Petra's Ghost Page 8

  “It’s not him. It’s his wife, Cynthia. She’s been at me three times now asking for you to ring her.”

  Angela never had much time for Daniel’s business partner or his wife. The couple had asked her once over dinner if she was a lesbian. She was, of course, but she didn’t fancy being queried about it between salad courses.

  “It’s probably about the paperwork for the sale, Daniel. Honestly, I don’t know why you didn’t take care of it before you left.”

  But of course, they both know why he didn’t take care of it before. For the same reason, he has a half-installed wet bar in the family room. His procrastination is driving Gerald around the bend. The money they are being offered by Triton Corporate is enough to set them both up for a very long time. Enough to rejuvenate his father’s failing farming equipment, maybe even to expand, ensuring another five hundred years of Kennedys on the land. Angela had confided in him that they lost quite a bit of equity when his father’s dairy herd had to be culled due to one cow with BSE, the lethal mad cow disease. His father was cagey about how much of a hit he had taken, and Daniel is beginning to wonder if his father’s anxiousness for him to come home has less to do with not selling the farm and more to do with saving it.

  “I still don’t understand why Cynthia would be wanting me.”

  “Maybe she’s wondering if they have gluten free on the Camino.”

  “Now, Angie …”

  Cynthia was a nice enough woman, but not Angela’s type. Petra had called her a “yoga mom.” Daniel’s still not too sure what this means, except maybe that you take all your own food everywhere.

  “I don’t know why, but would you please ring her? The woman’s in a right state.”

  Daniel borrows a pencil from the waitress as he settles his bill, starts writing the cell number for Gerald’s wife on the back of his receipt. He’s inscribing the last number when he decides something.

  “Listen,” he says. “I may have found a place.”

  “A place for what?”

  “A place for Petra,” he says. “Finisterre. It’s on the coast.”

  “Is that on the way to Santiago?”

  “No, it’s three or four days’ walk from there. I thought —”

  “You’re saying people keep walking after Santiago? As if five hundred miles isn’t enough. What are you people, daft?”

  “Finisterre means ‘end of the world,’” he tells her.

  “Well, that’s what you’ll be wishing for if you don’t get home here soon. Dad and Mom are in a right panic.” She softens a bit. “It sounds nice, Danny, but the family need to know when to expect you. Dad’s getting ready for the calving season, and he doesn’t know whether to get a hired man or …”

  “I know, Angela. I just need to take care of this first, so.” He is looking past the propped up phone to the main thoroughfare when he sees the flash of a familiar ponytail walk by in the crowd. “Listen, Angela, I got to get going,” he says, grabbing his backpack from the spare metal chair beside him. It makes a loud scraping sound on the cobblestones as he pulls it toward him, almost falling over.

  “But you still haven’t told me —”

  With a click, he cuts his sister off, feeling bad only for a moment. He rounds the corner of the alleyway and gets back onto the main Camino route through town. Uphill, he has to work to catch up to Ginny. He doesn’t want to lose her in the twists and turns of the narrow streets, or among the locals who seem to move like glaciers on the sidewalk. He could call out to her but doesn’t. Instead, he works to bridge the distance between them until the cobblestones open onto pavement and they enter Viana’s large main square. A Gothic brick church takes up the entire far end. A stone-columned feunte with four flowing spigots sits in its tall shadow in the centre. When Ginny stops there to fill up her water bottle, he sees his chance.

  “Ginny,” he says cautiously, standing behind her but not too close. She doesn’t turn around.

  “Hello, Daniel,” she says, the clipped words her only reaction to him. Otherwise, she keeps filling her water bottle as though he isn’t there.

  “I saw you pass by.”

  “I saw you, too,” Ginny says, removing the plastic bottle from the stream of water, more of a dribble really. If the state of water quality matches the plumbing, she’s in trouble.

  “Are you sure that water is all right?” he asks her, watching the sluggish flow out of the rusty spigot.

  “Still trying to take care of me?” she asks, screwing the cap on and popping the top before taking a good long drink from the bottle. He watches the rhythmic contractions move down the column of her throat as she swallows. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and smiles at him like a cat that got at the cream, even if that cream might contain E. coli.

  “You going in?” she says, gesturing toward the overbearing church at the end of the square. There are stunted trees with naked branches planted at intervals around it, like prisoners held behind a high fence of stone pillars and wrought iron railing. The only means of escape, or entry, is a gated archway visible down the north side of the building.

  “Okay,” he says.

  “Okay,” says Ginny, nodding, as if a larger agreement has been settled.

  “I gather we’re not talking about it,” he says as they walk together toward the edge of the square, down the external cloister to the church’s side entranceway.

  “No, we’re not.”

  She runs her open hand along the iron fencing as she walks by, making a soft vibration with her fingertips each time they strike the metal rails. Daniel can see flying buttresses running along the top tier of the building at the far end. Knows they were built to keep the walls from collapsing under the pressure of high arches and vaulted ceilings. He wants to point them out to her but manages to keep his mouth shut. Not the time for an architectural lesson, he senses.

  As they turn in the gate, Daniel sees a white stone block laid into the grey pavement. The reflected glare from the sun directly overhead forces them to shield their eyes in order to read what is written on it. He may not know Spanish, but he can translate the year in Roman numerals inscribed along the bottom, 1507. He also recognizes the name engraved in capitals at the top.

  “Cesare Borgia,” he reads. “Lovely family, I hear.” He inspects the bronze-studded doors of the church held open by heavy black chain, thinks about the infamous Borgias mounting the stone steps and passing through into Mass, Spain and Italy’s original crime family. “Your man Cesare not only murdered his own brother but bedded his sister, along with half the prostitutes in Rome.”

  “Being the illegitimate son of Pope Alexander VI has its perks, I suppose,” Ginny says, not to be outdone. “I heard he even ran an orgy in the papal palace, put on performances of naked gymnastics there.”

  “Fair dues to him,” Daniel says. “I understand they were after giving out prizes.” He is eager as always to tell what he knows, but then worries about the inappropriateness of complimenting a man on his debauchery. He backtracks. “I reckon a lot of those stories are a bit dodgy. Male fantasy meets legend, or what have you.”

  “The evil thoughts of men?” Ginny asks him.

  “More like the Renaissance’s version of internet porn.”

  “Same thing,” she says, walking across the memorial stone, dismissing in one step the most feared of the Borgia bloodline. “Anyway, I’m not here for him,” she says. “Or for the evil thoughts of men.” She opens the door and motions to him. “Let’s go have a look around.”

  Inside is the vaulted ceiling Daniel had anticipated from the buttresses outside. The massive stone ribs span out like a giant arachnid above a three-storey altarpiece filled with polychrome statues overlooking the nave. He can see Saint James depicted on the right, with his pilgrim staff, Santiago Peregrino. This is in sharp contrast to Santiago Matamoros, the Islamophobic version, who is typically shown decapitating invading Muslim hordes, a feat he managed despite having died a dozen or so centuries prior to their oc
cupation of Spain.

  After giving the altarpiece a quick once-over, Ginny moves down the side aisle toward the ambulatory that runs behind it. Daniel continues to look up, admiring the domes and ellipses that hold up the seven-hundred-year-old roof, the beauty of lateral thrusts and counter-resistance. When he has had his fill of the technical splendour of well-designed applied science, he goes in search of her.

  Three side chapels are built behind the round end of the polygon sanctuary. Ginny stands by the railing of the closest one, twisting her body over a low barrier railing trying to get a better look at what is inside. When Daniel gets closer, he realizes she has a smartphone in her outstretched hand, taking pictures. It is the first time he has seen her use it.

  “Isn’t she awesome?” she says as he comes up behind her.

  Daniel sees a statue of a woman central to the chapel. She is bare breasted with a tightly woven skirt down to her ankles. The gold weave of the skirt criss-crosses her lower body like caramel-coloured scales. She looks like a mermaid with a large crucifix in her hand and a pained expression on her face.

  “It’s Mary Magdalene,” Ginny tells him. “This is her chapel.”

  Daniel sees the sign on the wall, Capilla de la Magdalena. The “other” Mary.

  Ginny takes a few more photos and then pockets her smartphone. “She’s my favourite,” she says.

  “Yeah, I have all her hits. Fallen Women of the New Testament. Penitents on Parade.”

  “Ha ha,” Ginny says, overpronouncing the consonants to show her sarcasm. “Actually, there is no real evidence that she was a fallen woman. That’s just something Western Christianity created. Makes her racier. The Bible’s original pin-up girl.”

  She’s right. Daniel has observed two constants when visiting churches on the Camino: the statue of the Virgin Mary is usually bigger than the one of Jesus; and Mary Magdalene always looks like a tramp.

  “Have you always had a thing for her?” he asks.

  “No,” Ginny says. “I wasn’t even raised Catholic. My mother felt any discussion of religion was in poor taste, like passing gas in public.”

  “That’s a shame.” Daniel remembers arguing both politics and religion at the supper table with his parents and siblings while growing up. Heated debates that made them all raise their voices and sometimes ended with his dad pounding their long wooden kitchen table in earnest. Daniel still loves the mental fencing of a good argument.

  “My family was a bit like the Borgias,” Ginny admits, pursing her lips for a moment. “Well, without the sexual depravity.” She looks at him directly for the first time since their fight, as if evaluating him, then goes on. “My sister was a bit of a nightmare.”

  “Was?”

  “They caught her trying to strangle me in my crib once.”

  “Sibling rivalry,” Daniel says, thinking of his sister and he, the youngest, teaming up against their two older brothers. He had nicked one of them in the neck with a homemade wooden sword once when he was three. His brother had wailed while their mother pulled the splinters out with tweezers. Daniel had wailed later when she took the sword away.

  “Something like that,” Ginny says, turning back to the statue. Mary Magdalene sits atop a pedestal under a domed marble roof, surrounded by columns streaked gold and blue. The colours pick up the rich caramel of her reed skirt. “Then again, I was a bit of problem child myself. Spent most of my teens looking for ways to piss off the world.”

  “Testing the boundaries,” Daniel says.

  “More like blowing the boundaries off the fucking map,” she tells him, with some embarrassment and just a touch of pride. “I had to grow up young, though. Left home when I was sixteen and never went back.” A cloud moves across her expression, then floats away. “That’s why I love Mary Mag so much,” she says, turning to the saint. “She’s a woman with a history. Like me. Like the Borgias.” She grabs the railing and leans back, making a V with her body and the barrier. Her neck hyperextends, ponytail meeting backpack. She closes her eyes as she stretches.

  “I’m sorry about what happened before,” Daniel says, watching her. The supple bend of her torso is laid out in front of him like a spring set to pop. As with most men that find themselves admiring a woman, he isn’t aware he is staring.

  “That’s okay, Daniel,” she says, pulling herself slowly back to an upright position. She turns to face him again. “You’ve got a history, too,” she says, raising her eyebrows slightly before walking away toward the next chapel.

  Mary Magdalene watches Daniel from across the barrier, and they both know that she’s right.

  They hear the parade before they see it. The buildings in Logroño remind Daniel of Dublin, not very tall, but close together with narrow streets. You can’t see anything coming until you’re in danger of being run over by it. That’s how Daniel and Ginny have come to find themselves blocked at an intersection by a marching band. Young people dance in brightly coloured clothes and wave oversized red-lace fans in the air to the steady beat of drums. It looks like a Spanish rave.

  The two are still shocked by the size of the crowd rounding the corner, the loud whistles and drumbeats. They have spent so many days walking in open, empty spaces that it is hard to not feel overwhelmed by the teeming procession.

  “Look!” Ginny cries. Raised at least four feet above the crowd are giant papier mâché heads, bobbing and twirling down the street. When Daniel looks closer he sees that they have bodies as well, decked out in elaborate costumes designed to provide the maximum amount of swing when the person hidden underneath spins around.

  “Who are the characters supposed to be, do you think?” Ginny asks.

  He was about to ask her the same question. There is an old-fashioned bewigged British court judge draped with a beauty queen sash. A traditional Spanish girl surrounded by brilliant orange petticoats that bounce and twirl. A Muslim beauty behind a sheer gold veil that flows to the bottom of her skirts and ripples with her operator’s movements. He cannot recognize any of them, unfamiliar as he is with Spain’s cultural icons. The only character whose significance Daniel feels he does understand is the monsignor with the black domed hat and long black cassock, made famous during the Spanish Inquisition. He’s seen them in Monty Python sketches.

  A man slides open a small door below the roped belt of the puppet clergyman and peers out, as if checking in visitors at a speakeasy. Someone in the crowd reaches out and places a cigarette in his mouth, and he takes a long appreciative drag. Smoke spews out from the crotch of the cassock. Daniel makes a mental note to tell Angela about what it was like to see that.

  “There’s a king and queen,” Ginny says, pointing farther up the street.

  The stately couple dance less than the others, walking together as if surveying the procession. Ginny steps out into the street to get a better look, not noticing the woman waving a flag on a metal pole. Daniel manages to grab her by the backpack and pull her back just before she is beaned on the head with it. The woman continues waving the broad black-and-red flag in wide hand-over-hand arcs, as though she never even noticed them.

  “That was fairly close,” he says, still holding on to Ginny’s backpack.

  “Yeah, no one likes a parade injury. It’s such a buzzkill.”

  When the parade thins out a bit, they join in the procession, enjoying the beat of the music and the mesmerizing “Big Heads,” as they later learn the papier mâché figures are called. The crowd, the music, the dancers, they all snake through the city streets with Ginny and Daniel at the tail, the two pilgrims far less colourful and exotic in their dusty hiking boots and beige sun shirts. It is getting hot, not just from the warming trend of this late fall weather but also from the pressing of so many bodies in an enclosed space. The constant beat of the drums is so different than the marching bands they are used to back home, far more tribal than military. The tempo and flight of the dancing red fans pulls the two of them along. Daniel watches Ginny as she bends and sways to the music, lifting her arm
s above her head, so that her smooth, flat belly shows when her shirt hikes up.

  Just as she requested, they have not talked about what happened in Azqueta. He is starting to think he blew the whole thing out of proportion anyway. It probably was just a kid fooling around, with a mask like those Daniel can see all around him in the parade. Maybe they had used one of the Big Heads to make it look like an apparition was floating above the corn, just as they floated the characters above the throngs of people in the parade. He and Ginny had walked almost twenty-five miles that day. He had been so drained and dehydrated that he might have seen an entire chorus of milkmaids lifting skirts in that field. He turns and smiles at Ginny, who is moving side to side with the rhythm of the music. She responds with a gentle hip check when she sees him looking.

  “Come on,” she says, beckoning him to join her. He gets ready to make excuses, like he has been making for the last year to his family, to his friends, to himself. Then he thinks, What the hell.

  He grabs her hand in his and holds both their arms high in the air as he dances down the street. He sways and shimmies and hip bumps like a man released. If his friends back home were here, they would rib him for a week for even knowing how to dance like this. And even then, Daniel thinks, as they blend into the throbbing crowd — he still wouldn’t let go of her hand.

  After several blocks, the frantic drumbeat of the parade starts to get repetitive. Daniel sees a wine bar in a small open plaza off the main street and points it out to Ginny without words. She wouldn’t be able to hear him above the music if he spoke. When she nods, they pull out of the crowd, collapsing into two chairs set outside next to a round patio table.

  “Those people have more energy than me,” he says, pulling out his water bottle, waving down the waiter for a Coke. He needs sugar as well as liquid.

  “Well, we have walked about fourteen miles today,” Ginny says, loosening the laces on her boots and then taking the boots off. She wiggles her toes in her thick wool hiking socks, legs stretched out straight in front of her in a not so elegant but entirely captivating way. Daniel longs to take off his boots as well, but he is afraid of offending with the odour that might be unleashed in the process.