Off the Road (26 page)

Then again, maybe not. The
only accessible roads are ox paths, all paved in squishy sheets of bovine and
ovine dung. The village smells of fresh shit, quite piquant in the late
morning. Parked at the front door of each house is an ox, who welcomes us by
evacuating his bowels in a small explosion. At the occasional post is a
tethered cow who also seems genuinely excited by our arrival and speaks oxen.
Scrawny dogs howl at our approach, scampering along and then slip-sliding in an
impressive 180-degree halt. Chickens flit along the surface of the shit,
screeching an unconvincing claim of ownership.

Let me say this about shit.
I have spent months walking through all manner of it. To tell the truth, a
pilgrim comes to like shit. I know this sounds like an acquired taste, possibly
born of necessity. But shit, of the rural variety, can have an attractive odor.
I am not including humans; don’t even want to talk about it. But ruminants,
horses, rural dogs, and chickens produce tons of dung along the road. And I
welcome it because the wafting perfume of manure is an olfactory signal of
pending rest. It means animals, which mean people, which means shelter, which
means coffee and water and food.

A pilgrim’s appreciation of
shit, however, has not been achieved by Willie the Filmmaker or his wife. They
tiptoe with the deliberation of soldiers in a minefield. The rest of us happily
plow through. Sliding down one street, we pass an open barnlike area just below
a house on stilts. Inside, a middle-aged housewife and her two sons, about ten
years old each, are standing in a shed impressively full of shit. They appear
to be raking it, possibly grooming the place for show.

The woman looks to be in her
forties, although I suspect she is in her twenties. She stares at us in fear,
which is actually shyness. She has on green slacks and a white tank-top
T-shirt. Just beneath her armpits, one can see the supporting strap of her bra.
All of her clothes, even her undergarments, are filthy with dirt. Yet I can see
her beauty, ruined by labor but still visible in her bashful green eyes. Jesús
says hello and explains that we are pilgrims.

“We haven’t had pilgrims in
many years,” she says coyly.

“My friends and I are
marking the old road so you will have more pilgrims in the future,” he says.

She is happy at this news.
She brushes her hair out of her eyes and shuffles about, embarrassed in the
presence of so many men. She wipes the shit off her sons’ faces. As if she had
temporarily forgotten her manners, she lets out a yell and disappears. She
returns with two bottles of wine and stacked glasses.

None of us has been sober
this morning. Willie, naturally, is first to the bottle.

Suddenly the Flemish are in
a rumpus, talking excitedly and pointing at the woman because the slogan on her
T-shirt is in their language. It also happens to be in English. There is a
picture of a car and beneath it a meaningless Madison Avenue oxymoron: “The
only unoriginal.” Willie is overcome by the coincidence, and somehow this sets
off many ideas for him. He draws his camera from his tiny daypack like a sword
and starts filming. Our presence is hard enough on this painfully shy woman.
Willie closes in with the camera, working his way around for an artistic arc
shot, and swoops in close to her shirt.

It is bunched up just at the
Flemish words. Without so much as a howdy-do, Willie yanks out her shirttail
and begins pulling it down over her pants. He tugs at her shirt around her
crotch and then smooths the fabric flat up to her neck. He touches her breasts.
The woman stands at extreme attention, like a patient enduring some unspeakable
medical exam. She turns her head sharply to one side, in the direction of
Jesús. It looks like a cry for help.

Jesús speaks rapidly at me.
I don’t understand his words, but I do understand his meaning. I turn to
Claudy, who understands, and he wails at Karl in Flemish. But our chain-letter
translation takes too long. Willie is turning off his camera now, absolutely
oblivious of our anxiety. The young woman stands frozen. We are speechless, and
the thick fog of our languages has made us incapable of saying a word. We stand
as stiffly as she, resorting to the crinkled smile of José. It’s the best we
can do to say we are sorry.

In these mountains the
business is cows and oxen and sheep, so naturally the road out of Moral and
deep into the woods is nothing but an endless trench of manure, freshly
dampened by morning dew, then thinned by a trickle of stream water and the
natural humidity of this forest. The banks are crumbly and wet and laced with
aggressive brambles. The only painless route is straight through the trough.

Jesús has graciously allowed
Willie the Filmmaker’s wife to ride on the mule. This is a dubious luxury,
sitting upon an A-frame of plywood and two-by-fours. On an incline, the mule
stumbles and takes the age-old precaution. It pitches its burden to the ground.
Willie’s wife flies off the mule, but not before her gym shorts catch a nail in
Jesús’s homemade saddle. The entire backside of her shorts is ripped out. The
valuables in her crotch spill into the muck. We are embarrassed but stare. One
of them is a spoon.

Willie is angry because
after two hours of treacherous walking the village with the phone and the car
ride has not appeared. Jesús mumbles that it will be soon. We help Willie’s
wife, who has a few bruises and below the waist now wears nothing but a blue
polyester loin flap.

In another chestnut forest —
it’s probably around one
p.m. —
we
stop for a rest in the shade. No one has food, and we’re all a little weak.
Rick produces a candy bar and breaks off a piece for everyone. Jesús turns the
key on another can of sardine parts. I look through my pack for a plum or pear
and discover my breakfast cache from the parador.

Genuine jubilation breaks
out as I unfurl a cornucopia of fruit and sausage, bread and cheese. Willie
pops over and sits beside me. When I pass a portion of food for his wife, he
takes a bite before handing it on. I hope Saint James won’t think poorly of me
when I am driven to beat his brains in with a rock.

Not far up the road, the
chestnuts reveal an unnatural geometry, a rooftop, and soon another remote
village. Villar is nothing more than six houses on the path, all red roofs with
white walls listing with age. A pink man and his pink wife open a door and
greet us. His face is a perfect circle, completely bald, topped by a beret that
shuffles from side to side but never falls. Willie lets it be known that he
wants me to ask the man if there is a telephone.

“Of course,” says the man,
almost offended. “The last house on the street has one, but it hasn’t worked
for several months.”

Claudy reminds me that we
almost sent Willie back down the mountain with a lie; instead look what
splendid horrors virtue produced.

“Saint James,” says Rick.

Jesús and the pink man are
talking animatedly around the mule. Their Spanish is fast and colloquial, but
enough words finally come through. Jesús is trying to sell the mule for the
equivalent of $400. The pink man will offer nothing more than $150. He pries
back the mule’s baggy lips, points at her receding gums, and scoffs at Jesús’s
claim that the animal is young. He walks around the animal’s backside and sizes
up her hips. Too narrow, he says, not a good worker. They both argue until the
pink man starts swearing and curses Jesús as a typical
gitano.
It means
“gypsy.” I realize that we are not marking the old road, but accompanying Jesús
on a business trip.

Meanwhile Willie has climbed
a cherry tree and snapped off an entire branch. The pink man cries out that he
sells cherries for a living and calls Willie many bad words. Willie ignores him
while he plucks, eats, and spits.

I offer to buy some in order
to keep the peace (such an American). I don’t know the going price of cherries
in these parts, so I give him about five dollars in pesetas for a small bag. We
are instantly restored to his graces, and soon his wife emerges with a tray of
exquisite coffees. We drink three pots. The coffee is so tasty, I am again
thinking American. These beans will make me a fortune back home. When I ask her
where she gets her beans, she returns with a regular coffee can. The trick is
her secret ingredient, and she holds up a bottle of lethally potent
guapa.
So we get tanked yet again.

The road out of Villar pulls
a sharp U-turn and then twists back again to a major intersection of dirt
roads. The three mountains and the communications tower are as far away as when
we began. Jesús hunkers down beside a rock, taking his compass reading in
private, as he prefers. He points to the rightward path.

This doesn’t make sense
because it’s due north. The road always moves west—the path of the setting
sun—and its arc is unmistakable. Due west is down an old road to the left. Besides,
the path on the right appears freshly cut. But Jesús invokes the privileges of
local color, chugs some more from his long-necked bottle, and insists we follow
him. The sun doesn’t
always
set in the west, I console myself; it’s a
deceptive guidepost. The road descends sharply for an hour and then halts in a
massive quarry shimmering with quartz.

We reclimb the entire road
to the top, and Jesús takes another private compass reading. He points to a
curving narrow swath. This looks to me like a cow path that rambles among the
contours of least resistance. Man cuts wide roads that tend to go straight. But
I am overruled.

After a half hour of
downhill twisting among sharp stiff shrubs, the path dissolves into a meadow
flung like a spread over the mountainside, a beautiful place for a cow.

I sense a mutinous mood
among my compadres. Jesús crouches to take another compass reading. I tiptoe
closer and peer over his shoulder. Jesús is mumbling strange words while
dangling a string from his forehead. Attached at the end is a pink stone set in
gold. The stone circles around until it settles into a back-and-forth pendulum
motion. Jesús rises (a bit startled by my presence) and points away from the
sun and declares it to be west.

Gitano,
I think, means gypsy.

I point in the direction of
the setting sun. Jesús consults his stone again, this time publicly. He points
into the setting sun and sheepishly confirms, “West.” Now that that is settled,
we climb back up the mountain to the intersection where three hours ago I had
first suggested we turn left. I have had my fill of local color for the day and
am not alone. I could teach Jesús a new word now. A French word. Coup d’état.

Finally and inevitably, a
fresh breeze full of omens—manure, mainly—shuffles through the trees. The road
widens into a well-walked path, and soon we are threading our way through the
seven o’clock rush-hour traffic of Sanfiz de Seo—oxen carts, skittish sheep,
ambling herds. The road on the back stretch was as brutal as any I’ve been on.
Willie and his wife are smeared with crap and mud. They are scratched and
bleeding wherever flesh is visible. Willie’s clothes are shredded as well, so
both of them are practically naked. Willie hasn’t said a word or shot a frame
since lunchtime. Perhaps he has learned something about pilgrimage. But
probably not.

Jesús has been guzzling from
his bottle all afternoon, having lost his leadership role to an ugly American.
He’s been singing slurred lyrics in a subdialect of Gallego. Without our usual
siesta and nap, we pilgrims are exhausted. Our gait is a stumble. We
rhythmically shift our packs to find one unused muscle, but there is no
comfort.

At a bar, we lumber to a
table beneath a curling Bruce Springsteen poster, next to... the telephone.
Jesús has no trouble working Telefónica, which confirms all my suspicions about
him, the telephone company, Spain, and the ongoing conspiracy of the universe.
Over a round of lukewarm Cokes, we sit in catatonic bliss, waving away hundreds
of flies with our bandannas. The mule pokes its head through the open door and
swishes its tail in empathy.

When Jesús’s friend arrives
in a huge American-built Wagoneer, Willie races out to get the best seat. Rick,
Claudy, and I are crammed in the rear well with our knees in our faces and our
gear on our laps. Claudy translates a message from me to Willie: Remember,
Willie, Americans only really do one thing really really well. Kill people.

We agree to return to the
tent, and tomorrow Jesús will drive us here to resume our transmontane quest.
At the tent I have a glass of wine, which transforms me into a moron. I drift
out back among the mattresses, collapse somewhere, and suffer turbulent
nightmares until I awake late in the morning, to a real one.

Claudy bought the mule for
$150. By the time I intervene, it is too late. Jesús has filled out a sheaf of
papers that purport to comply with the fantastically complex Spanish law
regarding the movement of pack animals. Spain’s equine stock is infested with
something called
peste del equino,
“horse plague.” By law, movement of
such animals into the rest of Europe is forbidden, but even in Spain there are restrictions from region to region.

“Claudy,” I plead, “this
mule cannot even carry our packs. What is the point?”

“What do you know,
American?” inquires my Dionysian friend.