The Pillars of Hercules

“Or Marseilles, or Nice,” she went on. “I went to Spain once. And to Brittany once. I prefer the sea in Brittany—it is rough and beautiful.”

“What about the Mediterranean?”

“It is not exciting,” she said.

I could have told her that the Mediterranean extended to the shores of Syria, was tucked into Trieste, formed a torrent at Messina, hugged the delta of the Nile, and even wetted a strip of Bosnia.

“And will you stay in Nice?” she said.

“For a few days. Then I’ll take the ferry to Corsica.”

“I have a friend from Corsica. He told me that the people are very traditional there. The women are suppressed—not free as they are here.”

“Is his family traditional?”

“Yes. In fact, when they heard that he was talking about life there they got really angry. Corsicans think it’s bad to repeat these things. I feel bad that I am telling you.”

So to change the subject, I asked her about her studies.

“I am studying psychology. It’s a six-year course. I chose it because I want to work with autistic children after I graduate.”

“Have you ever worked with autistic children?”

“In the summer, yes, several times,” she said. “Ever since I was twelve I knew I wanted to work with handicapped people. I knew it would be my life.”

“That’s hard work, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s hard. You give a lot. You don’t get back very much. But I don’t mind. Not many people want to do it.”

Such idealism seemed to me rare. These were not sentiments I had heard expressed very often, and they lifted my spirits.

The next day was sunny, and Arles was not far. I left my bag at Narbonne railway station and went for a walk along the étangs, and watched the flamingos feeding and flying.

This Mediterranean sunshine was like a world of warmth and light, and it was inspirational, too. It was easy to understand the feelings of T. E. Lawrence, who took a dip there in 1908 and wrote to his mother, “I felt I had at last reached the way to the South, and all the glorious East; Greece, Carthage, Egypt, Tyre, Syria, Italy, Spain, Sicily, Crete,… they were all there, and all within reach of me.”

I had thought that I had left Narbonne in plenty of time, but the early darkness of winter fell upon Arles just as the train pulled into the station. I had wanted to arrive in daylight. It was the seventeenth of February; Vincent Van Gogh had first arrived in Arles on the twentieth (in 1888), and because of that timing his life was changed.

“You know, I feel I am in Japan,” he wrote to his brother Theo.

It was the light, the limpid colors. It was, most of all, the trees in bloom. And strangely that February was very cold and snowy. To see branches covered in snowflakes and white blossoms thrilled Van Gogh—and this in a low Hollandaise landscape of flat fields and windbreaks by the Rhône. They were almond blossoms mostly, but also cherry, peach, plum and apricot. Van Gogh painted the almond flowers on the branches, a Japanese-style picture that resembled a floral design that he had seen before on a screen panel.

Even in the dark I could see some blossoms, and in the glary light of streetlamps the almond petals were like moths clustered on the black branches and twisted twigs.

Arles had three or four large luxury hotels, but I was put off by their ridiculous prices. I had found the name of a twenty-dollar hotel in a guidebook. This was called La Gallia. It was apparently a cafe and pizza joint.

The man at the coffee machine said, “Go outside, turn right, go around to the back and up the stairs. Use this key. The light switch is on the wall. Your room is on the second floor. You can’t miss it.”

“Do you want me to sign anything?”

“No name needed. No signature. Just the money in advance. No passport. Sleep well!”

“Is there a toilet?”

“It’s in the hall. But you have a sink.”

It was a medieval tenement on a backstreet, with a cobblestone courtyard and a winding staircase. I was halfway up the stairs when everything went black; the timer on the light ran out. I struggled in the dark to the landing, where I fumbled my flashlight out of my bag. I used this to find the light switch on the next landing. It seemed so difficult contriving to enter and leave this odd empty building that I stayed in my room and went out at the first sign of dawn.

That morning there was an old man with a wooden leg trying to climb the stairs.

“Softly,” I said.

There was only room for one person at a time on these precipitous stairs.

“This wooden leg of mine is heavy,” he panted. “It was the war.”

“My uncle was here in the war.”

Cpl. Arthur Theroux of Stoneham, Massachusetts.

“Fighting?”

“Running a blood bank. He was a medic. Thirty-third Station Hospital.”

We had to throw most of the French blood away, Paulie. They all had syphilis. The American whole blood was the stuff we used.