EXCERPT FROM SARA’S JOURNALDecember 11, 1998
Near Urrugne
Cote Basque
Beside the Hendaye Gare is a petit gare, with a petit train
that will take us to San Sebastian. The train leaves at 3 minutes past the hour and the
half-hour, but it’s lunch and the ticket kiosk is closed. We inspect the schedule. We
inspect the tarifs. A round trip to San Sebastian is 460 pesetas. That’s $4.60
CDN.
We leave Alfi at the Gare’s confused parking lot. There are a few
intermittent signs for pay parking, but it’s lunch and no one has a ticket. Lunch
hour is free parking in France. The lot is split into several sections; one for the main
station and smaller lots for the petit train and employees. We decide to
wing it sans billet and tuck Alfi near the petit Gare.
At 3 minutes past the hour the people crowd up to the petit gare and
board the petit train. A uniformed lady shuffles through the train to sell lunch hour
tickets. We say, "bonjour" and she charges us in francs.
The petit train wobbles into Spain and the view from the window changes
from the shops and traffic of Hendaye to brick lowrises decked with scallops of villainous
laundry. The view from a train is almost always the same. Coming into Montreal or leaving
London, entering Seattle or Munich, the train follows a route beyond the main boulevards
with the pretty trees and fancy shops and painted houses. The train recruits an audience
for the ponderings of a graffiti artist. We catch our reflection in the tunnels and then
instantly a scene of alleys and the backs of bakeries and tiny begoniaed balconies
reappears. The view is privileged from the height of the railway. Clotheslines drip with
children’s tiny coloured underwear, trimming the windowed walls like sailing flags.
It’s black and I see my face. Then it’s bright and I see a life: a T-shirt, a
small pair of pants, a washcloth, a dishcloth.
The small towns pass in a sequence of iron railings and smoking bakers
and the laundry draped with plastic tarps. San Sebastian is the last stop and we glide
through the station and step into fragrant, muggy air. Rain spits and the smell of fried
seafood and urine and cigars and shortbread blows through the streets. We’re peas in
a pod of schizophrenic architecture. A café window boasts a library of cookies. Spanish
conversations overlap and layer with the music of gastronomic delight as we lonesomely
traverse the Parte Vieja, the old town. The empty cobbled streets open to crammed
rooms, where the bar disappears beneath platters of tapas; squid and olives and
chorizo and pimiento salad.
At the heart of the Parte Vieja we are emptied into the old
bullring, the Plaza de la Constitucion. The arcades grow smaller when I stand in
the corner. It’s a perspective diagram. The balconies above vibrate with orange and
blue shutters. Each place is numbered for a ticket-holding bullfight spectator.
Monte Urgull rises behind the old town and is one of two hills
that flank the shell-shaped bay at San Sebastian. The climb to the top is a series of
switchbacks and stone steps. At the summit is the ruined fortress Castillo de Santa
Cruz de la Mota. We picnic and absorb the panorama of the city and its encircling
hills, the old town and its monuments and the crescent-shaped coast.
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