Europe @ 2.4 km/h (41 page)

Both the bridge and the 14th-century Palace of the Popes, the biggest Gothic palace in existence, also here in Avignon, are on the World Heritage List. Unfortunately, the interior entails too many staircase ascents and descents to make a comprehensive visit practicable for me. But, with help from a few other visitors, I get as far as Guards’ Hall and the spacious central courtyard.

For nearly 100 years, from 1305, Avignon became the new Rome. The primacy of Rome for Catholics was challenged, not, as it had been since 1054 by the refusal of the Orthodox to recognise the Pope; nor, as it would be in 1517, by a Luther; but by a simple act of shifting house, after the Pope himself, Clement V (a Frenchman), moved the Holy See here. Over the next seven years he created 24 cardinals in three mass promotions. Twenty were French, thirteen from the South. Their resultant influence enabled a succession of French popes to be enthroned. According to an official brochure, they decided to make Avignon ‘the capital of Christianity’.

Apart from the question of whose Christianity we’re talking about here (the Orthodox in Armenia and Ethiopia, or the Copts in Egypt, would doubtless be offended by the presumptuousness of the phrase), I pause to reflect how repugnant the very notion of a ‘capital of Christianity’ would have been to those who heeded Jesus’ words ‘My kingdom is not of this world’.
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Later pontiffs built on. The edifice we know as the Palais Vieux, surrounding the cloister I can only glimpse from the courtyard, was built at the behest of Benedict XII (1334-1342). Clement VI (1342-1352) added two immense, ornately decorated wings, which make up the Palais Neuf. Then in 1376 Gregory XI packed up the papacy and took it back to Rome. But the Great Schism in the Western Church between Roman and Avignon factions persisted for decades after that.

1250-1257 km

Like Arles, Nîmes dates from Roman times. In its ancient Forum the Maison Carrée — a veritable mini-Parthenon and one of the best preserved of all Gallo-Roman temples — has been standing literally since Jesus was a boy (AD 2 or 3). It is easy to believe that it would collapse tomorrow without the scaffolding, and the concrete backing and filling, that partly obscure its clean lines today.

In 1992 Norman Foster’s firm of architects was refurbishing the site at the same time as it was restoring the Reichstag. I am glad to see that even Lord Foster resisted the temptation to put a glass dome on this one.

Némes’ Roman amphitheatre — smaller than Arles’, really a boutique stadium of its day — is said to be the best preserved in the world (though I have to say, I don’t see much difference between the two).

The audioguide, though lacking the solidity of an official guidebook, manages to convey the ‘sense of theatre’ that accompanied a second-century gladiatorial contest here. (The brutality of such entertainment is not so easily conjured up, for which we should probably be grateful.) VIPs sat in the front row, shielded from the sun by vellum awnings — which reminded me how inequality seems to have been long accepted as the permanent state of man: think corporate boxes at today’s stadiums.

At great expense, we are informed, First Magistrate Titus Julius has had lions brought from Roman provinces in North Africa. The lions don’t fight each other but
venatores
, men who fight them, run around the arena — a comic image, that — in an effort to tire them out; and sometimes even wrestle them with their bare hands.

Apparently, the thumbs-down sign is a Hollywood myth. ‘If the gladiator appeared to lack valour, the crowd would call for him to die. The Magistrate, called an “Editor”, turns to the crowd who will call “Mercy” or “Cut his throat”. The Editor decided.’ [
Sometimes the
old traditions are the best
. — Ed.]

1259-1262 km

Toulouse lacks the crime-ridden reputation of, say, Nice or Marseilles. But it is no Utopia, as I saw for myself tonight. Ric, met as I was going into a supermarket, was friendly enough. ‘Do you want a drink?’ he asked — and, perhaps relieved that he hadn’t begged for money, and also because I had just been thinking of visiting a bar, I said yes.

He trumped that plan by buying a couple of beers from the supermarket, and we adjourned to the steps of a neo-Classical public building about 100 metres away. After handing me one of the tall cans, Ric began to talk.

‘I’ve just arrived in Toulouse today.’

‘So have I.’

‘I was living in Paris. They let me out of jail yesterday.’

‘What were you in for?’

‘The worst thing.’

‘And will you stay here?’

‘Awhile. I know people here.’ The convicted murderer nodded to a blue sedan parked unobtrusively in front of us. ‘Watch.’

A man got out of the car and walked over to a white van which had parked almost simultaneously on the side street opposite, whereupon Ric turned commentator. ‘There are police in the van. They’re dealing in cocaine. You will see nothing.’

Ric’s last remark struck me as something a hypnotist might have said; and the scenario he was sketching certainly had the capacity to mesmerise. But I did see something. The blur of a retreating hand that held a bulging envelope, perhaps a Manila folder, that is all.

St Sernin Basilica is far from being Toulouse’s only outstanding public building but it is the one that points the visitor back to the city’s distant origins. The world’s largest extant Romanesque church — 115 metres from facade to apse, all brick — St Sernin is an important stop on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela in north-western Spain. Sernin, the first Bishop of Toulouse, was martyred
circa
AD 250 when he was dragged by bulls from the Forum — still the town’s main square, now the Place du Capitole — along the road to where this basilica would later be built.

For three days I abandoned Toulouse for a detour to Andorra — travelling there and back by bus. Andorra is so distinct — a nation with its own traditions and place in the world — that my experiences there merit a chapter of their own. When I arrived back in Toulouse it was lunchtime, and I knew just where to go.

1283-1286 km

By the time I reach Les Halles covered market, lunch is in full swing.

Months ago a French chef working in an Oslo hostel recommended the
cassoulet
in far-off Toulouse — not the sort of advice one forgets. Downstairs is a fish market; upstairs — which I reach by the goods lift — are a succession of good, bustling and economical restaurants.

In the queue I get talking to a youngish French couple. They later keep a place for me at their table — a mercy in the crowded circumstances — and when the meal is over, before I can say
Je suis
content,
they have paid for my
cassoulet
and unstintingly shared their bottle of red, requiring only that I reciprocate when they are in Melbourne. I am humbled by their generosity.

It is eight o’clock on a late autumn night on the far side of the seasonal divide — and feels like early winter. Shivering a little, I sip a Turkish coffee in the Place Arnaud Bernard, the large public square that is the hub of Toulouse’s populous North African community. What is Europe to these people? Here I may pick up clues. The main concern I have is not that they will tell me what they want me to believe but that they will not trust me enough to say anything at all.

The restaurant owner, Ben Arfa from Tunisia, finds most Europeans in Toulouse pleasant. ‘Some are tolerant; others are rude with their silence. But then they don’t come here often so I can live with them, or’ — the witticism makes him chuckle — ‘without them.’

While we are speaking, four motorcycles ridden by police officers screech into the square, stopping with a beautifully executed three-quarter turn. Many eyes focus on them from the perimeter of the square, but they act as if oblivious to their surrounds. When they are gone, Kaaki — a young Moroccan sitting at the table across from me — spits, ‘Pigs!’ It is not the first time this epithet has been applied to members of the constabulary but it has added venom when expressed by a Muslim. ‘No one is doing anything and they come here and talk about us,’ complains Kaaki. ‘They do not speak to us, all to make us afraid. But we are not criminals, we do nothing wrong. We have no fear of them.’

1290-1292 km

A concert takes place this evening in the Place du Capitole, to support this city’s bid — against Marseilles, as mentioned, and one other French city — to be the nation’s candidate for European Capital of Culture 2013.
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A bemused octogenarian
Toulousain
who has come to the square, it seems, out of either curiosity or habit tries to bop with the rhythm of an Afro-rap group testing the sound system, but succeeds only in looking pathetically out of place (and time). An hour later I am on a train heading through green, green Gascony, westwards — the direction my journey has taken since Monaco.

1294-1299 km

Before I left St Honorat, Frere Pierre-Marie had recommended that in Lourdes I might like to stay at a convent
.
Now that would be an experience to dine out on, I thought, and said yes. Pierre-Marie — eyes now twinkling — even recommended a nun of his acquaintance at Lourdes (and by now I knew him well enough to permit myself a smirk, but asked no questions). Even if her function was similar to Pierre-Marie’s, at least her title wasn’t guestmistress.

A taxi from the station brought me to the Maison d’Accueil Assomption, where Sister Ghislaine de Clercq was waiting. Sister Ghislaine — Belgian by birth and vexed by the continuing tug of war that threatened her homeland — turned out to be a kindly, bespectacled nun of seventysomething years. She explained the hours of prayer, silence and dining — some of which overlap in unexpected ways — and, after showing me to my room, thoughtfully arranged my bedclothes. It isn’t every day a nun makes your bed so I asked if she minded my taking a photograph. As Sister Ghislaine peered up from her perfectly executed hospital corners, a knowing glint in her eye told me she was no fool.

I was at Lourdes for less than twenty hours on my headlong rush across Europe, but time slowed down to meet me. When it comes to the commercialisation of religion, surely few places can match this. On Boulevard de la Grotte, leading down to the sanctuaries, one of the largest shops is the Palais des Rosaires (the Palace of Rosaries). Its shutters were down today, though, and painted on them were the words FERME DIMANCHE (Closed Sundays). Surely the proprietor was missing a marvellous business opportunity here?

What lies at the root of the belief in Lourdes’ significance? That in a grotto here over several weeks in 1858 the Virgin Mary appeared eighteen times to Bernadette, a girl of simple faith. On her fifteenth appearance Mary said, ‘Go and tell the priest to build a chapel here’. The chapel arose long ago — and construction still goes on.

As I am in the grotto, moving respectfully past the clammy rock which millions of hopeful hands have touched in the past century and a half, dozens of the prayerful are seated 10 metres away, many fingering rosaries. A slow procession passes from left to right. The sepulchral silence is suddenly broken by an American woman, who says to her husband, ‘Can you hear the water?’ (Everyone could before she spoke.) Ten seconds go by, and no one has dared caution her. She cries out again, ‘It’s still coming!’ As though the flow of centuries would stop just for her …