Gâteau Basque

I don’t know if the universe has a plan: I may be cocky at times, but I’m not nearly cocky enough to pretend I have any idea what the universe may or may not be planning for me or for anyone. All I know—all I really can know—is that things have a way of working themselves out, even when you think that there’s nothing that can be done to make your situation better.

I live a life of extremes: I’m not an optimist nor a pessimist, but I can be both in the span of five seconds. I can convince myself that everything is wrong with the world, that I’ll die lonely and bored, that I’ll never make it as a writer and I may as well just hunker down in my pajamas and eat oatmeal until I run out of money… and one little phone call or text message can completely change my outlook on life, make me want to take a shower (to cheers from the rest of the population), comb my hair and actually drag myself out of my desk chair and away from my novel (or, more frequently, web comics with the word document containing my novel opened behind them) and out into the world.

Case in point: I woke up this morning after a weekend spent like jet lag: nights I couldn’t sleep and days I couldn’t stay awake. I was all set to spend Sunday in my pajamas with an episode of House running in the background of what was sure to be on the less-productive side of my productivity scale (yes, I have a productivity scale), when I got a call from a friend and an invitation to go on a hike.

My younger self would haved died at the mere suggestion of exerting myself to climb up a hill (mountain, actually), but this self was up and in the shower in five seconds flat–what had started out as a grey day spent indoors turned out to be the sunny fall day that had made this my favorite season long ago and that is a rarity here in the famously rainy and gray Basque region.

We set off in the car towards the border with France, and we soon reached Peñas de Aya, a mountain near the French border that, according to legend, was kicked up by a Basque mythical character called Sanson, inspired by the Biblical persona of Samson, a character I’ve loved ever since seeing the opera Samson and Delilah at fourteen and even more so ever since I discovered that Regina Spektor and I share the same soul.

It reminded me, strangely enough, of another famously cloudy city: San Francisco. When we moved there for a year, I was twelve, and my father used to pack the four of us (my youngest sister was six) into the green Land Cruiser he drove at the time to wind the snakey turns up to Muir Woods, just over the bridge in Marin County. He would force-march us through the mulchy trail, exclaiming over every massive Redwood, “Isn’t it incredible?” And it was… the first dozen times.

But here, I was the one exclaiming, the one whipping out my camera at every turn to take a picture of the pitching cliffs that extended over grassy fields and out to the towns nearby. From afar, we could see San Sebastian, like Rio with its Jesus standing over the city. It looked so small from up so high–it hardly seemed possible that the last six weeks could have been spent in a place so small, that everything I’d done and all the memories I’d created were restricted to that little town, which looked like a model town from Mr. Rodgers.

When we reached the top, we stood for awhile, looking out at the view, before another group, this time a group of Spaniards, plopped themselves down next to us and pulled out a packed lunch. They ripped pieces off of baguettes and made mini sandwiches with ham and cheese. They swigged wine directly from a bottle they passed around, a habit I had picked up long ago in Cannes that the French had always scoffed at, claiming that if they were ever caught at a picnic without glasses, they would forego the wine altogether.

Suddenly, we realized we were hungry.

Into the car we went, off towards the French border, which we crossed, our destination a tiny town called Sare in French and Sara in Spanish. When we arrived, I was struck by how different it seemed–the Spanish side of the Basque Country–el país vasco–seems just that: Basque. The French side, however, is strikingly, purely French. Perhaps less than Hendaye, which I had visited last year–at least here, the signs were posted in both French and Euskara, but I felt strangely back in my element as I ordered a café noisette instead of the café cortado I’ve become accustomed to ordering here in San Sebastian (both consist of a shot of espresso with just a little bit of foamed milk on top.)

To go with our coffee, we split a gâteau basque, a rich and buttery cake filled with a layer of either jam or cream–we opted for cherry jam, which was sweet and perfect against the sandy, barely sweet cake. The three of us finished a cake meant for four in record time and soon were back on our way towards Spain. With a bonne soirée instead of my now typical agur, we were back outside, stopping in at a small, local church before heading off on our way.

In the impeccably kept cemetery, we ran into a French woman devouring her own gâteau basque, this one filled with cream. She spoke no Spanish: although the border is only minutes away, people from each country tend not to be able to switch languages with as much facility as one might think. “I mean no disrespect to the cemetary,” I translated later for my English friends, “But it’s such a beautiful day.”

One thing had nothing to do with the other, and yet I understood.