Off the Road

by Hitt, Jack

  “That’s as good a canon as any I could devise,” I quip, and throw my hands up in the air. But I miss the solemnity of what has just happened. For a good Catholic boy who grew up to become a respected Pamplonan banker, his words are heresy: he is denying the world of a hundred generations of his Spanish ancestors. I try to make up for my flippancy by shaking my head with grave concern, but now there is nothing but silence.

  Javier has a wandering eye, and in the contemplative haze of his confession, it cuts loose, strays inward, and disappears. His other eye locks on to the view of the road out the window while he finishes his café con leche. Javier is a sincere man whose earnestness is so pure that it is impossible not to be moved by the gravity of his pilgrimage. He longs to convince himself of his own ideas.

  He asks me why I am walking the road.

  “I used to know,” I tell him with a nervous guffaw, “before I started.”

  He understands this awkward evasion. “Let’s walk,” he says, and hoists his pack on his back.

  Not far on the other side of town, a farmer approaches us and seeks the blessing of passing pilgrims.

  “Please, when you arrive in Santiago, ask Saint James to deliver us from the socialists. They are taxing me to death. I can’t run my farm. See if you can get González out of office.” (Felipe González is the socialist prime minister of Spain who is universally denounced by left- and right-wing voters and then always reelected.)

  Javier and the farmer trade obscene epithets for the prime minister, and then the farmer tells us that we reek like a shut barn. He says that pilgrims smell worse than any ruminant he knows. From his front yard garden he rips out two long sprigs of mint, fashions each into a loop, and hangs one around each of our necks. Then he pops the stem backward and ties it off so that the top spray of mint points back to our noses like a microphone.

  “See, now you don’t have to smell yourselves. It’s the greatest gift I have for pilgrims. Hug the apostle, and pray for lower taxes,” he says, steering us back onto the road.

  According to the old tradition of the road, when a pilgrim arrives in the cathedral in Santiago, he embraces a statue of Saint James and asks for the fulfillment of the wishes of all the people who helped him on the road. Javier swears he will hug Saint James and ask for lower taxes. But neither of them seems especially confident in the apostle’s power against the collusions of González and the European Economic Community.

  Javier walks at twice the speed I do, and I struggle to keep pace. Of course, his backpack is considerably smaller—a sleeping bag, a change of clothes, and a small toilet kit. He hasn’t any of the high-tech machinery I am lugging—tent, mess kit, inflatable air mattress, tube of Instant Fire. And he is a model of contemporary denial. At lunch in a small town, I want to sit down to a plate of lamb chops and greasy Spanish fries, maybe half a carafe of red wine. Javier, though, wins the day. We sit on a rock beneath a tree on an empty plain, throw down a fistful of shelled pistachios, gulp a quart of water, and move on.

  To Javier, all unnecessary distractions violate the spirit of the road. I acquiesce in the presence of someone whose certainty of what he’s doing is so thorough and convincing.

  By two p.m. the sun is slaying me. I’m a redheaded, ruddyfaced six-footer of Viking stock. The unfiltered heat of midday in a freshly plowed field reacts with my skin like a barbiturate. I am groggy, unsteady, and weepy. In order to persuade Javier to rest under the occasional tree, I must nag or cry. He has the tawny skin of a Basque, and his restless energy allows him to insult me with helpful folklore, such as “The best remedy for fatigue is to keep walking in the heat.”

  Up over a ridge, Estella appears as winsomely as her name— the Star. Like so many on the road, this city was founded by French clerics during the Middle Ages. Several French orders benefited from the road, but first among them all was the Abbey of Cluny, which built many of the monasteries and cities along the way. The Gallic presence here was so entrenched and longstanding that until the mid-1700s the street language of Estella was French.

  The yellow arrows for the last half mile into the city are all visible from a ridge. They point straight down a deep gorge in the sloped fields behind a farmhouse and then direct the pilgrim up a zagging route to the edge of town. The asphalt highway, meanwhile, winds upward gently, following the path of least sweat to the city gates. Without even thinking, I step onto the highway. Javier calls out.

  “The arrows point this way,” he says.

  “Yeah, but this road is a bit easier, and I am beat.”

  “But this is the way of the yellow arrows.”

  “Javier, those yellow arrows are simply an attempt to keep us off the highway. Look where they go. Down into the gorge and back up. It’s essentially someone’s driveway.”

  There is no question that I am right. Most of the road suggested by the arrow painters is authentically the old cart routes between towns. But, very often, one can sense that the arrow painters are just trying to keep us away from automobile traffic. Normally I would accept this intention as well meaning and follow them without question. But not today.

  “Javier this is make-work. Why climb down into a valley and back up a steep hill when we don’t need to?”

  “These are the yellow arrows. This is the road.” He can’t break away from the stern authority of the arrows.

  “Do you believe that this long driveway is really the old road?” I ask. The thing is, Javier doesn’t want to walk down there, either. He wants some cold water and a rest. A solid day of walking and sweating is enough. But he can’t convince himself.

  “This is the road,” he says with a crack in his voice.

  “Listen, Javier, do you really think that this is the road? Or is it more likely that the ancient route that approached Estella was widened into a merchant’s road and then in the twentieth century was paved into this highway? I assert, Javier, that the true true road is, in fact, this highway. Medieval pilgrims wouldn’t have just walked into this gorge. They’d follow the main road into town. From this point into town, the highway is the true old authentic actual real pilgrim road.”

  Javier is tortured by my logic. On the one hand he knows I am right. Yet somehow my observations are in conflict with his desire for the true road and the deeper reasons he has for being here. My logic may be clear, but it makes him feel bad. In the end, he is too tired, and he yields. Without comment he stomps off up the highway. It’s almost as if he knew the truth of what I said but would have preferred that I had never spoken it out loud.

  For a moment I feel righteous with my arguments. I have challenged the authenticity of the yellow arrows, the guidebooks, and the unseen experts. Am I not closer to a truth as it might be sung by boozy serfs? Am I not listening to the song of history rather than reading its words? Sure. But when Javier buys me a Coke at the local bar, he’s sullen and quiet. I am suddenly stricken with guilt, as if I have tempted a small boy from attending mass with a raincoat full of porno pictures. Javier and I eat a terse dinner in Estella that night. When I awaken the next morning, he is gone. I search the logical places. But it’s obvious. Tie slipped out of town before dawn.

  A good week into this walk, past Pamplona, the road winds through ragged ugly plains, broken up by a brutal hill or distant ridge. Between the tiny stone villages is th

  e pilgrim’s road, a trail of dusty clods of soil occasionally overtaken by swatches of volunteer wheat. One mo rning I spend hours trying to find a puddle of shade beneath a tree. The infamous Spanish sun appears twice its normal size. In these parts the old pilgrim’s road overlaps the uninhabited corridor where earlier authorities strung heavy electrical lines, thick as ship’s rope. The bulky cables sizzle like agitated crickets.

  Relief does come occasionally, and the pilgrim is tempted to find in the slightest variation of his suffering a sign or a portent. In a fierce heat, I arrive in Los Arcos. I locate the town fountain and plunge my head up to my shoulders directly in the water. I plop down to a lunch of tepid
plums when a group of old men and women signal me over. They are cooking homemade chorizo and fresh bread over a few cinders on the hot stone street.

  I wouldn’t mention these coincidences except that they arrive almost expectedly—as if the suffering of the day entitles me to stumble upon a cookout in town or, another time, a family who takes me in. One extraordinary coincidence takes place with comforting frequency. Outside of Azqueta, I can find no arrow at an intersection of two country roads. Out of nowhere, an old Dodge Valiant appears at the corner. A Spanish man hangs his head out the window. “Pilgrim,” he advises, “continue straight ahead.”

  Farther down the road, a grassy path seems up to no good. Upon approach, a pleasant looking tree has a rotting dog, wearing death’s sinister smile, wedged into the crotch of two limbs. Farther on, an oily bog is inhabited by huge frogs that bark like wild beasts. The landscape is otherwise deceptively barren and unwelcoming. The locals grow white asparagus. This Spanish delicacy is achieved by piling up dirt around each protruding plant so that the sun and the chlorophyll never interact, yielding thick white juicy stalks. In the bars they are delicious, but fields of them resemble rows of freshly filled mass graves. Again the path diverges, and there is no arrow. A man on a bicycle pops into existence. “Pilgrim,” he says, “take the road to the right,” and disappears.

  By midafternoon, on a day more grueling and punishingly hot than the last, I enter the village of Sansol, which seems to mean Holy Sun. There are no open bars or shops. One man working on a truck suggests that if I’m looking for water or bread, I should press on down the next vale and up the hill to Torres del Rio. The time for siesta has arrived and slowed everything, including me, to a near standstill. I can’t go on, but I have no choice. At the edge of Sansol, during a momentary confusion about the road, a woman materializes on a tiny crumbling porch and directs me to the shortest route.

  Torres del Rio is misnamed. It means Towers on the River. There is no river, and the only toweresque thing is a stumpy church steeple. The squib in my guidebook says that this town is so often short of water that the locals store it up during the winter for summer use. I can find no fountain. It is three p.m., and the heat and sun are crippling. No one stirs. I have not seen a human being.

  Everything in town is built of the same yellow stone, so that the squat yellow houses rise up from the yellow bricked streets like baked goods. The air makes a rasping noise, as if it were scratching the hot stones. I see a Spanish widow, dressed in the familiar black weeds, disappear around a corner. I dash to catch her, but with the weight of my pack I turn to stare down an empty cul-de-sac. A dog occupying the only smudge of shade beneath a stone bench snarls territorially when I pass.

  I grow paranoid in these conditions. I sense that people are hiding behind their heavy wooden shades, peeping at me through the cracks. A German tour bus—strange to see—idles along one street, belching waves of heat. I gesture, but the driver motions me to move on. From behind the tinted glass windows, a bright red Teutonic face stares at me as she pulls herself into a coat. The Mercedes air-conditioning must be too chilly.

  At last I come upon a group of kids, Torres del Rio’s version of the Wild Bunch. One boy is scarred menacingly on his cheek. The girls are dressed sluttily, an attempt at heavy metal rebellion. They sulkily direct me to the bar.

  It is closed, of course. My fingers drag on the glass door because the air-conditioning within has caused lovely droplets of condensation to form on the door. I press the side of my face to the glass. I shout for the owner. But in the scorched stillness and stony acoustics of Torres del Rio, my ample voice is useless.

  One of the miracles chronicled in the old books speaks of five eleventh-century knights who swore to accompany each other on the road. When one named Noriberto fell ill, a testy debate ended with three of the knights walking on. Felix, the fourth knight, stayed behind to care for the sick knight. After Noriberto had rested, he got up to walk. Moments later Saint James appeared from the sky on horseback, swept up the two noble pilgrims, and flew them to Santiago.

  This story may sound like harmless myth, a quaint hallucination from the collective mind of desperately tired people. But in the unforgiving sun of the road, impossibility segues easily into improbability, melts into uncanniness, and then registers as quite likely. The pilgrim goes over the details of the story just one more time. Exactly what was it Felix and Noriberto did to get a lift?

  On foot, a pilgrim finds that his mind can get so blurred by the stroke-inducing sunshine that in his reverie he almost believes that he can control these coincidences. Wish hard enough, and that horse will gallop right up. On several occasions I have eaten all the food in my pack, opened it, and found that my stash has reappeared. Empty bottles of water have filled themselves. Money has appeared when I had none. On precisely those occasions when I was out of hard currency and hungry, strangers have offered me meals without prompting. I could go on.

  Standing outside the cold door to the closed bar, I fish through my pockets, looking for money. I intend to wait for the bar to open. Among my coins I feel a piece of paper. On it is written, “Torres del Río. Casa Santa Bárbara.” A few days ago, somebody—a pilgrim, a bartender, a monk, I honestly cannot remember—wrote down the address of this residence because the owner offers help to pilgrims. A few more days in this heat and I would be swearing that the piece of paper just appeared there. Saint James.

  The Wild Bunch directs me to a street on the edge of town. Casa Santa Bárbara is a stunning mansion, a wide boxy symmetry of two-story windows. I’ve struck it rich. A set of hedges frames an impressive entrance of twin doors. Every inch of the yellow stone is blanketed in luxuriously green ivy. Above the doors is a colorful tile depicting Santa Bárbara, the patroness of military artillery. On the ground is a curled wrought-iron boot scrape. I use it and then knock.

  The door opens swiftly to frame the extravagant figure of Ramón Sostres. “I am El Ramón,” he says. Elis hands and arms are outstretched like Il Duce’s, and his sense of drama makes his simple Spanish translate more accurately: “I am the One and Only Ramón.” Which indeed he is.

  He is a tall man for this part of Spain, with a head of hair that appears cut in a single slice of hedge clippers. It stands wildly on end, as if he had managed to sleep on all of it. But who can notice this man’s hair after looking him in the eye? The right one caroms around the socket like a billiard ball, studying every inch of his guest. The other is parked madly in the corner near his nose, a small wedge of black. No pupil. Just one-half of a pair of crossed eyes. His laughter has the staccato rhythms of Woody Woodpecker. Droplets of saliva leap from lip to lip as he talks excitedly. He is dressed in thick hot flannel, bedroom slippers, and several shirts and sweater. I stand dripping with perspiration and look at him again. A sweater.

  The Amazing Ramón steps into his foyer. It is a neatly tiled room, touched up by an Italian table and some thin, modern looking chairs. I drop my pack. There is no air-conditioning on anywhere. Yet, when Ramón taps open his interior door, a lovely soft breeze, as if beckoned, sweeps around him. Soon this small room is as frigid as a cave. I collapse gratefully onto a chair while Ramón buttons his sweater.

  I needn’t call El Ramón a miracle because he is more than happy to do that for me. This is the language that he uses, occasionally punctuating my disbelief at what he says with, “El Ramón is a miracle, is he not?” He is a former literature professor from Barcelona who moved into this house after priests left sixteen years ago. He assumed the tradition of caring for pilgrims.

  “I have kept as many as fifty pilgrims in my house at one time. One pilgrim miraculously conceived here,” he says, his right eye exploding in ribald ricochets. He makes an O with his left hand and runs his right forefinger in and out of it to let me know he’s aware of the miracle’s true source. The Amazing Ramón likes to talk a little dirty.

  “The baby was born in Santiago, and her mother called him Jacobeo—James. He began his life here! Right
here! Where you will stay!”

  I have other things on my mind just now, so I ask Ramón where the bathroom is located.

  “Ramón is a pilgrim, too. My backyard is large and welcoming,” he says. His eyeball does a three sixty, and a mischievous grin unfurls across his face.

  “No, no, you don’t understand,” I venture as tactfully as possible. “I’m not in need of a bush or a tree. My problem is more... serious.” A wincing tightens my features, and language is unnecessary. A two-year-old would understand me.

  Ramón disappears momentarily, returns, and plunges a sheaf of waxy European toilet papers into my chest. He points again to his backyard. I accept his gift and tell him that I will give the matter some thought.

  Ramón escorts me through the foyer to the first door on the left, the pilgrims’ quarters. As my eyes adjust to the penumbra of the extremely dim light, I find myself in a room illuminated by a single low-watt bulb dangling on a fraying cord. The paint has not been touched since this was someone’s elegant drawing room a century ago. The place is empty except for a few discarded car seats, filthied with the hideous smudge of too many sweaty backs and rear ends.

  Ramón is far from being a rich man. He shows me the washroom, a short walk to the rear. It is dank, with a few spigots jutting too far out of blasted holes. The air spangles with flecks of plaster floating in beams of light that radiate through cracks in the walls. There is a cracked tub covered in grime, above which hangs a brittle green garden hose. Water leaks from its crumbling mouth. Out of some residual sense of courtesy, I wash my hands.

  Ramón tells me to make myself at home and disappears upstairs. I hear the crises of a soap opera blare from a distant television. Those late afternoon agonies are recognizable in any language. I hear Ramón clinking glasses and then the voice of a young woman. I feel slightly embarrassed that I have imposed on him during a tryst.