A Shared Language

We arrived at the cathedral early. The main tour guide was already there, preparing for the day with a folder of laminated material.

We began talking about the Black Christ, which, he explained, had only turned black after the Revolution. I do not speak French, but I understand enough to get by. My wife said something about a fresco, and near the exit we found a surviving section of the Last Judgement.

Only the Hell side remained.

I began at the top and worked my way down, explaining the image to my wife in English. The guide stood beside us, listening. When I had finished, he nodded.

“C’est juste.”

Next to it was another mural. Souls were burning while angels lifted one or two of them from the flames. Christ, dressed in a green priestly robe, was praying above them. I explained that these were souls in Purgatory, and that Christ was shown as a priest interceding for them.

The guide nodded again.

On the wall opposite the fragment of Hell, there was only bare stone. I pointed to it and said that Paradise must once have been painted there: Hell on the left, Heaven on the right.

He said that this was his own interpretation too, but then offered another.

He did not see the church primarily divided between left and right. For him, Hell was the exit leading out into the world. Heaven was in front of us, toward the altar.

With a few words and a gesture, he turned the entire axis of the painting.

The missing Paradise was no longer merely absent from the wall. The cathedral itself completed the image. Heaven was ahead of us; Hell was the door through which we would eventually leave.

Afterwards, we went about our business in town.

Later, while we were packing the car, I saw the guide again. He was standing outside the cathedral, studying the wall. I looked at him questioningly, and he began explaining the mason’s marks cut into the stones.

From those marks, he could tell which masons had worked on which sections, how many of them there had been, and something of the stages in which the walls had been built. He spoke in French without slowing down, less as though he were conducting a tour than thinking aloud about what presently interested him.

I understood enough.

Perhaps he had understood my English in much the same way.

We did not share a spoken language fluently, but the cathedral supplied another one. I read the figures in the murals. He read the marks in the stones. Each of us could follow enough of the other’s attention for the conversation to continue.

I wished him a good day. He wished us a good journey.

As we drove away, my wife said that the encounter confirmed something for her: I would make a good tour guide. The guide and I, she said, spoke in the same way.

I think she meant more than our shared interest in cathedrals. Neither of us treated the building as something already explained. We noticed something, placed it within a larger pattern, offered an interpretation, and left enough room for the other person to turn it.

The guide read the cathedral. I read the pictures. My wife read the two of us.

Sometimes we recognize one another not by looking directly at each other, but by attending together to a third thing.