Antrazein - Part I

I had always wanted to walk the Pyrenees. I had not imagined that when I finally did I would be searching for my little brother. When we were little Mum and Dad had taken us on holiday to the French side of the mountains. We visited Cathar castles, thermal springs; we saw prehistoric cave paintings and finished the trip with a long weekend in Toulouse. I had happy memories of the region; holidays that brought us together, that we all enjoyed, had been rare.
Of course, visiting a region as a child, on the tourist trail and with one's parents, is a world away from walking the hill paths, from taking the long quiet lanes and actually searching for someone along the way. My return to the mountains was more a quest than a holiday.
Such a trip would always have had a deep effect on me. Solitude and long days of walking act powerfully on my soul. Nonetheless, if I had known the dark secrets that lurk still in the backwaters of Western Europe I would surely have stayed on the tracks more worn with daily traffic, I would have avoided the cold shadows of the deepest valleys. I would even perhaps have resigned myself to the knowledge that my brother could not be found.
I had told Mum and Dad that I was going on a walking holiday, I had even told them where I was going. They had no way of knowing that I was travelling in search of Phil. They had not got on with Phil for a long time; they had not even heard from him for three years.
I preferred not even to mention the subject of my brother to my parents. We lived a lie together. We had pretended for a long while that things were normal, and the harder we tried the more bizarre family gatherings became.
'Have a lovely time dear' Mum had said. That was normal enough, but her embrace was hard, the release reluctant. She always said goodbye like a woman who had lost one of her children.
By the last time I saw Phil he had been living in London for a couple of years. I was his only link to the rest of the family. He never contacted me, but I would call his mobile from time to time, and keep calling until I got him and not his message box.
At first I had been able to persuade him to go to the odd football match, or at least to come down the pub for a pint. On that final occasion though, as had become much more usual, he would only meet in the morning for coffee. When he sat down at the little black table, sank into the deep chair, he looked like a man who needed a coffee a great deal more than I did.
The whole time we were together he seemed both exhausted and nervous. He played incessantly with a ring on his right hand, responded quietly but asked nothing about me and made no effort to keep our conversation alive. He had always been a little withdrawn, but this was much worse. When he left he barely muttered 'goodbye', and then he was gone.
I had no-one to talk to about how Phil had been at the coffee house. I certainly could not tell Mum, and I could not think of anyone else in the family who would not soon enough have passed on my news, my fears, straight to her and Dad.
In the weeks that followed I became more concerned. I called Phil's mobile but he never answered, never returned my calls or responded to my increasingly desperate messages.
A month passed like that. Too long I know, but life was like that for me in those days. I decided that I would call to see Carol, she and Phil had been close for a while and I thought that perhaps she might have seen or heard from him.
Now who am I to pass judgement, but Carol was as odd as might be expected of a woman who had once loved my brother Phil. To my knowledge the curtains of her ground floor flat in Hounslow were never opened. The walls of the dismal interior were adorned with shocking, even gruesome, posters. It was black in there; she must have spent most of her money on candles. I imagined that eventually the wax flows would come together in one great flammable glacier, covering the flat, devouring its contents.
'Nah' she said as she leaned over the table working on the contents of a little wooden bowl with the tips of her fingers, 'I haven't seen Phil for a few weeks.' Carefully she laid out a crushed mixture of grass and tobacco on three waiting papers, joined to make a broad triangle. 'I did speak to him on the phone the other day though.'
In the tiny kitchen next door the kettle rumbled to the boil and clicked off. Carol left her cone-shaped creation and went to make tea. There are people in the world who quite simply cannot make a decent cup of tea, Carol is like that. When she came back a few minutes later she gave me a cup of something pale brown; yellow globules of milk fat circulated on its surface. I took one sip; it tasted as if she had scooped the water out of the Thames. After that I let it sit next to me and waited for her to tell me what she had heard from Phil.
'Yeah' she said by way of preparing the ground. She held the spliff to her lips, pointing it at the ceiling so that she did not spill its sweet-smelling cargo. The lighter came up in the other hand and she puffed vigorously. The end of the cone roared and the lighter flame leapt. The space between us filled with exhaled smoke. 'He's lost his job' she said matter-of-factly ; her face had relaxed and her voice had become immediately languorous.
'At the library?' Phil had had his fair share of jobs.
'Yeah. Some kind of internet problem, he didn't tell me exactly what.'
Confronted with that I immediately thought what most people would think, but I could not believe it of Phil. 'Not something err...'
She pushed her smoke-laden breath out quickly and answered my unfinished question: 'Oh no, not kiddies or porn or anything. Not Phil.'
'Then what could it have been?'
Carol took the spliff away from her mouth and regarded it carefully. 'Phil had some strange ideas' she said, 'weird shit, magic and stuff.'
'What Phil?' I said incredulous. She made to pass me the spliff. I surprised myself, held up my hand,'No thanks' I said with a thin smile.
Carol looked surprised, a little affronted even, but her consolation was already in her hand. She pulled again and made to go on talking. 'He said something about going abroad, going to France.'
'Where in France Carol?' I did not pause to wonder about the gaps in Carol's story, I just wanted to know where Phil had gone; why could come later.
'Down in the Pyrenees I think, some place he's been interested in for a long time. When he was still here he read a book, it was about there, the high mountains and the valleys and stuff.'
'Did he tell you the name of the place Carol?'
She puffed and nodded slowly. She was gradually being drawn into the jaws of the sofa. 'He kept talking about a village; somewhere called, somewhere called, hold on, it began with an A. Atra..., Antra..., Antrazein. That's it, Antrazein. She was so pleased with herself that she sat a little more upright and took a long gulp of tea. Even she grimaced as she swallowed the foul brew.
Carol had not come to the doorto say goodbye. I left as quickly as I could once she stopped making any sense at all.
In the days that followed I kept trying Phil's mobile. At the end of the week the number became unobtainable. I used the web to look for Antrazein without success; my only lead was that, in a region of valleys called The Couserans, there were abundant place names alike enough to Antrazein that Google persisted in offering me them as alternatives, just in case my spelling, or my typing were at fault in the search.
I devoted all of my spare time to worrying or searching for clues about Phil. When my preoccupation spilled over into my work time I finally googled Antrazein and magic. I scanned dozens of useless results until I found one that stood out.
Such were the dark rumours and horrific associations in the pages I read that I knew immediately I would have to go to look for Phil in person. A project was due on my line manager's desk, I had been trying to finish it for weeks, but now, instead of getting on I was glimpsing the nightmares of a madman, and convincing myself that for some reason these twisted visions had drawn my brother to the place of their origin.
I had plenty of leave coming, but I had to ask to take it immediately. I had spent a few years wondering why I was being so diligent, why I did so much work on my own time and managed to lose flexi-time hours nearly every month. The need to go to look for Phil finally brought me some reward; despite their show of corporate disapproval, they could hardly claim that I had been a problem employee.
I flew to Toulouse and took a hire care from the airport. On a gloriously clear autumn morning I headed south towards the mountains. The countryside was green and rolling; the car radio played a bizarre mixture of old French songs and American pop. I enjoyed the ride. I thought neither about what was to come nor about my life in London; it was one of those times when it was impossible not to live only in the moment. These days I hardly remember what that is like.
Of all the places to choose to disappear my brother had come to a place of awesome beauty. An hour and a half from Toulouse Blagnac I was winding my way into the wooded valleys of The Couserans. I was tired from an early start, my eyes were sore and I was not thinking straight, but the blue sky and the mountains had me mesmerised. I drove on with little thought for the gite I had booked or for what provisions I might need when I finally found it.
I spent my first three days in the gite pouring over maps of the surrounding valleys. I found nothing. I wandered a little and asked locals if they knew of the name Antrazein. Everyone I met was friendly; they appreciated my schoolboy French but not one of them had ever heard of that mysterious village.
The gite was owned by a German, he had farmed in The Ariege for more than twenty years. He told me in better English than I had French, that the region had many lost villages, places which had emptied as industrialisation and war changed the face of France in the Twentieth Century. 'You need to speak to some of the real natives' he said one evening, ' the old people, perhaps the shepherds who live further up this valley.
And so, in the absence of a better plan, and blessed with sunny weather, I resolved to start a proper walking expedition. As my week in the gite came to an end I prepared to take my host's advice. I would go and explore the little used paths to the tiny hamlets and remote farmhouses where I might find someone who remembered old names otherwise entirely lost from memory. Even if the search for my brother turned out to be a wild goose chase, I would at least make the most of my time in the Pyrenees.
I wandered for three days, and although I met very few people on my way, all those I did encounter I asked of Antrazein. I found no-one who recognized the name. I was still worried about Phil, but I confess I found it easy to enjoy my rambling progression through the steep-sided valleys. I passed through grand beech woods and across silent pastures invaded on all sides by ferns; I followed ancient paths from warm sunny hillsides into the deep shade of already snow-covered peaks.
On the fourth day I came along a track bounded by unruly hazel coppice. It took me past several stone barns, intact and recently used, but I saw no animals and no houses until I was suddenly confronted with the sight of a pretty white yurt in a well tended and gardened clearing. There were chickens scratching in a small pen, and smoke rose from a metal chimney. The smell of fresh coffee lay over the cool crystal mountain air.
The yurt-dwellers gave me a warm welcome. The first they knew of me was as I arrived unannounced at their colourfully decorated wooden door, and yet I felt that they would have been quite content for me to stay there as long as I wanted. We sat together and drank coffee in the sunshine and I told them my story. It was then that I found my first clue since I had been in France to the whereabouts of my brother.
Incredibly enough they had seen Phil. He had come this way and sat with them just as I was doing. 'He was very quiet' the woman Martine said. 'He told us that he was going to a village in the next valley.' She paused and looked closely at me before adding 'He looks a lot like you, your brother.'
If Phil had mentioned the name of a village to them they had forgotten it. I could tell from their sad expressions and shared glances that they had recognised in him something self-destructive, something wrong. In any event they had been sure he had been mistaken; as far as they knew there was no village in the next valley; one or two houses perhaps; shady paths rarely walked, but otherwise nothing between their yurt and the Spanish frontier.
'But he hasn't been back this way?'
'No. We haven't seen him since that morning' the man Jean replied.
When I tore myself away I had a renewed focus. By chance it seemed, I had stumbled on to Phil's trail, and he had told Jean and Martine that he was only going to the next valley. I realised that there was a chance I might catch up with him that very day. If only I could find someone who knew something of Antrazein.
I followed the chemin through the woods. Martine had told me that it led to a pretty col and then over into the next valley. Just on the other side of the col, she assured me, I would find a farmhouse. The old people who lived there were very friendly and might just also have seen Phil pass by.
A little while later, climbing towards the col, I rounded a bend and heard the flat-toned bells of sheep. In front of me with his flock around him I saw an old man. He was dressed in dun and grey and had a little black beret perched upon his wild white hair.
I ventured to say hello and he graced me with a broad and largely toothless grin. He said something far too fast for me to understand. I feared that even if I could get him to speak more slowly, he would stay with the Occitan patois that no doubt he preferred to French.
Still, I tried to explain to him that I was English and that I was on a walking holiday. We would have both been on our way largely none-the-wiser, but I decided to try to ask him if he knew of a place called Antrazein.
'Comment?' he replied three times and each time I repeated the name trying to vary the pronunciation until I hit on something he would recognise. Finally he seemed to understand. His expression changed from quizzical to concerned.
When he spoke again he did so with deliberate slowness and in his best French. He wanted me to grasp each word and at close intervals demanded of me 'You see? You see?' He told me that there was no such village any more and that I should not search for the place at all.
'But my brother has gone there' I said, trying to turn aside his insistent advice.
'If your brother has gone there' he said, a little agitated, 'then your brother is gone. You see?' The deep lines on his brow tightened and suddenly I thought he looked sorry for me.
Of course I did not see, not at all. My heart beat a little faster, but it was still easier to believe that this old boy was in fact quite mad, or that I had misunderstood his dialect-ridden French, rather than to give credence to his cryptic words. 'I must go' I said, 'Bon aprés-midi Monsieur.'
He watched me go a little way, weaving in and out of his impassive sheep, and then he called for me to wait. He came with a speed that belied his age and stood once again alongside me. 'Look at the path English' he said. I looked ahead and the chemin seemed to narrow; it was overgrown and after fifty metres I could see nothing more than a channel in which the trees were younger; the ghost of a path. He touched my arm, firmly with the flat of his hand. 'Turn around and come with me. We will eat together, you will stay at my house and in the morning you will go back down to St Girons. Forget about Antrazein. You see?'
The shadows were already lengthening on that side of the hills. He had made me more than a little afraid. I came very close to going with him, to forgetting that Phil had come this way and gone down into the valley beyond. 'I am sorry' I said, 'I must to go. You are very kind, but I must go.' It was as if someone else were speaking the words, a more determined version of myself.
He fell silent then and watched me leave. Even as I went into the undergrowth of the chemin I looked back over my shoulder and he was still watching my progress. Finally I could see him no more and heard instead the mournful bells of his sheep moving away in the cooling afternoon.
There were plenty of places along that vestigial track that made me uneasy. There were dark bends overhung by gnarled and ancient chestnuts; there were sluggish springs where animal troughs sat choked with the leaves of many autumns past. Already unnerved, I found myself hurrying. Despite the increasing cold I was hot; sweat ran freely down my back and sides.
It was with great relief, that just before the last sunlight fled from the high slopes glimpsed from time to time through the trees, I saw a farmhouse ahead, hard against the old chemin.
I noticed a solitary black cable join the way and reach the corner of the building; the umbilicus of civilisation. A light came on as if to greet me, and I fervently hoped that I would soon be able to leave outside the dark world of my unreasoning fear, a world I had embellished around the words of the ancient shepherd.
I had only just raised my hand to knock on the front door when it swung open in front of me. Warm yellow electric light bathed my face. I must have looked like a man running from something; the old woman in the doorway beckoned me in, leaned out and looked left and right into the evening before closing and bolting the door with strong swift hands. She mumbled something I did not catch but rather than stand there in the hallway I followed her through a door into a warm parlour.
An old man sat by a roaring fire; he stood up as I entered and offered me a hand short two fingers. He smiled a black smile, but his eyes were kind. 'Monsieur' he said.
I propped my rucksack against the chair he had motioned for me to use, 'You are very kind' I said as I sat down. The old lady spoke to me, offering me a drink perhaps. I did not understand her at all, but before I could explain the old man started to speak and she went off, apparently with enough of an idea to decide what I would have.
They exchanged more rapid-fire patois between parlour and kitchen and then the old man, gathering his wits, said in relatively clear French 'You will stay here tonight and all that. You see?'
'Thank you very much' I said, and just for good measure added another 'You are very kind.'
'You are German?'the old man asked as his wife thrust a short strong coffee into my hand and placed a tin box of sugar lumps on the table in front of me.
'I am English.'
'Why do you come here English?' It seemed at first a little rude this question, but his directness was well-intentioned. I tried to tell him the story of my search for my brother. As I spoke the old lady propped herself on the arm of another chair and listened. A couple of times she asked him to clarify something I had said and an exchange in patois would briefly interrupt my account. Otherwise they commented not at all.
By the time I finished my account I had stretched my French to breaking point. I was really tired but I kept going long enough to ask about Antrazein. For long moments the fire crackled and the old people made no response; the old man watched the flames and slowly shook his head. 'It would be better if tomorrow you went home' he said without meeting my eyes. 'At the least' he added slowly, 'do not go down into the valley. Do not go to Antrazein.'