EXCERPT FROM SARA’S JOURNALNovember 30, 1998
Arbonne
Cote Basque
Mendialde and its twin, Bixtaeder are booked for next
week. We have reserved a gite in the nearby village of Urrugne, and will return to Mendialde
for two weeks over Christmas.
It’s glorious. Raindrops slide and leave a trail on Alfi’s
window as we speed along the winding road to Saint Jean de Luz. It’s a sleepy fishing
village juxtaposed with fashionable shopping and an army of light bulb screwers in
manlifts, preparing the town for Christmas. There are enough off-season renovations to
convince us that the place must be teeming with tourists in the summer months.
St-Jean is Madam Rosaven’s favourite seaside resort. In the 11th
century whole wale carcasses were towed into St. Jean to be divided among the entire
village. A natural harbour protects the sandy beaches, and there are three breakwater
walls about a kilometre offshore. The walls disappear beneath a crashing, frothy foam
every few seconds. The shoreline is left for stick retrieving puppies and their swimming
instructor masters.
The light is warm and turns the sand cadmium. A crayon box of fishing
boats glow and sleep in the congested marina.
Everyone is busy at Place Louis XIV. There’s sandblasting and
pressure washing and light bulbs and trucks backing up and drywall destruction and
everyone is wearing a blue coverall. We dodge the flying drywall and find L’Eglise
St. Jean-Baptiste, anxious to inspect the cemented-up doorway. The Sun King, Louis XIV
married the Infanta Maria Teresa of Spain in 1660 here, which sealed a long-awaited
alliance between France and Spain. This union would ultimately embroil the two countries
in the War of the Spanish Succession in 1702. Masons walled-up the doorway through which
the newly married couple passed. Now there is another doorway beside it and a plaque
commemorating the wedding ceremony: The King of France and his Queen were the last to ever
pass through this threshold. L’Eglise is the biggest of all the Basque
churches, and includes five galleries and a 17th century altar that glitters
with gilded apostles.
We skip the local specialty of chaperones—squid cooked in
their own ink, and devour an extra crunchy, hot baguette flute, inaugurating a crumb
convention on my sweater. It’s an artform, the baguette. Varieties in the
boulangerie: flute, compagne, levure, ble entier. Each is a delectable exercise in
chewing, or flaking, or tearing.
The grubby sheep perform a bell concerto. A painterly sky drips smoky
clouds on the hillside and mountain peeks. The fields retain the morning’s damp
counterpane. Dusk descends.
