Spirit of Place: Letters and Essays on Travel

by Lawrence Durrell

  I think the secret of the matter is one of attitude; for Pepe it was only the “sights”—the mouldering copper and violet ruins of Roman amphitheatres in places like Nîmes, Orange, and Aries; or the parched buttresses and crenellations of medieval palaces snoozing away the centuries under that ripe old sun; these set-pieces we visited to be sure—but always en route for some contemporary gala, be it a bull fight, or a battle of flowers, or a cattle-branding, or a carnival. Who else can have seen Daudet’s windmill through a glass of Tavel rosé—that magnificent topaz-coloured wine which shares with Châteauneuf a comfortable dominion over the southern vineyards? And if we paid passing homage to the Nîmes arena (which Panurge built in three hours!) it was while we were hunting for a particular Provençal dish—brandade—which must be tasted if my initiation was to be completed. Indeed, to be truthful, the wines and cheeses of this region have worked their way into the landscape, so that my memories of it are shot through with the prismatic glitter of them. They are, so to speak, the living score upon which the reality of the place is written, and they gave colour to those romantic names of the region’s heroes—from Rabelais, Nostradamus, and Van Gogh up to Paul Valéry. (At Aigues-Mortes, Van Gogh’s coloured boats still idle up and down the green canals among the dragonflies; it seems less than a moment since the painter folded up his easel and left.) Tarascon, Beaucaire, and the Stes. Maries (the headquarters of all the Gipsies in Christendom).… And where Petrarch mourned his beloved Laura, we had an obstinate but lucky puncture which enabled us to pledge the lovers in a decisive little Blanquette which Pepe had provisionally decided not to open till the following day. But the heat and effort made him recant. (“By God,” he said reverently, “what a wine. And nameless yet! They should call it Laura’s Tears.”) Neither of us could remember a line of Petrarch to recite in memory of that virtuous and star-crossed shade; but we felt a sense of kinship with her as we drank to her in that memorable defile, by the cold clear water. (“I once loved a girl from Avignon called Laura,” said Pepe. “But she was far from virtuous like her namesake. As a matter of fact I prefer them that way—though I yield to none in my admiration of Petrarch’s lady-love.”)

  For a whole week we wove backwards and forwards thus across Provence, like spring-intoxicated dragonflies; and yet this for Pepe was a business trip, for several of the bulls he owned were fighting. There were long shady confabulations in taverns, under trees, in stifling offices. There was money to collect and staff-work to be done before we could return to the navel of the world which (he promised me) would cap everything. Meanwhile … the familiar prospects of vines, olives, cypresses; one comes to believe that they are Platonic abstractions rooted in the imagination of man. Symbols of the Mediterranean, they are always here to welcome one—either trussed back by the winter gales in glittering silver-green bundles, or softly powdered by the gold dust of the summers, blown from the threshing floors by the freshets of sea-wind. Yes, the great wines of the south sleep softly on in the French earth like a pledge that the enchanted landscapes of the European heart will always exist, will never fade against this taut wind-haunted blue sky where the mistral rumbles and screams all winter long. Yes, even if there were no history here, no monuments, no recognizable sense of a past to indulge our twentieth-century sense of self-pity, the place would still be the magnet it is. These Emperor cheeses, these magnificent unworldly wines still attest to the full belly and the rugged physical contents upon which Rabelais built his view of the ideal world of laughter. They are the enemies of literary nostalgia. The existence of Laura, of Tartarin, of Cézanne—the continuity of the world of the imagination—they are simply the proofs, so to speak, that some spots on earth are the natural cradles of genius. Provence is one. So long as the wines and the cheeses hold their place, such immortal company for the imaginations of men will never fail us.… Idle thoughts, drifting through the mind as we sit on a shady terrasse near Arles drinking Côtes du Rhône Gigondas with a prime St. Gorton cheese and fresh bread (Pepe winking derisively at a Coca-Cola sign on the wall opposite!). So we worked our way south to where at last the Rhône slows down like a mighty pulse to push its massive way across the flat Camargue to the sea, and after a final sunset-cup under the little church of the Saintes Maries we turned back to cross the plains and foothills to Gaussargues, the navel of Provence, the belly button of the world, Pepe’s personal omphalos.…

  Here again he was right—or was it simply the deceptive sense of repletion and content in that green-rayed dusk, travelling along the dense plumed avenues of planes as if under a green tent of coolness? No, the little Roman town with its graceful bridge and ambling trout-stream was certainly somewhere to linger. It figures in no guidebook—its time-saturated antiquities are considered unimportant beside those of its neighbours. But it is a jewel with its tiny medieval town and clock-tower; its rabbit warren streets and carved doorways with their battered scutcheons and mason’s graffiti. Rooks calling too, from the old fort, their cries mingled with the hoarse chatter rising from the cafes under the planes. Gaussargues!

  And here Pepe somehow came into his own—on the shady waterfront café before the tavern-hotel called “The Knights” where I was lodged, and where the affairs of the world were debated to the music of river-water and the hushing of the plane-fronds above us. Yes, if it was not entirely a new Pepe it was an extension of the old flamboyant figure in new terms—for here he was at home, among his friends, these dark-eyed, keen-visaged gentry wearing black berets and coloured shirts and belts. Their conversation, the whole humour and bias of their lives revolved about bulls and the cockades they carried, about football matches against the hated northern departments and the celestial fouls perpetrated during them; and more concretely about fishing and vines and olive-trees. Here too one entered the mainstream of meridional hospitality where a drink refused was an insult given—and where travellers find their livers insensibly turning into pigskin suitcases within them. Such laughter, such sunburned faces, and such copious potations are not, I think, to be found anywhere else outside the pages of Gargantua. At times the rose-bronze moon came up with an air of positive alarm to shine down upon tables covered with a harvest of empty glasses and bottles, or to gleam upon the weaker members of the company extended like skittles in the green grass of the river-bank, their dreams presumably armouring them against the onslaughts of the mosquitoes. Those of us who by this time were not too confused with wine and bewitched by folklore to stand upright and utter a prayer to Diana, managed to help each other tenderly, luxuriously to bed.…

  Murier the dentist, Thoma the notary, Carpe the mason, Rickard the postmaster, Blum the mayor, and Gradon the chief policeman: such an assembly of moustaches and expressions as would delight a Happy Families addict. Massively, like old-fashioned mahogany furniture, they sat away their lives under the planes—village characters belonging to the same over-elaborated myth which created Panurge. They were terrific and they knew it! And such vaunting, such boasting, such tremendous feats of arms: as when Pepe fought a duel with the dentist. I forget how it all began—doubtless over some trifling disagreement about who should stand who what to drink. But the challenge was given and taken up at once. Followed a grave choice of seconds and an even graver choice of weapons: which in the end proved to be open umbrellas. The duellers faced each other with a full wineglass in the left hand, umbrella in the right. “On guard,” cried Murier hoarsely, and the battle was joined. It was clearly to be a fight to the death, with no quarter given or asked.

  I wish I could say that thrust and riposte flashed back and forth as quickly as sheet-lightning. It would not be true, for both contestants were somewhat unsteady and attacked each other with the sort of unhealthy expression that one sees on the faces of chess players. In this stately but relentless fashion they moved up and down the main street until a balcony window opened and an old lady in curl-papers menaced them with a loaded chamber-pot if they did not desist; this had the effect of causing a momentary diversion when, taking ad
vantage of Murier’s lowered guard (he was under the balcony), Pepe drove his umbrella home to the hilt, upsetting his enemy’s wine all over his trousers. Prolonged applause, and a return to the terrasse where Gradon moodily suggested arresting the whole lot of us and putting us in irons.

  These were good, informative days, for during them I saw Provence standing at ease, as it were; saw it from the narrow aperture of ordinary village life which does not blind one to defects but shows everything in its true proportion. I understand, too, why it has remained so fresh and unspoiled to this day, for its comforts are few and its hardships rugged ones—such as the almost total absence of main drainage and bathrooms in the hotels, which would be enough to discourage the tourist even if the word “mistral” did not exist.

  Mistral! There is something of Olympian Zeus about the way it roars and rages down from Mount Ventoux, always unexpectedly and always at full force, rolling boulders and dust ahead of it and whistling down the river-valleys like a herd of mad bulls. In the dusty plain of the Crau the trees are all hooked into weird shapes, twisted and bent by its force. It is upon you at a moment’s notice, cramming the words back into your throat, sending the dust-devils spinning and whirling like so many dervishes among the vineyards. But it belongs faithfully to the landscape, and matches it as the dragon matches the fairy-tale; your Provençal treats it with a boisterous contempt despite the feverish headaches and general malaise it brings with it—due probably to the tremendous drop in temperature which accompanies its appearance. “Somehow one would not be without it,” says the Count de C.–J. as we watch it racing across the plain towards the chatâau. “Every rose must have its thorn.”

  The Count, who is one of France’s best essayists, lives virtually the life of a recluse among his magnificent vineyards. He is a good-looking and somewhat reserved man in his middle forties, with a withered arm. Quiet of voice and seldom smiling except with his expressive dark eyes, he dispenses a less boisterous but equally warm hospitality beside his own quiet lily pond, seated under a shady pergola of vine and plumbago.

  Once, they say, he was a great figure in Parisian society, but some early tragedy led him to abandon la vie mondaine and retire to a life of unbroken seclusion upon the family estates. Exactly what the tragedy was no one would tell me—though everyone seemed to know. Was it too painful for the village to mention—or was this simply an example of supreme tact? I shall never know. But I can guess why he was so admired: for though he was every inch a seigneur, and though he never set foot outside the grounds of the château except to labour in his fields, he was somehow still part of the active robust life of the community. Fishermen caught poaching or families in distress knew that Pepe had only to carry their story to him for help to be forthcoming. Nor was there a café-reveller who thought twice about invading the château after dark for a “stirrup-cup.” In this, I suppose, Pepe was himself the worst offender by far, and several times he led me scrambling and blundering up the dark paths at midnight to ring the bell on the great oak door. He was always sure of his welcome, and always with the same unsmiling politeness the Count would appear, often pyjama-clad, to light a lantern and (if the hour was late and his housekeeper in bed) to hunt out drinks for us from his vast cellars. I think he shared some of my own amused admiration for the flamboyant Pepe; at any rate they addressed each other comfortably in the singular like old intimates. “Ah! the devil,” he would say as Pepe recounted some dark triumph of skill or business acumen. “Ah! what a trick to play on a fellow creature”—with his smiling affectionate eye upon the face of his friend glowing rosy in the lantern’s light. Blundering homewards down the dark path after such an evening, Pepe would explain. “He himself leads the life of a blasted nun, but he enjoys visitors up there. But he has never set foot in the town and never will.”

  So the days lengthened quietly into sunburnt weeks, and gradually those missing chapters (the quest for which had first led me south into Provence) began to take shape in my mind. A curious process like pack-ice breaking up. I did not dare to ascribe it only to the wine! But one fine morning I found my child’s cahier had begun to fill up and I realized with a pang that it was time to make tracks, to get back to Paris and my dusty typewriter. My decision, so firmly announced over pastis on the terrasse of “The Knights,” was greeted with a chorus of disapproval. I had as yet seen and heard nothing, they said. I knew nothing as yet of Provence—as if this immortal hangover were not experience enough! Pepe himself was almost in tears. But I stuck to my guns. I had to leave, and in order to nail my resolution to the sticking-point, I actually chose a date of departure. A long and pregnant silence fell over those vintage characters as they sat before their drinks. Softly the river ran, softly the dark fronds of the planes hushed above us.

  “It is the day,” said Pepe sorrowfully, “of the Anciens Combattants. We have a memorial dinner every year for the class of ’34. We had planned to make you an honorary combattant for the evening. Wait till you see the menu—it is pure trigonometry, mon vieux. You will feel quite faint. No, put it off, this rash decision. Put it off a week or two, my dear friend.” It would have been easy to put it off perhaps for ever; but I remained adamant. The silence of perplexity fell once more. Murier suddenly sat up and said: “But the last train does not leave until midnight. There would still be time to dine with us and catch it. It would be some sort of a send-off for you. Otherwise we would be wounded in our amour-propre for in Gaussargues we always try to do the right thing by our visitors.”

  As it turned out it was one of the most memorable send-offs I have ever had, thanks to two factors whose importance I could not then foresee. The evening in question turned out also to be the duty evening of the Voluntary Fire Brigade, whose relief commandant was Pepe. But this little fact only dawned on him as we actually sat down to dinner by glossy candlelight in the medieval cellars of “The Knights,” our tables flanked appropriately by barrels, bottles, butts, and bins of wine against which we could lean if overcome by the fumes of the … but no, I will not give the Menu. I will always keep it a secret, locked in the recesses of my heart. I will not even give the wine list.… We were regaled by the music of a Spanish guitar played by Porot, the hawk-featured sacristan of the church, and served by two twinkling dark Provençal girls whose ears (though tanned) flushed increasingly as they listened to the highly robust quatrains which poured from the good Porot’s lips. It was in the middle of the first toast that Murier turned pale and cried: “Pardi, there are six relief pompiers here tonight—and it is the Voluntary’s duty evening. If the widow Chauvet should become lonely.…”

  Here I should explain the immediate roar of laughter which went up, and the rueful growling annoyance of Pepe who was obviously the target for it, to judge by his grin and the way he slapped his thigh and said “Damn the widow!” More laughter.

  Now the good widow Chauvet was a delightful old lady in her late seventies who lived a life of studious eccentricity in a tiny villa on the hill. In appearance stately and decorous she was nevertheless rather a flamboyant character too, in her own quiet way. Her hair for example.… It was as good as a firework display. It was clear that some local illusionist posing as a hairdresser had subjected her to the worst indignities. Yet she was proud of it, and proud that it was her own. In parts her coiffure resembled a Maclaren tartan, fading away around the sides to verdigris, kelp, and bistre. In other parts it spanned the whole spectrum from high violet to a brilliant, ringing gold which suggested that at some time she had been subjected to electrolysis. Twice a week her advertisement appeared in the personal column of the Courrier du Sud. It read as follows:

  Charming gifted widow, 45, with furniture worth nine million and small annunity, seeks distinguished Catholic husband who will appreciate and share august but dignified country life. Agents please abstain.

  Whether she ever received any replies to this appeal nobody knew; but for years now she had been quite determined to find another husband to replace number three (“parce qu’il f
aut faire une vie quand même”). This was all very well, and indeed she was rather admired for refusing to give in to old age, but the trouble was that latterly her choice tended always to centre on poor Pepe, who certainly had other fish to fry. It had become a joke: one of those long-winded village jokes which make life so delightful in places where the atom bomb as a subject for discussion has not been heard of. Yes, she was a brave fille, this widow Chauvet. But sometimes, on a duty evening, she would deliberately set her chimney on fire, overcome by what was described as a faiblesse (due to the Tavel rosé she took with her meals?), and in this way secure a certain modicum of male company in the form of the gallant brigade of pompiers led by Pepe, who would rush up the hill to the rescue in their fire engine. It was rumoured that such was her love for Pepe that she kept a duty roster of voluntary pompiers pinned to her kitchen wall, so that she would know exactly when to set the chimney alight. At any rate she had never done this on an evening when the gallant Pepe was not himself in charge. The inference was clear.

  This interruption, then, was very much to be feared; and for a moment the knowledge that the widow might strike cast a gloom over the company. But the food was so delicious, the candlelight so charming, the songs of Porot so clearly demoralizing to the two young serving-girls, the wine flowing so strongly … that everyone settled down at last to this memorable banquet in good earnest. I kept an apprehensive eye on a wrist watch and wondered whether I should have to be taken aboard the train on a stretcher.