A Year in Provence(7)
“Bonjour.” He unscrewed a cigarette butt from the corner of his mouth and introduced himself. “Massot, Antoine.”
He was dressed for war. A stained camouflage jacket, an army jungle cap, a bandolier of cartridges, and a pump-action shotgun. His face was the color and texture of a hastily cooked steak, with a wedge of nose jutting out above a ragged, nicotine-stained mustache. Pale blue eyes peered through a sprouting tangle of ginger eyebrows, and his decayed smile would have brought despair to the most optimistic dentist. Nevertheless, there was a certain mad amiability about him.
I asked if his hunting had been successful. “A fox,” he said, “but too old to eat.” He shrugged, and lit another of his fat Boyards cigarettes, wrapped in yellow maize paper and smelling like a young bonfire in the morning air. “Anyway,” he said, “he won’t be keeping my dogs awake at night,” and he nodded down toward the house in the hollow.
I said that his dogs seemed fierce, and he grinned. Just playful, he said. But what about the time one of them had escaped and attacked the old man? Ah, that. He shook his head at the painful memory. The trouble is, he said, you should never turn your back on a playful dog, and that had been the old man’s mistake. Une vraie catastrophe. For a moment, I thought he was regretting the wound inflicted on grandfather André, which had punctured a vein in his leg and required a visit to the hospital for injections and stitches, but I was mistaken. The real sadness was that Massot had been obliged to buy a new chain, and those robbers in Cavaillon had charged him 250 francs. That had bitten deeper than teeth.
To save him further anguish, I changed the subject and asked him if he really ate fox. He seemed surprised at such a stupid question, and looked at me for a moment or two without replying, as though he suspected me of making fun of him.
“One doesn’t eat fox in England?” I had visions of the members of the Belvoir Hunt writing to The Times and having a collective heart attack at such an unsporting and typically foreign idea.
“No, one doesn’t eat fox in England. One dresses up in a red coat and one chases after it on horseback with several dogs, and then one cuts off its tail.”
He cocked his head, astonished. “Ils sont bizarres, les Anglais.” And then, with great gusto and some hideously explicit gestures, he described what civilized people did with a fox.
Civet de renard à la façon Massot
Find a young fox, and be careful to shoot it cleanly in the head, which is of no culinary interest. Buckshot in the edible parts of the fox can cause chipped teeth—Massot showed me two of his—and indigestion.
Skin the fox, and cut off its parties. Here, Massot made a chopping motion with his hand across his groin, and followed this with some elaborate twists and tugs of the hand to illustrate the gutting process.
Leave the cleaned carcass under cold running water for twenty-four hours to eliminate the goût sauvage. Drain it, bundle it up in a sack, and hang it outdoors overnight, preferably when there is frost.
The following morning, place the fox in a casserole of cast iron and cover with a mixture of blood and red wine. Add herbs, onions, and heads of garlic, and simmer for a day or two. (Massot apologized for his lack of precision but said that the timing varied according to size and age of fox.)
In the old days, this was eaten with bread and boiled potatoes, but now, thanks to progress and the invention of the deep-fat fryer, one could enjoy it with pommes frites.
By now, Massot was in a talkative mood. He lived alone, he told me, and company was scarce in the winter. He had spent his life in the mountains, but maybe it was time to move into the village, where he could be among people. Of course, it would be a tragedy to leave such a beautiful house, so calm, so sheltered from the Mistral, so perfectly situated to escape the heat of the midday sun, a place where he had passed so many happy years. It would break his heart, unless—he looked at me closely, pale eyes watery with sincerity—unless he could render me a service by making it possible for one of my friends to buy his house.
I looked down at the ramshackle building huddled in the shadows, with the three dogs padding endlessly to and fro on their rusting chains, and thought that in the whole of Provence it would be difficult to find a less appealing spot to live. There was no sun, no view, no feeling of space, and almost certainly a dank and horrid interior. I promised Massot that I would bear it in mind, and he winked at me. “A million francs,” he said. “A sacrifice.” And in the meantime, until he left this little corner of paradise, if there was anything I wanted to know about the rural life, he would advise me. He knew every centimeter of the forest, where the mushrooms grew, where the wild boar came to drink, which gun to choose, how to train a hound—there was nothing he didn’t know, and this knowledge was mine for the asking. I thanked him. “C’est normal,” he said, and stumped off down the hill to his million-franc residence.