Spirit of Place: Letters and Essays on Travel

by Lawrence Durrell

  Desolate salt pans, the reeds stiff with rime, and a wind-shocked hinterland leading gradually away down to the Spanish border, with Perpignan as our last point of reference before we picked up N.117. And the red earth of Roussillon—the colour of topaz, of ox-blood, of terracotta, of raw beef, of beetroot according to the slant of the sun. How desolate the landscape becomes and how beautiful in tone and rhythm. It is the first great orchestration of Spain, of course, for Catalonia is really Spain—and Spain is simply red ground, a blood-soaked and sun-soaked emptiness. Somewhere here, I recollected, disappeared from living memory France’s great gallows’ bird of a poet Villon. The dust devils whirled and snarled across the fields. Little dusty forts crowned the shallow valleys. The country is baked and cracked like terra-cotta. It conveys the intensely archaic feeling of the Spanish temper with all its colours—its nobilities and absurdities and prides; its contempt for the easy life; its Mithraic pulse. Yes, for the sun here goes down like a stricken bull.

  We had now turned our backs on the sea and were buzzing northwards towards the foothills, forcing a passage in the eye of the wind. The Catalonian landscape did not last long. Yet its sunburnt rock and dusty chalk undulations were an admirable preparation for what was to come, making the change so surprising. Estagel, Latour-de-France, Axat rolled away under our wheels, and then quite suddenly the road penetrates the long narrow throat of the Aude and begins to climb and dip along narrow ravines whose banks are clothed with rich fern and spruce; ravines so narrow that they must see the sun only for a few hours every day. Safely cradled in its stony bed the Aude flows like an arrow. There are nightingales singing and the splash of trout. Taking these long sinuous curves which follow the meandering of the river we came upon little groups of attentive trout-fishers like statuary, intent on the chase. The wind had gone. Brilliant sunlight poured down. The sky was blue—not, to be sure, the brilliant Attic blue of Provence or Languedoc but the deeper, more violet blue which you find over the verdant inland places. After the harshness and poverty of the Catalan plain the change was astonishing. As we left the river and grumbled up the hills towards Quillan everything told of richness—rich mud, rich marls, verdant hillsides with thick grass.

  Monsieur Prosper pointed out the characteristics of the place with a kindly sparkle of good humour. “Geese, you see.” The farmhouses were gabled and built with deep lofts for winter fodder. For the first time we saw the ox cart drawn by these characteristic curly horned oxen. We saw too everywhere great bins of corn cobs gleaming butter yellow in the sunlight. “That is for the geese and fowls,” said Monsieur Prosper, adding that as far as he could tell the poultry of this region was far richer and far more succulent than the more famous products of Bresse. He promised me a chance to judge for myself. And he also discoursed knowledgeably on other matters, such as le Vert Galant, who left behind him a tradition for the manufacture of Gascons which is alive to this day among the peasants. The secret is this: if you have a male child rub his tongue with garlic and give him a sip of the fine wine of Jurançon. This cannot fail to make him both witty and wise. To illustrate the sort of wit (narquois is a completely untranslatable word) Monsieur Prosper gave me an example. The Gascon La Hire, the companion of Joan of Arc, patented the following prayer to God to be used in time of peril. “O God,” he prayed. “In this hour of peril try and act towards La Hire as La Hire would act towards you, if he were God and you were La Hire.” Subtle and appealing logic!

  And while we were talking he suddenly put out his hand dramatically and shouted “Look.” We had climbed fairly high now and with dramatic suddenness the Pyrenees had come swimming up on our left, their flashing snow caps ranged like fangs across the horizon, leading away in diminishing graduation towards the Pic du Midi. They were all the more theatrical in their beauty by being cut off from us by a violet-black line of foothills which framed them as a proscenium frames a stage. The roads grew straighter now; we had passed the shallow range of hills where Quillan and Foix stand, tucked like an envelope, into the side of the hills.

  We lodged that night at St. Girons at another excellent small hotel where Monsieur Prosper began to take an interest in the bill of fare in order not to spare me any of the local specialties. I must say our dinner would have made a goose feel faint, but as the only other diners were a couple of Dominicans who were eating even more heartily I somehow felt that we would be absolved. After all, food is a serious matter in France. This, then, is what Monsieur Prosper urged upon me. A pâté de foie gras maison, to begin with. (This should normally be spurned by the discriminating unless one is in poultry-country where no self-respecting cook would serve tinned foie gras.) On this occasion Monsieur Prosper, whom I trusted implicitly, ordered it for both of us without consulting me. God bless him—it was the best I have ever eaten. As we were still under the spell of that magical, tumbling trout river, the Aude, we also agreed upon a fish course that was quite perfect: fat white trout in a sauce meunière enhanced by the addition of a little goose-fat to the sweet butter.

  Monsieur Prosper had frowned over the wine list and had then said firmly to the pretty waitress: “A Blanc de Blanc to accompany the pâté and the fish, and then a Grenache … let me see … yes, a Paziols.” I protested vigorously: “Grenache is a sweet wine, Monsieur Prosper—I am sorry but I will not drink a sweet wine with a meal!” He crowed with joy at my mutinous behaviour, and said, “You will see.” And, of course, he was right—the Grenache was not a sweet one, but a marvellous dry and fruity wine, and the second bottle was ordered within minutes. It brought out the best in my young roasted pigeon on toast—the tender meat of which bore witness to the excellence of a sweetcorn diet. Monsieur Prosper chose preserved goose (clearly an obsessive choice) and pressed me to taste it: it was delicious, but terribly rich! The dessert was a specialty of the house for which we had to wait a little and which was well worth waiting for: an Armagnac soufflé which made Monsieur Prosper wink at me and say: “It is better than a pouding, hien?”

  After dinner, much enlivened by a glass of Armagnac and a cigar, my friend fell in with two other Knights of the Road, and, leaving me to brood upon life for a while, enjoyed the mild dissipation of a game of pontoon which seemed to lead to a good deal of cheating and endless argument. So to bed.

  Next morning dawned fine and cloudless and we were early in the saddle, and eager to attack some of the specialties of Tarbes, of which I had heard a good deal. The white peaks kept us company, bobbing along the skyline as we rolled along. There was the hint of ice in the air, but the sky was blue and serene. The landscape was studded with magnificent trees and green curves of downland criss-crossed with rivers; one might have thought one was on the Loire had it not been for those mountain tops glittering like snowdrops on our left. “First,” said Monsieur Prosper, “first I shall disappoint and disgust you by taking you into Tarbes, then I will give you an aesthetic thrill by looking back on it.” This sounded somewhat cryptic, and I only understood what he meant when we reached the town—which by the way is a perfectly ordinary French provincial town.

  It is not Tarbes itself that is unduly depressing, it is the almost permanent mist which enshrouds it. It is set in a deep depression, surrounded by hills and carved out by rivers. And while it is famous for food and drink it has the somewhat moist and depressing atmosphere of Lyons. We pottered about in it for half an hour while Monsieur Prosper made a phone call, and then set off westward again. Eight kilos outside Tarbes the road starts to climb into the sky. On the very top of this hill lies the little inn much beloved by all true Knights of the Road which has been most appropriately christened the Beau Site. The view is simply magnificent, and here at least Monsieur Prospers boast about an aesthetic thrill was justified, for the whole valley swam below us in a cinnamon-coloured mist which shifted and slid about in parcels and blocks. Tarbes itself looked most beautiful as it emerged and receded into definition, printing now a cathedral spire or an office block on the mist, and then letting them dissolve again. Here
and there a river bed sucked at the corners of the cloud, engulfed suddenly (like suds down a sink) a whole line of metal pylons stuck like ninepins in the ground, or perhaps a long diagonal line of poplars. Suddenly an airfield would emerge and release a couple of silver planes, only to blow itself out again. Apparently the valley of Tarbes is always thus, mist enshrouded. Beyond looms the great white snag of the Pic du Midi, the highest of the chain, with its tiny white observatory nudging the clouds.

  It was splendid to sit in full sunlight on the terrace of the Beau Site and watch this ever changing spectacle. As for the food, Monsieur Prosper paid close attention to it, muttering that we had a long march ahead of us and should stoke the fires while we could. It was in the course of this memorable meal too that he first revealed to me the boundaries of his Gascony—the only true one. Making his fingers into compasses he laid one upon the town of Auch and turned it through an arc which roughly demarcated the Department of Gers. “This,” he said (not without a glance over his shoulder lest some benighted Bigourdian or Landais should overhear him), “This is it.”

  “But Auch is the ancient capital of Gascony.”

  “It still is for me.”

  “Then Gascony is slightly larger than Armagnac.”

  In his opinion the area was comfortable, bounded by the great main roads which set out from Toulouse, one running northward to Agen, the other traversing the southern end through Tarbes to Dax. “It is definitively the true Gascony—only don’t say it too loud in the taverns. I don’t want to prejudice my trade, you see.”

  “I see.”

  I began now to understand more clearly. We continued along the main road as far as Pau with its air of shabby opulent desuetude, its orange trees, and its permanent hotel population of old folk sitting out the sunlight on sunny terraces surrounded by potted palms, absorbed in ancient newspapers or games of rummy and patience. Like all such resorts it was both depressing and faintly romantic with its freight of vanished memories; an elephant’s graveyard for the Royal House of the Old Europe. It is now what Baden-Baden must have been in the days of Edward VII. But here at long last we crossed into the imaginary Gascony of Monsieur Prospers election, for leaving the main road we chose a network of small but excellent departmental tracks leading us back towards Auch by Morlaas and Vic le Bigorre. It was bosomy rolling country, and its steep wooded roads skimmed up and down the hills with the trajectory of swallows. Once more the rich farms with their deeply staggered roofs, their deep granaries: and gigantic canisters of corn-cobs lying stacked up as poultry feed; huge slow-moving cattle and oxen; and the unfamiliar wayside crosses which somehow reminded one of Austria. And everywhere the somnolent lines of turkeys and geese. It gives a great sense of peaceful loneliness, perhaps because it is not densely populated. The farms are spacious and sparsely distributed. You could travel for half a day and hardly encounter a soul. Yet the very sense of solitude was itself welcoming.

  Towards evening—we were heading for Mirande la Jolie—Monsieur Prosper revealed to me gravely the secret of D’Artagnan. “They say,” he said, “that he was born at the Chateau de Castelmaure, which we will visit. But in my opinion Dumas was in error. I will show you his native village.” And sure enough up popped a road sign saying “Artagnan,” and with a chuckle Monsieur Prosper turned the car down a network of country lanes to reach it. It is so small that it is not marked on any of the ordinary motoring maps. It is really a hamlet rather than a village—a cluster of peaceful farmhouses set in rolling country. We reverently switched off the engine and let the quiet sounds of the countryside invade our senses—the lowing of cattle, and the thin high cry of a girl driving turkeys across a field. A man in waders squelched across a muddy field practically pushing a cow before him. Its hooves sank glibly into the deep black mulch of the farmyard. “This is where he was born,” said Monsieur Prosper firmly, with an air of academic precision. “I am sure of it.” By now both of us had forgotten that D’Artagnan was a creature of fiction; he was extremely real, the patron saint of Gascony. I half resolved to do a long and contentious literary paper about this discovery of Monsieur Prosper’s.

  It was dusk before we rolled into Mirande la Jolie, which lived up to its name, despite its rather straggly unwashed air, and its dilapidated streets; but this was to be our headquarters for ten days or so while my companion worked the rich goose-country round about. We celebrated our arrival that evening with a dinner made up of the famous local delicacies and topped off with a smoky Armagnac. Quite overcome by the sensation of having completed his journey and given me the promised introduction to this magical place, Monsieur Prosper actually broke into song, a song which paid tribute to it all. As far as I remember, it went like this:

  Dans les chênes des cours, lorsque tombait la

  nuit,

  Des dindons imposants semblaient d’énormes

  fruits.

  La fermière gorgeait les canards et les oies,

  Afin d’en obtenir les plus onctueux foies.

  It was, so to speak, the overture to the Gascon symphony—a symphony of food and wine which has almost blurred all perspectives.

  For ten days we flitted about the region, as lightheartedly as fireflies. Monsieur Prosper did his medicineman act as swiftly and deftly as only a Frenchman could, and wherever it was unduly prolonged he would set me down at some antiquity to wait for him, or simply on a terrace over a river with a glass of some irreproachable wine before me. One could have made a rosary from the names of the villages alone—Bassoues, Peyrusse, Vicnau, Miélan, Masseube, Plaisance, Riscle, Gouts. Their names echo in memory like the motifs of a fugue. And of course whenever the flesh failed me under those cargoes of good food and wine I resorted to the one specific for all human ills—the good Arquebuse.

  Nevertheless, Monsieur Prosper was right, it was distinctly taxing in the matter of diet. It could not be prolonged indefinitely. I began to feel I was walking like a pouter-pigeon. And on the tenth day I saw the high towers and walls of Auch rise up before us with a certain sense of relief. Monsieur Prosper was a master of the appropriate effect and it was in Auch that we austerely studied a Velazquez and went to Mass in the famous cathedral before seeking out a suitable lodging in the town in which to spend our last Gascon night—for tomorrow we were to head south once more, back to the frugal and dusty borders of Languedoc.

  Nevertheless, as one last concession to Monsieur Prosper’s expertise I faced up to one farewell meal chosen by my friend with all the old care and thoughtfulness.

  “This time,” he said, “no fish. Plus ça change,” (and he giggled) “et moins c’est la même chose.” He ordered snails, and I assured him I was an expert on them, having tasted them in every snail-proud region of France and even in Switzerland. “Gascon snails will add to your collection,” he said serenely. They did indeed, and to my waistline, and I reflected that they were probably fed Armagnac and foie gras for months before cooking. Monsieur Prosper was sorry we should not have time to savour (he underlined the word audibly: déguster) a Castelnaudary cassoulet—as unique, he said, as the Pyramids—but instead we should have (I quailed at the words) goose-liver and raisins. But the fresh, whole, parboiled liver, served in a simple sauce of its own juice, thickened with maize-flour and bubbling raisins from the local vines, was a pure enchantment which I later exorcized with the help of the good monks of St. Genis.

  Our conversation was slow and hushed as was proper in a temple of gastronomy, but Monsieur Prospers gallic lightning flashed now and again, as when I enquired about the Jurançon we were drinking. “You appreciate it? Everyone from the Vert Galant to Brillat-Savarin has extolled its charms. And it does not affect the liver”

  Seeing the doubt in my eyes he went on. “As a Knight of the Road, and with my peculiar complaint, I know” He ordered another bottle, and then said: “My dear friend, companion of the table and of the road, I am only a Gascon by adoption, by love so to speak; but here, in this part of France, grow the largest grapes, the largest goose
-livers, the largest appetites, and … the largest lies! Truth is so splendid in Gascony that one simply has to improve on it.…”

  It is an appropriate time and place to say farewell to him, sitting there with his spectacles on the end of his nose, his napkin tucked joyously into his waistcoat, his sharp birdlike eye quizzically adjusted to a bill of fare with the intensity of an explorer studying a map.

  Solange

  Written in Paris about 1938, lengthened by about half

  and retouched 1967. Not previously published.

  I

  Solange Bequille b. 1915 supposedly

  Far from Paris towards April sometime,

  Familiar of the familiar XIV arrondissement

  four steps up

  four steps down

  two three four five

  where the sewers discharge

  by the turret of an urinal

  six seven eight

  steel ducts voiding

  in shade and out of the wind …

  Relatively impossible despite so much practice

  To word-parody the tantamount step, but easier

  Copy for the lens a powder-blue raincoat, beret,

  Cicada brooch, belted and bolted waist of wasp,

  Dumb insolent regimental shoes, sheeny rings,

  The whole of it amberstuck through twenty winters,

  Carried round the globe in damp suitcases,

  Some pedlar’s pack of visionary ware like

  Her rings of a vulgar water reflecting

  black testicles of buoys

  tugging at the Seine

  lovers in leaden coffins

  pelting the dead with crusts

  the prohibitions of loneliness

  being twenty-two with a war

  hanging over them, its belly hard,

  noting the orgasm of Hegel