Chirozo 2 |
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husband had given her difficult little donkey to the innkeeper to look after. “Chorizo,” was all she could say. I learned that chorizo is the long dark sausage with a string hanging out of the end, favoured by us pilgrims. Coarsely chopped fatty pork is seasoned with mild Spanish paprika, though it can, the innkeeper confessed, be made with other meats. He offered me a fine breakfast of huevos con chorizo. “All pork, and price of pork today!” He raised his plump hands to Heaven. I skipped breakfast, jettisoned everything I didn’t need from my backpack (small gifts, my guidebook), loaded bread and water and set off. A man lay dying on the baking-hot street. He’d had a heart attack and policemen were using CPR and electric shock paddles. Afterwards they told me five or six pilgrims die each year on that stretch. It must have been a good day to die, as the Native Americans say. God knows what the total is for the entire route, since the Middle Ages. I began to notice a number of home-made monuments along the trail, marking the last steps of other modern-day pilgrims. By now I was tired all the time; what kind of “walking meditation” was this turning out to be? In the mountains I froze, dreaming of the red woolen sweater I had left behind. My knee was now worse and after another week I couldn’t keep up with my noisy new Italian friends and had to call a halt around two each afternoon. But I would die rather than quit now. Finally I limped into Santiago de Compostela and, though I’m not religious, I entered the beautiful church—to see the woman who had dreamed of making the trip with a donkey. She’d made it! I congratulated her, and when she had finished her prayers we left together. The two donkeys were tethered outside, contentedly trimming the graveyard grass. There was no sign of her husband so I asked where he was. She came close, her eyes bright, and whispered: “Chorizo.”
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