Encore Provence Read online

  It was either an admirable exercise in low-pressure salesmanship or a maddening inconvenience, depending on your patience and your point of view. Or, in my case, another reminder of why I like to live in Provence. Curiosities are everywhere, and the world's most reluctant car salesman is only one of them. Before leaving Apt, we should pay our respects to another oddity – the town's railway station.

  It is set back from the main road that leads to Avignon, a cream-coloured building constructed during those giddy, prosperous days of the nineteenth century before trains had any real competition from cars and planes. The architectural style is railroad bourgeois – two substantial storeys crowned by the triumphant, unblinking flourish of a circular œil-de-bœuf window, its blank stare directed across the road towards the Hôtel Victor Hugo directly opposite. (Rooms for the weary traveller at 175 francs a night, WC included.) To one side of the station building is a small, well-kept park, and the area in front is usually crowded with cars and vans coming and going. There is an air of bustle appropriate to the starting point for exotic voyages to every corner of Provence and beyond.

  In fact, I wanted two seats on the TGV high-speed train from Avignon to Paris. Was it possible, I asked the gentleman at the reservations desk, to purchase tickets from him that would take us all the way?

  ‘Of course,’ he said, pecking away at his computer to bring up the schedule of departures. ‘From here,’ he added proudly, ‘I can arrange tickets to anywhere in France – and also to London on the Eurostar, although that does involve changing trains at Lille. What time would be convenient for you to travel?’

  I picked a time, and asked him when the train left from Apt to connect with the TGV from Avignon. He looked up from his computer with a frown, as though I had asked a question of extraordinary stupidity. ‘You can't go from here,’ he said.

  ‘No?’

  He stood up. ‘Venez, monsieur.’ I followed him through to the back of the building, where he threw open a doorway that gave on to the deserted station platform, and waved a hand at what had once been the track. I looked in vain for the shining double rails of the chemin de fer, for the signals, for the puff of steam on the horizon. Alas, there was no way for even the most determined train to penetrate the waist-high weeds that stretched in a dead straight line off into the distance. Apt's days as a vital rail link were clearly long gone. However, I was told that with sufficient notice a taxi to Avignon station could easily be arranged.

  But think what you will about a train station without any trains, at least it is open all day to conduct its limited business. This sets it apart from those Provençal establishments – and there are many of them – which open and close according to a timetable that is guaranteed to bewilder and mystify the unwary. Butchers, épiceries, ironmongers, newsagents, antique dealers, clothes boutiques and small stores of nearly every description seem to follow only one consistent rule: whether they open at eight in the morning or not until ten, they lock their doors at lunchtime. The shutters come down at noon for at least two hours, often three. In small villages, this can stretch to four hours, particularly when the heat of summer calls for an extended siesta.

  And just when you begin to feel that a certain chaotic pattern is emerging, the rules will be changed. You go to buy cheese at a shop that has always opened on the dot of three, only to find the window bare except for a notice advising you of a fermeture exceptionelle. Your first thought is that there has been a death in the family, but as the exceptional closing period enters its third week, you realize that a matter of almost equal gravity – the annual vacation – has come up. This is confirmed by Madame when she returns to work. Why didn't she put her holiday plans on the notice? Ah, because news of a prolonged absence might encourage burglars. Cheese theft, apparently, is a grim possibility in these dangerous times.

  The rituals of rural commerce are made even more complicated every August, when the French in their millions leave their offices and factories for the joys of the open road and the peace of the countryside. Since Provence is a popular summer destination, most local enterprises keep working, hoping to profit from the high season. You will never have a problem finding food, drink, postcards, pottery, souvenirs made from olive wood, or sun-tan oil. But should you need anything a little out of the ordinary, something that originates in those deserted offices and factories up there in the far north, you would be well advised to anticipate a long wait.

  Friends from Paris, down to spend August in their village house, discovered that their old electric kettle had expired. Being by nature faithful customers, they went back to the shop where they had bought it to buy a replacement. And there in the window, somewhat dusty but definitely new, was exactly what they wanted. They were already taking out their cheque-book as they went into the shop.

  The proprietor was apologetic, but firm. His stock of kettles was exhausted and, as the factory outside Paris was closed for the month, it would be mid-September before he received any more. Désolé.

  But, Monsieur, said our friends, you have a kettle – an up-to-date version of our old kettle, the very kettle we desire – in your window. What luck! We'll take that one.

  The proprietor would have none of it. That kettle must remain in the window, he said, for reasons of publicity. How else would people know that I stock that particular marque?

  Reasoned argument failed to budge him. The gift of the old kettle as substitute window dressing was declined. The offer of payment by cash, usually a powerful inducement, was refused. The kettle stayed in the shop window, where, for all I know, it is still gathering dust, a small token of the trials of August.

  This is in many ways the most difficult month of the year, and not only because the population is swollen by tourists. Crowds can easily be avoided, but the weather can't, and the weather of August is, as the farmers say, excessif, a reaction to the heat that has built up during the long dry days of July. For week after week, the sun never seems to set, soaking into the hills and the stone houses, melting tarmac, splitting earth, grilling the grass brown, thudding down to make the hair on your head hot to the touch. And then one day, traditionally around the middle of August, the air thickens and becomes heavy, almost syrupy. There is an abrupt silence in the bushes as the cigales stop chirping, and you feel that the countryside is holding its breath, waiting for the storm.

  This still, quiet moment before the first trump of thunder is your final chance to go through the house unplugging your fax, your computer, your answering machine, your stereo and your television set. Once the storm gets going and the lightning starts to ricochet around your ears, it is almost inevitable that the domestic power supply will be cut off. But before that happens there will often be one last violent electrical spasm – nature's vengeful swipe at high technology – powerful enough to scramble the brains of any sensitive appliance. We have lost two faxes in this way, and one answering machine that was so traumatized it developed an incurable stutter.

  Our consolation is a front-row seat for one of the greatest shows on earth. The valley acts like a monstrous amplifier for the rolling growls of thunder that swirl around the house, ending in cracks that threaten to shatter the roof tiles. Lightning dances along the crest of the mountains, and for a brilliant moment or two every rock and every tree is floodlit, their shapes etched against the evening sky. The dogs stay close to us, ears flat against their heads, content for once to be indoors. We eat by candlelight, grateful for the protection of solid stone walls, watching the storm move up the valley until it disappears with a distant mutter and a final flicker of light, far away in the hills of Haute Provence.

  The air turns cool, then moist, as the first fat drops of rain hit the ground, and there is the sudden welcome scent of wet earth. Within seconds, the drops become torrents. Water falls from the overhanging roof tiles in a continuous sheet, gouging channels in the gravel of the terrace, crushing plants, flooding flowerbeds, bouncing head-high off the outside table – two months' rain in half an hour. It stops as
abruptly as it began, and we go paddling across the terrace to rescue a bedraggled parasol that has been knocked off its feet by the downpour.

  The next morning the sky is as blue as ever and the sun returns, making steam rise from the newly washed fields. By the end of the day, the countryside has regained its parched appearance, as if the storm never happened. But inside the house, souvenirs of the deluge linger in the pipes and cisterns and U-shaped crannies of the plumbing system. Subterranean flooding causes prolonged gurgles. Normally mild-mannered taps have violent sneezing attacks, spewing out gouts of muddy water. By some baffling process, items of kitchen waste – odd fragments of lettuce, a sprinkling of tea leaves – take a wrong turning in the pipes and find their way into the bowl of the downstairs lavatory, causing some consternation among visitors who are accustomed to uneventful urban plumbing. Well, they say, we never expected this.

  But it is only one of many small surprises that make daily life in Provence unlike life anywhere else. One Sunday last summer, my wife came back from Coustellet market still shaking her head. She had been drawn to one of the stalls by a tray of courgette flowers, which are delicious either stuffed or deep-fried in light batter, a favourite late-summer recipe. ‘I'd like half a kilo of those,’ she said.

  But nothing is that simple. The stall-holder snapped off a plastic bag from a roll behind the stall. ‘Of course, Madame,’ he said. ‘Male or female?’

  More recently, one of our guests, a man prone to the extravagant gesture while talking, knocked a glass of red wine over his trousers. The next day he took them to the dry cleaners. Madame spread the trousers on the counter, examining the stains with a professional eye and a discouraging shake of the head. It was possible, she said, that the stains could be removed, but that would depend on the wine. Was it a Châteauneuf or one of the lighter Luberon reds? Amazed that he couldn't remember, she then gave him a short lecture on the staining capabilities of various wines, according to their tannin content, and seemed ready to move on to particular vintages when the arrival of another customer distracted her.

  Our friend returned to the house greatly impressed. He said he had spilt wine on his trousers all over Europe, and in several major cities in the United States. But never had the provenance of his stains been so thoroughly questioned. Next time this happened, he said, he would be sure to take the wine label and perhaps a few tasting notes in with his trousers.

  The Provençal loves to give advice, to impart superior knowledge, to set you straight and save you from the error of your ways. As a foreigner who has had the temerity to write about Provence, I am frequently trapped in a corner with an accusing index finger wagging under my nose, and corrected. I've come to enjoy these educational exchanges, whether the subject is the best way to eat a melon or the mating habits of wild boars, and there have actually been occasions when conclusive evidence has been on my side. But this is dismissed or ignored. My instructor does not allow himself to be confused by the facts, and he will always have the last word.

  One of the most persistent crimes that I have committed is to put an acute accent on the ‘e’ in Luberon, an innocent but clearly uneducated act that inspires considerable scorn in the breast of the Provençal purist. Letters arrive, rapping me over the knuckles, quoting other writers such as Jean Giono and Henri Bosco, and telling me to follow their excellent, accentless examples. And then one day, Monsieur Farigoule, the self-anointed linguistics professor, took me to task for tinkering with someone else's language. In self-defence, I went back to my reference books.

  It seemed to me that I had some rather distinguished and scholarly allies. In the Larousse dictionary, on the maps of the National Geographic institute, in the Etymological Dictionary of Names of Rivers and Mountains in France and on the Michelin maps of the Vaucluse, the Luberon appears with an accent. These are not lightweight publications, but serious, official records, compiled by serious, official people. For once, I thought, the last word was going to be mine.

  But no. As I recited the list to Farigoule, I could see him pursing his lips, and he allowed himself one or two eloquent, disdainful sniffs.

  ‘Well,’ I said finally. ‘There you are. Larousse, Michelin…’

  ‘Bof,’ he said. ‘Parisians, all of them. What do they know?’

  Ah, the poor Parisians. Despite being French they are regarded as foreign, and therefore to be treated with suspicion and ridicule. They are renowned for their arrogance, for their condescending attitude, for their fashionable clothes, for their shiny cars, for buying all the bread in the bakery, for just being Parisian. A derogatory word – parisienisme – is now creeping into the local language to describe their insidious and unwelcome influence on certain aspects of Provençal life, and they have even been accused of attempting to tamper with nature. Last year, a story circulated about the Parisian owners of summer homes in one of the more chic villages – St Germain sud, as it has been called – complaining to the mayor about noise. Their siestas were being ruined, they claimed, by the insufferable racket of the cigales. How could anyone sleep with all these creatures rubbing their noisy legs together?

  One might imagine the mayor treating this as a crise municipale, putting aside less important business to organize a squad of cigale hunters, armed with nets and insect sprays, to patrol the bushes on tiptoe, alert and ready to pounce on the merest whisper of a chirrup. It is more likely, of course, that the mayor gave the Parisians the standard Provençal response to unanswerable questions or ridiculous demands: the full shrug, which is executed by local experts as follows.

  A certain amount of limbering-up is required before any major body parts are brought into action, and your first moves should be nothing more than a frown and a slight sideways tilt of the head. These indicate that you cannot believe the foolishness, the impertinence or the plain dumb ignorance of what the Parisian has just said to you. There is a short period of silence before the Parisian tries again, repeating his remark and looking at you with some degree of irritation. Maybe he thinks you're deaf, or Belgian, and therefore confused by his sophisticated accent. Whatever he feels, you now have his complete attention. This is the moment to demolish him and his nonsense with a flowing, unhurried series of movements as the full shrug is unfurled.

  One. The jaw is pushed out as the mouth is turned down.

  Two. The eyebrows are fully cocked and the head comes forward.

  Three. The shoulders are raised to ear-lobe level, the elbows tucked into the side, the hands fanning out with palms facing upward.

  Four (optional). You allow a short, infinitely dismissive sound – something between flatulence and a sigh – to escape from your lips before letting the shoulders return to a resting position.

  It might almost be a yoga exercise, and I must have seen it hundreds of times. It can be used to signify disagreement, disapproval, resignation or contempt, and it effectively terminates any discussion. As far as I know, there is no countershrug, or satisfactory answering gesture. For these reasons, it is an invaluable gesture for anyone like myself whose command of the French language is far from perfect. A well-timed shrug speaks volumes.

  I was on the receiving end of one not long ago when I went into Cavaillon, lured by reports of an elaborate face-lift that had been given to the toilettes publiques at the top end of the Cours Bournissac. I remembered them as being unobtrusive and underground, dank in the winter and sweltering in summer; functional, certainly, and not a particular eyesore, but by no means decorative.

  Changes have taken place – dramatic changes that are obvious even from a distance. The top of the establishment has been covered by a circular bed of earth, planted with bright flowers. In this floral setting, her face tilted away from the sun, is a reclining nude carved from pale, smooth stone. She undoubtedly has a symbolic significance, possibly something to do with rushing waters and the joys of hygiene. In any event, she is a handsome and well-formed addition to the Cavaillon landscape, promising blessed relief to those who venture down the stairs t
o take advantage of the other improvements.

  One of these is human, an attendant who will direct visitors to the appropriate section of the toilettes according to gender and need in return for a modest tip. He is the first surprise. The second is the choice of equipment. France being a country that likes to embrace every kind of technological achievement from the Concorde to electronic mole killers, you might expect to find a gleaming array of the latest in sanitary engineering – automatically sterilized cubicles at the very least, maybe with a seat-warmer option for the colder months.

  Instead, you will find a piece of bathroom history: a flat porcelain tray about three feet square with a hole in the middle and two rectangular protuberances, one on each side of the hole, on which to place your feet. It is an arrangement that has been in use since the earliest days of modern plumbing, and is known in French sanitary circles as the à la turque model. I had thought it was no longer manufactured and virtually extinct, only to be found in those corners of France that are too remote to benefit from the march of progress. But there it was, solid, new and strangely out of place at the end of the twentieth century.

  Before leaving, I asked the attendant if he knew of any reason why the contemporary lavatory had been passed over in favour of this more primitive installation. Was it to frustrate vandals? To discourage readers of magazines and others who might occupy the premises for selfishly long periods? An aesthetic choice? Or just nostalgia for the good old days? I might as well have been asking him to explain the secret of life. He delivered the full shrug. ‘C'est comme ça,’ he said. That's how it is. Take it or leave it.

  What is there to like about this catalogue of Provençal quirks, most of which are inconvenient and seem to have been devised with the express purpose of taking up as much of your time as possible? An errand that might take half an hour in other, more streamlined societies can easily occupy an entire morning. Appointments are postponed or forgotten. The simplest domestic problems always seem to require complicated solutions. Very little is straightforward. The climate is intemperate, often destructive. And the foreign resident, whether Parisian, Dutch, German or British, no matter how many years he may spend in Provence, will never be considered anything more than a long-term tourist. These are not conventional attractions.