Off the Road (32 page)

“No, wait!”

When a brief break does
appear, a crowd of frightened pilgrims lumbers across the highway, their packs
chunking from side to side, hollering words and phrases in all the languages of
the world, none of them translations of the ancient cries “Ultreya” or “Santiago.”

Closer to the center of
town, the medieval precincts of Santiago appear, and history once again
embraces the pilgrim. The labyrinthine confusion of these ancient streets
breaks up the groups of pilgrims until we are—either by accident or choice—
alone. The arcaded medieval streets still bear their ancient names —Las
Platerías, the street of the silversmiths; La Azabachería, the street of the
jet merchants, the artisans who carved ebony souvenirs centuries ago. The
restaurateurs and the pedestrians point and smile in the right direction. Down
one street and then another until the city opens onto a magnificent square
dominated by the cathedral.

I have seen a hundred town
plazas in Spain. There isn’t a city or a village that is without one. They come
in all sizes, from the simplest bricked square with a bent leaking pipe for a
fountain to the gorgeous park and cafes of Pamplona. They all seem a rehearsal
for Santiago. In an essay entitled “Watching the Rain in Galicia,” Gabriel García Márquez wrote: “I had always believed, and continue to believe, really,
that there is no more beautiful square in the world than the one in Siena. The only place that made me doubt its authority as the most beautiful square is the
one in Santiago de Compostela. Its poise and its youthful air prohibit you from
even thinking about its venerable age; instead, it looks as if it had been
built the day before by someone who had lost their sense of time.”

Saint James’s feast day is Spain’s greatest holiday. People from all over the country make the trip to see pilgrims by
day and the extensive fireworks by night. Tomorrow, King Juan Carlos’s son,
Felipe, the prince of Asturias, will make an address in the cathedral. The
plaza is filled with milling crowds, children with balloons, trinket salesmen,
visitors from all over. After so much work getting here, a pilgrim can’t help
but fancy that it is all being done for his benefit. There are whispers among
the crowd. I am being pointed out and gawked at.

“Look! It’s a pilgrim!” The
children stare, and I see myself for the first time as they do—a dirty ragged
man with untrimmed beard, a pack and stick. Taking up the central location of
the plaza is the long sought after cathedral. Its two outrageously Baroque
towers are garish and loud, fooling the pilgrim into thinking that a similar
cacophony awaits him within.

But the Baroque frontispiece
was built in the eighteenth century to protect the precious twelfth-century
stonework that once faced the natural elements. Just inside the doorway is the
tympanum of the Romanesque church—called the Portico of Glory— mortared with
the sweat of pilgrims from Triacastela. A set of five columns supports three
symmetrical arches. Scholars bicker endlessly about this sculpture. Is it the
most beautiful example of Romanesque architecture in the world? Or does that
superlative belong to Chartres or Puy? Or is it transitional Gothic? Well, you
decide, pal, and be prepared to die thereby.

Arrayed across the top of
the central tympanum are the traditional twenty-four musicians of the
Apocalypse. They form a human halo around the Romanesque figures below. The men
are about to strike up the final song proclaiming the end of the world. Two of
them toward the middle are fingering a hurdy-gurdy. These sculptures are the
work of a twelfth-century genius named Master Mateo. The precision of the
pieces is so accurate that when modern musicologists studying the hurdy-gurdy
tried to construct a replica of the forgotten instrument, they climbed a ladder
to the top of this tympanum and used the amazing detail of this stone replica
as a guide.

On the center column,
shouldering the weight between the musicians and man, is a life-size statue of
Saint James himself. He seems well dressed for a Romanesque sculpture. The
folds in his cloak are remarkably smooth. His face wears a slight smile (maybe
even mischievous). His left hand rests on a staff that looks like an old man’s
cane. For the first time that I have seen on the road, he is seated. But his
toes point down and his knees are bent. He looks as if he is either about to
sit after an exhaustive trip or possibly to stand in honor of my arrival.

At this central column, a
few tourists and several standard-issue, babushka-wearing, multisocked,
thick-black-dress, wooden-shoed Little Old Spanish Widows have gathered. A
guide is explaining the stories of the Portico of Glory and the traditions.
There are many, but the one with which I am presently struggling commands that
the pilgrim approach the statue of James on his knees. How embarrassing. I had
long ago vanquished tradition, so I decide I will simply pause silently, with
WASPy self-restraint.

In the Middle Ages this
small space where I stand was one of the most sought after pieces of real
estate in the world. For as many as five centuries it would have been
impossible to get near the Portico without a fight. And there usually were.
Hundreds of people camped out beneath the statue of James. Women gave birth
here. Pilgrims cooked meals in steaming vats. Fires blazed. Every night was an
orgy of quarrels and fights. According to the letters of one Saint Bluze, there
were so many pilgrims of so many nationalities crowded in here that stabbings
and murder were commonplace in the church. After a while, the functions of the
cathedral broke down because the authorities routinely had to contend with the
elaborate ceremony of reconsecration. In 1207 Pope Innocent III wrote a quick
blessing exclusive to Santiago. A mixture of wine, ashes, and holy water
scattered briefly would now do the job.

It was at this place that
the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno wrote, “Before this Portico, one must
pray in one way or another: one cannot make literature.” And it was here that
the Cid, St. Francis, van Eyck, kings and queens, and millions and millions of
fellow pilgrims collapsed in gratitude.

Heavy is the hand of
history.

Down I go. The tourists step
back in a murmur. The guide goes silent, out of respect, as a way is cleared
for me to the column. Emotions overwhelm me. Tears squeeze from my shut eyes
and run down the dust on my cheeks. A widow weeps with me. The whispers I hear
flatter me. Whatever they may be saying, I hear them talking of me, as a true
pilgrim—a dirty, ugly, filthy, smelly pilgrim. It’s a queer kind of celebrity.
Yet every pilgrim wants some sense of confirmation from without. This small
group has witnessed my arrival and were momentarily moved by it. But it’s not
as pure as that.

As I inch my way toward the
column, there is the unexpected thrill of victory—an athlete’s high, the
Olympic buzz of coming across the finish line, hands up, breaking the tape, the
body suddenly limp with accomplishment. That part of me wants to jump up, stuff
my fist in the air, and scream, “I made it. I did it.” And then look into the
crowd to find the face of the one person who believed in me all along and see
him clench his fist and shake it in congratulation. Obviously this part of me
will star in the TV movie version of the walk,
Santiago
: Walk with
Me, Talk with Me
(based on a true story).

Even here, minutes away from
completing my pilgrimage, an air of fraudulence lingers. I had expected a
purity, a clarifying wind of revelation. Instead the tourists unsheathe their
cameras and illuminate my already soiled epiphany with the strobe of flashes.
This clenched face and furrowed brow now bowing before the statue of James—is
this mine, a performance, or both?

The pilgrim wants confirmation,
and I know there will be other opportunities to get it. The cathedral is
practically a gauntlet of confirmation.

On the other side of James’s
column is a self-portrait in stone of Master Mateo called
Santo dos Croques,
literally “the head-banging saint.” Tradition holds that visitors bang their
head against Master Mateo’s to receive his wisdom. This custom is especially
popular among students at the University of Santiago on exam night. It is not
technically part of a pilgrim’s obligation. But I am not one to turn down a
little wisdom. I gently bang my head.

Afterward the pilgrim walks
to the high altar at the other end of the church. Situated above the table is
another statue of Saint James, this one gilded, his cloak encrusted with
jewels, and bathed in amber light. A small doorway on the side points the
pilgrim to a narrow passageway behind the statue where the pilgrim may hug
Saint James in thanks. In the Middle Ages the pilgrim customarily put his
broad-brimmed hat on Santiago’s head before embracing him. Cosme de Medici
visited here during the pilgrimage’s heyday and noted that from the front, the
statue changed its headgear so often that Saint James seemed to be trying on
new hats day and night. My shell clangs loudly against the gold as I give him a
hug, promised to so many on the road,
un abrazo por el apóstol.

The exiting staircase
reveals an arrow that points to another chamber down below. As narrow as the
last, the passageway opens onto a small, low-ceilinged room. Behind protective
bars lies a small silver coffin, large enough to hold the body of a child.
Within it are the bones of Saint James.

There are several other
pilgrims here, and we stare awkwardly. All these traditions have accrued over
the centuries, each of them attempting to give to the pilgrim a sense of
accomplishment.

The bones of Saint James
were long the source of the pilgrim’s popularity, but the story associated with
them ran its course. Belief in the bones petered out in the nineteenth century,
and the authorities didn’t know exactly where the bones were anymore. So the
church authorized an archaeological dig beneath the church’s flat stone floor.

Initially the work did not
go well. In order to accommodate the church’s activities during the day, the
excavations took place by torchlight at night. Digging beneath the floor stones
in the location where Saint James’s bones were said to lie, the workers were
teased by findings of bricks and masonry from the appropriate eras, but nothing
else. Eventually the dig progressed to a space beneath the apse. One of the
workers, Juan Nastallo, was digging late in the evening of January 28, 1879. In
a deposition he reports: “I prayed to the Virgin of Sorrows that the body of
the apostle appear. At that exact moment, Canon Labin [the head archaeologist]
arrived.... I removed the two bricks with the trowel and there appeared various
bones contained within a box which exuded an odor that I have never smelled
before. I immediately lost my sight for a half hour and I nearly fainted when,
with the help of my companions, I was carried out of the hole. I remember well
the sanctity of the oath I had sworn, and I declare by all and confirm the
commotion that I experienced and the most gratifying odor I perceived. I know
too that Canon Labin, who had suffered a serious migraine headache, was cured
at that precise moment. I, instead, on account of the commotion, suffered my
ailments for eight or ten days.”

The church brought in other
scientists to confirm their authenticity. The bones were anatomically assembled
and surprisingly there were enough for three skeletons, not one. This was
interpreted to mean that Saint James was buried with the remains of his two
original disciples. But which bones belonged to James?

As it happened, a church in
Pistoya had long claimed to have a small piece of Saint James’s skull—the
mastoid process, to be precise. Could it be? One of the three skulls in the
find
was
missing a chunk. When the two parts were finally united, they
fit, according to the church, like two parts of a puzzle.

The news of this discovery
provoked celebrations in Spain. Even Rome, so belligerently disinterested in Santiago’s legitimacy in recent centuries, was excited. Science, the ancient enemy of
faith, had confounded itself, and confirmed the beliefs of the ages. On
November 1, 1884, Pope Leo XIII issued a formal declaration, filled with
unambiguous glee. “Thus,” it reads, “the doubts that these bones existed have
vanished.”

But the gloating was
short-lived. In 1900 a church historian, Monsignor Louis Duchesne, wrote
The
Ancient History of the Christian Church.
He has little to say about Saint
James. He mentions the bones and then asks: “Why was that identification made?
We have not the slightest idea. But ecclesiastical authority supported it, and
we must in kindness suppose with good evidence—at least in its own opinion.”

As I stand looking at the
small coffin containing the bones, in wander a few other pilgrims. Then two
nuns follow. The only conversation is an exchange between the two sisters. One
says that the carvings on the ancient silver coffin are quite lovely. The other
agrees and adds that the coffin is also remarkably shiny.

Rick grabs my arm to remind
me that there is some paperwork we need to complete. At a side door on the
outside of the church, the pilgrims are ordered to line up to receive a
diploma. This is the final confirmation that the church grants. The pilgrim
signs his name to the rolls, presents his stamped passport as proof, and is
given what is called a
compostellana,
a grand parchment written in
Latin.

Apparently, handing out
compostellanas
is, among clerical duties, just a notch above cleaning the chapterhouse with a
toothbrush. By the time I reach the front of the line, a young, handsome priest
invites me to sit in a chair. He asks a series of questions as enervatedly as a
bureaucrat in the unemployment office.