Encore Provence Read online

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  ENCORE PROVENCE

  Peter Mayle has contributed to a wide range of publications in England, France and America, and his work has been translated into twenty-two languages. His books, many of them published by Penguin, include A Year in Provence, Toujours Provence, Hotel Pastis, A Dog's Life, Anything Considered and Chasing Cézanne.

  PETER MAYLE

  Encore Provence

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  LONDON

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  First published by Hamish Hamilton Ltd 1999

  Published in Penguin Books 2000

  16

  Copyright © Escargot Productions, 1999

  Illustration copyright © Ruth Marten, 1999

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  ISBN: 978-0-14-193321-4

  For Jennie with love, comme toujours

  CONTENTS

  1 Second Impressions

  2 The Unsolved Murder of the Handsome Butcher

  3 New York Times Restaurant Critic Makes Astonishing Discovery: Provence Never Existed

  4 Recipe for a Village

  5 Curious Reasons for Liking Provence

  6 A Beginner's Guide to Marseille

  7 How to be a Nose

  8 In Search of the Perfect Corkscrew

  9 Eight Ways to Spend a Summer's Afternoon

  10 The Genetic Effects of 2,000 Years of Foie Gras

  11 Discovering Oil

  12 Friday Morning in Carpentras

  13 Green Thumbs and Black Tomatoes

  14 PS

  1

  Second Impressions

  I think it was the sight of a man power-washing his underpants that really brought home the differences, cultural and otherwise, between the old world and the new.

  It was a cold, still morning in early winter, and the pulsing thump-thump, thump-thump of a high-pressure hose echoed through the village. Getting closer to the sound, it was possible to see, over a garden wall, a laundry line totally devoted to gentlemen's underwear in a stimulating assortment of colours. The garments were under attack, jerking and flapping under the force of the water jet like hanging targets in a shooting gallery. Standing some distance away, out of ricochet range, was the aggressor, in cap and muffler and ankle-high zip-up carpet slippers. He had adopted the classic stance of a soldier in combat, feet wide apart, shooting from the hip, a merciless hail of droplets raking back and forth. The underpants didn't stand a chance.

  Only a few days before, my wife and I had arrived back in Provence after an absence of four years. Much of that time had been spent in America, where we were able to slip back into the comfortable familiarity of a language that was relatively free – although not entirely – from the problems of being socially appropriate or sexually accurate. No longer did we have to ponder the niceties of addressing people as vous or tu, or rush to the dictionary to check on the gender of everything from a peach to an aspirin. English was spoken, even if our ears were rusty and some of the fashionable linguistic flourishes took a little getting used to.

  A friend of below-average height told us he was not considered short any more but vertically challenged; the hour, previously a plain old sixty minutes, had sprouted a top and a bottom; you were not seen leaving a room, but exiting it; the economy was regularly being impacted, as though it were a rogue wisdom tooth; great minds intuited where once they had merely guessed; hopefully, an agreeable word that never harmed a soul, was persistently abused. Important people didn't change their opinions, but underwent a significant tactical recalibration.

  There were many and hideous outbreaks of legalese in everyday speech, reflecting the rise of litigation as a national spectator sport. Surplusage was one of a hundred of these horrors. I noticed also that sophisticated and influential Americans – those whose comments are sought by the media – were not content to finish anything, but preferred to reach closure, and I have a nasty feeling that it won't be long before this affectation is picked up by waiters in pretentious restaurants. I can hear it already: ‘Have you reached closure on your salad?’ (This, of course, would only be after you had spent some time bending your learning curve around the menu.)

  We met, for the first time, the outster, although we never saw a trace of his more fortunate relative the inster. We were taught to give up our hopelessly old-fashioned habit of concentrating and instead try focusing. Every day seemed to bring new and exciting vocabulary options. But these minor curiosities didn't alter the fact that we were surrounded by at least some version of the mother tongue, and therefore should have felt quite at home.

  Somehow we didn't, although it certainly wasn't for lack of a welcome. Almost everyone we met lived up to the American reputation for friendliness and generosity. We had settled in a house outside East Hampton on the far end of Long Island, a part of the world that, for nine months a year, is quiet and extremely beautiful. We wallowed in the convenience of America, in the efficiency and the extraordinary variety of choice, and we practised native customs. We came to know California wines. We shopped by phone. We drove sedately. We took vitamins and occasionally remembered to worry about cholesterol. We tried to watch television. I gave up taking cigars to restaurants, but smoked them furtively in private. There was even a period when we drank eight glasses of water a day. In other words, we did our best to adapt.

  And yet there was something missing. Or rather, an entire spectrum of sights and sounds and smells and sensations that we had taken for granted in Provence, from the smell of thyme in the fields to the swirl and jostle of Sunday morning markets. Very few weeks went by without a twinge of what I can best describe as homesickness.

  Returning to a place where you have been happy is generally regarded as a mistake. Memory is a notoriously biased and sentimental editor, selecting what it wants to keep and invariably making a few cosmetic changes to past events. With rose-coloured hindsight, the good times become magical; the bad times fade and eventually disappear, leaving only a seductive blur of sunlit days and the laughter of friends. Was it really like that? Would it be like that again?

  There was, of course, only one way to find out.

  For anyone coming to France directly from America, the first and most nerve-racking shock to the system is traffic shock, and it hit us as soon as we left the airport. Instantly, we were sucked into high-velocity chaos, menaced on all sides by a hurtle of small cars driven, it seemed, by bank robbers making a getaway. The Frenchman on wheels, as we were quickly reminded, sees every car in front of him as a challenge, to be overtaken on either side, on blind bends,
while lights are changing or when road signs are advising prudence. The highway speed limit of eighty miles an hour is considered to be an insufferable restriction of personal liberty, or perhaps some quaint regulation for tourists, and is widely ignored.

  It wouldn't be so alarming if the equipment, both human and mechanical, were up to the demands placed on it. But you can't help feeling, as yet another baby Renault screams past with its tyres barely touching the road, that small cars were never designed to break the sound barrier. Nor are you filled with confidence should you catch a glimpse of what's going on behind the wheel. It is well known that the Frenchman cannot put two sentences together without his hands joining in. Fingers must wag in emphasis. Arms must be thrown up in dismay. The orchestra of speech must be conducted. This performance may be entertaining when you watch a couple of men arguing in a bar, but it's heart-stopping when you see it in action at ninety miles an hour.

  And so it's always a relief to get on to the back roads where you can travel at the speed of a tractor, with time to take in some of the graphic additions to the scenery. Ever since my first visit to Provence I have loved the faded advertisements painted on the sides of barns and solitary stone cabanons – invitations to try aperitifs that have long since vanished, or chocolate, or fertilizer, the paint chipped and peeling, the blues and the ochres and the creams bleached by the sun of seventy or eighty summers.

  For years, these primitive billboards have been outnumbered by less picturesque messages, and these seem to be increasing. Towns and villages now often have two names, one with the old Provençal spelling. So Ménerbes now doubles as Ménerbo, Avignon as Avignoun, Aix as Aix-en-Prouvenço. And this may only be the start. If the Provençal road-sign lobby continues to be active, we might one day see Frequent Radar Controls or Low-Flying Aircraft or even The Home of the Big Mac adapted to the language of Frédéric Mistral's poetry.

  Signs are everywhere – informative, persuasive, educational, proprietorial, nailed on trees, perched on poles by the side of a field, attached to railings, pasted on to concrete; signs for wine caves, for honey, for lavender essence and olive oil, for restaurants and real estate agents. Most are inviting. But there are a few which warn of savage dogs, and one – my favourite – is particularly discouraging. I saw it in the hills of Haute Provence, tied to the trunk of a tree by the side of a path leading into a stretch of seemingly uninhabited wilderness. It read as follows: Tout contrevenant sera abattu, les survivants poursuivis. Which, roughly translated, means: Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be prosecuted. I like to believe that the author had a sense of humour.

  There is one other warning I can't imagine seeing anywhere else in the world but France. You can find it in the Place des Lices, in St Tropez, where the market is held every week, an enamel sign screwed to the railings. It informs the passer-by in large type and stern language that he is absolutely forbidden to stop and relieve himself in the vicinity – a message one cannot imagine being necessary in East Hampton, for instance, a town noted for its well-toned and highly disciplined bladders.

  The message is necessary in France because of the Frenchman's fondness for impromptu urination. Whenever nature calls, he is quick to answer, and it doesn't matter where he finds himself at the time. In towns and cities, there are a thousand discreet corners; out here in the country, hundreds of empty square miles and millions of bushes ensure privacy for le pipi rustique. But judging by what I've seen of the Frenchman's choice of venue, privacy is the last thing that he wants. Sometimes on a rock, silhouetted against the sky like a stag at bay, sometimes so close to the side of the road that you have to swerve to avoid cutting him off in midstream, he is there, doing what a man has to do. And he has not the slightest embarrassment about doing it. If you should catch his eye as you pass, he will acknowledge you with a courteous nod. But it is more likely that he will be gazing upward, counting the clouds as he takes his ease.

  Luckily, forbidding notices are not at all typical of the greeting one can expect in most public places. The politeness of strangers in France is noticeable; people are not necessarily friendly but invariably well-mannered, and a morning of running errands is marked at every stop by small but pleasant acknowledgements that you exist, something that doesn't always happen in other countries. In England, for example, many shopkeepers make a point of behaving as if you're not there, possibly because you haven't been formally introduced. In America, the land of rampant informality, you can frequently find the other extreme, and the customer has to respond to well-meaning inquiries about his overall health and how he's doing, followed, if they're not quickly nipped in the bud, by a stream of comments and questions about ancestry, clothing, oddities of pronunciation, and general appearance. The French, it seems to me, strike a happy balance between intimacy and reserve.

  Some of this must be helped by the language, which lends itself to graceful expression even when dealing with fairly basic subjects. No, monsieur, you haven't made a beast of yourself at the table; you're simply suffering from a crise de foie. And could that be flatulence we hear coming from the gentleman in the corner? Certainly not. It is the plangent sound of the piano des pauvres, the poor man's piano. And as for that stomach we see threatening to burst the buttons on your shirt – well, that's nothing but a bonne brioche. And there is that famously elegant subtitle from a classic western. Cowboy: Gimme a shot of red-eye. Subtitle: Un Dubonnet, s'il vous plaît. No wonder French was the language of diplomacy for all those years.

  It is still the language of gastronomy, and in a country that often gives the impression – at least on the roads – of being late for lunch or dinner, you would expect to see more physical evidence of the national passion for good food. More solid flesh, more Michelin men rolling from one meal to the next. But it isn't so; not, at least, in Provence. Of course they exist, these mammoths of the table, but they are few. The vast majority of men and women I see every day are definitely, irritatingly slimmer than they have any right to be. I've heard people from other countries explain this as the result of some benign cocktail of the genes, or an overactive metabolism brought on by too much coffee and French politics, but the true answer must lie in what they eat and drink and how they eat and drink it.

  The French don't snack. They will tear off the end of a fresh baguette (which, if it's warm, is practically impossible to resist) and eat it as they leave the boulangerie. And that's usually all you will see being consumed on the street. Compare that with the public eating and drinking that goes on in America: pizza, hot dogs, nachos, tacos, heroes, potato chips, sandwiches, jerricans of coffee, half-gallon buckets of Coke (Diet, of course) and heaven knows what else being demolished on the hoof, often on the way to the aerobics class.

  Restraint between meals is rewarded as soon as a Frenchman sits down at the table, and this is where other nationalities become deeply puzzled. How is it possible for a body to pack in two serious meals a day without turning into a human balloon or keeling over with arteries that are rigid with cholesterol? French portions are fairly modest, certainly, but they never stop coming, and they will often include dishes that would horrify a doctor in the States: creamy rillettes of pork, pâtés laced with Armagnac, mushrooms wrapped in buttery pastry, potatoes cooked in duck fat – and these are merely to set you up for the main course. Which, naturally, has to be followed by cheese; but not too much, because dessert is still to come.

  And who could contemplate a meal without a glass or two of wine for the stomach's sake? Some years ago, seekers after the gastronomic truth discovered what the French have known for centuries, and pronounced that a little red wine is good for you. Some of them went further. Looking for a tidy explanation of what came to be called the French Paradox, they noticed that the French drink ten times more wine than Americans. Voilà! Paradox explained. It must be wine that keeps the French trim and healthy.

  I'd like to think it were as simple as that, but I have a feeling that there are other, less dramatic influences at work on and in the
French stomach. I believe, without a shred of scientific proof, that the raw ingredients here contain fewer additives, preservatives, colourants and chemical novelties than in the States. I also believe that food eaten at a table is better for you than food eaten hunched over a desk, standing at a counter, or driving in a car. And I believe that, wherever you do it, hurried eating has ruined more digestive systems than foie gras. Not long ago, there was a fad in certain New York restaurants for the guaranteed thirty-minute lunch, enabling the busy and important executive to entertain two different victims in the space of an hour. If that isn't a recipe for tension and indigestion, I'll swallow my cell-phone.

  It's true that time in Provence is not worshipped in quite the same way as it is in more hectic parts of the world, and it took me a week or two to bow to the inevitable and put my watch away in a drawer. But while no great importance is given to time in the sense of punctuality, there is an enormous relish of the moment. Eating, obviously. Conversation on a street corner. A game of boules. The choosing of a bunch of flowers. Sitting in a café. Small pleasures receive their due, and there is an absence of rush – sometimes infuriating, often delightful, and in the end contagious. I realized this when I went into town on an errand that need only have taken fifteen minutes, and came back two and a half hours later. I had done absolutely nothing of any importance, and I had enjoyed every minute of it.

  Perhaps the slower pace of life is partly responsible for another aspect of the local character, and that is cheerfulness. The French are not famous for being jolly; rather the reverse. Many foreigners tend to judge the mood of the entire nation on the basis of their first humiliating exposure to the Parisian waiter, not knowing that he is as morose and distant towards his countrymen – and probably towards his wife and cat as well – as he is to the tourist. But go south, and the difference is striking. There is an atmosphere of good humour, despite considerable difficulties, high unemployment and the financial guillotine of French income tax.