The Road to Santiago: Pilgrims of St. James

them up to the roof of the room where they stuck and shed flames over my bed and my clothes.
    “I covered myself up as best I could in the bedclothes, keeping all the while a watchful look-out. The flames suddenly went out. The men then sat down at a table and began to gamble with cards. They shuffled and dealt and staked money as if they were in deadly earnest. Soon a quarrel broke out among the gamblers, weapons were drawn and so many blows were given that I began to pray to Our Lady of Guadalupe, whose sanctuary is the only one I have not yet visited.
    “However, the quarrel soon ceased and all the noise died down for half an hour, but I assure you my whole body was bathed in sweat. Just when I thought that the men had gone for good, I suddenly felt someone tugging at the extremities of the blankets and sheets and pulling them gradually away from me. Now I was really frightened, for without the bedclothes I was defenceless. I saw a fierce-looking man with a torch in his hand followed by two others, one of whom carried a big metal basin while the other was sharpening a carving-knife. My hair stood up on end: I tried to speak but could not. As soon as they had come up to me, the man with the torch blew it out. ‘I am lost,’ said I to myself. ‘They will cut my head off and that basin is to catch my blood.’ I stretched out my hands in the dark to ward off the knife. They were gripped, I shouted. At once the torch was lit again and I saw that two big dogs had seized hold of my hands.
    “In desperation I called, ‘Jesus Christ.’ At that name the ghosts retired, but they raised my head and propped it up on fresh pillows and smoothed out the sheets and blankets.
    “For a while I was left in peace and I began to recite to myself some lines of the psalm of David which I remembered. This gave me some confidence and I thought they would now leave me alone. But then to my horror I perceived that the ghosts beneath the bed were gradually lifting it on their backs and hoisting it up to the roof. There a big hand from a rafter caught a hold of me by the arm. The bed fell to the ground with a frightful crash and I found myself dangling in mid-air from that gigantic hand. Around the room a great number of windows suddenly opened and many men and women gazed at me, laughing shrilly and kept squirting water at me from syringes. Just then the bed caught fire and the flames dried the moisture on my body, but I was more afraid of them than I had been of the water. The fire soon went out and the arm lowered me into my bed and settled the bedclothes over me.
    “For about one hour I was left in peace, then I saw the ghosts ferreting in my knapsack where I kept my worldly belongings, and they scattered them all round the room. Without a moment’s hesitation I jumped up to rescue them for, though I had been terrified at first, my blood was now up.
    “The ghosts flitted out of the room into the garden and I rushed after them. I saw them pass between the cypress trees and on to a well, where they threw the belongings and disappeared after them.
    “I did not pursue them any further, so I turned back to the hermit’s chapel. He opened the door and, seeing me pale and distracted, he cried:
    “ ‘The ghosts have given you a bad night.’
    “ ‘So bad,’ said I, ‘that I have not slept a wink. I’ll leave my ragged cloak as payment for the night’s rest I have not had.’
    “The hermit then took me into his resting-place and while we waited for dawn to appear he told me stories of others who had spent the night in the haunted room.”

    The ghost story worked like a spell.
    Don Eusebio was the first to toast me in copitas of aniseed brandy, but I was unprepared for the bombardment I received from individual members of the audience, who wanted to catechize me on duendes, fantasmas and espectros —all the infinite varieties of ghosts that haunt the northern kingdoms of Spain, even including the xanas of Asturias and the Santa Compaha of Galicia. I then realized that my pilgrim route henceforth would become still more of a shadowy journey among a people obsessed by the cult of souls, who have to be released from the torments of Purgatory by the prayers of the living, but who may wreak harm among the latter if they are not propitiated.
    Long after our show was finished and Miguel had accompanied the two actresses to their fonda I sat arguing with Don Eusebio and two members of our audience about ghosts. Don Eusebio, being