The Church and the Curio Shop

We're walking back down towards the railway station, luggage on our shoulders and biting cold at three in the afternoon. We've said bye bye to the only person we came across here who spoke any words of English, the young proprietor of the cafe we found refuge at for the half hour before our train came. On the road, on the main street through Walcourt that curves down from Grand Place to the railway tracks, there is hardly anyone, the shops shut because it is Sunday, people staying warm in their homes.

We say our last few Bonjours to, a little earlier, the couple eating lunch at the table next to ours at the cafe and now, to a man with a dog who walks past us. Here, you quickly learn to say Bonjour to anybody you pass on the street, not because you suddenly like saying it, but because you must, it is a sign that you are not unfriendly. In this heart of French Belgium where we saw only one other person who didn't look like them (It doesn't seem like the town sees too many), a pastor appointed to Walcourt's church from Burkina Faso (!) who came up and spoke to us (and he spoke French, the language the locals speak), it is a sign that they are looking for from these foreigners.

But people are friendly, and civil. And scarce. Walcourt is small, the kind of town which has one or maybe two shops of each kind.

Behind us is the church, towering, utterly contrasting with the scale of the town itself. Great steps lead up to its entrance. We went inside this morning. It is immensely turned out (as my friend said looking around, "You've got to love Catholic extravagance"). What was immediately remarkable was that this was a real living church, untouched in comparison to the Sacre-Coeur or Saint-Denis in Paris, or St.Michael's in Brussels, churches that are perhaps considered "greater" than the one I had just entered, but as a result of which, walking into them you are greeted by a sight of tourists in shorts walking around with cameras, barriers erected to block public access to parts of it, brochures in various colours in shelves along one side, and a notice every fifty feet asking you for "suggested contribution 5 Euros". And while I'd still feel awe at the scale and the adornment of it, too much of its aura was lost; inside every one of these great churches, I've felt shortchanged of the atmosphere that, standing before it and gawking at its construction from the outside, you imagine must inhabit a space such as this. Today, service begins, and as always when I'm listening to exhortations from a priest in a language I don't understand, my focus wavers, and my eyes wander unhurriedly. This place is massive, built with handsome stone, the stained glass lit up so brilliantly that you are sure there is electric light somewhere up there, the orchestra resonating when it plays. Old women who have been waiting for this moment all week go up to the lectern and address the pews. When a section completes, there is a hush, and a chorus of voices sings words in Latin, ineffably heightening the atmosphere. I gawked at this church too from the outside; nothing took away from that feeling once inside either.

When I took a walk around Walcourt later, I could see the church from anywhere, it is there like a lodestar. It is built on top of a hill with ramparts stretching around and away from it. When you look around standing there on the mount, you realize it is a wonderful, still-standing illustration of the time and the reasons for which the town's main installations were built this way -- walk to the edges of the mount and you find that this is the highest hill around, with a view of anything that is going on for kilometres around you -- from here, looking around into the descending distance, it is not too difficult to imagine guards and nightlamps flashing coded messages and a stealthily advancing enemy.

Last night, just like the day, was cold. While the lady at the bed and breakfast was nice, and she wanted to ask us a few curious questions, and I wanted to talk to her, we find that we are simply unable to communicate with each other. Interactions with people are few, and lonely. Darkness descends much earlier than the night. There is nothing to do then except stare out the window of my room, wondering what goes on in those houses with chimneys down below.

Now, we pass the curio shop we went into the day before. It is open. Yesterday, the lady excitedly pointed to the agarbathis next to her scented candles when we exchanged greetings at the counter, "L'Inde!" she says, pointing to the rack; "Yes, they're Indian too" we say, looking at each other before turning to smile at her. "Hmmm, Bangalore" I say to my friend as if examining the manufacturer's label, deciding it would be rude not to pick them up after the enthusiasm she has shown in making the connection between us and her agarbathis. We exchange a few words, she in French and we in English of course, actual communication left to giving each other somewhat helpless smiles between half-sentences, look around this little place she has put together in that warm, individual manner of curio shops, and take our leave. Today I peer inside as we walk past, it is a Sunday, the day and the street deserted as Walcourt's streets always seem to be, but there she is inside, busily straightening a clock on the wall and preparing for unseen customers.

Every couple of minutes, a car drives past and right through town, people with maps in their hand pausing at the fork down the road trying to figure out which way to go. It must be nice to explore the Belgian mountainside in a car, with heat to keep you from freezing while you're doing it. Those two women will probably traverse a satisfying part of the Ardennes this weekend. With trains only twice a day and a bus service that, almost funnily, comes to a near complete shutdown during the weekend, there are only so few points on a map you can put a finger on without one. If you had a car you'd probably spend a pleasant hour or two looking around Walcourt's church and stopping at a cafe, before you decide you will head down the road to somewhere else. If I had wheels maybe I would've seen more of this place. And maybe less of it, too.

Surprisingly, there are other people waiting for the train. Both when we got off the train from Charleroi yesterday, and this morning when we came to check when the afternoon one was, we were the only people in the vicinity. The goods train that we saw yesterday on the adjoining set of tracks with graffiti scribbled all over the walls of the bogey -- very incongruously for gentle Walcourt -- is still there, unmoved. Yesterday we got off on one of the two tracks for the single passenger route that served the town. The conductor, looking stern and dressed delightfully, red waistcoat, crisp black jacket, red-and-black hat, blew a conclusive whistle once we did, after looking up either end to make sure nobody was still getting on. We walked past a waiting area-cum-station house set a few metres away from the tracks, with not a soul anywhere. As the train pulled out of Walcourt on a chilly saturday afternoon, it had felt very much like we had been dropped off somewhere. Today, there is a group of backpackers and a pack of boy scouts on their way back from a field trip standing about on the platform.

Inside, the train is crowded. More boy scouts walk up and down the compartments, and there is a noisy football team of kids. At the first stops making its way to Charleroi -- the site of Brussels's feeder airport and a small, grim, industrial sort of city in its own right -- the crowd getting on the train, just as you watch and listen to them, is becoming more urban. Commuters move down the aisles, nobody particularly meets your eye. Only minutes after getting on to our train, it is clear that we have left Walcourt behind. Just as I did when I was walking back down to the station through the main street, peering in to the curio shop, I remembered the last two days -- the man at the cafe, huddling in the cold last night at a place that felt entirely foreign, the woman at the bed and breakfast, the inability to exchange two sentences with anybody and be understood -- and was left with a somewhat incomprehensible feeling about it all. I found myself wondering, because of all the other places I want to go to, if I would ever make another trip here. And maybe that is part of what made all of it, even the everyday little occurrences and exchanges, a little more poignant: I might never come back here again.