The Pillars of Hercules

I could not have imagined a better exit line to serve my departure—from Tangier, from Morocco, from the Mediterranean. But the line vanished from my mind the next morning as I boarded the ferry Boughaz for the trip across the Straits.

I was thinking of how there was an aspect of Mediterranean travel that was like museum-going, the shuffling, the squinting, the echoes, the dust, the dubious treasures. You were supposed to be reverential. But even in the greatest museums I had been distracted, and found myself gazing out of museum windows at traffic or trees, or at other museum-goers; places like that were always the haunt of lovers on rainy Sundays. Instead of pictures, I often looked at the guards, the men or women in chairs at the entrances to rooms, the way they stifled yawns, their watchful eyes, their badges. No museum guard ever resembles a museum-goer, and my Mediterranean was like that.

Herculean was a word I kept wanting to use but never did. The only Herculean part of my trip was every night having to describe how I had spent the day, without leaving anything out; turning all my actions into words. It was like a labor in a myth or an old story. I could not sleep until the work was done. Mediterranean travel for me—for many people—was sometimes ancestor worship and sometimes its opposite. This was unlike any other trip I had taken, because although the journey was over, the experience wasn’t. Travel was so often a cure; I was cured of China and Peru, by going; I was cured of Fiji and Sri Lanka. Cured of Kenya and Pakistan. Cured of England, after many years. But my trip had not cured me of the Mediterranean, and I knew I would go back, the way you went back to a museum, to look—at pictures or out the window—and think; back to some Mediterranean places I saw, and more that I missed.

The mooring lines of the Boughaz were hauled aboard just as dawn broke. I thought of what Bowles had said. Don’t become a monument or people will piss on you. There was no danger of my becoming a monument, but Gibraltar was another story. Perhaps that explained why I had been so flippant when I had seen it the first time, and maybe so many monuments explained the mood of my Mediterranean travel, or some of it.

The darkness in the sky dissolved, as though rinsed in light. Into that eastern sky leaked yellow-orange, pinking to paleness, a whole illuminated day ahead, looming behind the Rock to the northeast, grander at this distance, and then the pair of pillars big and small on the facing shores. The sea was calm, and glittered under limitless sky—it was going to be a wonderful morning, the sort of restful brilliance you get, the sky exhausted of clouds, after days of storms. The light grew brighter, revealing the day, and it just got better, as this rosy dawn became a sunset in reverse.

About the Author

PAUL THEROUX was born in Medford, Massachusetts, in 1941 and published his first novel, Waldo, in 1967. His subsequent novels include The Black House, The Family Arsenal, Picture Palace (winner of the Whitbread Prize for fiction), O-Zone, The Mosquito Coast, which was made into a hit movie starring Harrison Ford, the critically acclaimed My Secret History, and Chicago Loop. His bestselling and highly successful travel books include The Great Railway Bazaar, The Old Patagonian Express, Riding the Iron Rooster, To the Ends of the Earth, and The Happy Isles of Oceania.

Table of Contents

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Map

Contents

Epigraph

1. The Cable Car to the Rock of Gibraltar

2. The “Mare Nostrum” Express to Alicante

3. The M.V. Punta Europa to Mallorca

4. The “Virgen De Guadalupe” Express to Barcelona and Beyond

5. “Le Grand Sud” to Nice

6. The Ferry ÎLe De Beauté to Corsica

7. The Ferry Ichnusa to Sardinia

8. The Ferry Torres to Sicily

9. The Ferry Villa to Calabria

10. The Ferry Clodia from Chioggia

11. The Ferry Liburnija to Zadar

12. The Ferry Venezia to Albania

13. The Seabourn Spirit to Istanbul

14. The M.V. Akdeniz: Through the Levant

15. The 7:20 Express to Latakia

16. The Ferry Sea Harmony to Greece

17. The Ferry El Loud III to Kerkennah

18. To Morocco on the Ferry Boughaz

About the Author