bistrot fare, but the patio is trellised and covered with vines. On one side, fish and ducks swim by in the canal. The shaded setting with clusters of grapes hanging over the tables offers a delightful escape from the frenetic Sunday market. In all likelihood the person we had been negotiating with an hour earlier would arrive and nod and wish us bon appétit before joining friends at a nearby table reserved for them.
We decided we needed French provençal chairs for our dining room. We hadn’t had much success until we noticed a set of seven in one of the stalls. This was a rare find. The brocanteur wasn’t there; the fellow at the stall across the aisle said she would return in a few minutes. We waited, but after some time she still hadn’t returned so we discussed moving on. He saw that we might do so and came over.
“She won’t take less than two hundred and ninety euros for all seven,” he said, asserting his expertise.
Marie-Hélène and I glanced at each other. We had been ready to pay more than that. The price marked on the chairs was four hundred and eighty. I looked at the fellow and feigned some concern.
“We could pay two hundred and fifty, but we can’t wait any longer. Can you help us?”
“Beh oui. Je pense,” he replied.
I paid him while Marie-Hélène brought the car around and folded the back seats down. Just as we had loaded the last chair in the hatch of the car a woman came by and stopped.
“Those are my chairs!”
“Oh yes,” I said. “The fellow in the next stall looked after it for you and we paid him.”
She went off to see him, while we closed the hatch door and headed for home.
• • •
Our drives took us an hour north on the A7 Autoroute to Valence for shopping in the boutiques, to Barjac situated deep in the Massif Central for a giant outdoor spring antique market, and an hour and a half south-west on the A9 Autoroute to Nîmes to see the Jardin de la Fontaine and the best-preserved Roman amphitheatre in France. Nearby, the massive 275-metre-long Pont du Gard, part of the aqueduct that the Romans built to supply water to Nîmes some two thousand years ago, rises almost 50 metres over the Gard River.
In Nîmes and Arles, ferias with bullfights are still held each year, although they are less violent than they once were. The bullfighters are unarmed, and their goal is not to kill the bull but to snatch the ribbons off its horns. On the other hand, the bull is free to do all the damage it can. Angered bulls have been known to pursue their tormentors over the arena barrier and up into the stands amid terrified fleeing spectators.
We were walking past the amphitheatre in Nîmes when I couldn’t resist telling Marie-Hélène a story about a man visiting a city in Spain known for its more traditional bullfights.
“He had an introduction from a friend to a very good restaurant in Barcelona. The maître d’hôtel welcomed him warmly when he arrived and showed him to an excellent table. The man accepted the suggestion of the waiter for the dinner. When the maître d’ returned at the end of the meal to ask if he had found the dinner to his satisfaction, the man said it was excellent, but he noticed that someone at the next table had what looked like a very unusual dish.”
I glanced at Marie-Hélène to see if she was listening, and then went on.
“‘Can you tell me what that dish was?’ ‘I most certainly can, monsieur; it was bull’s testicles.’ The man was very interested now, so he asked, ‘I would like to return tomorrow evening and try that. Would it be possible?’ The maître d’ said he would do his best. So the man returned the next evening and as promised the dish he requested arrived and the man ate it. Once again, the maître d’ returned after the meal and asked if he had enjoyed it. ‘Yes I did, but I noticed they were much smaller than the ones you served the other gentleman last night.’ ‘Well, that is true, monsieur. . . . You see, some days the bullfighter wins, and other days he does not.’”
• • •
While Marie-Hélène is fluent in French and has a natural grasp of dialects, I had learned the language in university and could read, write and speak reasonably well—or so I thought. I began to realize that I had a very small vocabulary and that my pronunciation was apparently abysmal. I learned this when the gardener turned to Marie-Hélène and asked, “What did he say?” . . . The French language was going to be a challenge for me.
The Parisian French taught in classrooms does not apply in Provence, where the words run together into short sentences that are delivered with a staccato efficiency. Furthermore, I was faced with a dialect and a mixture of old provençal words not found in dictionaries. I was forced to resort to more basic communication—that international language of gesticulating combined with exaggerated facial expressions. So body language took over, and before long I found myself interpreting gestures, the roll of the eyes, and where a finger was pointed. When Albin pointed at a tool and said marteau a second time, I reached for the hammer. Before too long the words began to fall into place. Dealing with artisans, however, is easier as there is something to point at. Social conversation is different again. I learned to hear the nouns first and to fill in the words in between later.
I learned ‘bof’ quickly enough, as it summarized our gardener’s rejection of one of my gardening ideas. It often accompanied or was used in place of a dismissive shrug. ‘Merde’ was a categorical dismissal mixed with hints of contempt.
With Albin ‘oui’ became voui, and ‘vingt et un’ became vantay ay eon.
‘Pas d’accord’ meant strong disagreement, while ‘beh voui’ seemed to indicate agreement or at least the acceptance of a suggestion.
I had a lingering fear of mistaking the meaning of just one word and it leading to mirth, personal embarrassment or some more serious blunder. I learned there can be a subtle difference in the sounds of two words, but a serious difference in meaning. Baiser means either to kiss or to make love, baisser to lower. Poisson is a fish and poison is poison. It was wise to stay away from some words.
The garden took up much of my time. One day I was working on one of the last areas that needed weeding. Long before a motorcycle appeared in sight, I could hear the deep thrum of a powerful engine. I looked up from the rosemary shrub I was pruning, my nose filled with its sharp, resinous scent. The machine came into view as it rounded the bend in the road and I recognized the black cycle and the rider in black leathers and helmet. While I couldn’t see his face through the tinted visor I detected a nod of his head and I raised my hand in response.
The motorcyclist continued on by, and then a hundred metres up the road he slowed, moved to the edge of the road and then swung across to make the sharp turn up the driveway to Faustin Buisson’s house. Last year I had become familiar with the thrum of this engine and the cautious approach the rider made on the road. I assumed that he must be Faustin’s son. In time I learned that he had moved to Aix-en-Provence to find employment. The family farm was far too small to support him and he probably wanted to get away and explore new opportunities not available in Nyons, as so many other youths had done. Like his father, he arrived alone and left alone. However, that was soon to change, and we were to see more of him that summer.
Acknowledgements
This book would never have been written except for the suggestion of Tom Johnston, and then the enthusiastic support of my wife, Marie-Hélène. The first outline of the story was read by Nancy McNeill, who said she wanted to read more. Eileen and Paul Dwillies and Lucie Desrochers made their full share of contributions, and I thank David Freeman for his sense of humour.
