Sinning Across Spain

by Ailsa Piper

  I was flying again. Galicia took me out to the sky, where I met up with my sinners. This time, we flew together.

  Finally, I understood something the mediaeval pilgrims may have learned, too.

  It is easier to walk for others than for yourself.

  When I considered what had been entrusted to me, the pain that had been disclosed, what it had cost to tell me, and what was hoped for and from my walk, my personal woes lifted. The thing people had worried about most was actually the thing that made pavement softer. Remembering my sinners stopped my feet from throbbing or my knees from aching, and demanded I do better. Walking for another is a gift and teaches us how to walk with our own failings. It is grace, if there is such a thing.

  High in the hills above mediaeval Ourense, I realised I’d been blessed by my sinner-teachers, and I hoped to depict their grace in a flame at Finisterre.

  Act Three. The spirit stage.

  Leonardo called. Happy, happy. The pilgrim is coming.

  Il Capitano texted. Hurry, hurry. You have the best bed. By the wall. Up high.

  I wept my way into Cea, tears staining my stretched, grinning cheeks.

  The albergue was chock-full. Overnight the numbers of walkers had doubled.

  In order to get a compostela, the certificate issued by the cathedral stating you’ve completed the pilgrimage to Santiago, it’s necessary to walk a minimum of one hundred kilometres. For this reason, the town of Sarria on the Camino Francés has ten or more albergues—it’s exactly the right distance for the hundred-kilometre pilgrim. Ourense is at approximately the same distance on the Via de la Plata.

  Beginner pilgrims nursed blisters and talked of aching backs. I felt so sorry for them. These newbies would have barely broken in their packs before they reached the cathedral, and would never know the euphoria of the well-oiled body. The focus of their pilgrimage would remain their feet, their calves and their anguished spines. They deserved their compostelas. Those of us who had walked for weeks got our reward from the road and the weightless freedom of the third act.

  I strolled the streets of Cea with the Italians, photographing each other in the plaza under the clock, sampling bread at family bakeries, sniffing overblown roses, waving to other pilgrims and greeting locals. We sat at Bar Vaticano, sipping white wine and nibbling the walnuts I’d been given. Il Soldato opened them by squeezing two together in his palm. I won a bet that the photos on the wall were really of Rome. My Italians couldn’t see the Holy See!

  It seemed a lifetime since I had been there. The photos reminded me of words given to me by a scholar at the British School. Richard Pollard, a mediaevalist, had been intrigued by my undertaking and had slipped a piece of paper under Susan’s door the morning I left. It was his translation of a quotation from Pope Gregory I’s Dialogues, describing his feelings after becoming Pope. Richard felt it might have relevance for me. After all the weeks of walking, the words of a Pope from 590ad resonated:

  And so I weigh what I now bear, I weigh what I have lost; and when I look upon what I have surrendered, what I bear is made heavier. For look: now I am struck by the waves of a great sea, and in the ship of my mind I am hammered by the winds of a fierce storm, and when I recall my previous life, as if I have sighted the shore with a backward glance, I sigh. And what is still harder to bear, as I am savaged and roiled by immense waves: I now can scarcely see the harbour I left behind.

  How differently we felt about our burdens. Not that I imagined sin-walking was anything like being Pope—compare the shoes! But looking over Gregory’s words, I recognised that although I could scarcely see the harbours of Rome or home, what I carried was lightening. My storms were behind me. I was being lifted by kind breezes.

  And kind Italians.

  We agreed we could feel the end. I wanted to slow, to savour everything, but some other force pulled me forward. Duende?

  No. But mysterious, certainly.

  I tried to thank them for that day of solitude. All day, I said, I walked as though on air. I told them how I’d seen an elderly couple emerge from a grey stone cottage into the sunlight. How they blinked then kissed each other. A few paces on, I watched two yellow butterflies fly around and around each other in a tight circle, oblivious to me.

  I said I walked inside a dream of flying.

  There’s still no other way to describe it. In my body but also outside it. Watching myself, feeling my feet but not the ground, feeling air moving above and below me, lifting, soaring, rising. Rising with the sun …

  They raised their glasses to flying and we talked on.

  But I will forever rejoice in and be mystified by my flight. I never found an answer for why it happened or how. I never knew when it would kick in, but suddenly there I’d be, looking down on my self.

  Grateful. So grateful for another mystery.

  I came to love that body walking below me, getting me where I had to go and waiting for me to return to it. I loved its resilience, its steady forward motion. I came to love my body ‘in spite of’. I’d always loved it when we flew but I’d finally learned to love it when it was earthbound.

  I celebrated and mourned the end of that day’s walking. A kind of sane delirium. Ecstasy, I guess.

  Sky-dancing.

  It was my last full day sola before reaching Santiago.

  28

  Three’s Company

  Il Capitano and il Soldato were natural carers, like Leonardo and Ricardo, determined to ensure my safety and happiness. In some ways, Herr Theologie and my amigo had softened me for them. Had I met Herr T in a Galician lane, he might not have recognised the cheery pilgrim in convoy. My amigo might have wondered too. Back in Salamanca, he said the Italians would protect me. I bridled at the suggestion. I had forded torrents and stared down turtles. I needed no one.

  Pride. My boon companion.

  The Italians taught me that the opposite of giving is not taking, but receiving.

  A big lesson.

  I watched the two of them, friends for decades, play out their relationship. I never really knew who was boss: the texting, flirting Capitano or the watchful, dignified Soldato, who would say, ‘When the Captain decides …’ just before walking out and choosing a direction. Sometimes they bickered, but I couldn’t tell how much of that was for my benefit. They were both actors. Il Capitano was perennial clown to his soldier’s king.

  And they claimed me for their own.

  Finally I gave in to the road, my teacher, and embraced being part of a team. I even stopped keeping tabs. Mostly.

  I did get a shock when I interrogated them about paying my hostal account at Ourense. They flatly denied it, and after insisting they promise, I realised the man on the counter must have made a mistake. I tracked down a phone directory, called the hostal and said it was the Australian pilgrim. He laughed, said it was nada, that his wife had mis-marked the ledger, it happened often. He was happy I had called but very surprised.

  I didn’t want to tempt fate. I wrapped cash in tissues, found an envelope and despatched it. To do otherwise would have been thieving and not a good look for a sin-carrier two days short of Santiago.

  The next day, I strode up, and occasionally down, hills, ascending three hundred metres over twenty kilometres in a little over three hours. Along the way I encountered Yuji, a Japanese pilgrim who laboured under a twenty-kilo pack and a gargantuan camera; laid-back Chris, who was twice Yuji’s height, and said he wanted to be ‘less German’ in his ways; a quizzical Canadian, who was intrigued by our sin conversation, as it was his first talk of things spiritual on the camino; the bony Dutch pilgrim with the perpetual limp and gritted teeth; the French gentleman with the love of Spanish vino; the Spanish heartthrob with the love of Italian beer; the Austrian singer with a love of Australia; and the Belgian loner who kept his eyes on the road and marched.

  The sky was open. The plateau was wide. The air was t
hin and heating up. Layers were removed. Arms bared. The day sprawled.

  Team Italy convened in a lush green pocket, where a wooden slab doubled as a table. Boots came off and toes wriggled in long grass. We picnicked on Cea bread, sheep’s milk cheese, anchovies and wine. The beers I’d carried up the mountains were polished off and we cracked open the last walnuts to eat with an apple. We talked about endings then avoided talking about endings.

  We walked on, past vegetable gardens, across multi-lane freeways, above sky-blue wildflowers necking with humble bees and bumblebees, and into the laneways, the mystical little-people-laden laneways of Galicia. We came together and separated. A foal tottered towards me and a cow shied away.

  Cows.

  Black-and-white. Deep brown. Caramel. They looked straight into me, their eyes black pools of acceptance.

  An ancient señora talked to her herd as she’d done for centuries, her profile so craggy I wondered if she was hobbit, gremlin or goblin. Another called to her flock of ten sheep, shooing them, entreating them, scolding them and shoving them like wayward children.

  Grasshoppers raced me along the track, startling me with their blue underwings, reminding me over and over of Mary Oliver’s hopper in the poem that had first made me walk in Spain. Reminding me again and again to relish every heartbeat, because after all, it is this life, this one right now, that is the one to cherish, to relish, to live well and with integrity.

  ‘This life,’ I called to the racing grasshoppers. ‘It’s enough.’

  And if there should happen to be a life beyond this, I told them, then I will meet it with wide-eyed surprise. But this life is enough. I have heaven, here and now.

  I walked on, full and thankful, praying all through that long summery Galician day.

  Praying with my feet.

  Moss thickened. Slugs slid. Heat rose, and so did the Italian battalion, and after thirtyish kilometres we handed over our credenciales, received our sellos, and checked in at the albergue at A Laxe. We sprawled on the grass with our expanded pilgrim village, to watch washing dry, to journal and to drift. The sun made everyone dozy, like sleepwalkers.

  At dinner, we requisitioned the local bar to watch a tennis match between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. One new pilgrim sat alone, spruce in clean khaki cotton, his shirt and trousers sporting sharp creases. There was something of the star about him. He was German and ascertained that I spoke English but my friends spoke only Italian. He told me he had walked caminos before and learned many lessons. He gave his opinion on wines of the world, and Australia fared well; on architecture, and Spain fared badly; and on the changing face of the camino. This was his eighth time, having travelled the Francés first back in the ’70s. He was disappointed by the changes there, including the attitude shifts as locals learned what pilgrim money could buy. He feared the same for the Via.

  It’s difficult, I said. No one would want people to stay ‘poor and simple’. As in any country, an influx of money is an influx of choice, and people don’t always choose as others would wish.

  He agreed, saying he was enjoying the conversation. He liked to speak English, he said. It was, like German, a civilised language. He asked why a woman like me was allowed by her husband to walk alone across a country. When I said our marriage was built on trust, he shook his head and said I did not know real freedom. He laughed as il Capitano made repeated attempts to contact a hostal in Santiago, trying to book a room for me. Il Soldato noted phone numbers and addresses.

  ‘Why do you walk with these old ones?’ the German asked.

  ‘They’re my friends,’ I said.

  ‘But they are old. You could find other companions. More congenial to you.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘They make me happy.’

  ‘So do they pay for you?’

  ‘I don’t understand. What do you mean?’

  ‘Your meal? Your lodgings? Do they pay?’

  ‘No. Of course not. They’re my friends. Why would they pay?’

  ‘You should let them pay for your company. A woman like you. You should take what you can get.’

  I pushed my chair away but said nothing. Il Soldato was watching. He raised his eyebrows and I laughed, hoping he would be fooled. I had no words to explain.

  Take what you can get.

  Back in my bunk in the still-light dormitory where snoring had already begun, I replayed the conversation. No matter how I interpreted it, the hurt didn’t diminish. Was he inferring I was some kind of escort service for elderly pilgrims? That I was the kind of person who could be bought? Was the implication that my friends were gullible fools? The kind of men who would trade in women? Why say such a thing?

  He had either tried to enlist me or he had offended me and my friends. I couldn’t be sure which, but either way, something had been violated.

  I lay awake planning methods of retribution.

  Next morning, we set off as the sun rose. I clicked a photo of our shadows, elongated on the road in front of us. Il Capitano is obvious from the shape of his muscled legs in shorts. I’m identifiable by my hat brim and walking poles. Il Soldato curves under his enormous pack.

  Tre amici. Three friends, side by side down the narrow way.

  It was our last full day’s walking before Santiago. We passed fields of patterned mown grass, the smell of it a herbal nectar. Oak trunks sprouted boles, suspiciously like homes for gnomes. Jets left vapour trails above ancient belltowers in sleeping hamlets. Vines trailed into the path, and sprigs of white, blue and yellow flowers accumulated on my hat.

  In Silleda, we stopped for coffee. Il Soldato asked if I was okay. He said that something was not right. ‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s just the last day. I am fine.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘tomorrow is the last day. This is just another.’

  I had been talking, laughing and picking flowers, but I guess when you walk, eat, sleep, and share intimacies about hormones and history, you get to know someone. Why should they not see through me when I knew the moment there was a shift in their moods?

  I walked ahead, letting them talk as I resorted to the iPod to take my mind off the German. I’d thought I was done with sin, but the day before arriving at the cathedral steps, I was a seething mess, wanting only vengeance. I imagined holding an albergue pillow over his face as he slept, stopping his flow of spite. I wished him thistles and thorns to rip his pristine smugness. I summoned words like brigand, outlaw and bandit, hoping they could be enlisted to take shape and attack him.

  If thoughts were sins, I was toast.

  I did also consider the German’s sin.

  ‘Take what you can get,’ he had said. That seemed a very modern sin: grab it all, because what matters is who has the most, or the biggest.

  I liked him less with every step; wished him pain with every breath.

  We stopped to picnic in cool woods. The day had worked its temperature up, along with mine. We were boiling together. Il Capitano pinned a rose to my hat as il Soldato opened a bottle of wine. I spread out cheese, bread and tomatoes. Our bare toes lined up in the shade. We raised water and wine glasses to each other and toasted our last road lunch.

  I tried to give them money for the wine. I didn’t realise they were going to buy it and hadn’t contributed enough. They were adamant. It was a gift. I was equally adamant that I pay my share. Il Capitano argued with me that it was only a couple of euros, they might be old, but they could buy me a wine. Il Soldato watched, saying nothing.

  And then I cried.

  Il Soldato said it was good. That he knew I was unhappy. He asked what had upset me. Was it the phone call from my husband?

  No, no, that was a gift.

  Then what?

  I told them, as best I could. Slowly, searching for words.

  Il Soldato’s face turned to stone. The Easter Island statue had returned. Il Capitano stepped onto the path as if to
face down the German.

  Il Soldato pronounced the German maleducato and brutto—ill mannered and ugly—as il Capitano wiped my tears with his napkin-sized handkerchief. Il Soldato said he knew I was unhappy at dinner; my face was pink, and so he knew the man had said something. I laughed. My face was always pink. We all laughed. That was true.

  Time to move on. I said I’d sit for a while and write. They would see me down the road. No problem.

  I did write.

  When my husband called, he’d asked if this camino had been like the first. Had I loved it as much? I told him that it had been harder and deeper. The Francés had been in no small part a life-lesson about letting go. Having found my acupuncturist compañero, my long-lost-lifetime-friend, I then learned how to release him. Each time we said goodbye, it was simple.

  That had never been possible for me before the camino. I always experienced parting as pain, as though each ‘see you soon’ was a final farewell, like the ones I’d made after the deaths of those I loved. The Francés, and my compañero, changed that. Just knowing he was on the planet meant I could finally relax about everyone I loved and let them walk their ways. I still don’t understand why finding him was a home-coming, but mystery sits easier now.

  This road was tougher.

  Yes, it had asked more of me physically, because it was harder and longer, but it had asked more of every part of me. The unbending, uncompromising part of my nature had been broken down on the Mozárabe. Carrying the sins made me watch myself every minute of the day. I’d been my own critical observer, an active conscience monitoring my actions as fully as I could, fronting my failings.

  Also, language had played a part. In spite of the conversations I’d managed, in Herr T’s formal English, in Spanish with my amigo, and in Italian with my garrison, I never had the release into commonality that had been possible with my compañero. I’d had no choice but to go deep into self. And mostly, I found a companion who was prepared to stay the course. Mostly, I was peaceful company, seeking little except to understand the path. As a result, it was a pleasure to travel with that self, and equally pleasurable to learn, finally, to travel gracefully in company. It had been hard, I answered my husband, but full of quiet joys.