We learned that time in Provence is a very elastic commodity, even when it is described in clear and specific terms. Un petit quart d’heure means sometime today. Demain means sometime this week. And, the most elastic time segment of all, une quinzaine can mean three weeks, two months, or next year, but never, ever does it mean fifteen days. We learned also to interpret the hand language that accompanies any discussion of deadlines. When a Provençal looks you in the eye and tells you that he will be hammering on your door ready to start work next Tuesday for certain, the behavior of his hands is all-important. If they are still, or patting you reassuringly on the arm, you can expect him on Tuesday. If one hand is held out at waist height, palm downwards, and begins to rock from side to side, adjust the timetable to Wednesday or Thursday. If the rocking develops into an agitated waggle, he’s really talking about next week or God knows when, depending on circumstances beyond his control. These unspoken disclaimers, which seem to be instinctive and therefore more revealing than speech, are occasionally reinforced by the magic word normalement, a supremely versatile escape clause worthy of an insurance policy. Normalement—providing it doesn’t rain, providing the truck hasn’t broken down, providing the brother-in-law hasn’t borrowed the tool box—is the Provençal builder’s equivalent of the fine print in a contract, and we came to regard it with infinite suspicion.
But, despite their genial contempt for punctuality and their absolute refusal to use the telephone to say when they were coming or when they weren’t, we could never stay irritated with them for long. They were always disarmingly cheerful, they worked long and hard when they were with us, and their work was excellent. In the end, they were worth waiting for. And so, little by little, we reverted to being philosophical, and came to terms with the Provençal clock. From now on, we told ourselves, we would assume that nothing would be done when we expected it to be done; the fact that it happened at all would be enough.
FAUSTIN was behaving curiously. For two or three days he had been clanking up and down on his tractor, towing a contraption of metal intestines which spewed fertilizer to either side as he passed between the rows of vines. He kept stopping to get off the tractor and walk over to a field, now empty and overgrown, which had been planted with melons. He studied the field from one end, remounted his tractor, sprayed some more vines, and returned to study the other end. He paced, he pondered, he scratched his head. When he went home for lunch, I walked down to see what it was he found so fascinating, but to me it looked like any other fallow melon field—a few weeds, some tatters of plastic left over from the strips that had protected last year’s crop, half an acre of nothing. I wondered if Faustin suspected it of harboring buried treasure, because we had already dug up two gold Napoleon coins nearer the house, and he had told us that there were probably more to be found. But peasants don’t hide their gold in the middle of cultivated land when it can be squirreled away more securely under the flagstones or down a well. It was odd.
He came visiting that evening with Henriette, looking unusually spruce and businesslike in his white shoes and orange shirt, and bearing jars of homemade rabbit pâté. Half way through his first pastis, he leaned forward confidentially. Did we know that the wine produced from our vineyards—Côtes du Lubéron—was about to be given Appellation Contrôlée status? He leaned back, nodding slowly, and said “Eh oui” several times while we absorbed the news. Clearly, said Faustin, the wine would become more expensive and vineyard owners would make more money. And, clearly, the more vines one has the more money one makes.
There was no arguing with that, so Faustin moved on to a second drink—he drank in an efficient, unobtrusive way, and always reached the bottom of his glass before I expected—and put forward his proposition. It seemed to him that our melon field could be more profitably employed. He inhaled some pastis while Henriette produced a document from her bag. It was a droit d’implantation, giving us the right to plant vines, a privilege accorded to us by the government itself. While we looked at the paper, Faustin demolished the nonsensical idea of continuing to grow melons, dismissing them with a wave of his glass as being too demanding in terms of time and water, and always vulnerable to attack by the wild boar who come down from the mountains in the summer. Only last year, Faustin’s brother Jacky had lost a third of his melon crop. Eaten by the boars! The profit disappearing into a pig’s belly! Faustin shook his head at the painful memory, and had to be revived by a third large pastis.