Last night, as soon as I heard Fiona going into her room, I got ready to run for cover into mine. I felt a bit like Kevin Costner in The Untouchables when, just before the first raid against Al Capone, Sean Connery warns him that if he “walks through that door, he’s walking into a world of trouble and there’s no turning back”. In my case, I was certain that by walking through that door I’d be walking into a world of snoring and broken wind which would almost certainly keep me awake all night, but if my goal was to become the new object of Fiona’s affection, without a clerical collar in my case, there was nothing else for it.
You couldn’t breathe inside the room due to an absolutely unbearable concoction of smelly feet and chorizo burps, along with snores that were hitting every single musical scale out there. The room consisted of two French couples, three retired Catalans, Eva, her father and yours truly. Right from the very beginning I knew I wasn’t going to sleep a wink and despite the fact I tried several times and even zipped my sleeping bag right up to the top as if I was a dead Pharaoh, my efforts were in vain. At about two in the morning I accepted my damn fate: not even by counting the entire sheep population of Spain was I going to be able to sleep, so, just like a soldier on guard duty, I decided to prepare a report for the NCO in charge of the garrison on all the relevant events that took place in the room throughout the night, which are detailed below:
02:00am: The Philharmonic orchestra from Baix Penedés in Catalonia perform the three man snoring version of "Els Segadors".
02:15am: Wind is broken in C sharp from the French sector.
02:30am: Disorientated, Fiona opens the door and comes into our room. After a few seconds of traipsing up and down the spaces in between the bunk beds as if she’s Pacman, she finds the door and leaves the room.
02:45am: One of the French women gets up to go to the bathroom. I sit up in my top bunk and as I turn towards the hallway, I can make out a little flashing green light in the darkness. I conclude that Fiona can’t sleep and is outside her room anxiously sucking on her electronic cigarette.
03:00am: Another salute from our dear neighbours from the other side of the Pyrenees.
03:02am: Retort from two of the harquebusier Catalans who, due to the small room, have the same effect on the French troops as the drum roll of the young drummer boy had on Napoleon’s in the Battle of the Bruch. A ceasefire is declared.
03:15am: Dave, Eva’s father, gets up to go to the bathroom. So many coloured pills can’t be good for you.
03:30am: As if she were a contestant on “Takeshi’s Castle” doing the maze challenge, Fiona stealthily pushes the door of our room open only to let go again, repulsed by the stench, and quickly went back to hers.
04:00am: The clank of coins hitting the floor in the hallway. I deduce that Fiona has confused the luggage lockers with a drinks vending machine and all her savings fell to the floor as she was going to get a tin of beer.
04:30am: Just as it seemed I had dozed off, I open one eye to discover how Dave, Eva’s father, is leading Fiona by the hand, like a small child, to our door to show her where her room is. The Irish lady got disorientated again and got into the Californian’s bed.
05:00am: The “Quinto Levanta” is playing in the French bunks. An unpleasant alarm clock sound that no one can manage to silence.
05:15am: So as not to wake anyone up by turning on the lights, the French ones have put a miner’s light on their heads that they could have lit a football pitch with. All it would have taken was for them to start talking with a megaphone and we would have all left the hostel with our hands in the air.
05:30am: After half an hour of rustling around in plastic bags and talking as if they were alone, the French couples leave the room.
06:00am: Just when I thought I might be able to sleep at least a couple of hours, the three tenors from Baix Penedés start to delight us again with their repertoire of snores.
It was around half past seven in the morning when I finally got up out of my sleeping bag and headed for the bathroom to take a cold shower which managed to clear my head a bit. As if I hadn’t had my fill during the night, on my way to the bathroom I bumped into Fiona who gave me the worst news I’d heard in these two weeks of pilgrimage: she’s going back to Ireland. She can’t take it anymore. My literary muse, the woman whose story could have given me a bestseller is leaving, returning to her island, sick of sleeping with strangers who don’t have any consideration for a lady who smells of jasmine and whose lifeless body, anesthetised by the wine, apparently does not emit gases of any kind.
After breakfast I saw Eva who was ready to do the first five kilometres of the route and then take a bus to Burgos as her feet haven’t recovered and she’s finding it difficult to walk. I suggested that she check the bus times as I didn’t think buses would be stopping in towns with few inhabitants, like the ones we’re passing through, every half an hour. Waiting for us outside the hostel was Kevin, the Irish guy, and his mother who wasn’t one bit happy when Eva told her that her father had left for Burgos a good while ago.
If it wasn’t for the pleasant company, today’s route would have been a bit of a drag. We entered the Plateau of Castile where the majority of the Camino ran through flat land. We only had to overcome the Atapuerca Mountains, whose pass would have been a little hard if it wasn’t for the sheer number of kilometres we had already racked up. There is a cross at the top of the pass where Philomena left a stone on which she painted a shamrock in remembrance of one of her eleven siblings who recently died from cancer. Eva couldn’t find a bus in Atapuerca, the first town where we stopped so she decided to give it one last push to Burgos, where her father promised her that they would rest for a day.
It took forever to get to Burgos. The last ten kilometres, through industrial parks and suburban neighbourhoods, were never-ending. It goes without saying that your feet tire quicker on hard concrete than they do when walking in the countryside. On this last part Eva was telling me that she was a bit erratic during her teenage years and gave her parents a rough time of it for a few years. I’m sensing that the majority of the tattoos that adorn her body are from around that time too. I think getting back on track with her father after those strained years is another reason why the Californian girl is here.
In Burgos I met Juanma, the uncle of my great friend Bosco. Actually, he’s not really his uncle but he’s so close to the family that it’s as if he were. Juanma is as nice as ninepence, someone who goes out of his way for others. He had a serious motorbike accident a few years ago and he’s one of those people who live life to the full, more aware than anyone else that our time here is short, shorter than what we usually think most times. I call Juanma Robert de Niro because I think he’s just as nice as the well-known actor despite the fact I don’t know him at all and also because he physically resembles him. Or at least I think so, which is good enough. De Niro booked me in with a physiotherapist in Burgos for an hour to get a well-deserved massage and took me for tapas and wine… I thought we were about to say goodbye, with yours truly ready to explode and a little tipsy at that, when he told me: “and now let’s go and get some dinner”. I tried to protest but he immediately stopped me, saying: “you’re turning into an Ethiopian: do me a favour and eat or tomorrow you won’t even get as far as the outskirts of Burgos”. I don’t know if there are many Ethiopians who weigh 95 Kilos, certainly not the ones De Niro was referring to anyway, but I decided to keep quiet in the hope, naive as I was, that he would let me order a light salad. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
The waitress came to take our order and Robert told her: “ok, so we’ll have a portion of roast cecina (cured beef) and another of ‘leicon’". Off the top of my head I just assumed it was a regional speciality so I looked at the menu to see if it was a type of vegetable, something that I could eat without much effect on the stomach. The only thing I could see on the menu beginning with ‘l’ was lacón (shoulder of pork) and I wondered if Robert was pronouncing it in English and, if so, why. The waitress must have been wondering the same as, totally dumbstruck, she asked: leicon? What’s that? Without holding back, Robert retorted: "well you’re the one selling it so if you don’t know, we’re all buggered…” pointing at the lacón on the menu he spelt out: l-e-i-c-o-n! Still dumbstruck, the waitress wrote it down on her notepad and, without looking at us, said: “yea, lacón". Not about to let the waitress have the last word, De Niro answered back with: “say it however you like, just bring us a portion. Oh! And a bit of wine to wash it down”…
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario