Month: April 2017

One of my favorite shows is the BBC serial Wallander.  It’s a beautifully filmed series of exquisitely told narratives about a gloomy Swedish detective who solves gloomy crimes. The high point of each episode (at least for me) follows a set formula: Wallander is at home, napping or pondering the latest gloomy personal situation he has gotten himself into when his mobile phone rings, he receives the key piece of information needed to solve the crime, and he leaps out of his chair.  The next shot (invariably my favorite of each episode) is of his car, a dark blue Volvo station wagon, speeding through a stunningly gorgeous panorama of the Swedish countryside.  I felt this was the rhythm of my time in France: we would be quietly doing some activity at home (fortunately with a good deal more cheer than Wallander) until the anointed hour, when we would leap in to action and our little white Peugeot would zip through the stunningly gorgeous French countryside to our next activity.

In the French countryside, dinner (a bit confusingly to us Yanks) is taken in early afternoon.  (Their light evening meal, normally taken at sunset after an aperitif, translates to ‘supper’.)  The adults come in from the fields or work (and often children come home from school) to meet, rest, and catch up over the meal.  It’s not unusual, if you are out walking at this time, to find several generations of a family around a table in their yard.  These meals are no small affair, at least three courses with wine before and during.  In town, meals are taken at a café.

The anointed hour upon us, we zipped along stunningly gorgeous country roads (sunflowers smiling at the sky, maize* waving in the breeze, rows of walnut trees doing what they do) to the local café.  After introductions (elle est la fille du Jim; I met the proprietor, her family, and local villagers), each with the French kiss on both cheeks, I was seated at the end of a bench at the inside corner of two long plank tables**.  There was wine, bottle pairs of red and white strategically placed among us (blanc for me), and lively conversation regarding the antics and accomplishments of friends and family.  Those around me would occasionally slip in to English to ask me a question directly (I catch the drift of French conversations, but cannot yet conjugate responses) and return to French to discuss my response.

In French cafes, it is the norm to eat communally, serving each other from common bowls.  Bread was set out, quickly followed by a tureen of soup, a beef stew rich with veg***.  Bowls were passed forward and filled, the soup shared until it was finished, the bread torn and dipped in the broth so none is wasted.  (This is after all, rural farm country.)  The two cooks took turns eating with us between serving and clearing.  After more conversation we were treated to the main course: a caesar salad made with romaine picked fresh from the garden hours before; new potatoes, diced and roasted in butter until the edges were crisp and crackled with flavor; and chickens, rubbed with local herbs, that had shared the oven with the potatoes until they too had (according to the others) been cooked to perfection.

Somehow I had been placed so the dining partner to my right was what appeared to be a classic older French country gentleman.  I say appeared to be because while I did expect a certain flirtatiousness, I was quite surprised when his questions as to why I was not married quickly moved to overt offers of affection.  Fortunately he was chastised by his neighbors (it turns out that this was a symptom, or perhaps benefit, of his early dementia) and conversation turned to other topics.  Dessert was a plum tart, each plum hand cut with the pieces carefully fanned from the center to edge over layers of crisp pastry.  We ate, we talked, we sipped wine, and it was good.  After a while it was time to return to the fields (the animals need to be tended, even on Sundays) conversation waned, and folks began to say their au revoirs.  Despite its length (over two hours) the meal was far too short.

After another zip in the car we were back home.  Zia took to her study to write letters and make calls, and I gathered a book and curled up on my bed.  The afternoon was warm, a breeze weaving through frets in the shutters, and I felt sated with good food and good cheer.  Soon the pages of my book became fuzzy, and I drifted ever so slowly into a blissful sleep.

* Maize is a starchy version of corn grown to feed the animals.

** In village cafés, it is the norm for the locals to dine at a long communal table. (This is how you catch up on local happenings.)  Individual tables are also available for tourists.

*** I will now occasionally eat meat if I trust the farmer who raised it.

The parking spot was tiny, but my friend Zia*, an experienced jockey of French country roads, handily wedged her car into the spot.  We grabbed our baskets (reed, made by women in Africa) from the boot of the car (sheltered spot in the hatchback), waited as a camion (a motor truck similar to a Ford Transit Connect) sped through the intersection before crossing the street.

The farmers’ market in Fajoles is small, about a dozen vendors, but is appropriate for a hamlet of its size.  Despite the size, it draws a large crowd and is a favorite meeting place of local farmers and ex-pats.  As a result the small courtyard was packed. White crushed stone crunched under our feet as we made our way to the first stop on the Zia’s shopping list – the honey man.  Zia introduced me (she has spent summers there for over twenty years and has become part of the community) and she began educating me on the different honeys and the wonders of propolis.  We were quickly interrupted by one of her friends, the wife of a retired general officer who had served in the French Air Force. They chatted for a short time, and honey now in hand, moved on to the local vintner.

And so it went: introduction, conversation with the vendor or another friend, moving on; from the vintner to the veg man, then the fruit lady.  Under the trees by the church we ran in to the General, who turned out to have been a fighter pilot, and spoke well of his deployments to the U.S.  Our last stop was to visit a friend showing her watercolors of the local area.  After a bit of cheerful conversation we were on our way.   Bounty in hand (honey! wine! haricots verts! peaches! pattypan squash! pate!), we headed back to the car, and zipped back to the house.

In the French countryside, the big meal is in the early afternoon.  Today, the plan was to have our big Sunday meal at the local café.  Zia had some chores to do before we headed out, which gave me a chance to explore. After a quick check of my laundry (put out before marché, still slightly damp) and nearby flower, tomato and herb beds, I hiked across a large field to the low farm structures at the back of the property.  It was here I got my first peek of the little one who would soon be my favorite neighbor of the trip.

The structures were animal pens that had come with the property.  Over the years they had lain fallow, but had recently been renovated by and were now used by the back neighbor to house rabbits, chickens, a pig and sheep.  It was nearing the hottest part of the day and the animals, wiser than the human approaching them, were hunkered down in the shade of their open-sided tin-roofed shed.  But sheep are curious, or perhaps associate people with food, so one by one the more adventurous of the flock came out for a look.  Two even came to the fence and accepted clover from my hand (in this case it was greener on my side of the fence) which encouraged others.  And then, who was that, peering out from behind that shy (or more likely protective) ewe?  A little lamb, soon to be known in the house as Lambie.

But all I would get was a peek.  Something spooked the sheep; the ones past me scattered in the field, and Lambie and her mom bolted back to the safety of the shed.  I took the cue and headed back to the house, eager for the next adventure of the day.

*Name changed to protect the innocent.

I had forgotten how early the day starts in the countryside.

It had been dark when my friend’s car pulled up her drive the night before.  After a good cry, I had cleaned myself up and gone back to the station agent.  With some prodding he advised me that another train was available, but that it would deposit me in Sarlat four hours later than the first one would have.  I had (amazingly) convinced a second Brit to share her phone, and during the call my friend had agreed to the new course of action.  I even had enough Euros to buy a coffee and a pastry (but not a sandwich) from the Café Paul next to the MacDo’s* in the station.

By then the heat had grown from steamy to sweltering.  I scoured the station for a less hot place to rest.  In the end, I returned to my previous position on the main platform just outside the doors to the station.  I glanced at the pages in my book.  I watched the trains arrive and depart.  But mostly I sat, exhausted, with no plans beyond this stay and my return to the US, wondering what I had gotten myself in to.

Trains came, trains went.  I heard half a dozen languages: French, English, Dutch, German, something Latin (Italian?  Portuguese?), something Scandinavian.  At one point a group of girls, each sporting a boogie board and an ear to ear smile, bubbled by.  (Oh, that’s right, Bordeaux is on the Atlantic coast.)  Gendarmes armed with military rifles arrived to patrol the platform.  Another TGV arrived and departed, but the gendarmes remained.

After a while, my train appeared on the departure board, track ten.  I made the trek to the platform (with a luggage assist up the last batch of stairs by a nice Frenchwoman and her daughter) and, in time, boarded the train.  Soon we were off, through the countryside, past vineyards, sunflowers and other small-batch crops on a track that followed the Dordogne (Dore) River upstream.  At one station, the driver stopped for a smoke.  At another, unscheduled, he picked up a co-worker.  It was sunset when my friend met me, waving, on the platform at the end of the line.

And now, in what felt like far too short of a time later, sun was streaming through the window, and my friend was imploring me to meet the day.

The thing I noticed was the quiet.  I could hear birds chirping, insects buzzing, sheep bleating somewhere nearby.  I lurched out of bed and, as I steadied myself, gazed out the open window.  The sky was blue, and a small garden (wisteria, roses, poppies, lilac and sage sheltered by Japanese cherry  and walnut trees) separated the cottage from a long lawn and the pastures beyond.  The wind was warm on my skin, pleasant, but with the hint of a cloying heat to come.

After a breakfast of yaourt (yogurt), muesli and fresh peaches (swoon) we were on our way, zipping through fields and orchards in her tiny Peugeot, on our way to the local marché.

More soon!

*  MacDo is the French nickname for MacDonalds.