Hey! Things are looking up! I managed to find a little market this evening and buy a few things to cart up the hill to my cave. (When Jon Von in Paris referred to his cave, he meant his wine cellar, but I mean it quite a bit more literally.) I am now the proud owner of two sponges, some coffee filters, a dish towel (lavette gaufrée), some toilet paper, a bottle of household cleanser, three hangers, and a bar (yes, a bar) of laundry soap. I also picked up half a dozen eggs, some jambon sec (very much like prosciutto, but thicker), some Brie, yogurt, a jar of tomato sauce, and some apples and bananas. (The French aren’t obsessed with perfectly yellow bananas the way Americans are, by the way. I get the feeling they wouldn’t dream of putting unripe fruit like that on the shelves.) Unlike in Paris, it seems to be OK here to handle the produce rather than allow the specialist (shopkeeper) to select it for you. I also went to a boulangerie and bought a baguette and an almond pastry. Jean-Camille told me there are two boulangeries in town, each owned by one of a pair of brothers. Apparently, they used to own a single shop together, but had some irreconcilable differences and now own competing bakeries. One, according to JC, is good for bread, and the other is good for pastries, as those were the specialties of the two brothers, respectively. I couldn’t remember which was which, though, so I bought one of each at the first of the shops and I came upon and hoped for the best. Somehow I can’t imagine truly bad baked goods of any kind here.
So a little more about my cave: all limestone walls and open rough-hewn beams where the stonework does not extend all the way up into arched ceilings. Some of the doors are heavy and unfinished, with ancient riveted hardware, and others, obviously added later, are lighter weight, without door knobs. I use my pinky finger in the keyhole to coax them shut behind me. The floors are either terra cotta tile, where they have been resurfaced, or natural limestone, which leaves a fine, white dust on your feet and any clothes you might let drop. There are recessed windows on the side of the building that overlooks the rolling hills below, but it is otherwise on the dark side, with some stones that actually seep moisture during the night. The apartment is in the actual ramparts, or fortress, of the old village, built into the hillside.
It is apparently the old Roman archbishop’s dwelling, and it was clearly built for defense. It is accessed from a road on the mountainside below, and you enter up several flights of uneven stone stairs in what I can only describe as underground tunnels. If you turn the wrong way, which I did yesterday, you wind up in an old lavoir, where the washing of clothes was once done (by whom? Monks? Soldiers? I have yet to find out the deepest history, but am very curious to). This dark and damp stone room is without lighting and looks for all the world like a dungeon. I backed my way out pretty quickly. I asked Michele in my broken French when I arrived if there were ghosts here, and her eyes got very wide and she said “Vous avez peur?” (You are afraid?) I thought that question to answer a question was worthy of a politician, but I chose to ignore its implications. So far, no blithe spirits, unless one manifests in the form of deep sleep, because I’ve never slept as hard as I do here. Jean-Camille said that was true for him as well. As a medical resident in orthopedic surgery, I can see this is a highly valued trait for him, and I almost felt guilty that I was occupying his special spot for la sieste when he came down with a head cold the night we met.
My room is another all-stone, arched-ceiling cell, but a beautiful one, with a recessed window and curved inset niches with painted phrases of biblical Latin outlining them. The colors in this room are incredible. All the stone was painted at one time, and that paint has worn to a variety of hues in muted blues, ochres, and mauves. Lying under this ceiling is an amazing experience—maybe part of the secret of the quality of sleep that descends on its occupant. A glass paned wooden door with sturdy patinaed hardware separates it from the main salon, with a pair of floor and ceiling locks on the exterior, rather than the interior—a somewhat disconcerting curiosity.
There are space heaters placed strategically around the apartment, but they don’t begin to touch the cold retained by the stones, except in my little bedroom, which I keep closed with the heat on. There is no Internet here, and a phone signal can only be caught in front of a vaulted window. Needless to say, there’s no TV.
A split bath has been built into yet another vaulted archway, and the water on the Chaud side of the big old antique sink is so hot that it quickly goes opaque. The shower consists of a drain in the floor and a hand-held copper sprayer. Tonight I tied my hair up in a T-shirt and directed that thing at various parts of my body (you can’t get wet everywhere at once) for about a half hour, trying to stave off the chill.
The other side of the bathroom contains only a toilet and a roll of pink paper in a flowerpot on the floor. While I consider low-flow toilets disgusting and lame (what's the point if you have to flush three times?), they’re hardly French-centric, and I don’t blame the country at all for excluding seats on public toilets. It's not like those paper ass gaskets actually protect you from anything, and every self-respecting woman should hover, anyway, in my opinion.
But I digress...
I have been informed that Bonnieux is a Catholic village, and Lacoste is protestant. This reportedly resulted in many bloody wars in the past. I am taking a class called Treasures of Provence, which I think will dig into some of this history, and I’m eager to find out about it, because all the true history books, as opposed to travel guides, about this region are in French. The villagers in Bonnieux seem to have a fairly negative view of Lacoste to this day, though their reasons are now different. Pierre, who is a good family of friend of my hosts the Matteis, claims that Lacoste is tres faux, having undergone rehabilitation efforts that compromised the authenticity and architectural integrity of the village. It does look more like the movie set of Chocolat than I could have ever imagined, but then, so does Bonnieux, in a slightly more rustic way.
The fashion designer Pierre Cardin owns the ruins of the Marquise de Sade’s castle in Lacoste, which sits at the top peak of the mountain, and according to locals, he bought up most of the village for himself and made the interiors of the houses much more modern and grand. The worst part of Cardin’s takeover is that he did not then rent the houses, but kept them private, for his own parties and events (he has apparently resuscitated de Sade’s tradition of holding grand theatrical events there, if not his other more exotic predilections). This effectively shut down any businesses in the village, and he reportedly hires shopkeepers to open the quaint little ?/ when he has guests. I think the American school in Lacoste must have changed some of this, however, since there are now classes held year round, and at least one or two brasseries that seem to capitalize off this and the Dimanche (Sunday) traffic to the protestant church there.
Since it is still March, not much is open here, but reportedly that should change in April. The fact that there was not a bus from Bonnieux to Lacoste and back, though these lines were listed online, seems to be very typical. When Jean-Camille was here, we went to the Departement de Tourisme to check on this, but even it was closed during its posted hours of operation.
A bit more on the cast of characters here: Jean-Camille is 27 and very handsome, despite a bad case of pellicules (dandruff) and a receding hairline. He has a real robust French look, with a heavy frame and a boyish smile, with one tooth askew, which—if you know me well—you know is a weakness of mine. I’d like to put him in a good pair of Levis, rather than these femmy French jeans, and see how much more that improves his appearance. Even so, I’ve counted up our age difference twice now (17 years, both times), hoping I could stumble upon some mathematic equation that would make a romance between us acceptable. His English is quite good, with some amusing adaptations to the language (“My sleep is very tight here.”). He already has an engineering degree, and is now doing his medical rotations in Marseille, (together? I don’t know. That would seem strangely acceptable here) where he and his mother both live most of the time. Michele is also a doctor, now retired, as is their good friend Pierre. Michele’s father was also un medecin, and maybe generations before him—who knows.
Michele is tiny and birdlike—no more than four and a half feet tall—with messy auburn hair and a beautifully lined and expressive face. She is somewhere in her seventies. I’m interested in the fact that her son is so young. I imagine she must have had him at around my age or older. She told me quite abruptly that Jean-Camille’s father is dead, but did not expound on the circumstances. It’s interesting the conversations you have when your language skills are limited. We skip all the small talk and get straight to the nitty gritty. She and Pierre both told me in their halting English, with genuine mistiness, how they adored and revered their parents (now deceased) and about the importance of family. Michele gestures to her chest and talks about affairs of the heart and the necessity of loving all people in an amazingly heartfelt and candid way. These are not the French you hear about from disgruntled Americans. The maître d’hôtel at the place where I stayed in Paris talked to me while I waited for my cab about the tendency in all countries for the people in the southern regions to be more open and warm than the comparatively closed and private residents of the north. It was an interesting point, I thought, and it has certainly been reflected here, where Michele has fed me because I wasn’t able to get to the store until now, clothed me because I didn’t bring a coat or umbrella, and arranged for me to be driven to and from school by equally agreeable friends and neighbors, who obligingly speak to me in their clearest French, coaching me on my responses.
Pierre, the bon ami of Michele, is also wonderful. He speaks from the front of his mouth, with sensual pursed and pouted lips, in a voice that seems to be filtered through a mouthful of mashed potatoes. This is somehow a very agreeable thing. His English is pretty good, and I think he likes to believe it is excellent. Also in his seventies, he has a firm, protruding stomach and a bald head that he shaves to maintain his look of overall hairlessness, with mixed effects. In the back, where it is difficult to reach, he has some tufts of hair he has missed. He wears a suit and starched shirt all the time, as far as I can tell, and he will allow himself to become saturated in the rain, declaring the he detests les parapluies (umbrellas). He has big ham-fisted hands and one of the worst smokers’ coughs I have ever heard. I can imagine him being a physician I would trust implicitly.
Dinner and petit dejeuner (breakfast) with the Matteis and Pierre, which I have experienced several times now, is a formal affair. In the morning it involves delicate china from a caddy parked near the table, and Michele insists on pouring the coffee and even the milk, despite the multiple refills necessary in these tiny cups. There are croissants and slices of baguette and a slab of butter that is scalloped along the edges, as well as homemade comfiture of some berry I’m unfamiliar with. A lot of inquiring as to how things are and imploring to take more is involved. Dinner is similar in that way, and involves at least four courses, beginning with un aperitif that involves being directed to a Louis XIV chair in a small semicircle of other mismatched antique chairs and eating salted peanuts and potato chips with champagne, or in Pierre’s case, a French liquor and water. My first night here, this was followed by an unbelievable savory tart, somewhat pizza-like in appearance, but with creamy sauce and cheese and razor-thin slices of potato. Then skinny little chicken legs baked on some leggy looking herbs and more petite potatoes and tiny individual heads of some kind of greens, anointed with olive oil and salt. Cheeses and bread come next, and then a pastry of a fruit they call “coing,” which is something like an apple or pear, but tougher, which I gather has to undergo some elaborate tenderizing process in order to become edible.
There is a café in town owned by a man who speaks quite good English, and who will also provide you with a Wi-Fi code if you purchase something there. Today I had a lunch there of the most excellent duck I’ve ever had, though my experience with duck has previously been mostly in greasy Chinese food. It was served with a vinegar reduction sauce and a mixed vegetable compote favoring grilled eggplant (aubergine, a name that makes me like it more), and some sort of custard-like cheesy thing topped with a single blackened tomato, which it took me some time to discover contained discrete amounts of potato. I won’t be able to eat like that every day, though, so I’ll probably have to mostly order a café crème in order to get access to his Internet connection. The owner, whose name I am ashamed I’ve forgotten, is res sympatetique, though, and he even talked to a rental car company on the phone for me today.
So slowly but surely, things are falling into place. And hallelujah and praise the lord, tonight I had tomato sauce on my pasta!
XOXOXOXOXO
