Day Fourteen: Chez Kooky
Ah, quelle journee! I'm comfortably installed in the grand chambre chez Couquet in the village of Montsegur, slightly flush with wine and the triumph of having held my own (with a liberal sprinkling of "Encore une fois?" -- "Come again?") in a lengthy conversation with two French people. And fresh from another conquest -- Monsieur has apparently enrolled himself in my devoted army of elderly scalawags.
But once again, to begin at the beginning. I arose with the dawn and shook the dust of La Caille from my shoes (it was Madame who settled my bill -- that black leather mini is by way of being her habitual morning negligee, it seems). What delight to set off on the road southwest at last! After a purely nominal getting lost around the roads leading south from Carcassonne, I began my pilgrimage into the Ariege.
It is a desperately beautiful landscape -- the prospect widens to large fields swelling like a turbulent sea, some trees still timid but most in a blaze of blossom. Fields of mustard flowers and pale grass -- shapely cows the color of New York slush -- red roofed medieval bastides -- willow trees -- the whole nine yards. And just when you think it can't get any prettier, you come round a curve and find the snow-capped Pyrenees staring you in the face.
I had also managed to latch onto a wonderful radio station, so this was soundtracked by the Rolling Stones -- "You can't always get what you waaa-aaant.." and Steve and Edie's version of "C'est Si Bon." I distinguished myself in the village of Lavenlat by screaming aloud when "Lay Lady Lay" came on.
Having time well in hand, I decided to go up the D9, on the recommendation of the Cadogans, past another Catharist ruin, Roquefixade, on the way to Montsegur. If you didn't know it was the shreds of a castle, you'd really think Roquefixade was just a funny piece of rock. I went by as soberly as one can when "Sexual Healing" is playing. (I suppose I should just be grateful they held off on "Papa Was A Rolling Stone" until I was safely down in the valley again.)
Back on the D117, once again -- you're driving along, minding your own business when blammo! Montsegur appears smack in the center of your windshield.
If I had been a foot soldier in Simon de Montfort's army, I would have said, "F*** me, we're never taking that hunk of rock... Whaddya say we go sack Toulouse or something?" I guess that's what faith can accomplish (insert irony here).
I think I need to explain here. The Cathars were a group of medieval heretics who gained a wide popular following in Languedoc in the eleventh century. Divided between "perfecti" (individuals committed to living a life of complete chastity, contemplation and vegetarianism) and ordinary worshipers, the Cathars preached freedom of conscience, equality between the sexes, non-violent resistance and non-hierarchical social relations. When the Church found out about this heresy, the Catholic authorities simply could not believe that people were saying these things, and invented the Inquisition as a method of investigating their beliefs more thoroughly and methodically. The Cathars were gaining converts at a scandalous rate in the South -- people were greatly dissatisfied with the worldliness of the Church -- the Cathar way, if you didn't take the vows of the perfecti, required considerably fewer commitments than the Church as well. It just so happened that the lords of Languedoc, most of whom seemed to be named Raymond, were getting too big for their britches, by the standards of the French king Phillip, hankering after their own independent Occitan fiefdoms. This detail sealed the Cathars' fate -- Phillip launched a crusade against the Southern heresy, putting Simon de Montfort (who is as popular in Languedoc today as Sherman is in Atlanta) in charge of the royal army.
The fighting went on for a good while, but the Cathars began to lose by attrition. They withdrew to their Pyrenean strongholds, with stony names like Montsegur (Mount Safety), Roquefixade (Fixed Rock) and Peryreperteuse (Pierced Rock), and waited for the world to end. Montsegur is commonly referred to as the Cathar Alamo -- two hundred doomed souls held off the royal army through a long winter seige. In spring, tired of dying by inches, they negotiated a settlement by which anyone who renounced Catharism could walk away free; everyone else would come down to a field at the foot of the mountain and be burned. Every single member of the Montsegur community walked down, singing, and climbed the ladders to throw themselves into the flames -- not one renounced their faith.
The D117, on its way down into the village of Montsegur, passes where you park your car and begin the ascent. I think I should be able to do it, thoroughly tanked up on bronchodilators and taking plenty of time. What's a little disconcerting is the number of cows ranging freely over the burning field -- big cows, with horns and curling upper lips -- when one is stumbling and wheezing, one doesn't want supercilious cows sneering at one. The village is weensy weensy -- only two drive-on-able streets, and the rest gravel footpaths, so it was easy enough to crunch around on foot to find the Hotel Couquet.
The pollarded lime trees are not yet showing a leaf, but were a distinctive landmark nonetheless. I decided to go back down to Lavenlat and get a few provisions before checking in chez Couquet. Managed to take in a few sights wandering down various backroads, such as the Intermittent Fountain of Belestra (it runs a few minutes every half hour, when the laundry cycle of the fairies hits the rinse cycle. I'm not making this up).
The Cadogan folks characterize the Hotel Couquet as "quaint, old-fashioned, a bit funky but fine for a short stay" (the Rough Guide people are more enthusiastic). If by "funky", they mean the doors are difficult to close properly and Madame in her floppy slippers leads you up innumerable flights of pitch black stairs prattling about how many nights you'll be staying since she didn't quite get it right... well, there are worse things in the world than funky (monster truck tires at the reception desk, for one). Madame, a grizzle-headed garden-gnomish person, is absolutely the soul of kindness and takes a pleasant interest in your doings without prying, and speaks carefully because you're a foreigner but doesn't talk down to you. And offers you the choice of the grande chambre or the moyenne chambre, the only thing being you'll have to change to the petite chambre on Wednesday if you take the grande chambre because it is reserved for someone else since the unfortunate error in counting up your days stay. And would you like to dine? Anytime that is convenient for you...
I couldn't resist the grande chambre, it is so very grande and full of light and air and views of the sugar-coated, er, snow-capped mountain tops in the distance. The ceiling is varnished wood, there are blue pansies in the window boxes, a bright pink garden rose in a stoneware bottle on a potbellied bureau, and a couple of aristocratic wingback chairs and a spindly legged table and a piece of furniture I'd call a settle if it wasn't French... The general color scheme is old gold, and the whole of it pleases me immensely.
Monsieur kept me entertained while Madame served -- it was just the three of us, with a fire going and the TV on. I don't know precisely what made me such a hit with Monsieur, but I could hardly open my mouth without provoking gusts of good-natured laughter -- he nearly popped a vein when I referred to Henri the Fourth as "Le Vert Gallant." The repast was plain but tasty -- fresh bread and a hearty meat broth, juicy chops and very cunning tiny fried potato rosettes, with preserved cherries for dessert, with a very presentable little Cotes du Roussillon red accompanying. Throughout the meal there was chat about my plans, the weather, life in California, whether I'd been in France before, my writing... all the small talk we take for granted. But I had really begun to believe that I couldn't understand or be understood in anything but the most elementary French -- so being able to kid back and forth about them coming to stay with me in San Francisco, was just a slice of heaven. I asked Madame how long she'd been running the hotel -- she said it had been her parents', and that she had been born right in this room!