Pardon My French

by Allen Johnson

  “Well, I …”

  “He doesn’t live in Boston,” another woman corrected. “He lives in the state of Washington,” poking the tip of her bare toe into the side of Mount Rainier. “Right there. That’s where he lives.”

  I looked at the geography teacher. She was taller than the rest of the ladies, about five feet eight with short cropped blond hair and a flash in her eyes. Although she was in her early sixties, she had a straight back and clear complexion.

  “What is your name?” I asked.

  “Odette,” she said smiling broadly. “And your name is Alain?” she asked, using the French pronunciation.

  “Yes.”

  “But this is a French name. You have a French name?”

  “Well, actually, my name is ‘Allen,’ but I thought it would be easier to pronounce, if I …”

  “Mais non,” Odette said. “You must not use the French ‘Alain.’ That is old fashioned. You must use your own name. Allen. That is much more exotic.”

  She smiled and then did something I seldom saw during our first year in France. She actually winked at me.

  “Et alors,” Henri said. “Are we going to hike?”

  “Mais oui. Of course. Let’s go,” the group sang out.

  We started out east along the sandy shore, strewn with the discarded homes of scallops, cockles, and razor shell clams. It was mid-September. The sun was shining brightly in a cloudless sky, and fishermen with their long poles were scattered along the shoreline, angling for daurade (gilt-head bream) and bar or loup (sea bass). The hikers formed groups of two and three, chattering over the sound of the waves breaking lightly on the beach.

  I naturally found myself drifting toward Odette who, at the time, was examining the shell of a sea snail.

  “Isn’t it marvelous?” Odette said without introduction.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why, just look.”

  I noticed that Odette used the informal “you” when speaking to me, as if we were old-time schoolmates.

  “See how symmetrical the rings are? And how the shell circles itself like a tiny French horn? It is incredible, don’t you think?”

  Odette placed the shell in my hand. “Yes, it is,” I said, turning the small shell between my fingers. “It’s extraordinary. It makes me wonder what kind of life he had in the sea.”

  Odette swung her body around to face me straight on. She took both of my hands in hers. “Yes, exactly! That was what I was wondering too.”

  I laughed, delighted by Odette’s childlike spirit—as though she were seeing the world for the first time. I wondered if she was married, and if her husband shared her seemingly uncomplicated passion for life.

  “Are you married?” I asked.

  “Oui,” Odette said.

  “Does your husband hike with you?”

  “Ça, non. He’s a bit of a pantouflard.”

  The word pantouflard always strikes me as funny. The French say it is a little pejorative. It comes from the same root as pantoufle, which means “slipper.” By extension a pantouflard is someone who likes to stay at home—literally translated, then, as “the slippered one.”

  “I see that doesn’t stop you from doing what pleases you,” I said.

  “Not in the least. My husband and I have been married for forty years. That’s how long Moses wandered in the desert looking for the Promised Land, you know.” Then, with perfect timing, she added, “I’m still looking.” Odette peered at me with a turned-down mouth and deadpan eyes, grabbed me by the arm, and then let out a hoot in tribute to her own whimsical wit.

  At the turnaround point Henri circled up the group.

  “We are going to stop here for twenty minutes,” he announced. “There is a café by the road for those who would like something to drink. Or for those who are a little more daring, you can go for a swim.”

  Now I was torn. I liked the idea of sitting in a seaside café, prattling away from the rush of the rolling sea, but then again, the thought of taking my first dip in the Mediterranean was terribly seductive too.

  “What are you going to do?” Odette asked.

  “I’m going for a swim,” I said, deciding on the spot.

  “Me too.”

  Because it had been previewed that the hike might include an ocean dip, I had worn a pair of polyester boxer shorts that could double as swim trunks. All I had to do was to strip off my T-shirt and kick off my tennis shoes. In a moment I was wading into the surf.

  “Isn’t this wonderful,” Odette said. Her voice came from behind me. I looked over my shoulder, and there she was, naked from the waist up, kicking at the waves that were lapping at her ankles.

  I searched all my memories in a millisecond. Yep, this was definitely the first time I had gone for a swim in the Mediterranean with a topless French grandmother.

  We waded chest high into the surf.

  “Can you do this?” Odette asked. With that she tucked her head and dove for the sandy bottom. In an instant her feet pierced the water’s surface. They were locked together, straight and pointed like the flawless entry of a champion springboard diver. Then her feet—still perfectly vertical—turned full circle and slowly disappeared into the sea.

  “Pas mal, hein?” she said, resurfacing and wiping the water from her eyes.

  “Not bad at all,” I said.

  “Et alors?” Well then?

  I took that as my cue to match her underwater ballet. I took in a breath and upended myself, but I forgot to exhale through my nose and got a snout full of saltwater. I aborted my acrobatics and came up hacking like a three-pack-a-day smoker.

  “Les Américains ne sont pas très doués,” Odette said with a hearty laugh.

  “We may not be talented,” I argued, “but we never give up.” With that I plunged for the bottom again—this time mindfully exhaling through my nose—and launched my feet into the air. Not wanting to be outdone, I arched my feet and pointed my toes at the sun. It was beautiful for two seconds, and then my right calf muscle cramped up, and my feet flopped over like two dead mackerels. I bobbed to the surface, madly massaging my calf.

  Odette was laughing out of control now, not in mockery but in the way children laugh when they have learned how to whistle or do a cartwheel. It was a warm, Christmas-morning laugh—a laugh that I would come to know as well as my own, for Odette became a frequent hiking partner and a dear friend by year’s end.

  * * *

  MY SECOND HIKE WITH THE PÉROLS HIKING CLUB was on a Monday. That day was reserved for the blue randonnées (hikes), the eleven-mile treks with two thousand feet of elevation gain. These were hardy hikers, able to trudge through thickets and scramble up mountainsides with ease. Although there were a few youngsters, most were in their fifties.

  The hike was scheduled for a loop in the hills near Montpeyroux, northwest of Montpellier. The hilly landscape—dry and dark green—was clearly Mediterranean, with outcroppings of limestone and clumps of holm oaks. The wild thyme and rosemary were plentiful along the trail like a carpet set out for royalty. Olive trees were scattered at random across the hillsides, and straight lines of grapevines etched the flatlands.

  After a thirty-minute drive to the trailhead, I got out of the car and sat on a stump to lace up my boots.

  “Those are serious hiking boots.”

  I looked up at a figure silhouetted in the sun. “I like them,” I said, shading my eyes to see the man behind the voice.

  Seeing my distress, the man sat down alongside me. He was a stocky fellow, about five feet six inches tall, I guessed, with an uncovered thicket of black hair. His face was darkly tanned, almost terracotta, with pronounced laugh lines and straight white teeth. I placed him in his early sixties. “You are new,” he said extending his hand.

  “Yes,” I said. “My name is Allen.”

  “My name is Gaétan.”

  “Gaé …” I said laboring over the pronunciation.

  “You can call me ‘Tani.’ It is what my family calls me.”<
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  “Okay,” I said, standing up and putting on my pack. “You have an interesting French accent, Tani.”

  “I was born in Spain.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  By this time the group of thirty men and women were saddled up and starting down a section of road. Tani and I fell in toward the rear.

  “I came to France when I was a teenager,” Tani said, “and I still roll my ‘r’s’ like a Spaniard.”

  “It’s charming,” I said.

  “That’s what I think.”

  We walked for a while in silence until we came to a vineyard bursting with ripe dark-purple grapes.

  “They look good, don’t they?” Tani said, pulling out his pocketknife.

  “Yes,” I admitted, “but the proprietor won’t appreciate you stealing them.”

  “That’s true,” Tani said, slicing off a clump of the fruit, “but then again, the proprietor isn’t here. And, besides, you must taste them.”

  Tani placed a cluster of grapes in my hand. I ate them one by one, spitting out the seeds along the side of the road. They were sweet, very sweet. I nursed each grape, savoring the succulent meat under the thin purple skin. When I finished, I was tempted to go back and slice off a clump myself but had visions of an angry vigneron sweeping down on me with his wild-pig shotgun cocked, ready to pepper the succulent meat under my own thin skin.

  Now we were on a narrow dirt road, winding our way into the hills.

  “Wait a minute,” Tani said, veering off to the side of the road. He snapped off a branch from a bush that looked a little like the sagebrush we find in southeastern Washington. He rolled the sprig between his hands for a moment. “Smell this,” he said, cupping his hands under my nose.

  I have to admit, I don’t know my herbs. To me, oregano sounds like an Italian sports car—the Oregano X9-1000—and the only basil I know is my Greek cousin from Denver. As far as I could tell, the plant smelled like green tea. “What is it?” I asked.

  “Guess,” Tani said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “No, I insist. Guess.”

  “Uh … green tea?”

  “Mais non, mon drôle d’Américain. C’est du thym.” But no, my funny American. It’s thyme.

  “Hummm, thyme,” I said, plunging my nose into his hands again. “So that’s thyme, huh? Ça sent bon.” That smells good.

  On the morning of that hike, Tani and others would call out my name each time they discovered another fruit. “Allen, Allen, you must taste this,” they would shout. Within four hours, I was introduced to wild figs, apples, mulberries, blackberries, and sweet chestnuts that the French greedily gathered and stuffed into pockets and backpacks. “The chestnuts make a fine confiture,” Tani assured me.

  We stopped for lunch at a wide spot on the trail that offered a cluster of boulders as tables and chairs. Tani sat down beside me. I started to open my backpack to fish out my lunch when Tani grabbed my shoulder and tipped me to one side. As I balanced myself on half a buttock, Tani snapped off a branch that was wedged under my britches. Then he gave me a tug, which plunked me down squarely on both cheeks again.

  “What in the …”

  Tani smiled with all his teeth. “Do you know what this is?” he asked, waving a piece of shrubbery in my face.

  You had to hand it to him. Tani was not giving up on the herbs and fruits of Languedoc.

  “I don’t have the slightest idea,” I said honestly.

  “Yes, you do,” Tani said with a chuckle.

  “No, really I don’t. It would just be a guess.”

  “Then guess.”

  “Okay. Thyme?”

  “Ah, ça non. It’s rosemary!”

  “Rosemary! I knew that. I was just about ready to say rosemary. One more second, and that’s what I would have said. Rosemary.”

  “Are you making fun of me?” Tani said with a smile.

  “Moi? Never.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Well, maybe just a little.”

  I plucked the lunch bag out of my backpack: a cheese sandwich, an apple, an energy bar, and a half-liter of water.

  “What is that?” Tani asked.

  “What?”

  “That!” Tani said, waving a hand over my scanty picnic.

  “That’s my lunch,” I said, a little sheepishly.

  “No, that’s not a lunch,” Tani boomed. “This is a lunch.”

  With that Tani began to pull a five-course feast out of his backpack. He looked like a magician pulling rabbits and doves out of a top hat. He started with a full one-liter bottle of red wine. That was followed with a couscous and chicken casserole, pork sausage, dried apricots, and a box of chocolate-coated cookies.

  I looked at Tani’s buffet and then at my limp cheese sandwich. “That’s incredible,” I said.

  “C’est normal,” he said.

  I surveyed the other hikers who were scattered in twos and threes around us. It was a culinary orgy in full swing, right there in the backwoods of Languedoc. People were eating rabbit, artichokes, and pasta salads. They had apples and bananas and pears and, by my count, nine different types of cheeses. Then, every three or four minutes, one of the hikers would make the rounds to share a tasty delight.

  “How about an aperitif,” one trekker said, standing over me with a pint of yellow liquor in his hand.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “I didn’t bring a glass.”

  “Allen didn’t bring a glass,” the bartender announced to the other hikers.

  “No glass?” Jean, the group leader said. “Comment ça? How is that possible? That is the first thing that goes into your pack, Monsieur l’Américain. You can leave your boots at home but never your glass.”

  In the next instant a hiker produced a short stack of plastic glasses, reserved, I assumed, for just this kind of setback: when an uncivilized American is caught in the woods without, heaven forbid, a proper vessel for a sweet aperitif.

  “Thank you,” I said, accepting the glass. I turned to the bartender. “Just a taste,” I said.

  “Quand même,” the bartender said, adroitly funneling two fingers of the liqueur into my cup.

  “Merci, merci, merci!”

  At that point, Tani leapt to his feet and hoisted himself onto a rounded boulder. Raising a glass of wine in perfect toasting form, he commanded the attention of the hikers. “Let’s show Allen our hiking-club spirit!” he blustered. With that, all the trekkers lifted their glasses and in one voice, sang out, “OooOOOH, santé!” The wishes for good health echoed in the valley below.

  Later, my cup was replenished with three types of regional wine—two reds and a rosé—all very good, of course, but I was getting dangerously close to my limit. Another glass and I would reenact Odette’s underwater ballet by standing on my head and snapping my legs to attention. I was actually considering the idea when Tani placed his hand on the back of my neck and gave it two shakes. For a moment I felt as if he were a Latin percussionist and I the maracas.

  “Allen, have you ever had a canard?” he asked.

  “A duck?”

  “Yes, but not that kind of duck.”

  “There’s another kind of duck?”

  Tani sneered at me sideways. He peered into his backpack and fished out a box of sugar cubes and a pint of liquor. “This is Calvados,” Tani said, patting the flask. “It is an apple brandy, named after the department in Normandy. Ah, yes,” Tani said, lovingly stroking the flask, “l’eau-de-vie du Calvados.”

  Tani offered me a cube of sugar, which I held between thumb and forefinger. Then he poured the brandy over the sugar cube until it was fully saturated, the excess streaming from the bottom of the cube and forming a puddle between my boots.

  “Bon appétit,” Tani said, as I eased the soaked sugar cube into my mouth. “That is a canard!”

  It was a strange sensation: a block of sugar in my mouth saturated with hot liquid—forty-five percent alcohol—setting my chest ablaze. (It is rather like a pancake recipe I in
vented, featuring a standard pancake mix—flour, milk, eggs, sugar, and butter—but peppered with my secret ingredient, the seeds from three or four dried red-hot chilies. Sweet, but with a zing.)

  In between the wine and Calvados, I was offered slices of saucisson (large smoke-cured sausage), Cantal cheese, three types of cookies, and some homemade dark chocolate. It was a holiday feast.

  Just as I thought it was time to pack up, Tani began to rummage in his backpack again.

  “What are you looking for now?” I asked.

  “My coffee,” he said.

  Of course! What would a French meal be without coffee?

  Tani drew out a small camping cook stove and a miniature espresso machine. The appliance had a three-ounce aluminum cylinder for water and a tiny basket for ground coffee. The cylinder was topped with a miniscule shelf for the demitasse and a small shepherd’s-hook spout that fed the cup. The whole thing was less than six inches tall.

  Tani poured two to three ounces of water into the cylinder, filled the basket with coffee, and set the machine on the flaming camp cooker. In a few moments the water boiled over, rising up through the basket, through the spout, and into the tiny cup.

  Tani turned off the stove and then delicately caressed the cup’s handle with thumb and two fingers. He slowly drew the demitasse to his lips as if breathing in the scent of a beautiful woman. He blew lightly over the top of the brew and then sipped a drop—slowly as you would nurse a stiff jigger of whiskey.

  “Ah, comme c’est bon!” he said with a smile that is normally withheld for hot baths, warm summer nights, and reading the Sunday paper in bed.

  While Tani was communing with his coffee, I noticed that our leader, Jean, had a topographical map spread out over a rock. A couple of hikers were looking over his shoulder.

  “This is how you locate yourself on the map using a compass,” he explained.

  “Of course, if that doesn’t work,” I said, “just holler out ‘Would anyone like some wine?’ and the French will come running from miles away.”

  The group laughed, and someone made a friendly wisecrack about savage Americans that I didn’t quite catch.