June 13, 2012
Noah, further mysteries, and shrugging of the shoulders and not caring: Home to Monpazier (Dordogne)
ONE OF the puzzles about Noah is where all the water came from. Up to the height of Mount Ararat, which is higher than Mont Blanc. And where it went afterwards, given that everywhere was flooded as well.
Well, this week we found the answer to the first question. It just rained and rained, here at home just as it did back then. I had got as far as looking for carpentry classes, just in case. And then, this morning it stopped, just as we were setting off. The sky then stared at us in a grumpy mood but it never actually rained. It just stayed cold. Well, no matter: it will all be forgotten in a few days. Cycling is like that.
Ann at the baker's shop, where her husband, the master baker, is head of the voluntary fire brigade, watched us leave with her baguettes packed in our bags. Her expression was a mixture of admiration and confusion.
We dropped immediately into the valley, rushing round sweeping and unobstructed bends, then started the climb up the other side. I rode this way once with a Slovenian couple. They weren't the first to think that a landing on a green bend was the top. My call of "You're nowhere near the top" didn't need translation. Their dismay showed that they'd understood well enough.
An hour passed, then two, over the gentle Lot and up the endless rise that skirts Monflanquin on its conical hill. We passed through Biron, where the Germans arrived one day and carted all the men off to extermination camps. Without ever explaining why or still less apologising.
Karen looked at their names on the horizontal slab of stone that is their memorial. Then silently, reflectively, she walked to the back.
"I felt a chill," she said. "I couldn't stay there. It was all hands being raised in agony."
Well, times move on. Tonight, in the bar at our campground, a mixture of nationalities are beerily watching Holland play Germany in the European soccer championship. There's great rivalry between,the large and small neighbours. They played a match a year or two back as well. The Dutch were on one side of the stadium and the Germans on the other. Suddenly, the Dutch raised posters and showed them to the rival fans across the way.
They said: "Can we have our bicycles back?"
Among Germany's lesser sins during the war was to steal all Holland's bicycles.
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