Everything I know about the Way

Everything I know about the way is a short story by Alexandra F. Coego. Longlisted in the 2023 Bloom Writing Contest of the European Society of Literature.

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There is a pilgrimage in the north of Spain that everybody, alive or dead, is condemned to do. Before I go on explaining why you will walk this way at some point in your life or afterlife, I want to clarify what I mean by "the north of Spain." Banish the scorching sun and the flamenco dancers and the bullfighters that your imagination most likely conjured when you read Spain. I'm going to take you somewhere quite different. Start with a white canvas. Or, even better, a green one. Just sprawling greenness of all shades, though mostly dark ones: emerald and malachite and moss and juniper and jade. Then, add the white in thick and dry brush strokes, also in different shades: smoke white for the low mist creeping in, pearl for the pregnant clouds above and alabaster for the foam of angry waves. Finally, a blue of the most melancholic shade framing it all, the green and the white, for the sky and the ocean. Now, you should have in your mind a decent image of what I mean by the north of Spain and, more specifically, Galicia.

I'm sure that you are impatient to find out why on Earth you will end up in Galicia of all places but, before going into the details and reasons for your impending voyage, I must add some key information about the region. As a Galician myself, I feel like it is my duty to prepare you for this pilgrimage and describe to you the kind of people you will meet on the way.

That melancholic blue you used for the sky and ocean —you will find it in the people, as well. We call it morriña. It means homesickness but, what sets morriña apart is that being away from home is not a prerequisite to feeling it: a Galician can dwell in long hours of morriña in the comfort of the home they grew up in. I do not know if we were always prone to this specific type of nostalgia, but one could argue that it might have to do with being a nation of migrants.

To use my case as an example, both my grandmothers fled the Civil War, one to Venezuela and the other to Cuba, and despite being back in their hometowns for decades, they sometimes sit on a bench at dusk or stand in the kitchen alone, motionless and silent, as if they were still lost in a foreign land and the ache for home had suddenly overcome them. Their children, my mother and my father, recall childhoods of cicadas singing in the blazing afternoon and palm trees caressing skies of cruel blue and, most of all, they remember a strange pain in their small chests when they got on the boat back to what their parents called home.

Imagine then how thick the air is with all that melancholy, how pervasive homesickness is when home is not a place but a time. I myself grew up missing a time that was yet to come, a future far away from all these people who all they did was missing something, and I fled and I ran and before I knew it I was thousands of kilometres away from home, sitting on a bench at dusk or standing in my kitchen, unsure of what I was looking for, longing. What I want to say with all of this is that you may feel terribly homesick when you arrive in Galicia at first. I encourage you to embrace it. Breathe the blue in. You will miss the place just as terribly when you leave.

You probably already suspect this, but some sort of magic is involved in this whole business of the dead or alive pilgrimage. While Spain stands on the eroded yet still strong pillar of Catholicism, Galicia shares its whole weight on two: the Catholic Church and the older pagan legends. It is one of the few places in the world where a perfectly respectable churchgoing woman can also proudly claim to be the daughter of a witch. That is, of course, a meiga, which are the good ones, the ones who just get you in a little trouble but would never hurt anyone — no one in their right mind would openly claim to be related to a bruxa, the truly evil ones. Some say it is the other way around, and that it is the meigas who entertain a closer relationship with the devil, but then again, this is an old land of old legends where few things are what they seem to be. The spell covers the whole of the northern coast of Spain and, the further south you travel, the fewer witches and trolls and fairies and druids you'll find, perhaps because the thick forests that hide them disappear as well.

It is then important for you to understand that, during your pilgrimage, inexplicable things and encounters might happen when you find yourself lost in the heart of the woodlands. Do not be afraid. The worst thing that could happen (your death) might have already happened by then.

Now that we have gone through the basics, let's get into the journey you will embark on. Perhaps I should've started by clarifying that the pilgrimage I have been talking about is not the celebrated Camino de Santiago, although the Camino is itself relevant to the story of this lesser-known way. The pilgrimage that you will walk is to the sanctuary of San Andrés de Teixido. It is located north of this northern region, perched on a steep hill by the sea, where the apostle Saint Andrew is said to have arrived by boat — just like Saint James.

To much of Saint Andrew's chagrin, the cult to his remains did not spark the same religious fervour as his former friend and colleague. Where James got a magnificent gothic cathedral whose spires reached the very stars the town is named after (Compostela means field of stars), Andrew’s was a small church with a single tower and austere white walls. With the passing of the centuries, the Saint grew restless in his small sanctuary, surrounded by nothing but the echo of harsh Atlantic winds coming from heathen arctic lands. We do not know if it was jealousy or loneliness or simply morriña, but something finally pushed Andrew to ask God to remedy the injustice he saw in this difference between himself and James.

‘Nobody comes to see me here, in this small and isolated temple,’ he lamented.

That is when God made the promise that condemned us all:

‘Do not worry, Andrew, for those who won't come to see you alive, they will come to see you when they're dead.’

Or, in Galician: Vai de morto quen non foi de vivo.

Now, at this stage, you might be tempted to discard this whole thing as an old woman's tale and go all your life without going to the sanctuary. I myself have tried (unsuccessfully) to forget about it by moving away and busying my days with serious and reasonable things, like a corporate career and lunches with people who would definitely dismiss me if I ever mentioned witches during our civil conversations. But then I would think of my mother, who is the most serious and reasonable person I know, and how she would slip a small ivy branch under my pillow every summer solstice. I believe that the safest decision that you can make is to travel to the sanctuary while you are alive, regardless of how much faith in the process you have. After all, the least you'll get out of it will be a short holiday in Spain —albeit not the sun-soaked one foreigners usually seek when they travel to the peninsula.

The reason for this advice is a simple and practical one: those who wait until death will have to complete the pilgrimage while trapped inside the small and cold and slimy body of a lizard. You see, it would be extremely dangerous for a soul to wander around Galicia without inhabiting a body. You would most likely end up being caught by the Holy Company, a group of lost spirits that maunders from town to town through the thick of the night to carry the message of death to the places where death is due —and there is no heaven or hell after joining the Holy Company. 

I don't mean to scare you with these details. You truly have nothing to fear. Your soul will be protected under an unassuming yet effective scaled shield. It might be distressing for some to go from closing their eyes while on their deathbeds, surrounded by loved ones, only to follow the light and end up in an unfamiliar forest in northern Spain reincarnated as a lizard. Some might even think they've been sent to a damp and fireless hell. Nothing further from the truth. Yes, it might take you considerably longer to make your way to San Andrés de Teixido using your new and strange small limbs, but it won't be hard for you to adapt to the forest. Remember what I said about homesickness. It doesn't matter how scared you are or how cold your blood is —the morriña will make its way into your tiny reptilian heart and there will come a time, after you finish the pilgrimage, when you will miss the enormity and vastness of the ferns and willows and streams all around you. Plus, there will be others too. People that, like you, waited till it was too late. You will find them and they will find you.

I must confess that, despite having spent the past couple of paragraphs doing my best to convince you to do the pilgrimage while you are alive, I am quite tempted to leave it to the afterlife. Just a couple of weeks ago, I travelled back to Galicia and my father suggested that we go together to San Andrés de Teixido. He did not mention it, but I knew his health was deteriorating and the issue of the pilgrimage had risen a considerable number of spots on his to-do list. I had just landed in Santiago de Compostela, which is only a couple of hours away by car from the sanctuary, and, before driving south to our hometown, he thought we could make a detour and pay a visit to the lonely Saint. It would have certainly been convenient to do it and be done with it right there and then but, in the end, I asked my father if we could leave it for another day. I blamed my decision on my tiredness from the early morning flight and the less-than-suitable weather conditions, but that night, laying on my childhood bed, I thought about what it would be like to be born again —not as a different person, with a whole new set of dreams and hopes and misfortunes, but as a small creature, unbothered by everything except survival and making it to the chapel.

I must say that I have always found comfort in my own insignificance before the beauty and grandeur of nature, and I cannot but wonder how lovely it would be to marvel at dew drops the size of my hand (or, rather, claw) glimmering in the morning light, or how cosy it might be to curl up under a bed of camellia petals after a long day of crawling towards the sanctuary. I wonder if it would be easier for my heart to be full if it were smaller.

Anyway, I digress now.

Let's go back to you and your journey. I know you must have questions. How will I know the way if I'm a lizard? What if someone steps on me and I die again? What will happen if I decide to never finish the pilgrimage and stay forever in the forest? Unfortunately, I do not have the answers. Everything I know, I have shared with you. Perhaps we will meet along the way —at least I hope so. Wouldn't it be lovely if we both decide to wait until death and end up together in the forest?