Lonely Sky
Side 1, Track 2
This is another in a series of stories drawn from the 1975 Chris de Burgh album, Spanish Train And Other Stories. I have endeavoured to be faithful to the spirit of the stories and in some cases include lyrics relevant to tell the tale. As with any fiction, there will also be cases where some license is taken in order to create and complete a story line.
Technically La Bise belongs to Switzerland.
It starts in the Swiss Alps and builds strength in the north before blowing across Lake Geneva and then southward into France. In the summer it is a dry wind and when it arrives the rule of thumb is "avec la bise, lave ta chemise" or "when the bise blows, wash your shirt". The perfect day for hanging out the laundry.
Winter is another story. It becomes a cold, dry wind. Damn cold. When it passes over water it picks up the moisture and coats trees, fences, and the tip of your nose with a layer of frost. On days like today the trees shed those brittle leaves like the tears that rolled down my cheeks as I worked my way to the lonely café.
My woolen jacket kept me warm enough, but as the tiny frozen shards of ice swirled around my knees I quickened my pace and finally made it through the door of La Bicycletterie. I was glad for the familiar warmth and certainly glad it was not one of my many bicycle trips here because as the name hinted, the café was in front and a bicycle repair shop in the back. An incredible little place that seemed to be able to produce parts for just about any age of bike including my aging British bike that required many café visits.
A couple of centuries back there was an icehouse in the courtyard I had passed about a block away and today it would have been warmer inside surrounded by ice than it was outside in the empty streets. Winter was here and summer was really over and here I was, warm in a café with Christmas just a few weeks away. And I was alone. Alone was normal for me, or at least had been up until about four years ago when I was visiting a cathedral in Paris. Gothic cathedrals had always fascinated me and though I had not moved to France to spend my time in them, that is exactly what I had ended up doing. There did not seem to be such a thing as a 'small' cathedral. They were always gigantic and complex structures. Even a smaller cathedral thought it was big. Cathedrals took a long time to build. Notre Dame needed almost 200 years before it was completed so the builders and the designers began their work knowing they would never see it finished, leaving the cathedral to tell its own story.
Those cathedrals would also play their part in telling the story of the time I spent with the young woman I met in a Paris. I didn't know where our time together would go or where it would end up. Sitting here in La Bicycletterie and looking back over those four years, I had also accepted that like those who built cathedrals I would never know how her journey would end. Only that it would continue without me at her side.
When we first met, we had both been standing in the cathedral studying the Lord and Lady that had been forever surrounded by cold stone. Suddenly she spoke out loud and seemed to be asking the lovers why they were close, but not touching. It was something I had also wondered because I often stopped here when taking a break from my writing.
"Well," I answered on behalf of the couple. "We did not die together and by not holding hands one of us is free to start the journey through the sky without being held back, while the other can continue their journey through life."
She looked at the once loving couple with faces captured for all time in stone and said, "There is a poem about a Lord and Lady in their tomb that ends with, ‘What will survive of us is love’. Maybe whether your hands are clasped for eternity doesn't matter."
It had been Christmas then and like now, cathedral choirs were practicing and we had found refuge from the cold wind.
She grabbed my hand and led me to where the choir was rehearsing. Then she knelt to pray and to listen to the choir. I felt out of place standing there beside a kneeling figure so knelt as well, sharing that moment of listening to the choir with her yet not sharing the moment of prayer. A moment that became common over our time together.
Careful not to raise my voice too much I said, "I am not big on prayer.”
"Then quiet and listen. The choir sounds so lonely in this empty space."
From that moment we seemed to sail wherever the winds took us. Le Tramontane, Galerna Mistral, , and eventually here with La Bise, our bicycles, and this café.
With Le Tramontane we cycled along the coast where our summer was spent living in a house with huge oak timbers that evoked the soaring spaces of our favourite cathedrals. It was a wind that brought with it the aroma of Spain and while I wrote my stories, she drew images of the clouds. When the wind brought the heat we often retreated to a cathedral where the thick stone walls and closed shutters offered a break from the winds. Winds that were living up to a reputation captured by Victor Hugo who said“ The wind coming over the mountain will make me mad.” During one of those moments, we sat and gazed up into the lonely upper reaches where images in the stained-glass windows introduced us to more lords and ladies brought together in death, but never touching as they had in life.
By the end of November the cold winds arrived, bringing with it cold rain. After the flush of another New Year together, January dragged on dull and overcast. It was time for us to fly away again.
Galerna tested us. Days were set by the temperament of the wind. It could empty a crowded beach and leave us huddled together watching dark blue clouds move in and merge with the surface of the ocean. The storms could be sudden and I often retreated into my writing while she took refuge in a cathedral. She would return from those solitary visits quiet and restless. "The skies are empty," she would say. "Except for the clouds because even the birds will not come out today.” Galerna has a history of wrecked ships and dead sailors who were not ready for the abrupt changes that come with it. Understanding the wind's fickle nature and reputation helped protect those who got caught up in those lonely skies. I could not contain her restlessness and finally listened to Galerna who was telling me it was time to leave the Bay.
They say the Mistral winds have not only shaped the land, but they will shape your spirit. It blew away dust, cleaned the air, and played with us. It promised rain but never really delivered. It sent away the clouds and let us walk hand-in-hand on warm evenings and sit in old cathedrals lit with candles. The Mistral is the masterly wind and it was difficult for us to break free from its hold. It turned the warm waters cold as we swam together in the ocean under the clear skies the wind regularly delivered into our daily routine. Here we spent time in the largest cathedral we had seen. From where we sat the nave rose 42 metres above us with too many images to take in no matter how often we came to follow the stories that rose above us. At Christmas the sounds of the choir filled the whole cathedral with a ghostly sound that became something new as we moved about the nave and the transept that formed the Latin cross. She loved the choirs and like the Mistral, the huge cathedral was shaping her spirit as she followed the music as it soared higher and higher.
So, the time came once again when she wanted to sail further. Together we faced La Bise which had blown as the Roman Empire came to an end and that would ultimately take her away from me.
We found medieval cathedrals, Romanesque and Gothic churches, and passed through a doorway carved five centuries ago. As we sat in a church overlooking the city we heard the Children's Choir. Walking through the narrow and winding streets our hands no longer touched even when the cold winds sought us out. There was no joy in listening to the choirs and the old cathedrals now felt empty. Sitting with centuries-old sepulchres was to sit among the dead and it began to weigh heavily on me. Then as the summer faded away and the birds began to leave, she too looked in a different direction. By autumn she was no longer by my side.
As I sit in the café on this cold winter day, I can imagine her on the plane as the engines throttle up and push it faster and faster down the runway. I finally had the ending to a story I had been drafting for the last four years. I sensed the rumble and the roar as she started to lift off, drowning out the voice that had kept me writing as I had sailed beside her over the years. I looked at my watch. The plane would be climbing into the lonely sky and turning south. She would remain caged in that plane until it reached her next destination and set her free on a new path.
The voice telling our story started to fade away, no matter how much I strained to hear the words. Finally, there was silence. There was still a line to go to finish my story but it slipped away and would not return until she flew back to me.
I finished my coffee, closed my notebook, went back outside and looked up at the lonely sky. It was filled with nothing but the bitter wind of La Bise.
