So, as I say, I left Lourdes last week and took the train to
Rocamadour. I'd read that Rocamadour is one of the most ancient Marian shrines in the world, a critical junction along the
Camino de Compostelle, which I walked from Vezelay back in 2004, and which I am suddenly - and somewhat surprisingly; since until I think about this week, I'd felt absolutely no desire to ever do it again - feeling as if I may have to walk again, but from a different angle. I thought I should go, and see the famous black virgin there, and climb up to the shrine on the cliff in the footsteps of Charlemagne and Saint Louis and dozens of other kings, saints, bishops, popes and millions of untold other pilgrims who have come there over the millennium and a half that it has existed.
So, again as I say, I embarked via Toulouse (where I stopped for the afternoon to visit the mother church of the Order of Preachers, and the Tomb of Saint Thomas Aquinas - !!! - pictures, some rather good ones, I think - soon to come, when I get my image sorting and storage issues sorted out!) and then took the evening regional bus then another train to get to Rocamadour. Along the way, it began to rain.
I got there about 9 pm, expecting there to be a village with some sort of selection of hotels there to choose from. But there was only one hotel directly opposite the closed station, and it was shut tight, and dark. In a spirit of mild abnegation, I decided to sleep out. In the rain. No biggy: I have a sleeping bag, bivy and tarp. I've used the bivy frequently, but the tarp - a light, 6' x 8' - I've never used, and like a retard, have never even tested out.
There was an enclosed waiting bench on the far side of the tracks - which one had to cross on a rubber pathway laid across the rails with a lit warning sign that flashes whenever a train approaches - and the woods behind it looked somewhat promising. I started to scout along the platform to see if there was a dim nook with good branches about on which to throw up my tarp.
I mucked about for ten fifteen minutes, and got well and drenched. My anorak kept my upper body only damp, but my pantlegs were getting soaked. And I couldn't see anything obvious to pitch my tarp and bivy down on. Damn frustrating..
It finally dawned on me that it was Saturday night, and that there most likely would be very little traffic in the station until well into the coming morning.. Why not just sleep in the enclosed waiting area, all nice and snug in my sleeping bag? Genius. If you're gonna kick it like a hobo, you gotta do what you gotta do.
So, that's what I did. I popped a sleeping pill, and went to bed on the bench in the enclosed shelter.
Next morning, I overslept. I'd meant to get up at 8:30 and hunt down the church for mass, but screwed up my alarm and woke up 10:30ish, and groggily got myself together. In the dark the night before, I'd assumed that the shrine would be revealed in the dawn, the impressive cliff would be right there in front of the station for me to just climb up and go to mass.
But there was nothing there. Just that empty hotel, trees, and a few houses. What to do? I had assumed that this being one of the most famous shrines in France, with a million and a half pilgrims coming a year, that 4mass would be easily had, even in the off season, just as it had been at Lourdes.
But here I was, and there was nothing there.
I was deflated. It was like when I'd taken the train to Fatima from Compostella, and had expected a substantial station right near the shrine, but arrived to find a little dinky powdunk station 14 km from the shrine, that required a bus ride through the countryside to get to.
It was like that. I was screwed. I hate missing mass, and this was a borderline thing - I should have done my due diligence, but I hadn't, and now I was out of luck..
I sat there, glum, waiting for signs of life.
About noon, a girl showed up. Maybe 18, asian features, wearing a scout uniform and carrying a backpack. Neckerchief, badges, the whole deal. She came into the shelter, looks at me, smiles, and fires off a stream of French. I gaze at her through my glaze, try to smile back, end up with a sort of grimace and just shook my head. Now, normally I understand everything people say to me here. My French - not so recently "pretty good for a dipshit American" is on the verge of just being pretty good period. But my mind had evaporated on me. She looked at me pityingly, clearly thinking "ah, this guy is clearly some sort of mental gimp."
Yes. That's right. I sat wallowing in that deliciously familiar old sensation of mild humiliation and self reproach tinged with contempt. It's been a long while since ineptitude in French has made me feel that, but I used to get all pruny bathing in it, back in the day, all the time. It was almost a cause for nostalgia.. But not really.
I decided to go see if I could roust someone out to tell me about the hotel, to get away from this girl scout. I was here, and I was going to see the damn shrine. I was not going to give up, dammit.
I went and knocked on the door of the house next to the hotel. An extremely cheerful fellow with a round ruddy face, looking like he'd just stepped out of a Pieter Bruegel painting and changed into modern clothes, came to the door. My mind clicked back into gear, and I asked him "ou est le proprietaire de l'hotel? c'est encore ouvert?" He grinned, and told me that yes, the hotel was open, but that the proprietor was visiting her family for Sunday and would not be back until four. I could call her number, listed on the sign there. I told him my cell didn't work in France. Could he help? He grinned again, apologetically this time, and said a client could call her, but he didn't dare, not when she was with her family. The sign says she'll be bak at four. Ah, can't call her, not even on behalf of a client? No. Sorry. I was like, "elle va revenir a quatre heures, c'est ecrit en pierre?" Sure. Absolutely.
Okay. I'll wait then. I found the wall nearby and sat down. A car appears and pulls abruptly in in front of the train station. A girl and guy get out. Late teens. Both in scout uniforms. He leans against the car, she leans into him, obviously digging his bones deeply. I am amused.
Then, another car and a van pull in. Disgorging more teens in scout uniforms. Over the next ten minutes or so, several more vehicles arrive, until about twenty 18-ish kids are gathered in scouting uniforms. Two priests in cassocks drive in and drop off a couple kids and drive away. The scouts - girls and boys - all socialize vigorously, eating lunch and screwing around with one another. I am intrigued and bemused by the spectacle.
It's moments like this when the French strike me as being deeply other - familiar, somehow, but so very very not at all the same as us. I was a boyscout, and made Eagle at 13. Then, I basically disengaged. Scouting in the States is very much a middle school thing. Most kids - probably 2/3's or so - quit by the time they reach high school. Cool kids definitely do not usually stick around. It's definitely not cool to run around in uniform. It's nerdy and definitely un-hip. I think it has something to do with Vietnam and the hippies and the wave of cynicism that hit us back in the seventies..
But here, in rural France I was watching a co-ed group of strapping, attractive kids wearing rolled neckerchiefs and throwing scout salutes a eachother like gang bangers throw gang signs. They threw their salutes like WW II British soldiers, throwing their hands up lackadaisically above their shoulders with a loose wrist, like an SS officer barely acknowledging an underling's heil hitler salute; fingers in the three middle fingers up, thumb over pinkie below, just like in the States.
I was astonished. Such amazingly artless lack of cynicism.. in teenagers. Astonishing, completely incredible.
Then they began to sing. Sing. It was like when the dwarves sang of the Mountain at Bag End.. They weren' t American style campfire songs, which are usually silly or comic. They were singing about "le chemin" and "le seigneur," like something out le Chanson de Roland.
It probably was. I tried to record it; but my camera battery was nearly dead and I could only take a few stills. I'll put one up on the blog maybe, later.
Then, the train came. Most of the kids got on it. Five or six of them did not, and I realized that they'd come in uniform to see their friends off. More salutes, they sing on the platform as the train pulls away. I sit there mildly astonished, and somehow moved.
It happened all the time when I was living with the Philanthropotes (another group of vital early twenty something French kids who continually astonished, impressed and moved me like this. I felt like an anthropologist amongst a strange people, a witness to all sorts of odd but profoundly human behavior that constantly surprised and touched me.
It's good to be here, in France. I truly love these people. They are awesome.
To be continued..
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