Paris to the Pyrenees: A Skeptic Pilgrim Walks the Way of Saint James by David Downie
Authors: David Downie
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reincarnate. Jacquinot played with the ring of keys before answering. “Who knows? The scheme didn’t work. People cried bloody murder and Mitterrand wound up buried in his home town, Jarnac.” He paused and grinned maliciously. “Do you know what a coup de Jarnac is? You’ve read The Three Musketeers? In fencing, Jarnac means an unfair thrust.” He made a downward, poking motion aimed at my calves.
It was, I realized, what we call a low blow.
RUSSIAN CELTS AND ROAMING ROMANS
Staring out from a shelf at our B&B was a vintage hardcover with the winning title Histoire de Bourgogne . Presumably this was a history not of Pinot Noir wine but of the Burgundy region. I plucked it and headed for a pre-prandial nap. Beyond the flowing draperies of our bedroom rose Marigny’s church spire. I plumped the pillows and squinted with heavy eyelids.
Written in the 1950s by a certain Charles Commeaux, the book recounted Burgundy’s early history, the part leading up to Caesar’s arrival. It told of waves of nomadic hunter-warriors who had swept in from the east around 500 BC, or so the author claimed, their ancestors having left what’s now western Russia sometime between 800 and 1200 BC. Go West, Young Barbarian! These so-called “Celts” had promptly set about exploiting the happy natives of Gaul, members of the older, sedentary, pacific, agriculture-based Halstatt Civilization, which didn’t sound very French either. The warlike Russian Celts’ modus operandi was much like that of the brutal Romans who followed them and the even more “barbarian” Germanic tribes who came after. In fact, with their beheadings, live burials and burnings, raping and pillaging and serious hygiene problems, the Celts sounded considerably worse than Caesar, more on par with Attila. As to Caesar himself, he came off as being less dasdardly than dashing, as portrayed in the pages of the book, despite his thinning hair. What color eyes did Caesar have, anyway? I blinked, trying to recall the painted statues I’d seen. The pages of the book blurred. I blinked again.
Instead of seeing Caesar’s eyes, I saw his nose, a Plasticine nose, with my forefinger outside it and thumb up a nostril, pinching the modeling clay. My hands felt youthful. Atop them arthritis-gnarled fingers nudged and directed. As I pinched and smoothed, my mother’s fingertips flattened my clumsy work and reshaped it with broad, confident strokes. “You’re putting in too much detail,” she said gently; “rough out his features first, and then go back.”
Art history books lay open, ranged around her basement studio. Black-and-white photos of busts depicting Caesar filled the clay-encrusted pages, each held open with a clothespin. And then I was standing in Latin class, a clothespin and the bust in my clay-crusted hands, saying to my teacher, “Here it is, my year-end project, it’s finished. We modeled the Plasticine first, rubbed it with Vaseline, made a two-piece plaster mold, and poured ‘cast-rock’ into it. Yes, ma’am, it’s the first head I’ve ever made, ma’am, and no, it isn’t perfect, and I’ll never try again, and yes, my mother helped me and yes, she helps me with my Latin, but she’s want to light a candle9HCh Italian and she doesn’t pronounce it the way you do, and that’s why you don’t like me. The nose and ears have too much detail, ma’am, the chin is weak, I agree, the forehead does look like a monkey’s forehead, yes, ma’am.” Miss Nelson the Latin teacher curls her lip at my Caesar, the same way she curls her lip when I read aloud from Cicero. Miss Nelson pronounces it Sissero, in that sticky southern accent of hers, and she pushes her glasses up her broad, flat nose over and over again. She says wheny, weedy, wiki, turning Caesar’s v’s into wimpy w’s in that syrupy Louisiana voice, threatening to flunk me if I won’t give up that vulgar “church Latin” in her classical Latin class. Veni, vidi, vici, I say back to
It was, I realized, what we call a low blow.
RUSSIAN CELTS AND ROAMING ROMANS
Staring out from a shelf at our B&B was a vintage hardcover with the winning title Histoire de Bourgogne . Presumably this was a history not of Pinot Noir wine but of the Burgundy region. I plucked it and headed for a pre-prandial nap. Beyond the flowing draperies of our bedroom rose Marigny’s church spire. I plumped the pillows and squinted with heavy eyelids.
Written in the 1950s by a certain Charles Commeaux, the book recounted Burgundy’s early history, the part leading up to Caesar’s arrival. It told of waves of nomadic hunter-warriors who had swept in from the east around 500 BC, or so the author claimed, their ancestors having left what’s now western Russia sometime between 800 and 1200 BC. Go West, Young Barbarian! These so-called “Celts” had promptly set about exploiting the happy natives of Gaul, members of the older, sedentary, pacific, agriculture-based Halstatt Civilization, which didn’t sound very French either. The warlike Russian Celts’ modus operandi was much like that of the brutal Romans who followed them and the even more “barbarian” Germanic tribes who came after. In fact, with their beheadings, live burials and burnings, raping and pillaging and serious hygiene problems, the Celts sounded considerably worse than Caesar, more on par with Attila. As to Caesar himself, he came off as being less dasdardly than dashing, as portrayed in the pages of the book, despite his thinning hair. What color eyes did Caesar have, anyway? I blinked, trying to recall the painted statues I’d seen. The pages of the book blurred. I blinked again.
Instead of seeing Caesar’s eyes, I saw his nose, a Plasticine nose, with my forefinger outside it and thumb up a nostril, pinching the modeling clay. My hands felt youthful. Atop them arthritis-gnarled fingers nudged and directed. As I pinched and smoothed, my mother’s fingertips flattened my clumsy work and reshaped it with broad, confident strokes. “You’re putting in too much detail,” she said gently; “rough out his features first, and then go back.”
Art history books lay open, ranged around her basement studio. Black-and-white photos of busts depicting Caesar filled the clay-encrusted pages, each held open with a clothespin. And then I was standing in Latin class, a clothespin and the bust in my clay-crusted hands, saying to my teacher, “Here it is, my year-end project, it’s finished. We modeled the Plasticine first, rubbed it with Vaseline, made a two-piece plaster mold, and poured ‘cast-rock’ into it. Yes, ma’am, it’s the first head I’ve ever made, ma’am, and no, it isn’t perfect, and I’ll never try again, and yes, my mother helped me and yes, she helps me with my Latin, but she’s want to light a candle9HCh Italian and she doesn’t pronounce it the way you do, and that’s why you don’t like me. The nose and ears have too much detail, ma’am, the chin is weak, I agree, the forehead does look like a monkey’s forehead, yes, ma’am.” Miss Nelson the Latin teacher curls her lip at my Caesar, the same way she curls her lip when I read aloud from Cicero. Miss Nelson pronounces it Sissero, in that sticky southern accent of hers, and she pushes her glasses up her broad, flat nose over and over again. She says wheny, weedy, wiki, turning Caesar’s v’s into wimpy w’s in that syrupy Louisiana voice, threatening to flunk me if I won’t give up that vulgar “church Latin” in her classical Latin class. Veni, vidi, vici, I say back to
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