Incompatible

by Mauricio R B Campos

  “Do you know the story?”

  “I’m not too fond of fantastic stories, but in this case, I had to make an exception, all in all, people always attach my name to the cavalry stories. I think at last all envied Lancelot; this caused the destruction of

  Avalon.”

  Since she had difficulty to raise the heavy suitcase, he helped her, and to break the ice he asked her what she was meditating about.

  She smiled and said she wasn’t meditating about anything, that wasn’t how it worked.

  “And how does it work?” He wanted to learn, whist they started walking, following the remaining people.

  “Meditating is trying not to think of anything, not to move, only feel the emptiness.”

  “Is it possible not to think of anything?”

  “After much training they say it is, but I didn’t manage to achieve it yet. The mind is always manifesting and when we try not to think of anything, it feels like we get bombarded by thoughts that grow even from unconsciousness.”

  Arthur contemplated her black eyes that looked at the road ahead. His interest was always concerning the more practical aspects of life, sports, health, finances and business. Strategies for the development of human power. Meditation, yin-yang and this kind of new age things always seemed to be a kind of senseless escapism. He recalled he had entered one of those mystic articles shops once or twice and found them all the same: incense scent, Enya or something sleepier in the loudspeakers, a woman faced like a modern witch behind the counter and shelves full of useless and beautiful odds and sods. Not thinking of anything? What could be the use of achieving it? Wouldn’t it be the height of waste of time?

  “It’s a little esoteric” he stated, competing his thinking, still believing that María did not seem like the one he had found at Viena Capellanes.

  “It’s your body, your mind, your reality. You live in them and think it’s strange or even bizarre to think about it?” She asked.

  That response got him like a train. Was not this the question he had had during the last times?

  CHAPTER 12

  Arthur slept in Triacastela at a rural lodge. He arrived so tired that all he could think about was taking a shower and sleeping. They had stopped in restaurant for pilgrims where he enjoyed a strong meal, surprised with his hunger. The sun was inclement at that stretch, which made conversations more difficult, because they had to save breath to go ahead with the journey.

  On the next day, they followed a track of extreme beauty that passed by the Monastery of Samos. The Monastery Saint Julião de Samos is on a gigantic construction like a castell, on which three architecture styles live together: late-gothic, Renaissance and baroque styles. It underwent several fires along its history, the last one in 1959, when it was rebuilt. There were no more monks living in the edification that currently shelters an education center of the Church and a lodging for the travelers of the Way of Santiago.

  During the visit to the monastery, he talked again to María, who he was accompanying by distance along the journey. He met her when she was walking through the elegant cloister gardens, where a statue of the saint that named the monastery was impressively raised, observing the emerald grass where living fences formed symmetric geometric drawings that seen from above would form the drawing of a big cross.

  “I tried not thinking of anything last night, but I confess it wasn’t possible” he said, striking up a conversation.

  “Oh, really? And what did you feel?” “Nothing, I slept. I was terribly tired.”

  She laughed:

  “Try it for five minutes once a day. After some time, you can get rid of all the thoughts. In the beginning, it’ll be difficult, and these moments of full abstraction will not last more than one or two seconds.”

  “What then? What happens?”

  “Only you can answer this question.”

  Typical answer of the esoteric people, he thought. When there’s no answer, the option is clinging to this sentimentalism. It’s inside of you. When it’s time you shall know.

  “What is this tattoo in your arm?” he asked, still surprised by the strange star sheltering the yin-yang symbol.

  “It’s a symbol I’ve created. The eight tips sphere is called chaosphere. Inside of it I have yin-yang, symbolizing the two mains basic opposite and complimentary powers that are in all things: yin is the female principle, night, Moon, passivity, absorption. Yang is the male principle, the Sun, the day, the light and the activity. With this I meant that everything is inside the chaosphere.”

  Arthur kept silent and observed the statue of Saint Julião de Samos.

  María was a cute brown-haired girl, but her ideas were too weird. Actually, he felt that esoteric system was incomparable with what he noticed in reality. When the tour guide appeared to call them, with his little flag stuck in his suitcase, the pilgrim followed him willingly getting away from María during the rest of the trip.

  They headed to Sarria, where the Brazilian reunited with the comfort of a hotel. He took a shower, ate a delicious doble x-burger, ordered in the reception, took a muscle relaxant to relieve from the violent pain in the calf and, when he lied down in bed, he slept like a child.

  CHAPTER 13

  The Way of Santiago kept on for Arthur with its intrinsic characteristics: pain in his body, mainly in his legs and feet, a very strong hunger, tiredness and many, many moments of introspection. It does not mean he had got around from the group, but after some time, he had no mood to talk; it is necessary to keep the breath for long walks, and the intervals are too short. The more he introjected, the more he realized something in his perception of the world that was wrong, but he could not say what. In the other hand, a certainty concerning things that did not fill up the emptiness he felt in his chest would grow wider: the catholic religion did not touch his soul not even there at that holy and sanctified way; let alone María’s confused esotericism...

  He was on the seventh pilgrimage day already, walking by the way that binds Palas de Rei to Arzua, through a dirt road that, by cutting the plain, would divide a greening meadow, observing from a mountain whose shape reminded vaguely of the crest of a shark, when he had an interesting conversation. It was with a woman who might have been over fifty years old, a little out of shape, short and red haired, the face with many expression marks and lively green eyes. She approached him while he walked and asked him about the friendships he had made in the way, speaking in Spanish.

  “I knew many nice people in the way” he answered politely.

  “I’m Mercedes, from Lugo, Galicia. And you, where’re you from?”

  By imitating the way, she had introduced herself, he answered with a smile faced with the charismatic figure:

  “My name is Arthur, I’m Brazilian, from São Carlos.”

  “So, tell me, have you achieved the illumination you were looking for?”

  “Forgive me for the frankness, but speaking like this it sounds a little...” he made a pause searching for the word, but she completed the sentence:

  “Idiot? Is this the word you look for?”

  He agreed:

  “You know, Brazilian, I’ve been treading this way for 14 years and I’ve learnt how to realize the kinds of walkers I find. Most people imagine the Way of Santiago is more or less like the road to Damascus. As if a light would come from the skies and show you the direction to follow in your life from that moment on.”

  “Does it seem so obvious like this?”

  “You remind me of my son. There was a time at which he got a bit lost, without knowing his function in the world. She stared at him. After this, she contemplated the sky where distant clouds announced rain for the next hours.”

  * * *

  On the tenth day of travel, the pilgrims finally arrived at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Arthur’s group entered the main aisle and contemplated the Portico da Gloria, sculpted in stone by Master Mateo. The portico represents the celestial Jerusalem, as described in the Apocalypse. It is formed
by three arches, each turned to each aisle of the church. The arch of the right door represents the Final Judgment. The arch of the left door represents Old Testament episodes.

  In the central arch, in the middle of the tympanum, one may find the

  Christ, the Pantocrator: a Christ in all his glory after the Final Judgment.

  Christ shows his stigmas, as a sign of triumph over pain and death. The Messiah is surrounded by the four evangelists. By his side, there are the angels that hold the symbols of the Passion, like the Cross and the crown of thorns. Displayed in circumference arch (within the archivolt), we recognize 24 elderlies of the Apocalypse, most of whom holding a music instrument: they are playing a symphony in honor of God. By the feed of Christ, we can see the apostle of Compostela.

  The Catholics formed line to enter and confess before going to Santiago’s grave. There were confessionals’ windows in several languages, so that pilgrims from all over the world could find forgiveness for their sins. He did not feel he had sins to confess and moved to the rest of the visit. He visited the apostle’s grave and other parts of the cathedral. The main aisle and other parts in which they maintained the Roman style, with predominance of stone and enormous heights, seemed more beautiful and harmonious to him than the parts where gold and the baroque were meddled and polluted the landscape with a number of ornaments and cloths and statues that were so close to each other that he had the impression the sky was a tight place.

  In the crypt he had the same sensation that Capela dos Milagres, but astonishingly intensified. There was something there that even he could feel in the atmosphere. He left to a square and sat on a little wall that separated the garden from the stone streets that surrounded the cathedral. In the garden, rose-shaded flowers remarked before the impressiveness of the pastel shades of the cathedral.

  He remembered having seen Ana in the line of the confessional box for Portuguese. He did not understand well the reason why a spiritist needed the bless from a priest, but he kept it away in the section of nonsense things somewhere in his brain.

  “Hi, pilgrim!” a familiar voice drew his attention, it was Mercedes, the Galician red-haired with whom he changed a dozen words in the way.

  He smiled in return:

  “Hi. How nice to see you again here!”

  “So? Are you a new man yet?”

  He shook his head:

  “I think it doesn’t work like this; don’t you think? But now I have bubbles in my feet.”

  She kept on smiling and showed him her crushed card.

  “It must be worthy to have rough feet.”

  Arthur looked at the card that he took from the woman. The card was black with letters white in high relief, the word F E R M IN in Times New Roman and in the phone number in the back.

  “What’s this?”

  “If treading the way hasn’t changed you, you should look for him. Since you’re here. This is Fermin, for you that comes from Brazil, I can say he would be the Galician Paulo Coelho.”

  “A wizard?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know if I’m into esotericism, Mercedes.”

  “Alright. What have you come here for? A reasonable explanation?

  Who are you trying to deceive?”

  “Humm... Actually, what can a wizard do to me?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not a wizard. I’m a good catholic. For me, treading this sacred way and praying at the feet of the Greater Santiago is enough to renew my faith. I don’t have doubts. But it sounds like this is a characteristic of my generation; perhaps the way we were raised, I don’t know. You, the youth, have access to so much thing that you get lost, as if you were unable to decide between many things. You end up not deciding for any.”

  He smiled.

  “My mother used to say that much television would harm the health” she added “She had no idea what this kind of internet was” she ribbed.

  “And how is your son today?”

  “He didn’t become any witch or something like this, if it’s what you’re thinking. Fermin only made him think clearly, review some of his positions. My son says he’s more of an oracle than a wizard.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “So, think, but don’t say that won’t happen to you, and take it easy. Rome was not made on one day. Pay a Visit to Fermin, take benefit from whatever you can, discard what you have to, at last, not everything that shines are gold.”

  The lady lay her hand on his shoulder and gave him a last smile before heading to the cathedral:

  “God bless you and Santiago protect you.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Arthur finished the call. The agency’s employee had managed to rearrange his flight to the next week, which would assure him time to go calmly up to Vigo and get to know Fermin, the wizard; he even received the guidelines to arrive at the other city by bus, by using the services of Renfe Operadora. The route was short, it didn’t even take one hour and a half.

  Since he had the phone in hands, he called the number on the back of the card with the enigmatic Fermin’s number. The phone rang until the connection was out. Have I canceled my flight for nothing? He dialed again, the hotel code and the number of telephones that rang almost until getting out, but this time a hoarse voice answered, in Spanish, by saying only this:

  “Fermin.”

  “Hello, I received your card and I’m calling to arrange a visit, please.”

  “Humm...” the voice hesitated in the other side of the line, as if considering something. “Who gave you this card?”

  “Mercedes.”

  “I don’t remember any Mercedes. Where was it?” He questioned.

  Arthur remained uncomfortable, he didn’t expect the man would treat him in such a harsh manner; at last, this was not his breadwinner?

  How eccentric! It might not be this Fermin!

  “In Santiago de Compostela. I found her in the Way.”

  “Ahn, I think I know, it’s a woman that gives people my cards with my phone number to the pilgrims as if I was a Merlin or something like.”

  “Can we arrange the visit?” the Brazilian man was already beginning to become impatient with such a reluctance.

  “No. I don’t arrange visits, I don’t know what kind of thing that crazy woman told you about me, but I’m not a kind of astrologist or hand-reader. But if you bring half a dozen cold 1906 “Las Coloradas”, you will be welcome.”

  “It’s a matter of saying when, but if it can be soon, I’d appreciate, because I have canceled my return to Brazil because of this.”

  “Humm... Today it’s Tuesday...” he made a pause, as if calculating mentally or perhaps he was researching his schedule in a smartphone “you can come on Thursday afternoon. And don’t forget.”

  “What?”

  “I want the cold coloradas.”

  “Hum, ok. The card she gave me doesn’t bring your address. Where can I meet you?”

  The oracle smiled:

  “At least this, at least I won’t be obliged to receive pilgrims at my house door.”

  And after saying his address he hanged-up the phone.

  Arthur kept looking at the sheet of the notepad with the watermark of the hotel where he took the address, wondering if it was not a big nonsense. Was it his impression or Mercedes had printed those enigmatic cards of Fermin without the oracle’s consent? Who would be the madder of the two of them? Fermin or Mercedes? Or would it be him for getting into a road to nowhere? How about Fermin’s reluctance, how to explain? Would they be adjusted in some strange marketing strategy to get people for their sect? Where have I put myself? He thought. But Fermin seemed kind considering the Spanish stiffness standard. He sat in the bed of the hotel and stared at the TV set on, but with mute function working. In the screen, a weather info graphic in all regions of Spain. He took his mobile and checked Google by Vigo, searching for attractions to have fun since he had extended his trip.

  He became interested in the Cervexería Nós brewer, typically Gali
cian. What would be a typical Galician brewery? It was worth discovering, the breadfruits seemed to be delicious in the picture presented in internet. He decided to go there on the following day, he could visit that house at the coming night. For the last night in Santiago de Compostela he decided to visit the Taverna do Bispo (Bishop Tavern), that promised good breadfruits, especially the mini lobster bruschetta’s and the shrimp tortillas, in addition of a large beer menu.

  CHAPTER 15

  Arthur arrived at the little street, where, according to the mobile application, he would reach the wizard’s house. The narrow way was an uphill surrounded by walls made of stone by both sides. On the left side there was a wall of a ruined construction, on the right side there was a high wall of settled stones, the walls of the bottom of a house. By stepping on the floor where white sand divided the gaps of the rocks with a greenish slime, he went up heading to the top of the mountain where an old house of stone would draw attention for the vain of the one-metered door, sheltering a round door of solid wood. A medieval flashlight was stuck to the wall. On the upper floor, small windows showed thick iron grids, there was a little roof on this part of the construction that projected from the big wall he had just surround. The building had a third floor where a verandah was projected, facing the coast of the biggest Galician city.

  The bronze latch with the size of a closed fist had the format of an East Dragon, delicately worked. The visitor knocked three times on the thick door made of rustic wood. A part of him could not yet believe he was getting into the rabbit hole like that. This same part reminded him of some horror movies that could be used in his story as a plot. Tourists, that horrible movie where some Americans visit Brazil only to discover that, if someone wants to steal your organs in a foreign country, it is no use screaming. Another film that came to his mind was Hostel, a cheap production about tourists that discover the horror in an establishment of East Europe. Another part of him that did not allow being impressed by the cinematographic trash made him smile by thinking how absurd this kind of thought was. This was the strange smile that Fermin found when he opened the door and greeted him: