And walked.
And walked.
The path was long, but well maintained, maybe even recently made. It led us up and over the next cliff, while all around us the turquoise sea lapped up against the rocks. Parasol pines provided some shade for the walk, but by the time we reached the top of the hill, I was sweating like a pig.
“Are we there yet?” I asked. My stomach rumbled. It truly was the conversationalist - like my mother’s, I realized, the letter coming to mind.
“Tired already, Jammy?”
“You aren’t?” He shook his head. “Can we stop to eat, at least?”
“Just drink your water. We need to keep going.”
I took his advice, chugging most of my thermos and keeping it in my hand for easier access. The way down was easy: stairs carved out of rock, steep and slippery from years of use, but manageable.
The bottom of this calanques was astounding. A beach, under a canopy of pines, leading right up to crystal clear water, almost like a Caribbean dream. Children played in the water as their parents rested on the shore, soaking up the sun.
Was that a boob?
I had heard about European beaches. Been warned about them by my grandma, back as I was packing for the trip.
“Be careful out there, Jamie Martin,” she said, as she clutched my bathing suit in both hands, “the women there go topless. Topless!”
It turned out, not that many women were actually topless, just a few here and there, and mostly grandma’s age. Then I realized I was staring and looked at anything else: like the cliffs that courageous, screaming teens were jumping off of.
“Is this the place?” I asked. Valentin shook his head.
“It’s the next one over. Not too far, I promise.”
“But I’m hungry, can’t we stop for lunch?”
“We eat, and then you’ll want to nap, and then we’ll want to swim, and by then the day is over before we get this clue,” he said, “it’s your hunt, Jammy: it’s your decision.”
“Fine,” I said, tightening the straps of my bag, “Let’s keep going.”
The path was thinning this time, leading us up and away from the idyllic beach. Massive bushes rose up on either side, but not tall enough to give us shade. With the cicadas chirping and the stagnant, hot air, I almost felt as if I was in an old western movie.
It made no sense, seemingly leading us away from the cost, limestone slick in places from years of hiker use. If I wasn’t already sweating, I sure was now. You could fill the Mediterranean Sea with the bullets that ran down my forehead.
And then, just as dad said, we reached the top, and the world fell away at our feet.
In the space of an instant, we had gone from a stuffy path to the top of the world. We stood on a towering clifftop, high above everything else for miles, the bright blue sea surrounding us below, waves crashing against stark grey rocks. The pines grew from impossible crevices, dotting the grey with green so bright the contrast hurt my eyes.
“This is the place,” I said, feeling the ocean breeze whip at my hair, “this is the place my parents were!”
I was hit in that moment with a feeling I had no words for, though the Germans probably had an incredibly long and complex one to describe it. A feeling of familiarity. Of calm. Of being rooted to the ground, firmly, knowing where I was from and where I was meant to be.
“Nobody shall say of me that I have not known perfect happiness,” said Valentin stoically.
“A poem?”
He shook his head. “Virginia Woolf said that of Cassis, the first time she stayed. In the 20’s.”
Virginia Woolf stayed here? It felt odd to share this place with someone so famous, nearly a hundred years later. I pulled the letter from the bag, rereading the paragraph where dad described this cliff, this view, this moment. It felt as if he was here with me, a hand on his shoulder, guiding me.
“So now, we need to find the old trailhead.”
“The old one?” Valentin pointed behind us. The gravel path we had followed up here spread back like the spokes of a wheel, all of them smooth and gentle. Not the climb that intimidated an entire class of masters students.
“I think it was here,” he said, striding straight off the path, climbing under the barrier that clearly said, “do not cross, dangerous cliffs ahead.”
“But…” I stammered. “This is illegal!”
“Do you want to retrace the steps in the letter, or not?” he asked, pointing at a marking on the rock. “Look, it was here. This is the way down.”
Hesitantly, I crossed under the barrier, and made my way over to the cliff. It was a short, straight drop, with a dry pine forest below, steeply sloping towards the sea.
Valentin was right, there was a marker here: but it couldn’t be the actual path, could it?
“I remember from when I came with my grandparents,” he said, turning around and dropping his foot into a hold. Within minutes, he had scrambled down the stone, his feet on the carpet of pine needles.
“Tu viens?” he asked.
“Um, I’m not sure about this…”
And then, out of nowhere, the cutest little dog ran past me, scrambling down the cliff in four swift jumps. It rushed up to Valentin, tail wagging wildly.
“Jamie?” he called.
“What?”
“You’re not going to believe this, but this dog has only three legs.”
“What?” I stammered.
“Come and see!”
The odds were uncanny, it had to be a sign. If a three-legged dog could do it…
I tried not to think about the drop, how broken my body would be if I fell. No, I had to do this. This was nothing compared to what I put you through.
On the rock beside me, a tiny painting of a blue man climbing rocks marked this as being at one time the official trailhead. I turned around, grasped the rock, and put my foot down. And then the other.
A few minutes later, my heart pounding, I reached the bottom of the climb. The dog’s owners were next, a cute German couple, chatting cheerfully together as they made their way down.
“Valentin?”
“Yeah?”
“This dog has four legs,” I said, looking into the eyes of the panting, adorable mutt. It looked back up at me, tail wagging, all four legs comfortably attached to its body.
The owners climbed down, and they continued on their way, dog doing all the guidance they ever needed. Meanwhile, Valentin had this twisted grin on his face, at the same time excited and a little bashful.
“Well, you climbed, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, but don’t do that, ok? I was really looking forward to meeting a three-legged dog!”
Now we just had to find the cave. Like my parents, almost two decades before me, I followed the trails left by thousands of feet, both human and wild boar, constantly looking uphill for an opening in the rocks.
The cave was exactly where dad had said it would be. We broke off at a fork in the trail, climbing instead of descending. The smell hit us before anything else: cheap beer and old urine. I had to plug my nose just to get close.
“What is this?” I stammered. I definitely did not want to go inside. “Is this it? This gross, dark hole is where my parents had their first kiss?”
Valentin shrugged. “Could be worse. My first kiss was at a bus station.”
“Mine was under the bleachers at school.”
“Tell you mine if you tell me yours?”
“It was with Justin DeAngelo. He was on the lacrosse team, and I was in the color guard. I can’t remember who had dared us, but at the time it had felt like the illicit romance movies we all talked about. It only lasted for a week, when the novelty of it all wore off.”
Valentin blinked, slowly, thoughtfully. His hand reached up to cover his mouth, holding back a laugh.
“What?”
“That is the most American thing I have ever heard,” he said, barely able to contain the laughter. “Was this real, or on TV?”
“It
was real,” I grumbled. Lovely. So my life was a living stereotype to this country. “Hey, yours was at a bus station, so it can’t be much better.”
He shrugged. “We had correspondents in middle school. From Italy. I had a crush on mine. We spent a marvelous week together as part of the class project, and then the day they all went home, we kissed before she boarded the bus. She did not kiss well. I did not either.”
“Aw, that’s cute, though,” I said, picturing a pre-pubescent Valentin trying to understand the mechanics of lip locking with a fancy young Italian girl. In my mind, she was wearing an expensive designer dress, and he was wearing a beret. Two could play at the stereotype game.
“Anyway, shall we find your father’s clue?”
The cave was barely wide enough for me to pass, my hands on both walls, but it went for quite a distance into the stone. The tall opening let in a stream of sunlight, even though the pines that guarded the entrance. It was enough to work with: we could see the traces of a campfire in the middle of the floor, flat-ish stones set up for people to sit on. Valentin lifted one and put it back down.
“No clue here,” he said, moving on to the next rock.
I could feel panic rising in my chest. The cave was much, much smaller than anticipated. Taking into account the number of tourists… the almost twenty years since the clue was hidden… the odds of ever finding it were shrinking by the second.
“Hé, you going to make me do all the work?”
I shook my head, trying to clear my mind of the thought. No. If I wanted you to have a miracle, I would have to find a miracle.
I stepped deeper into the cave, but it was shallower than I had initially assumed. Much, much shallower. The smell of piss was stronger back here.
I tried to imagine my parents exploring the cave. The way dad spoke of mom’s excitement. How could this place plant the seeds of our family? If I hadn’t stepped inside, I could totally have seen the lush pine forest and sharp cliffs as being romantic, but this? No.
Valentin brushed past me, raising goosebumps on my skin. I shuddered.
“You ok?” he asked.
“Yeah, just…” I glanced around the cave. There was the entrance, the fireplace. There was the back, and the urine. Not much else.
Until a piece of orange plastic caught my eye.
There was no possible way this was it. Seventeen years, out in the open like this, it would have been snatched up by anyone visiting the cave. I gaped at it, unsure if I even wanted to chance seeing it for myself.
Valentin followed my gaze, seeing the spot of orange at the same time as me. He stepped towards it, rolling the rock that covered it out of the way and picking it up.
“Is it…?” I asked. Could I dare hope?
He handed me the plastic. It was a pocket, the kind you slipped legal documents into to keep them organized at home, but the outside was covered in little notes in permanent marker. I didn’t stop to read them, instead slipping it open and grabbing the paper inside.
Two sheets, stapled together. White with black type on them. Notes scribbled in the margins in black ink, pencil, and for some reason, white out.
“Mon Amour,” I read. My heart was pounding so hard in my chest it could have exploded right through. “Valentin, this is it. It’s the letter!”
My eyes scrolled down the notes in the margins. Some were in French, others in English, others still in languages I didn’t recognize. Some were short, saying simply “so cute!” or “adorable,” while others were long tirades about love. There was a comically large penis drawn in one corner, though someone else had tried to scribble it out.
“So?” asked Valentin, perching his head so he could see the letter better, “it is really it?”
I nodded, too choked up to speak. I handed him the orange plastic, and he ran his eyes over the notes there, his eyes wide with the same shock I was feeling.
“This isn’t normal,” I said, “not only did people… dozens of people… who knows how many people… actually find this letter, but they left it here? They added to it? They didn’t steal it or rip it or…”
Valentin said nothing, his eyes going to the rock underneath which the page had stayed hidden so long. Neither of us has words for this moment.
“This is a sign,” I said, out loud or in my head, I wasn’t sure. “The universe wants us to finish this chasse au trésor. This needs to happen.”
“Well then.” Valentin looked back up at me, his eyes bright and - was I imagining this - brimming with tears. “Let’s read the clue. See where the universe wants us next.”
And we read.
Mon Amour,
You found it! You actually found it! I was so worried someone else would get to it first. I had a whole stash of these backup letters prepared to sneak back into place in case you came up empty handed. Now I’m just going to use them to draw pictures of cute cats on them. As originally intended.
Not too hard to find that one, was it? The next one should be easier, though a bit of a trip. That’s to get back at you for planning our first date somewhere so awfully remote. Your clue for this one: The Pretty Provence castle. You got it?
I can’t remember which one of us decided on it first. After the mind-blowing kiss in Cassis, we both knew this relationship was beyond simple sitting and dining dates. So picking a castle for a romantic trip seemed like fate. Destiny. Whatever. I would slip some symbolism into these letters, but I’ve done enough of that in all these dissertations, and I think we’re both tired of overanalyzing the use of flowers in letters. The author likes poppies, that’s it. In this case, the author of these letters likes you. That’s it. You’re cute.
You made us take the train to Avignon, claiming you knew of a bus that could get us there. We get there, and of course, no bus. It’s mid-November, and the tour groups are sparse, so hitching a ride with them is a near impossibility. So we have to gather our things and hitchhike.
That man was so angry when he heard us speaking English! He didn’t even want to let us in his car, he was so miffed. But then you wowed him with your impassionate response about understanding English being the only way to truly capture how much more beautiful French was, and I threw in my agreement, and the man let us in. He was rather sweet, in the end. Just a little fâcheux. Grincheux. Possibly all of the seven dwarves rolled into one.
We had to climb to the top of the mountain, but it was worth it for the view alone. The wind on those castle ruins can be so harsh you feel like you could gust off at any moment. Standing at the railing, holding your hand, letting the wind try to push us off the edge, I felt like nothing could ever tear us apart. The way we laughed, together, in the face at that cold wind, it made me all the surer that this wasn’t a normal date. I felt like I had known you since before I was born.
When we got tired of the wind, we slipped back into town, teasing each other about our tussled hair. We grabbed crepes at a local place, and you laughed about mixing cultures. I pointed out we were already pushing it: French and American was a little more shocking than Normandie and Provençal, and you had no answer for that. In fact, I think I scared you a little. So I made it up to you by getting you dessert, too.
It was too early to go home, and too cold to go back to the fortress, so we decided to explore the quarries down below the village. That’s where we found the Cathedral, and watched the light show, alone in the dark, our fingers completely intertwined, but our eyes so transfixed we weren’t even thinking of being distracted with something so basic as each other.
When we decided to call it quits for the day, we had one small problem to resolve: getting a ride through the valley. It sure was nice to see everything without the tourists, but now that we actually needed them, we were stuck on a mountain hours from home.
We went to the village’s parking lot and waited. And we waited and waited and waited. That’s where I hid your next clue: at the very top of the car park. And don’t worry: you’ll just have to follow the signs.
And this ti
me, have Seb drive you. I don’t want you stuck all the way up there in April. The winds are awful this time of year!
So much Love,
Your Pomme Noisette.
When the bus didn’t show up this time to take us back to Aix, I didn’t even care. The universe had protected the letter, which meant it wanted us to complete the hunt. It was on our side. You were going to get better.
I wanted to spend the day there, swimming in the lagoon blue water, eating the picnic Valentin had packed for us (just how much cheese could one fit in a backpack?), diving off cliffs and soaking up the sun. Even the sky seemed deeper here, deeper than any sky I had ever had over my head, deep enough to swim in, too.
The water had been perfect, the crowd manageable, but my head wasn’t there to enjoy it. My mind was thousands of miles away, sitting next to you in the hospital, where you struggled to walk along the little railed path. I couldn’t enjoy this until the hunt was over, and you had recovered. I had no right to love any moment of it until I could spend it with you.
So, when the bus didn’t show, and Valentin told me we would have to take the train, I could only agree. This is what the universe wanted from us, after all. Even if it meant a smelly, slow trip back into civilization.
We took a tiny bus from Port Miou to the station. All the while, a group of tourists in the back were laughing like hyenas. I couldn’t even tell where they were from, they didn’t speak a word except to laugh. Valentin cringed, trying not to shoot them glares, forcing his eyes forward on the road ahead.
We flew over a bump, and I practically fell out of my chair. The group laughed again, and I resisted the urge to punch them. Other than Charlie - he deserved it, trust me - I had never wanted to punch anyone before in my life. But that kind of laughter did something to me that urged me to Hulk Out. We were relieved when they got into another car at the station.
The train was a funny looking thing, like an airplane without wings, except the windows were massive. Inside, the seats were blue velvet, wide apart with tables between them. Two people rode this carriage, sitting towards the back where it connected with the next one.
Aix Marks the Spot Page 8
