WHEN WALKING

Home to Santiago – Day 77

Sobrado dos Monxes to A Salceda: 34km

The visiting nuns accidentally lock everyone out of the pilgrim mass this morning. Luckily, we all got well shriven at a beautiful Vespers the night before. It is a shame to miss the ranks of nuns and monks at song and prayer again, but it is my oversleeping and not the nuns that causes me to miss out.

What this does mean is we all end up leaving at about the same time. I find a café that does proper breakfast, and there is everyone filling up: Asia and Mateus, Eric, and Diana.

I give Bernard a call to let him know he should come over from the café that he’s in, so he can join the group. He turns up with Margoz and promptly takes the chair from my table and goes to sit with Asia and Mathias. The superpower shared by a good interpreter and a middle-aged woman is the power to disappear. Margoz observes, finds himself a chair and puts it opposite mine.

I think that my work is done. Bernard is now in with the group and with a mixture of basic Spanish, clowning, and Google translate, he is ready to communicate on his own terms. He leaves with Asia and Mateus after gettingmy blessing. I tell Margoz he can with them too.

I have a meeting this morning at 10 o’clock Spanish time. This means I’ll be walking slowly, or stopping for the two hours it lasts. I need to walk alone. It is lovely to see my former team again, but when I see the others in the meeting, the ones who were in charge of our fate, I am glad to be far away.

I take photographs of kittens while management talks. The meeting finishes while I eat a bocadillo in a little bar.

Back on the road, I get a call from Bernard. He’s not sure which way to go. Asia and Mat are taking a different route. I send him the map and tell him not to wait.

Shortly after this, the paths split, I make a last-minute decision not to take the shortcut I’ve told everyone else about, but to do the extra two kilometres, go via Arzúa, and join the Francés a little early.

When I looked at the map, I remembered the paths after Arzúa, which were green, and I remembered walking past a stone where I saw Zsuzsanna, my first Hungarian pilgrim. I had been happily walking my first two-week holiday Camino, and when I saw her, I didn’t understand that she couldn’t possibly want to be part of the jolly little group I had found. So I started chatting to her and she came along to our fancy albergue and we did all have a lovely evening chatting away.

But looking back now, I think I understand Zsuzsanna a lot more. She had just come off the Norte and joined at Arzúa. She told me about all the wonderful things she’d seen along the coast, waterfalls and eagles and cliffs, and later she also told me how she was walking to try and come to terms with the death of her daughter.

I wonder now how my intrusion struck her then, sitting on that stone at the end of her Camino. But I remember her laughing. I remember her talking with Herbert, who’d also lost a child. I remember us having one fun, joyous evening together before she silently disappeared in the morning.

So my intention is to follow her route, to remember Zsuzsanna, and to remember myself when we met on the rock on the path out of town. “The ghosts of the Camino” is how Iván puts it.

Arzúa is full of pilgrims. All the big routes have converged. So, I decide to look for my favourite cheese shop, and when I find it, I’m greeted with the usual surly service, empty tables and a nice plate of cheese and membrillo. A couple come in nervously to ask about the menu. They are about to leave, unsure, despite the fact it was recommended in the guide. I tell them to come back. It’s worth it.

“ don’t know what to order,” they say. “What did you have?”

I show them the photo I’d just sent to a friend. They ask if they can take a picture of it so they can show it when they come back and not have to deal with the owner again.

On the way out of Arzúa, my name is called out. It’s Johnny and Steve, a couple of lovely Australian pilgrims, whom I meet from time to time. They have finally met some fellow Australians and are very excited about this. Johnny offers me a spoonful of her cheesecake, which I take, like a poor starving orphan passing by. And off I go.

In comes a call from Ivan. I jokingly say, “Don’t tell me the albergue is closed.”

“Not exactly,” he says. “Where are you?”

I tell him I’m in Arzúa, eleven and a half kilometres away. It’s 4:20.

“You need to be here by six,” he says, “or they’ll be closed.”

“Okay, I can do that.”

I don’t know how I think I can do that, but I set off in my racing gear. One hour, two hours, at full pace. I’ll be there at quarter past. They’ll let me in.

I’ve walked at full pace almost all the way. I’ve stopped only once to speak to a Flemish pilgrim who seemed to be having trouble, but she was fine. She also knew the albergue I was going to. “Oh,” she said, “it has a massage shower”. I found a gear I didn’t know I had. When I arrive, it is 6.15 and the albergue owner has waited.

In my room, there is Marta, a very forthright Austrian woman talking to Paloma, a very lovely Mexican girl. She’s telling her about the crime in Mexico City. “I think it’s fine, actually” says “unless, of course, you’re buying drugs or something”.

,Marta replies, “Well, I know criminal very well. I work in the justice system, you know.”

Paloma smiles and just lets her have this .

When Paloma has gone, Martha tells me how she’s lived in England since the eighties and the English love her, and that’s where she feels at home. Bizarrely, despite everything, I do rather like Martha too. She’s so loud and strong and annoying and fully developed as a currently two-dimensional character. It’s also the last day tomorrow, so she need never be anything more. She then tell me she’ll be moving back to Austria after all these years because her mother is unwell. And the third dimension starts to come through.

Finally, Ivan, Bernard and I go for dinner at Margoz’s guesthouse. Bernard and I promenade along the road, friends once more, and even he is delighted by the standard of the food at this ‘Mami-Papi’ restaurant.

To finish, chupitos are ordered all round, but to my surprise, not for me. When Ivan spills his down his trousers, I tell him that’s my curse. But you can’t really wish a curse on Ivan.

It’s jolly. It’s lovely. We all make to walk home.

“Aren’t you going to wait for others” asks Margoz, as I tire of waiting for everyone to sort themselves out.

“I wait for no one,” I say, and vanish once more.