I started writing a letter to Nina while I was in Edinburgh. I described what I was seeing, of course, but it was mostly about her. I told her how wonderful she was, and how much I had enjoyed our time together. Somehow, I wanted her to understand that the past few days had been magical - out of the ordinary.
I felt a very strong connection.
( I wrote)
It's a friendship I would like to maintain, despite the distance. Writing this letter feels, in a way, like talking to you - and I'd like to continue our conversation.
OK, a bit sappy. But it felt good. The letter would probably be waiting for her when she got home. I wrote to Steve, as well, and zipped off a few postcards.
After Scotland, I went to Amsterdam, and then Belgium. The battlefields and First World War cemeteries around Ypres were a bit of a pilgrimage for me, as they are for many Canadians. It was at St Julien, in 1915, that Canadian soldiers were caught in the first poison gas attack. Incredibly, they didn't run - they stayed to fight, and prevented a German breakthrough. Some of these incredibly brave, incredibly foolish men placed handkerchiefs, soaked in urine, over their mouths, as rudimentary gas masks.
Paris was a bit intimidating. It's a big city, and my schoolboy French wasn't quite up to the challenge. I understood very well, but getting complicated ideas across was much more difficult. I saw some of the Louvre, Les Invalides, the Eiffel Tower and the Champs Elysees.
Then it was off to Normandy, on another pilgrimage - to the D-Day beaches. My grandfather had landed on Juno Beach.
But the highlight of this part of my trip was when I followed a fellow traveller's advice, and went to Mont St Michel. It's one of the top three tourist destinations in France, and it was easy to figure out why.
I got that magical, other-worldly feeling again, so I wrote another letter to Nina. I wasn't sure if she would be home before this one arrived. I described what I had seen and done, but mainly I just let her know that I was thinking of her.
Chateaux on the Loire, and a quick swing through Burgundy ... I promised myself that next time I travelled to France - and there
was
going to be a next time - I would rent a car. Some places were just too hard, or too time-consuming to reach, on foot, or by bus and train.
I wondered what it would be like to travel with Nina. I'll admit that I was mostly thinking about the evenings, when we would return to our hotel, or Bed & Breakfast. I dreamed of making love with her, all the way, imagining all of the positions we could have tried, if only I had had condoms.
The next day, I bought some condoms. You never know.
Carcassonne was everything I thought it would be. I started another letter to Nina there. One of the advantages of letter-writing is that you can stop anywhere, and then resume your letter later, when you have more to say. I know: you can save a draft of an email - but who does that?
My next destination was Barcelona. It was raining lightly, so I put on a shell jacket. I started with the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's unfinished basilica. It's certainly unique - there's nothing like it. Opinions are pretty evenly divided, between those who hate it, and those who love it. I spent an hour trying to decide which group I belonged to.
Then I walked down the Rambla. It was still drizzling a bit, but not enough to discourage the tourists or the locals. The Rambla was a wide, tree-lined avenue, where you could watch people strolling about, out to see and be seen. There were a few cafes, but it wasn't totally commercialized - at least, not back then. But it was always crowded.
I found a huge, colourful indoor market, with some exotic spices that I had never seen before. The lady who worked there struck up a conversation with me. She quickly exhausted my inadequate Spanish, and switched into French, which I could handle. I was asking about the saffron, when she glanced over my shoulder. She asked me to turn around.
- "That man - in blue. You see?" she said. "And the lady in the coat?"
I saw exactly what she meant. The guy wasn't wearing a raincoat, or a jacket. His clothing was worn - almost shabby. A local, then - definitely not a tourist. But he was looking up, to right and left, as if he was seeing the market for the first time.
He was keeping pace with a black woman in a long coat. When she stopped, to browse at one of the stalls, he stopped, too, and started looking around as if he was a fan of the architecture. Very suspicious.
The woman had a small purse on her hip. It was open, because she had just bought something - or was going to. The man stepped a little closer to her.
I moved into the middle of the aisle. When he closed in on her, I was sure that he was going to reach into her purse. Two quick steps, and I was next to the guy. I just shoved him, with two arms.
He staggered, and regained his balance a few feet away. Now, an innocent person would have been shocked, and would have come out with something along the lines of 'What the hell?' This guy saw me glaring at him, and just slunk away.
The woman in the coat had turned around, and was looking at me, bewildered. She was black, young, and strikingly pretty. And confused.
It was the lady at the spice stall who saved me. She called the black girl over, and explained everything. After a false start in Spanish, they spoke French. The fellow behind her was a well-known pickpocket, who had been in and out of jail. The police knew him, but they couldn't follow him around all day. She had pointed him out to me ... and I had saved the young lady. The spice woman made it sound a lot more heroic than it actually was. I'm pretty sure that I blushed.
But the black girl was suitably impressed. She held out her hand - palm down, limp wristed. "Celine." she said. "Merci, Monsieur...?"
- "Chris." I took her hand, and held it for a moment. "Enchante." I said.
- "Oh, you speak French?" she said, pleasantly surprised.
I apologized, in advance, for my Canadian accent. Some French people can be very fussy about language. Celine wasn't one of those. She was delighted to learn that I was Canadian, and that it was my first day in Barcelona.
- "You must let me show you the city, then." she said. "Have you seen the Sagrada Familia?"
- "Ahh ... I was on my way there." I fibbed.
- "Then we shall see it together. I insist. It is the least I can do, after you saved me."
- "It was nothing." I said.
- "Not for me." she said.
God bless my parents, for sticking me in that French immersion school. I could understand 90 to 95% of what Celine said. I spoke slowly, frequently hesitating as I searched for the right word. She was very patient.
- "I understand English, too." she said. "But your French is so charmant, so genial ... it is a pleasure to hear."
Well, 'charmant' is good, and so is 'genial' (nothing to do with genius, in case you're wondering).
Celine was well-educated, and surprisingly knowledgeable about Canada. She was curious, and asked me quite a few questions. I answered in French, as often as I could, but she understood me very well if I switched to English.
She was French-born, but her family hailed from Senegal - except for her paternal grandfather, a white Frenchman. "He gave me this." she said, tapping her aquiline nose. Now that I looked more closely, I realized that it did set her apart. She had dark brown skin, full lips, and big brown eyes, but with that nose, she looked very exotic.
- "Oh, the rest is all African. Well - mostly." she laughed, running her hands down her flanks and hips. Her long coat was particularly tight across her full chest. I looked, of course. She wanted me to look, and smiled when my eyes finally returned to her face.
Celine knew a great deal about Gaudi, and art in general. She was a wonderful guide, and enjoyed showing me the basilica I had already seen.
I didn't feel too guilty about fibbing. It meant that I was able to split my attention between the church, and Celine. She had great legs, and moved gracefully, like a dancer. She seemed fully aware of where my eyes were focused, and went out of her way to give me a show. She swayed as she walked, with slightly exaggerated hip motions.
She also adjusted her long coat a dozen times, pulling it tighter across her chest, or her backside. I didn't need Moe's advice to read these signals. French girls, it seemed, didn't waste time on subtlety. The only thing I wasn't sure about was why she was doing it.
It was for my benefit - there was no doubt about that. But I couldn't help wondering how she had made up her mind, so quickly, that she was going to put on this show for me. Was she just flirting? Or was I being seduced?
- "Have you seen the house of Picasso?" she asked. "No? You must. It is not far."
- "Lead on." I said. "I would follow you anywhere."
She liked that comment, if her grin was anything to go by.
I would really have liked to have Moe around, to coach me. Celine was exotic, hot, and a highly skilled flirt - or seductress. I really hoped that it was the latter.
But I had absorbed Moe's lessons enough to remember to act with confidence. Why
wouldn't
Celine want to seduce me? I was a nice guy, decent looking ... And if I was completely wrong about her intentions, so what? She was five years older than me, as it turned out - but it didn't seem to matter to her, and it certainly didn't bother me.
The Picasso Museum was no big deal - I'm no art expert. It didn't have any of his famous paintings - those were in galleries around the world - but they had hundreds of his sketches. The guy was absolutely obsessed with a painting by Velasquez, nearly 300 years earlier. But Celine was really keen on this stuff, and it was fun to watch her grow animated as she tried to explain it to me.
We were there for quite a while. My stomach growled - loudly. I apologized, but Celine only laughed. "Listen to me, talking on and on about art, when you need to be fed." Then she snapped her fingers. "Ha! I can combine the two - art and food. Will you let me buy you dinner? I owe you that much, at least, after you saved me from that thief."
- "I would be happy to have dinner with you." I said. "But there's no need for you to pay."
- "Nonsense." she said. "You are in my neighbourhood. You would do the same for me if we met in Canada."
She took me to a restaurant called the Four Cats, where Picasso and his friends used to eat - often for free, because the original owner was a sucker for art and artists. It was an awesome place.
- "This is impressive." I told Celine. "I'm in your debt. I would never have found this restaurant unless I had met you." It was true. In those days, we couldn't just pull out our phones and find the top 10 places to eat in Barcelona. You had to read your Lonely Planet guidebook, or get your information from a tourist office, or a fellow traveller.
I don't remember what I ate. I was getting more and more turned on by this exotic French-Senegalese woman. She didn't need the long coat anymore. When she took it off, my jaw dropped so far, it bruised my sternum.
She was outrageously stacked. Her breasts couldn't have been real. And the rest of her reminded me of the song 'Brick House'. It didn't escape my notice when she got her hands stuck in the arms of her coat, which had the effect of thrusting those massive boobs towards me. And of course Celine was watching my face, to make sure that I hadn't missed the point(s).
But there was another signal from her, which even Moe might have missed. Celine was calling me 'tu', rather than 'vous'. It's impossible to duplicate in English, where the personal pronouns are identical: you.
In France, though, the difference can be very significant. The French are quite reserved, with strangers. Using 'tu' indicates a degree of familiarity, or of intimacy. Celine was either extremely open, or she was sending me a verbal message, along with all of the visuals.
