Spirit of Place: Letters and Essays on Travel

by Lawrence Durrell

  They were aghast and rather disposed to disbelieve me I think. “How did you find the trellis, how did you actually get in?” cried Martine aghast with surprise, and flushed with pleasure.

  “I have promised not to tell,” I said.

  I started the car amid warm goodbyes and pushed her out across the handsome bridges which span the loops of the Drac and Isère. It was getting late. But it was only when I reached the first big turning south that I noticed something on the back seat and realized that the students had also thought up a parting present for me: a little wicker basket full of roses, the famous roses of Grenoble.

  The Gascon Touch

  Published in Holiday. Philadelphia. January 1963.

  GASCONY (MY FRIEND Monsieur Prosper never tires of repeating it) is geographically a figment, “But,” he adds impressively, laying one large hand palm downward upon the map of France and the other upon his heart, “it is a poetic fact. It is the name of an idea, a temperament, a way of looking at the world.” Ever since Caesar civilized the nine peoples in Novempopulana, as it was first christened, the geographical boundaries of the place have constantly fluctuated, following out the rhythmic rise and fall of the great houses. Even its name has changed, from time to time first to Aquitania, then to Vasconia (Basqueland). Very roughly this figment comprises all the land which lies between the left bank of the Garonne, the Atlantic, and the Pyrenees.

  “It’s a patchwork quilt of races and customs,” adds my friend, “all of them extremely touchy and proud. The Béarnais, the Bigourdians, the Armagnacs, the Landais.… They each think they are the real Gascons.”

  “This is all very well, Monsieur Prosper, but Gascony, if it exists at all, what is it? Where does one go to hear its heart beat?”

  Prosper closes one eye and puts his head on one side. “When I next go you shall come with me. You will be in good hands, travelling with a Knight of the Road.” He drinks a small toast to himself in red wine—a toast which includes all those members of his profession—and indeed manages to invest it with a distinct glamour for me. He is a commercial traveller in “Savegoose” and Gascony is one of his assignments. As a matter of fact, I don’t think that anywhere in the world you could find a body of men so generally cultivated and so wide-awake, as the commercial travellers of France. They may not be book-learned in the ordinary sense, but their native curiosity does duty for any education they may have missed, by keeping them on their toes intellectually. It is not merely that they are adepts of the food and drink through which they must fight their way, but they are also very consciously a race of amateurs in the French sense of the word.

  When finally we did set out on our journey the fact was brought home to me very vividly, for all the way along we kept passing Monsieur Prosper’s professional acquaintances—other Knights of the Road—beating up or down the hills in their dusty station-wagons. A wave, a shout, and they vanished; but Monsieur Prosper would say: “There goes Poincaré. He travels in silk. He’s written a play which they are going to put on in Lyons.” Or else, “Ah! that rogue Dupont! He’s quite a painter. His last show in Toulouse was a great success.” And so on. Like migratory birds they hum about along the great Nationales to pollinate the retailers of France, if you like to think of it like that. The only real mystery to me is how they never seem to die of overeating, for they have that highly developed nose for good fare which comes of a lifetime’s experience. Perhaps they become stoic philosophers, though to judge by Monsieur Prosper, I should doubt it.

  “Long periods at the wheel,” explains my friend, “turn one into a Reflective one. It is the ideal life for an artist. Ah! if only I had talent like Dupont, if I could write or paint, or even collect Roman coins like Dubarry.… Alas! I am simply one who lives the good life.” Can you be French and not be a natural Epicurean?

  Yet, of course, even the good life has its penalties. Monsieur Prosper pushes his floppy beret back in order to scratch his forehead with his little fingernail. “I overdo it,” he admits with a touch of sadness. “I grossly over-eat. Indeed I suffer from a rare liver-condition which must sometimes give me the look of the geese whose Saviour I am. But what is to be done? I do not chase women, cannot stand the cinema. My vices are those of my profession. I read a good deal, and I eat more than I read.”

  He sighs. “Thrice I have been given up for lost and been given the Last Sacraments. Each time I have rallied. I have felt a sudden surge of Faith. I have sat up in bed and called for a bouillon made with a glass of white wine (if possible, Blanc de Blanc!). Miraculously my liver has responded. Within two days I was back on the road. But I admit the Gascony run is a taxing one. Yes, it taxes every nerve. Ah, wait till I take you—take you to the “real Gascony,” for I and I alone know where that is.” With a spatulate finger he stabs the Nationale 117 and draws it along the borders of Spain, slowly moving northwards in a slow arc.

  We were on our third glass of red wine, I remember, in a restaurant at Sète. He had just come down from Gascony after a successful goose-saving journey and would not be returning that way until the autumn, when he proposed to allow me to accompany him. “The best time to see it,” he said, “if the weather holds out. Ah Gascony!” holding his glass of wine up to study its brilliant garnet topaz colour.

  “Two winds contend for the Gascon’s soul,” he went on with a fine flourish of rhetoric, and in a tone which left me in some doubt as to whether he was quoting or improvising. “The two winds they call Cers and Autan—both of them fully fledged devils. Yes, it’s hard country. Cers is a bitch-wind which brings the cold as it comes rolling up from the Atlantic. Country people say it stirs the sap and quickens the fruit trees. How should I know? It brings the coastal fogs as well. But Autan is even worse—a real cassejambe, a break-your-leg wind which nobody has a good word for. Oui, mon cher, Autan alanguit les sens, brise les nerfs. Combien de fillettes séduites qui, sans lui, n’eussent jamais fait le moindre manquement! (Yes, Autan softens up the senses, cracks the nerves. How many young girls have been seduced who, had it not been for him, would never have been guilty of the slightest lapse.)”

  Prosper sighs heavily. “Yes, Autan is a brute, and they treat him as such. The countryfolk call him porc and even puto de Marseille. So they fight it out all winter, these two winds, a long bitter battle which lasts until Easter. Ah! then comes the turn of the season, usually about Holy Week. For a few days you have the taste of snow mixed with the scent of the early flowers. A yellow rain falls. The spring begins. And Re Artus goes away—did you know, by the way, that faint folk-memories of King Arthur still remain in Gascony under that name? On windy nights they say that Re Artus is hunting among the clouds, driving them before him. It is a fitting memory to remain, for the Gascon soul is nourished in a warlike tradition, a tradition of chivalry.”

  “You mean D’Artagnan, too?”

  “Of course. And I will reveal his secret to you.”

  And so the promise of this autumn journey was made though Monsieur Prosper left it so long that I wondered whether it would be wise to accompany him when at long last he reappeared. Even in the so-called radiant Midi of France late November is a questionable time at which to start a journey northward. In fact I felt somewhat disposed to chide him as he rolled up in his battered old Aronde, an ancient battle-wagon at least ten years old. But his smile disarmed me as he climbed out grunting to shake my hand, removing his beret first with the punctilio of a great Chevalier. He stilled my doubts by pointing to the distinctly grey sky overhead and saying: “A little rain will warm things up for us; then we shall have blue weather for at least a week.” Reflecting that he had had years of experience in these matters I allowed myself to be disarmed and packed a suitcase which I flung into the back of the car—which was stacked with life-saving packets of “Savegoose” and somewhat minatory posters.

  I should explain that in goose-country, where the practice of force-feeding geese (gavage) is in operation, there are always a goodly number of casualties. Geese suffer from rare
liver-conditions as much as the gourmets who finally eat them—that is the whole point, after all. Now the wonderful, the sovereign power of “Savegoose” is that it helps the costive digestions of the geese, makes liver-trouble easier, and so helps to limit casualties in this lucrative trade. It may seem somewhat ironic that a man with a rare liver-condition should himself be chosen for the onerous task of peddling this nostrum, but then life is like that. I asked Monsieur Prosper whether, when he himself was in extremis, the idea had never come to him to try a teaspoonful of his own magical “Savegoose.” “Strange you should say that,” he said. “Indeed it often has. But as the composition of the stuff is a trade secret that the makers won’t reveal, I don’t feel I should dare. Who knows—it may contain Californian syrup of figs—then where should I be? Or liquorice? I might blow myself up.”

  The posters, however, with their wonderful pictures of extremely thoughtful looking glassy-eyed geese lying on their sides, or flapping their wings and glowing with health after a dose of “Savegoose,” were quite unequivocal. “For every liver-condition,” they insisted. Prosper nodded and agreed. “Surely,” I said, “there is a fifty-fifty chance that it works on men, too? Think, you might have found the one specific for which all good gourmets are hunting. ‘Savegoose’ might be the answer to adult prayers as well.”

  Monsieur Prosper pursed his lips and considered the matter thoughtfully, but he did not comment further. I think he was perhaps a little bit hurt that I should treat his healer’s role with levity. “It is certainly miraculous stuff,” he said after a long silence. “You should see how the geese get sometimes.” He made an extraordinary face for a second to show me, and then switched it off like a light. “But after a single dose.…” He made another equally extraordinary face—a face glowing with health, positively candent with joy of recovery. He practically flapped his wings.

  At Montpellier we were hit by such a thunderspout and such a torrential shower, that my heart sank. “Here goes Gascony,” I thought. We should spend our time dragging the car out of mud, or skidding along iced-up roads like a pebble on the surface of a pond. Or else we would be marooned for three days out of reach of help and have to exist on this blasted “Savegoose” in the back of the car. Our bodies would be found later with faces contorted by the last dreadful spasms and our livers swollen up like footballs. (Would they stuff them and mount them on velvet and put them in the Musée de l’Homme as a warning to all men?) But no. Monsieur Prosper was not downcast, on the contrary he seemed elated. “Just as I said,” he cried. “One touch of the wind and the sky will be clear as a bell.”

  And to my annoyed amazement so it proved; by the time we reached the borders of Roussillon the sun was out, the sky had been peeled back to blue, and a wind like a hacksaw was tearing at the long undulating plains. The wind! I have known many unpleasant winds—there is one in each country usually which has a dreadful effect upon one: Italian sirocco, or the winter “koshava” in Belgrade which turns the milk; but the mistral is a match for any of them. It sends temperatures toppling below zero in a matter of hours. The sky may be blue but … one’s extremities become polar. As Monsieur Prosper explained when I lay exhausted on a hotel-bed in Narbonne protesting that I would not live to see Gascony, “You should not eat so heavily when there is a mistral because all the blood is drawn away to the stomach by the digestion and you risk getting frostbite.”

  But the wind explains at least two serious lapses of a tourist kind on my part, for instead of lingering in Pézenas, Bouzigues, and Béziers, as I had intended to do, we made Narbonne in one jump like a scalded cat, the old car humming and trembling with fatigue in every shock absorber. I had particularly wanted to taste the little sweet mutton pies of Pézenas which are its “specialty,” partly for gastronomic but also for patriotic reasons, for they are of Anglo-Indian provenance. No less a mogul than Clive of India, who once spent a long holiday in Pézenas, attended by a retinue of colourful Indians, is the grandfather of the Pézenas pie. His Indian cooks imported it, and the local inhabitants adopted it. But Pézenas was dancing with dust devils and autumn leaves and when I opened the window to look at it the force of the wind blew Monsieur Prospers beret into the back of the car.

  I fared no better at Bouzigues with its famous lagoon full of oyster-beds where, in good weather, one can dangle one’s feet in the water and eat oysters to one’s heart’s content. The water was slashed and gouged by this mistral with such ferocity that I feared for the morals of the oysters slumbering in its depths. We whirled into Narbonne only just under control. The wind had invaded the town sweeping showers of brown autumn leaves before it. They rose in clouds, blinding us.

  We pulled in and found lodgings for the night at the little Lion d’Or; one of the really important factors of travel with a Knight of the Road is that they always lodge very modestly, but they always know where to find a small hotel with first-class food. The Lion d’Or, for all its smallness, was comfortable, wonderfully heated, and spotlessly clean. The little dining-room which was also a public restaurant and bar was staffed by people who knew their jobs. The food was excellent.

  This, by the way, is not always the case in the Midi of France. Contemptuous northerners will always tell you that cuisine in the true sense stops short at Valence, and that the gens du Midi eat primitively. The truth of the matter is that they eat Mediterranean fashion, and have fewer elaborate dishes; but those few are first class. So good, in fact, that after dinner I felt simply dreadful; it seemed clear to me that I was either developing polio or else a cerebral meningitis. Refusing an offer to play cards with Monsieur Prosper, I tottered to my bed and spent a very bad night listening to the screech of the wind outside the windows.

  In the morning I felt too ill to get up and confessed to Monsieur Prosper that this was the case. He shook his head impatiently. “It is only the mistral,” he said. I knew it was … and had I been at home I would have fought it off with a glass of vieux marc. My feet were cold, my nose blue, my courage at low ebb, my pulse slow, my stomach in disarray. No, I would never make Gascony. Monsieur Prosper stared at me thoughtfully for a second and then said, “I will have you on your feet in ten minutes.”

  Retiring to the bar he returned with a glass and a long green bottle. “Drink this,” he said. I drained the colourless liquid obediently and immediately began to struggle for air, reaching out blindly before me with one hand and clutching my throat with the other. The stuff ran through me with the power and fury of a forest fire in brushwood.

  “What is it?” I gasped as soon as I could get my breath.

  Then Monsieur Prosper uttered the magic name of this life-giving draught—a word which is now burned into my memory and will probably be inscribed on my tombstone. “It is simply Arquebuse,” he said gently, almost modestly.

  “This is the most terrific firewater in the world,” I said reaching for the bottle; but only to examine the label for another glass of the stuff would have blown me out like a candle. “Arquebuse” it was called all right, and the label showed it to be a 50 degree drink; but its mysterious title and descriptive matter were almost as intriguing as its obvious powers to heal every ill of the flesh. This was what Ponce de León hunted for—the Elixir of Eternal Youth! I knew that I should never surfer from a day’s illness from now on. Monsieur Prosper beamed. “I told you so,” he said. “It is purely medicinal, this stuff. It is for those whose digestions are seriously disordered by too much food and drink.” The remorselessness of French logic, the subtle twinings of the Cartesian mind! So one took a 50 degree shot of this Lion’s milk in order to cure the effects of overdoing things with 12 degree wines or a 40 degree Pernod! What could be simpler? Who but the French could have thought it up? I leaped out of bed like a tiger, and while dressing examined the holy bottle (was this what Rabelais really meant?) with a clearer eye.

  I pass on my information to all travellers in mistral country. Arquebuse for example is not described as a drink at all but as “Eau vulnéraire.” It is m
ade by the good fathers of St. Genis Laval, and is composed of the purest alcohol into which they insinuate a secret mixture of carefully gathered herbs and simples which they macerate. The label is somewhat conservative. Arquebuse, it says, derives its name from a mixture which was originally invented to cure the terrible wounds made by the weapon of this name after it was invented in Europe. It does not explain how the change from external dressing to internal cure came about, and it would be idle to quibble.

  Clearly one day a thirsty archer who was having his wounds dressed took a swig from the bottle while the doctor’s back was turned. So magical was the effect that from then on the thing has been issued to the general public as a sort of supernatural stand-by in times of stress. And yet, on the bottle you will find the good monks insisting drily that it is “neither a liqueur, nor any kind of alcoholic drink, nor is it really a medicament of any kind—it can most accurately be described as A VULNERARY.” A magnificent word, and a marvellous example of diplomatic exactitude. Besides, having once tasted it, I was in no mood for dialectical quibbles. I did not want those quiet monks to give over their steady, subtle maceration of herbs in order to argue with me. Nor did I want production of this marvellous tissue-enlivening liquid to fall off because of a few barren arguments about the nature of medieval archery. No. Monsieur Prosper was delighted by my enthusiasm for his little vulnerary which clearly was one of the trade secrets of the Knights of the Road. I was dressed in a flash and ready for anything; my soul wore boots and spurs. Taking up the magic bottle I slipped it into my haversack. As we swept out of Narbonne the wind howled no less wildly but now I did not care; indeed I opened the window and laughed tauntingly at it. I know that Arquebuse would see me through.