There has been another mild winter. The water levels are still below what they should be, and it is estimated that as much as 30 percent of the undergrowth in the forest is dead, and therefore dry. The first big fire of summer destroyed more than 6,000 acres near Marseille, cutting off the autoroute in two places. And the madman with the briquet is still at large; probably, like us, taking a keen interest in the weather forecasts.
We have bought a heavy-gauge tin box to hold all those pieces of paper—passports, attestations, birth certificates, contrats, permis, old electricity bills—that are essential in France to prove your existence. To lose the house in a fire would be a disaster, but to lose our identities at the same time would make life impossible. The tin box is going in the farthest corner of the cave, next to the Châteauneuf.
Every time it rains we’re delighted, which Faustin takes as a promising sign that we are becoming less English.
Dinner with
Pavarotti
The publicity preceded the event by months. Pictures of a bearded face, crowned by a beret, appeared in newspapers and on posters, and from spring onward anyone in Provence with half an ear for music had heard the news: Imperator Pavarotti, as Le Provençal called him, was coming this summer to sing for us. More than that, it would be the concert of a lifetime, because of where he had chosen to perform. Not in the Opera House in Avignon or the salle de fêtes in Gordes, where he would be protected from the elements, but in the open air, surrounded by ancient stones laid by his fellow Italians 19 centuries ago when they constructed the Antique Theatre of Orange. Truly, un événement éblouissant.
Even empty, the Antique Theatre is overwhelming, a place of colossal, almost unbelievable scale. It is in the form of a D, and the straight wall that joins the two ends of the semicircle is 335 feet long, 120 feet high, and completely intact. Apart from the patina left on the stone by nearly 2000 years of weather, it could have been built yesterday. Behind the wall, scooped out of a hillside whose slope lends itself naturally to stepped seating, curved banks of stone can accommodate about 10,000 spectators.
Originally they were seated according to class: magistrates and local senators in the front, priests and members of the trading guilds behind them, then the man in the street and his wife, and finally, high up and far away from respectable folk, the Pullati, or beggars and prostitutes. By 1990 the rules had changed, and the allocation of seats depended not so much on class as speed off the mark. The concert was a foregone sellout; swift and decisive action was necessary to secure tickets.
It was taken, while we were still dithering, by our friend Christopher, a man who operates with military precision when it comes to the big night out. He arranged everything, and gave us our marching orders: on parade at 1800 hours, dinner in Orange under a magnolia tree at 1930 hours, seated in the theater by 2100 hours. All ranks to be equipped with cushions to protect buttocks from stone seats. Liquid rations provided for the intermission. Return to base approximately 0100 hours.
There are times when it is a relief and a pleasure to be told exactly what to do, and this was one of them. We left at six sharp, arriving in Orange an hour later to find the town in a festival mood. Every café was full and humming, with extra tables and chairs edging out into the streets to make driving a test of how many waiters you could avoid bumping into. Already, more than two hours before the performance, hundreds of people with cushions and picnic baskets were streaming toward the theater. The restaurants displayed special menus for the soiree Pavarotti. Le tout Orange was rubbing its hands in anticipation. And then it started to rain.
The whole town looked upward—waiters, drivers, cushion-carriers, and no doubt the maestro himself—as the first few drops landed on dusty streets that had been dry for weeks. Quelle catastrophe! Would he sing under an umbrella? How could the orchestra play with damp instruments, the conductor conduct with a dripping baton? For as long as the shower lasted, you could almost feel thousands of people holding their breath.
But by nine o’clock the rain had long since gone and the first stars were coming out above the immense wall of the theater as we joined the throng of music lovers and shuffled past the display of Pavarottiana on sale beside the entrance. Compact discs, tapes, posters, T-shirts—all the products of pop merchandising were there, apart from I Love Luciano bumper stickers.
The line kept stopping, as though there were an obstruction beyond the entrance, and when we came through into the theater I realized why. You stood still—you had to stand still—for a few seconds to take in the view from the front of the stage, the view that Pavarotti would see.