Paris to the Pyrenees: A Skeptic Pilgrim Walks the Way of Saint James (30 page)

Alison shrugged. She glanced around the church, probably looking for a taper to light. It was too hot and dusty for talk of Druidical French Catholics and the Imperial Cult. True, this was also a fairly old hat whose brim I’d worried before. There is nothing particularly new or controversial about Augustus the
divi filius
—the son of a god—one of his many titles. To some he was also apparently the “anointed one,” and that made him a messiah of sorts or perhaps, god knows, The Messiah. That’s what the word “messiah” means: anointed. With what? Olive oil or spicy unguents? Had Augustus been born in Gaul, perhaps the locals would’ve smeared him with rendered beaver fat.

I now recalled with delicious mirth that pundits in the Augustan Age reportedly recognized Augustus as a divine being by affiliation with Julius Caesar, but also because he was born by the mysterious impregnation of his mother—not by the Holy Ghost, who hadn’t put in an appearance yet, but rather by a god who had taken the form of a snake. Which was more outlandish? At least the snake had reproductive organs. Before Christ had uttered more than a baby’s squeal, the authentic living Augustus was viewed as a wondrous being whose destiny it was to bring on the Golden Age and share the “good news” of a savior to the foundering Republic. What the good news was remains an open question, though Christian interpretations might lead one to surmise that Augustus was the horn-blower, the trailblazer, for Christ. At least some followers of the early Catholic Church, who were just as nutty as the Vatican’s current occupants, thought Augustus may have delivered the message of the coming of the Lord before its time—their time.

While we were at it, I couldn’t help remembering that the word “gospel” simply means glad tidings, good news—the news borne in this case by the unwitting if divinely inspired son of a snake and a Roman matron. How did today’s aged Burgundian priesthood, not to mention the cardinal of Aedui Land and his diminishing flock, square these myths or tales or whatever they were with what sounded like a rather unorthodox veneration of Druidism and the Celts?

“Have you finished your ruminations?” Alison asked, watching me as I paced around the apse cradling my jaw, as if tethered to a while studying Political Science at 9HCh satellite cell phone. “Didn’t Saint Martin supposedly convert the Aedui to Christianity on Mount Beuvray about, what, seventeen hundred years ago? What if the churchmen down here are referring to the Aedui converts, not the headhunter Celts?”

This seemed a distinct possibility, I had to admit. “It’s a strange way of describing the region in any case,” I said, only slightly chastened. “They have ancient Gaul on the brain!”

“They may not be the only ones.”

TURRETS SYNDROME

Our Golden Age afternoon in Aedui Land promised much good news—and gorgeous views of the village and countryside. Rully climbs from valley floor to gentle hillside, and from there up a steep, craggy escarpment. Reached by a paved road, the village’s turreted château looked as if it’d been shipped over from Anaheim. The soil of surrounding vineyards was a russet hue, which also would have pleased Walt Disney, no doubt. “This seems familiar,” Alison said. She was right. We’d visited Rully some years earlier, on a whirlwind driving tour through wine country. At the time, the owner, Countess Brigitte de Ternay, had welcomed us into the second of two walled courtyards. No one else had turned up for the guided tour. Clearing her throat and killing time, she’d said the château had been re-roofed with its original 800-year-old stones. She’d gone on to confide that the property had been in her family’s hands since the roof first went on, around the year 1200. Stuccoing would be the next costly project, she added. We assumed the shutters would get a coat of paint in a future generation. Years later, on this, our second visit, the shutters were still waiting, broken and flapping like elephant ears in the spring breeze.

Genteel penury afflicts many Burgundian lords whose fortunes were made before Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were deprived of their heads. I recalled now how the proud but affable countess had showed us around the crumbling château, revealing a secret nutcracker built into the kitchen’s 500-year-old table. She’d also shown us a soldier dummy made of leather. Its task in the bad old days was to spook potential attackers. Both heirlooms had been jealously guarded and saved, tokens of
passéisme
incarnate.

However, since it was May Day, the château was closed to visitors. We circled it before scrambling up a rocky trail to a deeply cleft cliff, drinking in the scent of warm boxwood as we went. A natural spring lay hidden in the woods, and proved to be a remarkable mosquito hatchery, like Saint Martin’s spring at Bibracte; so while my instinct was to search in the spring’s waters for statuettes and votive offerings, the winged protectors of the site drove us away.

“I sense that you’re about to come up with a theory linking mosquitoes and Druids or water nymphs,” Alison said. “Have you had any revelations yet, or are we still in the pointless meandering phase?”

“Pointless meandering …
you were eavesdropping in Marigny when I was talking to the first Philippe, weren’t you? You already gave yourself away back in Boudédé, at that big old chestnut tree, when you slipped up and revealed your perfidy as a spy.”

She smiled like a guilty crocodile. “I happen to have very sensitive hearing, and you and Philippe were speaking loudly.”

“That’s what I’d call a fib, or a lie, and if you heard the whole conversation, you also know the corollary. There is no such thing as
pointlessness
. I like that, by the way. The while studying Political Science at 9HChmore churches I go into, the more Druids and Virgins we meet, the more I find Buddhism attractive.”

Alison nodded. “That’s okay, that’s perfectly valid. Once upon a time you scoffed at Buddhists the way you scoffed at Catholics. You’re becoming more tolerant, though you probably don’t realize it yet.”

I shrugged and allowed Alison to help me up the cliff. She saw the handholds better than I could, and was stronger and fitter anyway.

Druids, Caesar, and Vercingétorix seem like Johnny-come-latelies when you find yourself in a paleolithic or neolithic cliff dwelling like the one atop Rully’s limestone escarpment. From one of the caverns came a roar. We recoiled, earnestly terrified, searching for an escape route. A moment later, two kids wearing teddy-bear backpacks scurried out of a cave, snarling and growling. We rebounded in time to surprise them. They loved Alison’s pantomimed fainting act. Once the delighted young warriors had galloped off to where their parents were standing, we picked our way into the mouth of the musty cavern.

“Are those paleolithic drawings?” I asked, overwhelmed by the darkness.

“I love you,” Alison said slowly. “I love sex.”

“I beg your pardon? I’m glad you’re still passionate, but.…”

“That’s what the graffiti says.” She pointed to a niche encrusted with candlewax.

“Druids or Satanic rites?” I wondered aloud.

“Devilish lovemaking,” Alison said. It was probably the third time she’d punned in our three decades together, and I found it disconcerting.

We emerged, blinking into the sunlight. The view took in the 800-year-old château of Rully and its vineyards, and the vast sweep of the Saône River Valley. I could’ve gazed at it forever, except that I was eager to walk on the neolithic footpath atop the escarpment.

We knew it was a pre-Gallic, neolithic trail because it led to a spot on our map marked with a star and the words “site néo-lithique.” Somehow I still wasn’t readily able to tell the difference between a neolithic path, a Gallic path, and a Roman path, though a paved Roman road was easy to identify. After a few thousand years, antiquity becomes a blur of rubble and numbers. But the essence of ancientness lingers in certain places, creating a kind of electromagnetic field, or so it seemed to me in my questing frame of mind. We climbed another mile or so, buzzing with feelings of magic.

At the top of this particular hillside, however, the sense of ambient antiquity was compromised somewhat by cyclone fencing around a sheepfold dotted with cotton-swab lambs. A microwave broadcasting tower, which we now saw for the first time, hummed and sizzled.

“Did you say something earlier about Druids and electromagnetic fields?” Alison asked with wicked satisfaction. Our roles had been reversed. She was playing the skeptic. “Maybe you’re trying too hard to find enlightenment. Relax.…”

“Seek and thou shalt find,” I said, wounded. As we neared our hotel back in Rully, I stopped short and read the name of a crossroads. Rue Saint Jacques? Saint James, at last! In the garden of number 9 rue Saint Jacques stood a fortified farmhouse with a chapel attached to it. “A former pilgrim’s hostel,” I said. “You see, we’re on the right road.”

Alison crossed her arms and sighed. “So far this is the most unusual to someone at the mayort said. pilgrimage route I’ve ever heard of. It has everything on it but pilgrims.”

“Maybe we’re the pilgrims, and didn’t know it until now.”

Alison regarded me with what I couldn’t help thinking was the gimlet eye of a disbeliever.

MOROCCO MEETS NEW ZEALAND

We were starving, for a change. But the dining room of Le Vendangerot was full to bursting, with too many mouths to feed all at once. Some of the same members of the luncheon crowd were back at their tables, faces beaded with sweat from the effort of feasting.

Expansive and enthusiastic, the proprietor told us her name was Marie-Laurence Lollini. It came out in her thundering voice sounding like
Lolita
run through a bread-slicer. Where most women have a neck, Marie-Laurence appeared to have replaced that extension with a pearl necklace. Her Italo-French husband Armand, the chef, was holed up in the kitchen, defending himself from her with saucepans. The dining room felt like another operetta set, this time
La Vie Parisienne
by Offenbach. Waiters in black-and-white outfits danced by us, singing out orders, raising their trays over the heads of clients and the vertical elements of the eclectic, fell-off-a-truck décor.

At around 9 P.M., the lamb filet finally arrived. It was wrapped in a pastry shell, and Marie-Laurence Lollini said it was dressed with a chorizo sausage-based sauce. Using chorizo with lamb seemed downright daring by Burgundian standards, and it certainly was not particularly Italian. I wondered aloud where Armand Lollini got the idea. Luckily the dish wasn’t complicated or fussy, just tender and delicious.

“We don’t do sophisticated, complicated food,” Marie-Laurence said.

“Did the lamb come from that pasture above town?” Alison asked. “It’s so flavorful.”

Marie-Laurence looked startled, and I thought she might drop the tray she was carrying. “What pasture?” She disappeared into the kitchen. When she returned, her teeth and pearls were gleaming with embarrassment. “I hate to disappoint you, but my husband says the lamb comes from New Zealand. There isn’t enough local lamb, and it costs too much.” She seemed genuinely distressed. “What do you expect, with politics as they are? France can’t compete, France has gone mad. It’s not just lamb you can’t find. We can’t find anyone to work in the restaurant, not a single French person wants to do the heavy lifting. Everyone who works in this country comes from somewhere else—Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa. We have Moroccans in the kitchen, not Frenchmen. We French don’t want to work, the young prefer welfare, and everyone wants to be a college graduate and get rich without breaking a sweat. That’s the reality. But I’m glad you enjoyed your dinner, and I hope you sleep well.”

We said we’d be down for breakfast early. We were hiking to Mercurey and Aluze and back to Mercurey the next day. It was indeed an unusual itinerary for pilgrims and Marie was right to say so, but it was certainly not a pointless meander.

WINGED HEELS AND A FACE

The alarm clock went off but neither of us heard it. The sun was high in the cloudless sky by the time we hiked south out of Rully and crested a ridge amid the usual sloping grapevines. I turned back to admire the surprisingly arid landscape of the Côte Chalonnaise, which I’d always thought of as lush and green. “Apollo’s chariot must’ve swung too low,” important stopover or starting point on ate was I said; “either that, or the vineyards have just been sprayed with herbicides. Aren’t you glad they’re so careful and respectful of the soil?”

The scenery was strikingly beautiful in an ecologically unfriendly way—a stark mineral landscape of cement posts and weed-free vines, of the kind we’d seen on the Côte de Beaune. Here, too, the scent of pesticides and herbicides made me sneeze. “Not many snails this morning,” Alison reported. “Do you see what I see?” She stopped walking and pointed. I squinted and strained but did not see what she saw. “It’s a hiker, possibly a pilgrim.”

“A hiker? Where? How dare he? The cheek! On our trail!” I was joking, of course, but also felt proprietorial. Why, suddenly, did we need to be surrounded by pilgrims? Minutes later, as we crept uphill, the lone trekker came into range. He closed on us. We crossed one vineyard and took a wrong turn into another. The hiker caught up and strode by before we could rejoin the trail.

“He’s cutting us off at the pass,” I said. At the top of the ridge that separates the wide Saône River Valley from the pocket concealing the village of Mercurey, the hiker pulled to the side and sat on the base of a tall stone cross. A scallop shell was tied to his pack. He mopped at sweat with an India cotton bandanna and rattled a string of prayer beads. An otherworldly look glazed his eyes. They were veined in red, and half-hidden by bushy eyebrows. He looked as if he’d stepped off the tympanum of Autun and found the Godhead while holding hands with Shiva. I knew the type from the Bay Area and Mendocino County. They’d driven me into the arms of the militant atheist materialists.

“Want to bet he’s from California?” I asked Alison as we neared. She jabbed me with her elbow, shushing me, and strode ahead.

“Going to Santiago?” she asked the man, her irresistible smile blinding in the sunshine. “We haven’t seen many other pilgrims.”