Day 97. Nimes. Nov 11 2001

A day of rest.

Our disgust at the horrific carnage of the night before cast a pall over us for the rest of yesterday evening and it seemed to take so much of the beauty out of everything we had seen in Nimes. It was hard to reconcile such a beautiful city with such ugliness.

But it unfair to tar the whole city with the same brush. Nimes is a very beautiful place, a glistening city of marble and stairs. Oh the stairs. They have left a lasting impression on us, most especially in our calves.

The long sinuous curving stairs that cling to hills in the Jardin de La fountain, winding their way through vertical avenues lined with plane trees, impossibly green in the depths of November. Stairs that climbed over a waterfall that spiked into a small pond far below. When the stairs finally burst from under the trees to the base of the Tour Magna it was with a shock. The air had grown warm beneath the sheltering trees and now the cold assaulted us once more.

The great tower rose up like a monolith, impossibly white. The inside was alarmingly hallow, like a jar flipped upside down and scrapped clean by a child desperate to have every last taste of flavor. All that rose in the centre was a modern staircase of concrete, looking alien with it’s smooth spiraling contours in the rough brick of the tower. Climbing stairs became painful now, a strain on our legs and feet. The top, when it came, was a burst from the darkness to brilliant light and blowing air. The view, or the wind, was breathtaking.

Knowing the emptiness that was in the tower beneath us I was overcome by waves of vertigo even as I took in the landscape. I tumbled back against the wall and held the cables to the lightning rod that rose next to me and reflected on the irony of being electrocuted while worrying about the dangers of height. All that separated us from the gardens below was a thin lip of stone and a fatal drop. I cannot say now that I was sad to climb more stairs, this time down.

Next were the stairs of the Maison Carre, the building a testament in stone to so many of the reasons we came on this trip. Flawless white marble, chipped and stained by the passing eons, in a design so ancient and familiar that we almost felt compelled to drop to our knees and genuflect to gods long dead.

Then there were the stairs in the parks. The long singular staircase of Imperial faith leading to the sheltered sanctuary of the ancient temple, dedicated to Diana I have since discovered.

Then the short stairs that descended to spring of Nemausus itself, and exposed us to the source of all Nimes fountains.

Fountains abound, almost as much as stairs. The Jardin De La Fountain of course, but the Place D’Assas as well with it’s illusion of waters flowing uphill to fall in a cascade on a startled man while nearby a monolithic face spews water.

Or the Fountain Pradier with its cryptic name and nameless heads spewing forth a torrent of icy water that chilled to the bone.

Finally there are rough hewn wooden steps of the arena as well. Always today my mind is drawn back there. The pain and the suffering we saw has left me filled with words and yet speechless, filled with poetic rage and yet reduced to incoherent ranting. I write rants against the human race, filled with shame and despair for the future of our species. I am surprised by the depth and virulence of my own reaction.

But enough. Nimes has been a place of outstanding beauty and horror for us and I do not have the right words to describe the experience.

It has become cold and and the Mistral wind has picked up clouds of rain that turn the sky a sickly yellow. The small courtyard of the hostel is soaked and even racing to our evening meal has become a challenge. We will roll ourselves tight in our bunks and try to save as much of the radiators warmth as we can for the rest of the trip.

We have the room to ourselves tonight and it will be nice to be able to roll over without worrying that the creaks and groans of our bed will not awaken the room. Tonight I hope to sleep without dreams.

Next Entry: Day 98. Avignon
Previous Entry: Day 96. Nimes