Chapter 11
Two Days Early
The kilometres could be counted.
The farewell could not.
On the stone markers along the Way, the numbers grew smaller each day. Forty-three kilometres. Twenty. Twelve. I knew how far a body could walk in an hour, how many breaks I needed, and roughly when I would reach the next hostel.
I had spent the entire journey measuring distance.
Now the distance was almost gone.
Only then did I understand that it too had held something open.
As long as Santiago lay ahead of me, there was always another morning, another stage, and a bed I had not yet seen. I did not need to know what the walk meant. I only had to get up, pack my rucksack, and follow the arrows.
Soon there would be no more arrows to follow.
◆
On the penultimate morning, I woke in Ribadiso.
The celebration was over. The stream ran past the old walls, and the pilgrims disappeared one by one onto the Way. I put the pack on my back and walked toward Arca (O Pino).
I knew that I would walk into Santiago the next day.
The thought made me happy.
It also made me uneasy.
I had been walking for more than four weeks. Everyday life had been reduced to the essentials: walk, eat, and sleep. My feet had taken over much of the work my head usually did. Every evening I had arrived somewhere I had never been before. Every morning I had left it.
Now I was approaching the place I would not leave on foot.
In a few days I would board a plane. The journey home would take a few hours. The landscape I had spent more than a month walking through would disappear beneath me as colours and lines.
Earlier pilgrims had to walk all the way home again.
I had met a few who did so. They came toward us with the sun in their faces. The rest of us walked west with our shadows in front of us. Those on their way home had theirs behind them.
I imagined what it must be like to turn around at the cathedral and begin the walk home at once.
The body would have time to understand the turning.
Each day Santiago would lie a little farther behind. The road home would not be a return to the same. It would be a new walk through a landscape now seen from the opposite direction.
I would not have that time.
The plane was waiting.
◆
The forest between Ribadiso and Arca (O Pino) changed colour with the light.
It was never simply green. Sunlight fell between the leaves and moved across the path. In some places I walked on asphalt before the arrows led me back among the trees.
There were more people on the Way now.
I sat down at a small roadside inn in Arzúa and ate breakfast while pilgrims walked past. We greeted one another:
“Buen Camino.”
The greeting had followed me across Spain. Now it had a different resonance. A good way could no longer mean only a safe stage or strong legs.
There was so little Way left.
Some of those who passed had begun in Sarria. They were still new to the rhythm. Their shoes were cleaner, their groups tighter, and their conversations louder. They spoke of Santiago as something they could already grasp.
I too had begun that way.
With a goal.
With a plan.
With a route I knew by heart.
The difference was not that I had walked farther than they had. The difference was that the Way had had time to disturb my plan.
◆
In Sarria I had met the Dutch family from Triacastela again—the man who was finally able to walk the last stretch with his wife and daughter, but who held on to a pace only he could sustain. This time I said it plainly: if they did not make it this summer, the cathedral would still be there next year.
Now, as I watched people hurry past the roadside inn in Arzúa, the family returned to my thoughts. I understood better how easily a goal can blind us. What is meant to bring us together can instead divide us when the goal becomes more important than the person walking beside us.
Santiago had stood for centuries.
No one needed to ruin the day in order to reach it.
◆
Later that day I passed small clusters of houses in the forest.
Their names were on signs: Xen, Ras, Brea, Alto de Santa Irene. People lived ordinary lives here while the pilgrims passed through. Clothes hung out to dry. A door stood open. Somewhere food was being prepared.
It did me good to see it.
For those of us on the Way, everything pointed toward Santiago. For the people who lived there, this Sunday was one day among other days. Some might be going to visit family. Some had to work. Some had slept badly.
The world was not waiting for me to reach my goal.
At Santa Irene I considered stopping. The hostel looked inviting, but the door was closed and would not open until later. I walked another kilometre and found a bed in Arca (O Pino).
It was the last bed before Santiago.
A television crew was moving around the hostel, filming for a Spanish morning programme. Perhaps I was filmed as I lay on the bed resting after the day’s stage.
It did not fit well with my idea of a solemn ending.
I was a tired man on a bunk while someone pointed a camera into the room.
The Way had never been obliged to give me the right symbols.
◆
That evening I treated myself to a better dinner.
The wound under my foot was gone. The ankle infection that had almost ended the journey during the first week had subsided. I could walk without guarding every step.
My body felt strong.
I could have continued.
This surprised me. At the beginning I had been afraid my body would not manage to walk eight hundred kilometres. Now, when the kilometres had been used up, it was my body that did not understand why it should stop.
Four young people from Japan were staying in the room. Two of them began to argue. Their voices rose. Later they went to bed without saying goodnight to each other.
I had imagined that the final evening would gather the whole walk together.
Instead I listened to a couple who were angry with each other.
It was almost liberating.
No solemnity could protect us from the ordinary. Even a few kilometres from Santiago, people could misunderstand one another, become angry, and turn their backs.
The goal did not make us complete.
I slept well.
◆
On Monday, 20 July, I got up for the final stage.
I packed the rucksack in the same way as on the other mornings. The sleeping bag was rolled up. My belongings found their usual places. I looked over the bed to make sure nothing had been left behind.
The movements had become habitual.
There was no special way to pack for the last time.
When I lifted the rucksack, I felt its weight across my shoulders. It had not become lighter. Yet I carried it differently from the first day.
I went out.
The forest received me for a while, but asphalt came more often. The sound of cars grew clearer. The houses stood closer together. The body can feel when a large city is approaching. The path slowly loses its own world and becomes part of the road network.
Around me walked excited pilgrims.
Some waved. Some took photographs of one another. We all knew this was the final
day, even though we had begun in different places.
I fell into step with two grown men from Mexico.
They were practising Catholics and had walked the final hundred kilometres for religious reasons. They told me about their pilgrimage and what Santiago meant to them. I listened as we walked.
Their expectation was not mine.
Yet we shared the same direction.
For a while we walked beside one another. Then our pace separated us again.
◆
I passed Lavacolla, near the airport I would fly from two days later.
A plane rose above the trees.
I heard it before I found it in the sky. Up there were people who could cover in a few hours the entire distance I had spent thirty-three days walking.
I myself had flown to the starting point.
I knew that rapid transport was a good thing. Yet the plane seemed alien now. It moved without knowing the ground. No stone pressed against the sole of a foot. No hill forced the body to slow down.
Soon I would be sitting up there.
I still had no understanding of what the transition would do to me.
◆
Then I came to Monte do Gozo—the Hill of Joy.
The name promised a moment.
Here the pilgrim was supposed to catch the first glimpse of Santiago and feel the joy of knowing that the goal was near. I had walked through the stillness I did not find, the obedience I resisted, and the joy that came between people. Now I stood in a place that itself bore the name of joy.
The first thing I encountered was a large monument of concrete and metal.
I did not like it.
It seemed heavy and immovable. The pilgrim had lived in movement, one foot in front of the other. The monument looked as though movement had been stopped and made massive.
Perhaps the reaction was unfair.
But I had seen greatness in a slice of cake, a hand around an injured foot, and a place at a table. I had crossed bridges that carried people without proclaiming their importance.
Joy did not need a large monument.
It had already been there.
◆
After Monte do Gozo came the suburbs.
I followed the yellow arrows between houses, across roads, and through streets. The city did not reveal the cathedral at once. I had to keep looking even after the sign told me I had entered Santiago.
Then the streets changed character.
They became narrower. The stone walls drew closer. The sound of footsteps echoed between the buildings. More pilgrims were walking in the same direction. Some had tears in their eyes. Others laughed and embraced one another.
I walked on with the rucksack on my back.
At last the space opened.
The cathedral stood before me.
It was larger than the photographs had managed to convey. I tried to fit it into the camera, but the building would not be contained in a single image.
I had arrived.
For a moment I waited for the feeling that should correspond to the sentence.
It did not come as one feeling.
I was happy.
I was relieved.
I was tired.
And somewhere beneath all this lay a stillness I could not interpret.
◆
I entered the cathedral with my rucksack.
Mass was about to begin. I found a seat and put the rucksack on the floor in front of me. The dusty pack stood between my feet in the vast church.
It was right that it was there.
It had carried what I needed. It had been too heavy on some days and almost empty on others. It had lain beside the bed in monasteries, municipal hostels, private guesthouses, and a hotel room while my foot tried to heal.
Now it stood in the cathedral.
During the Mass, the great thurible was set in motion. It swung high through the space. The ropes tightened, and the censer swept from side to side above the people.
It was beautiful.
It was also a spectacle.
I allowed myself to be moved and at the same time observed it all from the outside. I had often stood this way in religious spaces: touched, but uncertain what that touch obliged me to believe.
After Mass I joined the queue behind the altar.
When it was my turn, I put my arms around the statue of the Apostle James.
I thanked him for the journey.
It was a strange act for me, but it did not feel false. The thanks did not have to settle what I believed about the relics, the legend, or the miracles. I had come to a place where, for centuries, people had given gratitude a body.
Now I did the same.
◆
Afterward I found the pilgrim office.
I took out the passport.
Every overnight stay had left its mark in it. Some stamps were clear and perfectly round. Others were crooked or faint. They showed monasteries, churches, villages, and hostels. To me they also showed nights, faces, and rooms.
The woman behind the counter examined the passport.
She went through the stamps one by one.
I waited.
Then she added the final stamp.
The requirement had been fulfilled.
She took out a document with Latin text and wrote my name on it. Then she handed it across the counter, shook my hand, and said:
“Congratulations.”
It was done.
A document confirmed that I had completed the pilgrimage route.
I looked at my name.
For many years documents had mattered greatly in my life. Diplomas, appointments, approvals, and finally a doctorate. They said that a piece of work had been assessed and completed.
The pilgrim certificate did the same.
It confirmed the distance.
It confirmed the stamps.
It confirmed the arrival.
But it could not confirm what the Way had done to me.
◆
I found a hotel and booked a room.
Only then did it dawn on me that I had arrived two days ahead of schedule. I had allowed plenty of time, but walked faster than necessary. Now I had two days in Santiago before my flight home.
Two days early.
The words could sound like a victory.
I had not merely done it. I had beaten the schedule.
Yet there was unease in this triumph.
Why had I walked so fast?
I had begun the journey knowing the route by heart. I had wanted to open myself to the unforeseen, while at the same time carrying a strong will to complete the task. Even after the high plain had taught me obedience, part of me had continued counting kilometres and assessing progress.
Now I had saved two days.
What was I going to do with them?
◆
In the hotel room I took off the rucksack.
I set it on the floor.
There was no bunk above me. No stranger was breathing on the other side of the room. No boots stood along the wall. The door could be closed, and the room was mine.
I should have felt freedom.
Instead, I suddenly missed the sounds.
Bags being opened.
Water bottles falling to the floor.
Someone trying to pack quietly before sunrise and waking everyone.
Coughing.
Snoring.
Whispering in languages I did not understand.
Several times during the journey I had longed for privacy. Now I had it and discovered that solitude too had changed.
It was no longer only stillness.
It was the absence of the others.
◆
Kierkegaard’s lily and bird rejoice in the day that is given.
They do not compare today’s distance with yesterday’s. They do not make joy into proof that they have performed better than others.
I was happy to have arrived.
That joy should not be diminished. My body had held. My foot had healed. I had walked all the way from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. I was allowed to be proud.
But the joy of the day was something different from the triumph of completion.
Triumph needed a number.
Eight hundred kilometres.
About 1.6 million steps.
Thirty-three days.
Two days ahead of schedule.
Joy did not need the accounting.
It had been in the forest, at the table, and beside the stream. It had come while the Way was still unfinished.
What mattered most had not waited at the cathedral.
◆
I had reached the goal.
Yet nothing in my body knew how a walk ended.
My feet were ready to walk the next morning. My hands knew how the rucksack should be packed. I would still wake early and listen for the others.
The certificate lay on the table.
The rucksack stood on the floor.
The document said that the route was complete.
The stillness in the room said nothing.
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