Sinning Across Spain

by Ailsa Piper

  My sinner who had wrestled with anger at her parents told me she read one of my emails to her mother, and they cried together. I think often of the fact that you’re walking with my ‘sin’ and it reminds me to pay attention to myself, to take deep breaths—and just enjoy, for crying out loud!!

  Another spoke of seeing the walk as a chance to transform poison to medicine—a phrase from her Buddhist teachings. She wished me breezes on hot days. They are the reaping of good karma, she wrote.

  I was relieved to hear from my procrastinator, who sounded tip-top: I have been shedding and shredding ‘marvellous much’. Another hiked around Port Phillip Bay, her twenty-five kilometres an antidote to selfishness.

  My brother told me he needed no crying on his behalf. He’d actually had a moment of feeling happy. It both scared and relieved him.

  My husband wrote from our base camp that all is well. Three perfect words, when strung together followed by his signature.

  I could have stayed all day on Paul’s couch, pretending it was a normal weekend with my village just around the corner. Email gives that sense.

  But Salamanca called. And breakfast.

  I’d arranged to meet my Italians for coffee, so Paul and I strolled through mild morning sun into the sandstone centre of the old town. Architectural marvels lined the route, one after another, more ornate, more whimsical, more imposing.

  Hermoso, hermosa, hermoso, hermosa …

  She walks in beauty, all right!

  Guidebooks can’t prepare you for Salamanca’s Plaza Mayor. It may be the most beautiful in Europe with its regal proportions, its stone, the carving, the shady arcades, the way the sky appears to incline towards it, helpless to resist.

  It announces itself to you and beguiles you, simultaneously.

  Could citizens ever grow accustomed to such loveliness?

  Salamanca’s nickname is La Ciudad Dorada—the Golden City. The sandstone of its buildings came from one particular quarry and the colour is ravishing. Of course it is a World Heritage city. No argument there.

  Standing smack in the centre of the plaza were il Capitano and il Soldato. They showed no ill effects from their 53-kilometre day and intended to walk that afternoon to the next pueblo. It was only seventeen kilometres. Hardly worth loading the pack! They would be a day ahead of me, so it was unlikely our paths would cross again before Santiago, given their centurion pace and stamina.

  Paul took us on a tour. Salamanca’s university is Spain’s oldest, founded in 1218. On the elaborate stone entrance portico, dominated by my old friends the Catholic kings, a tiny frog is carved into one of the panels. They say that if you locate him, you’ll have good fortune and marry within a year. Il Capitano, a lifelong bachelor, said that didn’t sound like luck to him! The frog, squatting on a skull high on the left side, didn’t look amused.

  Il Soldato was very taken with the Casa de las Conchas—the House of Shells. Dating from the 1500s, it was built by a knight of the Santiago order and its sandstone walls are studded with pilgrim shells. I photographed my knights there, before they went on their way, promising to text me, to leave messages, and to find me, their libellula.

  ‘Libellula?’ Paul asked, as we watched them disappear into the crowds.

  ‘Dragonfly,’ I said. ‘It’s what they call me.’

  And they were gone. Just like that.

  Paul took me for recovery by tapas!

  I hadn’t understood that you don’t buy tapas. Rather, you buy a drink and are given a tapa to go with it.

  Salamanca had some of the most elaborate tapas I ever saw, arrayed like jewels along sparkling glass counters. And variety? If choice is the great indicator of privilege, Salamanca is the lucky city. I wanted to photograph every bar, every morsel.

  Around the Plaza Mayor, carved stone medallions adorned pillars: kings, dignitaries and heroes. One depicted General Franco. Someone had climbed up and drawn a Hitler moustache above his lip. He glowered at us.

  Maybe a student had done it. They were everywhere, arm in arm, in groups, lolling in sunshine and cruising the bars. They come from all over Spain, because the university’s reputation is high; and they come from all over the world, because Salamanca specialises in teaching the Spanish language. The city is enlivened by their vivacity, their curiosity and their beauty. The high-octane enthusiasm is infectious.

  Salamanca had seen its share of upheaval and ugliness. The Inquisition and Franco both feature in its history, and the wealth and majesty of many of its buildings bear out a sense of entitlement and conservatism. To walk those streets now, among faces from all countries and bloodlines, it’s hard to imagine the fear and bigotry that hid behind celebrations of the ‘Spanish race’ during the Civil War. The place is all light and bustling energy.

  Salamanca was the third city I’d seen in Castilla y Léon, after Burgos and Léon on the Camino Francés. What a province, to produce three such magnificent examples of civic style.

  It was Mother’s Day. El día de las Madres.

  Families feasted into the afternoon. Madres marvelled, as did we, in the Casa Lis, the Museum of Art Nouveau and Art Deco, and they kneeled in silence, as did we, in the airy interior of San Esteban’s church.

  Paul and I separated. I had pilgrim provisions to source in the commercial centre. I still hadn’t fathomed Spain’s shopping and eating hours, but I was grateful for the anomaly of Sunday retail in their Catholic culture.

  Rather like legalised gay marriage. Spain, in spite of its Catholicism, recognises same-sex marriage as a fundamental human right. Their post-Franco culture constantly surprised me.

  The twelfth-century, ‘old’ cathedral held more wonders, not the least of which was the climb over its towers. Up there among the sky and turret-tops, I looked back to the southern mountains. I was seven hundred kilometres from my starting point in Granada. I was simultaneously atop a cathedral and in nature. I was no wiser about faith, but I had given myself fully to the quest.

  I met my amigo in the modern part of town.

  In a city, in a restaurant with a starched tablecloth, with him in a new collared shirt, we were tentative, sipping cauliflower and almond soup with a local white wine. He gave me a perfect gift: words on a page. It was a card inscribed with the Spanish version of a prayer to St Teresa. It’s a more formal version of ‘no pasa nada’:

  Nada te turbe

  Nada te espante,

  todo se pasa …

  May nothing disturb you

  May nothing astonish you.

  Everything passes.

  God does not go away.

  Patience can attain anything.

  He who has God within

  Does not lack anything

  God is enough.

  We raised a glass to our journey. We had travelled almost three hundred kilometres together, on and off, and emerged as amigos. We wished each other buen camino, hugged, and said adiós. Goodbye.

  The afternoon light was fading. Looking at his card, I was reminded to make one more prayer to the little thing starting with C: ‘Please let nothing disturb him.’

  A Salamanca matron in a camel coat nodded as I passed. More mad pilgrims, she was probably thinking. But she smiled, and murmured, ‘Buen camino.’

  I had tired feet from cobblestone-walking and a tired heart from amigo-talking. When I looked at him now, I saw his smile as a mask and worried for his future. It wasn’t just the financial crisis that had changed his life. His brother’s secret was making demands on him and I’m not sure anyone could help him. I certainly couldn’t do any of his crying for him.

  Perhaps it was better to know him fully, but I wished I could still have believed him to be footloose and fancy-free. Something had been taken when he told me his story.

  Abuse does that.

  Anger does it too. It steals peace.

  ‘But anger i
sn’t all bad,’ I said, and an elderly gentleman doffed his hat.

  I had to watch my habit of voicing my thoughts in cities.

  As I strolled to the Plaza Mayor to meet Paul, I grappled with the ‘sin’ of anger. Maybe it was time to look at it again.

  ‘Anger reminds us that we care,’ I whispered into the startled eyes of a Spanish bombshell in stilettos and tight jeans.

  Change rarely occurs until there has been a bit of anger. Anger at the way things are. Anger at apathy. Anger at lack of compassion. And isn’t the release of anger beneficial for psychological health?

  I wondered how my amigo had arrived at such seeming calm. Was it faith? Therapy? Had he, somewhere, had a cathartic explosion of anger that had allowed him to wear that smile?

  ‘I know,’ I said, ‘not all anger produces a useful outcome.’

  But is that the fault of anger or of where we let it lead us? Shouldn’t we learn to monitor our emotions? To recognise when they are leading us somewhere dangerous?

  ‘It’s about balance,’ I said, as though I had stumbled on a cure for cancer.

  An old man shook his head and backed inside his café door.

  Some Buddhists say that evil is on the way to being good. I decided anger is on the way to change, and where we direct our anger tells us what kind of change will occur. Productive or damaging.

  I was early into the plaza. I’d raced across town, leaving a trail of perplexed Salamancans in my wake. Cities are risky for pilgrims. All that sensory stimulation and all those people can overcharge the batteries. I sat on a bench in the centre of the plaza and exhaled.

  Paul arrived and we watched the sky turn from deep turquoise to indigo to midnight blue. Gold lights came on in the square.

  ‘Aaahh,’ the gathered citizens sighed, applauding. As nightly rituals go, it’s a beauty. Open-air theatre, played out to a guaranteed full house of appreciative patrons.

  We wandered back to his place, drifting in and out of conversation. I was happy to be quiet with him, to laugh with him, to debate with him.

  ‘Stay as long as you like,’ he said. ‘It’s fine with me.’

  It was tempting. A second rest day in that civilised city, in Paul’s refuge, could be just what the pilgrim doctor ordered.

  We said good night. Not goodbye.

  22

  Into the Wind

  I farewelled Paul just after dawn as he left for the mine. Waving him off from his apartment was unsettling. It felt domestic. Like a home.

  I washed my clothes and hung them in the drying room. I wrote postcards, tended my feet and monitored the sky.

  And I sat.

  I couldn’t go out because my trousers were damp.

  I didn’t strip the sheets from the bed, just in case.

  Stay or go? Rest or walk? Resident tourist or itinerant pilgrim?

  In the preceding days, I’d barely looked at my guidebook, letting others make decisions about roads, albergues and cafés. On the white sofa in Paul’s white room, I scanned it. The directions were a foreign language.

  Clouds rolled in. My clothes wouldn’t dry. I had cold feet.

  Stay or go? After seven hundred kilometres, why couldn’t I decide?

  Miedo. Fear.

  It all seemed huge. Impossible. Exactly as it had after Sue’s funeral, before leaving Australia.

  Surely comfort wasn’t leeching my courage?

  That got me off the couch. I would not fall prey to softness. If I was going to be afraid, let me at least be staring into the eyes of a monster. I dressed in clammy clothes and shoved the rest of my near-dry belongings into the mochila. The first town was only seventeen kilometres away, after all.

  Paso a paso. Step by step.

  Into the wind. Into the cold. Into the fear.

  I missed luxury the minute I dropped the key through the locked door. I missed Paul’s humour. I missed my way. I missed my rhythm, which fled as the wind pushed against me, insisting I had made the wrong decision.

  I missed my amigo.

  Contrary creature! Now I had the solitude I’d wanted, I was sulking. The way was all mine—just me, the pea-green fields, a yellow arrow and the sky. Walk on, pilgrim. Thy will be done!

  The road led on forever: straight, white gravel to the far horizon. I stopped and looked back. There was a city there. Just out of sight. I looked down. No shadow. Time held her breath.

  ‘I’m no mirage,’ I whispered. I took a step and looked back.

  My footprint was clear in the gravel, its pattern a found friend.

  I stepped again. The wind picked up, and so did I.

  I walked.

  Paso a paso. Step by step. That’s how I got to Calzada de Valdunciel, a tumbleweed town, shuttered early, with not a soul to be seen.

  After three attempts to find the albergue I located Carmen, who had the key. She opened the door to an eight-bed dorm, a sitting room, two showers, a kitchen, a place to hang clothes and a courtyard to corral the horses of riding pilgrims. A guestbook held a message for me from the Italians and an entry from two other Australians. I’d seen their names in previous books and hoped to catch them. A week earlier they’d been five days ahead of me; now it was only two.

  When arthritic José arrived to collect my payment—a princely three euros!—we exchanged blonde jokes. He gave me a sello depicting a pilgrim shell and staff, then escorted me to the supermarket. Proffering his arm as though I was his chica and we were off to a dance, he showed me the modern sculpture of shiny windmills, the exterior of the locked church, and the library where the niños gathered to play on the internet. He told me I must have vino with dinner to keep warm. There was snow in the north of Spain along the Francés, and we were getting the full blast of the winds. He directed me to the best apples, complimenting me on my Spanish, my courage and my alegría.

  And I was happy. Just like that. Dread to delight in seventeen kilometres.

  Two German women arrived, Eva and Heike. It was their first day, after walking from Seville to Salamanca the previous year. Because I have no German and Heike had no English, we relied on Eva for connection.

  She was sixty-two, with the vivacity of a teenager. Heike was perhaps twenty years younger and a foot taller. She was lean and blonde, where Eva was round, dark and constantly on the lookout for mischief. I was smitten by them and by the intimacy of their friendship. We had a night of graphic mime, laughter and toasty warmth. I was grateful I’d made it back onto the path, but my heart went out to the snowbound pilgrims in the Pyrenees beginning their first act. My sleeping bag was a cosy burrow.

  Bring on Act Three.

  The next morning was freezing. Literally.

  Ana Balen Rey, the blonde weathergirl I’d seen on TV in every bar, told me over breakfast that today would be fine, fine, fine. And icy, icy, icy.

  It was a twenty-kilometre uninterrupted haul to the next pueblo so I indulged in a second coffee before leaving the Fräuleins.

  The wind was adamant I should not move. Head down in weatherproofs, with a hood and scarf around my head, I marched beside a four-lane highway, sloshing through mud on the service road and huddling in tunnels for warmth.

  Scurrying past a penitentiary where a concrete tower loomed over a yellow-walled compound, I wondered if anyone inside had been given the option of walking the camino instead of serving time. Called Topas, the penitentiary was rated maximum security, for the toughest of the tough, and yet a monk from the Buddhist Liberation Prison Project taught meditation to its inmates. Surely Herr T would have admired that as faith in action, even if he doubted what it could achieve.

  Remembering Herr T, the words of the Our Father came to me, as though for the first time. Lead us not into temptation.

  Now, why pray that? Why would a father want to lead his children into temptation? And what did the words imply about the way the faithfu
l viewed their ‘father’? The Spanish version of the prayer asks that the padre does not allow the faithful to fall into temptation. It may only be a small linguistic difference, but it points towards a father who is protective rather than manipulative. Interestingly, their version of the prayer uses the word ofensas rather than pecados. Offences. Not sins.

  Offence seemed to me a more practical word. We usually sense when we have given offence, or offended.

  Pilgrim cyclists raced along the highway, shouting to each other over wind and trucks, shouting to me and waving; a blur of high-spirited, fluoro Lycra. Many walking pilgrims saw them as cheats or annoyances, not real peregrinos, but I enjoyed them. Most were Spaniards, which might have explained their tendency to travel in packs and party up a storm.

  Wind battered my plastic layers. This was no breeze, no ripening of good karma. It was a full-force oppositional gale, but it energised me. I wondered if I function better with something to push against. Maybe an equal and opposite force makes me dig in, determined to vanquish it.

  Pride?

  My hands could barely uncurl from my walking poles when I made it to the bar at El Cubo de la Tierra del Vino. Twenty kilometres of snowy blasts had frozen me. I opened the door to be met by a warm, smoky fug. Card players sucked on cigarettes, their faces masks of neutrality. Cyclists fronted the bar in their riding slippers. They erupted when I removed my hood.

  ‘Hola, Rubia!’

  I was the only woman in the place.

  ‘Hola, hombres!’ I called, seating myself at a table in a far corner. I peeled off layers, ordered pots of tea and waited for warmth to seep into me. One by one, gentlemen of the village limped or sauntered over to exchange stories. They told me that many years ago, the phyloxera had killed their grapes but they were recovering. Days were not so bad. Sola? Surely not. Australiana? They’d seen two other canguros, only days ago. They said I was valiente.