Have you ever gotten a
shock of surprise, when reading a particular passage in a book?
It so happens that the current book I am reading, the late
Sir Steven Runciman's The Traveller's Alphabet (sadly
out of print), was not the book which gave me this start of recognition.
But when he got to the bit about his trip to Roumania, I suddenly remembered
this remarkable lady's book of later memoirs, and that very reaction which they produced about a location, at one point, which I had been meaning to tell you about for a long time.
First, let me transcribe the exact passage so you can get into the right mood.
During the famous
Versailles Conference, where she played such a dazzling role for her adopted homeland, she was lionised socially, and literally invited everywhere.
One day, in the middle of the treaty-making, she just decided to play tourist, and did what many of us would do -- went to visit one of those enormously grand cathedrals, of which France has an embarrassment of riches.
Namely,
Notre-Dame de Reims.
"A moving sight, indeed, that mighty cathedral rising like a ghost of unimaginable beauty from a grey mass of formless ruins.
Because of its many wounds, its lines and angels had become blurred, softened as seen through a veil; its glassless windows paint a tracery of lace against the sky, and, like so many decapitated martyrs, its statues seem frozen with pain.
Yet there the great building stands invincible, having defied the modern means of destruction and with them the spirit of hate. A vision of another age, of a stronger faith, ascending above the surrounding chaos, more sacred than ever because of its mutiliation, more supremely stately because all around it has been laid low, and today the sky is its only vault.
Such it appeared to me that early spring day, when we stood, mute, gazing up at its perfect majesty. Somehow one became speechless or spoke only in whispers."
Ladies and gentlemen, in my short lifetime, I have read hundreds, thousands of books, but
never have I read a paragraph which so impressed me for its perfect descriptive powers.
This lady, vainglorious, slightly absurd, and magnificent, had the power to see something as it was, and yet to describe it flawlessly so that at the end, you felt as if you yourself had drunk of that imperial cup in Moscow, had viewed that ravine in Malta, and had quadrilled with Winston Churchill until your clingy dress brought down two partners on the dancefloor with you, by mere conjuring of her pen.
In short, that woman was one hell of a writer.
--
We arrived in Luxembourg's tiny airport, my father, mother and I, via the Bahamas on Icelandic Airways that December morning, ready to make a run to the car rental counter, but first had to pass through the custom's window.
Despite the three of us being "European", it was my newly American citizen mother's passport that the lady behind the guiché fawned over, practically falling over herself to welcome an US citizen to her little land -- an attitude which has forever stayed with me, because it was repeated a dozen times that following month on the continent.
When my dad and I presented our passports next (I was a dependent in his passport, as was the custom in those days), she took a look at that blue UK booklet of travel, and wordlessly, stamped it and bade us no farewell.
Arriving at the car rental office...no counter as thought, but actually a little wooden office located outside the airport...the lady there took one look at us three, and starting speaking in rapid-fire Letzebuergisch, though none of us were Luxembourgers.
Not sure what this baptism of linguistic fire was about, but her surly demeanour was not improved even when we tried German and French, as a courtesy, before my dad opened his mouth and finally said, "Do you speak English?".
The paperwork was still to be done, despite long-standing reservations Telexed from the States (remember Telexes?).
There were International Driver's Licences to produce, on old-fashioned paper with stamps and black-and-white photos, long since gone today.
And again, those passports, since you can't do anything in Europe without documentation up the wazoo, something Americans and British both should be happy their cultures are by nature, against.
Finally, we had our keys to the Opel Kadett in dad's hands, since of course, he drives.
He may have paid for my mother's medical education because as he said, "I don't want to live the next 50 years beside a stupid woman", he may have encouraged me to stay away from the kitchen, and paid for riding lessons when other girls were learning how to do laundry and sweeping up, but he was still macho enough to always insist on being the driver in any car he was in.
He drove.
It was December, and of course, there was snow all over the ground.
Being British, he is a trusting sort, who still never checks what a person behind a counter gives him, because he always assumes the bag will contain exactly what he paid for (to his chagrin, when he arrives with two Big Macs, instead of the Fish sandwich I requested).
He turned on the windshield wipers on the Kadett, and...nothing. He got out of the car, jiggled them, and...nothing.
We were on our way to Paris, with no windshield wipers working, and with snow threatening to bear down on our party of 3.
He turned on the headlights...nothing. This can't be happening!
(My mother immediately blamed the surly Luxembourger woman who obviously "had it in for us", which is a common assumption between most women about each other, by the way)
With no windshield wipers, and no headlights, and a starving child, we rushed from Luxembourg to Metz, then on our way to Nancy when it started to snow.
With mittened hand, my intrepid father cleared the snow from the windshield, as he tried to speed ever faster in the direction of Paris, convinced he could make it before it got really dark.
(Fortunately that American nightmare of coppers pollulating the highways just when you least need them, doesn't really apply on the continent. We were safe from tickets defended in awkward French, as long as we stayed on the highway)
Daylight now was a mass of dark greys, and menacing inky blues.
Whether by design or complete and utter misdirection, we turned into the nearest big town, since we obviously were not going to get to Paris by nightfall.
We three of us, cold, hungry, and lost, were in Reims.
With a child's concept of time and space, the ride might have taken 8 hours or 80 minutes, for all I knew.
And looking at a map today, I have no idea how dad took that exit that led us to Reims, since clearly Nancy is well below it.
Mother was asleep in the front seat, but I was very awake now, having decided that if she were sleeping, I would be on duty as co-pilot for my father, still doing the mitten jig every minute.
The thing with family car trips is that they are not tour guide jaunts, who get announcements in 5 languages like, "
Turning your heads, you will now see Reims approaching to your left", whereupon docile tourists in coaches do as they are bid, and suitably enlightened, they open their green Michelin guides to the Reims section.
No.
Dad and I simply, and with expert economy of speech, looked at the passing signs and wondered where we were.
Théâtre this, Republique that, and Musée the other.
A million towns in France are exactly the same, but undaunted, dad kept driving, no doubt on the lookout for a nice, but not too costly hotel to kip down his tribe.
That's when it happened.
Imagine me, a child in warm earmuffs, and a little cute beige Christian Dior coat, leaning over my father's shoulders as he drives, suddenly turning in slow motion (why are unforgettable memories always in slow motion, as if in a dream?) and seeing a long foggy avenue to my right.
In that exact moment, in fact, as dreams tend to be, with perfect timing, the fog lifts slightly and to my right is an enormous edifice, in more shades of grey that I have ever seen in my whole life then, and even now.
Reims Cathedral loomed to the right of our car and thus stunned my father and I into submission, as it had for over 1600 years to families the world over, come to pay their respects.
I prod mother awake.
Years later, she said the sight that she beheld as she opened her eyes was like in a gothic nightmare, all jutting spires, and overly imposing saints staring at her, no, through her very being.
Wow, I am so happy my memory is one of shared awe, not fleeting, devilish terror as hers.
And now I must confess that I love Reims. And I'm very scared of it at the same time.
What was it that Queen Marie said?
"
...that mighty cathedral rising like a ghost of unimaginable beauty from a grey mass of formless ruins".I was seeing it a good 70 years after she had, and yet that description SIMPLY cannot be improved upon.
With fog spiralling around us in the massive square in front of the cathedral, my father held my little gloved hands, approaching to pause to look at the august doors, and their
weirdly carvings.
I was a stoic little kid, and would never confess to fright or discomfort, but he must've sensed me quaver through our joined hands as I looked up and up and up to the reliefs of saints in Christian agony.
He hurried me along, and there before us, stood the most enormous cavity of a nave you have ever seen in your life.
When, years later, I read that armies had lodged themselves in that self-same cathedral, including possibly (disreputably) a German ancestor of mine, or two, I understood.
Yes, a child has a memory of bigness that is by its very nature, exaggerated. Anyone who has ever tried to visit their grade school as an adult, will know exactly that feeling, "...was my desk really that small?".
But Reims cathedral defies magnitude.
First, though I've since seen photographs of its interior which shocked me for its brightness, the Reims I knew was as dark as sin, and nearly as welcoming.
I cannot remember the layout exactly, but never will I forget the dazzling statue at the centre of
Saint Joan, yes, that Saint Joan, who is not buried there having had her ashes thrown into the Seine, but who we British had selfishly put to death.
But Saint Joan HAD been inside Reims, as she witnessed the fruit of her battles in the coronation of that duplicitous king, Charles VII.
In fact, Reims cathedral for centuries fulfilled the same function Westminster Abbey did in England -- not only the last resting place of the august Elizabeth I, and a slew of other kings, but also the place of their crowning before God.
I have been to both, and I have to say, Reims is the place where even a king can feel humbled (or indeed, a queen), not the dear old spinsterish Abbey.
I am not sure if all parents do this, or it was just mine, or even, if it was the knowledge that we were "just" in a church, for all its jumped up grandiosity, but my parents let me wander all alone for a good 15 minutes.
Tombs passed me by, as I inched my way around the littered chairs in the middle of nave -- which then, as now, I found a little awkwardly-placed.
I saw him.
He must've been middle-aged, but to me he was old. A man wearing a black overcoat, holding a candle in his hand, praying with his lips moving, but in French, so that the sound was like a gushing stream in soft flow.
"Je vous salue, Marie, pleine de grâce.
Le Seigneur est avec vous...
(Je vous salue Marie, pleine de grâce...beautiful, just beautiful)
I stood there, transfixed, for seemingly hours.
But even so, I was careful not to be seen by him, conscious that I was intruding into a very private moment, one that fascinated me, because I had never seen my own father in such a position.
Children's ultimate yardstick being all things parental, of course.
And just like that, my parents reappeared. In their eyes I saw my marvel mirrored back at me, so I knew that, veterans of many cathedrals themselves, this was a special one nonetheless.
I turned back, as we left, having yet to learn the lesson of Lot's wife. One last look, one last frisson.
Reims...
Even its very name suffuses me with a chill of majesty that I believe we mortals were bade by God to know as the word "awe".
We went inside our car, and drove now in the darkness, carefully, with hand on the horn.
The streets were empty (and I've been told by many Frenchmen, that Reims at night, is nearly dead), so whatever blessing we had been given inside the cathedral, followed us on our way to our lodging.
Neither my parents nor I recall the name of the ENORMOUS hotel we ultimately found to lay our weary heads, but I do remember one thing about it.
My dad mentioned what a wonderful cathedral her city had, and the concierge lady, who sported a manly blond haircut -- a French
Gertrude Stein -- took about 10 minutes to teach him the right pronunciation of said city, with such a gutteral accent, emphasising that nasally sound, that even a German would be proud of.
REIMS!"Reims"NON! REIMS! "Reims?"REIMS! REIMS!! REIMS!!!As long as I live, I will never forget Reims' farewell impression on my childish eyes, my tall father towering over this tiny corpulent Frenchwoman, as she schooled him (tired, dishevelled, in need of bed not elocution lessons) as to the correct pronunciation of her town, Reims.
If only Audioblogger were still around. Wouldn't we have fun listening to me saying
REIMS! over and over again, just like that lady concierge did over 20 years ago.
And no, I don't ever want to return to Reims again, despite my love for it. Some places do not need a repeat visit. Let them haunt your reveries until all your hairs be white, until you die.
Adieu, Reims.
Labels: France, Nostalgia, Roman Catholicism, World Culture
