June 21, 2018

It’s my first night in a boss’s role. I’ll say how it is – strangely alert. There are evening checks, locking doors, making breakfast for the early pilgrims. It’s close to midnight when I fall nose-first in the bed.

It is dark all around when the silence of the albergue is disrupted by screeching and breaking bangs.  Still completely drowsy, I run downstairs. There’s a Korean traveller budging the door in the wrong direction, and not only that – he hasn’t even lifted the stopper at the bottom. Jeez… yesterday I instructed everyone on this. Upon seeing me, the man does not repent from budging the door still. The sound is akin to a canon firing a blast. In a hurry I switch to Russian for some reason and shout – teeho! (that’s ‘quiet’ in Russian). It works! He leaves the door alone and I gently open it. He gets out and I proceed to my chambers.

Tziing! – The door-bell! I turn ’round and open the door – the man forgot his walking sticks. The love for humans swaps out for migraine. The ordeal has woken up a couple other pilgrims, the albergue starts to wake up. It’s half past five and my head is aching, mind is shutting off, but there’s no point in going back to sleep. I sit on the bed and massage my head.

In the short snippet of sleep I capture a dissonant dream, in which, among other things, the face of Gundega trembled (I’ve written before about this special little girl and her mother, Inguna!). It felt weird. Somehow I get my bearings and drink a double portion of strong coffee and three ibumetin pills and get to work. When the priests arrive along with the seminarist, the second floor is flawless and aired out. Alas! Today I have to leave my wonderful room on the second floor and move to the first, where Raul stayed – closer to the main door, just to get around much faster. Ughh… the stench of cigarettes and alcohol is present here too!!! I tear the windows open and let the air have its way. My migraine has an opinion on this, and in general – it’s uncomfortable here.

Seeing Daniel I grab him by the hand and tell him I need to talk, motioning to the chapel. Obviously quite confused, he follows. We sit down and I carefully, choosing every word, start telling him about my friends’ family, about the terribly ill girl Gundega, that everyone, to whom she is dear, is praying for a blessed and easy passing. I tell him about the sickness, about Inguna who taught her mute child to speak in several languages and about a song that Gundega wrote the lyrics to. I tell him about the pain of the last six months, about the suffering a mother feels seeing her child in pain and not being able to help. All the while tears are running down my face, I notice that only when he passes me his handkerchief, just to notice him crying too. “What do you think her relatives, friends and you would want?  A miracle, to heal her?” I return a smile:”Daniel, we’re not kids, you know well that miracles have limits of their own, and this is not the occasion. We’re asking for a blessed passing. What else can Inguna do for her child, so that the gates open?” Daniel stares at me with big eyes:” You talk so calmly about this?! No further questions – why is it like it is, why the acceptance?’’ I answer that the family is very wise; they’ve been to India with their daughter. I tell him about the Saturday fire rituals, about everything everyone has gone through to learn this acceptance. I open facebook and show him the pictures of Gundega and Inguna trying to translate some of the message – especially the ones where the little girl writes about the art of seeing beauty in things where most would see a dead end. Daniel gets up to light a candle and says that for a couple of days there will be one at the altar just for Gundega, and that today’s mass will be dedicated to her and her family. We sit together for a bit just yet, with a touch on my shoulder he says:”I’ll leave you here.”

I sit and think, how, sometimes, we understand things that others would consider the gift of the world. How often do we shush our children– Shush, don’t talk right now! But Inguna would give everything just to hear her little girl call her ‘mom’ just once. It hurts much …thinking about what I’d done to my kids unintentionally – I’m sorry… but you can’t turn back the time.

I take a couple hours off and go for a stroll in the city. At my return the life in the albegue is flourishing, a bunch of cyclist has arrived, they are laughing and chatting about how one overtook the other, and that today they will only be able to sleep on the stomach. Kristina, a nice, talkative American is going upstairs backwards, says her legs and butt are hurting too much. She had traversed 120km that day, the last 10 of which – crying. I feel you, girl! I show her to her room with a bathroom, and whisper that a massage can be arranged. While I am arranging the other pilgrims, I hear snoring from the ‘speaking’ room – it’s the seminarist, the lazybones, idler! In a while a priest from Brazil arrives, thoroughly sweaty and with slyly squinted eyes; asks if there are any lower prices for someone in equal service, a nice double-room would do. I tell him – sure! And proceed to state our usual rates. A couple grimaces later he hands me the pilgrim’s passport.