In Cahors

We are on our way to the Dordogne, the refuge of the Neandertal, the land of the caves where the ancient humans painted and carved on walls tens of thousands of years ago. The beautiful, rich valley of that big river, lined with limestone cliffs. On our way to finally see Lascaux (of course not the cave itself where we nearly destroyed the artwork of the ancestors before closing it off, but the elaborate replica, Lascaux Four, there at the base of the hill where the cave itself sits, closed to all but a few occasional scientists in moon suits). On our way to the valleys of the Dordogne and its tributary the Viesse, we stopped for a pique-nique in the city of Cahors.

We drove in the way we had come four summers ago when we were wandering the area, looking for a new home. We remembered the cafes by the river, away from the flow of the big old buildings of the city, and the trees that will flower later in July. We turned to the left to stay close to the river and settled on a spot with benches that looked over the water to the cliffs beyond, old houses with their clay tile roofs nestled at the base of the rock, next to the river.

It was just beside the road, but it didn’t really matter. There were trees, grass and rose bushes. We found a bench beside a fig tree, poured ourselves some wine, brought out the bread and cheese and olives, ate and watched the parade of humans, cars, buses and bicycles.

When we had almost eaten our fill and were pouring a second glass of wine, we each, in our own way, gradually became aware of a presence quite near us on the lawn. I had hesitated to turn and look, sensing it might be some semi-wild creature we would scare away. Walter had looked. He turned slightly and touched my leg. “See that woman? She has a parrot in the tree.” I turned squarely to see.

“Bonjour”, I said, suddenly unsure of the gender to the person who stood there, close to our bench, chopped brown hair under a nondescript cap, loose-jacketed, looking up at a big, brightly colored parrot in a fig tree beside us.

“Bonjour” replied the person, the voice either male or female, a bit rough. The parrot looked at me, cocked its head and squawked.

“Il est curieux de vous.” the person explained, glancing quickly at us and turning back to the bird.

“Comment dit-on ‘parrot’ en francais?” I wondered aloud.

A blank look passed quickly over the face turned towards me, incomprehension.  Something in the eyes, perhaps a directness in the brown-eyed glance, made me recognize this person was a woman.

“Quel es le nom de cet oiseau?” I stumbled.

“Bertrand,” she replied. “Bertrand, mon perroquet.”

Confused for a moment, I thought, no it can’t be a parakeet, it’s too big, then remembering some lesson I’d had with the French word for parrot, I said,

“Oui, perroquet! Il est beau avec le rouge et le bleu et le vert. Quel âge a-t-il?”

A small smile of pride, just a hint, appeared on her face as she calculated the length of time and then replied that he was thirty-four years old. I translated for Walter, who was picking up much of the meaning already. He said,

”I wonder how long parrots can live? That’s pretty old.”

I asked. She said with some confidence that they could live to be about fifty but most kept in a house lived to be about forty.

“I’ve had him since he was a few months old,” she told us, with an accent that seemed part of the air she had breathed since a child.

We talked for quite some time, learning that he like being outside and would not fly away, that he couldn’t say any words but imitated the bark of the neighbor’s little dog quite nicely, that he sometimes imitated a laugh from the television.  It was clear that this bird had been her closest companion for all those years. We learned somehow that she watched movies about the old days in France. In fact, she watched a lot of old movies on her TV at home. She had been born in a nearby village and lived in Cahors all of her adult life. There was much I wondered about her life but didn’t dare to ask, what she had done, had she been married, did she have children, what kind of home did she have.

We told her we were going to the caves at Lascaux, about a hundred kilometres north on the Dordogne River.  Her round, tanned face crinkled. She had heard of them, of their paintings, but had never been. It reminded her somehow of a movie she’d seen about men who wore plumes on their helmets. She had been to Toulouse with her father once or twice she remarked, hearing we lived further south, near the Pyrenees.

Our conversation could have stretched on and on. She was clearly content to have our interest. We could have become acquainted. But the road called us, the paintings in the caves, the river itself. We made our excuses. She motioned to Bertrand who sidled up the branch and jumped to her shoulder where she snapped a leash on a ring around his leg.

As we gathered our things she stood, watching, Bertrand squawking, impatient. She waved, unmoving, as we walked toward the road. “Au revoir!”

“Bonne journée!” I called back.

For those moments, walking away, I was filled unexpectedly with a certain kind of joy. Having seen through the window of her eyes some part of a life, some flicker of recognition beyond the filters of language and culture, I was stirred, happy to be able to communicate in my imperfect French. As we climbed into the somewhat battered car we’d bought a few months ago here in France, I looked forward eagerly to the next things we would experience on the road–together; the beauty of the cave paintings, the unknown stretches of a big river that had supported so much life for so long.

She, on the other hand, was probably returning slowly, by way of several familiar stops, to some small old house nearby, perhaps to chat for a while with a neighbor, then a meal in her kitchen and an evening to watch old movies with her parrot chattering in the background. Perhaps content. A good day. A recognition. Small things.

The Mists of Fougax

There is a time when the mist here floats on the hills behind the house in the morning. As dreams mingle with visions of what we call the solid world, as I move from sleep to what we call waking, there is less division on such mornings. One morning the mist may be violet, sitting as if it were the warm breath of the still-sleeping hill itself clinging to the silence. Another morning like this one, the mist seems to float yet is without movement. Obscuring yet filled with light as the still colorless sky becomes infused so very gradually with the warmth from the sun rising over the mountain to the east.

There is also a time when one comes to a new place when the separation between that which we have come to know as our self and that which is not self is as imperceptible as the separation between mist and hill, mist and tree, mist and sky, between dream and the re-assembling morning world.

This morning when I was awake enough to tell my body to move and start the conscious day, I walked in my nightgown into our front room, a room lined with windows facing the road and a tiny kitchen space. As I passed by the windows on my way to the kettle, there was a flash of yellow at the corner of my eye. Two yellow-vested women seemed to be standing on the other side of our garden fence, in front of the row of rose bushes. Yellow vests. Signifiers of emotions and opinions which are not quite clear. A restlessness I cannot yet penetrate.

There’s a way in which the mood is turning, unwilling to continue along a disturbing path where the desires of the haves push the lives of the have-nots in ways they cannot control. As I went to set the water to boil for tea I wondered—was it this restlessness settling here in front of the house on the road into the village on a Sunday morning? Was it village workers responding to some emergency? The range of possibilities is as yet unclear to me, jumping into a new world of complexities woven over thousands of years.  The cues of a very different culture, cemented into my awareness since childhood,  can mislead.  And imagery of the yellow-vest is ambiguous even to the French that surround me. 

Then another flash out of the corner of my eye–a runner coming down the road opposite ours, down from the trail through the woods and turning left in front of our house. Then another and another, all with leggings or shorts, little backpacks of different sizes and all holding some sort of collapsible walking sticks.

Ah, yes, a cross country race! It began to come into focus. The women with the vests were officials, guiding the runners. The logo on the yellow vests became clear–”Trail des Citadelles.” They were running from one high Cathar citadel to another. Walter, about to come naked into the front room, forewarned, put on some clothes, looked at the situation in the road and said, “We have to bring those women some coffee.”

Moments later, two cups of strong coffee in hand, we walked out together to the fence and offered them. Both women, seeing the cups, said “Oh! Oui! C’est si gentil!” We stood for a while talking with them over the little fence as they greeted runners with “Par la. Tenez a gauche.”That way. Stay to the left.)

In my faulty French, I ask questions about the race and the weather. They answer warmly and willingly. They had been coming to this very spot every Easter morning for the past eight years, through the shifting dates of Easter and through rain, cold, heat and even snow. They had seen the house empty for four years in a row and were now glad to see it alive again. Today was just right. Fresh, but not at all cold. A bit of rain and grey skies, but definitely spring.

Back under the eaves of the house, we pulled out a couple of chairs and watched, dry, through the light rain as families with children waited to see a husband or father, aunt or mother come down the road to take the bend around the corner. Some on the course had already been running for three or more hours and faced many more. As each one was sighted, their small groups of supporters clapped and cheered them on. Sometimes the father or mother stopped briefly to kiss each one in their little crowd on both cheeks before running on to cheers of “Allez! Allez!” from behind.

Each interaction that connects us to this place, this home, that allows us to penetrate just a little into the life of the people here is like waking into one reality from another, dream to dream. The man who, for instance, has a beautiful garden at the other end of the village, where the river winds past the old mill and past green patches and lilac bushes. This man who was eager, when asked, to tell us all about the work he does to make a beautiful vegetable garden with rows of hoop houses and beautifully mounded potatoes and how he protects his cherry trees and harvests them and how he cuts and stores up his wood.

Or the woman standing just outside her door at the turning before the bridge whose little dogs barked at me as I passed, who said “Beaucoup de bruit avec peu de cause.” ( Lots of noise with little cause.”) We both laughed in the amber light of a sunset descending over the mountains around us, both touched by it in ways beyond apprehension.

Or the old man carrying in a huge chunk of wood through his blue front door who said “Ah. Oui, mon poêle est vraiment grand,” (Yes, my stove is truly large) when I commented on how huge it was, there in his old strong arms. The woman who gave me a ride in her little car she pulled out of the garage when I knocked on her door and said, “J’ai tourné le genou pendant la randonnée. Ça fait mal. Vous pouvez me conduire à l’autre bout du village??” (I turned my knee while I was hiking. It hurts. Can you give me a life to the other end of the village?)  Concerned, she asked if I needed to go to the doctor. When I said it was not that bad, we chatted on the way about the house we’d bought whose previous owners were her friends of many years

Such beauty to be found. Here we are in the midst of it. Eyes open. Ears open. Nostrils flaring to smell the incredible blossoms of spring. Hearts listening, wondering, caught by the intensities of sunlight through parting clouds, sense of self dissipating like the mists over the hills, stirring and waking from dream into dream. So many other realities exist. This is one.