“So how did you get into such a mess anyway?” We both looked
down at my bandaged knees and horrendously blistered feet, clogged with
shreds of zinc tape. “It’s a long story.” “Well,
you can tell it to me over a beer.”
Grégoire, a log cutter from Ortù, one of Corsica’s remotest villages,
had picked me up at the bottom of the Liamone valley, hobbling north towards
the pale grey needle peaks in the distance. This corner of the island’s
wild interior, ringed by miles of granite mountains, is renowned as a
nationalist bastion (the goatherd who gunned down the French governor
a few years back is believed to still be at large in the hills hereabouts),
and I was surprised to be offered a lift at all, let alone one to the
end of the road.
“Just don’t talk politics”, my host warned me under
his breath as we stepped into the village bar. Plied with draught chestnut
beer and chasers of myrtle liqueur, I spilled out my story. In two months
of rough walking, I’d run into one set back after another: knee
injuries, nocturnal wild boar attacks, a mouth abscess, a mad dentist
who’d broken an anaesthetic needle in my gum, and, finally, a root
canal filling that had cost more than my flight.
.
“No doubt about it,” he nodded, “Evil Eye. Quelqu’un
t’as fait la mauvaise oeuil, mon pote.” I’d read
about the Eye – l’Occhiu – in old ethnographies
– how it was believed someone could cast a malevolent spell with
the wrong kind of look, a jealous comment, by saying how well your children
looked or praising the appearance of your horse. But I didn’t see
what any of this had to do with my blisters. “Don’t worry.
I know someone who can sort you out. Come.”
Draining his glass, Grégoire led me back out into the glaring light of
the square and through a series of alleys to an ancient stone house with
pots of geraniums growing from oil tins on its window sills. A knock
at the door was answered by an elderly woman with purple-tinted hair and
a gleam in her eye. Grégoire muttered something in Corsican, and I was
ushered into a shuttered front room that smelt of church and wood smoke.
The woman, Grégoire explained, was a Signatora, a “Sign-Maker”.
“She’s going to find out if you’ve got the Eye.”
I watched as a candle was lit, a shallow bowl filled with water and drops
of oil poured into it. Closing her eyes and lowering her head, the Signatora
then began to murmur verses in what sounded like Latin, pausing every
now and again to make the sign of the cross over the bowl. After two
or three minutes, Grégoire’s eyebrows raised steadily as, on the
surface of the water, the unmistakable form of an eye began to take shape.
There were knowing looks and more exchanges in Corsican. “She’s
going to cut some of your hair, to break the bad spell later,” he
said enigmatically. “Don’t, whatever you do, thank her, ok?”
So I merely smiled and waved goodbye as we stepped back into the sunlight
of the street.
Now, I’m not a great one for superstitions. But I have to admit
that from the time I left that old lady’s house I felt unburdened
in some profound way. Suddenly life felt like a freshly oiled bicycle
wheel again. Having said farewell to Grégoire (being careful not to thank
him either) I flew through the forest to the top of the valley and the
mountain hut I’d limped down from a week before, and polished off
the rest of the infamous GR20 haute route in a week, without so
much as a twinge from teeth or toes. More amazing still, waiting for
me at the refuge after I’d left the Signatora, munching his
way through a packet of Hobnobs and a cup of PG Tips, was my old flat-mate
from college, who’d just happened to have arrived – a chance
in a million.
Who says there’s no magic left in travelling?
©First Published in Wanderlust magazine, 2002. David is the author of
the Rough Guide to Corsica (now in its fourth edition) and
the Trailblazer Guide to Trekking in Corsica.
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