Benson sucked and gargled and inhaled his way through the menu. By the next morning he had emerged from the shadow of the grave and was feeling sufficiently recovered to join us on a trip to the Ménerbes pharmacy in search of the last prescription.
One of the village elders was there when we arrived, perched on a stool while his shopping bag was being stuffed full of nostrums. Curious about what exotic disease the foreigners might have, he remained seated while our prescription was being filled, leaning forward to see what was in the packet as it was put on the counter.
The pharmacist opened the packet and took out a foil-wrapped object the size of a fat Alka-Seltzer tablet. She held it up to Benson.
“Deux fois par jour,” she said.
Benson shook his head and put his hand to his throat.
“Too big,” he said. “I couldn’t swallow anything that size.”
We translated for the pharmacist, but before she could reply the old man collapsed with laughter, rocking perilously on his stool and wiping his eyes with the back of a knobbly hand.
The pharmacist smiled, and made delicate upward motions with the foil-wrapped lump. “C’est un suppositoire.”
Benson looked bewildered. The old man, still laughing, hopped down from his stool and took the suppository from the pharmacist.
“Regardez,” he said to Benson. “On fait comme ça.”
He moved away from the counter to give himself space, bent forward, holding the suppository above his head, and then, with a flowing backwards swoop of his arm, applied the suppository firmly to the seat of his trousers. “Tok!” said the old man. He looked up at Benson. “Vous voyez?”
“Up the ass?” Benson shook his head again. “Hey, that’s weird. Jesus.” He put on his sunglasses and moved a couple of paces backwards. “We don’t do that where I come from.”
We tried to explain that it was a very efficient method of getting medication into the bloodstream, but he wasn’t convinced. And when we said that it wouldn’t give him a sore throat either, he wasn’t amused. I often wonder what he told his brother the doctor back in Brooklyn.
Shortly afterward, I met my neighbor Massot in the forest and told him about the suppository lesson. It was droll, he thought, but for a truly dramatique episode there was nothing to touch the story of the man who had gone into the hospital to have his appendix out and had woken up with his left leg amputated. Beh oui.
I said it couldn’t be true, but Massot insisted that it was.
“If I am ever ill,” he said, “I go to the vet. You know where you are with vets. I don’t trust doctors.”
Fortunately, Massot’s view of the French medical profession is as unlikely to reflect reality as most of his views. There may be doctors with a taste for amputation in Provence, but we have never met them. In fact, apart from our brush with mononucleosis, we’ve only seen the doctor once, and that was to combat an attack of bureaucracy.
It was the climax of months of paper shuffling that we had gone through in order to get our cartes de séjour—the identity cards that are issued to foreign residents of France. We had been to the Mairie, to the Préfecture, to the Bureau des Impôts, and back again to the Mairie. Everywhere we went, we were told that another form was required which, naturellement, could only be obtained somewhere else. In the end, when we were convinced that we had a full set of certificates, attestations, declarations, photographs, and vital statistics, we made what we thought would be our last triumphal visit to the Mairie.
Our dossiers were examined carefully. Everything seemed to be in order. We were not going to be a drain on the state. We had no criminal record. We were not seeking to steal employment from French workers. Bon. The dossiers were closed. At last we were going to be official.
The secretary of the Mairie smiled nicely and passed over two more forms. It was necessary, she said, to have a medical examination to prove that we were of sound mind and body. Doctor Fenelon in Bonnieux would be pleased to examine us. Off to Bonnieux we went.
Doctor Fenelon was charming and brisk as he X-rayed us and took us through the fine print of a short questionnaire. Were we mad? No. Epileptic? No. Addicted to drugs? Alcoholic? Prone to fainting? I was half-expecting to be interrogated about bowel movements in case we might be adding to the constipated sector of the French population, but that didn’t seem to be a concern of the immigration authorities. We signed the forms. Doctor Fenelon signed the forms. Then he opened a drawer and produced two more forms.
He was apologetic. “Bien sûr, vous n’avez pas le problème, mais …” he shrugged, and explained that we must take the forms into Cavaillon and have a blood test before he could give us our certificats sanitaires.