Encore Provence

by Peter Mayle

  It was agreed, in the end, that they should draw straws to decide who was to carry out the sentence. When this had been done, the men went back down the mountain to have Sunday lunch with their wives.

  The executioner chose the time with care, waiting for the dark of the moon, leaving the house when night was at its thickest. To be sure of a kill, he had loaded his gun with two shells of chevrotine, even though one blast of the heavy buckshot was enough to stop an elephant, let alone a man at arm's length. He must have wondered if the others were lying awake thinking of him as he went softly through the empty streets and up to the butcher's shop. And he must have cursed the time it took the butcher to come downstairs in response to the persistent tapping on his door.

  He used both barrels, jammed up tight against the butcher's chest, and didn't wait to see him fall. By the time lights started to go on in the neighbouring houses, he was in the fields below the village, stumbling through the vines on his way home.

  Sometime before dawn, the first gendarme arrived, roused from his bed by a call from one of the few telephones in the village. Half a dozen people were already standing in the pool of light spilling from the butcher's shop, horrified, fascinated, unable to keep their eyes away from the bloody carcass that lay just inside the door. Within an hour, a squad from Avignon was there to clear them away, remove the corpse, and set up an office in the mairie to begin the lengthy process of questioning the entire village.

  It was a difficult time for the five husbands, a test of solidarity and friendship. They spent another Sunday morning in the forest, reminding each other that silence, total silence, was their only protection. Keep it behind the teeth, as one of them said, and nobody will ever know. The police will think it was an enemy from the butcher's previous life in another place, settling an old score. They passed the comforting bottle around and swore to say nothing.

  Days passed, and then weeks. Weeks without a confession, weeks without even a clue. Nobody admitted to knowing anything. And besides, there was a certain reluctance to discuss village affairs with outsiders in uniform. All the police were able to establish was the approximate time of death and, of course, the fact that the murderer had used a hunting rifle. Every man who held a permis de chasse was questioned, every rifle was carefully inspected. But unlike bullets, buckshot leaves no identifiable traces. The fatal shots could have come from any one of dozens of guns. The investigation eventually faltered, then stopped altogether, to become simply another dossier in the files. The village went back to work harvesting the grapes, which everyone agreed were exceptionally concentrated that year after a dry, warm autumn.

  In time there was another butcher, an older family man from the Ardèche who was happy to take over premises that were so well equipped, even down to the knives. He was pleasantly surprised to find himself welcomed with unusual friendliness by the men of the village.

  ‘And that was the end of it,’ said Marius. ‘It must be nearly forty years ago now.’

  I asked him if the identity of the murderer had ever been established. There were, after all, at least five people who knew, and as he himself had said, keeping secrets in a village was like trying to hold water in your hand. But he just smiled and shook his head.

  ‘I'll tell you this, though,’ he said, ‘everyone turned out the day they buried the butcher. They all had their reasons.’ He finished his wine, and stretched back in his chair. ‘Beh oui. It was a popular funeral.’

  3

  New York Times Restaurant Critic Makes Astonishing Discovery: Provence Never Existed

  The letter came from Gerald Simpson, a gentleman living in New York. He was puzzled by a piece he'd seen in the newspaper, which he had enclosed, and the article made sad reading. It condemned Provence as a region of clever peasants and bad food, and here was the source of Simpson's puzzlement. I don't remember it being like that at all, he wrote, when I was there on vacation. It's not like that in your books. What's happened? Can it have changed so much in the last few years?

  I read the article a second time, and it did indeed make Provence sound unattractive and poorly served by its restaurants and food suppliers. I've been sent similar pieces before, written by journalists in search of what they like to think is a different angle. They are anxious to find what they call ‘the reality’ that lurks behind the postcards of sunny lavender fields and smiling faces. Give them a disenchanted visitor, a surly shopkeeper or a bad meal, and they go home happy; they have their story. I rarely agree with what they write, but that's fair enough. We all have our own ideas about Provence, and mine will inevitably differ from those of people who come for a week or two, particularly if they come during August, the most crowded, least typical month of the year.

  The piece that I had been sent, ‘My Year in Provence Last August’, appeared on 22 April 1998 in one of the world's most distinguished and influential newspapers, the New York Times. It was written by Ruth Reichl, whose name, I'm sure, causes a frisson of apprehension when it is dropped in the restaurant kitchens of Manhattan; more so during her tenure as restaurant reviewer for the Times, a position she no longer occupies but did that April. A shining beacon of gastronomic knowledge in a dim and ignorant world, a maker and breaker of culinary reputations – all in all, a woman who knows her onions, as one of those clever old peasants might say.

  Not the least of Reichl's accomplishments as a food writer and editor is her ability to get to the heart of things without wasting a moment. In the course of her visit during August, she was able to investigate, consider, sum up and dismiss an entire region of France – what diligence! – and yet still manage to find time to have a disappointing holiday.

  What a catalogue of disappointment it was, too, from the very first breakfast: awful baguettes, worse croissants, sour coffee. A trip to the market failed to unearth a single ripe tomato. The peaches were hard as rocks. The green beans looked tired, and nothing makes a food critic's heart sink more quickly than the sight of a tired green bean. And the heart continued to sink. None of the potatoes had been grown in France. None of the butchers had any lamb. It was gourmet hell, and visits to the supermarket, where Reichl said she was forced to shop on non-market days, did nothing to temper her dissatisfaction. There, too, the food was pretty dreary. The meat and vegetables were a disaster. The cheeses came from factories. The bread was wrapped in plastic. And, horror of horrors, the selection of rosé wines alone took up more space than all the cereals, cookies and crackers in her local D'Agostino market back home. Imagine such a thing! More wine than cookies! There can be few more telling signs than that of a society in the grip of depravity.

  Other revelations will follow, but before they do it is worth examining the first part of this miserable litany in more detail. There is no doubt that you can find indifferent food in Provence, but to find it everywhere you look suggests carelessness or a profound lack of local knowledge. This would be understandable in the average tourist, but Reichl is anything but the average tourist. Her working life is devoted to the discovery of good food. She is doubtless extremely well connected in gastronomic and journalistic circles. She surely has friends or colleagues in France who could have told her that in Provence, as in the rest of the world, you need to know where to go. Didn't anyone give her a few good addresses? Didn't she ask for any? Didn't she read the excellent books of Patricia Wells, her counterpart at the International Herald Tribune, a food writer with an intimate and informed knowledge of Provence? Apparently not.

  The elusive ripe tomato and the absence of lamb – two disappointments that we have never encountered during our years in Provence – might have been bad luck; or they might have been the result of arriving at the market and the butcher too late, when the best has already been bought. August is like that. As for the dreadful supermarket, it seems that again Reichl was either badly advised or not advised at all. Certainly there are supermarkets with factory cheese and plastic-wrapped bread, although I can't see why this was worth mentioning. Supermarkets are specifically
designed to sell mass-produced food, much of which is legally obliged to come in plastic skin. Even so, not all supermarkets are alike. Plenty of them in Provence have fresh cheese counters and their own bakeries, even if the cookie selection may not be up to the D'Agostino standard.

  In fact, most of the serious cooks we know only use supermarkets to stock up on basic commodities. They buy their meat, bread, oil, wine and produce from small specialist shops, as their mothers used to do. And if they live in or near Avignon, they shop at Les Halles, one of the best food markets one could hope to find, in France or anywhere else. It's on the Place Pie, right in the centre of town; not far, as it happens, from where Reichl was staying.

  For twenty-five years, the market has provided a permanent outlet for local suppliers, and the forty stalls offer a stunning choice of meat, poultry, game, breads, cheeses, charcuterie, fruit, vegetables, herbs, spices and oils – and a fish counter more than thirty yards long. Every weekday it opens at six and closes at noon. But parking is difficult in Avignon during August, and perhaps for that reason the market was ignored. A pity.

  Never mind. If inspiration or the will to shop falters, there are always the local restaurants. Avignon has several which compare favourably with good New York restaurants – Hiely, L'Isle Sonnante or La Cuisine de Reine are just three – but these somehow managed to elude the Reichl eye. Instead, we were told about a whimsical menu, read but not tasted, consisting of nothing but tomatoes. (Let us hope they were ripe.) This presumably prompted her remark about mediocre restaurants in major cities. It's enough to make you despair of keeping body and soul together during your stay in Provence.

  But now, disillusioned and faint with hunger, we come to the most extraordinary revelation of all. Here it is in black and white, backed up by the considerable authority of the New York Times: ‘I had been dreaming of a Provence that never existed.’

  The sentence hit me with the force of an unripe tomato between the eyes, as you can imagine. Where had I been living all these years? And what about those other misguided writers? The Provence that Daudet and Giono and Ford Madox Ford and Lawrence Durrell and M. F. K. Fisher knew and wrote about – the Provence that I know – doesn't exist. It never existed. It is a sunny figment of our imaginations, a romanticized fantasy.

  I'm afraid that much of the blame for this monumental deception has to be laid at the door of a native son of Provence – alas, yet another overwrought and fanciful writer – Marcel Pagnol. Reichl is a keen admirer of his, and she shares her admiration with us: ‘The Provence I am most attached to is that of the great film-maker Marcel Pagnol. It is a scratchy black-and-white world where men in cafés amuse themselves by hiding rocks under hats and waiting for someone to come along and kick them.’

  This, it seems to me, is like expecting contemporary America to resemble a Frank Capra movie set, but I felt that I should make some inquiries, and I cannot argue with the results. In fairness, I must report that hat-kicking, as a crowd-pleasing spectacle, has gone the way of the guillotine. A search through the archives in the mayor's office of my local village failed to reveal a single recorded instance of hats being kicked in public. When I asked the oldest man in the village bar if he had ever been amused by the kicking of hats, he looked at me sideways, took his drink and moved away. Even in the most remote villages of Haute Provence, where you might imagine coming across the odd, forgotten nest of hat-kickers, you are unlikely to find men in cafés amusing themselves with anything other than conversation, cards or boules. First, bad food. Now this. Another dream shattered.

  Nevertheless, there are visitors to Provence who seem able to look beyond fuzzy expectations and derive considerable enjoyment from what actually does exist. Unfortunately, they are tourists, and they are not welcome in Reichl's world. She prefers places that, in her words, are not quaint and not ‘touristed’. Tourists, of course, are always other people; never us. We are different. We are travellers – intelligent, well-mannered and cultured, a blessing on our chosen destinations, a delight to have around. It's a common attitude, and one that I have always found condescending and offensive, as well as inaccurate. If you travel away from home for pleasure, you're a tourist, no matter how you like to dress it up. I consider myself a permanent tourist. Some of my best friends are tourists. Tourism makes an important contribution to the local economy, and provides a living for many talented people – several cooks among them – who might otherwise have to look elsewhere to make ends meet.

  Let's take, for example, the only two good restaurants Reichl was able to find in the whole of Provence: the Auberge de Noves and the Bistrot du Paradou. Both are excellent, as she says, and both are deservedly popular with tourists. Would they be able to sustain their standards if they had to depend on a purely local clientele? I very much doubt it.

  There is a final note of disappointment even when describing the favoured Bistrot du Paradou. The food was good, the ambience charming, and yet: ‘I sensed that there was something unreal about all this, an artful attempt to resurrect the spirit of Marcel Pagnol.’ Good grief! What could have provoked that? An outbreak of hat-kicking in the car park? The arrival of Charles Aznavour for lunch? Or the fact that the bistrot had only been in business for fifteen years, and not fifteen generations? Whatever it was, it provided useful support for the theory of a non-existent Provence.

  The next Reichl holiday, so we're told, will be taken in Italy, that golden land of dreams, and I hope for her sake they all come true: waiters singing snatches of Puccini, lusty peasants treading the grapes with purple feet, glorious meals of hand-knitted pasta. Buon appetito, signora!

  But now, for the benefit of my correspondent Mr Simpson and any other brave souls who may still be considering a visit to Provence, here are a few good addresses – proof, I hope, that all is not lost. The addresses cover a fairly wide area, and so may involve your spending some time in the car with a map. But the countryside is beautiful, and what you find will be worth the trip. I should add that these are personal choices that have been made in my usual haphazard fashion over the years. They are in no way intended to be a complete and organized listing. One last warning: addresses have a habit of changing, so it would be wise to check in the phone book or at the local Syndicat d'Initiative before you set off.

  Markets

  I have never found a more pleasant way to go shopping than to spend two or three hours in a Provençal market. The colour, the abundance, the noise, the sometimes eccentric stall-holders, the mingling of smells, the offer of a sliver of cheese here and a mouthful of toast and tapenade there – all of these help to turn what began as an errand into a morning's entertainment.

  An addict could visit a different market every day for several weeks, and this selection, which is best read with map to hand, is far from comprehensive. But I think it's enough to show that there is no such thing as a non-market day in Provence.

  Monday: Bédarrides, Cadenet, Cavaillon, Forcalquier.

  Tuesday: Banon, Cucuron, Gordes, St Saturnin-d'Apt, Vaison-la-Romaine.

  Wednesday: Cassis, Rognes, St Rémy-de-Provence, Sault.

  Thursday: Cairanne, Nyons, Orange.

  Friday: Carpentras, Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Lourmarin, Pertuis.

  Saturday: Apt, Arles, Manosque, St Tropez.

  Sunday: Coustellet, L'Isle-sur-Sorgue, Mane.

  Wine

  Here we are on delicate ground. One of the changes that has taken place in the Luberon over the past few years has been an enormous improvement in the quality of the petits vins. Small local vineyards are producing better and better wine; perhaps not of the same weight and complexity as the big vintages of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, but well made, easy to drink and not expensive. There are dozens of these wines, and that's the problem. It would take a greater thirst than mine to try them all, and I'm sure that I have omitted several treasures. Further research is being carried out on a daily basis. Meanwhile, here are a few favourites.

  Château La Canorgue, Bonnieux. Reds and whites are goo
d, and there is a wonderfully pale, smoky rosé, most of which is bought by local restaurants. To ensure getting a case or two, you need to go to the château in March or April.

  Domaine Constantin-Chevalier, Lourmarin. Somehow, two men and their tractors manage to take care of fifty acres of vines. The wines, particularly the reds, are beginning to gather medals and appear on restaurant wine lists. If this continues, there is a good chance that the staff will be increased to three.

  Domaine de La Royere, Oppède. The only vineyard I know where the winemaker is a woman, and very good she is too. Anne Hugues turns the grapes into excellent wines, while her husband makes a fine marc, potent and deceptively smooth. Drive with caution after a tasting.

  Château La Verrerie, Puget-sur-Durance. An ancient vineyard, replanted and completely rejuvenated by a wine-loving businessman with the help of Jacky Coll, one of the region's most accomplished architects of the grape. His touch has produced some exceptional reds.

  Domaine de La Citadelle, Ménerbes. One of the bigger local properties, and the home of a corkscrew museum as well as a wide and interesting range of Côtes du Luberon. Tasting sessions tend to be prolonged and sometimes convivial.

  La Cave du Septier, Apt. Not a vineyard, but a shop run by Hélène and Thierry Riols, who know all that I wish I knew about the wines of Provence. Put yourself in their hands, and drink what they recommend. Naturally, as responsible wine merchants, they also stock all kinds of splendid bottles from Bordeaux and Burgundy. However, since these come from foreign parts they need not concern us here.

  Olive oil

  Probably the most fashionable Provençal oils are those from the valley of Les Baux, and if you happen to be near Maussane-les-Alpilles just after the olives are gathered towards the end of the year, you can find them in the tiny Maussane cooperative. But the oils go quickly, and summer visitors are likely to have better luck further north in Haute Provence.