Lawrence Block - Step by Step

We learned to pick up provisions at stores along the way. Nuts and olives were both tasty and portable, and delivered a good nutritional payload. Bakery-fresh bread ranged from pretty good to excellent, and we learned to point at the whole wheat loaves until we learned what they were called. Lynne remembered that Hemingway had somewhere observed that you could always tell a poor country, that the whores were young and the bread was still good. Permutations of that line became a part of our argot; a street scene might prompt one of us to remark that the bread in this particular village was sure to be wonderful, while the occasional loaf of compressed sawdust would call up a vision of geriatric working girls.

There were times when good food was available. Some cafés had soup, and it didn’t much matter to us if the base was a meat stock. Our vegetarianism was never religious in nature. (In fact it’s impossible to say what the basis of it might have been. It wasn’t PETA-style ethical vegetarianism, as neither of us stopped wearing leather, and, while we both thought it was probably good for us physically, I can’t say it stemmed primarily from health concerns. It just intuitively seemed right for us at the time — and, some years later, it seemed to be time to give it up.)

In the city of Burgos I remember eating a rich stew, after carefully picking out and setting aside the larger pieces of meat. More recently I spent some time on the Atkins diet, and if I’d then been presented with that very same bowl of stew, I’d have limited my consumption to the very portions I rejected the first time around.

Pizza was always a good choice, when we could find it. It was abundant in France, but we only encountered one pizzeria on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, and that was in Catalonia. The fellow who owned it was fluent in English, and we got to talking with him; he’d learned the language in England, where he’d also learned to make pizza. He met an English girl there, married her, and brought her back to Catalonia, where they’d opened a pizzeria.

In Huesca, we had a hell of a time finding a place to eat. There were a couple of restaurants that were priced beyond our budget, and if there was anything cheaper, it was well hidden. Then we found this large restaurant housed in what seemed to be some sort of inn, and we had a decent lunch there at a reasonable price. Something was odd about the place, and somewhere in the course of our meal we noticed that Lynne was the only woman in the place, and not because we’d somehow wandered into a monastery.

It was, we realized, some sort of gay house of assignation. It was also the best place to eat in Huesca, and we took all our meals there for the rest of our stay. Now and then we’d see a youth we recognized, leaning on a fence and looking flagrantly available. Lynne called out a cheerful greeting to one such lad, and the poor son of a bitch turned scarlet, as embarrassed as if his mother had caught him in a men’s room with a senator from Idaho.

In Galicia, the province where Santiago de Compostela is located, we encountered a local pub specialty called Pimientos de Padrón. These were little green peppers, perhaps an inch long, roasted with garlic and salt, and I ate plate after plate of them.

Early on, the route was very much our own creation. After we left Mme. Très Sportif, we continued on toward the Andorran border as far as the town of Aix-les-Thermes, where we had to wait for three days because the road ahead was closed by an avalanche. When they opened it, we walked on to and through Andorra, and there’s something special about walking in one end of a country and out the other end a day or two later.

The little country has long been jointly administered by France and Spain, and this had the effect of turning much of it into a shopping mall for tax-free cameras and electronic gear. While the shopping held no attraction for us, the views were pretty spectacular.

It was during our transit of Andorra that Lynne first began to believe that she’d actually be able to go the distance. Up until then she figured that what she was going through was only going to get worse, and that eventually she’d have to quit and go home; the only thing that was keeping her going was that she couldn’t figure out how to break the news to me.

I knew she was having a tough time, but I’d anticipated as much. I was having a difficult time myself, contending with the weight of the backpack and the steepness of the terrain and the sheer burden of mile after mile after mile. What kept me going was the certainty that it would become easier once my body had conditioned itself to meet the challenge. I could recall those laborious circuits of Washington Square Park, by means of which I had gradually turned myself into a runner. In much the same fashion I was now transforming myself into a hiker, and so was Lynne.

Except she didn’t know it. And, when I told her, she didn’t believe me.

As far as she was concerned, I was just shining her on, dangling the notion of improved physical conditioning like a carrot while I kept in reserve the stick of disapproval. She didn’t believe me for a moment. It was just a nice story I was telling her, something to lure her into continuing this impossible journey, and if I could make up such a story she could pretend to believe it. But she wasn’t buying it, not for a minute.

So she soldiered on, knowing it was hopeless, and sustaining herself by holding imaginary conversations with her girlfriends, in which she pointed out my obduracy while lamenting the fact that she couldn’t go on and didn’t know how to tell me.

I wish she’d had some of those conversations with me, because as it was I really had no idea what she was going through. Then again, what if she had? All I could do was offer the same assurance I’d been extending all along, and all she could do in turn was nod and smile and know in her heart that I was full of crap. So on we walked, and I wondered why this game and good-hearted companion had morphed into a whiner, while she wondered why she’d ever been persuaded that marrying me was a good idea.

And then, somewhere in Andorra, things changed.

I don’t suppose it hurt that we had crested the Pyrenees, and that we were now going down instead of up. But more important was the fact that the walking we’d been doing had made us discernibly stronger. I think, too, that this strengthening process was mental as well as physical, that we were both getting used to the idea of spending our days walking substantial distances.

When Lynne told me that she was indeed stronger, that shouldering her pack and walking for an hour or two, while still challenging, was no longer the horror it had been, I was relieved but not surprised. “That’s great,” I said. “I told you that would happen.”

“I know,” she replied. “I didn’t believe you.”

And, after we’d batted that one back and forth, I frowned, puzzled. “If you honestly didn’t believe me,” I said, “and if you were convinced it was never going to get better, what kept you going?”

She gave me a look. And, a mile or so down the road, she found us a shortcut.

We were approaching Andorra La Vella, the principality’s capital and largest city, and the road into town consisted of an elaborate series of descending switchbacks. From where we stood, we could see the town way down below, and the way the road resembled a meandering river, or perhaps a snake. Lynne pointed to our right, where a steep and little-used footpath plunged straight down toward the center of town.

“Come on,” she urged. “We can go straight down and save all that walking.”

And so we did. Staying upright was no mean task, given the declivity of the path and the heft of our packs, and it was almost as hard to keep from running as it was to keep from falling, but we managed somehow. And it was exhilarating, dashing down that mountainside, crossing and recrossing that winding ribbon of road, and finishing up, flushed and breathless, in the very center of town, surrounded by no end of establishments eager to sell us cigarettes and stereo components.