The River Path – by Tadhg Muller
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The rain came. Long steady sheets etching the sky in diagonal lines, the first glimpse of winter, a hint of cold in the air, and the street desolate. The rain fell on murky cobbles that mirrored the clouds. A dead-end town. Nowhere. Like a hazardous reef for a ship that you dragged your body onto, not sure of how, or why. You ended up marooned, sipping calvados and chewing on rillettes and torn warm baguette – at least I did.
We were caught by the downpour en route to another imaginary location, traversing the town in ever-expanding spirals, on the laneway, through the field, up the river and onto the ridge, until we reached a point of exhaustion and turning back. We’d taken to doing this time and time again, as the day came to an end, as it started to fade – our strange evening walks. The town itself had long since become an obstacle. As for me, I was like a caged animal pacing backwards and forth; that’s what those walks were mostly about, trying not to go out of my mind.
This time my child was on her scooter, in a bright Spanish dress, wild matted hair, Blundstone boots pulled onto bare feet that were tough like leather, long limbs, sharp features, and bright blue eyes that belonged in the wild.
And she looked back and smiled. A long walk home, a long walk in the wind and rain, and neither of us much bothered.
The wind brushed her hair, and I tilted my hat brim towards my eyes as we turned for home.
And we spied him, an old monk coming down the road from the Gare de Sarthe. His hood pulled up over his face like he’d made a journey in a time machine; like he’d arrived a thousand years into the future.
And I caught my reflection in the window of a car. The rambler’s trilby bent and worn and faded, a moth-eaten wool cardigan, a print cotton scarf – dishevelled.
And my girl turned her gaze from the monk and looked me in the eye. He was angling towards us. He pulled the hood down; an old, lined face, his blue-green eyes intense.
The three of us, you could have turned the clock back a hundred years in that old town, on those winding cobbled streets, out there in the middle of nowhere, in the deepest corner of the Sarthe, the dingiest corner of the Loire.
“The three of us, you could have turned the clock back a hundred years in that old town, on those winding cobbled streets, out there in the middle of nowhere, in the deepest corner of the Sarthe, the dingiest corner of the Loire.”
I was waylaid, and the child with me, not sure exactly how I had come to be stranded in that town, but sometimes you get caught out, time catches up with you, and the motion and movement and running and moving get trapped, things close in and, for a time, it is as if the journey has all but come to an end.
And the monk asked for directions to the abbey. The question lifted my spirits. Just a ripple in the monotony of life, a small ripple. But the sun was coming down. And the clouds had pushed the remains of daylight into the shadows. Up on the river Sarthe, somewhere in the Pays de la Loire, where somehow everything had conspired to bring my designs to an end, I had long since become all but invisible (mostly, that is), and that is no mean feat. Not unlike twilight, not unlike the fading sun and shadows, an art of filling the space in between … of falling into the cracks.
I explained that the abbey was a long way away, down to the river and snaking along the river, and it was a long hike. And there were no buses or train to that town, so I suggested a taxi. And he asked if I knew the way by foot. And I repeated: first the river path, then the abbey. And he shrugged. Indifferent to the darkness and the rain and the time and the cold. And I could feel my daughter pushing forward as if there was something that she was eager to hear or see. I could feel her anticipation. I shrugged.
I would show him the path, and he smiled. But first, we would need to drop my girl, scantily clothed as she was, inside the gate of our grande maison. And she pulled a face, which said it all.
And we walked along the grande rue. The monk asked my daughter something; she smiled in reply. My French was rudimentary at best and the conversation left me trailing. And the old monk caught the look in my eye, and something passed across his face, and I could see he got it. I rolled my eyes. She was something else, that girl.
He was from Venice and had taken a plane to Nantes that morning, and from there a train to the nearest station to the abbey, and he arrived in this two-bit town. And my daughter whispered that he had grown up here, in the Sarthe, and this made no sense. Sometimes the wires get crossed. I get that.
Everything was always so much straighter when I was out walking on the road alone. The act of having someplace to go had this way of anchoring me; not the endpoint, but existing at that moment.
Sure, maybe he did grow up here. Maybe shit wasn’t straightforward.
In my terrible French, I told the monk that I was Australian and that my ancestors were mostly Irish. The ones that got on their knees and got lost out on the road. I was catholic – in the universal sense, I guess. But it felt like a dumb thing to say, like a fact that didn’t matter. All rivers lead to the same place, down the river, into the Loire, along its length and out into the ocean. What did this man care for creed? He was searching out the river. Of this, I am sure.
And so the three of us trod the cobbled stones, and people passing in their cars turned to study us through the glass and the sheets of rain. And we left town. And came to the edge of the woods. And part of me wanted to tread the path with him, all the way to abbey and beyond, to just keep on walking along that river, all the way out of here.
“And so the three of us trod the cobbled stones, and people passing in their cars turned to study us through the glass and the sheets of rain. And we left town. And came to the edge of the woods. And part of me wanted to tread the path with him, all the way to abbey and beyond, to just keep on walking along that river, all the way out of here.”
We had long since passed our gate. I hadn’t stopped to drop my daughter home. I dared not pause. And I didn’t know why. But there was something in that ancient town. There was something there, some meaning in that fading moment, a hint of change looming. And the thought that on that walk, in the fading light, I might see something. A message perhaps, who knows.
I began to see the river, blue-black with the sheen of a polished stone, and across the river the ruined walls of the old chateaux, the gatehouse and the bell tower, crumbling stone, all the marks of the passage of time. And there was the river path, a thin winding dirt track that would take the monk upriver and to the thousand-year-old abbey, against the current, two hours by foot.
We shook hands and very gently he touched my daughter’s head, and she nodded, and with a sign of the cross, a blessing, he blessed the journey. And night had truly descended, and the rain lashed us, and you could hear the wind brought to life by the rustling of the ancient woods.
And we turned back together, my girl and me.
And she asked what would happen when he got to the abbey.
I was sure that someone would feed him.
And she asked if I thought the monk might tell someone about us.
– I don’t think so. But sometimes something very important happens. You couldn’t possibly explain it to anyone else; they just wouldn’t get it. But something was there, just now, us three together. And not everyone would see it, or know it. Most people would be blind to it and think me crazy for saying this ... And the priest would know that you could see it in his eyes.
And she asked me what I thought the purpose of that moment was.
– We met a stranger, and all that mattered was that we set him on the road that he needed to be on.
And we turned for home, and the rain slanted down through the light, illuminated by the moon, which sat just above the shadows of the woods, and everything else was swallowed up by the darkness. A guide. And if not a guide, a path. And if not a path, a step. A step to go on, to journey upriver, to follow even in the dark. And I could feel it: the sky would soon be clearing and the darkness would be pushed away. I’d push against the current. The path would clear. ▼
Image: Anna Hunko
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