The Knees of Saorge

July 2019

This village is going to kill me before it cures me. I’m dying as I struggle up the steep cobblestones, trying to take in the medieval ramparts all around me but more conscious of my breath rasping in my lungs, wondering what the French word for ‘rasp’ is, wondering how to say ‘lungs,’ my steps very un-brisk, my knees whimpering a bit. The murderous part of Saorge relates to those knees, which last year developed some very unpleasant sharp pains following some days of intense interval training on the treadmill, which seems  VERY unfair to me, my body punishing me for attempting to push it to the next level, and here I am in a village comprised of nothing BUT hills, and stairs, and cobblestones, and why SHOULD these aging American knees do anything but complain when faced with the 900-year-old cobblestones of this citadel town, but BUT I have a vague optimism (huff, huff, step groan step) that if Saorge doesn’t beat me into the picturesque pavement that it will, if nothing else, give me some impressive calf muscles, if . . . if only I can keep at it, stay moving, practice my French, keep hoofing it to Heinz (the local bar), La Petite Epicerie (the local restaurant), the parking spaces bookending the town, Vitale, the tiny local grocery shop, the even tinier Saturday market, keep moving, seduce my meniscus or whatever treasonous muscles have been  panging at me on the stairs, keep going steadily, up the stones, down the stones, carefully on the stones, just keep at it, there’s a girl, hear the music? You’re almost at a relief station, a place to sit down, take a load off, have a cappuccino or a vin blanc, very uncharacteristic that, and I blame climate change, me a red wine woman all the way, but it’s so very HOT in Europe right now, and the white wine is cold, and at Heinz, as at most of the eateries in hailing distance, the wine is good, and cheap, and plentiful, and there’s music wafting (okay, it’s a bit louder than ‘wafting,’ but not unpleasant) from inside, and it’s so amusing to me that it’s so often AMERICAN music, that’s on Marc, the quasi-American owner of Heinz, apparently a huge fan of the ‘60s, but also Frank Sinatra – is that FRANK SINATRA serenading me and my knees right now?  Saying something stupid like ‘I love you’? And now it’s Dusty Springfield, Son of a Preacher Man, and I can’t sing a word of most French songs but several of the Saorgians around me, tout francais, are singing lustily along, in ENGLISH and omigosh it’s the Jackson Five! And Easy Like Sunday Morning, and of course You Give me Fever, and now the knees are willing again, and on we go, why am I surprised an ancient town would favor ancient music and oi my  legs are aching a bit, I thought I was in shape, that nice old man called me ‘buff,’ or at least I think that’s what he said, but he’s springing along those cobblestones like it’s flat astroturf and I’m stepping out somewhat gingerly, but thinking maybe in a few weeks? Months? I’ll be ignoring the hills and hiking along like all the old men, young men, everyone in Saorge, my poor old knees cured by a daily dose of gradual climbing and descending, cured not killed, and it’s all good, so beautiful and so good, high up here in a medieval mecca, where you can wear anything, be anything, and nobody cares, but everybody seems to care, an open secret that tourists are discovering, but also deliciously steep and thereby offputting to casual (out-of-shape) tourists, and we aren’t even tourists this time around, but  visitors, more than visitors, inhabitants for a year, take that knees, and everyone seems to know who we are, these slightly lost-looking tired travelers fumbling in French but friendly, because that is what we bring from the Midwest, we too are friendly, we will conquer you by virtue of our unthreatening friendly Americanness, reclaiming a bit of the national reputation so sullied by the cult of Trump, who by the way could NEVER make it through the town from the parking lot, too steep by far for the oafs of the world, but maybe, perhaps, peut-etre not too steep for my curmudgeonly knees that perk up at the music, Starry Starry Night, a song nearly as old as these knees, and oh my god does that mean one day I’ll be strolling strongly up the stones to American PIE? Cured, not killed, made whole by the wholesomeness of this ludicrously charming village? Tout est possible. Today at least.