Encore Provence (8 page)

Another wonderful amenity provided by every good café, regardless of size, is free entertainment of the old-fashioned, nonelectronic kind. Sit for long enough, pretending to read, and you will be treated to an amateur variety show. The cast will be mainly local, with occasional guest appearances by visitors. (These are the customers who sit politely, waiting to be served. Locals are more likely to bawl their orders as they come through the door; or, when their habits become sufficiently well known, a grunt and a nod will be enough to bring them their usual tipple.) If, like me, you find people more interesting than television, then here, as a fly on the café wall, is the place to watch them.

First to arrive, while the floor is still wet from its morning swabbing, are those battered ornaments of the local construction business, the masons. Their voices have the rasp that comes from cigarettes and the dust of a hundred demolitions. Their clothes and boots already look as though they’ve done a day’s work. Their hands are meaty, with muscular fingers and sandpaper skin from juggling with two-hundred-pound blocks of stone. Their faces are raw in the winter, seared in the summer. Amazingly, they
are almost always good-humored, despite brutal and frequently hazardous working conditions. When they leave, taking their noise with them, the café seems unnaturally still.

But quite soon their place is taken by the professional men, neat in their jackets and pressed trousers, briefcases loaded for a day at the desk in Apt or Cavaillon. They are a subdued contrast to the boisterous masons, serious and preoccupied with the cares of commerce. They check their watches frequently, make notes on small pads of what looks like graph paper, and brush their laps free of croissant crumbs after every mouthful. You know that their offices will be extremely tidy.

The first woman of the day is the owner of a hairdressing salon in a nearby village. Her hair is the color of the moment, somewhere between dark henna and aubergine, cut short. She will have spent a great deal of time tousling it to her satisfaction before leaving home. Her complexion glows with a radiance that is a credit to the house of Lancôme, and she is extraordinarily wide-eyed and vivacious for such an early, bleary hour. She orders a
noisette
coffee with a dash of milk, holding the cup with her aubergine-tipped pinky extended as she studies the lead story in
Allo!
magazine and wishes she could get her hands on the Duchess of York’s hair.

Her departure, on small, glistening feet, signals the start of a quiet period. It’s still too early for alcohol, except for the driver of the truck bringing beer supplies. He’ll have a businesslike glass—but only to satisfy himself that the beer has the correct, chilled bite—after he’s unloaded the kegs. He rumbles off, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, leaving the café to prepare for the second shift of the morning. Tables are cleared, glasses are polished,
the wave bands of the radio are explored in an effort to escape a numbing attack of French rap music.

Eventually, business picks up again. Two figures, nodding politely, make a tentative entrance and sit with their guidebooks by the window. They wear the uniform of prudent tourists: anoraks, in case of a sudden change in the weather, and those abdominal growths designed to confuse pickpockets—pouches of black nylon strapped around their waists, pregnant with valuables. After a moment of hesitation, they order glasses of wine, looking a little guilty as they toast each other.

Midmorning may be early for them, but it certainly isn’t for the quartet of village elders, with a collective age of more than three hundred years, who arrive next. Tumblers of pink wine are brought to them, and the cards for
belote
. But before they start to play, four heads in flat caps swivel on tortoise necks to inspect the strangers. They are from the pre-tourist generation, the old men, often puzzled by the popularity of Provence, sometimes pleasantly surprised at the prices their disused barns and scrubby, unproductive patches of land can fetch: quarter of a million francs for a ruin, half a million or more for a modest house. And then another small fortune spent on indoor sanitation and central heating.
Putaing
, how the world has changed.

While the four musketeers get on with their cards, it’s time to meet one of the café’s main attractions,
madame la patronne
, a woman of a certain age with a taste for hoop earrings the size of a parrot’s perch and precipitous décolletage. I’ve stolen her from a bar in Marseille, where I watched her presiding over her territory in a pair of conspicuously tight tigerskin trousers, dispensing drinks, sympathy, and insults to a group of regulars. Now there, I
thought to myself, is a woman born to run a café. And, by a happy coincidence, her name was Fanny.

The relevance of her name is linked to the
boules
court under the trees by the side of the terrace, another stolen attraction. (You can see the original court next to the Lou Pastre Café in Apt.) Every day, weather permitting, the spectators—experts to a man—settle on a low stone wall to offer their opinions on the performance of the players, and the version of the game being played is
pétanque
. This was invented, perhaps accidentally, in La Ciotat nearly a hundred years ago. Until then, the style of play had been a running throw, but on this eventful day, one of the players stood still when he threw, his feet together, or
pieds tanqués
. Was it fatigue, idleness, an ingrowing toenail, or arthritis? Whatever the reason, it caught on, and the new technique was then used regularly on the court outside the local bar.

And who was behind the bar? None other than the original Fanny, a lady of considerable charms and a sweet, accommodating nature. If, in the course of a game, one of the players should be in despair after a terrible run of luck, he would leave the court, go into the bar, and collect his consolation prize: a kiss from Fanny. In time, this became part of the vocabulary of
boules
. Today, if you should hear one of the men on the wall sigh and say, “
Té, il a encore baisé Fanny
,” he’s not making a romantic observation, but commenting on the player’s failure to score. Not long ago, I saw a set of
boules
displayed in a shop window that were so technologically advanced, so perfectly weighted, that they were guaranteed to be “
Anti-Fanny.
”

The influence of the modern Fanny, chatelaine of my imaginary café, extends far beyond the bar and the
boules
court. More, much more, than an occasional consolation
prize, she is the nearest thing the village has to a resident psychiatrist, a patient listener to the dreams and woes of her customers, a provider of spiritual and alcoholic encouragement. She also acts as unofficial banker, offering credit and even making modest loans to deserving and trustworthy cases. And, in return for these comforts and services, she receives generous transfusions of the lifeblood of the village: gossip. Feuds, domestic battles, illicit liaisons, lottery windfalls—she hears about them all. She is careful to edit the news before passing it on, and to protect her informants. Like a journalist who will only make a discreet reference to a source close to the President, she never reveals the author of the latest leak;
on dit
is as close as she gets. But that’s usually enough to send rumor—the invisible inhabitant of every village—scuttling through the streets like a dog after a ball.

With a few exceptions, all the adults of the village make a daily stop at the café. One of them is almost a fixture, always on the same stool at the end of the bar just inside the entrance, perfectly placed to ambush the unwary as they enter. It is Farigoule, the retired schoolteacher, who has been working on a book (although, given his constant presence at the bar, one wonders when) ever since he gave up academic life eight years ago. The café is his classroom and you, unless you’re very fast on your feet coming through the door, will be his pupil.

He is a one-man Académie Française, dedicated to the preservation of the French language and loudly indignant about what he calls the Anglo-Saxon contamination of his mother tongue, among many other modern tragedies. His current favorite horror—I should probably call it his
bête noire
—is the malign and seemingly irresistible influence of Hollywood. Farigoule’s considered opinion is that the
film industry is merely a front for cultural espionage directed against France. He will, however, admit to having gone to see
Titanic
(more out of a secret admiration for Leonardo DiCaprio’s cheekbones, if you believe Fanny, than any interest in the story). When asked what he thought of the film, his review was short but favorable: “The ship sank and nearly everyone perished. Most enjoyable.”

A close runner-up to Farigoule in regular attendance at the café is Tommi, the village expatriate. Originally from a distant, Scandinavian country, he has worked hard over the years to transform himself into a French peasant. He is probably the last man in the village to smoke unfiltered Gauloises, and has mastered the peasant’s knack of leaving the final quarter of an inch screwed into the corner of his mouth so that it bobs up and down on his lower lip when he speaks. Pastis is his drink, which he always refers to as
pastaga
, and he carries an Opinel pocket knife which he uses to cut up the
steack frites
he orders every day at noon, tapping its wooden handle on the table to release its ancient, blackened blade. Who would think he came from a nice middle-class family in Oslo?

Tommi has appointed himself an intermediary—a kind of shuttle diplomat—in the long-running vendetta between the brothers Vial, who own adjoining properties in the valley below the village. Dark, stringy men with the narrow faces of whippets, they haven’t spoken to each other for twenty years. Nobody knows for sure what started the feud. It might have been disappointment over an inheritance, a dispute over water or a woman, or simply a mutual dislike that has turned into an enjoyable loathing. The two Vials sit at opposite ends of the café, getting up from time to time to leave accusations and
insults with Tommi, who passes them on with conciliatory shrugs, nodding gravely at the response. Back he goes to the other brother. It’s known locally as the waltz of the three wise men.

For light relief, the café regulars rely on the turbulent love life of Josette, the baker’s daughter, a girl whose emotional state can be gauged by her wardrobe the moment she comes through the door. If the current romance is flourishing, she saunters in on platform heels wearing a microscopic skirt, with a crash helmet swinging like a trophy from one hand. Perched on a bar stool, she waits for Lothario to arrive on his
moto
, whispering to Fanny in between giggles and lipsticked sips of a Perrier
menthe
. But if the course of true love has taken a temporary dive, skirt and heels are replaced by dungarees and espadrilles, giggling by shuddering sighs, and Fanny has to dig around behind the bar to find a paper napkin for the tears.

Unmoved by affairs of the heart—unless, of course, the heart should stop beating and provide the excuse for another burial—is Marius. For him, I would like to create an official post in the village hierarchy—
entrepreneur de pompes funèbres
, or resident funeral director. This might help to give a semblance of authority to his hobby, but he would have to learn to be more subtle in his exchanges with his future clients, particularly Jacky, the oldest of the old men playing cards at the next table.

“
Eh, mon vieux
, how are you feeling today?”

“
Ça va, ça va
. I’m well.”

“Pity.”

This is enough to make a sensitive man take umbrage and go somewhere else to die, but with a little coaching I feel certain that Marius could disguise his natural enthusiasm for what he calls the final celebration. And he would
have to give up his plans to start the ultimate sweepstakes. Runners, if you could call them that, would be everyone in the village over sixty-five. Bets would be placed on their longevity, and winners paid after the funeral, cash on the gravestone. Marius takes the view that this is no more macabre than life insurance, with the added bonus of instant reimbursement.

You may have noticed by now that there is an imbalance between the sexes here, with the male customers greatly outnumbering the females. Where are the ladies of St.-Bonnet?

The different generations keep away from the café for different reasons. The younger women work, and when they’re not working they’re at home cleaning the house, paying the bills, chasing the children to bed, and cooking dinner for the senior child, the husband, who has stopped off in the café until it’s safe to go home.

The elder village ladies have two problems with the café. The first is Fanny, whom they consider
dragueuse
, a little too flirtatious and frisky for their taste, with a little too much bosom on public view. The second is that they can perform their function as an unofficial watch committee far more efficiently if they are on duty in the small square at the entrance to the village. Installed on chairs outside the house of their commander in chief, the widow Pipon, everything is within range of their radar: the post office, the
boulangerie
, the café, the parking lot, the
mairie
, and the church. They have long ago abandoned any pretense that they are simply taking the air, although a few of them may have some token scraps of knitting in their laps. They are there to observe and comment on everybody’s business.

The most insignificant change in daily routine is cause
for speculation. A young housewife buying more bread than usual must mean guests. Who are they? A confirmed heretic paying a visit to the church must have something juicy to confess. What is it? A local real estate agent pulls up in his mafia-black Land Cruiser and ducks into the
mairie
, clutching documents. Whose house is he trying to get his hands on? And—
mon dieu!
—the tourists. These young girls are wearing lingerie on the street! They might as well be naked! Here in the middle of St.-Bonnet-le-Froid, a respectable village! In the absence of anything else to titillate their curiosity, the old ladies can always fall back on the drinking habits of the men in the café, Josette’s amours—“She’ll come to a bad end, that one”—or old, unconfirmed, and therefore delightfully possible rumors.