Those who ate its fruit could never return to the world of the living. By forcing the seeds on Proserpina, he compelled her to live six months of each year with him.

  My grandmother had a granada tree in her front yard, so I understood why its bitter-tasting fruit were considered the food of the dead!

  The myth was an illustration for children of the changing seasons. Ceres welcomes her daughter back and the earth blossoms. When Proserpina returns to her husband, cold creeps in and trees are bare. The spring flowers of the antipodes took on new significance. They were Proserpina walking the earth. We called them everlastings, but I knew their life was short.

  Even back then, stories explained my world to me.

  Sitting by the Embalse de Proserpina, I tried to imagine Roman legions building it, making eternal spring by conserving water for the goo
d citizens of Mérida. Thousands of years later, a woman who had read their myth on the other side of the world sat on their handiwork, watching Spanish engineers and labourers refreshing it.

  Palimpsesto, palimpsesto …

  The wind was cold. My turbaned peregrino would be way ahead. Time to boot up.

  A black-and-white bird played tag with me, appearing and disappearing. Three cyclists sped past, Lycra blurs shouting, ‘Hola, Rubia!’ The creek to my right dawdled, trying not to disturb the white flowers on its surface. A yellow arrow on the roadside caught my attention just in time to direct me onto a dirt track through fields of encinas, the evergreen oaks that were just beginning to sprout their yellow catkins. The track became a walled lane edged with wildflowers in baby pink and duck-egg blue. My wagtail bird hopped among them like a Disney animation. Proserpina was surely about.

  Then the cartoon turned to a horror movie.

  At my feet, a metre-wide pilgrim shell had been etched into the path, with the bleached skull of a cow at its base. Everything raced. Pulse, mind, breath. Who could have made it?

  Not the cyclists; there were no tracks. The turbaned one?

  I heard an engine noise and gripped my hiking poles, preparing to meet the worst. A scooter came around the bend. The rider looked ordinary enough, but then aren’t most serial killers just ‘average guys’?

  He stopped. His eyes were wide and his speech rapid. He opened his scooter’s hold. For a second I expected to see—what? A knife? A gun?

  No. A muddy bag.

  He put a finger to his lips and glanced over his shoulder. I could see no one. From the bag, he produced a dirt-covered tuber. A potato? He pushed it under my nose and I inhaled. It smelled of earth.

  ‘Muy bien,’ he said. ‘Muy, muy bien.’ Very, very good.

  He kissed the mud-covered root, wrapped it again, and tucked it back into place with as much care as if he were cradling a newborn. And off he went, singing to the air.

  I had barely walked twenty paces when another man stepped over the hip-high stone wall to my left as though it were a kerb. He greeted me with a stream of rapid-fire Spanish, waving his arms, laughing and slapping my mochila. When I recovered from the shock, I saw he had a staff, a shell and a guidebook.