Almost French (5 page)

‘Is it
serious
? I mean did you get a serious education with so much pleasure?’ he asked sceptically. I laughed.

‘Serious enough, I guess. Why, what was your school like?’

A cheerless, dark brick building with few windows, apparently. The asphalt playground was tiny, speared by two sickly chestnut trees which were the only vaguely green things on the premises. It was a private Catholic school and the priests practised tough discipline. Sport was condensed to a weekly hour of gymnastics. There were no drama classes, no public speaking and debating. Art lessons were taken by the maths teacher and after the first year of secondary school they stopped altogether. Creativity and imagination were considered frivolous.

‘The only subject that counted was maths,’ he rued. ‘It’s the same all over France. And I was very bad at it. It didn’t matter that I was good at French, history and philosophy. If
you’re bad at maths, you’re considered stupid. For a long time after, I felt bad because of it.’

I was floored. Coming from a man who has a doctorate in law this complex seemed inconceivable. I was crap at maths, too, I told him. And I couldn’t have cared less. Maths was for swats. No teacher ever made me feel dim because of my lack of aptitude. But despite his unhappy memories, Frédéric also expressed pride in the French education system, the Republican principles which oblige every student to study the same texts with the goal of ensuring a common foundation and equal opportunity. Perhaps his schooling
was
more ‘serious’, as he put it—at least in subjects like history, philosophy and classical literature. But our discussion made me glad for the fun I had, grateful to the god of good fortune that I never had to struggle through anything as laborious as Kant’s
Critique of Pure Reason
.

One evening towards the end of my second week, an old friend of Frédéric’s calls. When he gets off the phone he is beaming. The friend and his family are staying in their summer cottage in Allier, a region in the centre of France, apparently. Frédéric must have told him about me because the invitation extends to the two of us. We’ve been asked to join them.

Hurtling down the A10 autoroute in his car, Frédéric gives me some background on where we’ll be spending the next six days. Allier is a sparsely populated, rural region. It’s really
la France profonde
, he says, explaining this is a loaded expression which refers to the mythic rural idyll that the French still consider the true essence of their country. The house where we’ll be staying is little more than a pile of old stones. His friend is … He pauses. Unable to find the right words in English, Frédéric switches to French.
Un vrai personnage
. A
real character. Four hours later, we arrive at the village of Saint-Léon where we stop at the little stone church as arranged, waiting for Jean-Michel to show us the route.

A few minutes later a dodgy-looking truck rattles straight for us. It has barely skidded to a stop when a bear-like bloke leaps out, bellowing at the trail of kids and dogs that tumble out after him. Before I can breathe
bonjour
, two massive hands clamp my face, practically lifting me off my feet. Loud, smacking kisses land on either cheek, amidst a babble of French endearments—
ma petite puce, ma poulette.
My little flea, my baby hen. Then Frédéric disappears in a huge hug, which is followed by more kisses and affectionate backslapping. ‘What are these ridiculous things?’ teases Jean-Michel, tickling his friend’s neatly trimmed sideburns. ‘You look like a bloody Parisian!’

It would be difficult to imagine a more unlikely pair. They strike a comical, Laurel-and-Hardy contrast: Frédéric, somehow chic in a shirt and shorts, alongside Jean-Michel, who on this day is exposing half his bottom. A white belly pokes between slipping shorts and a filthy, ripped T-shirt. While Frédéric smells lightly of Davidoff aftershave, Jean-Michel’s personal aroma is flavoured by ripe armpits. Showering is something he does on Sundays.

They’ve known each other since they were fourteen and their friendship is as solid as ever, even though one has chosen to pursue a career in the capital working for a large law firm, the other a serene existence as deputy mayor of a quiet village in northern France. While Frédéric’s lifestyle is rushed and urban, Jean-Michel has ample time for hunting and fishing. In France, the friends you make at school remain mates for life. You’re bound by a shared past and in this country, it seems history is everything.

The house sits at the end of a potholed track overlooking a gentle valley sprinkled with cows so content and motionless they look as though they’ve been painted on the landscape. Empty and abandoned when Jean-Michel bought it, the former farmhouse has recently been subject to some erratic restoration. The toilet, I note in dismay, has no door and looks straight onto the dining table. Chortling, Jean-Michel promises to erect a curtain for the ‘soft Parisians’.

For me,
la France profonde
is like sliding back fifty years in time. Allier has a rough-hewn authenticity: its villages are charming but devoid of the postcard prettiness which draws tourists. The boxy silhouettes of Citroën
deux chevaux
wobble gamely along skinny roads edged with poplar trees. Jean-Michel says the region is pretty much undiscovered, although to his chagrin, a neighbouring farm was recently sold to Parisians. (To Jean-Michel, all Parisians are pretentious snobs.) They plan to restore the place and use it as a holiday house.

I can understand why. It’s so peaceful here. There are similarities between the way Australians and the French view their rural regions, I discover on this holiday. In both countries, the land is a powerful element in the national psyche. And as in Australia, in France youth are fleeing rural areas for cities and many villages are dying. But listening to Frédéric and Jean-Michel, it’s clear there are also fundamental differences. There is a gentleness to the French countryside that contrasts starkly with the rural idyll I’m familiar with—the mythic outback.

For the French, the countryside is a vital refuge. They snatch time there whenever possible, as though they still haven’t fully adapted to the idea of city living. Every French person dreams of retiring to the countryside, Frédéric tells
me. On weekends, his Parisian friends flee to family houses in the provinces. But for most Australians the outback is an awesome, unforgiving place. You go there to be overwhelmed, for adventure, not to relax. Many of us know it only from books or films—rarely from sweet childhood holidays. The outback might fascinate and inspire us, it might have shaped our national identity, but it’s hard to imagine Sydney-siders rushing to buy second homes in Bourke or Broken Hill.

There are seven people (plus a dog and a slovenly cat) squashed into the two-bedroom cottage—us, Jean-Michel, his wife Nathalie, their kids Louis and Natacha and then ten-year-old Victoria from Ukraine. The family is looking after her following an operation in Paris to remove her thyroid gland which was cancerous as a result of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Her presence underlines the generosity of our hosts, who are not loaded with money. With its frayed, sagging couches, paneless windows and lack of hot water, the house gives new meaning to the word rustic. But it radiates gaiety and convivial disorder, and perhaps because I’m used to roughing it camping, I feel right at home. Frédéric and I sleep on sofa cushions on the floor of the lounge. Jean-Michel and Nathalie speak some English and patiently explain the jokes or entire conversations I’ve missed. But there is no standing on ceremony for a foreign guest—I’m expected to fit in and lend a hand like everyone else. Which is pretty much how it’s always been in my family with friends and visitors.

There are a few culture shocks, though. Jean-Michel, who turns out to be a Gallic version of an Aussie bushman, has an impressive arsenal of knives and guns with which he frequently slaughters dinner. Early morning, he heads out to
hunt hare and wild boar. By breakfast, the carcasses are stripped to the bone. On several mornings I arrive in the kitchen for croissants and coffee to find it transformed into a bloody battlefield strewn with bright red meat and purple animal organs.

Fascinated, I watch him make chunky terrine using an old-fashioned, labour-intensive meat grinder. Why not use a modern mincer? Delighted to have an interested audience, Jean-Michel sets down his tools. His face is a pantomime of professorial patience. ‘
Ecoute poulette
,’ he begins importantly. The ensuing explanation includes many unfamiliar words but with the help of his hand gestures I eventually understand that electric mixers crush the meat into nothing, whereas with traditional hand grinders the meat retains its structure, its fibres and full flavour.

In a blackened fire oven beneath the stairs Jean-Michel bakes oval loaves of crusty bread. We scour bushy banks of quiet lanes for blackberries to make jam. He pours the crimson cascade into old-fashioned glass pots and seals them with wax. ‘
La méthode traditionnelle
,’ he beams, wiping berry-stained hands on his T-shirt.

Under Jean-Michel’s tutelage, my French acquires personality. Instead of a ‘
verre de vin
’ (glass of wine) he teaches me the slangy, untranslatable expression ‘
coup de pif
’. Around the table, they talk ‘
cul
’—which literally means ‘bum’ but in colloquial language refers to sex jokes. A lot of the time I’m content to listen and observe, transfixed by the array of expressions which scud across their faces. I’d always assumed Gallic characters in films were wildly exaggerated.
Mais non!
Here they are
Oh-la-la
-ing, pouting to show doubt or disagreement, shrugging in resignation or indifference. They are natural ham actors, embellishing their own
stereotypes to such effect that a simple dinner conversation looks like performance.

On our second last day we go to buy cheese from a nearby farm. The owners don’t look very different from some of the people I met in rural Romania. He has a mouth of gold and black gaps; she wears an old-fashioned, floral smock, her abbreviated legs plugged into gum boots. Our request for cheese sparks a hum of excitement. What looks very much like an argument breaks out but in fact it’s only a lively discussion—emphatic hand gestures and raised voices are standard features of conversation in
la France profonde
, apparently. Eventually, we’re led into a barn, where through the dimness I can just make out bird cages containing small, pale discs. We gather around the goats’ cheese, heads shaking at the
mauvais temps
which has produced a lot of
vers
. There is a lot of heavy sighing happening and it seems appropriate to join in, although I have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about.

Later, the source of their concern becomes all too apparent. Poised to slice into a
chèvre
on my plate, I notice the rind is wriggling with maggots. Unphased, Jean-Michel is shaving off his crawling crust. Revulsion rises in my throat and I try to overcome it, not wanting to offend. No-one else appears shocked. And so I copy Jean-Michel, telling myself that I’ve eaten worse. Once, in northern New South Wales where I’d gone to do a television report, a group of Aboriginal kids presented me with a six-centimetre long, raw witchetty grub. Bush tukka, they’d giggled, bright eyes daring me. My weak, white, urban sensibilities were on trial and it would have looked bad to refuse, I’d thought. The liquid explosion in my mouth had almost made me retch.

I wipe some cheese onto my bread and bite.

The table erupts in peals of delighted laughter. It had been a test, and quite unwittingly I’d passed with flying colours. In fact, except for Jean-Michel, the others had been feeling squeamish just contemplating the plate. But used to foreigners wrinkling their noses at pungent, unpasteurised French cheeses, my new friends are immensely flattered by this gullible show of gameness. It’s as though I have just leapt on the table and delivered a rousing rendition of
La Marseillaise
.
Anyone willing to eat wormy chèvre must be okay,
read their expressions. Even Jean-Michel is impressed. ‘An American would never had done that,’ he remarks admiringly.

By the time we return to Paris, the gloriously long days are getting noticeably shorter. There is a sense of something reaching an inevitable end—and not just summer. Everything seems to herald change, the new crispness in the evening air, the shrinking queues, the city streets. The tourists with their shorts and cameras have been replaced by purposeful people with caramel tans and bright highlights in their hair. Parisians. Back from their holidays for the September start of the school and working year, known as
la rentrée
.

These changes seem to be a sign. Having already stayed far longer than I’d intended, my holiday in France is over too. I can’t keep prolonging my departure. Besides, Frédéric is about to go back to work. It’s time to hoist my backpack and pick up my travel plans: back to London, then Greece, then onto Turkey where Sue will fly over and meet me and from there perhaps an overnight bus back to Bucharest.