A Pinch of Time

by Claude Tatilon

  No risk of that, Uncle! A philosopher and an aesthete, he was proud of his “war machine.”

  “Note that it has a top speed at least twice as fast as a trotting horse: fifty kilometres an hour on flat terrain!”

  When it went downhill, you can imagine…

  Dum-dum-dum…

  What do you know, it’s The Flight of the Bumblebee now. Nela has thrown herself into the melody in the next room. That Russian music brings me straight back to my Provence. Onto the terrace, where we’d set up a brazier. Today, we’d call it a barbeque.

  “The coals are perfect. Kids, go get the chops. Today’s a feast day, we’ll loosen our belts.”

  “Right away, Uncle.”

  Eight fine lamb chops sprinkled with rosemary. The day before, he’d gotten half a lamb in exchange for a load of fodder. For lunch, just this time, the word “blow-out” wouldn’t be an exaggeration. The meat sizzled on the good coals from old vine-wood, sending up a smell that made us drool with expectation.

  “Hey, Gérard! Fan it a little more.”

  Then, suddenly and strangely, the light waned, and a soft but constant sound made us lift our heads skyward.

  “Boudiou, a wild swarm!”

  Barely ten metres above, thousands of bees had formed a thick humming skein.

  “At least six thousand! Couquin! Look at the size of that!”

  Still remembering a bee sting barely a month earlier, I didn’t linger to hear the explanations. I ran inside the kitchen, closely followed by Gérard, who quickly closed the door. Meanwhile, our uncle calmly took the time to turn the lamb chops on the grill.

  “Be careful, Roger!” my mother shouted through the door.

  “Don’t worry. They usually don’t attack when they travel as a swarm.”

  “But what if they do?”

  “Then it’s run for your lives! Look, the swarm’s attached itself to the side of the roof. Everything’s fine.”

  We ventured all the way to the threshold… then a few steps onto the terrace.

  “What do we do, Roger?”

  “First, finish grilling the chops, then eat them. After, I’ll go get Courbon and sell him the swarm.”

  “But it’s not ours!”

  “Of course it is! A wild swarm is owned by whoever’s house it resides at.”

  “Is it expensive?”

  “Depending on its size. With Courbon, a swarm like that could go for… let’s say a nice amount of flour, bread, and honey.”

  Monsieur Courbon was the town baker and owned several beehives. Right after our succulent meal (wisely eaten in the kitchen), Uncle went to fetch him. Our buyer carried a large burlap bag and a double ladder.

  “Hello, everyone!”

  “Hello, Monsieur Courbon.”

  “The bees are still there.”

  “And they’ll stay a while, pitchounet, if I don’t remove them. So I hear you were scared?”

  “A little.”

  “Well, no need to be! They never sting when they’re playing hooky.”

  “Are you sure?”

  My mother was far from convinced.

  He set his ladder against the wall and extended it: it was long enough. From his bag, he drew a thick pair of gloves and a small hood, and put them on. Then he produced a small device that looked like a miniature watering can.

  “What’s that?”

  “That, pitchoun, is my censer.”

  “You’re going to bless the bees?”

  “I will, Gérard! I’ll bless them and hear their confession.”

  “How many are there, do you think, Bastien?”

  “Five thousand, five thousand five. It isn’t a huge swarm, but still…”

  With the help of a burning twig, he lit the substance inside the device. Thick white smoke surrounded us, much quicker than during a conclave of the Holy See, irritating our throats, noses, and eyes. Carrying a bag over his shoulder and the smoking device in his hand, which was coughing fumes in his face, Monsieur Courbon put a hand on his ladder.

  “Need help, Bastien?”

  “No need.”

  He started climbing the ladder carefully, staggering a little since he was holding on with only one hand.

  When he reached the top, with a circular motion he copiously smoked the swarm and the few rebellious bees that flew around it. They quickly returned to their sisters for a deep artificial sleep. When all was quiet, Courbon took the large steaming fougasse of bees and stuffed it into his bag. Then, even more carefully, he climbed down the ladder.

  The deal was quickly struck between Roger and Bastien. We’d get a kilo of bread every week, plus a kilo of flour and a jar of honey every month. And that, for an entire year, starting this very day. And that was how, once or twice a month, my mother became a baker herself, extending Courbon’s flour with linden leaves when in season, quite rich in proteins, were we to believe Uncle Know-it-All.

  I can still recall a few more stories from the grill. Now my memory brings forth another story, a composite: pieces of red, burning wood where blue will-o’-the-wisps dance, the thick smoke that rises from the grill, our feast that sizzles, surrounding us with the smell of the sea. Memory is like a spider web that links the disparate images in my mind.

  “Ouch! It’s burning hot!”

  “Don’t you have a knife and fork?”

  I have to admit, utensils can be handy. With one sharp incision, I cut the swollen skin that barely sticks to the flesh. Firm, off-white flesh whose filets come off by themselves. Servings that I stick with my fork and easily transport to my open mouth before they break apart. And then, a gustative oxymoron, strong and subtle, the agreement between the sweet fennel seeds that covered the fish before it cooked and the fistfuls of sea salt thrown onto its charred skin.

  Uncle brought us some handsome, slate-blue sardines.

  “Where did you catch those, Roger?”

  “In Draguignan.”

  “But there’s no sea in Draguignan.”

  “Sure, but there’s Fabre.”

  “Fabre, the farmer?”

  “Exactly, my sweet. When I delivered the manure, he’d just come back from Fréjus where he’d traded some vegetables for a whole crate of sardines.”

  Uncle was proud of his expedition. This time, there was no mad swarm to disrupt our Agape, only joy this early evening, under the sweet shelter of the old linden, at the hour when the cicada orchestra brings its concert to a close. Only two or three members ignore the conductor’s pianissimo, wanting to tune their instruments, most likely, for tomorrow’s run. Time stops and peace descends upon the night. In darkness, memory fades.

  NINE

  The three little rooms upstairs were our very own Ali Baba’s cave. In the nooks and crannies we found all sorts of disparate objects that had been broken or mistreated by previous generations, although no one had the courage to throw them out. We found accoutrements of the Church (a nacre rosary, a phosphorescent statuette of the Virgin Mary, a Christ medallion), assorted pieces of old Moustiers pottery (all chipped), and a jewelry box (empty) made of sandalwood with the Normandie, the gleaming French steamer from the thirties, painted in relief on its lid – my favourite object because of its rough paint and faint camphor smell. And a good collection of some twenty lead soldiers, Gérard’s favourites, with which I’d very rarely get to play.

  One afternoon, I went downstairs to complain about that injustice to my mother. She bawled him out generously from down on the terrace. Instead of giving me the Napoleon brandishing a broken sword that I’d asked for, reluctantly and with just enough strength to make it difficult for me to catch, he threw me a cavalry officer whose horse had a bent front right leg. I tried to catch it, I missed, and it bounced off my face, opening a centimetre-long gash on my eyebrow, a war wound I still carry today.

  Then my mother sang in her beautiful clear voice:

  Five little soldiers standing in a row,

  Three stood straight and two stood so;

  Along came the
captain and what do you think?

  They all stood straight as quick as a wink.

  Her clever teasing dried my tears, and a cotton swab soaked in oxygenated water staunched the gushing hemorrhage. Then she stuck on a plaster that covered most of my eyebrow. “Maman, I’m disfigured with this plaster! It hides half my forehead. I can’t go to school like this tomorrow.” Slightly sheepish, Gérard didn’t attempt any sarcastic remarks, and he settled for a half-smile.

  Uncle Roger came to visit us a few hours after this misadventure. He silenced my jeremiads. “Let’s fix that up. Mimi, lend me your eyebrow pencil.”

  My mother sharpened the pencil and handed it to Roger.

  “Come over here, war hero! The plaster is skin-coloured, you can barely notice it. Don’t move, we’ll make you a trompe-couillons.” With his tongue stuck out, he applied a line of pencil on the plaster, giving my intact eyebrow a twin brother.

  That’s how he was, our uncle, full of tricks and solutions. While he was at it, he reset the horse’s leg by heating it over a candle. He said to Gérard, “You’re an artist, go get us your box of poster paints.” And he painted the reset leg a nice pale yellow.

  “Not pale yellow. For a horse, you say ‘dun’.”

  “Dun, like a Viking’s house?”

  “You got it, mister.”

  My mother didn’t know that either. Uncle baptized the horse “Honey-Hoof.” Afterward, the horse that had been at the centre of a bloody event became our favourite among the four others that comprised our imperial guard.

  Some thirty years later, I had quite a surprise when, in the streets of Marseille, I heard the word trompe-couillons used as a synonym for the kind of make-up that conceals more than it improves. Had Roger heard it before 1944, or had he invented the word? He was the kind who could make words up. Despite my frequent visits to the racetrack, I never met a horse named Honey-Hoof. I would have certainly bet the farm on him.

  Our uncle had given us all sorts of words like that. He was a real wordsmith – his sapès, of course, and also the wonderful verb pastignoler, which described Tavé the gamekeeper’s hesitant steps as he left, at one in the afternoon, the Bar du Relais after having drunk his usual dose of rosé and a few licks of pastis. “I want a Casa, Tadidumdidum, gents and broads, and nothing else!” “No, sir, a glass of ’51’s the only one that don’t hurt dégun!” As for Mathieu, who mended the roads, his drink was Pernod. To each his own. Pastignoler: a wonderful portmanteau word combining “pastis,” the name of the French liqueur flavoured with aniseed; the name of Marcel Pagnol, a native of Aubagne in the Bouches-du-Rhône département, a playwright and author who wrote in a simple, colourful tongue, and at the end, a drop of gnôle, or hooch, the strong, often home-brewed alcohol made of fermented fruit or foodstuffs.

  “Couquin de pas Diou, that’s my bike! Hey, you, over there!”

  The scene takes place on the village bridge right in front of the Bar du Relais, and the time is the noonday aperitif. The bike is leaning on the bridge railing, right across from the bar and Tavé, his accordion pants held up by clothespins, is watching it with one eye as he leans on the bar. Roger is next to him, and Gérard and I are seated by the window, sipping lemonade.

  “Fatchi d’ènti, my bike!” Tavé runs toward it and – “Stay here, jobastre! You’ll get…” – listening only to his anger, crosses the street, screaming.

  Two German soldiers are examining his bike, and one of them is already holding its handlebars and seat as if to climb on. They both jump when they see the gesticulating Tavé stumble toward them. But since he’s staggering due to an advanced state of pastignolade, the soldiers greet him with a smile. Their smiles turn to laughter when they hear him speak. He’s talking pidgin to them so they’ll understand, poor guy! They give him back his bike, pointing out that his back tire is flat. And the scene is over – phew! Tavé shrugs, and a few friendly slaps on the back are exchanged.

  Friendly, in the end, but fat as silkworms, those Huns.

  “They haven’t gotten aggressive in these parts, but you never know.”

  “We don’t see them much in the village.”

  “Sure, but they’ve set up shop in Riez, and there was some trouble last Monday. There was a raid and they took four men away.”

  “They took two hostages in Draguignan. I hear they’re going to shoot them.”

  Comments fly every which way. Back, and proud as a peacock for having confronted and routed the enemy, Tavé declares, “Sian propre, lei sordat!”

  “They didn’t want your bicycle?”

  “No, pécaïre! They thought it was too expensive!”

  All the same, the event may have shaken him a little: he decided he needed another tumbler of rosé and a sniff of pastis to calm his nerves.

  “All right, kids, time to break bread.”

  A figure of speech, of course (since on that day, like many others, bread would be replaced by rutabagas), yet the expression spoke of the austerity of the times. But it was a day for celebrating anyway. First, it was Thursday, and after a morning during which we did nothing (except enjoy ourselves), we still had the whole long afternoon with Uncle, who wasn’t taking to the road that day. He would use the break to work on his truck – blow in the pump, clean the spark plugs, check the tire pressure – and let us drive it. Without it actually running, of course.

  “Only if you stop fighting over the wheel!”

  “Of course, Uncle. But I get to be first because I’m the first born.”

  “More like the first shorn! Bah! Bah!”

  “Shut up, sheep brains!”

  All in all, a wonderful morning. Then, in the afternoon, a soap bubble competition!

  “Before we begin the contest, we have to build a bubble maker.”

  “Qu’es aco, Uncle?”

  “A bit like a lorgnon…”

  “And what’s a lorgnon?”

  “A kind of fadòli like you!”

  Uncle wheeled around. “Don’t start up again, or there’ll be no contest!”

  He wasn’t joking. He said to my mother, “Mimi, I’m taking just a little piece of soap.”

  “Please, Roger, I hardly have any left!”

  “Just a splinter, a whisker, barely bigger than your fingernail – a tiny little finger that’s so small, so pretty, that I love, that I kiss.”

  He’d kissed it, all right. Uncle Roger always got what he wanted with my mother. And more often than not, their theatrical squabbles would end in a song, always the same one, which he’d sing as he took her by the waist and led her, swaying, onto the kitchen dance floor:

  It is you, my chérie,

  The prettiest in town,

  You are my honey

  Who makes me go ’round!

  A twisted piece of wire with a round opening fashioned at one end: our device was ready to be tested. Outside, on the terrace, a sea of bubbles of all shapes and sizes floated in the air, iridescent in the last rays of the setting sun.

  “Next Thursday, if I’m not working, we’ll make a kaleidoscope! You’ll see, it’ll be even better!”

  And it was. His eye fastened to the peephole of Uncle’s new invention, Gérard thought he could see fish – silver ones swimming in schools, very close together, sardines and anchovies, then other kinds, more agitated, red and blue, playing among yellow and green-tinged algae. When it was my turn to look into the kal, the kali, the kalo (how do you say it? I’ll never get it!), I saw exactly the same thing. Yet I’d never put my head under water, in the sea. In fact, I’d never even been to the beach.

  TEN

  In my family, everyone sang, and sang in tune. Everyone but us two bullfrogs: Gérard and I. Uncle Roger, with his lyric tenor voice that was very close to Uncle Émile’s, had no trouble being accepted in the family choir.

  Moustiers. The village saint’s day, September 1943. On the day of the singing contest, a platform was set up on the square in front of the church, flagged and garlanded by a sea of holly, ivy, and rosemary
branches. Uncle Émile and Aunt Marie sang a duo:

  Good morning, my dear lady

  Good morning, my dear man

  I can’t see you but I can understand…

  Techno before its time: they each carried a handset, which gave them a certain countenance, except when Uncle, swept away by his own enthusiasm, hit himself in the nose with the headphones. A true stoic, the perfect Marseille harbour fireman, he didn’t miss a beat or drop the melody, which might have compromised their chances.

  First prize: Émile and Marie!

  Two years in a row.

  Yet the following year, not as a duo: Émile and Marie, both finalists, faced each other in combat, never seen before.

  Uncle Émile began with the perfect song for the occasion – a comical number:

  To get to my new job

  I bought a brand new car

  I swear it was no slob—

  The fastest on the road by far…

  This was in July of 1939. Come September, he left for the war…

  Eight months later I come back

  Requisition: my car’s become a cart…

  Inexorably, the unlucky streak continued. Uncle Émile acted out pulling a large stack of bills from his pocket and bought, one after the other: a motorbike – no more gas; several bicycles – all stolen. He tried the subway – soon closed to save electricity. He made do with a good pair of shoes to make the trip four times a day – soon, no more soles. To top it all off, the cobbler ran out of leather…

  But I’m a prudent and discerning man

  For tomorrow I’ll have played my hand—

  You got it; I’ll be walking on them

  To go see my mother, brother, and friends.

  And, sure, the world will be upside down

  But it might be funnier this time ’round:

  After all I’ve got nothing to lose

  Right side up, it’s been giving me the blues.

  The jury laughed till it cried. Gérard lapped it up.

  Aunt Marie replied with the latest success (the word “hit” didn’t exist yet):

  What is left of our love?

  What is left of days gone by?