Hours later hunger
compels me to dress and look for food. I
am thoroughly taken in by a touting restaurateur and led down into a dungeon
off the main square. The square is
bright and full of happily dining people, why don’t I stay and eat here? But it is a weak moment and I am now
semi-blind, my eyes hurt, my legs hurt, I suppose I want to be cared for,
coddled, and not have to make a decision as to where to eat.
I order, but am given mussels not mushrooms,
the main course is a mediocre something, and I am overcharged on my debit card
by a rather large amount, fifty percent in fact, but I am too blind and cramped
to register it until back in my hotel and horizontal. Once home in my room I
lay on my bed, dealing mentally with the man, too unwell to go back and right
the wrong. As the only deliberately
negative experience along the entire Camino I decide to let it be. I can’t even recall the name of the place to
shame him in print forever.
At night the 36 C drops
to 8 C and the radiators go on. I am
cosy and warm, and welcome the thick blankets which I had earlier pulled
off. In the morning my eyes are normal
and I watch pilgrims going spritely down the street, but I will stay another
day, let my legs return to normal. I buy
organic kefir and peaches, full, sweet and dripping with juice, the like of
which I haven’t tasted in decades – these have been allowed to live out their
allotted span to reach perfection on their trees in the sun.
Cherries I still have from the trees along
the way, and I add a delicious organic gazpacho soup to my purchases, made by,
so the packet tells me, Saint Teresa.
The little grocery store on the corner of the plaza has everything
delicious and I indulge in the breads and cheeses too. It is owned by a woman who seems to care much
for her produce ...
As I cross the plaza I
meet the cheating restaurateur – he has the grace to squirm under my gaze and
scuttles down the lane back to his dungeon!
Why! I think, not entirely surprised at his rapid disappearance, he knew what he was up to and guilt has
caught him. I’ll bet he thought I’d be
gone in the morning with every other one-night-pilgrim who passes through Villafranca
... but here I am, standing here as large as his guilt! I’m rather pleased that I didn’t return to
chide him by quoting Papal Bull, Book and Candle for stealing from a peregrina! What did a friend once say: karma is never cruel but it is uncannily
accurate!
I woke in a low moment
actually, one of those moments of self-doubt and feeling – I dislike the word
but it suits – ugly. Flashes of Mother’s Mantra you are fat, you are stupid, you are ugly
ricochet around my head. Funny how it surfaces to hit me in the face, so to
speak, when faced with a mirror. I
console myself with the thought that Pericles apparently felt the same about
the shape of his head too, and concealed it for posterity to remember him by
always wearing a shining and handsome helmet.
We, Pericles and I, share a keen sense of democracy and fair play –
small coin for a woman who, when all is said and done, would just love to be
pretty and loved. I smile at the comparison and know that I have, at least, a
shining and beautiful humour.
Downstairs I meet Ann
from Brighton, we had met at Gaucelmo. She
stayed last night at Cacabelos for €5 and found the place beautiful, only two
beds in each room, she tells me, and the rooms are built in a horseshoe around
the church. I felt worse then as I had told myself to stay there, marked it in
my Michelin Guide. Walking on to
Villafranca cost me my eyes, my legs, and €60 for two nights in San Francisco! A
CD of songs by Loreena McKennitt is playing in the café; I share with Ann the
breathtaking youtube film by Hikmet Sesinoy, a Chechnyan whose wild mountains,
dancing men, fleet-hooved horses, flying hawks and exquisite women, lifts
McKennitt’s song Night Ride Across The
Caucasus to a level of pure enchantment.
Ann notes it in her diary, will watch it when she gets home. I walk with her to the edge of town, we hug
goodbye, she looks at my feet: they don’t
look like they’ve walked any distance at all, she laughs, they’re beautiful! I laugh too, I only told them they were beautiful this very morning, I respond,
as Ann hugs me again and adds, out of the blue, and you are beautiful too, Zoé.
I know a shadow passes my face; I nod, tell her I probably needed just those words just this morning, thank her, and watch as she walks down the
pilgrim path and over the bridge. She
has chosen to take the mountain path of the three available out of Villafranca.
Following the road I
continue to a café for café con leche,
ponder on how timely things are, how right things just happen when the heart
cries. I pass a very large building and
glance up, aware of a huge poster hanging on its wall. Something calls me across the road to look up
and I strain to read it. Good
Heavens! This Revelation is telling me that St
Francis was here in 1214, 800 years ago.
Is it possible? I didn’t know
that and I’ve read much of St Francis and furthermore I spent ten days in
Assisi over Christmas and no one told me anything about Saint Francis on the
Camino then.
Mind you, no one who is
Christian knows he spent two years with Sultan Malik al-Kamil either, not trying to ‘convert’ him – really,
people are so self-congratulatory –
but sharing like with like as men of God.
Sultan Malik, the nephew of the great Kurd, Saladin, whose exemplary
behaviour towards even the worst of the barbarous Crusaders shames us now, was something
of a mystic, and great souls recognise each other.
In the time it takes to
photograph the poster all these thoughts run through my mind; am I re-tracing
footsteps of past lives? I have my own
Kurd stories and I ponder on the fact of my being here at all. Am I rounding off karmic circles? Completing things? I’ve led such a strange life, been so obedient
to its inner dictates.
In the comfort of
my journal I write the story of St Seraphim in his forest; a woodman or someone
comes to him for spiritual advice and said Father
Seraphim I can hardly look at you, your face is shining like the sun, the light
dazzles me. Saint Seraphim placed
his hands on the man’s shoulders and said you
can see me like this because you are lit by the same dazzling light.
As a man is, so he sees. Blake said that about men chopping down trees
too. It’s almost a commonplace; we see
in others what we are, or what we potentially are. Such a comforting thought, one day I’ll be
nice in spite of Mother’s Mantras! I
like nice people! And then I remember
Father Bede, who stayed with me shortly before he died, telling me I had the
consciousness of the Holy, and that I must continue his journey to the Black
Madonna for him and for women. These are
mighty thoughts for a morning.
I return to the Pilgrim
Bridge and photograph the striding stone peregrino
just as the three Americans arrive. They
are such nice men, we meet and pass from time to time but now we stay awhile
and talk, they too are having a rest day as one of them suffered from the
boiling walk yesterday. Two are walking,
the third is unable to and drives a car to meet them at their hotels each
evening. They are diplomats, one is
based in Paris at the American Embassy, they have walked together many times
over the years. They tell me they have
ditched their John Brierley – dreadful
book, say two of them, found the guidebook of Alison Raju and admire her
intelligence. We chuckle again and Chris
points out the easiest of the three possible roads out for tomorrow.
The Dragonet, or is it the Dragonte, is not
for me, nor the Camino Duro thank you; their names are enough to deter a tired peregrina.
I wander back to the
mediaeval part of town and up to the Door of Pardon, Puerte de Perdón, where in days gone by pilgrims who were too ill
to continue on to Santiago de Compostela would be cleansed of their sins by
touching the door. I too touch the door
and a great sigh escapes me. I’ll deal
with my sins later. But for now I think
that being here and not in Cacabelos is exactly where I am intended to be or I
would not be aware that I am following Saint Francis’ footsteps.
To be continued ... 
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