The Pilgrimage (18 page)

Come on now, after all, how can you take seriously anyone who leaves everything behind to
look for a sword? I asked myself. What would it really mean to my life if I couldnt find
it? I had learned the RAM practices, I had gotten to know my messenger, fought with the
dog, and seen my death, I told myself, trying to convince

myself that the Road to Santiago was what was impor- tant to me. The sword was only an
outcome. I would like to find it, but I would like even more to know what to do with it.
Because I would have to use it in some practi- cal way, just as I used the exercises
Petrus had taught me.

I stopped short. The thought that up until then had been only nascent exploded into
clarity. Everything became clear, and a tide of agape washed over me. I wished with all my
heart that Petrus were there so that I could tell him what he had been waiting to hear
from me. It was the only thing that he had really wanted me to understand, the crowning
accomplishment of all the hours he had devoted to teaching me as we walked the Strange
Road to Santiago: it was the secret of my sword!

And the secret of my sword, like the secret of any conquest we make in our lives, was the
simplest thing in the world: it was what I should do with the sword.

I had never thought in these terms. Throughout our time on the Strange Road to Santiago,
the only thing I had wanted to know was where it was hidden. I had never asked myself why
I wanted to find it or what I needed it for. All of my efforts had been bent on reward; I
had not understood that when we want something, we have to have a clear purpose in mind
for the thing that we want. The only reason for seeking a reward is to know what to do
with that reward. And this was the secret of my sword.

Petrus needed to know that I had learned this, but I was sure I would never see him again.
He had waited so

long for this, and he would never know that it had hap- pened.

So I knelt there, took some paper from my note- book, and wrote down what I intended to do
with my sword. I folded the sheet carefully and placed it under a stone one that reminded
me of him and his friend- ship. Time would eventually destroy the paper, but sym-
bolically, I was delivering it to Petrus.

Now he knew that I was going to succeed with my sword. My mission with Petrus had been
accomplished. I climbed the mountain, and the agape flowing

through me intensified the colors in the surroundings. Now that I had discovered the
secret, I had to find what I was looking for. A faith, an unshakable certainty, took
control of my being. I began to sing the Italian song that Petrus had remembered in the
train yard. I didnt know the words, so I made them up. There was no one in sight, and I
was passing through some deep woods, so the isolation made me sing even louder. Shortly I
saw that the words I had used made a kind of absurd sense. They were a way of
communicating with the world that only I knew, since now it was the world that was teach-
ing me.

I had experimented with this in a different way during my first encounter with Legion.
That day, the gift of tongues had manifested itself in me. I had been the ser- vant of the
Spirit, which had used me to save a woman and to create an enemy, and had taught me the
cruel ver- sion of the good fight. Now everything was different: I

was my own Master, and I was learning to communicate with the universe.

I began to talk to everything along the Road: tree trunks, puddles, fallen leaves, and
beautiful vines. It was an exercise of the common people, learned by children and
forgotten by adults. And I received a mysterious response from those things, as if they
understood what I was saying; they, in turn, flooded me with the love that consumes. I
went into a kind of trance that frightened me, but I wanted to continue the game until I
tired of it.

Petrus was right again: by teaching myself, I had transformed myself into a Master.

It was time for lunch, but I didnt stop to eat. When I passed through the small villages
along the Road, I spoke more softly and smiled to myself, and if by chance someone noticed
me, they would have con- cluded that the pilgrims arriving nowadays at the Cathedral of
Santiago were crazy. But this didnt matter to me, because I was celebrating the life all
around me and because I knew what I had to do with my sword when I found it.

For the rest of the afternoon, I walked along in a trance, aware of where it was that I
wanted to go but more aware of my surroundings and the fact that they had returned agape
to me. Heavy clouds began to gather in the sky for the first time in my journey, and I
hoped it would rain. After such a long period of hiking and of drought, the rain would be
a new, exciting experience. At three in the afternoon, I crossed into Galicia, and I

could see on the map that there was one more moun- tain to climb in order to complete that
leg of the pil- grimage. I was determined to climb it and then to sleep in the first town
on the other side: Tricastela, where a great king Alfonso IX had dreamed of creating an
immense city but which, many centuries later, was still a tiny country village.

Still singing and speaking the language I had invented for communicating with the things
around me, I began to climb the only remaining mountain: El Cebrero. Its name went back to
ancient Roman settle- ments in the region and was said to mean February, when something
important had presumably happened. In ancient times, this was considered to be the most
dif- ficult part of the Jacobean route, but today things have changed. Although the angle
of ascent is steeper than in the other mountains, a large television antenna on a
neighboring mountain serves as a reference point for pilgrims and prevents their wandering
from the Road, a common and fatal event in the past.

The clouds began to lower, and I saw that I would shortly be entering fog. To get to
Tricastela, I had to follow the yellow markers carefully; the television antenna was
already hidden in the mist. If I got lost, I would wind up sleeping outdoors, and on that
day, with the threat of rain, the experience would be quite dis- agreeable. It is one
thing to feel raindrops falling on your face, enjoying the freedom of the life of the
Road, and then find a place nearby where you can have a glass

of wine and sleep in a bed in preparation for the next days march. It is quite another to
have the raindrops cause a night of insomnia as you try to sleep in the mud, with your wet
bandages providing fertile ground for a knee infection.

I had to decide quickly. Either I went forward through the fog there was still enough
light to do so or I returned to sleep in the small village I had passed through a few
hours ago, leaving the crossing of El Cebrero for the next day.

As I realized that I had to make a quick decision, I noticed that something strange was
happening. My cer- tainty that I had discovered the secret of my sword was somehow pushing
me to go forward into the fog that would shortly engulf me. This feeling was quite differ-
ent from the one that had made me follow the little girl to the Gates of Forgiveness and
made me go with the man to the Church of Saint Joseph the Carpenter.

I remembered that, on the few occasions when I had agreed to put a magic curse on someone
in Brazil, I had compared this mystical experience with another very common experience:
that of learning to ride a bicycle. You begin by mounting the bicycle, pushing on the
pedals, and falling. You try and you fall, try and fall, and you cannot seem to learn how
to balance yourself. Suddenly, though, you achieve perfect equilibrium, and you establish
complete mastery over the vehicle. It is not a cumulative experience but a kind of miracle
that manifests itself only when you allow the bicycle to ride

you. That is, you accept the disequilibrium of the two wheels and, as you go along, begin
to convert the initial force toward falling into a greater force on the pedal.

At that moment in my ascent of El Cebrero, at four in the afternoon, I saw that the same
miracle had occurred. After so much time spent walking the Road to Santiago, the Road to
Santiago began to walk me. I fol- lowed what everyone calls ones intuition. And because of
the love that consumes that I had experienced all that day, and because my swords secret
had been discovered, and because at moments of crisis a person always makes the right
decision, I went forward with no hesitation into the fog.

This fog has to stop, I thought, as I struggled to see the yellow markers on the stones
and trees along the Road. By now the visibility had been very poor for almost an hour, but
I continued to sing as an antidote to my fear, while I hoped that something extraordinary
would happen. Surrounded by the fog, alone in those unreal surroundings, I began to look
at the Road to Santiago as if it were a film; this was the moment when the hero does
things that no one else in the film would dare to do, while the audience is thinking that
such things only happen in the movies. But there I was, living through a real situation.
The forest was growing quieter and quieter, and the fog began to dissipate. I seemed to be
reaching the end of the obscurity, but the light con- fused me and bathed everything in
mysterious, frighten- ing colors.

The silence was now complete, and as I noticed this, I heard, coming from my left, a
womans voice. I stopped immediately, expecting to hear it again, but I heard nothing not
even the normal sounds of the forest, with its crickets, its insects, and its animals
walk- ing through the dry leaves. I looked at my watch: it was exactly 5:15 p.m. I
estimated that I was still about three miles from Tricastela and that there was still time
to arrive before dark.

As I looked up from my watch, I heard the womans voice again. And from that point on, I
was to live through one of the most significant experiences of my life.

The voice wasnt coming from somewhere in the woods but from somewhere inside me. I was
able to hear it clearly, and it heightened my intuitive sense. It was neither I nor
Astrain who was speaking. The voice only told me that I should keep on walking, which I
did unquestioningly. It was as if Petrus had returned and was telling me again about
giving orders and taking them. At that moment, I was simply an instrument of the Road; the
Road was indeed walking me. The fog grew less and less dense; I seemed to be walking out
of it. Around me were the bare trees, the moist and slip- pery terrain, and ahead of me,
the same steep slope I had been climbing for such a long time.

Suddenly, as if by magic, the fog lifted completely. And there before me, driven into the
crest of the moun- tain, was a cross.

I looked around, and I could see both the fog bank from which I had emerged and another
above me. Between the two, I could see the peaks of the tallest mountains and the top of
El Cebrero, where the cross was. I felt a strong desire to pray. Even though I knew that I
would have to detour from the road to Tricastela, I decided to climb to the peak and say
my prayers at the foot of the cross. It took forty minutes to make the climb, and I did it
in complete silence, within and with- out. The language I had invented was forgotten; it
was not the right language for communicating with other people or with God. The Road to
Santiago was walking me, and it was going to show me where my sword was. Petrus was right
again.

When I reached the peak, a man was sitting there, writing something. For an instant I
thought he was a supernatural being, sent from elsewhere. Then my intu- ition told me that
he was not, and I saw the scallop shell stitched into his clothing; he was just a pilgrim,
who looked at me for a few moments and then walked away, disturbed by my having appeared.
Perhaps he had been expecting the same thing as I an angel and we had each found just
another person on the Road of the common people.

Although I wanted to pray, I wasnt able to say any- thing. I stood in front of the cross
for some time, look- ing at the mountains and at the clouds that covered the sky and the
land, leaving only the high peaks clear. Thirty yards below me there was a hamlet with
fifteen

houses and a small church, whose lights were being turned on. At least I had somewhere to
spend the night if the Road told me to do so. I was not sure when it would tell me, but
even with Petrus gone, I was not without a guide. The Road was walking me.

An unfettered lamb, climbing the mountain, stopped between the cross and me. He looked at
me, a bit frightened. For some time I stood there, looking at the black sky, and the
cross, and the white lamb at its foot. All at once, I felt exhausted by all that time
spent on tests and battles and lessons and the pilgrimage. I felt a terrible pain in my
stomach, and it rose to my throat, where it was transformed into dry, tearless sobs. There
I stood, overcome by the scene of the lamb and the cross. This was a cross that I need not
set upright, for it was there before me, solitary and immense, resisting time and the
elements. It was a symbol of the fate that people created, not for their God but for
themselves. The lessons of the Road to Santiago came back to me as I sobbed there, with a
frightened lamb as my witness.

My Lord, I said, finally able to pray, I am not nailed to this cross, nor do I see you
there. The cross is empty, and that is how it should stay forever; the time of death is
already past, and a god is now reborn within me. This cross is the symbol of the infinite
power that each of us has. Now this power is reborn, the world is saved, and I am able to
perform your miracles, because I trod the Road of the common people and, in mingling with
them, found your secret. You came among us to teach

us all that we were capable of becoming, and we did not want to accept this. You showed us
that the power and the glory were within every persons reach, and this sudden vision of
our capacity was too much for us. We crucified you, not because we were ungrateful to the
Son of God but because we were fearful of accepting our own capacity. We crucified you
fearing that we might be transformed into gods. With time and tradition, you came to be
just a distant divinity, and we returned to our destiny as human beings.