A Year In Provence Page 16

  In many ways, the early part of September felt like a second spring. The days were dry and hot, the nights cool, the air wonderfully clear after the muggy haze of August. The inhabitants of the valley had shaken off their torpor and were getting down to the main business of the year, patrolling their vineyards every morning to examine the grapes that hung for mile after mile in juicy and orderly lines.

  Faustin was out there with the rest of them, cupping the bunches in his hand and looking up at the sky, sucking his teeth in contemplation as he tried to second-guess the weather. I asked him when he thought he was going to pick.

  "They should cook some more," he said. "But the weather in September is not to be trusted."

  He had made the same gloomy comment about the weather every month of the year so far, in the resigned and plaintive tones used by farmers all over the world when they tell you how hard it is to scratch a living from the land. Conditions are never right. The rain, the wind, the sunshine, the weeds, the insects, the government-there is always at least one fly in their ointment, and they take a perverse pleasure in their pessimism.

  "You can do everything right for eleven months a year," said Faustin, "and then-pouf-a storm comes and the crop is hardly fit for grape juice." Jus de raiseng-he said it with such scorn that I could imagine him leaving a spoiled crop to rot on the vines rather than waste his time picking grapes that couldn't even aspire to become vin ordinaire.

  As if his life were not already filled with grief, Nature had put a further difficulty in his way: the grapes on our land would have to be picked at two separate times, because about five hundred of our vines produced table grapes which would be ready before the raisins de cuve. This was un emmerdement, made tolerable only because of the good price that table grapes fetched. Even so, it meant that there were two possible occasions when disappointment and disaster could strike and, if Faustin knew anything about it, strike they undoubtedly would. I left him shaking his head and grumbling to God.

  To make up for the mournful predictions of Faustin, we received a daily ration of joyful news from Menicucci, now coming to the end of his labors on the central heating system and almost beside himself with anticipation as the day of firing up the boiler approached. Three times he reminded me to order the oil, and then insisted on supervising the filling of the tank to make sure that the delivery was free from foreign bodies.

  "Il faut faire très attention," he explained to the man who brought the oil. "The smallest piece of cochonnerie in your fuel will affect my burner and clog the electrodes. I think it would be prudent to filter it as you pump it into the tank."

  The fuel man drew himself up in outrage, parrying Menicucci's wagging finger with his own, oily and black-rimmed at the tip. "My fuel is already triple-filtered. C'est impeccable." He made as if to kiss his fingertips and then thought better of it.

  "We shall see," said Menicucci. "We shall see." He looked with suspicion at the nozzle before it was placed inside the tank, and the fuel man wiped it ostentatiously on a filthy rag. The filling ceremony was accompanied by a detailed technical discourse on the inner workings of the burner and the boiler which the fuel man listened to with scant interest, grunting or saying Ah bon? whenever his participation was required. Menicucci turned to me as the last few liters were pumped in. "This afternoon we will have the first test." He had an anxious moment as a dreadful possibility occurred to him. "You're not going out? You and Madame will be here?" It would have been an act of supreme unkindness to deprive him of his audience. We promised to be ready and waiting at two o'clock.

  We gathered in what had once been a dormitory for donkeys, now transformed by Menicucci into the nerve center of his heating complex. Boiler, burner, and water tank were arranged side by side, joined together by umbilical cords of copper, and an impressive array of painted pipes-red for hot water, blue for cold, très logique-fanned out from the boiler and disappeared into the ceiling. Valves and dials and switches, bright and incongruous against the rough stone of the walls, awaited the master's touch. It looked extremely complicated, and I made the mistake of saying so.

  Menicucci took it as a personal criticism, and spent ten minutes demonstrating its astonishing simplicity, flicking switches, opening and closing valves, twiddling dials and gauges, and making me thoroughly bewildered. "Voilà!" he said after a final flourish on the switches. "Now that you understand the apparatus, we will start the test. Jeune! Pay attention."

  The beast awoke with a series of clicks and snuffles. "Le brûleur," said Menicucci, dancing around the boiler to adjust the controls for the fifth time. There was a thump of air, and then a muffled roar. "We have combustion!" He made it sound as dramatic as the launch of a space shuttle. "Within five minutes, every radiator will be hot. Come!"

  He scuttled around the house, insisting that we touch each radiator. "You see? You will be able to pass the entire winter en chemise." By this time, we were all sweating profusely. It was eighty degrees outside, and the indoor temperature with the heating full on was insufferable. I asked if we could turn it off before we dehydrated.

  "Ah non. You must leave it on for twenty-four hours so that we can verify all the joints and make sure there are no leaks. Touch nothing until I return tomorrow. It is most important that everything remains at maximum." He left us to wilt, and to enjoy the smell of cooked dust and hot iron.

  THERE IS ONE September weekend when the countryside sounds as though rehearsals are being held for World War Three. It is the official start of the hunting season, and every red-blooded Frenchman takes his gun, his dog, and his murderous inclinations into the hills in search of sport. The first sign that this was about to happen came through the post-a terrifying document from a gunsmith in Vaison-la-Romaine, offering a complete range of artillery at preseason prices. There were sixty or seventy models to choose from, and my hunting instincts, which had been dormant since birth, were aroused by the thought of owning a Verney Carron Grand Bécassier, or a Ruger.44 Magnum with an electronic sight. My wife, who has a well-founded lack of confidence in my ability to handle any kind of dangerous equipment, pointed out that I hardly needed an electronic sight to shoot myself in the foot.

  We had both been surprised at the French fondness for guns. Twice we had visited the homes of outwardly mild and unwarlike men, and twice we had been shown the family arsenal; one man had five rifles of various calibers, the other had eight, oiled and polished and displayed in a rack on the dining room wall like a lethal piece of art. How could anyone need eight guns? How would you know which one to take with you? Or did you take them all, like a bag of golf clubs, selecting the.44 Magnum for leopard or moose and the Baby Bretton for rabbit?

  After a while, we came to realize that the gun mania was only part of a national fascination with outfits and accoutrements, a passion for looking like an expert. When a Frenchman takes up cycling or tennis or skiing, the last thing he wants is for the world to mistake him for the novice that he is, and so he accessorizes himself up to professional standard. It's instant. A few thousand francs and there you are, indistinguishable from any other seasoned ace competing in the Tour de France or Wimbledon or the Winter Olympics. In the case of la chasse, the accessories are almost limitless, and they have the added attraction of being deeply masculine and dangerous in their appearance.

  We were treated to a preview of hunting fashions in Cavaillon market. The stalls had stocked up for the season, and looked like small paramilitary depots: there were cartridge bandoliers and plaited leather rifle slings; jerkins with myriad zippered pockets and game pouches that were washable and therefore très pratique, because bloodstains could be easily removed; there were wilderness boots of the kind used by mercenaries parachuting into the Congo; fearsome knives with nine-inch blades and compasses set into the handle; lightweight aluminium water bottles which would probably see more pastis than water; webbing belts with D-rings and a special sling to hold a bayonet, presumably in case the ammunition ran out and game had to be attacked with cold steel
; forage caps and commando trousers, survival rations and tiny collapsible field stoves. There was everything a man might need for his confrontation with the untamed beasts of the forest except that indispensable accessory with four legs and a nose like radar, the hunting dog.

  Chiens de chasse are too specialized to be bought and sold across a counter, and we were told that no serious hunter would consider buying a pup without first meeting both parents. Judging by some of the hunting dogs we had seen, we could imagine that finding the father might have been difficult, but among all the hybrid curiosities there were three more or less identifiable types-the liver-colored approximation of a large spaniel, the stretched beagle, and the tall, rail-thin hound with the wrinkled, lugubrious face.

  Every hunter considers his dog to be uniquely gifted, and he will have at least one implausible story of stamina and prowess to tell you. To hear the owners talk, you would think that these dogs were supernaturally intelligent creatures, trained to a hair and faithful unto death. We looked forward with interest to seeing them perform on the opening weekend of the season. Perhaps their example would inspire our dogs to do something more useful than stalk lizards and attack old tennis balls.

  Hunting in our part of the valley started shortly after seven o'clock one Sunday morning, with salvos coming from either side of the house and from the mountains behind. It sounded as though anything that moved would be at risk, and when I went out for a walk with the dogs I took the biggest white handkerchief I could find in case I needed to surrender. With infinite caution, we set off along the footpath that runs behind the house toward the village, assuming that any hunter worth his gun license would have moved well away from the beaten track and into the tangled undergrowth farther up the mountain.

  There was a noticeable absence of birdsong; all sensible or experienced birds had left at the sound of the first shot for somewhere safer, like North Africa or central Avignon. In the bad old days, hunters used to hang caged birds in the trees to lure other birds close enough for a point-blank shot, but that had been made illegal, and the modern hunter now had to rely on woodcraft and stealth.

  I didn't see much evidence of that, but I did see enough hunters and dogs and weaponry to wipe out the entire thrush and rabbit population of southern France. They hadn't gone up into the forest; in fact, they had barely left the footpath. Knots of them were gathered in the clearings-laughing, smoking, taking nips from their khaki-painted flasks and cutting slices of saucisson-but of active hunting-man versus thrush in a battle of wits-there was no sign. They must have used up their ration of shells during the early morning fusillade.

  Their dogs, however, were anxious to get to work. After months of confinement in kennels, they were delirious with liberty and the scents of the forest, tracking back and forth, noses close to the ground and twitching with excitement. Each dog wore a thick collar with a small brass bell-the clochette-hanging from it. We were told that this had a double purpose. It signaled the dog's whereabouts so that the hunter could position himself for the game that was being driven toward him, but it was also a precaution against shooting at something in the bushes that sounded like a rabbit or a boar and finding that you had shot your own dog. No responsible hunter, naturellement, would ever shoot at anything he couldn't see-or so I was told. But I had my doubts. After a morning with the pastis or the marc, a rustle in the bushes might be too much to resist, and the cause of the rustle might be human. In fact, it might be me. I thought about wearing a bell, just to be on the safe side.

  Another benefit of the clochette became apparent at the end of the morning: it was to help the hunter avoid the humiliating experience of losing his dog at the end of the hunt. Far from the disciplined and faithful animals I had imagined them to be, hunting dogs are wanderers, led on by their noses and oblivious of the passage of time. They have not grasped the idea that hunting stops for lunch. The bell doesn't necessarily mean that the dog will come when called, but at least the hunter can tell roughly where he is.

  Just before noon, camouflage-clad figures started to make their way to the vans parked at the side of the road. A few had dogs with them. The rest were whistling and shouting with increasing irritation, making a bad-tempered hissing noise-"Vieng ici! Vieng ici!"-in the direction of the symphony of bells that could be heard coming from the forest.

  Response was patchy. The shouts became more bad tempered, degenerating into bellows and curses. After a few minutes the hunters gave up and went home, most of them dogless.

  We were joined a little later for lunch by three abandoned hounds who came down to drink at the swimming pool. They were greatly admired by our two bitches for their devil-may-care manner and exotic aroma, and we penned them all in the courtyard while we wondered how we could get them back to their owners. We consulted Faustin.

  "Don't bother," he said. "Let them go. The hunters will be back in the evening. If they don't find their dogs, they'll leave a coussin."

  It always worked, so Faustin said. If the dog was in the forest, one simply left something with the scent of the kennel on it-a cushion or, more likely, a scrap of sacking-near the spot where the dog had last been seen. Sooner or later, the dog would come back to its own scent and wait to be picked up.

  We let the three hounds out, and they loped off, baying with excitement. It was an extraordinary, doleful sound, not a bark or a howl but a lament, like an oboe in pain. Faustin shook his head. "They'll be gone for days." He himself didn't hunt, and regarded hunters and their dogs as intruders who had no right to be nosing around his precious vines.

  He had decided, he told us, that the moment had come to pick the table grapes. They would start as soon as Henriette had finished servicing the camion. She was the mechanically minded member of the family, and every September she had the job of coaxing another few kilometers out of the grape truck. It was at least thirty years old-maybe more, Faustin couldn't remember exactly-blunt-nosed and rickety, with open sides and bald tires. It had ceased to be roadworthy years ago, but there was no question of buying a new truck. And why waste good money having it serviced at a garage when you had a mechanic for a wife? It was only used for a few weeks a year, and Faustin was careful to take it on the back roads to avoid meeting any of those officious little flics from the police station at Les Baumettes, with their absurd regulations about brakes and valid insurance.

  Henriette's ministrations were successful, and the old truck gasped up the drive early one morning, loaded with shallow wooden grape trays, just deep enough for a single layer of bunches. Stacks of trays were placed along each line of vines, and the three of them-Faustin, Henriette, and their daughter-took their scissors and set to work.

  It was a slow and physically uncomfortable business. Because the appearance of table grapes is almost as important as their taste, every bunch had to be examined, every bruised or wrinkled grape snipped off. The bunches grew low, sometimes touching the earth and hidden by leaves, and the pickers' progress was in yards per hour-squatting down, cutting, standing up, inspecting, snipping, packing. The heat was fierce, coming up from the ground as well as beating down on the necks and shoulders. No shade, no breeze, no relief in the course of a ten-hour day except the break for lunch. Never again would I look at a bunch of grapes in a bowl without thinking of backache and sunstroke. It was past seven when they came in for a drink, exhausted and radiating heat, but satisfied. The grapes were good and three or four days would see them all picked. I said to Faustin that he must be pleased with the weather. He pushed back his hat and I could see the line sharp across his forehead where the burned brown skin turned white.

  "It's too good," he said. "It won't last." He took a long pull at his pastis as he considered the spectrum of misfortunes that could occur. If not storms, there might be a freak frost, a plague of locusts, a forest fire, a nuclear attack. Something was bound to go wrong before the second batch of grapes was picked. And, if it didn't, he could console himself with the fact that his doctor had put him on a diet to reduce his choles
terol level. Yes, that was certainly a grave problem. Reassured at having remembered that fate had recently dealt him a black card, he had another drink.

  IT HAD taken me some time to get used to having a separate purpose-built room devoted exclusively to wine-not a glorified cupboard or a cramped cavity under the stairs, but a genuine cave. It was buried in the bottom of the house, with permanently cool stone walls and a floor of gravel, and there was space for three or four hundred bottles. I loved it. I was determined to fill it up. Our friends were equally determined to empty it. This gave me the excuse to make regular visits-errands of social mercy-to the vineyards so that guests should never go thirsty. In the interests of research and hospitality, I went to Gigondas and Beaumes-de-Venise and Chateauneuf-du-Pape, none of them bigger than a large village, all of them single-minded in their dedication to the grape. Everywhere I looked, there were signs advertising the caves that seemed to be at fifty-yard intervals. Dégustez nos vins! Never has a invitation been accepted with more enthusiasm. I had dégustations in a garage in Gigondas and a château above Beaumes-de-Venise. I found a powerful and velvety Chateauneuf-du-Pape for thirty francs a liter, squirted into plastic containers with a marvelous lack of ceremony from what looked like a garage pump. In a more expensive and more pretentious establishment, I asked to try the marc. A small cut-glass bottle was produced, and a drop was dabbed on the back of my hand, whether to sniff or to suck I wasn't quite sure.

  After a while, I bypassed the villages and started to follow the signs, often half-hidden by vegetation, that pointed deep into the countryside where the wines baked in the sun, and where I could buy directly from the men who made the wine. They were, without exception, hospitable and proud of their work and, to me at least, their sales pitch was irresistible.