My Cycling Season (And This Blog) End; A Practical Solution

Tuesday, October 21, 2014

     The winds are blowing hard today, the last day of my cycling season with the Caunes-Minervois club. All my friends are there: Jacques, the incoming president, a former policeman; Jean, the retiring treasurer and a former gendarme; Patrice, a former miner and the club secretary; Jeannot, an expert in HCL --"yes", salt-- the oldest member, still going strong at 81 after treatment for bladder cancer four years ago; Claude, a retired employee of the mairie here; George, a retired harvester of grapes, here and in Spain; Jamie, the club Scotsman, an oil expert.  I have invited everyone over for un pot --a glass of wine-- after our ride, my last this year.  Everyone is keen on coming, those who didn't hear the invitation made last Saturday at the annual club dinner were phoned.  "It's not the sort of thing anyone would keep a secret --a chance to have a glass of something after the ride", Jamie jokes.
   
      We ride 30 kilometers into the Mas Cabardès commune, which includes the medieval Château de Lastours and an affiliated fort, both high in the mountains.  The hamlet below is lovely, a footbridge over a stream connecting one end with the other, the stream's banks still thick with flowers and foliage --the vines have turned gold in the autumn sun, but it's still green everywhere.  The temperatures, too, are mild and made for cycling.  Only the stiff winds --the gusts throw our bicycles around a bit and test our control of them-- bespeak the beginning of the end of the cycle of warm weather.  Still, the weather is marvelous by the standards of New York, which is chilly now.

     I am in good form today and able not only to keep up, but at times, outpace the pack.  Attaque! shouts Patrice when I lurch forward past him.  I overhear Claude observe to Patrice, "Elle set costaud--" ("She's sturdy--") and I'm glad that in my last outing I'm making my best showing all season.

     The pot I have planned for after the ride's end, three hours later, is actually a sort of second lunch: I put out two bottles of award winning local reds, a platter of fresh charcuterie and saucisson from Icher, the local butcher: everything from blood sausage to head cheese to country paté and ham; along with a strawberry mousse refrigerator cake from the village boulangerie.  Everyone digs in, talking and joking animatedly.

     "How much do you understand, when everyone talks at once?" Jamie asks me.  We agree we miss about a quarter of what is said in the flurry of talk.

      Not that we're excluded from the conversation because we can't follow the rapid flow of words: at one point, George tries out his Spanish on me --he has a great accent and just the right intonation to sound like an average Spaniard.  Which leads several people to remark that the Spanish speak more loudly than the French, so much so that they can be heard several feet away. --A remark with which I agree, by the way.  The French place a value on speaking softly and on restraint in expression, neither of which interests the Spanish.

       The French also place a value on following the rules, even if only their idea of the rules. Spaniards, on the other hand, abandon all pretense of doing so, and just say they'll do what they want to do, to hell with the rules.  Hence the distinctiveness of each people.

      At some point all the wine has been drunk and the merits of each commented on; two thirds of the platter is gone and the cake entirely consumed.  At which point everyone picks up the dishes and brings them into the kitchen.

      "If my wife saw me doing this, she would be shocked" Claude says, sotto voce.  Everyone behaves like a gentleman and before they leave, I kiss each one and wish them Bonne Année --a good New Year.  They have been a kind of second family to me here, welcoming me and looking after me.  I would not have chosen to settle here had it not been for their hospitality to me last year.  One year later, I still feel grateful for their friendship, and good humor.

                                                                           ***

       At one point, I thought I wanted to put have a new bath put in on the top floor of the house while I was away.  It seemed a very practical idea: I could return to a house better outfitted for visitors, and I would not have to have workmen in the house when I was there.  I was wiling to pay what was required to accomplish the project and had a plumber give me his estimate for the work.  I had someone in mind for the job of general contractor, Lars, who has done such good work for me fixing my shutters.

     Lars works on large projects and has put in bathrooms --he put in a full bath in a house that belongs to an ex-pat couple who live on Avenue du Minervois.  I've seen the bathroom, and it's just what I would like to see on my top floor.  I've also seen the bathroom Lars put in in his own house on Avenue Montgaillard, another good piece of work.

     So Lars can do the job.  The thing is, he doesn't want to.  He's too busy now, but even later on in the year, he's not sure he wants the job, which isn't what he really wants to do.  He wants to do more creative work --decorative painting.

     Which is too bad, because I trust Lars, which is important.  Too many other workmen I've spoken to here are vague about prices and when they will complete jobs.  It seems that in the Midi work gets done very, very slowly:

     --The re-gilding of the altarpiece of Notre Dame du Cros by gilders in Provence took two years (and the crown of the altarpiece remained ungilded, notwithstanding);

     --My friend Roseline Amen has 45-year old exterior shutters she would like to have replaced: she has been waiting two years for new shutters.

     So I have arrived at practical solution to the lack of a toilet on the top floor of the house, adjoining the lovely bedroom overlooking the hills:

      I bought a toilet for the homebound.

      The pharmacist in Caunes sold it to me.  It has been manufactured like a chair in "Danish modern" style and has deep pink cushions.

      I had originally thought of buying a chamber pot --I used one as a little girl-- but a chair is much easier to use.  The "chamber pot" slips out from the chair and being steel, can be easily cleaned.

      The cost of my planned renovation would be thirty thousand dollars.  The toilet cost me--
      Eighty-eight euros --about one hundred twelve dollars.

     To the Caunois there's nothing at all strange about the solution I chose to the problem of having no bathroom on the third floor.  Chamber pots were commonly used in homes in Caunes until not too long ago, and some people still use them:

      "My mother-in-law still uses one" Christine, the owner of La Marbrerie, tells me.  "That's her solution to not having a bathroom  on the floor where her bedroom is."

     I leave Caunes Thursday morning a very happy home owner.

                                                                     

   

     

   

I Got Her Wrong: Toulouse

Friday, October 17, 2014

     If French cities are women --as the feminine gender of the word --la ville-- would suggest, Lyon is an ageless beauty who keeps up the tradition of elegant silks, Carcassonne a mussed old lady who hasn't changed her make-up in fifty years; and Toulouse --Toulouse is a modern woman who updates her look each season and who knows what's going on in the world, the French equivalent of the female New York Times reader.

     Montpellier is a university town, so it would be a woman focused less on style than making a statement of one sort or another.  While all these concentrations have their merits, Toulouse projects ambition as no other city in the south --perhaps no other city in France-- does.  Airbus, the Franco-German aeronautic consortium, has its headquarters in Toulouse.  As a result, the big accounting firms, Ernst & Young and KPMG, have offices there, along with many other players in the big business of making commercial jets.  The style of the 19th century buildings is not much different from that of Montpellier --both have lovely ironwork balconies-- but Toulouse's are taller and made of red brick, rather than white building materials, as in Montpellier.

     The main shopping streets in the city center are pedestrianized, broad avenues with every high-end European brand represented.  The Garonne flows through the city, dividing the neighborhoods of Saint Etienne in the center from more casual Saint Cyprien on the other side.  It was in Saint Cyprien that I went for a lunch that could have come from an alternative restaurant in San Francisco: everything I ate at Les Temps des Vendanges was market-fresh, from the arugula salad with pomegranate seeds, tuna, and figs flavored with coriander and tarragon; to the hake with sweet potato purée and a mirepoix of carrots and onions chopped tiny; to the three cheeses --sheep, goat and cow's milk; to the just-sweet-enough creamy rice pudding I had for dessert.  The price for the four courses, VAT and tip included: about $50.

     After lunch, I went on to one of the major museums in Toulouse, the Musée des Augustins, an enormous former monastery of red brick. Its forty foot ceilings allow even very large paintings to be lined up on top of each other, a 19th century way of hanging works on canvas.  The garden in the central courtyard is planted with flowers and herbs that were part of the medieval cloister garden: it too, is very large.  The ground floor also includes three huge rooms of wonderful medieval sculpture.  Seeing the giant statues of the saints I was reminded of the omnipresence of the symbols of medieval Christianity: as so many people could not read, images conveyed the message the Church wanted to communicate.  I find the wood and stone carvings so lifelike and dynamic in their monumentality --and unthreatening, unlike Tilman Riemenschneider's unseeing holy men.  The French style has delicacy without their austerity.

     I save the retrospective of Orientalist painter Benjamin Constant for my day's end, and go on to the Fondation Bamberg, housed in another very large red brick building of medieval style.  I have never heard of the Fondation Bamberg, and once in its galleries, wonder why I hadn't: it contains a spectacular collection of Old Masters as well as early twentieth century New Masters.  I have to list some of the painters by name: Works by Lucas Cranach, the younger Breughel, Van der Weyden, de Hooch, Tintoretto, Veronese, Guercino, Clouet, Canaletto, Guardi, Longhi,  Pisarro, Fantin-Latour, Gauguin, Derain, Matisse, Vlaminck, Signac, Dufy, Sickert, Bonnard, Vuillard, Utrillo, Boudin, Sisley, Caillebotte, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec --and others.

     Georges Bamberg was from a German family from Cologne, but born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1915.  He began collecting at seventeen, and when he decided to open his collection to the public winnowed it to make it more coherent; notwithstanding, the collection is massive.  The paintings are displayed on walls decorated with green flocked wallpaper, with antique chairs and period lighting placed in the rooms to give the feeling of being inside a domestic interior.  The overall effect is staggering.  It is as if someone picked the paintings up the way we shop for the week at a supermarket: buying one of everything we think we'll need.  The abrupt division of the collection into two such distinct halves, Old Masters and early twentieth century art, marks it as a personal collection, not a museum --but what a collection!

     My last gallery visit of the day is back to the Musée des Augustins to see the Benjamin Constant retrospective.  This is not the Benjamin Constant who loved Madame de Recamier, but Jean-Joseph Benjamin Constant, who lived from 1845-1902, and was one of France's most successful late 19th century academic painters.  He made his name painting Orientalist scenes of sultans, pashas, emirs, eunuchs and janissaries, women in harems.  When the vogue for them passed he became a celebrated painter of portraits, including a full-sized one of Queen Victoria, and another of Pope Leo XIII.  He was financially successful and well-regarded in academic circles, his gifts as a colorist melding perfectly with his handling of the exotic subject matter.  The colors jump out at you; the images, while clichés of imperialism, are luscious.  Perhaps that is why Constant was denied the Gold Medal of the pre-eminent organization of French painters, the Salon --of which he was an official, for many years.  He finally won it for a somber portrait of his handsome eldest son, Andre, dressed like a gentleman.

     I had put off visiting Toulouse all summer, as I had been put off Toulouse by my experience trying to get to Blagnac Airport during my first weeks in Caunes.  I had to pick up visitors there and being new behind the wheel, made a hash of both trips.  La Ville Rose, as Toulouse is known, held no interest for me.  Today, having time on my hands, and more confidence behind the wheel, I made the trip, which took ninety minutes.  I am so glad I did.
  

A Literary Groupie In Montpellier

Wednesday, October 15, 2014
10:00 p.m.

     I have just returned from a round trip to Montpellier, two hours away.  I made the drive early this afternoon to see Emmanuel Carrère, author of La Royaume, a well-received tome divided into two very different parts.   The first is about Carrère's life as a fervent Catholic thirty years ago and his eventual loss of faith.  The second part is a history of the early Christian church, focusing particularly on Paul and his acolyte, Luke, author of one of the Gospels.

     Carré, who is fifty-six, has the face and physique of a lightweight boxer who has seen better days.  His eyes are rather close-set, and his face has deep furrows around sunken cheeks.  His large paunch --which contrasts with his slender build-- suggests a man for whom physical exercise is not high on the list of priorities.  His mother is a historian and a member of the Academie Française; his father was an insurance broker.  Carrère was born to, and continues to enjoy, privilege: one reason why, at the end of La Royaume, he says "I will never be admitted to the Kingdom.".  In person, he is very soft spoken and thoughtful, as I found when I met him at Librarie Sauramps, the marvelous --and enormous-- bookstore off the central square in Montpellier, place de la Comedie.

     The book uses all sorts of anachronisms --likening some historical figures to  Ché Guevara and Vladmir Putin, for instance-- to render its subjects compelling, a technique which serves what Carrère admits is a pedagogic purpose.   Despite having long ago lost the desire to participate in Christian religious services, Carrère still has an enduring fascination with Christianity, which he describes at one point in Le Royaume as a kind of science fiction.  He also retains a great respect for many practicing Christians he has known personally, including his godmother, who died fifteen years ago.  He mentions that whenever he saw her, a fervent Catholic and a composer of sacred music, her first question was always, "How is your soul?"

     Not always very well, when he was young, is the answer.  Using religious practice as a way of organizing a troubled psychic life, Carrère became rigidly observant.  No one event led him to lose his faith, but perhaps greater emotional maturity --and the ending of an unhappy early marriage-- left him feeling less dependent on the rituals of the Mass to prop up his psychic state.  Those things and five bouts of psychoanalysis.

     Even as a secular fifty-something, Carrère is scrupulously conscientious intellectually -but never boring.  For instance, in the second part of the book he admits to a fondness for pornographic films.

     He does not, however, make the observation in passing, detachedly.  He describes, instead, coming upon a pornographic snippet --of a young woman masturbating-- on the Internet.  He tells us that, upon seeing it, he was enchanted --and absolutely convinced that the young woman was not a professional.  Which leads him to observe that certain devotional works of Marian art are caricatures of Mary; and a few --like Caravaggio's, for which his mistress modeled-- teem with life.  So, continues Carrère's argument, in pornography, just as in sacred art, the same questions of authenticity arise.

     The passage is dropped into the book like a depth charge.

      Which is why I want to ask him about it.  I get my chance at the "Meeting With" held after the book signing --it's why I drove two hours to Montpellier, and will have to drive two hours back.  "Yes!"  --Just as I was the very first person to have my copy of "La Royaume" signed, I am the first person picked to ask a question, which I have written down.

     The event is held in the auditorium of Montpellier's Mediatheque, and there is also a simultaneous transmission outside the auditorium, as the hall fills completely.  I am nervous, but I have my script.  I read out in French:

     Perhaps because I am not capable of expressing my intimate desires so publicly, I was struck by the pornographic episode in "La Royaume".

     At first reading, I thought it was your way of saying "I'm a sinner."

     However, I heard you speak at another event and say that it was only a way of making the point that in the profane sphere, as well as the sacred, the same questions of authenticity arise.

     My question remains, though. You have lost your faith, but have you abandoned the idea of--

     THE PEACH!

     The minute the words are out of my mouth, one half of the audience, cries out

     "LE PECHÉ!"

     That half is the censorious half of any group of people in France, without which the group would not be French.  I have committed a malapropism, ending my question using the word for  --a peach-- a feminine noun --instead of le peché, the masculine noun and the word for "sin".

     The other half of the audience laughs.  (I can only imagine that the audience outside the auditorium, mostly young -much younger than the senior citizens in the auditorium-- must have found my gaffe hilarious.)

     Emmanuel Carré, however, just takes my question.  He kindly elides the gaffe on which the audience focused:

     I agree with your analysis of my purpose in inserting the story in the book.  As to "sin", however, I wanted to stay away from that idea, which is so unproductively loaded with guilt.  I do, however, recognize --and I know the emotion well-- the existence of feelings of culpability.  I don't, however, think there is anything wrong with watching pornography on the Internet.

     I am exhilarated at having articulated my question cogently, if not in perfect French.  I drive through the night in a state of exaltation, Radio Classique keeping me company, the cool air pushing me forward towards Caunes, where I arrive about 9:45 p.m.

     The village is absolutely quiet.  The contrast between the fervent intellectual life of Montpellier and the sleepy rural village could not seem greater.

   

And The Days Dwindle Down To A Precious Few

October 13, 2014

     Nicole Leveling, my new cleaner, arrived just before 9:00 a.m., minutes after Beau and I returned from our regular morning walk through Caunes.  I think she is a keeper, which is a relief.  She will help me organize my closets in addition to cleaning, so that all the linens along with my clothes are easily accessible.  I have bought additional storage units at the local shopping center and begun reorganizing in advance of her return Thursday, so I am feeling ahead of the game.

     A chance encounter with a water meter reader from Carcassonne Agglo means that I have dealt with one of the more problematic tasks associated with my departure --reading the water and electric meters. I saw the man in his truck coming slowly down my street and stopped him, asking whether he had anything to do with meter reading.  If it were New York City, he would not have given me the time of day --instead the man stopped his car in front of the house, came inside and searched for the meter, which I had not been able to find.  (It was located underneath the kitchen sink, not the likeliest place.)  He gave me the address where to send the reading before I left, although he thought I ought to check with the mairie to make sure I had the zip code right.  I happened to be on my way there on precisely that errand, when I stopped him.

     Imagine my joy when Madame Davila, the mairie secretary not only found the address I needed, but gave me a printed form I could easily fill out and mail to the address given to satisfy the meter reading requirement.  I know how to read the compteur for the electricity and I already have a bill Electricité de France reading, so I can send it to the address on the bill and be done with that, too.

     I repacked my bags and left behind much I thought I'd bring back to New York.  After checking with DHL, it became obvious that even if I could get the courier service to pick up the two suitcases I filled (largely with French language books), I would have to fill out several customs declarations and print them out before.  After shipping a twenty foot container to Caunes, I never want to see a French customs form again: the books will have to wait to be read next year.

     Beau visits Dr. Mougin next Monday and will be vaccinated against rabies again, so that he can return with me using his Pet Passport and I mine, without my having to ever see the U.S. Department of Agriculture office at Kennedy Airport again.  He still does not like being left alone and it doesn't take much to get him barking if he is alone --the hammering from the next-door-neighbors' home repair project, for instance-- but he is much better.

     The house is secure, although I still find unsettling the news of the recent robberies.  I had a long talk about them --and the car burnings last week-- with Roseline Amen, a retired emergency room nurse I have gotten to know through my participation in the church fair at Notre Dame du Cros.

     I do not worry about my personal safety, she told me.  I leave my shutters open --I don't want to lock myself in, although some people think I should.  

     Vis-a-vis the latest incidents, the village has changed.  It used to be just wine-growers,  --and abstemious ones, by the way.  My family were typical, the value all held was the value of work.  Today, as a psychologist explained to me, the most important thing is leisure.  People work without thinking they will stay at any one job.  In the village there are now families --one in particular-- where no one works.  Whenever something happens, they are the usual suspects.

     It turns out that that family is the family that lives on the rue de Notre Dame, not far from me.

     They are very correct, though.  If you meet them on the street, they will always greet you politely.  However, I did hear one of them --he now lives across the street from me-- call his girlfriend a "dirty whore".  If you meet him on the street, however, he will greet you as anyone else in the village would.  Do they do a little "dealing"? --they probably do, to make ends meet, as even with the subsidies they receive, they need a bit more to live as they do.  

     Then, too, perhaps some of them burglarize houses in the village.  There's a couple --two women-- who live down the street.  They left the village after spending the summer here and a few weeks later, their car disappeared.  The neighbors who keep an eye on their house saw it was missing.  Now this part of the village is not one that anyone not intimately familiar with the village would know --only someone from the village, someone who knew that the two women had closed up the house could have successfully stolen their car.

     It also turns out that the name of the family, Saoudi-- is the same as that of my very first cleaner, the tiny young woman who spent four hours doing nothing when she was here.  In Rosline's opinion, she is not necessarily one of the relatives of the family of Fagins, though:

     I would not be in the least worried, Marta, either about your personal safety, or the house, if you've fortified it as you have.  The problems in the village are more than crimes, they are symptoms of a social pathology that is, unfortunately, now common in France.  In my brother's village a vigneron filled his barrels with grapes only to find that local teenagers had defiled them with refuse.  If there is even one fragment of glass inside, he's lost the value of the entire barrel.  

     I talked with the head of the local gendarmerie group this afternoon about the car burnings and the open consumption of marijuana.  This is his perspective:

     Today, in France, 60 to 80 percent of teenagers consume cannabis regularly.  Many start using it as early as twelve --I know of one case where a promising student ruined his chances of a better life, by becoming dependent on cannabis.  I know there is open consumption in front of the bank branch, but the problem for the gendarmerie is that if we approach, the users throw away the goods.  Also, under French law, use is not a crime, it is a violation of the health code.  The sanction is to be sent to a health service to address the dependency.  

     I asked about the torching of the cars last week:

     The investigation is, unfortunately, continuing.  The suspects are teenagers from Rieux, all with a dossier as long as my arm.  However, as they are minors, even if they are brought before the judge, he will just tell them not to do it again.  The burning of the car is an attempt to destroy the fingerprints that would inculpate the joyriders: "CSI" --the American TV program has taught them that.  If arrested the suspects face two charges --stealing the car and burning it-- not minor offenses.  However, proving the suspects are the perpetrators and as minors, bringing them to account --that's not easily done.

     Rosline Amen has the last word, which concerns a story I heard last year about an American woman beaten within an inch of her life by an intruder, a workman she had engaged:

     That was a "settling of scores".  Something happened between them during his work for her --she had one understanding, he had another-- it can happen.  What he did was personally directed towards her.  I understand that she returned to the United States to have the necessary surgery.  

     Whereas in the case of the burning of the car in the Place d'Europe, that was mere vandalism.  I happened to run into the elderly woman who owns the car incinerated.  She is terribly upset --she thinks it was done against her personally.  I tried to convince her that it wasn't, but she's unable to see it that way.

     It would be a cliché --but an apt one-- to say that as beautiful as Caunes is, it's not paradise, that it has problems just like anywhere else.  As Patrice Cartier said to me a few days ago, in response to my curiosity about these incidents,

     You've lived here long enough now to know what the life of the village is and not be surprised.

     Which, in its way, is a great compliment.

          

   

   

Unsettled; A Drive to Lyon and Grignan

October 12, 2014

     My departure date, October 23, approaches and it is time to put all in order.  Lars was here Monday to make needed repairs to all the shutters and to install latches on the shutters, a precaution intended to prevent a burglary.  And there are burglaries --it is a fact of life in any area where there are second homes.

     More unsettling than burglaries, however, are two incidents involving cars which took place earlier this week.  Two cars, one belonging to an elderly woman who kept it in the parking lot between rue des Écoles and Avenue du Minervois known as Place d'Europe, were incinerated.  The theory making the rounds about that, is that visitors from Rieux, the nearby village, came to Caunes to drink and, having no way of getting home, started the car, but could not get all the way there.  Abandoning the car, they gratuitously set it on fire.

     The story, to use an apt metaphor, spread like wildfire.  At the grocery store opposite the mairie, Marlène, the owner, gave her version of the story.

     The police know who did it, because someone saw them.  It's an outrage, but these things happen now.

     When bad things happen in Caunes, there are three persons likely responsible: firstly, "people from Rieux"; secondly, a family that lives on the village outskirts.  Both are perceived as Maghrebin, that is, Arabs from North Africa, natural scapegoats. Thirdly suspect is a transient family, headed by an alcoholic mother and father.

      How can the police know who did it?  They tell people they "know", but how do they "know", since the car was not set on fire in the Place d'Europe, but outside of Caunes?

     Patrice Cartier, a local writer, shared his point of view on the incident, a careful point of view decidedly in the minority.

     Drugs are not unknown in Caunes, as in the rest of the world.  Twice I have walked Beau along Avenue du Minervois in the evening and, passing alongside the bank, seen a couple of teenagers perched on the nearby ledge, a distinct perfume of marijuana traveling in their wake.

     Possession of marijuana is illegal in France, so I was surprised to see it being used openly, especially opposite Le Café de la Grande Fontaine, the one place in the village that is open non-stop, seven days a week, from morning to night.

     Yes, it's illegal, but in the small villages no one says a thing.  The Gendarmerie have other things to do than to bother themselves with bored teenagers smoking "kif", says Christine Bourges, who runs La Marbrerie.

     The "broken window" theory has evidently not penetrated the local consciousness, nor that of the gendarmerie.

      The transient family is not Maghregin and includes the fourteen year old girl, pretty and blonde, I saw the second time I scented marijuana in the air.

      Christine tells me, "C'est une famille qui se dégrade, tout le monde le sais."  ("It's a family in décline, everyone knows it."

      In the course of our conversation, Patrice too, refers to this family, and in the same way.

      But what to do?  The family is behind in their rent and is going to be evicted.  The children may be taken from their parents and placed in foster care.  Christine hires such children --she just took on a young man who cleans, helps in the kitchen and with anything else that needs doing.  His father is absent, his mother unable to raise him, so, at sixteen, he is on his own.

     Hopefully, he'll stick with the work --it's the only way out for him.  I know, because it was the only way out for me.  I've had several such hires and often they don't work out, but I want to do it because it was because of people who helped me that I found my way out of my hole.

                                                                          ***

     I made the last of my long-distance trips on Tuesday: four and a half hours to Lyon, in the Isère département, one way.  I set myself the test as the drive to Nice Thursday, October 23 will be just as long, and I did not want to never have done a drive of similar length before.  Beau stayed with Madame Froment, so I was also able to make the trip without worrying about how Beau would handle it.

     Lyon is known as one of the best places to eat in France.  Paul Bocuse made his reputation there, and still runs several restaurants in the city.  I made reservations at two restaurants, one of them being Sud, his bistro off Place Belcour, Lyon's gigantic central square; the other on rue du Palais Grillet --
 Palégrié.  I found both on the French website Le Fooding, where savvy French go to find restaurants around the country.  Both were delicious, although Palégrié's prix fixe menu: soup of mushrooms puréed with a confit of egg yolk and dried beef strips perched on the bowl's edge; sautéed skate; and, for dessert, a local cheese called faisselle was the more memorable.

     My airbnb in Villeurbaine, just over the Lyon city limits, was with a medical student, Clotilde Maury, with whom I was entirely in simpatico.  In fact, I was entirely simpatico with Lyon, a cosmopolitan city with much to recommend it.  Great museums, the historic association with silk weaving, a fine theatre, the Theatre des Celestins, and a diverse population.

     It was in Villeurbaine that I saw the first Hasidic Jew I saw outside of Paris.  And the many populations that inhabit the Lyon area seem somehow less marginalized than in the Midi --which is curious, because the Midi is where the people of France's former colonies predominate, each in their ghetto.

     And the Lyonnais are beautifully dressed, whatever their age.  I felt my city roots seeing men in well-tailored suits and ties and enjoyed the pleasure it gave me.  At last, somewhere in France where care is taken with dress!

     I had intended to try a third restaurant the day of my departure, but spotting a roadside marker for the village of Grignan, home to the château where the famous letter writer, Madame de Sevigné, visited her daughter and son-in-law, I decided to go there instead.  Grignan is in the Provence region, in the Drôme département about two hours away and halfway home for me.  In the summer, the place is the setting for numerous festivals held at the château that attract the well-heeled and cultured.  The Drôme is the home of million Euro villas, so its manicured aspect is the product of careful landscaping.  The château is set on a high hill overlooking all of the valley and in the distance Mont Ventoux is visible.

     What is amazing to me about the Château de Grignan, in addition to its spectacular placement in the landscape, is that it is almost all a reconstruction.  Almost entirely destroyed during the French Revolution, it was purchased by a famous dandy, Boni de Castellane, at the beginning of the twentieth century.  Needing money, he sold all the interiors before ultimately selling the châeau to a very wealthy widow, Marie Fontaine.  Marie Fontaine devoted the remaining years of her life --and fortune-- to reconstoring the château to its Renaissance apogée.  The exquisite and magnificent ivory façade is all the product of restoration.  The interiors are all of Madame Fontaine's choosing and do not, in general, reflect the period during the late 17th century when Madame de Sevigné was in residence.  In fact, the guided tour concentrates on giving a brief history of each piece, rather than on Madame de Sevigné, by far a more interesting subject.

     There is a lovely restaurant and inn, Le Clair du Plume, which is "the" place in Grignan, it seems.  There is a rather unfriendly village café, Le Sevigné, and lots of tiny boutiques selling clothes and pottery, two used bookstores and several art galleries.  One of the galleries, adjoining one of the bookstores, is run by a painter who began her career in fashion in Paris.  She let me into her fellow-shopowner's bookstore, where I picked up a set of the entire correspondence of Madame de Sevigné in three volumes, along with book of papers delivered at a symposium devoted to the 300th anniversary of the death of Madame de Sevigné in 1794.

     One of the papers deals with badinage, the playful back-and-forth between two people with a perfect understanding of each other.  Madame de Sevigné lived in Paris and was forced to see her daughter move away to Grignan, to live with her husband, who was six years younger than Madame de Sevigné and fourteen years older than her daughter.  He was a widower twice, so this was the third marriage for him, and he was anxious to produce a male heir.  Which he did, although the son died in his twenties, the estate passing to a daughter instead.  It was Madame de Sevigné's daughter who first published the first collection of her mother's letters to her, not long after Madame's death.

     Madame de Sevigné is considered by many writers --not all of them French-- to be a genius in her self-expression.  Virginia Woolf considered the Letters a great companion, as did Marcel Proust, and many authors in the centuries preceding.  She lived during the reign of Louis XIV and was part of his court, knowing everyone, their merits and their trajectories at court.  So reading her is not only an example of superb French, but a window into the world of the court of the Sun King.  Between the Letters of Madame de Sevigné and the Memoirs of the acerbic Duc de Saint-Simon, the splendors of the age unfold.  I was lucky to get a chance to experience Grignan and its château in the off-season, although I was happy to return to the much less sophisticated Minervois at day's end.
   

    

   

French workmen

October 6, 2014

     Autumn winds have made themselves known today in Caunes: there is no denying it: or the fact that  Wednesday, October 24 will be my last day for the year at 10, porte de Narbonne.

     I thought I had arranged matters so there would be no rush to complete tasks.  That is true, for the most part, but there are a few items I was unaware of that need to be resolved before I depart:

     1. the electric and water meters need to be read during the month my contract assigns a meter reader to me, November, when I will be gone;

     2. the shutters in the house need to be leveled, so that they are flush with the exterior walls when they close, a precaution against robbery, as well as away of extending their life.  The front door, whose wood has swelled, making it an athletic event to open and close, needs to have its supports readjusted.

     3. SFR, another phone, internet and television service, has to replace Orange, which is more expensive.

     4. The old Butagaz butane canister that supplies gas for the stove top needs to sealed off and the new one -with a new feeding tube-- installed.

     5. The house needs to be cleaned from top to bottom, linens placed in giant garbage bags with lavender sachets inside to keep away bugs and the damp.

     As to #1, I have been told that it is possible to paste a piece of paper behind a shutter where a meter reader will find it and take the figure I write down from the meters the day I leave.

     As to #2, Lars Leveling, a Frenchman of Dutch origin has been here today to readjust the shutters, drilling into place crossbars that right them.

     As to #3 and #4, Lars will try to help me when he comes back Friday to complete the work on the shutters.

     As to #5, Nicole, Lars' German fiancée will come by next Monday and on October 24.

     Nicole and Lars met in Australia and decided to move to Caunes together.  They have two young children and will be married next May.  Lars is much in demand because his work is excellent and his price reasonable.  He is thirty-seven, strapping and full of energy.  He charges the cost of materials plus 15 Euros per hour, which includes paying him for a half-hour lunch and the time it takes him to put his tools back in his truck.  He works steadily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and he is punctual.

     I thought that when we agreed on the jobs to be done before I left it might be the beginning of --as Claude Rains said to Humphrey Bogart in the last scene in Casablanca-- "a beautiful relationship".  I had visions of myself going away, staying in touch with Lars via e-mail to approve plans and wire funds, returning to find that the top floor of the house was fully renovated with a new bedroom, full bath and even a sauna.  Lars put in a similar set-up in the house of a couple who live on Caunes' main street some years ago, so I know he has the ability to, at least, supervise the laying down of a concrete floor and tile on top, if not plumbing.

     But he's not interested: he's full up until next summer and he thinks a cement company could do the job more easily.  He could lay the tile, but that will not be done until after the tile is laid on top of the concrete --something else he would rather not do, because I've steel beams holding up the roof foundation.  He'd be happy to do the walls, to consult on the bathroom fixtures and install them.  Pressing him for names that could do the other tasks, he just told me there were many, although those who do very good work were hard to find.

     "I have a good reputation in the village, and I want to keep it, I want my clients to be happy."

     --Even if that means turning down jobs, it seems.

     Yet I have to admire Lars' perspicacity: in a small area like Caunes and the surrounding villages, opinions about workmen's quality of work are the coin of the realm, freely exchanged and of different value.  Many men work in the building trades, the competition is intense and the make-up of work teams is fluid, with carpenters, plumbers, plasterers and electricians jumping from one to another.  There are no residential general contractors: people who are aware of all aspects of a job and coordinate the sequence that has to be followed to execute a renovation project in line with the client's wishes, work in the commercial sector.  On the residential side, there are plumbers who manage plumbers, painters who manage painters, electricians who manage electricians, but no one with the expertise --and the inclination to manage all aspects of a job.  I think Lars has the ability to do so, but he doesn't wish to. Working as he does, independently for the most part, usually the last workman to come on to a job, he doesn't butt heads with workmen from other trades. --That also helps his reputation with clients, who engage him for small jobs and large before and after a large project is completed --more or less to a client's satisfaction.

     I should also be grateful to Lars for not leading me on.  Anyone who ever read Peter Mayle's A Year In Provence remembers the impenetrability of the masons, their unreliability and the particular frustration Mayle felt over having a circular stone table set up in the garden.  Lars has given me reason to think about whether I really need to put a second full bath in this house, given the undoubted aggravation that juggling several workmen --each with a different way of working-- would cause.

     I can live without the extra bathroom for the foreseeable future, I have learned.

Beating The Bureaucracy - A French Sport

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

     As the days left me in France become fewer and fewer, I concentrate on tying up loose ends before I  close the house and wend my way to Paris October 28.  The taxes, the phone, internet and television subscription; the insurance on the house, the portable phone contract: the goal is to leave all in place so that next year I don't spend half the summer battling the different French bureaucracies.

     Take the phone company I signed up with, Orange: because I was staying in France more than 3 months, I was not eligible for the contract for a residence secondaire.  I pay 57, 80 Euros a month for the three services, too much to stay a subscriber through the year.   But if I cancel, in addition to the 50 Euro cancellation fee, I lose the phone number I have now and I have to start the process of signing up all over again.  This year I lost six weeks trying to get the phone set up and battled with Orange over whether I should have been charged for technicians' visits.  Ultimately, I had to spend 176,80 Euros to call in an electrician to jump start my services.

     Thankfully, some competition between the different phone, internet and television companies exists. Another company, SFR, will allow me to keep my present phone number; better, their price for the same services is almost 20 Euros cheaper.  I have just enough time to cancel my Orange contract, send back their equipment and install that SFR sends me.  I will still pay 50 Euros for canceling the service, but as a long-term proposition, SFR pays, allowing me to keep the house "plugged in" year round at a reasonable cost --and hopefully, saving me hours of aggravation in the years to come.  I learned about the cheaper service from a French woman who is a master of the bureaucracy.

      Vis-a-vis the error in identifying me as a taxpayer at the Trésor Publique, the notaire replied to my e-mail and sent me a copy of the document establishing me as the owner via e-mail.  The error was the Trésor Publique's.  I will visit tomorrow to try to straighten out the error, so the bill for the taxe d'habitation gets to me next month.   Ça sera compliqué, the woman at the Trésor Publique  told me when I highlighted the error and asked that it be rectified.  The bureaucracy will resist.

       Next year, with all my regular expenses mensualisès-- paid automatically-- I should be able to return to the house in Caunes without dreading the bureaucracy.  The chimney sweep has to clean the flue --a yearly requirement.  And next year the roof's timbers have to be sprayed to attack any xyllophage colonies: like termites. these insects eat wood.  The men who perform these works are independent contractors, so there's no bureaucracy involved.

       The life I've led here has been a French life, albeit with fewer constraints.  I have used the health services and found them to be at a high level.  As a private individual going to a private clinic the service was excellent, although I understand that public clinics are at a comparable level, if the bureaucracy greater.

     There are those who know their way around the bureaucracies and get the most of them.  It pays to educate yourself about them if you are receiving health care under the Secu, the French health system: if you know how to work the system the benefits are much broader than those most Americans receive, jaw-droppingly so.

     I give you the example of a Danish woman who lives in Carcassonne and is covered under the Secu: In her eighties and suffering from cogestive heart failure, she and her husband are determined to take their usual holiday in Biarritz this year, notwithstanding.

     The woman, whom I'll call Gräne, needs oxygen to live.  As carrying an oxygen tank with them on their trip is impractical, Gräne called the Secu and explained her situation.  The Secu will deliver an oxygen tank large enough to tide Gräne through her holiday to her hotel in Biarritz.  The cost of the tank, its delivery and pick-up at the holiday's end?  All covered by the Secu.  

     Gräne is a master of the bureaucracy.

     

   

   

Une Rentrée Difficile

September 30, 2014

     I spent twelve days away from Beauregard and Caunes, and it did me good.  I learned several things: 1. that the Mediterranean coast of the département nearest Italy, Alpes Maritimes, is full of Russians, that real estate agencies bear signs in Russian, hoping to attract their custom.  The same is true in San Remo, Italy, another redoubt of 19th century royals, if less intimate now than the nearby French villages of Menton, Beaulieu-sur-Mer, Cap Ferrat and Villfranche-sur-Mer.

     I also learned 2. that driving on the French toll roads from the Italian border to Toulon is a driver's dream.  The tolls mount, but the roads are fleet and well-maintained, curling through the mountains that hug the Meditrranean.  For the first time ever, I enjoyed driving very much.

     I also learned 3. how pleasurable it can be to be on a sailboat at rest in a beautiful harbor, specifically that of Hyères.  The village has beautiful areas, notably the old town; and students of the European avant garde in the 20th century will find it worthwhile to mount -and mount, and mount to reach the Villa Noailles, the concrete villa created by Robert Mallet-Stevens for the Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Noilles, between 1923 and 1927.  The concrete has not aged well and the right-angled rooms  are not to my taste, but the overlook is worthy of an emperor and empress.

     Returning to Caunes Saturday, I had a weekend before I had to pick up Beauregard, who did well by his stay with Madame Froment.   I found a calmer dog, perhaps due to the naturopathic capsules Madame Froment gave Beau each morning: sprinkled over the dog food, the taste mimics that of a canine mother's milk.  Eager to see Beau's transformation continue, I visited Dr. Mougin and signed up for a month's supply, the normal course of treatment.

     Now it is time to attend to the tasks associated with closing the house: Monday I went to the Trésorie Publique to pay the taxe foncière and set up the mensualité (auto-pay) for it and the smaller tax levied in late November, the taxe d'habitation, which includes the yearly tax on televisions.

     In paying the tax I discovered something surprising: the notaire who handled the real estate transaction identified me by my late husband's name, "Barbeosch", rather than mine, "Varela".  Of course, this suggests that the deed filed is also in Bill's name.  And while it might not be particularly serious in the case of the taxes, as the funds will be deducted automatically from my French bank account, should I wish to sell --or the house pass under French estate law-- the notaires' error will complicate matters.

     Another error I discovered relating to the house is that once again, my internet, telephone and television company, Orange, signed me up for a contract for a house that belongs to someone in residence year-round, rather than someone who has signed up for an Orange contract for a second residence.  All of which means that next year I will have to set up the service from scratch, paying contract cancellation fees meanwhile and losing what I had thought would be my permanent phone number.  La Marbrerie may once again, become my office next summer.

     All these inconveniences are as nothing relative to what the average Frenchman is going through.  Yesterday the news reported that the number of salaried employees asking their employers for an advance on their salaries for the purpose of paying their tax bill has exploded.  Today the news reported that for the first time the French national debt passed the two billion Euro mark.  That means that a baby born today can be said to be responsible for 30,000 Euros of the debt.

     Tomorrow the Air France pilot's strike, which has lasted two weeks and stranded passengers all over the world, ends.  The strike stranded passengers far and wide: the France 2 correspondent in Moscow explained that a particular problem for travelers whose fights were cancelled there was that they were forced to overstay their visas.  Those that could grabbed flights out of Russia to anywhere in Europe, for instance, Frankfurt, the third busiest airport in Europe after Heathrow in London and Charles de Gaulle in Paris.  The strike is estimated to have cost Air France $355 million dollars.  The reason for the pilot's strike?  Their opposition to the development of a low-cost airline by Air France.

     Other unhappy news:

     - Senior citizens were told that as inflation has not increased, they would not receive a cost-of-living allowance expected by many of them.

     -Parents of families learned that the allocation familiale --paid to any family with two or more children under twenty, regardless of income-- would be reduced.

     -Pharmacists were told that legislation would end their monopoly on the sale of over-the-counter medications and permit sale of the products at shopping centers.  (Some pharmacists say the sale of over-the-counter medications accounts for 25% of their sales.)

       Meanwhile, the Front National picked up two seats in the Senat.  The French senators are not elected directly, but by the mayors and conseillers of French départements, regions and towns.  Their power to express dissatisfaction with a President and his government is more limited than that of the Assemblée Nationale, which is necessarily of the same party as the president's.  The election of two FN Senators is not expected to shift the balance of power --overall the Senate elections shifted power  to the right.  However, the election of two Senators is a symbolic first for the party of the Le Pen family and illustrates the increasing reach --and sophistication-- of the party.

     The Front National is gaining support among France's disparate working classes, which both parties have written off.  The FN is attracting young supporters and more, leaders who would never have a chance in either the Parti Socialiste (PS) or the Unton pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP).  "Without a degree from one of the "Grands Écoles" it is impossible to get anywhere in either the PS or the UMP," observed a French political scientist.  "In the FN, if you are talented, you rise."

     In fact, one of the new Senators, David Rachline, the mayor of Frejus in the Var, is twenty-six years old.  (In France, one can hold both offices.)  Activist from the age of 15 years of age, Rachline plies the anti-immigrant line, popular in Frejus, where many pieds noirs (French returned to France after the country abandoned its colonies in North Africa) live.  Stéphane Ravier, the mayor of the seventh district of Marseilles, won the other Senate seat.

     This is the third defeat of the PS by the FN: earlier this year the FN took twelve mayoral contests, before winning 24 or 74 seats in the elections for French representatives to the European parliament on the strength of almost 25% of the votes.

     France's working class has been relegated to the periphery of national politics by the two major parties and the FN has taken advantage of that to broaden its base beyond the original anti-immigrant base of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the eighty-five year old founder of the party.  His daughter Marine is shrewd enough to articulate a party line that buries the anti-immigrant impulse (which is less acceptable outside France's Midi) in rhetoric that speaks of France, of civility, of traditional values --a line that appeals more in France's industrial northeast.

     Hollande's term has two and a half years more to run.  Little is anticipated from his government, besieged from within and without.  With the beheading in Algeria of Hervé Gourdel, the French mountain guide, many French are re-evaluating their attitudes towards the Muslim population.  Combined with the economy's moribund state and the worsening of conditions for its improvement, it is not a happy time to be a Frenchman in France.

Cannes and "Saint Laurent"

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

          It rained last night and early this morning, so there was some question in my mind about whether the excursion to Cannes today would take place.  I brought my umbrella and a sweater --the temperatures have dropped, perceptibly, since Monday-- and walked to the ticket office to get the last word on the sailing.

          "The ship will go, the captain has indicated he will sail at the usual time, 9:15 a.m.", the woman at the ticket counter --who has gotten to know me by now-- assured me.  "It may be cloudy in the morning, but it should clear in the afternoon."

          I arrived at the embarkation point, as is my custom, early.  Being the first there did not make me the first to board, however: there was a group of elderly Austrians in bright-colored and expensive sailing gear, led by an enormous Frenchwoman speaking German, who got on first.  I headed for the top deck to escape the crowd, and the boat's crew let slip the ropes.

          The sea was not as rough as on yesterday's brief ride to Saint Tropez, but once we were on the open sea the swells would abruptly peak --and fall.  At first, my compatriots on top deck laughed it off, but there was no let up.  To try to keep myself from sliding off the bench I was sitting on when the ferry lurched, I gripped the rope that divided the passenger area from the wheel and the captain, but it was no help.  I found I could grip the underside of the plastic bench with my left hand, and hold my position, so I did that for the rest of the two hour trip.

          I have been sick to my stomach at sea, very sick, in fact.  A dramamine patch administered two days before a long sea voyage now makes travel by sea comfortable for me.  However, I did not have even dramamine tablets for this trip, and after an hour at sea and no respite from the swells, I began to wonder how long I could hold out before seasickness overcame me.  In my mind, I heard myself saying, J'ai le mal de mer --je vais vomir-- to the crew member sitting among us on the upper deck.

          At first, I thought I was the only one under the weather.  A glance at the faces of my fellow travelers, told me I was not: the joking,  smiling Austrians were now keeping their lips firmly closed, all conversation ended.  When we got into Cannes harbor the boat slowed down and the violent rocking subsided.  Lively conversation began again, everyone relieved the morning's journey was at an end.

          I wanted to see Cannes because I thought that with the yearly film festival being perhaps the most prestigious international film competition short of the Oscars, Cannes would have lots --perhaps too much-- of its economy devoted to the movies.  I could not have been more wrong.  There is no museum devoted to filmmaking of any kind.  There is no art museum, except for a museum of primitive art.  The only other public attraction is the aquarium.

          Cannes is, however, a very fashionable city.  It is the first city I have been in in the south of France where the locals dress with dash and style.  Even on a cloudy day like today, the women and men were well-turned out, in general.  The Croisette, the promenade along the sea, allows strollers to take in the many sailboats in the harbor.  Indeed, this week there is an international regatta, and a stretch of stands selling sailing clothes.  The presence of one boat's young crew all dressed in traditional Breton caps and linen smocks posing for a professional regatta photographer excited the attention of daytrippers: "Snap! Snap! Snap!" too, went their cameras.

          I walked on, having decided that, as the day was overcast and cool, the best way to spend my time in Cannes was to go to the movies --and Cannes does have a lot of movie theaters, with the first day a movies plays in France being Wednesday --not Friday, as in the United States.  So it was my luck that the new biopic about couturier Yves Saint Laurent was about to have its first showing in Cannes at 1:10 p.m., forty minutes and an easy walk away.

          How was the movie?  Well if you have no interest in fashion or Saint Laurent and especially haute couture, it's not for you.  The film is mainly the story of the years this fragile man with a febrile imagination descended into his own private hell, a hell he never really escaped.  Gaspard Ulliel impersonates the designer as he was in the days when he was at the height of his fame and cultural influence, opening ready-to-wear boutiques under the Rive Gauche label, posing nude (discreetly) for advertisements for his men's cologne, taking his influence from street fashion --safari shirts, military jackets --and, a break with everything that came before-- a pant suit inspired by men's tuxedos, which he called le smoking.

          The film spends little time explaining any of this, as most of it is devoted to Saint Laurent's self-destructive relationship with J.J. Bascher, a gay libertine..  Saint Laurent almost killed himself --and his longtime partner in business and love, Pierre Bergé-- before both were free of him.  However, Saint Laurent's self-destruction --several packs of cigarettes a day, lots of scotch and still, pills-- ravaged him physically.  He retired from designing in 2002, becoming increasingly reclusive.  He died of brain cancer in 2008.

          The first showing was well-attended, but the queue for the second, which I passed, was very long.  The line was full of women who take great care in their appearance in the way Saint Laurent's mother did, discreetly but expensively.  These were the women for whom Saint Laurent first designed, before he became interested in playing with fashion's codes by putting women in pantsuits, by designing transparent black blouses to wear with them, by updating styles from the 1920s through the 1940s.  The graphic scenes of group sex and the frontal nudity may be too much for them.  Perhaps like me, they wanted a celebration of a brilliant and tormented craftsman, not a study in decadence.

          Perhaps to underscore that aspect of Saint Laurent's life, the director, Bertrand Bonnello chose, for the role of Saint Laurent in his last, withdrawn years, the Austrian actor, Helmut Berger.  The women on line might remember Berger's performance in a film equally scandalous in its day, Luchino Visconti's,The Damned, made in 1969.  When released, The Damned received an "X" rating from the Motion Picture Association of America.  Berger perfectly mimics the aged Saint Laurent's halting speech, with its stops and starts and pauses for breath, as well as his mental abstraction.

          A moth batting its wings relentlessly towards the flame, almost burning himself out, then withdrawing --just enough-- to do it again.  Until the wings could beat no more.  Saint Laurent's life could have been brought to the screen in this spirit.  But --as an eighth grade teacher of mine used to say, "We live in an age where we like to see the feet of clay of our idols."  So Saint Laurent serves them up, eclipsing the man's accomplishment in the process.

                                                         ***

          The trip back was uncomfortably cold, and my impressions of the film I had just seen dominated my thoughts.  My head ached when I descended the boat.  I was glad to return to little Saint Maxime for my last evening here and a hot shower.

The Debt To Pleasure: Saint Tropez

Tuesday, September 23, 2014
The First Day of Fall

     I am, I know, frugal: I have not had a meal in a restaurant since I arrived in Sainte Maxime, economizing by buying nourishment in the local grocery store or boulangerie.  Breakfast in the hotel is 9, 50 Euros and I cannot spring for it, even though I dearly wanted a decaffeinated coffee.  However, at 6,00 Euros (about $7.70 USD), I could not justify it.  I was thrilled when I found that La Tarte Tropezienne has a sophisticated machine that makes all different different kinds of coffee: the white plastic cup descends, the divine liquid is expressed and at the end, a tiny clear plastic spoon drops into the cup.  This is where the local builders get their coffee before going to work first thing in the morning at 6:30 a.m. There's no decaffeinated coffee, but at 1,00 euro a cup ($1.29), I'll go back on caffeine.

     I did, however, come here because I wanted to "pretend that France isn't in the state its in for a few days", as I wrote on August 20, "hoping to rub shoulders with that world that never changes, the world of wealthy people on the Riviera".  Now that I'm installed in Sainte Maxime, a place that fulfills every need of mind at present, I realize what a silly characterization of what I wanted I sketched: the towns and villages of Villefranche-sur-Mer, Beaulieu, and Menton are lovely and they are certainly filled with wealthy people, particularly in their environs.  So is Sainte Maxime as well as the neighboring villages: St. Raphael, Le Lavandou, Ramatuelle, Saint Tropez.

     What I find in Sainte Maxime is a studied quiet, the appearance of effortless tranquility --which is, of course, the product of a village consensus to keep Sainte Maxime attractive to residents and visitors who like it the way it is, unsexy --certainly in contrast to Saint Tropez.  Even more so, Port Cros, one of Îles de Hyères, two hours away by boat, which I visited yesterday.  The island, a nature preserve, has few residents, among them, Jean-Arthus Berthand, the famous photographer.  He bought the dilapidated fort on the point and built a farmhouse next to it, a place to which he can retreat after his journeys photographing around the world.  There are few other houses and only one hotel.  There is one boat a day there, six days a week, which is how Port Cros stays as quiet as it is --there were twenty-five people on the Plage du Sud --a beach that can be reached only after a thirty-five minute hike-- there yesterday.  Swimming in the waters of its tiny bay, I splashed like a child, completely happy: no foreign noises fouling the air, only the birds, the water, the sun, the hills and the fresh air.

     Giving myself over to pleasure isn't easy, my sensibility has never liked second-best and the third rate.  I am lucky that I can permit myself the indulgence of this vacation, but noticing how completely I have abandoned all but the lightest exercise and taken to enjoying afternoon naps, I can also say that inwardly I yearned for this, even if I never expressed it to myself.  The French have an expression, se replier sur soi, to withdraw inwardly.  For me to be happy, I have to allow myself to do this from time to time in some location that fulfills my dream of beauty and tranquility, and allows me to reconnect from my obsessive-compulsive orientation to measure the value of my days by the number of tasks accomplished.

     I'm reminded of the story of Jesus' visit to the sisters of Bethany, Mary and Martha.  Mary sits at Christ's feet to be near him, while Martha bustles to make sure the house is worthy of the honor of his visit.  Christ gently reproaches Martha, saying her sister "has the better part" --contemplation versus action.  Of course, the two are not mutually exclusive, as the Jesuits teach: laborare est orare --to work is to pray--  is their motto.

     But all work and no play makes Marta a very dull girl, so I am going to enjoy reading the books I've put off reading and nap and contemplate the Golfe de Saint Tropez and amble through old Sainte Maxime, doing nothing, forgetting everything, paying off my debt to pleasure. 

     --Incidentally, Saint Tropez isn't about any of this, it's about something else, much less lasting, conspicuous consumption and fleeting thrills.  Bulgari, Chanel, Armani --these temples of international style are well-represented, along with many other global brands, alongside less well-known, but equally expensive French ones.  The yachts in the harbor have Cayman Islands, Kingston, Jamaica; Road Harbour, British Virgin Islands, Valetta, Malta and similarly posh registries: their young crews can be seeing washing down the boats first thing in the morning, the owners below deck or absent.  Roman Abramovic, the billionaire, has a house nearby, Alain Delon lives in the hills; Helmut Berger returns every summer.  The tide of fame washes in and out here, stranding some a long way from home.

     I didn't take a single picture: it was too ugly.

Valerie Trierweiler's "Thank You For This Moment"

Monday, September 22, 2014

     I devoured Valerie Trierweiler's book, Merci Pour Ce Moment in less than a day.  It is unlike any other political memoir I have ever read in its singularity.  It was published --and republished-- while its main subject, the President of France, is still in office.  The only other book I can recall with similar timing, is historian Eric Goldman's The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, which criticized LBJ's politics, particularly concerning Vietnam.

     Trierweiler's book is of a different order, it is a memoir written within months of her dismissal from François Hollande's life, public and private  In the book she limns the personality of a thoroughly political animal, detailing his duplicities.  This is nothing new: Any book about a man who arrives at the summit of political power must of necessity either criticize, or defend policies associated with the personality-in-chief.  Scholars labor over facts to make a coherent narrative of a term in office, former intimates tell stories the press overlooked or never found out, the more revelations, the better the book sells.  Trierweiler's book surpasses any political memoir ever written with publication in mind because her story is about how the political and the personal became inextricable and the consequences of it for her.

     Trierweiler has been criticized without let-up since the book was published, although she was hardly the darling of the press once her relationship with François Hollande was published.  When she was "first girlfriend", she was criticized for being manipulative; when she published her book, she was excoriated for piercing the veil between the private and public life of a politician.  However, years ago François Hollande and the former candidate for the French presidency by whom he has four children, Ségolene Royal, melded their private life with the public one: Ségolene Royal invited French television cameras into the hospital room where she and her new offspring were recovering after the birth.  Hollande and Royal also invited cameras to film the Royal-Hollande ménage at home.  None of this had been done in French politics before.

     Trierweiler is frank about her illusions about François Hollande --and the disillusion that came with his accession to power.  The two --she a respected political journalist from a family with little, her father a double amputee, her mother a cashier; he the son of a doctor, a specialist in ear, nose and throat diseases, her mother a social worker, the family well-off-- crossed paths over twenty years before drawing closer when Hollande became the head of the Socialist Party and she was assigned that beat.

     Trierweiler was married, the mother of three when the closer proximity to Hollande began to feed the rumor mill.  Hollande had never married Royal, whose defeat in 2007 paved the way for her equally ambitious partner to seek the Socialist nomination in 2012.  By 2007, what had begun as privileged relationship that served both Trierweiler and Hollande's purposes --she wanted "scoops", he wanted to be written about favorably as a presidential candidate-- had taken a more volatile turn.

     Trierweiler writes she knew of the rumors, but as she knew them to be false, laughed them off --and continued to see Hollande privately for intimate dinners to talk politics.  She knew she was strongly attracted, but she knew she had a happy marriage and home life to lose.  Rationalizing that she was only trying to get the inside track on stories, she let herself get close not only to François Hollande, but to his circle.

     Cole Porter once said, "Nothing propinks like propinquity."  Indeed, the spark between Trierweiler and Hollande burned, Trierweiler, according to her account, not quite realizing that the relationship had become very serious for Hollande.  When --instinctively sensing the relationship was on dangerous ground-- she avoided Hollande, an aide tracked her down to tell her Hollande --in love with her-- was miserable.  She capitulated to his demands shortly after --consummating their passion in April in Limoges all the while Royal was campaigning for the French presidency.  Royal lost the election in May 2007; in June 2007, Hollande and Royal announced they were separating.

     Revealing that their first physical intimacy took place in Limoges --le baiser de Limoges, she calls it --is inadvertently ironic, although I am sure Trierweiler did not intend it to be.  One of the words for firing someone in French is "limoger".   Which was her fate, to be fired from Hollande's political and personal life in January 2014.

     The book is a kind of apologia pro vita sua, and the story of Trierweiler's re-invention, which is in progress.  She writes with immediacy:  Trierweiler plunges into her affair with Hollande, despite the cost to her family life; she plunges too, into the campaign for Hollande's election, writing stories favorable to his candidacy in Paris Match until November 2007 when its public disclosure requires Trierweiler to take a leave from the magazine.

     With the assumption of power in May 2012, Hollande becomes distant and visibly dissatisfied with Trierweiler.  The president's political aides keep her at a distance, and she is required to see his secretary to see him.  His falling popularity makes him privately taciturn and caustic and disinclined to take the counsel he once sought from Trierweiler.  There are rumors he is seeing Julie Gayet, a young actress, clandestinely, but Trierweiler chalks them up to the rumor mill.  Only when Closer publishes a photo of the French head of state wearing a motorcycle helmet entering the apartment building where Gayet lives; and of Hollande's driver bringing croissants into the building the next morning, does Hollande admit something of the affair.

     There is no going back at this point for either of them, although Hollande seeks to have his cake and eat it, too:  he forces Trierweiler out of his life by giving her the silent treatment, provoking an overdose of sleeping pills and Trierweiler's nervous collaspse.  Trierweiler says that the collapse at learning of Hollande's deception was exacerbated by the administration of the maximum dose of antidepressants.  She says this was a clinical decision in keeping with Hollande's desire to keep her sedated until he could figure out how to extricate himself from his self-created media storm.  Eventually Trierweiler returns to the apartment on rue Couchy she shared with Hollande and tries to put the pieces back together.  She gave up all journalistic assignments but one at Hollande's request, and now, bereft of lover, realizes all she has lost: she is on her own financially and emotionally.

     Hollande, nevertheless (certainly sensing Trierweiler is capable of publishing catastrophic disclosures) wants to keep her on a leash.   He tries to do so by tweeting her daily, frequently.  He sends her flowers, compliments her, says positive things about her charitable activities --activities, she bitterly reminds us, he never cared to interest himself in when she was Premier Dame de France.

     What is unique about Trierweiler's book is that while Hollande's faults are those of many political men, few of them have an adversary as close to them as Trierweiler was --or as articulate.  Having spent some time in New York City politics in particular, I can write with confidence that Hollande's faults -his self-centeredness, his infidelities, his calculation-- are not unique to the species.  However, by writing and publishing a book about her life with the man while he remains in office, she etches deeply.  Trierweiler's portrait of François Hollande may not be indelible, but it is trenchant.

     A little anecdote about Hollande's inauguration --that would have been just trivia had Trierweiler not tamped on it--suggests the ruthlessness of the man: To distinguish his inauguration from that of his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, who had his children of both marriages present at the swearing-in ceremony at the Elysée-- Hollande forbids his children from attending.  Their pleas do not change his mind, the swearing-in is limited to a  very few.

     Up until Dominique Strauss-Kahn met Nissafatou Diallo in a room at the Meridian Hotel in New York, the French press did not pursue stories about the private lives of politicians.  The French in general --and the press, in particular-- were critical of the American press for doing so.  Now that Valerie Trierweiler's memoir has pulled down the walls of the temple, things will never be the same: the personal life, at least in the case of François Hollande, is political.  And if anyone denies that, Hollande's designation of Ségolene Royal as Minister for Ecology is undeniably a melding of the personal and political.  It reminds me of the elevation of the king's mistress to positions of power and influence at court.  But obviously, that thought never crossed François Hollande's mind.

     Royal has become one of Hollande's chief supports since Trierweiler's book sparked a media firestorm, with Hollande's popularity at a nadir and calls for his resignation openly voiced.  Hollande has announced he will stay the course.  Meanwhile, sales of Trierweiler's book are breaking all records.  The die is cast --if not for Hollande --at least not immediately--, certainly for Trierweiler, whose professional and personal future is anyone's guess.  Hollande may one day look back on the end of his liaison with Trierweiler and say, as Napoleon did of Josephine, "I loved her, but I did not respect her."

     In Hollande's case, at least, that may have been a fatal mistake.

   

Sainte Maxime

Sunday, September 21, 2014

     I slept marvelous well in Room #26 of l'Hôtel Royal Bon Repos.  The day dawned lovely, and I took my time before leaving to walk over to the Casino Supermarché down the street.  With so many small sailboats and motorboats in the harbor, there is a need to have provisions between easy reach, hence the existence of the good-sized supermarket across from the port.  

     Which works to my advantage as a frugal traveler.  I have to eat anything I buy outside, though: the rules of the hotel are "no eating in the rooms".  It's not a hardship though, as the weather is warm and there are plenty of benches with backs to sit on and take in the view of Saint Tropez Bay.  

     Sainte Maxime has restaurants and shops along the bay, but they are well-appointed and their displays discreet.  The clientèle is older, it seems to me, all in keeping with Sainte Maxime's reputation as the "quiet" alternative to Saint Tropez.

     Not that it's impossible to visit ST if you think you want to see the spots where Brigitte Bardot danced on the tables, and celebrities on the rise (and decline) still sojourn.  There is a well-trafficked water taxi that runs every twenty minutes throughout the day and saves visitors the headache of driving there.  

     Market days, Tuesdays and Saturdays, in Saint Tropez, are jam-packed.  The traffic jams are legion.  Celebrities go to be seen and photographed and adulated.  As with Miami Beach, St. Barths, Palm Springs, Saint Moritz, and other resorts popular with famous people with money, Saint Tropez celebrates itself and those film and music stars who have money to burn, knowing that there are      other people --not famous, but also free spenders-- who will visit because celebrities visit.

     Not that Sainte Maxime is Saint Tropez' poor sister.  If my method of instantly sizing-up the economy of a place by appraising the quality of the hair coloring of women is valid, Sainte Maxime's female residents --who mostly tint their hair very subtly-- suggest that the village is far better off financially than most of France.  (In contrast, judging by their hair, the women of San Remo look as though they stuck their heads in electric sockets.) 

     There is a good librairie on the avenue that lines the port, with much the same offerings in books and magazines you would find in Paris.  Merci Pour Ce Moment, Valerie Trierweiler's book is on offer.  Indeed, it is just the sort of book that would be fun to read here.  I am looking forward to tearing through my copy during my stay here.

     

Necessary Flight

Saturday evening, September 20, 2014

     I left San Remo at noon today and said goodbye to Italy.

     When I came home last night, walking through the warren of streets that is La Pigna, I saw several groups of young men hunched on streets talking and smoking.  They noticed me, but when I said "Buona sera", no one replied.  I felt uneasy and started looking at alternative places to spend my week away once I got in the door of my airbnb studio.

     When he was eighteen, Bill had spent an idyllic summer in Sainte Maxime, in the Var department, a guest of a well-placed French family.  We had never visited, although Bill always spoke of how lovely the village was.  I went to "Trip Advisor" and compared hotels.  There was one room left at the best hotel, the Hotel Royal Bon Repos, so I grabbed it, a room on the second floor overlooking the bay from the terrace.  That "Hotel Royal Bon Repos" translates as "Hotel Royal Good Rest" in French, made me think perhaps I would get what I was looking for there.

     The booking made last night, I also informed Anna, my airbnb hostess, that I would be leaving in the morning and that I would like to turn in the keys at noon.  She and her partner, "Robbie", helped me get my luggage into the car.  It was market day, and  San Remo was even more chaotic than on Thursday and Friday.

     I was glad to get away.  "Yes", I have spent more than I planned on this holiday, but I made the right choice to get away.  This morning, Michael and Wendy, the Australians staying in the apartment next to mine, went to get their car and found it gone.  It had not been stolen, but removed by the San Remo police: Anna had forgot to tell Michael and Wendy not to park in the parking area by the market because cars there when the market opens are towed away.

     Anna sensed my unease: at one point she mentioned the young men hanging around, referring to them as "alternativi".  At first I thought she was trying to say they were gay, then she specified they were Moroccans.  "But they won't do you any harm, they're nice."  It turns out that Anna is from Naples, which influences her perspective: Naples is much more crime-ridden and dangerous than San Remo.

     --That doesn't, however, mean San Remo is where I want to spend a vacation I wanted to devote to gentle relaxation.

     In the morning, I took one more walk around San Remo, passing Christ the Savior Church and again moving upwards towards the luxury area of San Remo.  I saw signs for the hotel that dominates the height, the Royal Hotel San Remo.  I walked in and no one stopped me from proceeding to the garden terrace, where I read an International Herald Tribune.  It was a lovely experience that cost nothing, but it did not make me want to stay in San Remo.

     The drive out of San Remo to Sainte Maxime was one of the most enjoyable I have ever had.  I took the toll road, but it is set so high in the mountains that all around the road are peaks.  The roads were smooth and fast, and I arrived in Sainte Maxime in about two hours.

      Sainte Maxime is located on the Golfe de Sainte Tropez across the bay from the village Brigitte Bardot made famous, but it has neither the night clubs nor the cruise ship traffic, which makes it quiet.

     Virginie Liotier, who has owns and manages the Bon Repos, is a soothing presence. And my room has a lovely terrace balcony from which I can see the bay.  There is a grocery store down the street to buy things to eat, if I don't want to eat in restaurants all the time.  The beach is a short ride away.

     In contrast to San Remo, everything is very clean and small in scale.  My room is very luminous, unlike my cavern in San Remo.

     And I feel very safe and cosseted here, in contrast to the anxious two days in San Remo.  You can't put a price on that, because I need a royally good rest after San Remo.

You Get What You Pay For Part II: The Adaptable Traveler

Friday, September 19, 2014
Late afternoon

     I discovered this morning that the path to the church of La Madonna della Costa goes past my door. The church is on the top of a peak above La Pigna, up the old steps above where I am housed, a hike.  The grade of the hill is very steep, so there is no question of rushing up there.  At one point you leave the caverns of the old city and emerge into the light, the city, the port and the Mediterranean stretching out below you, but you have still not arrived, although there is a small church nearby.

     You must climb still higher, and then you see the mosaic of paving stones that leads to the "Sanctorum" as the blazon in the façade of the church trumpets.  The church --like all of the major Roman Catholic churches in San Remo-- is Baroque in style.  The interior is a riot of color and decoration.  I arrived just as the church was being opened to visitors, at 10:00 a.m.

     After, I walked down to the sailboat harbor, then turned around and walked along the water to Il Corso Imperatrice  (the Empress' Promenade), nearer France than Italy.  The empress in question was Maria Alexandrovna, Empress of all the Russias, who spent the winter of 1874-1875 in San Remo.  After her stay, the Russian aristocracy, including members of the Imperial Family, began to pass the winter seasons in the city.  The Russian community was large enough that eventually, funds were raised to build the Church of Christ the Saviour.  It was consecrated in 1913 as a church among the "foreign places of health care", a designation of the Diocese of Saint Petersburg that confirmed its status in the Russian community.

     However, the Church of Christ the Saviour also has links to the royal family of Montenegro, the Petrovic-Njegos dynasty.  On March 1, 1921 Nicholas I, King of Montenegro, died in exile in Antibes, France.  In his will he provided for burial in the crypt of Christ the Saviour "until the triumph of truth in the history of Montenegro".  His wife, Queen Miena, who died two years later in Antibes, was buried there, too, as were their two daughters, Vera and Xenia.  In an example of the close ties the royal families of Europe had to each other at the time, the last king of Italy, Umberto II of Savoy, King Nicholas' nephew, paid for the design and construction of a sarcophagus in black marble.

     However, after the death of the dictator of Yugoslavia, Marshal Tito, in 1980 --and before the start of the Balkan Wars in 1991, Montenegrans began calling for the return of the bodies of the royal family.  With the unanimous decision of the Russian community in San Remo, of the town Council and of the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs; on September 29, 1989, after a solemn ceremony, the four coffins left the Russian church headed for the Monenegran royal chapel at Cettigne, the ancient capital of Montenegro.  Photographs of the royal progress can be seen in the crypt, which still contains the sarcophagus donated by Umberto II.

      San Remo is a faded reminder of an age when relatives of Queen Victoria sat on all the thrones of Europe, including that of Russia.  And the milder winters continue to attract Russians.  There are real estate offices that cater only to Russian clients, all the listings described in Russian.  The fancy hotels --the Europa, the Paradiso and others-- do a good business with the Russian community.  And today on the beach, swimming in the ocean under grey skies were Russians, for whom the change in temperature is not dissuasive.

     There was an English community here, as evidenced by their church, a small structure that most resembles a parsonage.  Today, the English have moved to Spain and the South of France, closer to home and an EasyJet or Ryanair fight away.  Most tourists are Italian or Russian, although not everyone is just passing through.  In the heights behind the luxury hotels, are luxury apartments and villas with high gates and private access roads clearly marked as such.

     This San Remo is exclusive; and it is not dirty, noisy or chaotic.  The gardens surrounding these redoubts of the well-off are beautiful jungles of greenery and bougainvillea.  They give off an indolent lushness,  a far cry from the streets below, where motor scooters compete with Fiats and buses for space on the road.  Like Nice at sea level, much of which --apart from Le Promenade des Anglais-- is dense and grotty-- San Remo in back of the beach, by the fish and meat markets, with their massive parking garages and open-air parking places cheek by jowl with each other, is squalid.  La Pigna, where I am, is a working class district, although not everyone lives in squalor: my airbnb hostess has a lovely apartment with a beautiful balcony view of the Mediterranean.

     Squalor and chaos, living next door to conspicuous wealth --or the pretense of it:  the contrasts are sharper in San Remo.  This is Italy: it's accepted.  I'm adapting.