Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Caunes-Minervois
Bumps in the road

          When visitors arrive, it is the custom in Western societies not to slaughter a fatted calf or to light bonfires and beat the drums, but to show them around.  That, at least, was what I had planned to do when my neighbor, Alline, arrived from New York Monday afternoon.

           I picked her up at Toulouse airport at 4:28, her connecting flight from Charles de Gaulle having been delayed three and a half hours.  Still, misguidedly relying on the GPS and the Queen's English, it took three, instead of two hours to arrive in Caunes.  Abandon all hope, ye who rely on the GPS alone, it were better that you had only used a map than that you rested your bosom on a digital device.

          Disillusioned, tired, I took out the Michelin map of Languedoc-Roussillon and l'Herault, and marked the route to Carcassonne, where I planned to conduct Alline Tuesday afternoon, after a tour of Caunes.  I also marked the route to Pézenas and to Mèze and Sète, to which we would go Thursday; to Toulouse, where I would have to take Alline Saturday, if she could not pick up a connection there from Carcassonne.  Tomorrow, Tuesday, would be another day and a different story.

           The tour of the Benedictine abbey and Caunes' oldest ruelles, which took place under sunny skies, was all I hoped my guest would want, as was the café crème we enjoyed on Place de la Republique.  We returned to the parking by the little bridge over the Double Argent (the "Double Money"), the stream that cuts through Caunes, and walked toward the gold Clio, glinting in the sun.

          I pulled out the remote control ("télécommande"), touched the button to open the vehicle, and --nothing happened.  I took out the second remote control key I had been given at the Renault leasing agency at Blagnac/Toulouse Airport and tried it: again, nothing.  I returned to the house and got the leasing papers, fishing out the emergency telephone number.  To their credit, the leasing company's 24-hour customer service personnel in Paris went into action immediately, promising me a replacement vehicle while my Clio was being returned to action, assuring that I would not be without a car during the term of my lease..

          To make a long story short, after two hours, a mechanic and a truck arrived and carried off my week-old Clio.  The problem, the mechanic said, was that the sensor associated with the battery was not functioning.   More troubling, the repairman (dépanneur) did not have a battery for the new Clio model.   In two days the car ought to be fixed, he said.   Not to worry, though, because a replacement vehicle would be provided me.  And, I and Alline would be driven to the nearest pick-up location, in Carcassonne, at no charge.

          The only problem was that the Renault pick-up location in Carcassonne has no automatic transmission cars, only manual, and I don't drive a stick shift.  The customer service personnel had failed to look at the contract to verify what kind of car I leased.  Worse, there are very few stick-shift cars available.  Finally, the customer service personnel informed me that as it was unlikely that the garage at Livignan-Corbières to which my Clio was taken for repair would be the pick-up location for my replacement vehicle, I would therefore have to pick up the Clio in one place and return the replacement vehicle in another.  As I had already used up one of the two taxi rides to which my contract entitled me going to Carcassonne, I would not have to pay to be driven to pick up the Clio, but I could not return the replacement vehicle there, and at my own expense would have to pay to be returned to where I left the repaired Clio.  I would have to pay for what would probably be a very long and expensive taxi ride even though the replacement service made the mistake of taking me to Carcassonne.

          By the time all this had revealed itself, it was six o'clock in Carcassonne.   It seemed only right to use the opportunity to visit the Cité, as we had originally intended, yet it was about a mile and a half away, on the other side of the traffic circle directly in front of us on which cars were converging at a steady speed.  Across the street was a self-serve car wash where someone might take pity on us and give us directions to the Cité.  Getting there would require running across the highway and arriving on the other side before a car exited or reached the circle.  It suddenly seemed as though Alline and I were characters in a French road picture, a sort of PG version of Going Places, Bertrand Blier's film about hitchhiking thugs.

          1,2...3 --we ran across the highway to the car wash and walked around to its back, where a woman in a pink sweater and a blond ponytail was power washing her car.  Despite saying "Mademoiselle" several times, it was only when we walked right up to her that she took any notice.  Before we had even gotten out a few words, in an English accent she told us, "I'm on a timer!" --and went back to her work.

          Another woman pulled up and I happened to walk up to her just as she was pulling out her wallet.  She was briefly startled, but rolled down her window.  She was French, and got out of her car to help us.  Just as she was explaining to us the road into town, my cellphone rang: it was the replacement vehicle department telling me I would not get a replacement vehicle tonight, but tomorrow.

           Having been told previously that I would have to pay for taxi rides, I reiterated her colleague's diktat, which she reversed.  I told her that as we were in Carcassonne, where we had intended to go before our day was spoiled, could we be picked up in about two hours and returned home?  No problem, she said.

           Meanwhile, fortune struck: while Alline was getting directions into the Citè, a young Turkish restauranteur who runs a kebab-house in Carcassonne stopped at the car wash.  Hearing of our plight, he offered to take us to the Cité.  In we jumped and made it to the Cité, which is always open.  There is an irony in that, as for most of its active history, it was supposed to be unbreachable.   That was, however before mass tourism arrived.

           Unlike my earlier visit, in the middle of the day last week, the Cité was almost deserted at seven-thirty in the evening.  It was possible to take a photo of the famous towers at the end of the long walk by the drawbridge without a single tourist claiming part of the panorama.  Many of the shops were closed, those that were open were closing up, and few of the restaurants were doing any business.   The church of Saint Nazaire, which last time had been closed to visitors on account of a wedding, was open and empty.  The sky was a pale slate blue and the wind blew a refreshing breeze: it was serendipity to be able to enjoy La Cité this way.

          After the visit, I called the replacement service to have a taxi pick us up and take us back to Caunes.  The woman I had spoken to earlier, who spoke French with a Spanish accent, rolling her "r"s, asked what I needed.  I explained that I and my guest were now stuck in Carcassonne, having been dropped there because of an earlier mistake in assuming that a stick-shift car would serve me as a replacement vehicle.

          "Do you want me to put you in a hotel for the night?" she asked, I think, seriously.

          "No, that would be too expensive.  Just get us a taxi and take us back home to Caunes-Minervois."

           About twenty minutes later, a taxi, driven by a young man who spoke both English and French and whose taxi was very fast, picked us up and took us home.  On the way there, I explained the complications posed by picking up a replacement vehicle in one place, and having to pick up the repaired car in another.

          "We have an expression which is apt in this case", he said.  "Sometimes someone proposes a solution to a problem that will work, but on hearing it, someone else won't accept it and raises all sorts of other problems.  When that happens, in France, we say,

            'Why make things simple, when they can be complicated?'"