Sinning Across Spain by Ailsa Piper

Sinning Across Spain by Ailsa Piper

Author:Ailsa Piper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing
Published: 2012-05-20T16:00:00+00:00


16

TentacIÓn

In dense, headily perfumed fog, my phone rang. Barcelona calling.

I have an amigo, I told Leonardo and Ricardo. He is here with me.

Good, they said. Now you will be safe.

Every day they ring, I told my amigo. I said they were llenos de fe—full of faith—because I didn’t know the Spanish for faithful.

Yes, I was in company. When I crept into the kitchen area of the albergue, snores thundering on all sides, my amigo was waiting for me, grin in place.

It was my mother’s birthday. Had she lived, she’d have been seventy-three. I’d wanted to spend a solitary day remembering her and Sue. Not to be.

We loaded our packs with extra water because it was twenty kilometres to the next settlement. Visibility was almost zero as we picked our way along what we hoped was the path. As the fog lifted, I discovered why the perfume was so potent. We’d been walking between banks of rock roses—jaras—and wild lavender.

My amigo taught me new words.

Pájaros carpinteros. Carpenter birds. Woodpeckers!

They tapped furiously on the cork trees—the alcornoques. I repeated that word as I walked. Alcornoque. Alcornoque. Like percussion. My amigo cautioned me against singing my song in public because the Spanish also translate alcornoque as ‘idiot’. ‘Bruto como el alcornoque,’ they say. As stupid as the cork tree. I felt sorry for the maligned alcornoques. Our yellow arrows were painted on their trunks, and they proved totally reliable.

We played the Spanish version of a favourite childhood game, I Spy!

Veo veo. I see. I see.

Que ves? What do you see?

Veo una cosita. I see a little thing.

Que cosita ves? What little thing do you see?

Veo una cosita que comienza con … I see a little thing that begins with …

Little things. Walking triggers pleasure in things like language and rhyme. Poems don’t have to be grown-up and games don’t have to be complex, because landscape fills in the gaps. My amigo spent a good twenty minutes trying to guess my cosita that started with C. When I told him the answer was cielo, he protested.

‘The sky is not a little thing,’ he said.

And he was right. Not out there. Not that day.

The fog was gone. Mystery had been replaced by white light and true blue. Bells rang out from nearby sheep and cows. Distant hills called us on and the fields were a carpet of wildflowers sprouting from Extremadura’s red earth.

Extremadura could be translated as ‘extremely hard’ but it gave me ‘extremely sweet’ walking along picturesque paths, which were made even more memorable by the fact that we had them to ourselves. Just two pilgrims, bright sun and a dirt track.

We stopped after fifteen kilometres at a wayside memorial to a boy who, according to the story, was eaten by a wolf while on his way to a fiesta for St John the Baptist.

El Cruz del Niño Muerto, the guide said. The cross of the dead boy. I pictured my postcard John the Baptist, with only his red robe to protect him from wolves.



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