by Ailsa Piper
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked,
I cried to dream again.
Was that what they were doing in the albergue, all those big men/little boys? Crying to return to their dreams? On the road they looked so certain and fearless.
High on a peak, windswept and fog-free, I took out my camera. I turned in all directions but could not fit even a corner of the landscape into a frame.
I descended to the veiled human-scale world of fog. An arthritic farmer with a flock of Jersey Caramel cows whispered, ‘Hola,’ as though mindful of what might lurk in the whiteness. I asked him if the niebla would lift.
He shrugged. ‘Galicia!’ he whispered.
Further along the path I heard wailing, a sound from the gut of something. I felt my way off the track, along a low stone wall, peering into the white. At a gate, I stopped. The sounds were coming from a sheep, barely six feet from me.
It groaned and a bloody bundle dropped from it.
The sheep stepped back and the bundle bleated.
The sheep stepped towards it, licking blood and something viscous from it.
The bundle tried to move, to raise itself on spindle legs.
The sheep and I were motionless as it got up, fell, and got up again.
The sheep stepped forward. Her lamb began to suckle.
I’ve no idea how long I stood there, but I had nowhere better to be than watching that lamb fall and finally rise, in the silent white stillness.
The Bar Rincón del Peregrino is a kind of Wild West outpost covered in scallop shells. In pride of place on the bar was a shell signed by an Australian called Tony Kevin, whose book about walking the Mozárabe was being read by my husband as I walked. He was following me on the map, through Mr Kevin’s eyes, another palimpsesto as our experiences converged and diverged.
Tony Kevin had walked in the height of summer, at a different pace, staying in different places. When I read his book, I was struck by our opposing impressions. Weather, company or mood can alter an experience profoundly, but we agreed on Bar Rincón. It was a place of charm and eccentricity, and Luis, the patron, gave grinning welcome.
Sipping coffee at the wooden table on his verandah, I watched pilgrims arrive, sign a shell and leave, escorted by local dogs. The moving village kept shaping and forming itself, over and over. I pinned my shell near the entrance and tucked in beside my Italians, who had caught up with me.
We sang and were silent together through heather and gorse. I photographed them standing on either side of a rudimentary wooden cross. It towers above them, the sky a blue and grey backdrop. At their feet, white stones are piled in front of pink-flowering Erica. They lean in against the trunk of the cross, their bright rain jackets a contrast to the muted Galician tones.
Down we came, into Albergueria for lunch—always, with them, a proper stop, seated at a table, with boots off and rest shoes on. Always time and conversation. Tasting the food. Smelling it. Noticing each other. Energy levels, moods, preferences.
Then on, apart, along a stretch of flat gravel lined with flowering gorse. The daily call from Barcelona, my daily gift. Open land. Open heart. Then up, into pocket-handkerchief pueblos and an overdose of green and stone. Then up again into more heath, and then … then …
The top of the world.
Wind at my back. At my feet, a stone marker, carved with a shell and arrow. Sun on the far hills. Brown chocolate earth in blocks. Enough vegetables for a village in every plot. No stone unturned. Outrageous gifts from a landscape simultaneously rich and poor.
Down I went along muddy byways, light peeping though lacy tree cover and moss creeping up stone walls. My Italians caught me. Il Soldato streaked ahead. I side-stepped puddles with il Capitano, and when eventually we found our soldier, he was snoozing on a stone bench by a fountain, just outside a pueblo with an unpronounceable name: Xunqueira de Ambía.
Galician twists the tongue!
After thirty-four kilometres, another modern albergue greeted us. The government was spending on pilgrims, as pilgrims put money back into the economy. More than fair exchange, I thought, as I paid five euros for bed, shower and tissue sheets.
My Italians would have none of it. To a casa rural for them and some three-star silence, without roncadoras, as they called the snorers.
I ate with them down in the village. After the laundry, the ecstasy!
Chicken and pimentos. Jokes and stories. They talked of the Germans they had met who were doing a ‘Mercedes camino’, town to town in air-con luxury. Il Capitano described us walking into Santiago together: the captain, the soldier and the dragonfly. He gave me ‘our’ plan, and I thanked him for it. My acquiescence was the gift I could give. I smiled with il Soldato as another list of phone numbers was produced, another GPS co-ordinate cited.
Walking back to the albergue, the sky was full-blown rose. I’d had a text from home to tell me all was well. The Italians were tucked in, digesting my story. I’d told them about my cargo over flan and il Capitano’s hot milk with whisky. They said I was crazy to walk with sin because I was an angel!
I was a mud-smirched blonde harridan who got grumpy with unshowered Frenchmen in albergues, but I would be an angel if they bestowed it on me. It was their gift and a reminder to me to try to be better.
In my hand was the plan. In five days we’d arrive in Santiago.
Looking into the sky, I saw the first star’s glimmer. I wondered if there might be particles out there of my mother, and of Sue, and of others I’ve loved and farewelled. Science tells us the stars we see disappeared long ago. I was looking back in time. I squinted to see further. Were they out there?
The word for ‘starry’ in Spanish is estrellado.
The phrase for ‘to give birth’ is dar a luz. It means ‘to give light’.
I whispered those words to the Spanish skies.
Only five days until we reached the field of stars. Could that be possible?
I waited at a pedestrian crossing as a car passed.
‘Buen camino,’ the driver called.
I waved back. So far, so buen.
27
Rising
Next day, after only twenty kilometres, we let ourselves take stock in the city of Ourense. Or at least, il Capitano allowed it. We booked into a hostal above a chocolatería, amid cobblestones, arcades and courtyards.
I’d been walking for five weeks and was in advance of my schedule. The sins had felt lighter in the mountains of Galicia. I was becoming clearer about where my own faith lived, something I had not expected to be a side effect of the journey. Maybe the three-act structure was right, and I was reaping spiritual rewards in the third act. Whatever the cause, I felt confident that the worst was behind me, so I made a decision. I would carry the sins on, beyond Santiago, to Finisterre.
World’s end.
There’s a pilgrim tradition of burning boots, clothes or anything you want to release, there on the cliffs. I would write up the sins and let flames carry them to the ether. I imagined an orange sun dropping into the Atlantic, my pilgrim toes digging into white sand and achievement radiating from me like a halo as I looked up into the field of stars. After all, it had been the stars, the road and the elements instructing me along the way. I’d have to walk an extra hundred kilometres or so, and hoped I wasn’t tempting fate, but it felt right.
Of course, il Capitano was thrilled at a chance to update my itinerary.
In a ciber in Ourense’s bustling main street, I opened my inbox to find poems, news and encouragement from home:
From my Buddhist friend: Th
e way is not in the sky. The way is in your heart.
The story of a sixteen-year-old Aussie girl who had sailed solo around the world …
A traveller in Bangkok, watching as the people’s uprising was quashed …
A picture of Reepicheep, the mouse from the Narnia stories I loved as a child. There he was, high in the ship’s rigging, with his sword and coracle, off on an adventure.
And sinners.
One wrote of a new sin. The sin of not pausing. A sin that seemed very modern.
Mostly, though, it was as though all the sinners had formed into a cheer squad and the string of emails contained only encouragement. And love.
At the end of email after email: love.
From husband, family, friends, peers, saints, sinners and strangers.
There was a call from Barcelona as I sat at the computer.
Come, they insisted again. Come and let us care for you. You are family.
To complete my trinity of affection—Australia, Spain and Italy—il Capitano and his Soldato sat beside me in the ciber, waiting to go to lunch.
‘No’ was unthinkable. I said I would come to Barcelona.
In a restaurant called La Fuerza we talked of my decision. Il Soldato nodded and said it was good. Proper. Such loyalty must be acknowledged.
They ate pulpo gallego and smacked their lips over the juices. I ate spinach pasta, which they pronounced acceptable. We all chose lemon mousse. When I paid, il Soldato was horrified. I had breached a rule. The woman does not pay.
He accepted my being independent and paying my way, but to pay for him? For the man? No, no, no. It was good when I gave them each a shell from Australia, but this … this was impossible.
I tried to explain it was gratitude for their kindness. They had been with me since the first day of the Via. They’d let me make my own road, but always welcomed me back to theirs without question. They had shown me how to walk.
I couldn’t say all that and il Soldato wouldn’t have listened anyway.
Il Capitano said it was niente, that il Soldato was too proud, too proud, that pride was the sin of the ego. I tried to explain to him that I knew it well, that his soldier and I were fellow travellers in the land of pride. Il Capitano just laughed and said it would all be good.
And it was. Eventually.
Il Capitano and I went shopping for phone cards and found a suburban mall with all the worldwide same-name brands. After completing the camino of capitalism, we went to the museum to marvel at bronze wings and weeping granite women from the first century bc, and to the cathedral to see Santiago slaying Moors above the entrance. The mediaeval streets closed in around us as evening fell.
When we rejoined il Soldato he presented me with a rucksack of ironed laundry and would take no money. At dinner, after a dessert of cheese drizzled with honey, we all paid our share, down to the last cent.
The morning brought another twenty-kilometre saunter to the next albergue at Cea, so it was agreed over dinner that I’d make a late start and walk sola. You will be happier, they said, with time to write.
That’s what they called my preference for solitude. Writing time.
I heard whispers in the hallway but resisted popping my head out, instead sitting up like a queen in my single bed. And I did write.
My room had no window, but images flooded in from the previous days: the grey-haired, black-eared mule nibbling grass from my hand; frail balconies overhanging crumbling stone walls; the road sign to Granada reading 888; chandeliers of corn cobs drying on low verandahs; the doll’s clothing pegged above a brown donkey who sniffed it for taste; the hórreos, granaries, like miniature temples, raised off the earth to protect the produce; the land, furrowed and burrowed and harrowed and barrowed; the row upon row of saints in the gloomy cathedral; the jubilant niño, kicking his goal against a stone crucifix; and rain, mist, haze, fog … shrouds …
When I went to pay the bill, there was confusion about my Italian friends. No, the owner said, they had paid for me already. I handed over my breakfast money with my key and waved farewell, vowing to tackle il Soldato about his double-dealing.
Passing the Church of Santa Eufemia del Centro, I was compelled to go inside. It was starker than other churches I’d seen and elegantly proportioned, but I still wasn’t sure why I was there. I offered a prayer to Eufemia, wherever she was, asking her to help my sinners, then stood, not knowing what else to ask. As Mark Twain said, ‘You can’t pray a lie.’
In a pew by the exit, a woman sat weeping. She was plump, with lustrous long dark hair, and she wore an inky-blue cashmere wrap. Her grief halted me. I put a hand to her cheek and wiped away tears.
‘Sufro,’ she whispered. I suffer.
‘Sí,’ I said. ‘Lo siento.’ Yes. I’m sorry.
‘Por amor.’ For love.
Tears spilled again. I leaned down and hugged her, my pack almost tipping me into her lap. She clung to me, her sobbing echoing to the ceiling, but eventually she calmed. We held hands a moment, then she said ‘Gracias’ in that same whisper, and we separated.
In the weak sun on the worn entrance steps I said the prayer I’ve made all my life when someone is in trouble: ‘Please let everything be all right.’
Distant sounds of cannon fire marking the feast day of the Virgin of Fatima farewelled me as I clattered across the Roman bridge, hoping the prayer was heard above the din.
I exited Ourense via lanes and alleys, frutas and pastelerías, past granite and marble sellers and industrial estates, past the bus station, uphill. I strode along, confident my eyes would locate the next yellow arrow, my feet would fall into place and my heart would keep pumping in time with my lungs. The body doing its thing. Remarkable, wonderful machine. And somewhere above it, like a kite at the end of a tether, I flew, watching the snail crawling up, ever up … To meet a weathered face that widened into a grin when I called out, ‘Hola, Señora, buenos días.’ She laughed and laughed, amazed at my courage, at my force, at my strength, at my anima. She showed me her knees, scars bisecting both, and her knobbled hands. She spoke of her pain.
‘But you smile,’ I said.
‘Like you,’ she said, going on to talk of the heart and the spirit, of the soul, and of the little people who live on the mountain I was about to climb, insisting they are real, true. She had seen. Dragging me into her garage, a jumble of chairs, boxes, preserves and pickles, she grabbed two beers, filled a bag with fresh walnuts, and stuffed them all into the pack.
I don’t even like beer and it weighs a ton, but how to say no? A sin!
‘Dame un beso.’ Give me a kiss.
I did, on that cheek of wrinkles. Once, twice, three times. Four. Walk with God. Say a prayer for me. Remember me in Santiago. Think of me.
I did. I do.
I climbed. My pack was heavier, but I was lighter.
I wondered how I would recall them all. So many promesas for Santiago. The Angels, Lucia, Herr T, the cyclists, the men with duende, my Australian saviour and my Spanish amigo.
An Italian text. They were only seven kilometres ahead of me. The road must be steep.
And so it was. I climbed. And climbed. And climbed.
For two kilometres, I went straight up until all was green and the air sparkled. The mountain lifted me with it as the valley dropped away. A breeze played on my back and around me hung a sky so vast I could have fallen up into it.
The meseta and the mountains are two sides of the same coin. They both ask you to expand. The meseta says, ‘Be big enough to fill my emptiness’ while the mountain says, ‘Rise to meet me.’ I kept thinking my heart couldn’t expand any more, then I would turn and look back or up, and it had to, in order to meet the wide world I was being shown.
All I want to do, I thought, is write a love letter to this ridiculous country, because I’m infatuated. I see only good and am met with nonsensical beaut
y and kindness. All the way.
First love. It was like that.
I walked, that morning, for all the loves of my life, including Spain, the newest. And as the lady said, maybe Santiago was walking with me. In love, anything is possible.
I danced, too. Left alone, I turned cheerleader.
Those walking poles!
They strode out in mantis mode, praying a prayer all their own. They stretched my shoulders when I placed them horizontally in cross-carrying style. They remade me into a swordsman or gunslinger. Or Reepicheep! I braked with them, hung clothes to dry on them, and forded rivers with them. I was yet to poke another pilgrim with them, but I had pulled down the branches of fruit trees, tested water depths, and even walked with them. Just as my mochila had become part of me, so the poles were mood barometers.
While I was prancing, Galicia behaved like a showgirl, flashing all her best bits. Granite of all shapes and sizes, covered in lichen and moss, glinting in sunshine. Bowers, dells and glades. Yellow arrows on vineyard walls, beside wooden gates, on wayside rocks and the arch of bridges. The land rolling up and down, opening and closing, stretching and bending.
Carved marker stones showed abstract swords, crosses, pilgrims and stars to point me to Santiago. I grinned my way past them, waving to farmers, calling to crones. Twice I stopped on the path to click a photo of myself and inspect it, thinking, ‘No. You look normal. No one would know.’
Sin-free and sola, I sang to the cielo.
At Mandrás, a hamlet where I stopped for a lemon drink, three sisters worked the bar. We talked of the approach of summer. They told me they had bushfires, just like in Australia. They spoke of the pain when a blaze is deliberately lit. Someone always knows someone. Communities, tiny communities, are cleft in two.
It was hard to imagine the rural peace of Galicia being shattered. Entering one pueblo almost as soon as I left another, I was struck by the way generations came out to play. Cars disgorged adult children returning for the weekend, unloading treats. Grandparents played with toddlers beside stone fountains and siblings sang to each other as they hoed vineyards.