Читать книгу Walking to the End of the World - Beth Jusino - Страница 13

Despite the wine and the jet lag, or perhaps because of them, I slept fitfully in Le Puy, waking every hour to stare into the darkness and listen to people breathing in the cubicles around me. We were so close to beginning this thing. When my digital watch finally said it was close to 6:00, I turned off the alarm and quietly packed my bag in the dark. I put on my “walking clothes”—the hiking pants, the merino wool shirt, the vest, the scarf—that I’d so carefully chosen. I could hear the sound of a dozen other people doing the same thing, but no one spoke.

Downstairs, the tables were set for breakfast. I saw a pitcher of orange juice and a basket of crusty bread. But this early in the morning, the April sky still dark outside, all I could think about was coffee. My wishes were granted when the female volunteer came over with a coffee pot.

“Café?”

“Yes, merci.” My Frenglish made her smile as she waited to pour.

I looked at my place setting more carefully. There was a cereal bowl and a juice glass. No mug. Hesitantly, I reached for the glass. Maybe the French didn’t drink their coffee venti-sized. Demitasse was a French word, wasn’t it?

Her smile turned into a laugh. “Non, non.” She reached past me and poured me a full bowl of coffee. I looked around and realized that yes, everyone had a bowl of coffee.

Well, okay. When in France. I chalked up another lesson about the change in culture. The centerpiece of our French country breakfasts was a bowl of coffee, alongside which we ate sliced bread, not toasted, with butter and/or fruit confiture (jam).

At 6:45, Isidore told the assembled group (while pantomiming for us) that he would take us to the cathedral, but first we should please clean our dishes. A dozen people moved to gather bowls and cups, and a line formed at the sink. Eric, whose desire to be helpful is almost pathological sometimes, settled in at the tap and washed everyone’s dishes while they donned their jackets and packs.

They were, of course, charmed by him. Well, everyone but me. I was impatient with my husband’s good deeds. What if they left without us? What if we were late?

But of course, we weren’t late. As the first light of dawn started to break, Isidore led our group up an alley I hadn’t noticed and into a side entrance of the cathedral. He took us through the main sanctuary, pausing to make the sign of the cross before the Black Virgin, and to a smaller side chapel, where a line of backpacks rested against the wall.

There were twenty or so people in the pews already, and our group filled in around them. Remi wasn’t there, but I recognized the maybe-brothers from dinner. They stood, arms crossed, stiff and frowning. I mentally christened them the Brothers Grim.

The mass, of course, was in French. The words washed over me as I looked around the stone chapel. How many people had gone through these same motions in this same place before they set out in the name of Saint Jacques?

To understand the modern experience of what we now call the Camino de Santiago, it helps to look back to where it came from and why it matters. This journey is much more than a hike through the countryside.

Throughout the first millennium, as the Roman Empire spread across Europe, Christianity spread with it. As the Romans conquered and assimilated disparate peoples, the church gave them a common language and purpose—which is the nice way of saying it gave them something to focus on other than killing each other.

One of the most important unifying practices of the early church, and of most religions of the time, was pilgrimage. The physical commitment of traveling to a holy site, in a world where few people ever left the village where they were born, marked a person’s piety. Pilgrimage was an act of penance, devotion, and also adventure.

There were plenty of regional pilgrimage destinations all over Europe, each claiming some holy object that could convey blessing or absolution. The cathedral of Le Puy, I’ve been told, once boasted the foreskin of Christ himself—but then again, so did a dozen other towns across Europe. If a pilgrim really wanted to show devotion, there were two Big Pilgrimage destinations: Jerusalem, where Jesus was killed, and Rome, where many of the early apostles were martyred, all by the same Roman Empire that now sponsored them. (As with most things in medieval history, it’s best not to think too carefully about the details.)

As centuries passed and Christianity spread into Germany and the Low Countries, however, the distance of those big journeys became almost impossible for new converts. Enter a Spanish hermit named Pelayo, who in AD 813 reported experiencing a series of strange visions in a field in northern Spain. As the story goes, he followed a mysterious star and discovered, in an unmarked field, the body of Saint James the Greater, one of Jesus’s original disciples.

How a Jewish guy from Galilee happened to wind up buried in one of the farthest corners of the known world takes some creative explaining, but first-century storytellers were well equipped for that. It seems that after Jesus’s crucifixion, his followers scattered over the known world to convert others. James traveled to what is now Spain but had little success with the people there. He unwisely returned to Jerusalem, where he was arrested by Herod Agrippa, beheaded, and thrown over the city walls for the dogs to eat.

Not willing to let the brother of the apostle John become puppy chow, his disciples snuck out under the cover of night and retrieved the body (and, presumably, the head), put it on a rudderless, unmanned stone boat guarded by an angel, and launched it into the Mediterranean. The boat miraculously traveled back to the Iberian Peninsula, where, in some versions of the story, it sank just offshore, and James’s body washed onto the beach, covered in scallop shells.

The first steps of the Chemin du Puy, looking back toward the cathedral

His Spanish disciples somehow were there to receive the gift from the sea. They secretly buried the apostle in an unmarked grave in a Galician cemetery, which was later abandoned until Pelayo found it almost eight hundred years later under the star (hence Compostela: the Field of the Star).

When the bishop of the area heard the story, he recognized the opportunity a relic of this importance offered to create a major new pilgrimage route. European penitents would have to scale mountains and cross rivers to get to the far northwest of Spain, but there was a Roman trade road that passed nearby, so the journey was not impossible. As an added benefit, the bishop and later the pope must have realized that a Christian holy site on the Iberian Peninsula would support and motivate the struggling Spanish Christians in their ongoing fight against Moorish invaders, who controlled all of southern Spain.

So the church built a cathedral worthy of the relic it protected, and just like that, Santiago de Compostela became the third most holy site of Christianity. A thriving city grew around it, and in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when the first wave of Santiago pilgrims peaked, as many as a million people streamed across Europe to Santiago. They sought miracles, forgiveness, favors, and probably good stories to tell at their local watering holes.

Towns sprang up to support pilgrims and to profit from the commerce they brought. The church’s elite military order, the Knights Templar, protected them, and dozens of churchsponsored hospitals cared for them. Still, hundreds of thousands died along the way from disease, exposure, and violent crime.

The popularity of the Santiago pilgrimage, and pilgrimage in general, dwindled in subsequent centuries due to the additional risks brought by the Black Death plague and, later, the theological shifts of the Protestant Reformation. By the twentieth century the Camino was all but forgotten. But writers can’t let a good story die, and starting in the 1980s, a surge of books and articles brought it back to public attention. Not long after, in 1993, the Camino de Santiago was named one of UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites, and the popularity of the pilgrimage exploded.

In 1992 only 9,764 people received a Compostela, the church’s official certificate confirming a pilgrim’s arrival at the tomb of Saint James. In 2015 the number was 262,459.

A pilgrimage, of course, focuses on the destination and not the route traveled, so there is no single “starting point” for the Camino. The earliest pilgrims’ journeys began wherever they lived. However, according to a twelfth-century guide for pilgrims, the Codex Calixtinus, there were four primary pilgrim routes that developed in France to funnel pilgrims together and guide them past other holy sites on their way to Santiago. Vía Podiensis began in Le Puy, Vía Turonensis began in Paris, Vía Lemovicensis began in Vézelay, and Vía Tolosana began in Arles. Based on those writings, UNESCO’s designation recognized the trails that stretched back over the Pyrenees and across France, to those four cities. In subsequent years, the Heritage designation has expanded to include additional paths stretching to all four corners of Spain.

The most heavily traveled section of the Camino, then and now, is called the Camino Francés, which translates to “the French Camino” not because it’s in France (all but twenty kilometers are in Spain), but because historically this was the path taken most often by French pilgrims. Camino Francés begins in the French border town of Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, at the point where three of the Codex Calixtinus paths converge, and goes west, crossing the Pyrenees and winding across northern Spain to Santiago. Today, this is often mistaken as the “whole” Camino rather than a single branch.

The mass ended, and the priest explained—in several languages, including English—that we would proceed to the altar of Saint Jacques for a blessing. Eric and I followed the group back across the main sanctuary to an alcove near the main doorway, where a wooden image of Jacques was dressed as a pilgrim, with a floppy hat, pilgrim shell, and staff in hand.

The priest asked each pilgrim to introduce themselves. Almost everyone was French. Eric and I were, not surprisingly, the only Americans and English speakers, but there were also a couple of Germans and at least one woman from Belgium.

The priest read a prayer in the native language of each pilgrim, and a nun in a full habit and wimple gave us prayer cards to carry with us. One sentence in particular stood out to me: Be for them shade in the heat of the day, light in the darkness of night, relief in tiredness, so that they may come safely, under your protection, to the end of their journey. The spiritual and the physical worlds entwined.

After another prayer, the priest gave us each a small silver medallion the size of my thumbnail. On one side was a scallop shell, and on the other, the Black Virgin and the words “Notre Dame de Puy.” I slid it onto my necklace cord and wore that medallion every day until we were back in Seattle. Eric, I noticed, also paused to attach his medallion to the cord he wears around his neck to carry his wedding ring.

There was something about that moment, in a place that had blessed people like us for a thousand years, that demanded solemnity and an act of commitment. We were joining something older than anything we’d experienced.

When we left Lyon, we were backpackers. Now, I was a pilgrim of Le Puy.

Blessed and ready to go, we filed out through the grand, west-facing cathedral entrance. My nervous energy made me feel clumsy as I descended the long flight of stairs and then an even longer hill paved with cobblestones. The sky was blue but the air was cold; there was still morning frost on the ground this early in spring.

We followed the pilgrims in front of us at first, forgetting to look for the red and white stripes that would mark our way. But the hikers spread out as we all found our own paces, and Eric and I were soon beyond the edges of Le Puy, in the middle of rolling farmland, with only the painted markers to guide us.

We climbed and descended, and climbed again. The hills weren’t particularly high, but they were relentless. There didn’t seem to be a square meter of flat ground anywhere. After an hour, I was sweating despite the chill in the air.

I should mention here that my overpreparation in the previous months had all been mental, not physical. I knew I was supposed to “train” for a long hike, whatever that meant, but I’d convinced myself there’d been no time. The first time I put on my full backpack was the day we left, and I’d walked only a couple of miles at a time in my new, fancy trail runners.

My plan was to keep our distance short on the first day. Most of the pilgrims at the welcome gathering told us they were going to Saint-Privat-d’Allier, which was fifteen miles—er, twentyfour kilometers—from Le Puy. But according to our guidebook, there was a small town named Montbonnet with a restaurant and accommodations just fifteen kilometers from Le Puy. That seemed like a more reasonable distance for our first day.

The kilometers slipped by slowly as I tried to see everything at once. I took photos of every horse in a field or centuries-old stone cross by the side of the road. As the hours ticked by, I regretted that I’d been too nervous to eat more than a single slice of bread at breakfast. It was close to noon, and I’d walked farther than I had in months. By the time we reached Montbonnet, I was starving and, as Eric calls it, hangry. The excitement had worn off. My feet hurt. I needed lunch.

However, the Camino had other plans. Instead of getting a sandwich, I learned a new French word: fermé. Closed.

Montbonnet turned out to be a single street with a few houses and a cafe, which was fermé. The adjacent gîte was also fermé. It was clearly being renovated, but there was no explanation for why the cafe was closed. We could hear people moving around inside, yet the door was locked and the lights were off. There was no other place to get food in the town, and there were no other towns nearby.

This was not my plan, and Eric will gladly tell you I’m not good when things don’t go according to my plan.

Fermé or not, after fifteen kilometers without a break, I needed to stop. We sprawled on the porch of the closed establishment, and I took off my shoes and socks to rub my aching feet. It was nice to stretch my toes in the sunshine, but I was still hangry.

While I railed against the cafe and the town and everything conspiring against me, Eric gave me a leftover granola bar from his pack and waited out my sulk. These are always awkward moments for us, when I lose my shit over something that neither of us can control. He is, as I’ve said, an extremely helpful person. He wants to fix things. But when I’m mad at the universe, there’s not much he can do.

And so he sat and waited for an hour or so, until I was done, before he pointed out the obvious. We weren’t going to stay here, and the next town was still almost nine kilometers away. As annoyed as I was, I couldn’t dispute his conclusion, so we walked on.

The break had refreshed me, and while my feet still ached and my right shoulder had formed a knot under the weight of the unfamiliar pack, I told myself it wasn’t so bad. This was still an adventure.

We followed the red and white stripes of GR65 along a wooded trail toward Saint Privat, passing a number of French pilgrims as they rested in the shade. I noticed they were all eating the food that they’d wisely bought the day before and carried with them. Lesson learned: when in France, pack a lunch.

If entering Le Puy was a surprise for its bustling commerce, Saint Privat was the opposite. There was nothing modern about this sleepy town of listing buildings on a steep hill, and there were no people in sight.

We followed the main Camino markers until we came across Jean Claude, lounging on a bench with a few other men. The stone cottage behind them had a small vine-covered sign that said GÎTE. Since I hadn’t planned to stay here, I knew almost nothing about the town or where we should go to find a place to stay. This scene looked inviting, but my hope that Jean Claude would save us again was short lived.

“Réserve?” he asked, indicating the building. No, we did not have a reservation here.

“Oh, non.” The French have a special knack for blending a look of regret and disapproval. “C’est complet.” It is full. He said something I couldn’t understand, but the meaning was clear. The two men sitting with Jean Claude had snagged the last two available beds.

I could feel Eric doing the math of how long I’d lingered on the porch in Montbonnet, and how much sooner we might have arrived. This second disappointment of the day made my eyes sting with tears.

This whole Camino thing wasn’t working out as I planned.

Jean Claude waved down the road. There were other places in town. We must go on. We passed a cafe with patio tables set in the sunshine, and I looked at it longingly. My feet ached. My bag weighed more by the second. I was still hangry. But Eric wasn’t going to stop again until we found a place to stay.

Down a side street, I noticed another gîte sign. Following it, we passed through a gate and up a flight of stairs to another courtyard, this one beside a building that was all modern angles and bright white paint. I thought it looked like a Seattle community center, not a place for pilgrims following a medieval path, but if they had space, I would overlook the poor aesthetics.

A young man sat at a picnic table, reading a book. “English?” Eric asked him.

“Yes. A little.” We learned that he was German. He had a reservation here, but they wouldn’t open until 4:00, another hour away. He didn’t know if they had room for more pilgrims. “You should call them,” he offered, waving to a phone number printed on the glass door.

Sure, except this was our offline sabbatical. Our cell phones were turned off, and even if they weren’t, they weren’t connected to European phone plans. We weren’t supposed to need phones to walk a trail that’s a thousand years old.

Since when do pilgrims need reservations? I stewed. Even as I thought it, I realized that almost everything I read—almost everything that was written in English, for that matter—had focused on the Camino in Spain. I’d assumed that things were the same in France. Clearly that was not the case.

Eric and I waited, anxious and testy, for the gîte to open. Or at least, I was anxious and testy. Eric kept his thoughts to himself.

At 3:30 a woman pulled up in a car, but she ignored us. She puttered around a garden, made a phone call, and smoked a cigarette. I suggested that Eric ask her if they had space for us, but he refused to interrupt. Since I was too afraid to try it myself, in French, I continued to sulk and nurse my tired feet.

A few more pilgrims came into the courtyard, including a Belgian woman I recognized from the pilgrim mass. When someone finally opened the gîte door at 4:00, Eric politely let her go before us. I seethed, convinced that once again we would be turned away. At least this time it wouldn’t be my fault.

The inside of the building was as cool and modern as the outside. When we got to the counter, it was obvious that my worrying had been pointless. The man who ran the place even spoke a little English. Yes, they had beds available. They would also provide dinner and breakfast, an offer called demi-pension. He took our cash—along the Camino, all of our transactions happened in cash, which we replenished about once a week at the ATMs that were easy to find in most towns—and assigned us to a room with a minimum of words, casually waving toward a stamp pad sitting on a far table where we could stamp our own credentials.

This was a privately owned, for-profit gîte, and it was about as different from Isidore’s careful attention in Le Puy as I could imagine.

Our room had three sets of bunk beds, which quickly filled with a varied crew of pilgrims: a slender, serious French teenager who wore a white scarf; an older Frenchwoman with a pinched face and a lot of maps; and a solid, serious Austrian who left his underwear draped on the heater. They all went about their business with a minimum of words or eye contact, and we followed their lead.

I fumbled through my second night of unpacking and awkwardly navigated a shower in the communal bathroom. That left only one more chore: laundry.

Like the good hiker I aspired to be, I was traveling light, so I needed to hand-wash at least a few essentials every day or two. The trouble was, I’d never in my life washed clothes in a sink, and Eric was nowhere in sight to help me.

Covering my lack of knowledge with sheer determination, I scrunched wads of my hiking shirt and underwear under the running water of the bathroom sink, rubbed some of my bar soap across them, and succeeded mostly in splashing water all over the floor. When I’d rinsed out the bulk of the suds, I squeezed some of the water out and hung everything on the clothes bar in our room, where it dripped onto the tile floor.

With chores accomplished and dinner still two hours away, I found Eric and half-heartedly discussed touring the town; the church was supposed to be lovely. But I was tired, sore, and still hungry. I didn’t care about seeing anything except a chair and a beer at that cafe on the corner. There would be other medieval chapels.

Ten minutes later we were sitting under an awning, watching package trucks careen at impossibly high speeds around sharp corners and down cobbled streets never intended for motor vehicles. Jean Claude and another man came by and, after a questioning nod and smile of acceptance, joined us. They seemed curious about two young Americans walking the Chemin du Puy. I could see they wanted to question us, to help us. But without a common language we mostly just sat with our beers and our maps, companionable but awkward.

Eric and I excused ourselves eventually and went back to the gîte for dinner, which was as anticlimactic as the rest of the day. The food was good, as French food almost always is. We had a three-course meal of lentil soup and a salad, then sausage and potatoes, then a cheese plate and dessert. The meal was served family style to a table of ten pilgrims, including the solemn Brothers Grim. They nodded in recognition, but they spoke no English. Neither did the imperious older woman from our room, who sat at the head of the table.

“Perhaps we could speak English for a little while,” the Belgian woman said to the rest of the group, gesturing at us in sympathy.

“Non,” the dour woman declared. And then she said something that the German told us meant “I do not speak English. We are in France, and so we must speak only French.”

Eric and I were left to ourselves at the end of the table. Mute and exhausted, my mind kept coming back to the same question: Was this a mistake?