PILGRIMAGE (V) - DEVIL

As following a path inexorably becomes a metaphor for life, so, as in life, inexorably, bad stuff happens as well as good. My bad stuff happened on a deserted path through scrubby woods not far from the city of Burgos .

I was humming happily, high on my detour to Silos, where landscape, church and the voices of the monks were golden, when a pale, meagre man, visibly high on something a lot nastier, appeared from behind a tree waving a big knife, took all my money and kept on wielding the knife for quite some time, while wildly threatening rape and violence. I was numb, paralysed by shock, and unresponsive – boringly so, I think, as eventually he stopped raving, sheathed his knife and wandered off, leaving me to stomp onward to the next village and phone the guardia.

The guardias civiles, a lingering relic of pre-democratic Spain. Eleven years ago, though probably not now, the older guardias were themselves left over from those times, as anomalous and as comic-but-menacing as their funny plastic tricornes. So I didn’t relish calling them out, but, miles from anywhere with no money (though my assailant hadn’t wanted my credit card – that would have meant the end of my trip), needing a lift to a cash machine and needing a crime report if I wanted to claim my lost money on my travel insurance, I had no choice.

So I marched – on automatic pilot still – to the next village and into the bar, and demanded their phone. The elderly guardia who came, accompanied by his wife, in an ancient jeep, was in a very bad mood, having been called away from his family Sunday lunch. You can guess the burden of his discourse, I’m sure: a woman walking alone in the countryside was clearly ‘asking for it’. The following several hours in the isolated ‘barracks’ were almost as nasty as the attack. The difference between cuchillo (kitchen knife) and navaja (hunting knife) is engraved for ever on my mind – rattled, I first used the wrong word. “A gitano, a gypsy, was he?” “No, definitely not a gitano!” – and much more such unhelpful discussion, along with the caricature of the rural policeman typing out his crime report very slowly with one finger… I was deeply grateful to the younger guardia who came on duty later, drove me back to Burgos to an ATM, and back again to the village and its refugio.

By unhappy chance, for the single time on my walk, I was the only pilgrim that night in the small, untended building with half a dozen beds. I locked the door and didn’t sleep, and wondered if I would be able to go on.

I did go on, the next morning, stiffly, wretchedly, through a flat agricultural landscape, thankful to be in open fields and trying not to look constantly over my shoulder in fear. It’s extremely rare to be robbed on the Camino. I was unlucky, you might say.  Well, as it turned out...

 VI - Angel...

Comments

[Pica]

Oh Jean... that sounds wretched.

But this account is so full of wonder and detail and beauty and pain (mostly in the feet, which is where mine would be). I'm riveted.

[Lucy]

Aaarrgh! More, more, more!

[Lucy]

Oh, by the way Jean, I've only just seen your new photo of you! It's lovely, and I especially like that you have a plaster on your finger, not that you were hurt, but that it's human and distinct and vulnerable... was it a paper cut?

[dale]

(o)

Thank you, Jean, for these. And -- hugs.

[tamarika]

Oh my goodness! How terrifying. You are such a strong and courageous person, Jean! I am excited to see that gorgeous photo of you and to know, intimately, where it comes from.

[dave]

Sorry to hear about this, but your first line brought back very pleasant memories. Santo Domingo de Silos rocked! (I never have checked out their best-selling chant cd, though. Do they actually rock, I wonder?)