Day Nineteen: Behind the Red Door
Had a last vat of tea with Madame Couquet, who kissed me thricely and gave me her address for letter writing when I return to the States. Then I departed Montsegur.
(May I just mention that every time I passed the so-called Intermittent Fountain of Belestra -- and I passed it at least six or seven times -- it was founting away like nobody's business. Coincidence, or crock?)
It's so hard to describe landscapes properly. Here (here being the D618 over the Col du Port to St. Girons) as opposed to the Ariege, everything -- buildings, trees, fields -- are much closer together. The trees are very straight and slender -- I want to think they are poplars or aspens, but can't really tell. Fruit trees are in blossom -- the streams are running high and fast with melting run-off (not much help when tea metabolizing reaches a certain point...). The cows are red and hornless, instead of grey helmeted Valkyries, there are donkeys with enormous booming brays, the merens (little black-brown horses) look very knowing and self-satisfied. I've seen baby everythings -- foals and calves and piglets and lambs and kids.
I was not quite aware that the Col du Port was still under snow. The desire to stop and eat my pain au choc gradually drained from me -- taking a cue from the Donner party, halting a vehicle in snow has never seemed like a good idea to me -- but it actually wasn't any big deal. The roads themselves were clear, and the sun had been out long enough to melt any ice on the road. No problem about getting to Tarascon for the 2:30 tour of the Grotte de Bedeilhac.
It's a pretty darn big cave, I'll say that. Everyone gets their own little flashlight to help you stumble over the rocky ground -- there were perhaps twenty people in our tour. Instead of running the log flume ride at Great America, French teenagers get to work in prehistoric caves. We clambered around hither and thither, while Mademoiselle gabbled geological facts -- we foreigners didn't have the vocabulary to understand more than "calcine" and "manganese" and "ferrous oxide." (One Irish fellow began muttering "manganese, manganese" in a hopeless sort of way.) At first I'll admit it was a little dull. Then, the deeper you got in and the more you began letting go of trying to understand anything ("Manganese!"), the more evocative and spooky it all got. It didn't really matter if you were looking at a bison painting or a bird outline or some random rock formation -- you couldn't tell up or down anymore. At one point, we could see some geologists and/or archaeologists in one of the distant non-public passages -- they were like strange, alien beings, gesturing with their little pinpoints of magical fire.
Bopped back to St. Girons quickly enough, having picked up the usual set of provisions -- although the "Shopi" did not have Chevretines, and the fruit was lousy... The lodgings for the next few days is a 300-year-old country house called le Relais d'Encausse. Madame, a relaxed, welcoming woman with frizzy black hair and gamboling spaniels at her heels, brought me to the Red Room and insisted I have a cold drink on the lawn in the sun. I acquiesced in an orange juice and settled down.
Before long, two other guests joined me -- two teachers from Aix-en-Provence at the end of their spring vacation. We had a lovely long chat -- one of them has travelled in America and knows (and likes) San Francisco. They were so kind and flattered my French skills. One took out a book about Cathars, which started us on Montsegur and the Catharist chateaux, and good books about Cathars, and how on earth do I know so much about them... They plan to do a trip in that area in summer, and I threw in a good word for chez Couquet.
The Relais d'Encausse is a very tranquil, relaxed place -- I heard, but did not see, sheep in the evening. My new friends the teachers told me that Madame works in town as a social psychologist while Monsieur spackles and gardens here.
The Red Room is as charming as can be. The walls are white, with timbered ceilings, the furniture good plain varnished pine with the aforementioned red fixtures. There is even a red silk rose bouquet on the night table to embower Tip Top. Gay black, white and pink bedding -- the bolster a deck of cards motif. Then the bathroom, with red fittings and a jeu d'oie bathmat and yummy lanolin soap.
After I got settled in and was getting ready to wash my hair, one of the teachers came up and asked if I would take an aperitif with them. So I pattered down to the salle communal -- a terrific little amenity with a fireplace, a set of maps and books, a VCR, and a small kitchen for everyone to use. The three of us chattered some more while Madame went on a fruitless search for creme du cassis for our kirs, and ended up concocting a substitute with creme du framboise that was quite tasty enough. Fido begged pistachios from the snack tray while they tried to get me to take dinner with them... But I couldn't face a whole meal this evening.