"The mirrors of Compostela" A love at the end

Story "The mirrors of Compostela" - A love at the end (from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Finisterre) - Back cover: “PATXI, PATXI, WAKE UP!” Mario shouts at me in the middle of the night. - Huh… What… what's going on?… - BED POUNAISSES! […] There are plenty of them everywhere. In panic, without thinking and without consulting each other, we grabbed our duffel bags. Ah, we're wide awake for once! We are launched into an anarchic battle, Mario in boxer shorts, me naked. A massacre. We are doing a massacre! It's almost enjoyable ... The dirty beasts find themselves squashed, flattened, shattered, dripping blood on the woodwork, mattresses, headboards and walls of the bedroom. It's so slow, so sluggish, a bug, it kills easily. For a short while we believe in victory, but the more we crush, the more mattresses come out. By tens! A regiment of bedbugs! Driven by morbid excitement, yet we continue to murder. Blood is dripping on the tapestries. It's starting to get foul. Besides, we are stronger, but there are more! Much more ... We have to face the facts. Powerless in the face of numbers, there is only one alternative: capitulate. Extract: Since we are now in the choir of the cathedral and we are strolling there, let's go and see the relics of Saint-Jacques! We descend the steps following a route a few meters long and perfectly signposted to the crypt. A piggy bank invites you to slip a coin in passing. A small one is not it, Saint-Jacques is not venal. Have we neglected the piggy bank? There is a second lower! It’s donativo. If we also left this aside, whatever! we can give to the third ... We may have pretended not to see it ... A regret? A remorse then? ... At the bend of a step, the Church catches up with you! Like an imp who would claim his alms by springing from his box, a fourth piggy bank comes to your eyes. Finally, here we are in front of the relics! In the tiny crypt where we have emerged, a silver coffin is brought to light. It's nice. The apostle's rest seems sweet. A prie-Dieu invites you to kneel, a wooden armrest invites you to admire the coffin, and the slit in the wooden armrest ... invites you to give! On our back, we can read this quote from Pope John Paul II which ultimately touches me more than supposed bones in a silver box, even a pretty one: “Yo, obispo de Roma y pastor de la Iglesia Universal, desde Santiago te lanzo , vieja Europa, un grito lleno de amor: vuelve a encontrarte, se tu misma. »El Papa. In su peregrinacion in Compostela. 9 de Noviembre de 1982 (“I, bishop of Rome and pastor of the Universal Church, from Santiago, I send to you, old Europe, a cry filled with love: find yourself, be yourself.” The Pope. On his pilgrimage to Compostela. November 9, 1982) I, Protestant by birth, ex-practitioner, homosexual, always a little rebellious, I do not forget when I reread these words that if I am there, if I come from to live all that I have just lived, if I can now look further in my life, well, in fact, it is thanks to a pope! It is indeed John Paul II who revived the craze of the camino, after arriving here as a pilgrim in 1982. Thanks to the compostela, ersatz diploma issued to those who have traveled the last hundred kilometers, we have been able to count 619 pilgrims in 1985… then 5,760 four years later… and 183,366 in this year 2011 (327,342 in 2018 and nearly 350,000 in 2019)! But where are we all coming from all of a sudden? What era are we living in?