37. Cellars
In
Carcassonne in summer
the streets are packed. Tourists are flustered - children wave plastic
swords, restaurants spill overdressed tables out onto crowded pavements,
cars nose unfeasibly between them. Prices are high, rounded up to the
next euro or two. Or five. Cans of cold drinks are the worst …
But it is a genuine place, too. Many of the buildings are 300 years
old and large parts of the fortifications at least 900. And there is
something in these old stones that draws people
– often brings them back again and again.
I knew a woman – now dead, I think, I haven't seen her for a few
years – who worked in one of the many café-restaurants.
She was 84 years old when I met her. She served me coffee on a winter
morning when nowhere else was open.
She was born in the Montagne Noire, whose highest peak reaches over 1000 metres, in November 1918. Her village was only 500 or 600 metres above sea level, but snow-covered that year. Her parents argued about naming her Victoire – then relented and chose something less topical - Eglantine.
She grew up in the hills and met her husband when his family fled Carcassonne
a t the beginning of World War II.
Before they fled the Nazis, Eglantine's husband's family had lived in the same house in the centre of the fortified medieval Cité since 1810. The house itself was built on the foundations and cellar of a previous dwelling, constructed in the mid-12th century. It was the café I had sat down in.
She showed me the cellars – who knows how old they really were? She showed me her teeth – her own, not a denture.
I've written about Montségur,
the psychic scar. I've told the story of the unimaginable massacre at
Béziers. There's no
one left from those events. It makes it hard to put across the
power of a place.
But sometimes you can borrow or invent a character to do it for you.
