‘There are eight titles in the series.’ She was shuffling the paperbacks, nudging them determinedly towards me, raising her voice to be heard above the ascending din. ‘They are set in the mountains inland of here.’
‘What is the subject of the series? Do you want a glass of rosé?’ I asked Michel as I fumbled for my purse. He replied that he did not. ‘I’ll take a copy of each.’
‘Provençal life’ was the writer’s shrill response. The woman took no credit cards, preferred not to be given a cheque and was hoping to be paid en espèces. I was a little taken aback to learn that each book was fifty-seven euros.
‘Four hundred and fifty-six euros, please.’
‘But I don’t have that much cash!’ In any case, my enthusiasm had dwindled somewhat. ‘I might return later’ was my feeble exit line, which, understandably, disappointed and disgruntled her.
We made our way in a leisurely fashion towards the table with the rosé because it was also where the dancing was to take place. This promised to be the highlight of the morning. On our way, I picked up two one-kilo bags of dried Provençal herbs selling for five euros apiece, which struck me as a rare bargain. These events offered opportunities of buying direct from the earth though not necessarily at a cheaper price.
‘Are you parked up this end?’ requested the lady stallholder, still seated and crocheting something white. I nodded that we were.
‘Then pay me and I’ll store them under the counter, save you carrying them about.’
We agreed to this.
‘On your way back,’ she added artfully, ‘will you bring me one of those free glasses of rosé? It’ll be the first time any local official has ever bought me a drink and I’m not turning my nose up at it. I’d go myself but I can’t leave the stall. If I were there with the rest, I’d help myself to half a dozen glasses and some snacks. We pay enough taxes, don’t you know.’
We promised to do our best. She nodded, wistfully eyeing others wandering to and fro with refreshments clutched between their fingers.
Before reaching the mayor’s table groaning with generous portions of local produce, we encountered the first of the organic olive oil vendors. There was quite a crowd gathered about so I could not approach. I waited patiently a moment or two while scribbling down his farm’s address. This olive producer was not from our vicinity. I did not even recognise the name of his village.
‘He is further west and inland,’ said Michel who knew the place.
Inland invariably meant a higher altitude and this, in turn, would possibly mean that the trees were less vulnerable to attacks from Dacus. When I finally managed to shuffle to the front of the queue, the rather handsome young farmer with a shock of dark brown hair combed unevenly to one side, attentive grey eyes and a red kerchief tied around his neck, confirmed that his holding sat at an altitude of seven hundred metres. He was almost at the extremity of the olive line, he smiled, and there were no problems concerning la mouche d’olive.
‘Mind you, if the summers continue to get hotter, as has been the pattern over the last three years, who knows? The appearance of the fly at our altitude is not entirely out of the question.’ He admitted that for all the landworkers, organic or otherwise, climate change and the consequent shifts in plant habits caused by it were matters of profound concern.
‘Do you know if there is anyone here who does farm organically at lower altitudes?’
Someone from behind was shoving me impatiently, waving a blue, twenty-euro note. ‘Pardonnez-moi, excusez-moi, Madame.’
I was, rather selfishly, presuming upon this young farmer’s precious selling time, and he had travelled far for this opportunity. I apologised. He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, embarrassed that he could not assist me and that he was putting an abrupt end to our exchange. I stepped aside, allowing the woman with the money in her hand, with her tightly curled hair dyed the colour of golden raisins, to slip into the slot I had been occupying. She was pulling hard on the lead of a silver miniature poodle with a mauve bow tying its fluffy pompom into a vertical pigtail. The bowser was jumping and yapping excitedly at her heels. She gave a great tug and barked at the poor creature who cowered, while I moved smartly out of the way.
Fifty metres further along, we found ourselves snarled up in the crowds milling about the ‘mayor’s drinks table’. It was actually several tables placed side by side lengthways and covered in paper tablecloths printed with Provençal designs of olives, cicadas and sprigs of lavender. A line of volunteers were doling out plastic glasses of local pink wine while the public queued, in a not very orderly fashion, to stuff their hands from bowls spilling over with salted biscuits, small square cuts of pizzas and, of course, the familiar black Niçoise olives.
Neither Michel nor I was tempted and would have moved on in search of further olive vendors but we found ourselves surrounded, hemmed in, and there was no negotiating a path in any direction. The loudspeaker was blaring once more, to inform those not within the vicinity of the table that the mayor’s offerings would soon have been devoured and to hasten if anyone wished to avail themselves of his generous offer. And then the crowd parted just as though Christ were walking on the Sea of Galilee and from who knows where came a file of men and women, all in traditional costume. The pinafored women wore white lace neck shawls with bonnets tied about their chins while some of the men were in felt hats that resembled fedoras. They were wielding arched garlands of flowers and were accompanied by a handful of fluff-faced youths carrying musical instruments. I took the opportunity to dive at the table and secure a drink for the stallholder thirstily awaiting our return. The crowd began to applaud the arrival of the dancers, but when it became clear that no action was about to take place, they very soon returned to the scrum for food. We slid through a break in the wall of people and continued along the street in search of organic inspiration.
There were sweet stalls, one in particular specialising in nougats of every colour and flavour, all pebbled with nuts. Another displayed gigantic copper marmalade-making pans with the sweet dark liquid bubbling and burping within. Cartwheels of spiced bread were for sale by the kilo, rustic milk chocolate in great slabs to break off and chew, claimed by the ‘maison’ to be ‘fabrication à l’ancienne’. There was a young goat-jawed man in a smaller black felt hat sitting alone, deftly knitting dried lavender sprigs into bouquets. He hailed a greeting to a passer-by in Provençal: ‘Boun-joun!’
Provençal, a language of Occitania, once spoken throughout these southern hills and the long belt of coast, the language of troubadours and poets, was outlawed in the sixteenth century (1539) because it was perceived to be a threat to the French-speaking north, the monarchy and French rule. Over the centuries, as French became the lingua franca, Provençal fell into disuse. In the late nineteenth century Nobel laureate Frédéric Mistral and fellow writers worked to have the language reintroduced. Today, it is being taught in certain schools and these local fairs frequently offer an opportunity to hear it spoken.
Robust Italians had driven across the border in a substantial white van and had set up a magnificent cheese stall. They were yelling and calling their wares in yet another language: Formaggio! Formaggio!
Alongside the Italians, competition expressed itself in rows of woven baskets packed tight with sticks of handmade sausages. Sausages spliced with mushrooms, sausages flavoured with duck, sausages from Arles, others with Roquefort cheese, even another sampling flavoured with – for heaven’s sake! – bilberries.
The Nice Matin was stacked, on sale at the bar-tabac where a handful of inscrutable old men sat watching the world passing by, sipping their iced Ricard in silence. A baggy-chinned man in blue check shirt and grey hair was being interviewed by a local radio station. Something to do with the electric olive harvesting rakes he was displaying. He clutched a long sprig of oleae as he talked, holding it between fingers flailed by land work.
A member of the dancing ensemble, flabby-cheeked in hat and burgundy printed waistcoat,
let off an old-fashioned gun that resembled a blunderbuss. He aimed it high into the sky and the explosion resounded and echoed across the blue enamelled morning and caused a few of the crowd to jump out of their skins or giggle skittishly. ‘What a scare!’ ‘Ooh, goodness me!’
I spotted a second organic oil stand and pushed forward. Drawing close, we passed by another olive stall and I recognised the patron by his name, written above in large green letters. This was the brother of Gérard, our miller. ‘Look,’ I said to Michel, ‘how he resembles their robin-breasted father.’
Michel laughed, for this fellow did indeed. He sported a bristly moustache and black hat with a honeybee brooch pinned to its rim. Was he also an apiarist?
‘The two brothers don’t speak,’ I whispered to my husband. ‘In fact, hearsay tells it that no one in the family talks to this sibling. He has been ostracised.’ I had no idea why. ‘He does not even press his olives at the family-owned mill, imagine that.’ I paused in the alley between the stalls to study him carefully. I had an urge to go and say hello, but thought better of it. We had never met before, and I’d had no dealings with him. He was a fair decade older than our miller, with hazel, pedunculate eyes, yellowed and puffed by booze or heavy smoking. An aura of sadness, fatigue, emanated from him. He followed in the olive tradition, the family trade, but soldiered on alone. It was an extraordinary fact that he did not press his olives at the home mill.
Down our way, there existed a profusion of tales of family rivalries where one or another will not speak to a fellow relation. Still, whatever their rancours, they will always continue to buy their produce from whosoever within the family supplies it: bread from the baker if there is a cousin who bakes or meat from one’s brother-in-law, the butcher, should that be his trade. According to the Provençal mindset, to purchase outside the immediate family or the hamlet of one’s birth is to do business with ‘foreigners’, even if those foreigners were in fact inhabitants from an adjacent village.
I wondered silently what had caused this man to be so exiled from his kin. He, whose stall displayed olives of every size and variety, stuffed with peppers, garlic, onions, all on sale for sixteen euros a kilo. The oil he was selling was not organic, no more than his brother’s was. I also noted that our mill situated high in the hills behind our home was not represented at the feast of the pressing fair today. Did they avoid all possibilities of chance encounters?
The second organic farmer had also descended from on high. His holding was in a vicinity behind Aubagne and sat at six hundred and fifty metres. So, yet again, the olive fly was not a natural pest for him or his trees.
Did he know of anyone at lower levels …? As before, the oléiculteur simply shook his head. ‘Impossible to farm organically if you have to contend with the fly.’ And so said the third, the last of the three olive farmers present operating organically. We were out of luck. I felt downhearted, disappointed. Still, we continued on to the far extent of the displays, to a small square where old men with knobbled canes were idling time, gossiping, sitting on benches beneath the shade of the great plane trees, while across the leafy quadrangle were a trio of Arabs, arms on laps, just like the old men, but these North African labourers – two were barefoot with their plastic sandals discarded on the ground – squatted on a bench of their own. Theirs was at the farthest corner from the events. It looked back across to a less than attractive place des boules. An unspoken rule, then, that the Maghrebians do not sit with the Provençaux?
A second shot rang out. It was the hour for the dancing. We turned back in that direction, intending to amble towards the car. The plastic glass in my hand had grown warm and I felt sure the liquid was tepid. A small black insect was floating on the wine’s surface. As we passed the mayor’s table, empty now, its cloths stained by wine splash, I placed the glass back where I had found it.
The dancing had begun. The flautist and drummers were beating out the rhythms while the performers were spinning to and fro, swept along by their own merrymaking. Back and forth they bounced, flushed from exertion and pride, calling out to one another in their local tongue. The crosses worn as necklaces lifted and slapped against plump female flesh as the couples stomped in circles and then a little heel and toe polka or jig, up and down and about the pavement.
Suddenly, I caught sight of the mayor. A big-bellied fellow crowned by a hat with a swish white feather, clad in a heavy, black velvet cloak, he was standing alongside a woman and gentleman. They were also wearing hats with white feathers as well as the gold chains of office, which was a little puzzling. Perhaps they were royalty from another village? Whatever, this trio of civic servants, watching the display, were grouped together in a line, wine glasses in hand. To their left was a ‘messenger’ in a scarlet satin cloak who was bearing a blue and white banner. All wore expressions of such lachrymose boredom that they might have been attending an execution.
I nudged Michel. ‘Carpe diem,’ I said, and we burst out laughing. Feeling the sun on our faces, enjoying the happy-go-lucky mood, the exuberant display of the farandole, a traditional folk dance from Nice, we watched on for a few minutes longer and then, while the crowds were clustered together at this one spot, clapping, whooping, calling, we made our way with ease, arm in arm, back to collect our herbs where, fortunately, we found the vendor humming happily, bobbing her head from side to side, sipping one glass of rosé while another awaited her at her side.
‘Is it jolly down there?’ she asked.
‘The mayor’s having a whale of a time,’ I grinned.
‘Oh, he’s a miserable old so-and-so that one, face like a battered fish. Probably worrying what the wine has cost him. Anyway, cheers.’
We collected our herbs, bought two jars of honey each weighing in at a kilo, one for Quashia and the other for ourselves, from a beekeeper who lived way over the far side of the Var (or I would have invited him to come into partnership with us), and we said au revoir to the fair where the loudspeaker, crackled sound retreating behind us, was announcing that the parents of the lost boy had been located and they had been reunited.
‘All’s well … eh?’
My mission had been a disappointment, but the morning had been lighthearted and fun. Still, I was pleased to be returning home, clutching our bags of Provençal herbs and honey, alone with Michel to prepare lunch, and consider in which direction we might try next.
The repairs to the garage roof and extension of the terrace were finally to begin. I was up at five to drive Michel to the airport; he was booked on the first flight to Paris. A little after nine, our quartet of Portuguese came belting up the drive in a white, open-backed, beaten-up lorry. Two in the cab, two standing in the rear clutching dozens of upright planks of wood and an army of iron implements that I could not possibly identify. They ascended the hill at a pace that was alarming. It was a barrage rather than an ascent. They were whipping and damaging everything in their wake, breaking and snapping olive branches, newly and lovingly pruned; I heard the rumpus from my den, glanced out of the window, saw the assault and went running down to the driveway, yelling and waving to them as they reached the parking area: ‘Stop! For God’s sake, slow down.’
Too late, they had juddered to a halt. Broken olive twigs had been trapped between various parts of the lorry’s carcass.
‘Please, can you take the drive at a more considered pace?’
They did not listen, they could not hear me. They were shouting loudly among themselves, jumping down from the van, unloading wheelbarrows, boxes, throwing the metal rods this way and that. The dogs were fleeing for their lives.
‘Bonjour, good morning, bom dia,’ I yelled. ‘Please, can you be a little more considerate as you climb the hill? You have damaged the olive trees. Look!’
‘Oh, Madame, it’s nothing. Just a few twigs’ was their infuriating response.
For two hours they hit, slapped, hammered and rammed at the far stable wall, rendering it into piles of rubble. When that first rather raucous movement of the demoli
tion process had been achieved, they jumped back into the lorry and roared off for what proved to be a three-hour lunch break. After their return, I hurried back downstairs to the dust and debris, brandishing one of the broken olive branches I had collected from the tarmac. ‘This is not merely a twig,’ I emphasised. ‘This might very well have represented a litre of olive oil.’
They stared at me with bemused, bloodshot expressions.
‘Oh, Madame,’ the husky-voiced short one grinned eventually. ‘We are Portuguese. We know everything there is to know about olive trees. We grew up among them.’ They seemed in a merry frame of mind and no amount of complaining on my part could dent that.
‘I realise that you are obliged to deliver all the materials up here and that the drive is steep …’
‘And the old bus is not what she was. If we don’t take it at a lick, she stalls,’ one of the others laughed. ‘In fact, she’s for sale if you are interested.’
‘And the planks are tall,’ said another. ‘They hit the trees, tear at the boughs. Hélas, there’s nothing to be done.’
‘I realise all that. Still, I must ask you please to bear in mind that both sides of the drive are lined with overhanging olive branches and—’
‘Madame, we can see them. We all grew up on olive farms.’ Now they seemed puzzled by my concern, bemused by my insistence and gazed at me as though I were in a zoo. Feeling awkward, I turned on my heels and left them to it, crossing my fingers that they were intending to show more respect for their work.
‘What on earth are they doing to make all that racket?’ I moaned to Quashia later when I walked up the hill to give him a cup of tea.
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