by Josep Pla
“That’s a good bateau, mon brave, I’m telling you!” said one old man. “It’s just the one I’d choose to sail the waters around here! Look how roomy it is! Ours are too skinny and narrow!”
Baldiri walked with me as far as the fountain, he said the coffee had been so watery he needed a tavern. His legs were giving up on him.
“Is the wine of Banyuls any good?” he asked. “They say it’s a wine that’s worth a mass…”
“That’s what people say…However, believe me, wait and try it this afternoon. It’s going to be a long day and it’s only half past eight…”
After glancing in the direction of the fountain to see whether the Venus of the Pyrenees – or if you prefer, the Venus of the Albères – had returned, I went for a stroll around the fishermen’s quarter. Extremely picturesque and far from hygienic. The streets are steep and narrow, paved with sharp pebbles from the riera, which is how they used to pave streets before people wore real shoes – paving for the rope-soled sandal era. The wealth of cages with pets, the profusion of fishing tackle and fish boxes and the odd wandering goat made those streets even narrower. There are vines in front of many houses, as in old Cadaqués. The rain that had fallen over the last few days made the street slimy and slippery.
Although the vines were bare, I’d like to have seen the girl with the pitchers beneath them. But Venus had disappeared.
I walked down and back to the beach and strolled past the cafés. Before reaching the riera, I turned up the road to Puig del Mas. This road takes you past a succession of residencies with delightful kitchen gardens toward the Rectoria – that is, old Banyuls. At the time of the French Revolution, Banyuls had very few houses by the seashore. They were concentrated around the Rectoria – a small Romanesque church (shut today) that remains standing only because God so willed it – precisely because a cemetery is next to the church. In the ideological system of centralizing France, the Romanesque and Gothic were not valued at all and were deemed to be coarse, barbarian styles, deriving from an obscurantist, outmoded and sickly populism. What was worshipped was Versailles, the life in Versailles, la cour and its wan geometrical gardens. The end result was that the French – socialists and communists included – will bow most grotesquely before a marchioness.
I’d like to have entered the small, intimate church, gilded by the centuries, but it proved impossible. A man said there might be a burial that morning and they’d open up. However, I felt that very unlikely.
I walked on up the road and under the railway viaduct to Puig del Mas, a small country hamlet perched on a conical hump by the side of the riera. Puig del Mas is a rural hamlet typical of our country: silent, sleepy and reserved – the mysterious reserve that a life of smuggling projects on frontier communities. It is like being in a perpetual state of confusion, sensing you’re being watched but not knowing by whom or from where.
Past Puig del Mas, the path continues up the valley as far as Col de Banyuls (that is, the frontier), following the riera’s lethargic twists and turns. As you walk on, the sides of the mountains rise up, but never lose their long, gentle contours; their slopes are covered in vineyards and olive groves; it is a dreamlike, luminous, recondite, ecstatic landscape, dozing to the buzz of bees. A geological expanse without wild shapes or blood-curdling boulders, with a spontaneous, delicate, bucolic sensuousness that isn’t at all histrionic. This is the way Maillol came and went from his tumbledown Les Abelles farmhouse to Banyuls, a path that may have led him, after so many wrong turns, to conceive genuine sculptures.
It is this landscape that produces the best wine, the best oil, the best honey in the Roussillon, the three graces that Banyuls has on offer and the town’s source of prosperity.
From a bend in the path you can sometimes see a distant farmhouse, and however tiny your knowledge of the importance of Col de Banyuls in the frontier’s clandestine, contraband nightlife, your imagination leads you to shroud it in mystery. You feel you can still dimly catch the noise of beasts of burden passing along those rocky paths. You glimpse the stubborn sangfroid, the wealth of knowledge, the cold, controlled resistance of solitary old fellows, as wily as feral animals in the night. The human history – both secret and forgotten – of this earth I now tread becomes a real obsession.
As the sun rises, the air warms and the humidity fades; the autumn air is pleasantly tepid. Shrubs and plants give off an intense smell. Under the bright sky, by the light of noon, golden vines glitter and shine. People are tramping amid the olive groves. A sleepy cart climbs the quiet road. The sun silvers the water rushing down between the pebbles in the riera and turns the cool grass a liquid green.
Back in the Mestral we eat a plate of rice; small helpings of fish and chicken. Saldet is sad; he’s probably thinking we could have got by with less. Baldiri gives him the occasional withering look.
That afternoon I visit the Institut Aragó and spend a while admiring the splendid aquarium. It is significant; perhaps not as important as Monaco’s, but well worth a visit. It’s expertly built and the imitation of nature has that touch of fantasy an aquarium requires. However, though my experience in the matter is strictly limited, I’ve always thought the life of an aquarium fish is notably different than the life of a fish swimming freely in the sea. Because it realizes its food is guaranteed, such a fish becomes simply decorative, a tame, insipid, completely innocuous creature. It looks dozy, takes a nap even when swimming. I suspect it’s the result of the silence behind those huge windows, the inane somnolence reigning there. I’d like to eat an aquarium fish. What flavor can these fish on full board have? I suspect it’s bland and eminently forgettable: a taste endowed by excessive urbanity, what a purely decorative, well-fed lifestyle fosters.
After that, I visit Maillol’s monument to the dead, a flattish monument located on a rock – a small island – at the end of the bay. There is a dying athlete in the middle of the stone frieze and tragic scenes on both sides. The sculptor planted the humblest local shrubs at the foot of the shrine. The demise of the athlete makes a great impact, even though the monument’s Hellenic spirit is seen through German erudition. Maillol wasted half his life ridding himself of eighteenth-century France, and then he had to rid himself of erudition from German academic journals. Fortunately, he lived a long life. If that hadn’t been the case, he wouldn’t have had time to sculpt anything decent.
When I get back to the quay, I see Baldiri in conversation with a tall, robust young man who is full of energy. Initially, I think I’ve seen him before somewhere. Baldiri, who has imbibed a good amount of Banyuls wine, introduces me falteringly.
“He’s a construction worker – a good one – and they call him the gang master…And he’s a good friend.”
“I think I know you, but I can’t think from where…” I tell him.
“I’m a big friend of the old man…”
“Which old man?”
“Maillol.”
“Now, I get it; you, senyor, are the model for the dying athlete on his monument…”
“That’s right…”
It’s quite distressing. It’s like coming across a man who has resurrected – a man who’d been declared dead with a fanfare, but who’d only suffered only a bout of typhoid fever.
“Your death, dear gang master, will be the making of the monument.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s always a shock to see dying athletes turn into construction workers.”
“Well, I’m not intending to die any time soon.”
“And I too hope you live for many a year.”
There was a light mistral that night. From my den I could see a marvelous, pure blue sky, full of glittering stars.
* * *
—
After lunch the next day we set off go Port-Vendres with a southwesterly. Once out of the bay, we hoisted the sail and the Mestral moved wonderfully.
The co
astline from Banyuls to Port-Vendres isn’t as wild as from Portbou to Banyuls, but it is long. The Coll de les Portes is huge. Cape Béar, which makes up the southwest entrance to Port-Vendres is an immense, forbidding promontory with a very powerful lighthouse. The cape conceals Port-Vendres, so once you’ve sailed around it, the town comes as a surprise. It’s lovely to reach Port-Vendres by sea. The approach by land cannot compete.
There are only two genuinely natural ports on the coastline of historic Catalonia: the bays of Cadaqués and Port-Vendres. When they belonged to one nation, no great building works were completed in either. Collioure was the port for the Roussillon. Now Cadaqués, as a port, has remained at a prehistoric stage, while a magnificent harbor has been built at Port-Vendres.
Before stopping off in Port-Vendres, I’d have liked to spend a few hours in the Palilles cove, which is so solitary and full of trees, but Baldiri refused point-blank. There is a dynamite factory in Palilles that I gather belongs to the Nobel group – the famous Swedish manufacturer of dynamite who established the prizes. Baldiri said he had friends in the small docks in the harbor just before the spot I’d suggested and that he was quite apprehensive about this kind of factory, because they sometimes set off explosions and cause the earth to quake. So we simply sailed past Palilles.
Once we reached Port-Vendres – a town I know well – I told the skipper that our entrance into the rectangular dock might seem pretentious, and that we could drop anchor on the corner of the dock a few yards from the pharmacy owned by Monsieur Forgas, the town’s radical-socialist mayor and an acquaintance of mine. But Baldiri said that the rectangular dock was the best place to anchor. His last intake of wine had made him cantankerous.
In the evening, I walked along to the end of the quay and dined in the Hôtel du Commerce. They were still building the Compagnie du Midi hotel, and the Commerce was thought to be the best of its kind in town. Above all I was looking forward to the bouillabaisse, which I’d found to be excellent on previous visits.
However, that evening my expectations were soon dashed. Great expectations are dreams of a shadow, which is why they last so long. Small ones, on the other hand, die one after another…It’s sad to acknowledge that certain exquisite things that have become associated in memory with various stays in diverse locations have, in actuality, vanished forever. In Port-Vendres, my memories of the town, its sky and water were linked to a particularly classic, delicious bouillabaisse. You came there hoping to eat, maybe even to partake more than once. Now it is no more. The gentleman who made it has retired from the culinary art. He has rented out his establishment to people who cook like barbarians. This is the melancholy fact of the matter.
What is the fascination with bouillabaisse based on? I think that a dish becomes popular only when in one way or another it meets the demands of human greed. It’s sad to say, but everyone, however normal they may appear, hungers for something spiritual or material. Ambitious or sensual, greedy or spendthrift, imaginative or voluptuous, human nature is never passive, is always hungry. So, then, a bouillabaisse contains an element a diner will always appreciate, for it is at one with the very essence of that noble vice: a bouillabaisse invites you to eat solid things with a spoon, and that explains eighty percent of its glory. I’m not usually hyperbolic, nor do I let myself be carried away by nostalgia, but I do think that the bouillabaisse cooked by the gentleman who has now retired was the best in the world. Those who had tasted it retained such fondness they had it dispatched to the remote places where they lived. And canisters of bouillabaisse were sent to Paris and London at top speed. Its reputation was such that people carried it, as they say, with kid gloves. And even if it had to be reheated on arrival, it still preserved the taste, aroma and lightness of the bouillabaisse as if served on the spot, which is what most resembles the unforgettable light of Provence.
The ground floor of the Hôtel du Commerce was home to a café of the same name, the favorite haunt of the great and the good of the town. After lunch or dinner – because the Roussillon retains the custom, shared by so many towns on the other side of the frontier, of going out after dinner – three or four tables were set up to play piquet or belote. Monsieur Forgas was the lead figure in that heady gathering. Monsieur Forgas, a tiny old man with bulging, bloodshot, tortured eyes, wears a large rosette of the Légion d’Honneur in his lapel. He is the town pharmacist and, from time immemorial, its mayor. He belongs to the party of Monsieur Pams. I was once present at a public meeting chaired by Pams and Forgas. The former said in the course of his speech that Port-Vendres was Monsieur Forgas and that Monsieur Forgas was Port-Vendres, because Port-Vendres couldn’t be understood without Monsieur Forgas, in the same way that Monsieur Forgas couldn’t be understood without Port-Vendres, which meant that if you embraced Monsieur Forgas you embraced Port-Vendres and if you embraced Port-Vendres you embraced Monsieur Forgas, because Port-Vendres was inseparable from Monsieur Forgas, in the same way that Monsieur Forgas was inseparable from Port-Vendres, because you couldn’t separate Port-Vendres from Monsieur Forgas or Monsieur Forgas from Port-Vendres…In a word, there was such a fervor that the audience was overcome with emotion, and Monsieur Forgas was so moved he literally hung from the neck of Monsieur Pams like a couple of scapulars, and tears and sobs came to every eye and mouth and the meeting ended in a sea of tears. That’s the way of political oratory: it sometimes has its way with the tear ducts.
All is peaceful at nine p.m. in Port-Vendres. I once befriended an old, lame man who carried a stick and dragged a leg. He worked as a night watchman, and I used to sit next to him on a wine vat for two or three hours at a time or we’d stroll along the solitary quayside. I still think I can hear the noise his leg made as it dragged over the cobbles. Deep into the night we sometimes heard tunes from an electric piano in a house of dubious reputation – loud and clear. The old man would stop for a moment and wink at me like a tired, old dog and then we’d continue on our way.
Another thing that thrills me about Port-Vendres is the to-and-fro of ships from Africa. Two large mail boats link the town to Algiers and Oran. When they hoist the green flag over the harbor light it means a vessel is approaching. People look out their windows or walk down to the quay to watch it entering. It’s a splendid, natural harbor, but very enclosed and inland. The vessels that enter it do so like horned snails returning to their shells. The maneuvers of the boats from Africa are more drawn out and entertaining. What’s more, on deck there is usually a mass of North Africans, Arabs, blacks and other people. Half an hour after the boat has docked, bands of greasy, shabby men inevitably wander the streets. Others start playing cards on street corners. From one steamer to the next there is always an odd straggler wandering the streets in a haze, the whites of his eyes bulging.
Apart from the days when there is a mail boat from Africa, a pronounced calm reigns on the Port-Vendres quayside. Sometimes a packet boat arrives from Marseille or Sicily laden with carob beans or sulfate for the vineyards. When the crew is unloading sulfate, the clouds of dust thrown up make your hair stand on end. The carobs perfume the air, and the carts transporting the seed carry the warm aroma around the town and rocky outskirts, wafted by a dry, crackling north wind.
The magnificent, sheltered bay of Port-Vendres was never used in the days of the counts of Empúries and Roussillon, nor was it used in the era when the nation was one. The first time the name of the present town appears is in a document from the reign of King Jaume: a few down-at-heel houses. Nevertheless, that corner was one of the safest in the western Mediterranean. No heavy riera ever floods down, so there is no danger of a mudslide blocking the port. In the Middle Ages, Coullioure became the port for the Roussillon, and Port-Vendres never amounted to much, despite its superior conditions.
After the Treaty of the Pyrenees, one of the first and best governors of the Roussillon, the Count of Mailly, took a great interest in Port-Vendres. The renowned Vauban fell in love with the place for its military pot
ential. When this interest was born, according to Vidal’s Guia Històrica i Pintoresca dels Pirineus Orientals, Port-Vendres had a population of forty-five. In the course of the reign of Louis XIV, the monarchy spent a million and a half francs on military installations. The town took on an inevitably French look. Port-Vendres doesn’t look like a stagey backdrop as Cerbère does, but it is quite different from many other Roussillon towns. It is a town of the new order, somewhat cold and geometric, with an excess of color that is so pretty in the grayness of northern France but in the bright southern sun sometimes seems overlarded. If I’m not mistaken, when you come from Catalonia, Port-Vendres gives you your first sense of being in France.
To celebrate Louis XIV’s generosity, the Count of Mailly had a magnificent obelisk built in the rectangular square they had deliberately located at the right angle formed by the town’s two harbors. It is a twenty-five-yard-high gray needle made from Estragell marble on a pedestal of red Vilafranca marble. Before it was damaged in 1793, the obelisk supported a terrestrial globe decorated with fleurs-de-lis. The base was also pompously inscribed with phrases lauding the memory of the Roi Soleil, which nowadays can be read in the Museum of Perpignan.
Maillol’s monument to the dead is on the edge of this square opposite the harbors, and it includes a lady with an eighteenth-century hairdo wearing a Versailles-esque blouse, apparently made of tulle, and holding a palm frond. Given the style of the square, the sculptor must have thought his sculpture was in keeping. The old man likes to adapt his sculptures to the places where they’re going to be erected. Perhaps he exaggerated in this instance and proved more papist than the pope. The monument to the dead of Port-Vendres isn’t one of the best that Maillol has sculpted.
Was Portus Veneris – Venus’s Port – inter Pyrenei promontoria (Pomponius Mela, AD 43) really the site of Venus’s temple in the Pyrenees? Writers declare, with characteristic geographical insouciance, that the Romans raised a temple to Venus at the entrance to the Pyrenees, and that the site was called Portus Veneris. Strabo seems to connect this port with the temple to the Venus of the Pyrenees, as does Pliny.