Toujours Provence

Les Invalides


I had been to a pharmacy in Apt for toothpaste and suntan oil, two innocent and perfectly healthy purchases. When I arrived home and took them out of the bag, I found that the girl who served me had included an instructive but puzzling gift. It was an expensively printed leaflet in full color. On the front was a picture of a snail sitting on the toilet. He looked doleful, as if he’d been there for some time without achieving anything worthwhile. His horns drooped. His eye was lackluster. Above this sad picture was printed La Constipation.

What had I done to deserve this? Did I look constipated? Or was the fact that I bought toothpaste and suntan oil somehow significant to the expert pharmacist’s eye—a hint that all was not well in my digestive system? Maybe the girl knew something I didn’t. I started to read the leaflet.

“Nothing,” it said, “is more banal and more frequent than constipation.” About 20 percent of the French population, so the writer claimed, suffered from the horrors of ballonnement and gêne abdominale. And yet, to a casual observer like myself, there were no obvious signs of discomfort among the people on the streets, in the bars and cafés, or even in the restaurants—where presumably 20 percent of the clientele tucking into two substantial meals a day were doing so in spite of their ballonnements. What fortitude in the face of adversity!

I had always thought of Provence as one of the healthier places in the world. The air is clean, the climate is dry, fresh fruit and vegetables are abundantly available, cooking is done with olive oil, stress doesn’t seem to exist—there could hardly be a more wholesome set of circumstances. And everybody looks very well. But if 20 percent of those ruddy faces and hearty appetites were concealing the suffering caused by a traffic jam in the transit intestinal, what else might they be concealing? I decided to pay closer attention to Provençal complaints and remedies, and gradually became aware that there is indeed a local affliction, which I think extends to the entire country. It is hypochondria.

A Frenchman never feels out of sorts; he has a crise. The most popular of these is a crise de foie, when the liver finally rebels against the punishment inflicted by pastis, five-course meals, and the tots of marc and the vin d’honneur served at everything from the opening of a car showroom to the annual meeting of the village Communist Party. The simple cure is no alcohol and plenty of mineral water, but a much more satisfactory solution—because it supports the idea of illness rather than admitting self-indulgence—is a trip to the pharmacy and a consultation with the sympathetic white-coated lady behind the counter.

I used to wonder why most pharmacies have chairs arranged between the surgical trusses and the cellulite treatment kits, and now I know. It is so that one can wait more comfortably while Monsieur Machin explains, in great whispered detail and with considerable massaging of the engorged throat, the tender kidney, the reluctant intestine, or whatever else ails him, how he came to this painful state. The pharmacist, who is trained in patience and diagnosis, listens carefully, asks a few questions, and then proposes a number of possible solutions. Packets and jars and ampoules are produced. More discussion. A choice is finally made, and Monsieur Machin carefully folds up the vital pieces of paper that will enable him to claim back most of the cost of his medication from Social Security. Fifteen or twenty minutes have passed, and everyone moves up a chair.

These trips to the pharmacy are only for the more robust invalids. For serious illness, or imaginary serious illness, there is, even in relatively remote country areas like ours, a network of first aid specialists that amazes visitors from cities, where you need to be a millionaire before you can be sick in comfort. All the towns, and many of the villages, have their own ambulance services, on call 24 hours a day. Registered nurses will come to the house. Doctors will come to the house, a practice I’m told is almost extinct in London.

We had a brief but intense experience with the French medical system early last summer. The guinea pig was Benson, a young American visitor on his first trip to Europe. When I picked him up at the Avignon railroad station, he croaked hello, coughed, and clapped a handkerchief to his mouth. I asked him what was the matter.

He pointed to his throat and made wheezing noises.

“Mono,” he said.

Mono? I had no idea what that was, but I did know that Americans have much more sophisticated ailments than we do—hematomas instead of bruises, migraine instead of a headache, postnasal drip—and so I muttered something about fresh air soon clearing it up and helped him into the car. On the way home, I learned that mono was the intimate form of address for mononucleosis, a viral infection causing considerable soreness of the throat. “Like broken glass,” said Benson, huddled behind his sunglasses and his handkerchief. “We have to call my brother in Brooklyn. He’s a doctor.”