Toujours Provence(54)
It was in two parts. The base was a round bowl, raised off the ground by three flat supports, with a funnel leading up from the bottom. The top fitted over the lower bowl and prevented wasps who had made their way up the funnel from escaping.
But that, said the wasp expert, was the simple part. More difficult, more subtle, more artistic, was the bait. How does one persuade the wasp to abandon the pleasures of the flesh and climb up the funnel into the trap? What could tempt him away from the pool?
After spending some time in Provence, you learn to expect a brief lecture with every purchase, from an organically grown cabbage (two minutes) to a bed (half an hour or more, depending on the state of your back). For wasp traps, you should allow between 10 and 15 minutes. I sat on the stool in front of the counter and listened.
Wasps, it turned out, like alcohol. Some wasps like it sucré, others like it fruity, and there are even those who will crawl anywhere for a drop of anis. It is, said the expert, a matter of experimentation, a balancing of flavors and consistencies until one finds the blend that suits the palate of the local wasp population.
He suggested a few basic recipes: sweet vermouth with honey and water, diluted crème de cassis, dark beer spiked with marc, neat pastis. As an added inducement, the funnel can be lightly coated with honey, and a small puddle of water should always be left immediately beneath the funnel.
The expert set up a trap on the counter, and with two fingers imitated a wasp out for a stroll.
He stops, attracted by the puddle of water. The fingers stopped. He approaches the water, and then he becomes aware of something delicious above him. He climbs up the funnel to investigate, he jumps into his cocktail, et voilà!—he is unable to get out, being too drunk to crawl back down the funnel. He dies, but he dies happy.
I bought two traps, and tried out the recipes. All of them worked, which leads me to believe that the wasp has a serious drinking problem. And now, if ever a guest is overcome by strong waters, he is described as being as pissed as a wasp.
Maladie du Lubéron
Most of the seasonal ailments of summer, while they may be uncomfortable or painful or merely embarrassing, are at least regarded with some sympathy. A man convalescing after an explosive encounter with one merguez sausage too many is not expected to venture back into polite society until his constitution has recovered. The same is true of third-degree sunburn, rosé poisoning, scorpion bites, a surfeit of garlic, or the giddiness and nausea caused by prolonged exposure to French bureaucracy. One suffers, but one is allowed to suffer alone and in peace.
There is another affliction, worse than scorpions or rogue sausages, which we have experienced ourselves and seen many times in other permanent residents of this quiet corner of France. Symptoms usually appear some time around mid-July and persist until early September: glazed and bloodshot eyes, yawning, loss of appetite, shortness of temper, lethargy, and a mild form of paranoia that manifests itself in sudden urges to join a monastery.
This is the maladie du Lubéron, or creeping social fatigue, and it provokes about the same degree of sympathy as a millionaire’s servant problems.
If we examine the patients—the permanent residents—we can see why it happens. Permanent residents have their work, their local friends, their unhurried routines. They made a deliberate choice to live in the Lubéron instead of one of the cocktail capitals of the world because they wanted, if not to get away from it all, to get away from most of it. This eccentricity is understood and tolerated for 10 months a year.
Try to explain that in July and August. Here come the visitors, fresh from the plane or hot off the autoroute, panting for social action. Let’s meet some of the locals! To hell with the book in the hammock and the walk in the woods. To hell with solitude; they want people—people for lunch, people for drinks, people for dinner—and so invitations and counterinvitations fly back and forth until every day for weeks has its own social highlight.
As the holiday comes to an end with one final multibottle dinner, it is possible to see even on the visitors’ faces some traces of weariness. They had no idea it was so lively down here. They are only half-joking when they say they’re going to need a rest to get over the whirl of the past few days. Is it always like this? How do you keep it up?
It isn’t, and we don’t. Like many of our friends, we collapse in between visitations, guarding empty days and free evenings, eating little and drinking less, going to bed early. And every year, when the dust has settled, we talk to other members of the distressed residents’ association about ways of making summer less of an endurance test.