Читать книгу Walking to the End of the World - Beth Jusino - Страница 15

I slept better that night but was awake long before anyone else stirred, filled with a mix of nerves and jet lag. As the dawn light started to creep into the room, I knew I wanted to be out of the gîte as soon as possible and away from these stern-faced people I couldn’t talk to. There was a snag, though. The clothes I’d washed the night before were still wet.

“Oh, non,” the Belgian woman, whose name was Virginie, said. She had that regret-and-disapproval look down, too. “You must dry clothes outside. There are always sinks and lines behind the building.”

My breakfast carried the taste of my embarrassment as I worried about what else I didn’t know. I’d thought I was so prepared. How did everyone but me seem to understand how this Camino thing worked? I stuffed my clothes into mesh laundry bags and pinned those to the outside of my pack, so that the things would dry while I walked, and then we set out.

I could already see a difference in the land around us. The soil was no longer black volcanic rock but had softened to a deep brown. The hills, though, were a constant.

GR65 leads west, toward the remains of Saint Jacques. The rivers in France, at least in that area, run south toward the Mediterranean. The result is that we constantly climbed and descended steep, rocky river valleys. Our first few kilometers were all uphill. We occasionally saw other people on the trail who passed us with happy “Bonjours” and “Bon chemins” (“Good way”).

Just past a cluster of houses guarded by well-fed French chats, the trees cleared, leaving only bright green, early spring scrub grass on a rocky outcropping. And on top of the rock, a castle. Or, at least, the ruins of a castle. A crumbling keep balanced on the crest, watching over the river valley. Below the tower stood an intact chapel, built of stone that seemed to extend directly from the hillside and crowned with a roof of seemingly haphazard tiles and a belfry with real bells. The date on the lintel read 1328.

Where I grew up, a fort three hundred years younger than this would be designated a national monument, with school tours and park rangers. Here, though, there weren’t even fences or warning signs to keep us away. Eric and I shed our packs and set out to explore. While he climbed to the keep, I ducked under the low doorway to the chapel. It was cramped and dark inside, with a few wooden benches and a rough floor, broken through in places by the granite bedrock below.

A children’s song from Sunday school played in my head: The wise man built his house upon the rock . . .

Back outside, I climbed to the keep and looked out over the valley below. I could see a train winding along the river, and in the distance I could make out Monistrol d’Allier. It seemed impossibly far away to be only our halfway point for the day, but at least it was downhill. I tried not to look at the rows of mountains behind it. Those would come later. This was now.

In the opening paragraphs of her memoir Tracks, Robyn Davidson says, “There are some moments in life that are pivots around which your existence turns—small intuitive flashes, when you know you have done something correct for a change, when you think you are on the right track. . . . [This] was one of them. It was a moment of pure, uncomplicated confidence—and lasted about ten seconds.” That was me. I was on top of a mountain, beside a French castle, on a spring morning. I was past my lists, my maps, my plans.

I was entirely present.

I let the moment linger as long as I could, but the valley was waiting. We slung our packs back on and for the next two hours picked our way downhill along treacherous paths full of loose rocks. We passed through the valley town of Monistrol without stopping, though I saw several familiar faces in the bars along the way, enjoying a second café au lait.

I looked longingly at the cafe tables, but it was hard to slow Eric down long enough for me to find the town’s public bathroom; a midmorning snack was out of the question. He was focused on our destination, Saugues, still twelve kilometers away.

This difference in our paces was something I hadn’t considered before we left. Eric was like an Energizer Bunny; he kept going and going. He stopped when I insisted I needed to rest, but if he wasn’t tired, I wondered, why should we rest? I pushed on. I didn’t want to give the impression that I was slower or weaker than he was.

This, of course, was problematic for a lot of reasons, but let’s start with the obvious one: I was a lot slower and weaker than him, and we both knew it.

At home in Seattle, Eric managed a gym and taught classes in parkour—the sport of jumping, climbing, balancing, and running to overcome obstacles. My husband literally scaled walls for a living. I, on the other hand, worked mostly from my couch. My sport of choice was yoga, slow and controlled and close to the ground.

When I talk about the Camino, people sometimes say, “Oh, I could never do something like that. I’m not into extreme sports.” Trust me, neither am I. But walking wasn’t extreme, right?

As we tackled the steep slope that rose behind Monistrol, I started to wonder. The guidebook warned that there would be a steady incline for thirty-one kilometers, and the first ten would be especially difficult. Eric bounced up the exposed dirt trail and out of sight like a mountain goat. I plodded like a turtle—a footsore, out-of-shape, angry turtle.

To distract myself from my labored breath, and to concentrate on something other than jealousy of my husband—and Jean Claude and Virginie, who both strode easily past me on that hill—I tried to practice my French.

The Chapelle Saint-Jacques-de-Rochegude

Un, deux, trois, quatre, six, sept, neuf, dix . . .

Wait, I was missing something. I started to count on my fingers, out loud, with each step.

Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf, dix!

I didn’t hear the Brothers Grim approaching, but they obviously heard me. As they passed—because everyone passed me on that hill, eventually—their solemn faces were twitching. “C’est bon?” one asked, deadpan.

I might have blushed, but I was already so red no one would notice. I gave them a dramatic shrug and almost got them to laugh as they, too, disappeared up the hill.

I eventually made it to the top of the mini-mountain and found Eric waiting with the bread and apples and cheese we’d wisely purchased the day before in Saint Privat. After we ate, we walked together for the last few kilometers into Saugues.

Once again, we arrived without a plan for where to stay. Once again, the red-and-white stripes led us straight to a gîte de pèlerin.

Two men stood outside, and one of them was speaking English with what sounded like an Australian accent. My relief at hearing my native tongue almost drowned out what he said.

“No beds?” The Australian’s voice was loud, and he carefully enunciated his words the way humans everywhere do when we talk to someone who doesn’t understand us and we’ve run out of other ideas for communication.

The Frenchman beside him shook his head. “Non, non. C’est complet.”

Eric and I joined the conversation as the Frenchman held out a guidebook and pointed to the name of another gîte. There was a street address but no map. The man waved toward something farther down the road, maybe around a corner, and dramatically shrugged. They might have space. Maybe not.

The Australian, Eugene, looked more crestfallen than I felt. He dressed like a colonial tourist of the British Empire, with khaki shorts and pulled-up knee socks, a canvas fishing cap full of pins, and a plastic-covered packet of maps hanging around his neck. He also sagged under the weight of a pack that looked twice as big as mine.

As Eric tried to draw clearer directions from the French pilgrim, I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. Standing still felt like I was putting all my weight onto tender, fresh bruises.

The three of us decided we would go on together and find this new place. Eric, ever helpful, set off at a jog (a jog!). Eugene and I followed as fast as aching muscles allowed, but we didn’t get far before Eric came back to report there was nothing resembling a gîte down that road.

We were still standing there, trying to decide what to do next, when someone behind us called out. “Pardon? Excuse me?” The Frenchman from the “complet” gîte was chasing after us, waving his phone and speaking in Frenglish. He’d called a gîte somewhere and confirmed they had space, and he’d reserved for deux Americans and an Australian. Well, huh. The Camino does provide.

I turned and forced my tired feet to keep up with our guide as he led us toward our reservations. When Eugene asked where the gîte was, I told him I had no idea.

The Frenchman turned in surprise. “You understand him?” He gestured to Eugene.

Well, oui.

“I did not know Americans and Australians understand one another.” He was going out of his way to help us, and I didn’t know how to politely point out that Americans and Australians speak the same language, so I said nothing.

Our new Camino angel took us to a modern-looking building surrounded by children. Like most towns and villages along the Camino, Saugues provided a gîte communal, municipally run and usually a few euros cheaper than a private one. But Saugues was unique in that they combined their gîte with their public school. While kids shrieked and played outside, an efficient, humorless city employee collected our euros, stamped our credentials, and informed us that dinner would be at 7:00. He directed Eric and me to our room, which was bare but private, with two twin beds and a private bathroom.

I looked at the bed longingly, ready to put my feet up for a while, but we still needed food for the next day. So Eric and I took care of showers and laundry (hung properly this time on a clothesline in the small courtyard behind the building) and then went out again.

The only market in town was inexplicably fermé, but we found an open bakery. Eric went to the counter and, uncertain of the protocol, pointed to a baguette. The shopkeeper rattled off a question neither of us understood. We looked at him, hoping for some physical gesture that would give us a clue. The shopkeeper asked the same question, more sharply.

Je ne parle pas français. And then the other French word I’d learned that day. Désolé. I’m sorry.

The baker did not attempt to hide his contempt. He shoved the bread across the counter and scratched something onto a paper. Two euros. He continued to scowl as he took our coin and turned to the next customer. The encounter left us both cringing, reminded that not everyone would be gracious when faced with our lack of French.

We found fruit and cheese in another shop and bought them without incident. There were still two hours until dinner, but the strain of taking care of our basic needs in another language left me with little mental space to admire the architecture. We walked back toward the gîte, prepared for another quiet night, but as we passed a side street I glanced down and saw Eugene sitting alone outside a tiny bar.

The lure of beer and easy conversation redirected our steps, and we joined him. Despite the challenges of an old knee injury, Eugene was enthusiastic about absolutely everything Caminorelated, and the conversation flowed smoothly. We told him about Seattle, and he told us about his home on the southern coast of Australia. He planned to walk to Santiago and started in Le Puy because he had family ties in France and a passion for history.

Our cheery table attracted attention. The Brothers Grim stopped by, and I got them to smile again when I showed off my counting skills. Virginie and a Frenchwoman we’d seen the night before in Saint Privat pulled up a couple of chairs, and Eric poked around the edges of the language with them.

Just as they were stuck on a difficult phrase, a thin, weatheredlooking man passed by, and he stopped to help. Gabriel was fluent in French, English, and Spanish. We bought him a beer, and he told us he was walking GR65 backward, from Santiago to Le Puy, and then perhaps he would go farther. He’d walked all over the world, he said, as far away as Nepal. I noticed his clothes were ragged and his boots worn. He spent almost no money, camping by the side of the road or sleeping in the free rustic pilgrim huts that still occasionally dotted the Way.

The time passed quickly, and before I knew it we were hurrying back to the school/gîte for dinner. For reasons that weren’t clear, a few dozen teenagers also appeared to be spending the night, and their happy voices surrounded the two tables reserved for pilgrims. The Brothers Grim gravitated to a group of French pilgrims, and we joined Eugene and Virginie at the second table, where we could chat in English. Our conversation drifted to the common Camino question: Where will we walk tomorrow?

Virginie was horrified that we had no firm plan. “You must make reservations in France,” she told us. “Especially on weekends, when others also travel.”

As much as I wanted my Camino experience to be unstructured and spontaneous, her warnings sounded dire, especially after the past two days of what felt like close calls.

Our new friends were all going to Le Sauvage, a historic gîte de pèlerin that had been a hospital for pilgrims centuries ago. The Frenchwoman from the bar offered to call and arrange beds for us, and we accepted. But after some chatter in French, she hung up and shook her head.

“C’est complet.” Of course it was.

Guidebooks in multiple languages appeared from pockets and bags, and everyone went to work. Where else could the hapless Americans and the Australian go? We were in a remote part of countryside, and it was generally agreed that we had only two options: we could stop in a town just fourteen kilometers away, or we could continue past Le Sauvage to the next town, which meant walking more than thirty kilometers.

I did the quick math. Eight miles or nineteen? My body, rested and numbed with wine, still shuddered. I looked at Eugene and thought about his knee.

Eric and I did the married-people-mind-reading thing across the table, and he asked the woman to call the closer town, Chanaleilles, and make a reservation for two Americans and an Australian.

Eric and I had left Saint Privat alone, but after a simple gîte breakfast we left Saugues surrounded by friends. The bite in my calves told me we were still gaining altitude, and most of our companions outpaced us by the edge of town.

We walked into a steady wind, which did no favors to our baguette. We’d unwisely left it whole, sticking out of a side pocket of Eric’s backpack like a flagpole. I liked the aesthetic, but the bread was dry as a crouton by lunch.

We meandered along slowly with Eugene and still arrived in Chanaleilles at noon, long before most gîtes opened. The village was tiny, though, so it wasn’t hard to track down our host—a sullen woman who also managed the local bar. She spoke no English but took our money, stamped our credentials, and wordlessly pointed us to a room with a dozen twin beds.

Eric and I took two beds in a corner, and Eugene spread himself out on the other side of the room. As he unpacked his giant bag, I saw batteries, a pharmacy’s worth of medicine, and piles of clothes. No wonder the poor man’s knee hurt.

It took about ten minutes to explore the town, which was set deep in a valley and seemed to have more cows than people, and then there was nothing to do with the long hours of the afternoon except explore my doubts. Should we have kept going, pushing ahead another twenty kilometers? It was hard not to feel like a wimp as I watched people continue to trudge past while I cooled my tender feet in a frigid stream.

I tried to remember that we were pacing for a marathon, not a sprint. Many of the people we’d met, like Virginie, were on short holidays, but Eric and I weren’t flying home until July, regardless of when we reached Santiago. There was no need to rush. When that didn’t help, I reminded myself that this wasn’t a race at all. I would probably never again be in this particular corner of France, and if I moved too fast, I could miss something lovely. That helped a little.

Late in the afternoon, three other pilgrims—athletic French walkers who’d started a day after us and had already caught up—breezed in with easy-looking efficiency. One, a woman our age named Gwen, spoke some English, and the six of us passed a pleasant evening, despite the suspicious stares of the locals in the bar.

Eric listened intently to the French conversations. His accent and vocabulary improved by the hour as he peppered our fellow pilgrims with questions. What is the word for this? How do you say that? He was fearless about testing phrases and seeing what people understood. Within days he could ask basic questions so smoothly that shopkeepers and gîte hosts would rattle back complicated sentences, assuming he was fluent.

No one ever assumed that about me.

The weather the next morning was damp as the six of us climbed steadily into the wild and remote Aubrac. Cultivated farm fields gave way to rocky pastures, populated only by a few furry horses with tangled manes. The trees were bare, the breeze was sharp, and there were still small piles of snow along the trail. Spring, it seemed, was in retreat.

Our new French friends slowed to our pace for the first hour or two, but in late morning broke briskly away. They were bound for a destination twelve kilometers past Les Estrets, the town where Gwen had kindly phoned a reservation for us. By car they would be less than fifteen minutes away from us, but on foot the distance was insurmountable. As we parted, I knew we likely wouldn’t see one another again, given our—well, my—leisurely pace. And we didn’t.

Eric and I walked with Eugene for much of the morning, but eventually his bad knee protested, and he stopped in a sheltered field to rest. “Don’t keep waiting for me,” he assured us. “I’ll make it in time for dinner.”

Eric and I wound on together through towns that seemed deserted, even on a Sunday. In Saint Albans, where we planned to have lunch, the cafes and shops were fermé. I started to wonder if anyone actually lived in this corner of France.

Then, with ten kilometers still to go, something unexpected happened. The mountain goat developed a limp. Something was wrong with Eric’s Achilles tendon. He slowed down. He limped. He took off his sneakers, which rubbed against the tender spot, and walked in his sandals. It helped a little, but he still settled into what another pilgrim, weeks later, would describe as the “tunnel of pain.”

That’s how I found myself in the unusual position of walking ahead of him when a young woman with a floppy hat and a backpack strode out of a farm driveway. “That’s not the way,” she called cheerily, in English. She explained she’d taken a wrong turn and found herself awkwardly standing in a barnyard.

She mistook a driveway for the Camino. In hindsight, I should have paid more attention to that.

I was, however, once again infatuated by the sound of English and happy to have someone to distract me through the final few kilometers of a challenging day, so we walked on together up a shaded country road.

Lara was Swiss. She’d walked all of the Camino Francés in Spain a few years earlier but was here in France for just a few days. She’d catch a bus back home in the morning.

GR65 broke off from the paved road, and we followed a rutted dirt road that took us deeper into the woods. Eric lagged behind, the pain in his ankle making him unusually antisocial. Lara and I chatted about home and travel, but after a while, I mentioned that I hadn’t seen a trail marker for some time. Typically, the red and white stripes of GR65 pop up every few minutes. They’re painted onto fences, the backs of signs, trees, and even on rocks if the ground is flat. They aren’t always easy to spot—walking the Chemin de Saint Jacques often felt like an epic game of Where’s Waldo—but we were following a wooden fence that I thought should be marked.

Lara brushed aside my concern. “Oh no, this is right. This feels like the Camino.”

Well, she’s done this before, I thought, as we continued down a steep hill. Ten minutes later, the road ended at an intersection with another dirt road. There were still no stripes to indicate which way to go, and our guidebook didn’t mention an intersection. We were officially lost.

We dithered around, aching and tired. If we followed the new road in the right direction, we reasoned, it would lead to Les Estrets. But which way? We looked out over a valley, but there were no towns in sight. With no map, no GPS, and no idea when we’d lost our way, there was no way to know.

Our only real choice was to turn around and trudge, silently this time, back up the hill we’d just descended, until we came to the place where we’d missed the flaglike symbol of red and white stripes that indicated a turn off the farm road and onto a smaller footpath. It was late afternoon, and Lara’s reservation was for a town past Les Estrets. She was worried about arriving after dark, so with a wave, she sped up and disappeared down the trail.

Eric never pointed out that it was me who led us astray. He didn’t have to. We limped forward for the final three kilometers. Our detour cost us an hour and a half, and it was almost 5:00 when we stumbled down a final rocky embankment and into Les Estrets. I was exhausted, and my feet felt like they were on fire.

Like a horse that senses its barn, though, I sped up when the end was finally near. Eric was at least a block behind me when I arrived at the gîte. The owner, a gregarious man with a big voice, met me at the door.

“Réserve à deux Americans,” I managed, figuring that those were the important words, even if my syntax was wrong. When Gwen made our reservation, she’d given the host our nationality, not our names. It’s not like there were other Americans out here who were going to show up and take our spot.

“Ah, non!” The man had a florid face and rough English. “You are too late. I give the reservation away.”

For a second, I believed him, and panic stung my eyes. By the next second, I realized I didn’t care if he meant it. I wasn’t leaving.

“No.” I sat on the bench by the door and started to unlace my shoes. (Most gîtes required us to leave walking shoes outside, which made sense, considering how many cow fields we crossed.) I repeated: “Réserve à deux Americans.”

Eric arrived at that moment to find me looking mutinous and the jokester proprietor looking sheepish. Of course, we did still have réservés. We weren’t even the last to arrive, although Eugene had made it ahead of us.

Despite his injury, Eric soldiered on, showering and doing his washing before he allowed himself to rest. Me? I collapsed onto my assigned bed in our room for four and lay there for a long time, on the verge of tired tears. Could I really do this every day for months?

The gîte was full, and the communal dinner that night was noisy. Eugene, Eric, and I staked out an English-speaking corner, and we were joined by a Dutchman named Jan and a young Frenchman named Xavier. Across the room the group we’d met at the orientation in Le Puy flirted with our host and chatted among themselves like kids at camp. I christened them the Eight Walkers.

The wine flowed, perhaps particularly into Jan’s glass. He was a smallish, gnome-like man with rough, guttural English and endearing round glasses. In basic, fractured English, we all connected as our host brought out generous salads and steaming bowls of wild boar that he bragged he’d shot himself. We laughed and carried on through the cheese plates and dessert. I forgot that my feet ached. I felt another glimmer of the Camino I was looking for.

And then, precisely at 9:00, the dishes and wine carafes were whisked away and, feeling a bit bewildered by the abrupt change in emotional energy, I followed my fellow pilgrims off to bed.

Everything I’d heard about late-night life in Europe? Forget it. Pilgrims are asleep by 10:00.