The film cut suddenly to show the sharp, alert face of a ferret, and Alain got up and pushed the fast forward button on the video machine. “That’s just rabbit hunting,” he said, “but there is something else here which is good, and not often to be seen today. It will soon be history.”
He slowed the film down as the ferret was being put, somewhat unwillingly, into a rucksack. There was another sudden cut, this time to a clump of oak trees. A Citroën 2CV van lurched into the picture and stopped, and a very old man in a cloth cap and shapeless blue jacket got out, beamed at the camera, and went slowly to the back of the van. He opened the door and took out a crude wooden ramp. He looked to the camera and beamed again before reaching into the back of the van. He straightened up, holding the end of a piece of rope, beamed once more, and began to tug.
The van shuddered, and then, inch by inch, the dirty pink profile of a pig’s head emerged. The old man tugged again, harder, and the monstrous creature swayed unsteadily down the ramp, twitching its ears and blinking. I half-expected it to follow its master’s example and leer at the camera, but it just stood in the sun, vast, placid, unaffected by stardom.
“Last year,” said Alain, “that pig found nearly three hundred kilos of truffles. Un bon paquet.”
I could hardly believe it. I was looking at an animal that earned more last year than most of those executives in London, and all without the benefit of a car phone.
The old man and the pig wandered off into the trees as though they were taking an aimless stroll, two rotund figures dappled by the winter sunshine. The screen went dark as the camera swooped down to a close-up of a pair of boots and across to a patch of earth. A muddy snout the size of a drainpipe poked into the shot, and the pig got down to work, its snout moving rhythmically back and forth, ears flopping over its eyes, a single-minded earth-moving machine.
The pig’s head jerked, and the camera drew back to show the old man pulling on the rope. The pig was reluctant to leave what was obviously a highly desirable smell.
“The scent of truffles to a pig,” said Alain, “is sexual. That is why one sometimes has difficulty persuading him to move.”
The old man was having no luck with the rope. He bent down and put his shoulder against the pig’s flank, and the two of them heaved against each other until the pig grudgingly gave way. The old man reached into his pocket and palmed something into the pig’s mouth. Surely he wasn’t feeding it truffles at 50 francs a bite?
“Acorns,” said Alain. “Now watch.”
The kneeling figure straightened up from the earth and turned to the camera, one hand outstretched. In it was a truffle slightly bigger than a golf ball, and in the background was the old peasant’s smiling face, sun glinting on his gold fillings. The truffle went into a stained canvas satchel, and pig and peasant moved on to the next tree. The sequence finished with a shot of the old man holding out both hands, which were piled high with muddy lumps. A good morning’s work.
I was looking forward to seeing the pig being loaded back into the van, which I imagined would require cunning, dexterity, and many acorns, but instead the film finished with a long shot of Mont Ventoux and some more Jean de Florette music.
“You see the problem with the normal pig,” said Alain. I did indeed. “I am hoping that mine will have the nose without the …” he spread his arms wide to indicate bulk. “Come and see her. She has an English name. She is called Peegy.”
Peegy lived inside a fenced enclosure next to Alain’s two dogs. She was scarcely bigger than a fat Corgi, black, potbellied, and shy. We leaned on the fence and looked at her. She grunted, turned her back, and curled up in the corner. Alain said she was very amiable, and that he would start training her now that the season was finished and he had more time. I asked him how.
“With patience,” he said. “I have trained the Alsatian to be a chien truffier, although it is not his instinct. I think the same is possible with the pig.”
I said that I would love to see it in action, and Alain invited me to come with him in the winter for a day of hunting among the truffle oaks. He was the complete opposite of the suspicious, secretive peasants who were said to control the truffle trade in the Vaucluse; Alain was an enthusiast, happy to share his enthusiasm.
As I was leaving, he gave me a copy of a poster advertising a milestone in truffle history. In the village of Bédoin, at the foot of Mont Ventoux, there was to be an attempt on a world record: the biggest truffle omelet ever made, to be “enregistrée comme record mondial au Guinness Book.” The statistics were astonishing—70,000 eggs, 100 kilos of truffles, 100 liters of oil, 11 kilos of salt, and 6 kilos of pepper were to be tossed, presumably by a team of Provençal giants, in an omelet pan with a diameter of ten meters. The proceeds were to go to charity. It would be a day to remember, said Alain. Even now, negotiations were in progress to purchase a fleet of brand new concrete mixers, which would churn the ingredients into the correct consistency, under the supervision of some of the most distinguished chefs in the Vaucluse.