Carlos

She saw him approaching her a good ten minutes before they actually met. Out on those long and lonely stretches of the Meseta, that is not unusual. You can see all around for miles and so are forewarned of any other peregrinos in the vicinity. And that day there were not many. The walking season was drawing to a close; it had already rained twice that week.

Inwardly she was pleased. The truth was, she was a little bored of walking alone. Her walking partner from St. Jean, a jovial Dutch girl named Marijke, had gone on ahead at Burgos. She’d decided to stop in the city for a day, but Marijke had to be back at work by the start of September and so needed to walk faster. She had no such issues, with no job nor partner to get back to. So, she had plodded on, at first enjoying the solitude and the chance to collect her thoughts, but now in the mood to share again. She could see that he was walking a little faster than her, but even so, she slowed her pace slightly. As he drew near, she guessed that he was perhaps in his thirties and probably German or British. Soon she would know the truth.

“Buen Camino!” he hollered as he drew near.

“Buen Camino!” she replied.

They walked on a couple of steps. “My name is Pierre,” he said in English. “And you?”

She hesitated for a moment, eyeing this potential partner on the Way. “Lucia,” she replied.

“Spanish?” he asked. Inwardly, she smiled. It was the all-too-familiar Camino routine. Name, nationality, what job do you do, and why are you doing Camino? Extremely boring after the twentieth time.

“No, actually I am American,” she said, before pausing for effect and adding, “and also Mexican.”

“Mexican, eh? So, you moved to the States?”

“Yes, ten years ago. I got a job in San Diego. I have been a citizen for five years now. And what about you?”

“A little similar. I am English but also French. My dad was French, hence the name, but I was born and brought up near Oxford, famous for the university.”

“I know it! I went there three years ago on a trip around England. It is really beautiful, all the old colleges, and that museum there is incredible, although I forget the name.”

“The Ashmolean?”

“That is the one, yes! A really great place! But for me, the main thing is that I like the Philip Pullman stories about Lyra, so I wanted to go to the city where they are set.”

“His Dark Materials? Yes, they are rather good. I grew up very near to where he lives.”

“But you don’t live there now?”

“No, I moved to France twelve years ago. I have a place in the Alps near to Mont Blanc. I moved for the skiing – I am an instructor – but now I run a restaurant there in one of the resorts. I took French citizenship after Brexit; it made things easier.”

“Yes, that make’s sense.”

“And what about you? What job do you do?”

Another of the standard questions. You could read this guy like a book! She looked away. “I’m between jobs at the moment. A transition period I think they call it.”

“Which is why you’re doing Camino?”

There it was, the final standard question. “Yes, it’s why I’m doing Camino. And you?”

“It isn’t the ski season at the moment, so work is quiet. Besides, I also have some thinking to do. About where I want to go in life.”

Silence descended upon the two pilgrims. They walked on over the endless Meseta. In her mind, she imagined that she wasn’t moving at all, that this was but an elaborate conveyor belt. She was on the same straight path that she had been an hour, two hours, three hours earlier. The scenery never changed, flat fields all around, blue sky above. Her legs moved but she did not. God’s treadmill. The divine gym.

She glanced to her side. You didn’t get company like that in the gym she usually went to. Pierre was handsome and the little he had told her of his life intrigued her. What would it be like to live in the Alps, to go skiing in the winter and hiking in the summer? To wake up to those stunning vistas and breathe in that fresh mountain air? A world away from the life that she led.

And what would it be like to wake up with him by her side? She wondered in silence and decided that the idea was not a distasteful one.

It was as if he could read her mind. “So, Lucia, do you have a boyfriend?”

“Maybe I prefer women,” she replied, defensively.

“Maybe you do, but I don’t think so.”

She smiled. He was cheeky but that was nice. Should she tell him?

Why not?

“Perhaps I do, perhaps I do not. The honest answer is, I do not know either way.”

“I’m intrigued.”

“His name is Carlos, Carlos Sanchez. I met him in Tijuana. He is charming and I fell for him completely. It was Carlos who got me into the States. He is an important man with influence. But not in a legal way. He is a dealer, a big one. My life with him was not real: fast cars, designer clothes, a beachside villa, exclusive clubs. It was unbelievable but it was none of it was real. I soon learned where the money came from, but I closed my eyes to it. I closed my eyes to the bags of white powder I found hidden in kitchen drawers and the suitcases in the back of the car. I even closed my eyes when he snorted that powder up his nose before going out, and at the guns that he always carried. And I closed my eyes when he received a call on the other phone and had to leave, only coming back later with specks of blood on his clothes.”

“It sounds like a film.”

“It was. And I guess I liked being an actress.”

“You would make a very good actress.”

“Thank you.”

The silence took over again. Back to the God’s Treadmill, the intolerable monotony of the Gym of Life. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. Fields all around, sky above, gravel beneath. She could not bear it.

“I’d like to say that I woke up one day and realised that it was wrong. That I had to get out and that is why I’m on Camino. But it’s not true.”

“It’s not.”

“The thing is, he went missing. He went out after a call on the other phone and he never came back. That is what I meant when I said that I do not know if I’m in a relationship or not. Carlos; is he alive or dead? I honestly do not know. It was only then, only when I realised this, that I realised I need to get away from that life, to start again.” Tears filled her eyes as she spoke. “But the problem is, in my heart I still love him. I love him and yet I need to get away from him. That is why I am here. That is my Camino.”

He nodded slowly. “I think I understand.”

“Do you? Do you really? Can anyone?”

“I was not entirely honest with you earlier. I told you that I left the UK to live in France because I liked skiing. That is true, but it is not all. In England I fell in with some bad people. I left school without qualifications so the usual routes to a good job were closed. But the road to quick, easy money lay open and, I am ashamed to say, I took it. But then things got out of hand and I ran, ran to the only place I could think of. Resorts are transitory places. When I was young, I did two summers on Crete working in bars. In resorts people don’t ask questions and no one is surprised when a stranger just shows up. Pierre is not my real name.”

She looked at him astonished. Was this the magic of the Camino that she had heard so much about? How the Way sends you the people that you most need to salve your soul? And yet…

… yet she could not tell him. She liked him, she really liked this guy, and she could not say.

The silence returned, the silence of impossible possibilities. As she walked that treadmill, she imagined walking beside him for much more than just the Meseta.

“Where are you headed to tonight?” she asked.

“A place called Ledigos. That is 22km from Carrión de los Condes where I started this morning, about the right distance for me.”

“I’m also due to stay there,” she replied.

Silence resumed once again and then, a couple of minutes later, they entered into a discussion about types of cheese.

---

Ledigos, when they eventually arrived, was a sleepy village that Spain seemed to have forgotten about. The only place to stay was an establishment called El Palomar. She went in to ask if they had room since he had a problem with one of his backpack straps and she spoke Spanish. She emerged a minute later with a worried look upon her face.

“Is there a problem, Lucia?”

She nodded. “They are full. The only space left is a private room and they cost a lot more.” Inwardly she gulped. They had walked the last two kilometres in silence, with her tossing over in her mind what to do. She liked this guy; she wanted this guy and, she thought, the feelings were mutual. But they had only just met and well… she had not told him. At first, she had thought about leaving it but then she had been reminded that Camino is all about seizing the moment, taking the plunge. And the Camino had sent this man to her and so perhaps this was her lesson. So, she had lied… was lying. There were beds in the albergue, but that night she only wanted a bed with him.

“The money is not an issue,” he replied.

“The private room is a double,” she said.

He nodded. “Then I shall be moving on. You take that room if you like. The guidebook says that there’s an albergue in the next village, Terradillos de los Templarios. It’s only three and a half clicks further on.”

Her heart crashed and her world turned black. It was not to be! Tomorrow she would walk alone, or at least, not with him.

“But before I go, let’s have a drink together. I have enjoyed today.”

A chink of light. She nodded and smiled. “Yes, that would be nice. I have enjoyed it too.”

They ordered two beers and sat at one of the tables in front of the albergue. He toasted the Camino and they chinked glasses. Then the silence returned.

When around half of his glass was drained, he turned to her and said, “I hope that you’re not upset about me refusing the double room.”

“Oh no, not at all. I quite understand, it’s ok.”

“You’re a great girl, really great, and I’ve loved walking with you. But it is the whole Carlos thing. I can tell that you still love him and, well, like I said, I am trying to get away from that sort of life myself. I don’t think we would be good for one another at the moment.”

Inside she screamed, ‘Of course we would be good for one another you idiot! We would be fucking perfect for one another if only you knew!’

“No, I get it, you are right,” she said.

“However, if you’ll permit me, I’d like to share a little Camino story with you before I go.”

“Sure; go ahead!”

“Well, walking to Hornillos from Burgos, I fell in with a Dutch girl named Marijke. She was really cool, and we had a great time together, but she was a faster walker than me and had to be back at work in three weeks, and so she went off ahead. Anyway, she we got talking about other peregrinos and some of the things they say, and she started telling me about a girl that she had walked with from St. Jean to Burgos. Apparently, the two of them had got so fed up with the usual peregrino questions – What’s your name? Where are you from? What job do you do? Why are you walking Camino? – the same old crap every day, that they decided to make up exciting false identities for themselves. The Dutch girl reinvented herself as a South African with left-wing beliefs who had actually done some spying for the Cubans. I can’t remember what the other girl’s false backstory was, but Marijke did tell me her real tale. She said that she was Spanish, from Valencia, and had broken up from a somewhat boring boyfriend and left an unfulfilling job and was walking Camino to work out where to go in her life. So, what do you think of that?”

She eyed him warily and said, “It is a nice tale, but I don’t get the relevance.”

“Well, the fact is, I rather liked the idea and so I too made up a false backstory. I’ve been lying to you, Lucia. I’m really John from Luton who has just been made redundant from a job in local government. And I want to find that Spanish girl because she sounds like exactly the right girl for me. If I am to share a room with anyone, it is her, not the grieving lover of Carlos Sanchez.”

She looked at him coldly and then her face dissolved into laughter. “You knew all along, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did! I speak Spanish fluently you know and that is definitely not a Mexican accent. Now, shall we book that room…?”

Written 5th-7th February, 2021, Smallthorne, UK

Copyright © 2021, Matthew E. Pointon