Encore Provence (7 page)

Provence is not a land of lush pastures, and a cow, so they say, is as rare as a genial tax inspector. But the goat flourishes in the scrub and the mountains, and goat cheeses are surprisingly versatile. When fresh, they are light, mild, and creamy. They become firmer with age, and more pungent when marinated in oil with herbs, rolled in coarse black pepper, or garnished with wild savory. I have seen them no bigger than a thimble—
petits crottins
—or in plump wedges as
camembert de chèvre
, but they normally come in discs about an inch thick and three inches across, often wrapped in dried chestnut leaves and tied with raffia. The farmers around Banon, in Haute Provence, produce the best-known cheese, but they have worthy competition throughout the Vaucluse.

For a wider selection of different cheeses, there is the excellent Fromagerie des Alpes in Cavaillon, where the cow and the ewe are represented as well as the goat. The cheeses are kept in beautiful condition, and the proprietors will be happy to guide you in your choice.

There are very few large hotels in rural Provence, and if current building restrictions remain in force it is unlikely there ever will be. But more and more private houses are offering simple, comfortable accommodation, a decent dinner, and the chance to meet the French at home. Three examples:

In Bonnieux, there is Le Clos du Buis, run by the Maurins. Below Ménerbes, Muriel and Didier Andreis have recently opened Les Peirelles. And in Saignon, Kamila Regent and Pierre Jaccaud have converted an old house in the center of the village. Don’t expect to find room service or cocktail lounges. But the welcome will be friendly, you won’t go hungry, and your hosts will be able to steer you to other good local addresses, from restaurants to vineyards.

There are enough to fill a book, and it’s been written by a professional gastronomic correspondent, Jacques Gantié. The
Guide Gantié
describes 750
bonnes tables
from one end of Provence to the other. Read it and eat.

Looking back through this list, I see great gaps. For these, I apologize. Where is the prince of butchers, the reliable truffle supplier, the sausage-maker extraordinaire? Who should you go to see for the definitive melon or the most succulent snail, the
petit-gris de Provence?
Who has the tastiest
tapenade?
There is no doubt that they exist, these gastronomic specialists who spend their lives helping to make our meals memorable. But Provence covers a large
area, and I have only been exploring it for ten years or so. The longer I am here the more I realize I don’t know.

One thing I do know is that if you’re prepared to spend a little time looking and listening, your appetite will be rewarded. I would agree that the ingredients and flavors that form Provençal cuisine are distinct and particular, and not to everyone’s taste. I happen to like them, and with the notable exception of tripe, which I’ve never been able to embrace with any real enthusiasm, I have found very little to complain about. To say that you can’t eat well here is nonsense. To say that you need to devote some time and effort to do it is quite true. But that, so I’ve always believed, is part of the appreciation and true enjoyment of good food.

I remember once being told that the annual rainfall in Provence is much the same as London’s, although it arrives in more concentrated bursts. Looking out through the window, it seemed as though a six-month supply was being delivered all at once, a slanting gray curtain, thrumming against the tin tables on the terrace and dribbling off the chairs to trickle under the door before coming to rest in grubby puddles on the tiled floor.

The woman behind the bar lit another cigarette and blew smoke at her reflection in the mirror that hung above the row of bottles, pushing her hair back behind her ears and practicing her Jeanne Moreau pout. Radio Monte-Carlo’s hysterical good humor fought a losing battle with the mood of the room. The café, normally half-filled with workmen from the local
chantiers
by this time in the early
evening, was reduced to three damp customers. Two men and myself, prisoners of the weather, were waiting for the downfall to stop.

“It never rains like this in my village,” I heard one of them say. “Never.”

The other man sniffed, dismissing this meteorological curiosity. “The trouble with your village,” he said, “is the drains.”

“
Bof
. Better than having a mayor who’s always drunk.”

The display of micropatriotism continued, each man defending his village and disparaging the other’s. Abuse and slander were heaped on everyone and everything. The butcher sold horse meat disguised as sirloin. The war memorial was disgracefully maintained. The street lamps were the ugliest in France, the inhabitants the surliest, the garbage collectors the laziest.

All this and worse went back and forth between the two men with a surprising lack of passion. Disagreements in Provence tend to be energetic and heated affairs; arms and voices are raised, the names of ancestors are invoked, tables are banged, chests are prodded. But everything I overheard—even a most inflammatory remark concerning the postman’s wife—was muttered rather than bellowed. The two men might have been university professors debating the finer points of philosophy. I can only think that the rain had cooled their blood.

When I left the café to make a run for the car, they were still at it, nipping away at each other, determined to disagree. I knew both the villages that featured in this tribal squabble, and to an outsider like myself—with no intimate knowledge of the mayor’s fondness for alcohol or the proclivities of the postman’s wife—they didn’t appear to be nests of vice and neglect. On the surface, at any rate, there
was nothing about either of them to sustain a prolonged argument. But after talking to various friends and acquaintances over the next few days, it became clear that villages inspire highly partisan feelings.

A single trivial incident can set things off. All it takes is some kind of slight, real or imagined: a snub in the
boulangerie
, a workman taking his time to move his truck from a blocked alleyway, the baleful stare of an old woman as you walk by—these have all been quoted to me as proof that a village is
fermé
, cold and unwelcoming. On the other hand, should the inhabitants be friendly, talkative, and generally forthcoming, you’d better watch out. This is just a cloak for nosiness, and before you know it details of your private business will be pinned up on the notice board of the
mairie
.

The basic matter of location, in the eyes of many people, can damn a village without any help from the inhabitants. Too high, and there is no protection from the mistral, a well-known cause of bad temper and various minor insanities. Too low, and the streets are suffused by a permanent chilly gloom which, as village experts will tell you, is responsible for winter epidemics of flu, or even more disastrous afflictions. Why, it was only five hundred years ago that the population was almost wiped out by the plague.
Beh oui
.

The problems continue with architecture—“the whole place was ruined by the
salle des fêtes
they put up”—with not enough shops or with too many shops, with nowhere to park or with a parking area that dominates the village, with infestation by Parisians or deserted streets. In other words, as I was repeatedly told, there is no such thing as the ideal village.

One of the consolations of the short but often sharp
Provençal winter is that the days are less distracting. Guests are far away, biding their time until the warm weather arrives. Domestic chores are confined to keeping the fire supplied with logs and refilling the emptiness of the wine cellar after the ravages of summer. The garden is rock-hard and dormant, the pool is under its clammy cover, and the social round of the Luberon is, in our case, restricted to the occasional Sunday lunch. There is time to reflect on the mysteries of life, and I found myself wondering about and eventually constructing in my mind the ideal village.

Parts of it exist, although inconveniently scattered around in other villages, and so I have stolen those I like and brought them together. Most of my featured inhabitants exist as well. But in transplanting them I thought it only fair to give them disguises, and names have been changed to protect the guilty. The name of the village, St.-Bonnet-le-Froid, I chose because St. Bonnet is one of the more neglected saints in the religious calendar who doesn’t even seem to have his own saint’s day. So I’ve given him one (which officially belongs to St. Boris) to call his own: the second of May, just as summer is about to start.

St.-Bonnet is set on the top of a hill about ten minutes from our house, close enough so that the bread is still warm when I get back from the baker’s in the morning. Not too close, though, because even in the imagined perfection of this ideal village, tongues will wag. More from curiosity than malice, they will wag about every aspect of daily life, and since we are foreigners, our daily lives would be more closely observed than most. Our guests, in their annual progress from pink to bronze, would be studied as closely as the postcards they send home. Our household’s consumption of wine, revealed by the empty bottles,
would be noted with admiration or dismay, but it would be noted. My wife’s weakness for acquiring dogs would be quickly recognized, and rewarded with puppies that were surplus to requirements or vintage beagles too old to hunt. From the purchase of a new bicycle to the color of paint on the shutters, nothing would escape the village eye. More of this later.

One of the first essentials of any properly equipped village is a church. I considered the Abbaye de Sénanque, near Gordes, which is magnificent but a little intimidating and, I decided, far too big. I wanted something on a smaller scale, although of similar historical interest, and so my first theft would be to steal the church from St. Pantaléon. It is tiny and beautiful, with tombs cut into the rock on which the eleventh-century building stands. The tombs are now empty and—since they were made to accommodate eleventh-century-sized people—seem very small. The giants of today wouldn’t fit, and they would need a separate, more capacious cemetery. Following tradition, this would enjoy the finest view in the village, the theory being that the occupants have all eternity to appreciate it.

But there would be other views for the rest of us, almost as good, toward the west for the sunset, and north to Mont Ventoux. The fields at the foot of the mountain are fertile, almost lush, with vines and olive and almond trees; its crest, in the summer, looks prematurely white with snow. In fact, this is not the remains of a freak blizzard; it’s bare, bleached limestone, but when the sun catches it in the evening it has the rosy softness of a cushion. And there is no better place to watch the fade of light and the gradual creep of shadows across the mountain’s face than the terrace of the village café.

If a Frenchman were to tell you of the many contributions his country has made to civilized life (and he doesn’t take much persuading), the café would probably appear somewhere at the bottom of the list, if at all. It is an institution he has grown up with, a convenience he takes for granted. There is always a café. But ask visitors from Britain and America what appeals to them about France, and sooner or later—after the countryside, the culture, the food, or whatever else is their principal interest—most of them will say, often quite wistfully: “Of course, the French are so lucky to have cafés.”

It’s true that the British and the Americans have their bars, their pubs, their coffee shops, and their diners, even their carefully accessorized versions of the authentic French café, complete with aperitif posters from the 1920s, yellow Ricard ashtrays, sandwiches made with baguettes, and newspapers hanging on sticks. France, however, is where you find the real thing, the particular combination of sounds and traditions and services, the atmosphere which has evolved over centuries. That, not the decor, is what makes a café a café. Obviously, there are enormous variations: The Deux Magots in Paris would seem to have very little in common with a village café in the Luberon. And yet there are one or two very basic similarities.

First, you are left alone; sometimes, I must admit, for longer than you might want if the waiter is feeling liverish and antisocial. Once you’ve ordered, though, you have rented your seat for as long as you wish to occupy it. Nobody will hover over you waiting for you to have another one or get out. You are expected to linger. You can read a newspaper, write a love letter, daydream, plan a coup d’état or use the café as an office and run your business
undisturbed. I knew a Parisian who used to arrive at La Coupole each morning at nine o’clock sharp with his briefcase and spend the entire working day at one of the tables in the front, overlooking the Boulevard du Montparnasse. I always envied him having an office with waiters and a fifty-foot bar. In those days, before the cell phone, cafés would take calls for their regular clients, making excuses or arranging rendezvous as instructed. Some, I hope, still do, because the idea of having an answering service that provides refreshments deserves to endure.