The sodden but cheerful storm victims gathered in the restaurant to be revived with tea and coffee and marc. Gone were the elegant picnickers of the morning, replaced by dripping, lank-haired figures dressed in varying degrees of transparency. Showing through a pair of once-white, once-opaque trousers, red-lettered knickers wished us all Merry Xmas. Clothes that had billowed now clung, and the straw hats looked like plates of congealed cornflakes. We each stood in our own private pools of water.
Madame and Marcel, the waiter, who had driven back in the van, served an assortment of dry clothes along with the marc, and the restaurant was transformed into a changing room. Bennett, pensive under his baseball cap, wondered if he might borrow a pair of swimming trunks for the drive home; the Land Rover was awash, and the driver’s seat a puddle. But at least, he said, looking out the window, the storm was over.
If it was over in Buoux, it had never happened in Ménerbes. The drive up to the house was still dusty, the grass was still brown, the courtyard was still hot. We watched the sun as it balanced for a moment in the notch of the twin peaks to the west of the house before disappearing beneath a flushed sky.
“Well,” said my wife, “now do you like picnics?”
What a question. Of course I like picnics. I love picnics.
The Singing Toads
of St. Pantaléon
Of all the bizarre events organized to celebrate the mass decapitation of the French aristocracy 200 years ago, one of the most bizarre has so far gone unreported. Not even our local paper, which frequently makes front-page stories out of incidents as minor as the theft of a van from the Coustellet market or an intervillage boules contest—not even the news-hounds of Le Provencal were sufficiently well informed to pick it up. This is a world exclusive.
I first heard about it toward the end of winter. Two men in the café opposite the boulangerie at Lumières were discussing a question that had never occurred to me: Could toads sing?
The larger of the two men, a stonemason from the look of his powerful, scarred hands and the fine coating of dust that covered his blue combinaisons, clearly didn’t think so.
“If toads can sing,” he said, “then I’m the President of France.” He took a deep pull from his glass of red wine. “Eh, madame,” he bellowed at the woman behind the bar, “what do you think?”
Madame looked up from sweeping the floor and rested her hands on the broom handle while she gave the matter her attention.
“It is evident that you’re not the President of France,” she said. “But as for toads …?” She shrugged. “I know nothing of toads. It’s possible. Life is strange. I once had a Siamese cat who always used the toilette. I have color photographs of it.”
The smaller man leaned back in his chair as if a point had just been proved.
“You see? Anything is possible. My brother-in-law told me there is a man in St. Pantaléon with many toads. He is training them for the Bicentenaire.”
“Ah bon?” said the big man. “And what will they do? Wave flags? Dance?”
“They will sing.” The smaller man finished his wine and pushed back his chair. “By the 14th July, I am assured that they will be able to perform the ‘Marseillaise.’ ”
The two of them left, still arguing, and I tried to imagine how one could teach creatures with a limited vocal range to reproduce the stirring strains that make every patriotic Frenchman tingle with pride at the thought of noble severed heads dropping into baskets. Maybe it could be done. I had only heard untrained frogs croaking around the house in the summer. The larger and perhaps more gifted toad might easily be able to span more octaves and hold the long notes. But how were toads trained, and what kind of man would devote his time to such a challenge? I was fascinated.
Before trying to find the man in St. Pantaleon, I decided to get a second opinion. My neighbor Massot would know about toads. He knew, so he frequently told me, everything there was to know about nature, the weather, and any living creature that walked or flew or crawled across Provence. He was a little shaky on politics and property prices, but there was nobody to touch him on wildlife.
I walked along the track at the edge of the forest to the clammy little hollow where Massot’s house was huddled into the side of a steep bank. His three dogs hurled themselves toward me until their chains jerked them up on their hind legs. I stayed out of range and whistled. There was the sound of something falling to the floor and a curse—putain!—and Massot appeared at the door with dripping orange-colored hands.
He came up the drive and kicked his dogs into silence, and gave me his elbow to shake. He had been decorating, he said, to make his property even more desirable when he resumed his efforts to sell it in the spring. Did I not think the orange was very gay?