Petra's Ghost Page 9

  “So, what do you think that was all about then?” he asks her.

  “The parade? Damned if I know,” she says.

  “I thought you were after knowing everything,” he says.

  “Coca-Cola,” the waiter says as he drops a glass tumbler in front of Daniel with a clatter and pours in the black fizzy drink. He then places the can on the table with an air of distaste, as though he has been forced to serve a dead fish.

  “Why don’t you ask Mr. Sunshine here what the parade is all about,” Ginny says.

  Daniel tries asking in English, but the waiter just stares at him with an air of distrust. Doesn’t even grace him with a “Que?” or “No entiendo.” Ginny provides Daniel with some basic Spanish words with which to ask his question.

  “The parade?” the waiter says, suddenly finding his English. “This is the wine festival, peregrino, you are in Rioja country.” He says this with the same look of disgust for Daniel as when he served him the Coke.

  “I guess it must be a sin not to drink wine during the annual wine festival,” Ginny says, grinning.

  “Sure, I wouldn’t want to contribute to the further blackening of your soul.” He turns to the waiter, still standing there looking suspicious. “Una bottella de vino tinto, por favor,” Daniel tells him. Ginny smiles at his increasing Spanish. “And two glasses,” he adds as the waiter walks away.

  “Dos vasos,” Ginny whispers, giving him the translation.

  “Dos vasos, por favor!” Daniel calls after the man. The waiter looks back, and then continues to walk away shaking his head.

  “I don’t believe he likes pilgrims much,” Daniel says, taking another long draw on the sweet coolness of the Coke. “Oh, forgive me, I mean peregrinos, he’s not after liking peregrinos.”

  “Speak for yourself, I’m a peregrina,” Ginny says, leaning back farther in the chair, lifting her face to the sun, eyes closed, as she had leaned back from the railing of Mary Magdalene’s chapel.

  When the waiter comes back, he asks if they want tapas. Along with its wine, the region is known for these delicious appetizers that line the local bars under glass, like bakery windows. You pick from an array of delectables featuring fresh olives, tangy cheeses, and salty cured meats. Tapas, however, would require the two of them to get up and go inside to select their choices, and neither is up to it. It is strange how a person can walk for so long and then simply cannot walk anymore, as if the body goes on strike. When they refuse the tapas and ask for a menu, the waiter is visibly appalled by their lack of culture. He places the bottle of wine and both glasses in front of Daniel and marches off in a huff.

  “Do you think he fancies me a drinker?” Daniel says as he pours a glass of wine for Ginny and pushes it toward her.

  “Wouldn’t that be a form of racial profiling?” Ginny says.

  “Indeed, it would be,” he says, filling his own glass and bringing it to his lips. His first thought is that it tastes so much better than the wine fountain. His second thought is that it tastes better than any wine he has ever had. Even in France. No wonder the town has a whole bloody festival for it. “People talk about avoiding stereotypes,” he says to Ginny, taking another sip. “But nobody seems to have a problem with assuming I’ll be paralytic before noon every Saint Patrick’s Day.”

  “And are you?” Ginny asks, baiting him.

  “I come from a family of teetotallers. One year, a friend brought me a six pack of Guinness for Christmas and there were still two of them left come Easter.”

  “An Irish guy that doesn’t really drink,” she says.

  While Daniel nods, he feels secretly ashamed, thinking about the uncharacteristic hard drinking he had done in the last year and the reason behind it. “We aren’t always what people expect us to be,” he says, looking across the plaza.

  “No, we’re not,” Ginny says. “I guess that’s why we often disappoint people.”

  “You’re not after disappointing me.”

  “Give me a chance,” she says, rolling one sleeve of her T-shirt to reveal a defined shoulder. “Gotta maintain my tan,” she says as she rolls up the other one as well. The silver shells of her beaded bracelet catch the sun and seem to set off sparks.

  “Where’d you get the bracelet,” he asks her. It is a lot less tacky than the ones he has seen in the souvenir shops. He’s thinking it would be something his sister would like.

  “A little stall in one of the villages,” she says, biting her lip. “Were you thinking of buying one for a girl back home?”

  “There are no girls back home,” he says, knowing what she is really asking.

  It all seems so smooth and uncomplicated in the warm sunshine, as though only the two of them exist, him and this pretty girl with the easy laugh. But as with the crowd in the street, Daniel is always aware of the hidden horde that lurks around the corner. He is a penitent, like Mary Magdalene, always waiting for the judgment of his fall.

  Hours later when they leave the wine bar, pleasantly filled with the spicy seafood paella they ordered, he will see one of the Big Heads from the parade down an alley off the main street. The Spanish girl with the orange petticoats is slumped against a brick wall, lifeless where a burly young guy with tattoos has discarded her heartlessly on the pavement. Daniel cannot help but stare until the guy looks up at him, wondering what he wants. He and Ginny turn away and move on.

  It is late and all the albergues are full for the night. They even knock on the doors of some of the pensiones, prepared to pay the extra money for upscale accommodation. Everything is at full capacity because of the festival. Ginny sees a casa rural ahead that they haven’t tried. It looks pricey, not to mention noisy, overlooking an expansive three-tiered fountain and a plaza filled with clamouring party revellers. However, at this point they are getting desperate.

  Thankfully, the proprietor of what Petra would have called a B & B speaks English. “There is one room, peregrino. You are lucky. I had a cancellation.”

  How the hell does everyone assume right away we are pilgrims, Daniel thinks. Then he looks at their hiking pants, the backpacks. Who is he kidding?

  “Do you have two rooms?” Daniel asks.

  The innkeeper scratches his head, thinking. He must have assumed they were a couple.

  “Sorry, man, just the one. Fifty euros for the night.”

  Daniel and Ginny exchange exhausted looks. They both answer together.

  “We’ll take it.”

  It is getting dark when the two of them sit on the balcony with their feet hanging over the side. They are on the third floor and have a panoramic view of the city. Daniel has finally taken his socks and boots off and showered in the shared bathroom down the hall. They both drink water now, trying to replace the fluids they lost during the day out in the sun, as well as from the dehydrating effects of the exceptional wine. They had ordered a second bottle before they were done. The wine was so cheap, and it went down far too smoothly. Daniel thinks the alcohol content must be lower than conventional wine because, while he feels relaxed, he does not feel drunk. This is good; he’ll need to have his wits about him tonight.

  Ginny has showered and changed as well. She is wearing a pair of running shorts she uses as pyjamas. She dangles her long legs through the balcony railing over the crowd below. They kick back and forth in the night air, strong and sleek like the rest of her. Honey-brown hair hangs down free of the ponytail. She appears fairly relaxed as well.

  “You’re surprising me,” he says, looking out into the evening. Lights turn on to illuminate the fountain in the busy square below. He can see flowers and trees carved into the stone like fancy embroidery. A roar goes up from the crowd.

  “Why?” Ginny says, once things have quieted down again. “Because I would bunk down with a man I barely know rather than risk sleeping on the street?”

  “There are two beds in there and I’m after giving you the big one.” He must admit, he had breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the small single bed in the corner.

/>   In the centre of the room, there is a queen-size bed with luxurious duvets and pillows, and something that looks like mosquito netting hanging over it from the ceiling. Ginny had said that it was just for decoration. He knew that but had fun pretending to her that he didn’t.

  “I reckon I’m just surprised you’re still with me. After everything.”

  She ignores the subject he is trying so delicately to breach. “See over there,” she says, pointing toward the hills just outside of town.

  He can barely make out the faded green bumps of grass on the horizon, just outside the walls of Logroño. They are quickly fading with the diminishing light.

  “Aye,” he says. “I see them.”

  “That’s where the witches used to meet,” she says. “They would dance in the field by the river naked.”

  “Are they out tonight, so?” Daniel pretends to crane his neck to get a better look.

  Ginny gives him a swat on the arm. “I’m serious,” she says. “Logroño was famous for its witch trials during the Spanish Inquisition. They arrested thousands of people and charged them.”

  “We don’t have witches in Ireland,” he tells her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sure, we had the occasional tale of some old crone eating children during the famine, of course.” He can’t believe he’s saying this. “Oh wait, tell a lie, we do have witches,” he says. “Butter witches.”

  “What did they do?”

  “They stole butter.”

  “Wow, what a hardcore lot. Makes the Spanish Inquisition seem like a bunch of pansies.”

  “Sure, I told you we didn’t really have witches. Just fairies and that nonsense.”

  “Did the fairies dance naked?” Ginny continues to kick her legs absentmindedly in front of her.

  He thinks about the big bed behind them in the room. How those ivory sheets would slide down the silky skin of her thighs. He tries to change the subject to a safer topic than naked women.

  “Enough with asking me questions. Let’s hear more about the Spanish Inquisition.”

  “Well, it was pretty grim, as I’m sure you know.” The legs stop swinging. “They’d do unspeakable things to get people to confess, to turn on their family and friends. That’s how they ended up with so many witches — everyone kept accusing each other.”

  “That’s a terrible thing.” The lightheartedness of their earlier conversation begins to dissipate. He wishes now they’d stuck with the butter witches.

  “They’d lock them into a metal figure shaped like a bull,” Ginny says. He can barely hear her now over the noise in the square below. “The snout had the only air holes. I read about it.” She takes another sip of water, gazes out into the night. “They’d set a fire underneath. The person would force their mouth into the air holes and scream and try to breathe. It made them sound like a bull before he charges.” She shivers as she turns to him, her eyes wide. “They did this as entertainment.”

  Daniel is silent. He doesn’t know how to respond. He can picture the horror of the scene, as well as the fascination of it. It’s one of the paradoxes of the human race; both our revulsion and our attraction to agony.

  “I mean, a person would say anything under those circumstances, don’t you think?”

  “Agreed,” says Daniel, his thoughts of the bedsheets now diminished.

  “People never know what they will do if faced with that kind of fear,” she says. “They think they know, but they don’t.”

  She’s trembling. He hadn’t noticed before, but she is.

  “I believe there may be more to that story.” Leaning in, he gently puts what he hopes is a non-threatening hand on her nearest shoulder. “Perhaps you need to be telling it,” he says.

  She is holding something back. A dark shadow of a secret. Much like himself. Maybe that’s why they are attracted to each other.

  She turns to him and her lip quivers a bit like she’s going to speak, then instead she lowers the side of her head to his shoulder. He can smell the soap she used in the shower, a combination of ginger with sweet vanilla. He saw the body wash in the bath. He loves ginger, fresh and spicy. It gives an edge to the vanilla, makes it less ordinary. He wants to touch that scent, and not just with a brotherly hand on the shoulder. He wants to hold her in his arms. Maybe even pull her down on the cold mesh metal of the balcony and kiss her while the people below watch her bare legs kick out above them in a whole different way.

  As if hearing his thoughts, the crowd cries out in unison. The lit fountain is changing. Daniel looks down and watches as the clear flowing water turns blood red, spraying streams and droplets all around the circular stone basin, staining the sides dark. Some of the people below jump into it, and let the crimson liquid saturate their hair and clothes. It pours down their faces as they laugh and scream, holding their mouths open, bright red currents flowing down their chins. They dance around like kids at the beach or extras in a horror film.

  “Oh my God!” Ginny shrieks, scrambling off the balcony. She runs into the bedroom. Daniel runs after her. She is trying to get the door to the hall open but forgets she needs the heavy skeleton key that the innkeeper gave them to get out as well as in. It still sits on the bedside table next to their backpacks. She begins to yell and pound on the door to get out like the tortured witches in the Inquisition’s metal bull.

  “It’s all right, Ginny,” he says, pulling her toward him and away from the door. “It’s only red dye.” He lowers himself to her height, looks directly into her eyes to make sure she is processing what he is saying. “The innkeeper told me about it when you were in the shower. It’s for the red wine festival.”

  She stares at him blankly, then appears to understand, looking over his shoulder out into the night and then back at him for reassurance.

  “I, I just …” She begins but can’t seem to finish her thought. She glances down at his hands held fast above both of her elbows, her own hands clinging to his forearms so hard he can feel her short but sharp nails dig in. “I’m just so tired,” she says, explaining things away, releasing his arms, staring down at the carpet of the room, a deep shag reminiscent of the seventies that Daniel always associates with porn flicks. A strange mental connection, but given what he was thinking before Ginny flipped out, maybe not an entirely unexpected one.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, regaining composure.

  He releases her, with a touch of regret. “Maybe you should be adopting some lighter nighttime reading than the Spanish Inquisition,” Daniel tells her, working to lighten the mood. He cannot believe no one has come to bang the door down, thinking Ginny’s being violated or worse. He’s glad that they didn’t though. He imagines himself trying to profess his innocence in broken Spanish, like a misunderstood monster.

  Outside, the fountain continues to flow a bright red. It will do so until tomorrow night, when it will turn a softer rose and then pale gold to depict all the types of wine the Rioja region produces. The innkeeper told Daniel all of this. He is wishing now that he had told Ginny.

  “I think I’ll go to bed,” she says. She fetches the key off the bedside table and lets herself out to use the toilet. The door makes a metal click as she releases the knob from the other side.

  He walks over to the single bed and lies down on top of the duvet fully clothed, listening to the muted hum of the crowd in the square as they talk and sing songs he doesn’t know. When she comes back through the door, he shuts his eyes tightly, like a kid caught after lights out. He listens to her turning the key in the lock again, and then to the sound of her slipping between the cool sheets of her bed. There is a slight rustling of the netting above he can hear even with the noise going on outside.

  He thinks about Ginny lying so close to him. Listens to the evenness of her breath as she falls into the deep slumber that takes all pilgrims after a full day of walking the Spanish countryside, no matter how inconducive the environment may be for sleep. The body takes what it needs, and what hers needs is rest.


  After Ginny’s reaction to the red fountain, he knows he is not the only one with a past that still haunts. Ginny carries a burden on her Camino, too. Something as terrifying as blood from a fountain, or a witch in a cornfield. Maybe even as horrifying as what happened to Petra.

  He slowly drifts off, remembering how it feels to have a woman’s soft skin next to his. What it is like to reach your leg over to rest a thigh on her hip. Arms wrapped around a taut torso, with the curve of a breast held protectively in one hand. He is ashamed of these thoughts but too tired for self-recriminations. He wonders what Ginny’s secret is, but at the same time he doesn’t care. He pictures her beneath him, giving herself up like a woman born of witchcraft, dancing in a field naked to the rhythm of drums. He falls asleep to the roar of the crowd, feeling guilty and aroused all at once, like a good Irish Catholic boy.

  The evil thoughts of men, his mind warns, as unconsciousness takes him. The evil thoughts of men.

  CHAPTER 6

  Logroño to Azofra

  IT’S STILL DARK WHEN they pack up and leave the casa rural the next day. Both had woken up early. Neither had slept well. Daniel had lain in bed awake at four in the morning, staring at the ceiling, counting Ginny’s even breaths — until he heard her clear her throat and sigh, and he realized that she was awake as well. At dawn, they leave by the back door of the building, like thieves, avoiding the fountain out front. Daniel is not sure if this is intentional, but it probably is.

  It is still dark enough for the streetlights to be on. They illuminate a Logroño littered with Rioja festival leftovers. There are streamers and torn red fans curled up on the pavement, and discarded bits of food and broken bottles washed up on the curb like seaweed and shells.

  “Watch out,” Ginny warns, just as Daniel is about to step in a Technicolor pool of vomit outside one of the seedier-looking bars.