Page 282 - And the Mountains Echoed (novel)

Another nursery rhyme. This one about the bridge in Avignon.
Pari hums the tune for me, then recites the lyrics:

Sur le pont d’Avignon
L’on y danse, l’on y danse

Sur le pont d’Avignon
L’on y danse tous en rond.

“Maman taught it to me when I was little,” she says, tightening the knot of her
scarf against a sweeping gust of cold wind. The day is chilly but the sky blue and
the sun strong. It strikes the gray-metal-colored Rhône broadside and breaks on

its surface into little shards of brightness. “Every French child knows this song.”
We are sitting on a wooden park bench facing the water. As she translates the
words, I marvel at the city across the river. Having recently discovered my own
history, I am awestruck to find myself in a place so chockful of it, all of it
documented, preserved. It’s miraculous. Everything about this city is. I feel
wonder at the clarity of the air, at the wind swooping down on the river, making
the water slap against the stony banks, at how full and rich the light is and how it
seems to shine from every direction. From the park bench, I can see the old
ramparts ringing the ancient town center and its tangle of narrow, crooked
streets; the west tower of the Avignon Cathedral, the gilded statue of the Virgin
Mary gleaming atop it.

Pari tells me the history of the bridge—the young shepherd who, in the
twelfth century, claimed that angels told him to build a bridge across the river
and who demonstrated the validity of his claim by lifting up a massive rock and
hurling it in the water. She tells me about the boatmen on the Rhône who
climbed the bridge to honor their patron, Saint Nicholas. And about all the
floods over the centuries that ate away at the bridge’s arches and caused them to
collapse. She says these words with the same rapid, nervous energy she had
earlier in the day when she led me through the Gothic Palais des Papes. Lifting
the audio-guide headphones to point to a fresco, tapping my elbow to draw my
attention to an interesting carving, stained glass, the intersecting ribs overhead.

Outside the Papal Palace, she spoke nearly without pause, the names of all the
saints and popes and cardinals spilling from her as we strolled through the
cathedral square amid the flocks of doves, the tourists, the African merchants in
bright tunics selling bracelets and imitation watches, the young, bespectacled