I raised my voice to reach her above the moaning of the engine. “The whole thing’s foolish.”
She broke into wild laughter. “That’s why I like it, like you, like myself.”
We hovered on the brim of a valley; then commenced to sink as though the earth had given way beneath us. Far below, as far as eye could reach, were orchards smoking with white blossom. Through the heart of the valley a river ran; standing on its puny banks was a gray old town, blinking in the wind and sun like a spectacled grandmother who had nodded to sleep, and wakened bewildered to find spring rioting round her.
“Where is it?”
“Lisieux, unless I’m mistaken.”
“Then you know where we’re going?”
“More or less.”
We pulled up in a drowsy, sun-drenched market-place outside a sleepy café. At tables on the pavement, with hands in their blouses and legs sprawled out, sat a few artisans, eyeing their absinthe. Houses tottered and sagged from extreme old age. Across the way a cathedral, scarred by time and chapped by weather, raised its crumbling sculptured towers against the clouds.
She took my hand as she stepped out. “You nearly did for us just now.”
“Who cares?”