All text & images copyright © 2000 Joseph Robertson
[None of the contents of this page may be reproduced or distributed without the expressed, written consent of the author, who retains all rights & priveleges.]

Xampanyería [ Afternoons in Barcelona ] continued...

2.

A true constant in the decor (if any of the flotsam that dutifully lined the walls could reach 'decor') of this xampanyería was one certain slender 'tipo' in a leather jacket. Lone cockatoo. Maybe he didn't have the piercing wisdom of the owl, but he would look into people, through people, one bottle, one glass at his elbow, as he leaned on the counter that ran the length of the wall. He'd look into you, as if he had a secret which should have belonged only to you, and he wanted to correct the error... only, he couldn’t remember the secret, and he blamed you.

He seemed to love imagining the secrets of others. He never spoke. At times, it appeared that he was actually only appearing to be, not being, not real, a ghost. He would look into you, then look away, straight out the twelve-foot-high barn door a foot and a half away, into the street, as if there were nowhere else to be and his lament was a great, thick, impenetrable pane of glass that kept him inside the bar.

'Restos' we called him: 'the ruins' or remains of something bigger than what we saw. Restos just stood, drank, watched, trying to imagine himself, an elsewhere, others, places to be. He was the most subjunctive human being I had ever encountered.

With tart concern, I would observe the man in the corner, his little struggles against the mob, his attempts to keep from getting crushed, but mostly his rags and his way of clinging to the bottle he was drinking, as if it had a life of its own, as if it were his own most precious creation. He behaved as if detached, unimaginably detached, from everything around him, and yet he treated every object he touched (the bottles, vasos, countertop, the wall against which he leaned) with deeply paternal care, a something stored up from decades of disuse which we imagined he could no never fully expend. There was an absence he carried with passion, and whatever was lacking, that was the reason he felt mildly existentially fulfilled by the day's drink, one of many imprecise answers to disuse.

Indeed, having learned to exist in the distance that dominated my thinking, existing beyond all prior horizons, I felt akin to his scarcity. You could almost see through him. I had felt that way, wondered if I was merely a speculation of myself, a guess at some far-fetched possibility of selfhood, never to be realized. Restos was an icon and a diversion. I would scrutinize his habits, his silence, his precarious footing, and I would inevitably see myself. His sandaled feet had carried me; the mossy brown of his jacket wore something I knew as my own. I had known his isolation, likely his fears. And yet, I had managed to fall into this warm expatriate subculture, lucky 'forastero' that I was.

3.

On a sunny day, the air so clear you might think you could smell a 'mandarina' or two on the breeze, I would likely find myself walking either the Old Port or the Gothic Quarter. Each 'vecindad' sported building after building, all somehow similar, yet all seeming to have been born from different generations. Each was a maze in its own way. Nothing easier than getting lost in the ruins of another time.

The cobbles, the asphalt, the air were rich with sea salt. The mountains on the northwestern edge of Barcelona invited morning fogs to hang over the whole city, sinking only reluctantly back to the shoreline. These fogs lifted the sediment of history, daily, into the air, a ritual cleaning. A salty timeless savor would, daily, override the sooty-city residue of industry. For those intimate, empty hours, life itself opened up, became vulnerable, reliant upon our will. We tended to attempt to dwell among the salts.

No matter what my intended destination (many days I would have an insurmountable urge to pass by the Museo Picasso; other days, it was more important to find myself at the port’s edge, watching the world in flux), all streets, every exiting of an art gallery, every 'callejón' or 'escondrijo', every late café luncheon, would lead me back to the xampanyería. We would sometimes joke that all of the Barri Gótic was a series of compartments of the spirit, all fascinating but exhausting, all begging the loud, unclean serenity of the crowded cava bar.

At four p.m., possibly, definitely within the hour, one could locate Michael or Saint Jerome or Renault, Farola or the Dutchman. Nevertheless, it was always the outside, the persistence of the old places, that would drive us there. It was always an integral part of a more organismal experience, never solely, or statically, ‘a separate peace’.

4.

Seeking becomes a language among people who have determined that their common purpose is to uncover new words. One day, the color of light announced to us that a pilgrimage had to follow. In the right light, in a foreign country, it becomes possible to understand, sublimely, confidently, that a person can simply walk out of all known patterns, penetrate the veil of the night, and navegate a landscape about which one knows virtually nothing. All of this, of course, requires a team of willing cohorts, a safe country, and a large amount of good fortune.

It was in this manner we decided to hike to Montserrat. It would be a brief, boundless, sober experience.

5.

We carried with us three or four antique maps of varying diameter, none drawn to scale, and no compass. We carried certain provisions, for nutrition and for comfort’s sake. We had the moon at our backs. We had been given a very vague idea that pilgrims who had gone before us to see the the Serrated Mountain, in the true old tradition of pilgrimage, had also left marked trails for us to follow. This idea felt propitious, but not one of us ever sought concrete clarification on the matter. Though each of us knew a number of people who had tried to make the journey, relatively few barceloneses had actually ventured out as we were about to do. Neither was any one of us certain exactly what tradition we were engaging, perpetuating, but we felt sure, each of us, that our pilgrimage had been ordained by some necessity. There was no one we could consult on these matters; we had a private purpose, and no one had seen the markings anyway. All of this, the awareness of the moon, the provisions, the need for a sense of necessity, I think originated in doubt. We had our doubts about the advisability of hiking through the night, in a foreign country, expecially when the natives had warned us of wild boar and possibly wolves. We had doubts about our very stamina... already we had heard tales of adventurous spirits cutting out midway, turning for home, vanquished, warring secretly amongst themselves. Beyond this, I think we had an interest in doubt itself, exploring doubt and returning with something new and more whole and cleaner than the source of so many suspicions about possibility.

The whole thing had been Miles’ idea. In fact, we were at the xampanyería when he proposed it. I myself thought it to be one of the countless heady suggestions expatriates are wont to throw out into a common light, to see if they melt away or not... naturally, it seemed like one of those that would melt away. Soon we had more than a handful of eager souls, signing on (probably in the melt-away mode of reasoning), and we had set a date, even a place, as point of departure. But nothing was certain. The afternoon before the eight of us were to leave, we had no idea of what to do or how to begin. We knew only that somewhere in the Catalán interior, there was a mountain called Montserrat, a beautiful and famous place where the human spirit was supposed to receive an infusion of stability, and that it was supposed to be possible to walk there in less than one day. Consequently, it was doubt that regimented our planning. We had nothing but ideas.

I went looking for anything resembling a walking guide, an atlas of the region, a map, plain and simple. No store anywhere to be found by me, on such short notice, contained such tools. Gloria gave me a couple of old maps she had, which hadn’t really resembled the precise layout of the region for half a century. I promised myself I would not damage them with overuse.

The group was to assemble at the Plaza de Catalunya, Ramblas entrance to the regional rail lines. Ten, pm. It was still uncertain who would come. When I arrived, I found Mary, Kelly, and Renault. Renault was looking sharp around the edges, having sworn off alcohol for the afternoon and evening of our departure. We were all clean, well-fed, and tired. Three plus one. Miles was next, then St. Paul and Cat. Lisa had decided that nothing would make this long hard night worth her while. She had said it this way to Miles, and he had taken it as a gesture of liberation. She didn’t want to be the one who complained or suffered all the way to Montserrat. We envied her resolve, questioned our own, boarded a train out of the city.

There was a pungent silence among us. We had no clear leader, and we had already lost one of the volunteers. What next? was running over each of our foreheads like rocky stream unaware of its destination. We had quaint thoughts: Barcelona is our home; we should not abandon her; there will be disappointment... the night is the right place to take this chance; we will fail under cover of darkness, and succeed in the light, when the world is awake... there is something heroic about this plunge into the unknown; we are pioneers; perhaps this will give us a better understanding of our homeland, our history as a people and a nation. Renault thought about bears and comforted himself to know that no such peril would befall our team. All of this to pass the rhythmic quiet of a train ride, to forget about time, to ignore how far behind we had already fallen.

By the time we came upon a little bar, in the first town of the cordillera, and asked stupidly a table of young revelers for directions that would determine our entire experience, it was a quarter after eleven. It was becoming clear that we had a certain expertise for dallying about and not beginning, and I wondered if any of us would decline an offer to turn back and forget it, maybe share a pitcher of sangría and celebrate our practical wisdom and our cowardice. Cat decided we should ask the one female at the table to elaborate on the vague instructions her friends had offered us. She confessed that they had lied, that they were drunk and she was embarassed and it’s not every day someone asks for directions to walk through the night to a holy place. She told us to look for a hill up the road, and an intersection, and paint on trees. But watch for the wild boar. They come out at night, and they have no sense of civility whatsoever. It seemed an honest attempt. We did as she had instructed.

Half an hour brought us to the hill, and there was, interestingly enough an intersection, and behind some tall grass, paint on a tree. There were signs for more than one marked trail, and we chose the yellow and white. There were two arrows; we went left, up the hill. The hill was not very spectacular, and at the top there was a small, seemingly abandoned old stone church. We had already lost the trail, and we could not see far enough to locate Montserrat on the western horizon, due to light polution from the towns below. The moon had been coming out of the sea, as we left, so its trajectory would take it from east to west during the night. We located the moon, which seemed to be climbing straight up the spine of our night sky, and we were pleased to think that we knew at least which direction held our hope. Again, we dallied, we explored the churchyard, as if it would contain some clue, perhaps a magic portal that would transfer us directly to the craggy slopes of Montserrat. We were, in effect, searching for a miracle, and I still think it’s safe to say that doubt was among us, and we were all hoping someone would call off the hike.

But we had no leader, and no one seemed prepared to step forward, only to use that privelege to sabotage the expeditions. It would have seemed an abuse, and presumptuous. So we milled about the churchyard, looking for proof that our attempt had already ended, that there was no possibility of success, and it would be madness to continue. It seemed darker in our immediate surroundings than anywhere else on the hill or in the surrounding civic pools of brick and electricity. I found myself reflecting on the nature of God’s ability to know. Is infinity dark, full of shadows, a shadow in itself? Is it true that we will meet God in a place that feels like nowhere, but is everywhere, that we will merge with the Divine, and see clearly forever?

We hiked. We felt unknowing, and we joked about what must be escaping us. Then, suddenly, as we struggled to clear weeds from what we hoped was a trail, as we shone our flashlights on every tree in the vecinity, and we coiled and recoiled to prepare ourselves for the inevitable encounter with the famed wild boar of the cordillera, Mary spoke:

Maybe we followed the trail backward. Maybe it begins at the church.

But why would there be an arrow pointing backward?

Maybe for people who are returning. It only said the trail went in that direction. There was another direction, and Montserrat could be at the other end of the other direction.

Okay. We descended the hill, left God to his weeding, and finally we began. She had been exactly right. Maybe the church was the starting point, maybe not, but it was backward, toward the beginning instead of toward the goal. We set out toward the goal, and every ten meters, there was another radiant yellow and white marking on another tree, and we gave thanks, and we laughed, and we gave in to adventure, and we committed ourselves to sixty kilometers without fear. It was almost one in the morning...

[ copyright © 2000 Joseph Robertson ]

[ return to Tintas Travel page ]