Off the Road (25 page)

And later on, the
conversation initiated today sporadically breaks out again. I catch the German and
Miguel arguing over, of all things, the etymology of Santiago de Compostela’s
last name. Miguel says that Compostela is a contraction of the Latin phrase
campus
stellae,
literally “the field of the star.” The German, after boasting that
he has university credentials, says the name derives from the Latin
compostum,
meaning “burial place.”

Even in this recondite
discussion, one can make out the themes of the evening’s debate. For the
German, Compostela is buried, a grave, a dark, closed place to be dug out and
discovered. For Miguel, the possibilities of Santiago are visible, shimmering
with light, open-ended.

The fragile theology in this
tent is at its crudest when it centers on who’s in and who’s out. But it’s also
about the language of discovery versus improvisation. It’s the difference
between looking for what you know is there and making it up. The German stands
clearly on the far side of tradition, of order, of knowing. On the other
extreme of the spectrum, I think, stands Claudy, our Dionysian clown. Lie is
too busy plowing through the hilarity and inebriety of each day to give a jot
about history.

I want to say that those of
us who are troubled by doubt are somehow superior to the German and his allies.
I want to make a case for Claudy and drunk pilgrims and bicyclists and eaters
of fine meals and sleepers in comfortable beds. But the German will always win
these arguments because he has so much material to draw on for support—the
reservoir of tradition. The rest of us have only the nub of our developing and
feeble tale with few uninspiring details. We’ve only just started. I want to
say that ours is the riskier proposition because we are out beyond what is
taken for granted.
Per agrum.
Out past the fields. Pilgrims.

And it sounds good. But in
these conversations the German is more often right. Even in this final debate
on etymology, I want to jump in to help Miguel. But I don’t. I get up and mosey
out of the tent. As it happens, I know the German is correct. “The field of the
star” is what linguists call a folk etymology. In other words, it was invented.
Somebody just made it up because it sounded good.

I want no more arguments
tonight. Unnoticed, I slip away from the infinite rhythms of Jesus’s artificial
rain. The German will be with all the other pilgrims tonight. I will be alone.
I have to follow the road I am walking, and tonight it winds just past this
tent, through a dark alley, and into the air-conditioned dead end of my
parador.

T
he soothing rumble of the
thermostat kicks on, and waves of freon-treated parador air drift across my
face. I scissor my legs back and forth under crisp, hard sheets. In a morning
daze I dream I am among loafing conventioneers with name tags attending
seminars. I am back in America, with nothing awaiting me but food and pointless
chatter in
the amniotic security of a Hyatt Regency atrium. I
clench my fat pillow, release it, and stretch into Leonard
o’s image of
noble man. My toes nuzzle into the taut corners of the bed. So comfortable this
is, so yummy, so —
krong
—a plunging dagger impales me, and a gob of
morning spittle clots my throat.

My feet land inside my
boots. I race to the bathroom and stumble over my shoestrings. I pack my kits
and instinctively steal a minibar of soap. I stuff papers and notebooks, small
bags, and yesterday’s stinking shirt into their familiar nooks in my rucksack.
I toss it on my back, lace myself in, and race to the front desk. Here is a
brand-new emotion, fresh and undifferentiated remorse. Pilgrim guilt. I gotta
get out of here.

The morning clerk settles my
account, taking his time with credit card checks in New York.

“A complimentary breakfast
comes with the room,” he says in hotel lobby English. “All you can eat.” New
guilt is no match for old hunger.

The morning’s board is a
familiar movable feast. Every conventioneer in Pocatello, Flagstaff, and Lubbock is peering over the same selection. Chunks of cantaloupe and honeydew. Scrambled
eggs floating in stainless steel tins heated by a blue Sterno flame. Corrugated
fingers of sausage. Paper-thin slices of ham. Bowls filled with plums and
pears. Toast! Small boxes of cornflakes. Strips of undercooked bacon marbled
with thick veins of fat.

I pile it on, taking two
trips to set my table. I untangle an apricot-colored napkin folded into an
upright lily blossom. I slurp and clink at a bowl of cereal. I smack my way
through a pile of melon balls, sucking the riper chunks straight through my
teeth like Jell-O. By the time I notice my neighbors, two tourist families
looking at me in disgust, I can’t close my mouth. I’ve slid three sausage links
in the pouch of my cheek and presently am stuffing a jellied triangle of toast
topped with bacon into the maw. So the road has changed me in some ways.

Out through the plate-glass
view of the parking lot, I spy the Flemish, Willie the Filmmaker, his wife, and
the owner of the tent, Jesus, trudging with a mule among the Citroëns and
Mercedeses. A panic seizes me. I’d rather not be seen among Sterno flamettes
and melon balls. I snag an origami lily from another table and rush to the
banquet table. I pile a small volcano of meats and bread and plums and oranges
into the napkin and cram it into the top of the pack. One German couple has
made me an object lesson of American barbarism for the children. Glad to be of
service.

“Big trip today, yes,” Rick
says as I walk up.

My map points us to O
Cebreiro, a ninth-century village, still intact, high in the Galician
mountains. The road is uphill all the way, following the new interstate cut
through the old mountain pass.

“I know the mountains,”
Jesús says in Spanish with the assured confidence of a local. “The old road has
been abandoned since they built the interstate. Today we will find the original
route, and mark it for future pilgrims.” On Jesús’s mule is a homemade wooden
saddle, built of busted two-by-fours and broken pieces of plywood—the same
style as the tent. Tied to it are torn lengths of yellow plastic fertilizer
bags. Jesus says the mountain brush won’t accommodate arrows, so we will tie
plastic strips into the bush to indicate the direction of the reclaimed road.

I am thinking about the
redemptive power of the hard work of the road and about how good it feels to be
walking instead of arguing in a tent. My sublime reflection is interrupted when
Bacchus gooses me with his staff.

“We are going to find the
old Santiago road through the mountains,” says Claudy. “No interstate for you,
eh? Twoo peel-grim.”

At a bar on the edge of
town, we stop in for a final drink. Claudy and Rick order their brandies.
Willie makes weird circumnavigations about the barstools. It is his way of
condemning Rick’s decadence. Karl and I drink several
cafés con leche.
Jesús announces that there are only a few villages on the way. We all buy
bottles of water and strap them to our packs.

On the outskirts of
Villafranca just past the dilapidated electrical station, a white corrugated
concrete road lurches straight up and disappears into distant mountain clouds
like an infinite driveway.

“Ho,” says Rick.

“Brrrrrrr-eeeepppp,” cries
Karl to the mule, and slaps the beast amicably on the rump. Karl worked with
mules in Belgium and speaks their language. Jesús withdraws a huge long-necked
bottle of mysterious liquid and pours a pint straight down his throat. He
yodels the official local cry.

Nothing like an acute angle
to quickly silence an enthusiastic crowd. Immediately we are forced to cut back
and forth, like deer ascending a steep hill. Willie is dressed in his
usual—pale blue, short-short jogging pants with built-in underwear. His crotch
is a Euclidean tent of belongings. More disturbing, though, is that his wife
has adopted this habit. They are both wearing the equivalent of bedroom
slippers. Jesús, acting on Galician instinct, stays away from them.

Willie’s tiny daypack holds
his videocamera. His plan today is to film the pilgrim’s reclamation of the
medieval road to the top of the first mountain. Then he will descend and drive
his mobile home to O Cebreiro to meet us in the evening.

From time to time Claudy
fills me in on the continuing soap opera, which has always come across as
opaque since it is performed in Flemish. A few days back, relations between
Rick and Willie broke down. For the nonce, Willie speaks directly only to Karl.
This makes our morning conversations simple but comically complex. Whatever
Willie has to say must go through Karl, then to Claudy, who speaks English,
then to me, because I speak Spanish, and at last to Jesús. This morning’s
excursion is the pilgrimage in miniature.

The road is a garbage dump
for Villafranca. To our left it shears precipitously into uninhabited scrub
canyons streaked with landslides of burned stoves, open refrigerators, stripped
cars, and burst bags of paper trash. An hour later the road assumes a
cinematographically rustic look. Willie bolts up the hill, popping his slim
hips like a speed walker, to film the same old shot of trudging pilgrims, now
locally colorized by the mule and the leathery Jesús.

I ask Claudy to ask Karl to
ask Willie what the story line of his narration will be. I am trying to be
friendly, but I am also curious. Willie has nothing but miles of footage of the
Flemish grunting and stumping. Word seeps back that Willie will not adulterate
his film with narration. The images will speak for themselves. Claudy shrugs at
me as he explains Willie’s answer. From time to time Claudy enjoys learning an
Americanism. I teach him a new one: putz.

When the road levels out a
bit, old farmers wielding scythes appear in the slanted fields. Babushkaed
crones in black togs stuff grasses into outsize gunnysacks slung over their
backs. Every view frames a Brueghel painting. Willie shoots some picturesque
B-roll. A clutch of houses appears, called Dragonte.

Jesús ululates outside a
gate, and a small gray man with a blank face appears at his door, an American
gothic translated into Spanish. We are introduced to José. He has an odd smile,
a feeble wrinkle that suggests he’s out of practice. His smile comes on like a
switch—click—and then disappears. He invites us into his bodega, a
half-underground hut poorly lit by a square dimming bulb. When José steps to
the back, maybe twelve feet away, I can’t see him. The timber is black from
age. The moist air is dank but feels cool and refreshing. Around me on the hard
dirt floor are kegs of wine, cheese wheels, and mounds of potatoes. Many of the
potatoes have sprouted long green fingers groping for the door, a desperate
attempt at escape. José twists a small spigot on a red wine barrel and fills cups.
Willie grabs the first one, downs it, and asks for more before everyone else is
served.

“This is how a rich man eats
cheese,” Jesús announces. He takes a wedge of José’s sheep cheese and carves
out the soft creamy belly. He pops it in his mouth.

“This is how a poor man eats
cheese.” He skins the rock-hard rind, throws it away, and bites off a piece of
the toughened edge.

“And this is how a pilgrim
eats cheese.” He slices off the stiff hide of the rind again, but this time he
gnaws at it.

Willie missed this photo
opportunity because he was engulfing José’s cheese (eating like a rich man). So
he asks Jesús to repeat the story, which he does. But the lens cap was still
on, so Jesús does it yet again—all the while it’s so dark that each of us is
little more than a flash of cheek or Cheshire-cat grin. Willie films away.

José continues to refill our
cups and carve us wedges of cheese until we are stuffed and drunk. When he
passes a plate of cakes, Willie scarfs down the helpings before even his wife
has a piece.

Claudy looks at me
inquiringly.

“P-u-t-z,” I remind him.

The misty road out of
Dragonte climbs up through tall scrub, drops down into a stream, and pitches up
again past a field. The brush is high and wet, a temporary shield from the
warming sun. At each possible intersection, Jesús halts and ties a yellow strip
to a shrub. He drinks more from his bottle. Then he whacks the mule.

“Oooohhh-aaaauuuuu,” he
howls.

“Brrrrrrr-eeeepppp,” adds
Karl.

The mule lumbers into
motion, and we proceed. About an hour later the path takes us around and up a
bald hill covered only in flowering heather and broom, as if we have climbed
out above the tree line. At the top, for the first time, a distant view of Galicia’s mountains rises before us. Willie gleefully makes a honking noise signifying
pleasure and aims his lens at the pacific horizon. Three mountains over, each
one higher than the last, is a communications tower. Jesús tells me that O
Cebreiro is just beyond the tower.

“We will make it by
sundown,” he says confidently.

Jesús unscrews a tin of
fishlike substance and offers around bits of blackened scaly sea meat on a
shard of bread. Everyone declines except, of course, Willie. After snacking,
Willie sends word through the grapevine that he’s had enough and is turning back.
Jesús tells me that in thirty minutes or so we will link up to the marked road.
He intends to call his daughter and drive down the mountain. Jesús asks me to
offer Willie and his wife a ride down with him.

I explain this to Claudy.
Rick understands it, and the three of us entertain a foul plot. We
won't
tell Willie, thereby forcing him to endure several hours of thigh-trembling,
knee-buckling descent.

Then Rick says that Santiago wouldn’t appreciate this unpilgrimlike attitude and that there’s no reason to
punish the innocent wife. We all reluctantly agree and spill the news. Willie’s
face brightens so much at the prospect of a ride in a car that we all
immediately regret our virtue.

Jesús offers me a swig of
his drink. I throw back a swallow. My nostrils flare. My eyes widen. I feel the
tender flesh of my interior cheeks dissolving, but I swallow. Jesús is chugging
colored grain alcohol. We’re all lit from José’s bodega, but for the first time
I notice Jesús’s bloodshot eyes. His pupils are pinpoints, and his eyeballs no
longer make contact with the soft skin of the socket. He is completely stinko.

Forty-five minutes later the
road takes a deep, wet slide. The mule walks sideways and brays its contempt.
As do we. A trickle of stream water dampens the road. Our boots are slathered
with mud. Willie and his wife follow literally in our footprints, trying to
keep their bedroom slippers dry. Toward the bottom of this gulch, the road
levels out and the tight undergrowth disappears. We are in a forest of ancient
chestnut trees. The canopy of cool shade makes the woods majestic and magical.
Each tree is crouched at the trunk, massively thick, sprouting convoluted
tumors of bark the size of basketballs. In the distance another house appears
and then a small village, Moral de Valcarce. Willie is relieved since the town
means that he is minutes away from a ride.