Читать книгу Walking to the End of the World - Beth Jusino - Страница 17

Walking through L’Aubrac was like walking through the legends and stories Eric read as a kid. We’d reached the true highlands of the Massif Central, irregular rolling hills of open, treeless country. It was too early in the year for the herds of cows and sheep that would fill the pastures in summer, so the barren landscape was broken only by stone fences built from the rocks that dotted the landscape.

At least, that’s what Eric told me it looked like. He took it all in with wide eyes and a permanent grin. The idea that a place like this was real made him forget his tender ankle. Four days into a three-month hike, he was already talking about how to come back, dreaming about becoming a perma-pilgrim like Gabriel.

I, on the other hand, trudged along that day with my head down and my feet screaming. I resented every rock on the path that poked my tender, swollen arches. I hurt too much to appreciate the landscape around me.

On the outside, I looked fine. I didn’t have a single ampoule, the blisters that have plagued pilgrims for centuries. And my body above the ankles—apart from the outraged complaints from my lungs when I had to climb a hill—was fine. My shoulders had adjusted to my pack, and my knees and shins never complained. But my feet. My poor, tender, inflamed feet. I had no idea what was wrong with them, but I was pretty sure they were ruining my—and worse, Eric’s—entire Camino.

We started calling my feet The Princesses, because they felt every pea-sized pebble in the road. I set out every morning feeling fine. After a couple hours of walking, the tenderness would kick in. After another hour, each step sent sharp pain straight through me. It felt like I was constantly walking on giant bruises, and every uneven surface in the path was agony.

The only remedy was to stop regularly, take off my shoes, rub my arches back into peace, and rest. But I was traveling with a mountain goat who practically skipped across his fairy-tale land with his own set of worries, like whether we would get to our destination early enough to do all of what he called “the things” (claiming beds, unpacking bags, taking showers, doing laundry, etc.) before everyone else hogged the shower and the laundry line. That man walked with a mission, so I walked through the pain.

I couldn’t Google my problems or distract myself from them with a mind-numbing screen, which made it harder to cover over my misery. Eventually, inevitably, it started to rub into Eric’s good mood.

We both were tense when we arrived in Finieyrols, a cluster of houses too small to be a town, set dramatically in the middle of nowhere. Eric left me slumped on a bench outside while he got us checked into the gîte’s dortoir. After a few minutes of rest and foot massage, I rallied and plowed through my chores. Then I collapsed again on a boulder outside, soaking the late afternoon sun into my bare feet and letting myself imagine everyone’s reactions when I went home and confessed that I’d quit the Camino.

Because, obviously, I wasn’t up for this.

That was my mental state when Eric found me and tried to talk about how far we should go the next day. The towns were still sparse, and we either had to stop after fourteen kilometers again or push through our first thirty-kilometer day. Eric was leaning toward the latter, because it would put us in a better position for future stops.

Thirty kilometers wasn’t an unreasonable number. But when I tried to imagine walking for three hours longer than I had that day, I cracked.

“I can’t do it,” I snapped. And maybe I said some other things.

The muscles in his jaw twitched, or maybe I imagined that. I was sure I could see what he didn’t say. But Eric doesn’t like to argue with me, so he acquiesced. “Fine. We’ll stop in the closer town.”

Eric’s “fine” gets me every time. Guilt flooded over the pain. I hedged. “Well, maybe I can do it.”

My indecision annoyed him even more. “I don’t know what’s wrong,” he said, “and I don’t know how to help you.”

All I could come up with was, “I don’t know how to be helped.” Eric went off to scrub his clothes while I stayed on the rock and sulked.

People we met on the Camino often expressed playful surprise when they found out we were married. “You’re walking together every day for three months? And you’re still married?” I always wanted to say, “No, actually we filed divorce papers at the mairie (city hall) in the last town,” but I never did. Sarcasm is hard to get across to a nonfluent speaker.

We weren’t the only married couple on the Camino, of course. But we met plenty of pilgrims who were married but walking the Camino alone. A long trek like this doesn’t appeal to everyone, and the general consensus was that it was better to leave a partner at home than to try to walk across a country with someone who didn’t want to be there—a thought I suspected Eric was having in Finieyrols while I sat stubbornly on that rock.

Did I really want to quit? I’d known, intellectually, that this would be hard, but it had never occurred to me that I would have to stop. That I would want to stop.

That thought jerked me out of my sulk. Did I want to stop?

I dragged myself off the rock and down to the main building, where I bought a local beer appropriately called Antidote, tucked myself behind a picnic table, and finally looked around. It was stunning. The late afternoon sun cast warm light over hills that went as far as I could see in every direction. I watched two kids hanging over the fence at the edge of the property, trying to pet a couple of shaggy horses.

Yes, my feet hurt, but that didn’t change the crazy beauty all around me. We were in the middle of a remote area that few French citizens see, let alone two American tourists. I’d walked here, and unless those horses were tamer than they looked, I was going to walk out of here, too. We had good weather and new friends. Surely my feet would get better. I would get stronger.

Eric joined me not long after I started to believe my personal pep talk, and I bought him a beer as a peace offering. Without talking, we leaned toward each other and watched the kids play. We both wanted to be here. We would tackle tomorrow together.

At dinner we sat with Eugene and the Eight Walkers. We’d crossed paths with the boisterous group once or twice a day, and they always welcomed us to chat or share a snack. Michelle, the English speaker, explained that they were a walking club from a small town in northern France. They got together for weekly hikes and an annual week-long excursion. The husband of one walker drove a “camping car” with one of their dogs and all their luggage, which explained how they got away with such lightweight day packs on the trail.

Odette, a septuagenarian in the group, took particular delight in Eric, giggling and batting her eyes across the table at him. To my delight, Eric flirted right back. Michelle told me quietly that Odette’s husband died earlier that year, and it had been difficult to convince her to come on this trip, to get away from her grief. Now she was beaming.

I thought the night couldn’t get better, but then our host brought out the aligot, the regional dish of Aubrac. Take a bowl of mashed potatoes and add garlic and a soft, rich, local Cantal cheese. When it’s mixed together, it stretches like dough and has to be cut with a knife. It is as rich and delicious as it sounds.

When our host placed the aligot on the table, we all oohed and aahed appropriately. When she added a bowl of steaming, fragrant cubes of local beef, Eric melted with happiness.

In the glow of the morning light, L’Aubrac stretched toward the horizon in a photogenic landscape, treeless and wild. One of my photos from that day shows Eugene standing on top of a small rise, his enormous red backpack the only bright color on a monochrome field of brown. His back is to me, his hands on his hips, as he surveys what comes next.

For four days we’d shared stories as we walked and communal dinners every evening. I knew about Eugene’s adult children, whom he adored. His divorce, which he regretted. His curiosity about everything from military history to space exploration. I knew his knee caused him more pain than my feet caused me.

As Eric and I passed him that morning, I casually said we’d see him at dinner, if not before. But we never saw Eugene again. I later heard that he’d stopped for the day, aching and tired, in the town fifteen kilometers behind us. As we moved forward in subsequent days and weeks, we heard stories about him sometimes, but he never caught up.

I was surprised to lose Eugene, but he must have seen it coming. He’d asked me to exchange email addresses the first day we met, and by the time we got back to Seattle he’d sent a message. All told, he walked for about five hundred kilometers, but his inflamed knee kept getting worse. A French doctor told him that he needed to rest for at least three months, so he flew back to Australia early. Eric and I have an open invitation to visit him there.

As an American, I’m used to landscapes that take days to drive across. But in southern France, a day’s walk—what I could easily drive in less than half an hour—often carried us through two or even three distinct ecosystems. Every hour was worth paying attention to, because by the next we might be in a totally different environment.

By midmorning we’d passed out of the rocks and away from the wild horses, only to find ourselves on something better: turf. Eric commented that Tolkien would have called these springy meadows—a cross between grass and moss—“the downs.” In mid-April they were bright green under a blue sky. Early flowers bloomed and the air was warm, although lingering patches of snow made it possible to imagine the sudden storms that could descend, even in spring.

L’Aubrac seemed to understand that we were physically battered and still culture-shocked, and she put on her best behavior to welcome us. Well, at least nature welcomed us. Some of the people had other ideas.

We descended around lunchtime into a town that was also, confusingly, called Aubrac. We needed water, a bathroom, and a place to eat our lunch, but Aubrac the town was, of course, fermé.

Our first stop was a visitor’s center that advertised a cafe and a patio overlooking the valley. The sign on the door said they were open from Easter to October, but the employees eating lunch on the patio, complete with espresso shots and a glass carafe of water, ignored us. When Eric tried to talk to them, they shot a barrage of French that came down to fermé.

We huddled at the edge of the deck and ate our dry bread and dwindling supply of sausage while the cheerful party continued. When I asked if I could use the bathroom just inside the door, they waved me away to the center of the village and a locked public toilet.

I was getting used to things in France being arbitrarily closed, but this was the first time a bathroom failed me.

Before I left for the Camino, I worried a lot about bathrooms. If I was going to be outside, walking, for eight or ten or twelve hours a day, where would I, well, go? I couldn’t find consistent answers anywhere, but when we arrived, I happily discovered that almost every town in France, regardless of size, had a public water closet, or WC. They varied widely in cleanliness and modernity, and I learned to always carry a few squares of my own toilet paper, but still, WCs were always there, saving me from the embarrassment of the alternative.

As I’ve mentioned, I don’t camp, which means I never had to master the art of the female squat. As an adult, I learned an awkward variation, which required holding on to a tree. That’s probably too much information, but it’s relevant here because Eric and I had just spent five hours walking across soft, green, bare landscape. It was all very exposed. And now we were in a fermé village full of people, including nonhospitable visitorscenter workers who were happy to watch tourists wander in circles around locked buildings.

My temper rose with the tension in my bladder, but the visitorscenter workers just went back inside and locked the doors. The only other way to get access to modern plumbing was to go to the only restaurant in town and order cafés we didn’t need. Which meant, of course, that in half an hour I would need another WC.

Fortunately, after Aubrac, the trees came back. For ten kilometers, we wound steeply downhill through a forest of oaks and chestnuts. The older pilgrims around us groaned and pointed at their knees, but I was much happier walking downhill in the shade than uphill in the sun. When we arrived in Saint-Chelyd’Aubrac, deep in a valley and spread over a stream, we’d walked thirty kilometers, and I hadn’t felt as good in days.

Such is a paradox of the Camino: often a “good day” or a “bad day” happens despite the distance, not because of it.

The previous night Michelle had made a reservation for us at a private gîte on the outskirts of town. There were only three other pilgrims there that evening: a pretty young Parisian named Stephanie, who was fluent in English, and two stern-looking older Frenchwomen, who were not.

As we gathered around the dinner table, I noticed that one of the older women had a bandage on her hand and a deep bruise forming on her face under her glasses. She looked shaken. As our host brought out thick vegetable soup and a casserole of potatoes and duck confit, she told her story, which Stephanie translated.

Apparently, as the two women descended the last steep hill into town, the injured one tripped and started to fall forward. Human instinct would have had her put her hands up to catch herself, protecting her face, but the woman was using walking poles, and in her panic she didn’t let go of them. She face-planted onto a rock, bruising her eye but somehow not breaking her glasses.

The woman still seemed upset, but she mimed her fall and the impact of hitting the rock so well that Eric burst into laughter.

Now, my husband has a big, rich, loud laugh that fills a room. Usually, it’s wonderful, but that night I froze, trying to read the change in the air. Did he seem rude? Would she be offended?

Not at all. The injured woman smiled for the first time, and then she laughed. Eric had another fan.

Wearing sandals had relieved the pressure on Eric’s Achilles tendon, but as he got ready the next morning, we realized that it had caused another problem: the dreaded ampoule finally struck, and in an awkward place between his toes.

We stopped to buy supplies at a market that was miraculously open, and when Eric sat down outside to adjust a bandage over his blister, he was immediately surrounded by concerned pilgrims. The two women from dinner offered their antibiotic ointment. A Frenchman we’d never seen before waved away our American adhesive bandages and whipped out his own (presumably superior) supply. Others paused with opinions.

When we finally got on the road, we joined the Eight Walkers for a while along a wooded path, teasing them and being teased in return. Odette continued to make eyes at Eric. As we joked, I noticed our language barrier seemed to be shrinking. Maybe I understood a few more words, but I was also getting better at paying attention. I couldn’t think about other things while also miming my way through Frenglish. I had to stop worrying about whether my floppy sun hat made me look dumb, or about how my left toes were starting to ache again. These conversations needed my full attention.

We split with the Walkers when they stopped to wait for their camper car and lunch. The trail continued to run perpendicular to rivers and streams, and as the morning wore on we climbed and descended several times through forests full of chestnut trees. Despite the hills, I loved the woods and the soft, padded ground. I loved the shade and the way the trees framed pastoral valleys and lonely stone cottages.

Eric, it turned out, was not having the same experience. Wearing sneakers protected his blister but ate into his ankle. Wearing sandals protected his ankle but rubbed the blister on his toe. He soaked his feet in an icy stream when we stopped for a break, but found little relief when we were moving.

Two days earlier, my feet had beaten me. Today, his were winning. “I have one job to do, and I can’t do it,” he said in exasperation.

Fortunately, we were past the most remote portion of wilderness, and we had more options. When we saw the spires of Saint-Côme-d’Olt rising in front of us, we tossed the plan to walk another ten kilometers. According to the guidebook, there was a gîte communal here, and the book even indicated that the hosts spoke English. If they had room, we agreed, we would stop. I repeated what was becoming my mantra: We weren’t in a hurry, and this wasn’t a race.

That spontaneous decision, driven by the only blister either of us had on the whole Camino, led to one of my favorite afternoons in France.

The twelfth-century heart of Saint-Côme-d’Olt is walled and medieval. To enter, we passed through a narrow gate and discovered the kind of twisted, cobblestone streets that could never support modern technology or cars, but even as I thought about the impossibility, a tiny French hatchback zipped by.

The gîte was as old as the town. A door right in the thick city wall led us up steep stone steps, deeply rutted by the thousands of feet that had passed the same way. In a long, narrow common room a man introduced himself as Sylvain, from Montreal, and welcomed us in English.

“You’re the Americans! I heard you were coming!”

Wait, what? “We didn’t know until ten minutes ago that we would be here,” I stammered. “How did you . . . ”

He laughed and waved us to rest at the table. “It is Radio Camino,” he explained. “There are no secrets along the Way.” Someone who had met us, perhaps Gwen, had stayed here the night before. It was natural to tell the Canadian host about two other English speakers on the trail.

Sylvain led us up another flight of stairs to our low-ceilinged room. Four bunk beds stood on a rough wooden floor, but Sylvain said that so early in the season we’d have the space to ourselves. The walls were stone, and casement windows opened out to a view of tiled roofs and the uniquely twisted steeple of the town’s church.

Every quirky corner and dark beam here made me happy. Eric could have the wild country. This was my kind of fairy tale.

I left Eric sitting in the sun, doctoring his feet, and went out to explore what the guidebook said was one of France’s most beautiful villages. Streets jutted at odd angles and wove in circles, with arches and unexpected staircases turning every alley into a postcard-worthy picture. The sixteenth-century church—practically modern history for France—was unlocked and deserted, and I explored it slowly, taking in the statues of the saints and the way the late afternoon sun glowed in the stained-glass windows.

I reveled in the chance to linger and study an image of Saint Roch, the popular figure who seemed to grace almost every roadside chapel of the region. In a sometimes overwhelming lineup of saints, Roch stands out. In every image, no matter how simple or ornate, he’s always lifting the hem of his robe and showing off more than a little thigh. And there’s always a dog leaning adoringly against his leg. Who was this flirt?

Saint Roch, I later learned, was a French nobleman who lived in the early fourteenth century. Both his parents died when he was twenty, and the pious Roch gave up his inheritance, sold all of his possessions, and set out on a pilgrimage to Rome. This being the Middle Ages, there were plagues and mysterious illnesses afflicting the Italian towns along the way. Roch stopped often and cared for the sick and dying, frequently healing them miraculously either by touch or the sign of the cross.

But hanging around contagious people has its price. Eventually Roch contracted the plague himself, and he went to the woods to die. He built a shelter of branches, and a spring rose miraculously from the ground to provide him with a steady supply of fresh water. Then a local nobleman’s hunting dog brought him bread and licked his plague wounds, which began to heal. Well, that explained the paintings and statues. He’s not flashing us; he’s showing off a plague wound.

Miraculously cured, Roch returned home to France. His uncle, failing to recognize him, arrested him and accused him of being a spy. Roch did not reveal his identity because he did not want to glorify himself. He died in prison five years later. I’m not sure what the takeaway of that last part is supposed to be, but I was becoming quite loyal to Saint Roch, the patron saint of dogs and knee problems.

After a long, quiet time in the church, I meandered to an outdoor cafe, where I sipped a Leffe beer and half-heartedly caught up on my journal while watching the people go by.

“C’est bon?” the Brothers Grim asked, when they paused by my table to say hello.

Oui. C’est bon indeed.

When dinnertime approached, I went back to the city wall and my home for the night. A small group of pilgrims gathered at a long wooden table to share a simple curry dinner with Sylvain and his wife, Sabine. The couple had met on the Camino ten years ago, Sylvain explained, and walked to Santiago together. He moved from Canada to France to marry Sabine, and now they ran this gîte for the city while saving money to open a pilgrim house of their own.

As the wine flowed, Sylvain described what he’d learned from his time as a pilgrim. “It is a monastic life,” he said. “You wake up, you walk. When you arrive, you take care of your feet, you take care of your basic needs, and you eat. Do it day after day, and it becomes a meditation.”

He’d hit on one of the things that had been scratching at my mind all week. We walk, we eat, we sleep. Is this it?

According to Sylvain, yes. And the way he said it, it was enough.