At Home in France (23 page)

Off we went, to the scene of the crime. The gardener had returned to his pruning. Raymond stopped and got out of the car. The gardener came over and bent down, his ruddy, round face filling the window. I made a little wave—remember me?—and thanked him for all of his help. He tipped his hat and stood back up. Through the open window, I could hear the drift of conversation between the two men.

Hironde: Do you know whose dog this could be?

Gardener: No, never seen the dog. Probably a dog from the hunt.

This was alarming. A hunting dog? I had a horrifying image of diseased fangs, dripping with the blood of wild animals.

Hironde: What would they have been hunting?

Gardener: Rabbits, probably.

Hironde: Not pheasants?

Thus followed a discussion of the hunt, types of guns, vantage points for various game, and so on. The point of our mission seemed to have been lost.

Then Hironde: But would it have been a hunting dog? It’s Monday. It’s illegal to hunt on Monday.

A shrug from the gardener.

That matter unresolved, they lapsed again into chitchat: offspring, mutual acquaintances. The light of late afternoon was tinted by the sinking red sun. The valley had a hush about it. I gazed out my window. A few cows, drawn to this bewildering human exchange, meandered to the fence by the car. They stood rooted, as if they would remain there until the end of time. I returned their dull-witted stare. The congregations of insects around their eyes—shouldn’t it be madly irritating?—provoked only the merest twitch of an ear or an involuntary ripple of skin. They munched contentedly. The car was warm with the trapped sun. I could hardly keep my eyes open.

Raymond opened the door and slumped into the front seat. He started the motor but made no move to go forward. He announced that he and the gardener had discussed the prospect of going to the magistrates about the dog. He shook his head at the gravity of such an action. If you go to the magistrates, he said, they might simply shoot the dog. (Not a bad idea, I thought wickedly.) That would be too radical, he said, reading my mind. He drummed his hands on the steering wheel, deep in thought. Ah, he finally exclaimed, tapping his forehead
with an index finger, we would pay a visit to his friends who lived in the valley and knew all the goings-on. The man was a former policeman.

This aroused a spark of energy in me. Our search was taking on aspects of a detective story. We continued along the same road and then turned off along a backcountry lane, eventually winding around to a farmhouse. Out came a robust woman, approaching the car at a near gallop, arms outstretched in a high-spirited greeting to Raymond. She had a halo of thick curly black hair, penetrating blue eyes that sized me up, and a smooth, milk-white complexion unusual in a farm woman. She was more beautiful for being overweight, wonderfully earthy. I felt diminished by her. She swept us into the house, where we sat at the wooden kitchen table as she poured a rough red wine from a labelless bottle. Immediately, we were joined by her husband, who was as pale and sickly as she was robust and healthy. He was thin to the point of emaciation, his shoulders hunched as if he were in constant pain. His face was craggy and weathered. A wan smile revealed teeth like a decaying picket fence. He sat in a chair near the fireplace, his arms draped languidly over the chair arms with his wrists dangling lifelessly. I wondered if he was seriously ill.

When she heard the story, Madame assured me that country farm dogs were trained to bark and to defend their territory if provoked, but would never attack outright. What did this dog look like? I mentioned its color and size and had hardly gotten the words out when Madame boomed,
“Aha!”
That monster had gone after her on her
vélo
—bike—and she’d barely managed to escape. Then she emitted a bellow of triumph: my brother-in-law’s dog! She pounded the table victoriously with a fist.
Madame said that she’d warned her brother-in-law time and again that the dog was a no-good rascal. We must pay him a visit, she insisted, running her hands through her hair as if to tame her exasperation. He owed me the money for the doctor bill!

I must have looked completely startled—she halted in the midst of her outburst when she saw my reaction. I
was
startled—not so much that this was her brother-in-law’s dog, but that she’d admitted to it. Apparently, the dog’s attack would be more fuel for the fire of a longstanding feud with her brother-in-law. I glanced at her husband, who had lit a cigarette and was dragging on it despondently. For a policeman, he had a curious lack of interest in the case. The energy for any fight seemed to have been sapped from him.

Raymond and I walked back to the car. Dusk was setting in and I was beginning to feel the pangs of hunger. Yet events were moving along inexorably. Though we didn’t speak of it, Raymond and I were now in collusion, bound to see this through. We drove a short distance to the farmhouse of the brother-in-law.

Raymond suggested I wait in the car. Presumably, he felt it best for him to approach the people with what had to be a rather delicate matter. To relieve my anxiety, I perused a scruffy paperback guide to mushrooms I discovered in the glove compartment. A good twenty minutes passed. Then Raymond rapped on the window and gestured for me to follow him. I was extremely nervous, not only in the role of accuser, but in having to confront the vicious dog. We passed through the barnyard to a shed, where a portly gentleman with a rubbery red face and scrambled bristly hair stood with a bird-boned woman half his size, whom I took to be his wife. She was
that lusty woman’s sister? Raymond gestured to me with upturned palm—my American neighbor—as if serving me up. They seemed congenial enough, but something—their nonchalance and placidity—made me vaguely distrustful. We walked to the shed and there, secured with a heavy chain to a post and lying with his giant head resting on his great outstretched paws—looking for all the world like a repentant criminal—was the dog. I nodded and said, chalkily, to Raymond,
“C’est le chien.”

The man asked what the doctor’s fee was, without a word of apology for their dog’s behavior or inquiry as to my well-being. He withdrew a hundred-franc bill from the wallet in his pants pocket and, folding it twice over as if to make it vanish, slipped it to me, as if we were in some sort of conspiracy. He said—as if to assuage some guilt I might feel—that they would be reimbursed by their insurance company. The whole discussion left me feeling off-kilter; I had the unreasonable sensation that perhaps I was culpable.

Suddenly, unbidden, the woman announced that she had driven up to my house with the Portuguese woman. They’d not found me at home, she said tartly. Perversely, I suspected that it was more the tenacity of the Portuguese woman to see that I was repaid than an act of kindness on this woman’s part. But I was mystified nonetheless.

How did they know where I lived? I asked her.

She drew her shoulders up to her ears and pouted, with an expression that said I was asking the obvious. Well, the American with the house on the hill … It was not the first time I’d discovered myself to be a well-known figure, when I assumed I was anonymous.

As we climbed back into the car Raymond turned to
me and shuddered.
“Il est vraiment un grand chien!”
he said. I swelled, the heroine (as if I’
d
overcome the beast).
“Oui,”
I said boastfully. I commented that the couple had seemed cooperative enough. He confided that they were in some debt to him (how I relished this intrigue). When they’d had some money problems he’d bailed them out. In fact, their farm was now for sale. Did I have any American friends who would be interested?

“Monsieur a trouvé le chien!”
I exclaimed to Simone when we reached the house.
“Oui, Simone!”
he said solemnly. Then he launched into an account of his detective work, circling the table in increasing excitement. She brought coffee and motioned to him with a sit-yourself gesture—as if he were an overwrought puppy. As she sipped her coffee her lips were pursed with a tight little expression of satisfaction at the triumph of justice. Monsieur Hironde went to the telephone book and jotted down the name and address of the owners of the dog. I glanced at the florid script:
M. et Me. Maury
. If I should experience any further difficulties, he said, I should contact them.

Later I realized that while I hadn’t exactly received the sympathy I’d wanted, I’d certainly gotten consideration all around. Someone could have said that I was foolish—the foolish American—to be walking on a country road defenseless, so what should I expect?

They could have defended their own, against the foreigner, and let it go at that. In the end, however, their reactions seemed instinctive. The matter was simple: I was owed money. And owing money was no small matter, according to simple country justice. It was recompense, not sympathy, that the victim was due.

The next morning I packed up and closed the house. In
Bétaille, I stopped at the doctor’s office to pay the bill and ask for a change of dressing. He commented that it was a good thing we’d located the owners of the dog—word travels faster than the post here. He wished me well and gave me his card.

On my next trip, I met an engaging young South African couple, Gavin and Lillian Bell, acquaintances of the Servais, who compounded my distrust of country dogs. They were managing a small
auberge
near Salvignac for a friend who had gone back to South Africa to invest in a trout farm. When I visited them on a Saturday afternoon, Gavin had a dog story that topped mine. He was cycling along a nearby country road and came upon a freshly killed sheep, its throat savagely ripped open. Then another. And another. Finally, after passing nine dead sheep, all killed in the same manner, he came upon an Alsatian—“something like your German shepherd,” he said—in the throes of its tenth kill. The dog was drenched with blood. At Gavin’s approach, it ran off. Gavin found the owner of the sheep, who instantly guessed the owner of the dog. The owner of the sheep dumped his murdered flock on the doorstep of his neighbor and demanded payment for the lot—a tidy sum. The dog owner paid up. Then the sheep owner followed up with a further ultimatum: he would gladly shoot the dog or the owner could send him away. The dog presently resides in Paris.

At this point, I was counting myself lucky—I could have been taken for a sheep—and resolved to meet the problem head-on. I consulted with Simone and Raymond about taking a different route—Bétaille
aller et retour
. Simone knew of no
chien méchant
in this vicinity. But Raymond winced and whispered to her under his
breath,
“Mais on ne sais jamais, Simone.”
I asked Raymond if one could find a
“gaz qui font les larmes,”
my bumbling attempt at a term for a teargas gun. The light dawned and he exclaimed at the cleverness of this idea.
Gaz lacrymogène
. He found a scrap of paper—the flap of an envelope (all envelopes are saved for just such purposes)—and wrote down the words to present at the shop for
la chasse
in Bretenoux.
Une bombe de défense!
He snorted gleefully. Simone looked less enthusiastic.

I practiced the word,
lacrymogène
, and entered the shop. The owner was discussing fishing gear with two gentlemen and paused for my request. I hoped this would not appear untoward; I suddenly felt burdened with my identity as the American woman with the house on the hill.
“Gaz lacrymogène? Bombe de défense?”
I said in low tones. Question mark, question mark—trying out the untested, I’m always afraid I won’t be understood. But this was taken, surprisingly, as a matter of course. The man produced a little capsule, just the right size to grip in a hand. Armed with my
bombe
, I headed home.

On the patio, I gingerly removed the little red plastic lever, per instructions, and pushed the indented button with my index finger.
Pffft
, it worked perfectly. I read the fine print on the capsule, which contained a rather strange bit of information:
Sa formule est spécifique pour une utilisation en lieu clos (clubs, discothèques, etc.)
. (This formula is designed for indoor use.) Nothing about dogs. The next time I saw Raymond, I showed him my
bombe de défense
and pointed out the baffling note. He looked perplexed, then perturbed. He took a moment before saying lamely,
“Mais il y a des chiens dans les discos.”
And he wasn’t joking—dogs go everywhere with
their owners in France. Poor man. I suspect he’d rather me think there were vicious dogs than mad Frenchmen in the country’s nightclubs.

So I take the Bétaille route, my handy
bombe
at the ready.
Je suis prête pour la bête
—ready for the beast.

M
y concern about weather generally amounts to no more than wondering if I should carry an umbrella to work. For my neighbors, however, such matters have a greater import. More of their lives are spent outdoors: gardening, drying laundry, marketing. When I depart in the fall, I sense their despondency at the onset of winter, which will keep them housebound. In the spring they turn their faces unconsciously and gratefully to the sun. On each return visit I receive an update on the previous winter or summer. The October 1991 report: a summer of drought.