Aix Marks the Spot

by Sarah Anderson

  “So Dad wanted mom to go to Cassis beach?” I asked, careful not to pronounce it poorly, dare I insult my translator. He nodded.

  “But not the main beach, and he’s right. Especially at this time of year, the tourists take over. They went to the calanques, which, by his description, sounds like they went to En-Vau.”

  “I’m going to be honest here, I only understood about half of those words.”

  He looked up from the letter, grinning. It was funny how his smile changed all of his features: one second, he almost fell into the ‘dark-and-mysterious’ category, and the next, he was as goofy as a five-year-old. I tried not to laugh. He seemed almost excited at the prospect of telling me any of this, more excited even than being invited to follow a super-secret treasure hunt.

  “So the calanques are like…” he search for the word, struggling a little. Holding out his hand, he ran a finger along the negative space. “Fjords?”

  I couldn’t help it, it caught me so much by surprise I practically chocked.

  “Fjords? What, in France?”

  “You’ll understand it when you see them,” he explained. He placed his right index between his left thumb and forefinger. “This is Cassis.” He moved his index between the middle and index fingers. “This is Port-Pin.” Then he moved his finger two slots over, so it was between his pinky and ring. “And this is En Vau. It’s a bit of a walk, but it’s beautiful.”

  “Great,” I said. “How do I get there? Can we leave right now?”

  “It’s pretty far away,” he said, “Like, a two-hour drive from here? And you said we again. I am not sure I can go.”

  “Why not?” Every time a window opened, someone slammed a door in my face. Two hours. Damn. “Come on, beach trip! What else could be better?”

  “I don’t know. Sleeping?”

  “You must be joking.”

  “No, I’m Valentin.”

  If there wasn’t an open pot of Nutella on the bed right now, I would have tossed a book or a pillow at him, anything. But I didn’t want to waste it.

  “Seriously, though. I have no idea where I would be going. You know the place, right?”

  He nodded. “Every summer I would go with my grandparents. It’s my favorite place.”

  “Then why not come with me?” I said. “I’ll give you half of the treasure!”

  “No thank you!” he laughed, “the treasure is probably chocolates, or a pen, or… I don’t know, something that had to do with your parents. Not an actual treasure.”

  “I can… I can get you an autograph from Mamie?”

  He paused for a moment, contemplating the offer. And I found myself staring at his bright blue eyes, trying to understand what was going on in that head of his. He had to help. He just had to, or the hunt would be over before it even started.

  “You really want this, don’t you?”

  I nodded, faster than I ever had in my life. Felt like a headbanger at a metal concert.

  “Fine. But I’m not paying for your transport!”

  “Can you drive us?”

  “On my scooter? No way! It barely makes it to Pertuis and back. We’d have to take the highway and… no thanks.”

  “I have my license,” I said. He might be able to speak French, but I could drive a friggin’ car. Take that, fairness. “Maybe I could ask Jean-Pascal to lend me his car.”

  “Ah, but can you drive…” he struggled over the word, making a zig-zag motion with his right hand. The guy did so much of his speaking with his hands. “The not-automatic?”

  There must have been a breeze, because those doors just kept slamming in my face. It seemed as though every option was being shut down, one after the other.

  “How does anyone even get around here?” I wanted to rip my hair out from the roots. This was maddening.

  “Trains and buses,” he shrugged, “we can take one tomorrow.”

  “We?”

  It hit me suddenly just how much he was helping me with this. Just how wide that goofy grin was getting. Just how little Nutella he had eaten since reading the letter - as in, no Nutella at all.

  “Well, I did say you were paying,” he said.

  “You’re really going to come along?” I could have kissed him right then and there. I didn’t, though, I had some restraint at least. “You are so getting an autograph!”

  “I still don’t think we’ll find anything,” he shrugged. “but I feel sorry for a girl with no whiffy.”

  I smiled. I guess I really did have a friend here.

  “Je pars,” I shouted upstairs to Mamie as I stepped outside into the garden. It was only 7 am, but the sun was already up high, making it feel like noon. Stepping outside was like walking into a hotbox.

  Mamie, already at her typewriter, coffee in hand rather than her usual cigarette, glanced down at me in confusion.

  “Où?” She asked, taking a sip of her still steaming drink. Where?

  “Cours de Français!”

  I mean, technically I wasn’t lying to Mamie. I was taking French lessons with Valentin. Only I never told her where we were going for them.

  She could have asked me why so early. She could have asked me what I was planning on doing. If I was coming back for lunch. But instead, she turned her focus to her typewriter.

  “Ne rentre pas trop tard,” she said, returning to her work, unflinching.

  “What does Ne rentre pas trop tard mean?” I asked Valentin, as he opened the door to his house.

  “Don’t get back too late,” he replied with a yawn. He was as his usual casual self, with grey shorts and an orange shirt. I don’t think I’d ever see a guy pull off orange before, and yet this random teenager in Provence made it look like it was all the rage. Sunglasses were perched lightly atop his disheveled curls.

  “You can take your bike to the garden,” he said, “then, we go.”

  He gave me a weird look as he took in my outfit but said nothing. But there wasn’t anything wrong with my bright green gym shorts and my tank top: I mean, what else was someone supposed to wear on a beach hike?

  I snuck a glance at his shoes and was glad to see he was wearing sneakers. I had heard somewhere that the French reviled them. At least I was in the clear with my choice of footwear.

  We strolled out of his house, the close-knit buildings of the town sheltering us from the sun with their long shadows. A few early birds were having their morning coffees at the cafés as we passed, a smattering of croissants on their tables. My stomach grumbled.

  “Do we have time to stop for a pastry?”

  “No, sorry,” he said, “maybe in Aix.”

  “Aix?” My heart leapt at the word. “Aix-en-Provence?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “We’re going to Aix.” I found myself grinning at the prospect. Aix. The town where you met dad. The place where everything began. The city you never forgot, despite missing it almost two decades.

  But I wasn’t allowed to feel excited about this trip. I was here to find a treasure, not to enjoy myself. This would be my penance for all the pain I caused you, and it would never be anything more.

  The stop was a little post near the castle, with no bench or shade, but it was early enough that it didn’t matter. Even so, I could feel the heat rising around me. It was going to be another scorcher.

  “The bus should be here in five minutes,” said Valentin. The steady chirp of cicada song was already beginning to grow, like someone was turning the volume up on the world.

  “Cool,” I replied, unsure of what else to say. I still couldn’t believe we would be going through Aix. Having only ever heard of it from my mother, it had almost become a sort of fairy tale.

  Ten minutes went by, without any sign of the bus. Then, fifteen. My stomach grumbled, my craving for croissants growing with my hunger.

  “Crap,” I found myself biting my nails, then realized what I was doing and stuffed the hand in my pocket. “It’s really late.”

  “Relax, will you?” Valentin leaned against th
e bus post, casual as can be. “It will come when it comes. We’re not in any rush, we don’t have any rendez-vous.”

  “But if we miss this bus, we’ll miss the next bus,” I proclaimed, “and if we miss that bus, we’ve basically wasted the day. We should turn back now.”

  Valentin blinked, slowly, staring at me as if I had just told him my grandmother was a chicken.

  “But… we haven’t even left the station.”

  “Exactly, this way we don’t mess anything up.”

  “Jamie,” he said, trying as hard as he could to pronounce it properly. Instead, it sounded like he had an awful British accent. “Listen to me. It’s going to be alright. You’re anxious.”

  “I’m not anxious, are you anxious?”

  “Always. But why do I have to be anxious about busses? They come when they come.”

  “But if they say they’re coming at a certain hour, they should come at that hour, dammit.”

  “Fifteen minutes isn’t late,” he insisted, “fifteen minutes is normal.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “Yes, it sucks, but what are you going to do? Manipulate time? Worry about what you can change and stop getting mad at the things you can’t.”

  “We should call the bus company and complain,” I said, “we should see if other people were let down by this driver. I don’t know, we should do something!”

  “Too much work,” he shrugged, “it’s just a bus.”

  “But that’s just lazy,” I sputtered, “no one’s going to get anything done if they think nothing can be done.”

  He shrugged. “Can you make the bus get here faster?”

  The bus did eventually show up, a good twenty minutes behind schedule. The driver didn’t even apologize as we climbed up, Valentin paying for the two tickets to Aix, end of the line. He marched down the aisle of the nearly empty bus, spreading himself out along the seats in the back. I joined him, taking the seats before his, feeling the exposed skin of my legs rasp against the rough velvet of the seats.

  “The bus will take an hour,” he said, “but the drive is pretty. I will probably sleep.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Wake me when it gets interesting.”

  Everything was interesting, but I said nothing. The long stretches of fields of the countryside as we drove past; the rows of vines, filled with weeds, stretching out on both sides of the road; crumbling old farmhouses and massive estates practically side by side. I drifted off into a trance, watching the world rush by out my window, feeling as if I was watching a film where the only sound was the rumble of the bus and the chirp of the cicadas that chided us along.

  The voices swam in my head, reminding me I didn’t deserve this. I saw you, struggling to walk because of my mistake. Dad, trying to get the funds together to pay for our hospital bills. Mamie, refusing to talk to me for my entire life and then claiming she had wanted me all along, only to go right back to ignoring me. And here I was, riding lazily along the French countryside, living a dream so many others would never live, while they all suffered because of me.

  I wanted to scream. The hunger gnawing at my stomach mixed with the guilt and gave my gut a tight twist. I couldn’t be here. I shouldn’t.

  And then I saw the mountain.

  How it had been hiding for so long, I don’t know. Maybe I just wasn’t paying enough attention, because out of nowhere rose a peak so high it dwarfed the other hills and cliffs. A long crest stretched out before me, all grey limestone and green pines, with a sharp metal point rising from the peak, as if someone had armed the very mountain itself.

  “What is that?” I asked. But my mind already knew, recognizing it from paintings in the back of my mind.

  “What, the St Victoire?” Valentin grumbled, waking up from his nap.

  “That’s the St Victoire?” He nodded, and my breath caught. This was it. The mountain you had fallen in love with, Cezanne before you. What had brought you here in the first place. “What’s at the top?”

  “Oh, it’s a cross,” he explained, “some monks built it centuries ago.”

  “That’s wild.”

  “Is it?”

  “It must be massive if I can see it from here.”

  He shrugged. “It’s alright.”

  I watched the mountain grow as we drew closer, dwarfing our small bus. It was magnificent, all long ridges and peaks.

  “It’s like…” I couldn’t find the words. “The spine of a great beast.”

  “You think?”

  It wasn’t a judgement. Something inside him switched on, and in a second Valentin went from apathetic to bursting with energy. He sat up straight on his seat, leaning in over the chair to talk to me better.

  “It’s funny you say that,” he exclaimed, “some people have called it a dragon.”

  “A dragon?”

  He nodded excitedly. “When I was a child, my father would tell me the story of the monstrous beast that would attack Provence. Someone brave fought it, and when it died, it turned to stone. I don’t know if that is the true legend, but I always thought the mountain looked like a dragon, too.”

  I turned my eyes back to the mountain and imagined what it could have looked like with massive wings. I could totally see a dragon there.

  “Picasso thought it looked like a woman,” Valentin added, “painted it all sexy. He loved it so much he bought a castle there, and a lot of land. He’s buried at the foot of it.”

  “He is?”

  I hadn’t thought of Picasso, of all people, being buried anywhere here. Not that I had even thought about where he was buried at all.

  When the bus drove into the station at Aix-en-Provence, I was trying to hold back the giddy feeling in my gut. I was dying to see the town: to see the university where my parents met, to see the art museum with all the original Cézanne’s. But my stomach had another thing in mind entirely.

  “I need a croissant,” I said to Valentin, hopping off the bus.

  “We’re already late, we’re going to miss the next bus if we don’t hurry now.”

  “What? Seriously?”

  “Croissant or Cassis?”

  I didn’t need to answer that. We rushed down the station and Valentin found our bus, and once again we were settling in for a long ride.

  “This is going to take forever,” I muttered. My stomach grumbled along with me.

  “You’re the one who wanted to go.”

  I nodded. I missed having a car, being in control of where I went and when. I hadn’t been driving long, but it was enough to get used to the convenience.

  “It’ll be worth it,” he added, with a gentle smile, “Trust me.”

  He was right. Dad’s letter was safely folded away in a paperback in my backpack. If we found these clues, the trip would be priceless. You can’t put a price on your mother’s recovery.

  “So what makes you think the clues will still be there, two decades later?” he asked, as we endured the slow speeds of leaving the city.

  “I don’t know,” I replied, giving the bag a small squeeze on the seat beside me, “hope? I guess?”

  “You think your father hid them well enough that no one disturbed them in all this time?”

  “I have to.”

  What would happen if they were no longer there? I mean, I could just give you the single letter and see if that helped any, but it wasn’t going to make you better. Not like actual treasure would.

  The bus picked up speed as it joined the highway. Pines led our way through the countryside, sturdy, shady umbrellas against the scorching summer sun.

  We were riding atop massive cliffs, the ground dropping off so sharply it was as if we were flying. The Mediterranean Sea stretched out along the horizon, deep and welcoming. Gulls swooped overhead in the cloudless sky, intertwining their cries with the chirp of those endless cicadas. My face was pressed up against the glass, itching to get closer.

  “We’re still in France?” I asked, so in awe that flies could have flown into my m
outh and I wouldn’t have even noticed. It was like living in a fantasy novel. “How are you so casual about the giant effing cliffs right outside our window?”

  “Because I’ve seen them before?”

  “But they’re… they’re cliffs!”

  “Just wait until we get to where your Father wants you to go,” he replied, “Trust me. You’ll never want to leave.”

  My excitement faded. I knew he was trying to pump me up for what we were going to see, but there was no point. I was on a mission. I would find the clues, fix you, and go home as if none of this ever happened.

  The town was tiny, barely even a town - though I was learning that everything really was larger in America. Nestled into a bay between two towering cliffs, it had everything from a crystal-clear coast to a castle, and even an art gallery, All within the span of half a square mile.

  I was transported into an impressionist’s painting. The houses were all bright colors, around a tiny little inlet of sea, filled with stark white boats in vivid shades of blue. Stores and restaurants lined the port, along with knick-knack souvenir shops, and even two competing ice cream parlors right across from each other.

  It was actually kinda funny how I could pick out fellow Americans from the hordes of people meandering around the port: I didn’t know if my ears were just tuned to pick up English, but it seemed to be all I could hear. Or maybe that was the American loudness I had heard so many Europeans complain about. Add to that brand name tan sun hats, Hawaiian shirts and large cameras, photographing the port like it was their job, I was pretty sure who had come across seas to see this place.

  We switched buses again and were through the town and back up one of the hills. Port Miou hardly was a port, especially compared to the heart of Cassis, but it wasn’t that that took my breath away: it was the cliffs. Valentin had been right to use his fingers to describe them: I felt as if I had been swallowed right into the earth. Squeezed right between two sheer cliff faces, it was impressive water made it this far back.

  After two hours, two busses, and countless miles, we had finally made it.

  Or not, because the first thing Valentin said as we got off the bus wasn’t “We’re here” but “Marchons!” and we walked.