Day 16: Cahors to Lascabanes
- Simon Pollack
- May 12, 2024
- 4 min read
Updated: Jun 29, 2024
Does rudeness know of no limit, no range beyond which it’ll cease?
When Jenny opines her coarse feelings, is there no way to seek peace?
I’m sorry to have to tell you, such comport is eighty years old
And only by prodding her harshly will she ever learn to be told
12 May 2024, Sunday
Distance hiked 23.7km (14.8m) | Ascent 602m |
The climb out of Cahors is steep but I am now bounding up these slopes like a mountain goat. It does feel good to stride past others clearly struggling (as I did on my first few days). Competitive, moi? As it goes, with this greater fitness I’m also noticing more muscles and more ribs, and the need to tighten the belt a bit more. This is all to the good.
It was a very pleasant day’s walking and I did it mostly alone. The rain returned after the sun that Cat had brought with her, but only for an hour in the middle of the day while I took shelter (and a coffee) at a café in Labastide-Marnhac. I briefly chatted to a Swiss lawyer, Benedicte, who was also taking shelter, and later I walked with her for half an hour. She works for Zurich insurance, as did I for five years ending a decade ago. Shortly after Labastide I passed Ferme Trigodina, a basic gîte Cat and I had stayed at 5 years ago run by a chap called Rémy who supplied paper sheets and uncertain piano playing while regaling those who’d listen about his socialistic philosophy (he hates those who drive BMWs, which, ahem, I do). I deliberately avoided staying there again.
I passed a group I’d later learn was a married couple and wife’s-best-friend from La Réunion, a French island possession in the Indian Ocean which has under a million population and representation in the French parliament. The chap, who was called Emmanuel, was a terribly nice fellow. When I arrived at Lascabanes I was too early for my chambre d’hôtes so I found an honesty-bar at the gîte-communal and while supping an apple juice Emmanuel and his wife(+1) turned up for their accommodation. I chatted to a few more pilgrims before it was time for my arrival and I met Emeline the hostess at Grange des 2 Vallées. I had a nice comfortable room and there were a couple of shared bathrooms. One other room was shared by two friends, Catherine and Christine, who were doing a week or two of the Chemin. The other room was taken by an elderly (late 70s?) Australian couple, Jennifer and David.
Jennifer in particular turned out to be an unpleasant person. While it was admirable that this couple, who’d done some skiing in March in Switzerland then pulled on their hiking boots to hoof it to Santiago itself, were taking such a physical challenge in their stride at this age, nothing could destroy the admiration more than a selfish un-pilgrim-like manner. Christine is vegetarian so Emeline prepared a delicious curry with lentils and vegetables plus rice: a well-balanced meal. As she laid it down Jennifer barked “is that it? Where’s the meat?” Later I expressed to Emeline (and the other girls) that I didn’t like Jennifer at all, and Emeline was delighted to hear someone shared her view and she admitted she almost cried when her meal was so demeaned. This was all happening in one of those environments of two languages. The Australians didn’t speak French, and the three French women didn’t speak English, and I was there as the only bilingual person. I leaned across to Jennifer as she started whining and pulling her face, and I said “Feign happiness. Feign happiness with the meal”: yes I was that direct, for I’d already seen her attitude and didn’t like it. To this she replied, “Feign? Feign? What does that mean?”. Her husband filled in “Oh yes, I know that word, f-e-i-g-n” and I clarified “pretend”. “Never heard that word before in my life” came the curt vowels and broad ignorance from the woman. Not only is she rude, but she’s stupid.
The rest of the evening passed. As it would. I rather liked Christine and Catherine and spent the evening chatting to them in French, not bringing the other two into the conversation (they simply didn’t deserve it: in other situations of this type on the Chemin I did a lot of easing the communication flow between the two languages). At one point Jennifer made a comment that the French have no entrepreneurial spirit, for shops close on Sundays and a fair bit on Mondays too (and tomorrow was Monday). She and David had worked out there was a grocery store in the next town that was open till noon on Mondays. It turns out that Christine and Catherine were both entrepreneurs, the former as a trader in used printer-ink cartridges, and the latter as an estate agent. I suggested Jennifer might like to open a shop in rural France on a Sunday and see how much business she gets.
The next morning at breakfast Emeline put a nice bowl of bread on the table. Jennifer took five pieces, David took four, and they took almost all the butter and all the jam (including that which they dumped into their yoghurts). It left about four bits of bread to share between Christine, Catherine and me. Oblivious to this piece of monstrous rudeness they’d committed, the Australians munched away. I’ve never seen anything like it, though it later became a much-repeated anecdote for which I am grateful.
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