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| Château d'Arques, Languedoc-Roussillon, France |
I’m writing now on the 13th. On the 11th in the morning, W. took us with him on a shopping expedition to the village of Espéraza, where there’s a butcher he and K. especially like. He has planned to make a lamb shank dish, lamb marinated in red wine and herbs, this evening and wanted to buy the lamb from the butcher in Espéraza.
Unfortunately, when we got there, it turned out that the butcher is on vacation for several weeks, so no lamb shank. The village itself was not very attractive. We spent some time standing in the shade on the sidewalk as W. visited the pharmacy, and people passing us seemed suspicious of us and not friendly, one woman walking past us down a laneway and then turning around to survey our backs as if we represented some imminent threat.
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| Église Saint-Michel, Espéraza Languedoc-Roussillon, France |
While we were in Espéraza, I noticed a little church over whose doorway — one doorway into the church, at least — was inscribed, “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, Propriété Communale.” This is not the first church I’ve seen in France in which that revolutionary inscription is recorded over the church door, a reminder, it seems to me, that in effecting revolutionary change, the French had to do battle with the church itself, which resisted democracy — which resisted liberty, equality, and fraternity for all. I think the inscription over church doors reminds French people that what religious bodies seek to do should be normed by the democratic aspirations the French have chosen to enshrine for their society.
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The interior of the church, Église Saint-Michel, the village’s Catholic parish, was surprisingly beautiful, like stepping unexpectedly into a little jewel box. A placard outside the church says that it was built in the 13th century and refurbished in the 17th century, and then renovated in 1990 when attractive frescoes were added. The frescoes are over the altar and the organ loft, with the one over the altar showing a winged, muscular St. Michael with a brown breastpiece and a blue kilt-like adornment wielding a sword to defeat the devil. There was also a pretty rose window that didn’t look to be very old.
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| Cathar castle ruins, Coustaussa, Languedoc-Roussillon, France |
On the way to Espéraza, we passed by yet another ruined Cathar castle, this one at the village of Coustaussa, and W. drove us up to see it, as he told us it’s in ruins and considered somewhat dangerous to visit, due to the possibility of falling stones. We looked at it from a distance. It had, as so many of these Cathar strongholds have, both a sad and an ominous feel to it, as if the stones, if they were able to talk, would have quite some stories to tell.
The other stop we made on that morning was at a village whose name I didn’t catch, where a woman named Danielle brings things from her garden to a little wayside market on Wednesday mornings. By the time we arrived, she had sold quite a bit of her produce, all of her eggplants, almost all of her tomatoes and apricots. W. bought a selection of items including zucchini, the few tomatoes left, shallots, green beans, new potatoes, etc.
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| Capitelle outside Cassaignes, Languedoc-Roussillon, France |
As we drove back into Cassaignes for our midday meal, we once again passed those interesting domed stone buildings you see in fields in the south of France, capitelles, built with no mortar and apparently to shelter shepherds in inclement weather. They’re characteristic of this region and seem to be associated with vineyards, though W. tells us they appear to have been built to provide protection for shepherds out in their fields.
It was a very hot day (in the lower 90sF), and after our return from shopping, with the walking in full sunshine in those villages heating us up, we rested a bit and then found W. had prepared a very nice salad lunch, a sort of salade Niçoise but without potatoes and string beans, which we ate in their garden shaded by the beautiful linden and chestnut tree, with glasses of rosé wine. With the food, the wine, the heat, I was somnolent in the afternoon and excused myself and spent the afternoon alternately napping and dreaming and reading. I needed the rest, since I could feel my defenses fraying due to lack of introvert quality time. By “defenses,” I mean defenses against the feeling that we are a growing irritation to our hosts, that they are perturbed at our inability to predict their rules: defenses to try to keep me from collapsing into myself, feeling like a failure, even finding myself close to tears as I interact with others.
On the 12th, we got up bright and early — 5:30 A.M. — to prepare for a drive to the Mediterranean that was scheduled to begin at 7:30. Then when 7:30 rolled around, off we drove to the seacoast, with W. taking back roads that brought us through beautiful countryside, with the Corbières all around and mist on their peaks. It was an overcast day with fairly strong breezes.
Not long after we set off, we passed another Cathar castle, the Château d’Arques, up on a hillside and very attractive to view from the road. W. stopped the car and I snapped a photo.
We then drove on and stopped in the village of Durban-Corbières where W. likes to buy wine at Domaine de la Peyrouse, which offers, he says, a very good locally made organic red wine. While he bought a case of wine, Steve, K., and I sat for a while on the covered patio of an eatery called Chez Prano and had cups of coffee. Order coffee in this part of France, and you’ll be brought a demitasse of espresso with no milk, and with either a packet of refined sugar or a cube of brown sugar. Usually a tiny cookie or a small caramel (the latter at Chez Prano) accompanies the coffee.
We sat sipping our coffee and enjoying the somewhat cool and misty weather as people around us chatted, smoked, and in the case of one middle-aged man, pulled his feet up into the chair in which he was sitting and talking to two companions. The waiter, whose arms were heavily tattooed, sat and smoked along with a table of women to whom he talked volubly. At one point as he brought something to our table, he smiled and waved at someone behind us and said in heavily accented English, “My mother.”
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| Leucate, Languedoc-Roussillon, France |
From Durban-Corbières, on to Leucate on the seacoast. When we got there and parked, W. brought an umbrella down to the beach and set it up while Steve and I walked along the shore, enjoying the cold water that rolled in with enough force that there were a few surfers out in the ocean. W. judged it too cold to swim. The walking was enjoyable, but the sand seemed surprisingly soft, so that we sank easily into it, and as the waves came in, they destabilized it even more, so that we both found ourselves a little disoriented, with the feeling we were about to be swept out to sea.
We then walked back to the umbrella next to which W. and K. were sitting on beach towels and all had sandwiches of cheese and salami that W. had prepared, and after this, W. and K. took a long walk, with us guarding their items on the beach. After they returned — I found myself unable to sit long on the beach, due to pains in my legs, and had relocated to the mini-wall running between the sidewalk and beach — we gathered everything up, put it back into the car, and walked from the beach to a seafood restaurant W. and K. highly recommend in Leucate, La Cabane de Vincent Boniface.
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| La Cabane de Vincent Boniface, Leucate, Languedoc-Roussillon, France |
The restaurant is attached to a business that sells seafood and fish directly from shipping boats that pull into the harbor; Boniface is right on the harbor, and its outside seating area (there are no tables inside) looks into the harbor and lets you see boats pulling in with their catch. You reach the seating area by walking through the seafood-vending area with items for sale displayed on ice, and with tanks with running water keeping other items fresh as staff shuck oysters and prepare other seafood at a counter overlooking this display.
We arrived in time to avoid the noontime crunch, when W. and K. said the place is usually so crowded with local folks that it can be impossible to find a table. I enjoyed sitting and watching the boats come in, though not long after we sat down, I began to have one of the retinal migraines I can sometimes have when sunlight flashes off water, and felt my usual dizziness, disorientation, and nausea as that ran its course.
All through the outside seating area, little sparrows were hopping, including on tables. At a table next to us, a woman kept feeding a cute little sparrow as it perched on a wall next to her. I gave a piece of bread to a sparrow that arrived just as the bread came to our table — they obviously watch for that — and then when I suggested that Steve do the same, K. exploded and said, “No! I don’t like that!”
I think W. could then see how surprised — and, yes, a bit crushed — I was at her outburst. He tried smoothing it over and then she said several things to try to defuse the tension. But this still felt like a storm that had been brewing for some time suddenly bursting, and I felt like the object of that storm, a very unhappy feeling.
The seafood was good and surprisingly expensive. The menu offered huitres, moules, coquilles, crevettes, palourdes, and bulots. K. doesn’t like seafood so ordered nothing. W. and I ordered six shrimp, and Steve ordered a platter with six raw oysters, three clams, and three mussels.
The shrimp were very good and came with a tartar sauce that had some garlic in it. I added a few drops of vinegar from a bottle on the table. I gave Steve one of my shrimp and he encouraged me to sample one of his mussels and one of the clams, neither of which appealed to me. Both were very salty.
Then back to Cassaignes by way of the interstate, which W. and K. call the autobahn, with another visit to Limoux, where we stopped at several supermarkets for this and that. I think we visited three supermarkets, but I can recall the names of only two of them, Super U and Lidl, the latter a German company. W. and K.’s goal was to buy enough of the food items they needed that there would be no need to drive anywhere the following day (Friday, the 13th, when I’m writing these notes).
W. wanted especially to buy the lamb shank he had been unable to get at the butcher shop in Espéraza. Super U has a meat counter he particularly likes, and a butcher he thinks is first-rate, so we went to Super U to buy the lamb shank and some merguez sausage, which is K.’s favorite. W. was able to get both at Super U and was pleased with the quality of both and with the service he received from the butcher, who trimmed the lamb shank to W.’s specifications.
Then back to Cassaignes for a rest — another hot day — and a supper in the wonderful garden, a casserole of fresh vegetables W. cooked with some noodles: new potatoes, tomatoes, zucchini, onion, all with seasoning from the south of France including sprigs of thyme I had bought, a plant to put into a pot, for W. and K. The vegetables and noodles were topped with slices of goat cheese. With this we also enjoyed some tzatziki W. had made for the salad the day before. He makes it with cucumber, onion, garlic, and fromage blanc, which is often used in France in place of yoghurt to give dishes otherwise using yoghurt more body and creaminess.
With the meal, we drank some cool local rosé wine and after we had eaten, W. invited us to sample glasses of the local red wine he had bought earlier in the day at Domaine de la Peyrouse in Durban-Corbières as we drove through on our way to the beach.
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