Toujours Provence(55)
We all agree that firmness is the answer. Say no more often than yes. Harden the heart against the surprise visitor who cannot find a hotel room, the deprived child who has no swimming pool, the desperate traveler who has lost his wallet. Be firm; be helpful, be kind, be rude, but above all be firm.
And yet I know—I think we all know—that next summer will be the same. I suppose we must enjoy it. Or we would, if we weren’t exhausted.
Place du Village
Cars have been banned from the village square, and stalls or trestle tables have been set up on three sides. On the fourth, a framework of scaffolding, blinking with colored lights, supports a raised platform made from wooden planks. Outside the café, the usual single row of tables and chairs has been multiplied by 10, and an extra waiter has been taken on to serve the sprawl of customers stretching from the butcher’s down to the post office. Children and dogs chase each other through the crowd, stealing lumps of sugar from the tables and dodging the old men’s sticks that are waved in mock anger. Nobody will go to bed early tonight, not even the children, because this is the village’s annual party, the fête votive.
It begins in the late afternoon with a pot d’amitie in the square and the official opening of the stalls. Local artisans, the men’s faces shining from an afternoon shave, stand behind their tables, glass in hand, or make final adjustments to their displays. There is pottery and jewelry, honey and lavender essence, hand-woven fabrics, iron and stone artifacts, paintings and wood carvings, books, postcards, tooled leatherwork, corkscrews with twisted olive-wood handles, patterned sachets of dried herbs. The woman selling pizza does brisk business as the first glass of wine begins to make the crowd hungry.
People drift off, eat, drift back. The night comes down, warm and still, the mountains in the distance just visible as deep black humps against the sky. The three-man accordion band tunes up on the platform and launches into the first of many paso dobles while the rock group from Avignon that will follow later rehearses on beer and pastis in the cafe.
The first dancers appear—an old man and his granddaughter, her nose pressed into his belt buckle, her feet balanced precariously on his feet. They are joined by a mother, father, and daughter dancing à trois, and then by several elderly couples, holding each other with stiff formality, their faces set with concentration as they try to retrace the steps they learned fifty years ago.
The paso doble session comes to an end with a flourish and a ruffle of accordions and drums, and the rock group warms up with five minutes of electronic tweaks that bounce off the old stone walls of the church opposite the platform.
The group’s singer, a well-built young lady in tight black Lycra and a screaming orange wig, has attracted an audience before singing a note. An old man, the peak of his cap almost meeting the jut of his chin, has dragged a chair across from the café to sit directly in front of the microphone. As the singer starts her first number, some village boys made bold by his example come out of the shadows to stand by the old man’s chair. All of them stare as though hypnotized at the shiny black pelvis rotating just above their heads.
The village girls, short of partners, dance with each other, as close as possible to the backs of the mesmerized boys. One of the waiters puts down his tray to caper in front of a pretty girl sitting with her parents. She blushes and ducks her head, but her mother nudges her to dance. Go on. The holiday will soon be over.
After an hour of music that threatens to dislodge the windows of the houses around the square, the group performs its finale. With an intensity worthy of Piaf on a sad night, the singer gives us “Comme d’habitude,” or “My Way,” ending with a sob, her orange head bent over the microphone. The old man nods and bangs his stick on the ground, and the dancers go back to the café to see if there’s any beer left.
Normally, there would have been feux d’artifice shooting up from the field behind the war memorial. This year, because of the drought, fireworks are forbidden. But it was a good fête. And did you see how the postman danced?
Arrest That Dog!
A friend in London who occasionally keeps me informed about subjects of international importance that might not be reported in Le Provençal sent me a disturbing newspaper clipping. It was taken from the Times, and it revealed an enterprise of unspeakable villainy, a knife thrust deep into the most sensitive part of a Frenchman’s anatomy.
A gang of scoundrels had been importing white truffles (sometimes contemptuously referred to as “industriar” truffles) from Italy and staining them with walnut dye until their complexions were dark enough to pass as black truffles. These, as every gourmet knows, have infinitely more flavor than their white cousins, and cost infinitely more money. The Times reporter, I think, had seriously underestimated the prices. He had quoted 400 francs a kilo, which would have caused a stampede at Fauchon in Paris, where I had seen them arranged in the window like jewels at 7000 francs a kilo.