This afternoon we must have passed the left turn they took. The loops, the stops, the intersections, the unrolling, the catching up, the intertwinings, the following, the leading in a life—all more mysterious than the rotations of stars. And my mother, whose radius of travel was short, tied the letters with ribbon and kept them in her desk. “When you get the chance,” she said to me, “go.”
A Paperweight
for Colette
Burgundy
Cherries, quail eggs, sweet potatoes, white asparagus at six euros a kilo, plump, erotic apricots, haricots verts (but they’re from Kenya), buckets of peonies and roses, clusters of crimson tomatoes—the middle of the Auxerre covered market buzzes with shoppers loading their cloth bags at fruit and vegetable stands, and groups of farm women visiting over their baskets of eggs. We could be at a market in Italy or Portugal. But around the perimeter we could be nowhere but France. The meat displays are as carefully arranged as the gold jewelry cases on the Ponte Vecchio. We gaze at trussed turkey stuffed with prunes, paupiettes of pork, rosy jellied hams, black-footed chickens, and roasts wrapped in lacy cauls. I count twenty kinds of terrines: fish, various livers, chunky pork, layered vegetables, and chicken. The bakery cases offer puffy gougères the size of softballs, rabbit pies, and great craggy loaves of bread. Cheese would be reason enough for a trip to France. A woman shopping next to me discreetly pokes several when the cheese monger looks away. Her shrewd thumb knows the stages of ripeness. She leans close to inspect the rind. She then points to her selection, a buttery-looking mound soft as a baby’s cheek. Ed selects several pillowy farm cheeses, several goat ones that look like chalky elf cakes or coat buttons. Two people are taking money. I pay one, and we start to walk away. The other money-taker shouts that we must pay, the one I paid shouts at him, and a big family argument breaks out but no one pays any attention.
Loading the car, we’re happy. This is our third day in Burgundy, and we have been turning around as dogs turn before they settle down. We have rented a beautiful, if unkempt, old stone place in the tiny village of Magny on the Yonne River. I wish my friends Susan and Cole could buy the place. They love France and would make the garden into a little Eden. Already the fruit trees are in place. Houses inevitably exude the essential sense of the owners, and so I start to invent narratives about the English owner’s Early Ikea bed that smells like someone recently died there, and the news he looked for in his stacks of ten-year-old newspapers. A baronial fireplace and a grand piano, combined with plastic chairs, leave me trying in vain to answer the question why? There’s a novel here.
The rental agency’s photographs showed a romantically set table and a blurry living room with French doors overlooking the river—the owner’s dream of the house as it was before the unfortunate action in the novel took place. The idyllic river is there—I love the smell of rivers. A rowboat lies half submerged at the shore. The telephone does not work (of course by chapter two he didn’t want to hear from anyone), and even the cell phones receive no signal. What if one of us trips over a pile of mouldy jigsaw puzzles and needs an ambulance? When we asked the caretaker how to connect the telephone, she said, “Oh, he probably didn’t pay the bill.” The plot thickens. The owner is too sad to pay attention to basic details. The kitchen . . . the well-equipped and spacious kitchen with dining area. I try to see it as a challenge instead of as a place fit only for boiling cabbage. Two greasy shelves, mildew, a freestanding relic of a stove with doll-size burners, and an oven no bigger than a toaster. We shall dine on melamine. I would not be surprised to see a snake crawl from under the fridge. I met an exotic yard-long green and black one sunning on the kitchen doorstep. When I beat the path with a stick, he languidly slithered away. The caretaker from the village somehow started the stove for us without causing an explosion. But the novelistic potential remains—a Christmas tree from several years ago provides a fire hazard in the garage. This image grounds the novel I never will write—a tragic breakup occurred during the holidays. The dried-up tree symbolizes all that went wrong. Perhaps the wife took up with a mechanic in the village. But we are dreamy fools seduced by river light.
We stop to see Auxerre’s Gothic cathedral. The town looks appealing and prosperous. A city situated on a river is fortunate, especially when a cathedral soars against the sky. Shoppers crowd the streets, and people lounge at outdoor cafés. We detour to a gigantic French Wal-Mart–type megacomplex, where we buy sheets, towels, dish towels, a tablecloth, napkins, and a few cooking utensils. I think I’m dreaming of how my friends in their happiness would scrub and paint this house into its full and lovely potential. Yes, even our open windows, fresh flowered sheets, vases of flowers, and some scrubbing could perk up the rooms.
When Colette was a child in nearby Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, her mother, Sido, travelled to Auxerre every three months. The aura of the nineteenth-century market town it must have been lingers still. She set out in the Victoria at two in the morning in her quest for luxuries: a sugarloaf wrapped in indigo paper, ten pounds of chocolate, cinnamon, nutmeg, rum for grog, pepper, vanilla, and soap. Colette perched on the backseat. I can imagine her intense interest, the bumpy ride under the stars, slowing at first light as they entered the waking town. My mother used to take me shopping in Macon, our Auxerre, when I was little. Suddenly there were things to want. I selected a skirt with wide rickrack. I was able to buy books, not available in my small Georgia town. Once my desires overcame me, and I threw a tantrum in Davison’s when my mother would not buy me a stuffed animal that played music.
I came to Burgundy to revisit Colette. We drove our own car from Cortona because Ed wants to take back special wines, preferably those paired with dinners here. I’m hoping to find for my Bramasole garden herbs unavailable in Tuscany: sorrel, chervil, tarragon, and new-to-Bramasole varieties of basil. We brought a stack of French cookbooks and a book on cheese. And then there’s Burgundy, land of the Very Rich Hours, to see.
We meander on country lanes flanked by undulating fields. The villages seem ghostly, empty except for cats. We go through the village of Misery twice, and: “Stop, did you see the name of this place? Go back!” The town of Anus. We stop off “at home” to store the food. An amber light slants across the back garden, once an orchard. I step out onto the balcony to look, but the rusty railings do not seem entirely secure. The sight of the broken, overturned deck chairs reminds me of the owner’s saga. Did he consider leaping to the river below? “Let’s go somewhere wonderful for dinner,” I call to Ed.
After a drive, we walk along the river, then find a small restaurant beside a canal. I look up from the menu. There’s our house’s caretaker, working as a waiter. She brings us a complimentary aperitif and olives. The slanting light rakes the water. I love the long summer twilights. I’m always happy when I can see blue boats riding on their reflections. A little string of lights comes on, and we feast on simple salads and roast chicken.
When I was studying for my master’s degree, I had to select three writers for my oral exam. I chose Keats, the American poet Louise Bogan, and Colette. The department chair called me in to discuss my choices. “Keats is great. Bogan is marginal,” he said, “a limited poet but acceptable to the committee. But this Colette? What has she written of value? Wasn’t she in the Folies Bergère?”
This was 1975 and hard to imagine from here. I was studying Craft of Fiction with Wright Morris, a writer I revered for his ingrained sense of place and his careful, revealing images. When he handed out the semester reading list, all the novelists were men. After class I approached him. “Mr. Morris, I was wondering about the list of books. Why aren’t there any by women?”
“Oh, hello, my dear. Oh yes, I thought of that myself. I considered Virginia Woolf, but really, she becomes tiresome. I want to give you examples you really can delve into.” Maybe he was farsighted, but he appeared to be looking down a rather proud nose at me, so far, far away.
“So.” Pause. “Ford Madox Ford is more important than Virginia Woolf?�
� My tone was infused not with aggression but with protective coloring.
“More to offer the novice writer, Miss Meyer.”
“Mayes.”
“Yes, of course. Miss Mayes, our southern belle.”
No one avoids conflict more than I. But pushed, I can throw a conniption fit, and I will go to any mat if necessary. I was reeling from this second blow. The next week, carrying a stack of Colette’s books, I visited each committee member. I admit to reaching for some southern charm. Finally they relented, probably not out of sudden conversion to the literary merit of my author but to avoid having to justify a decision if a troublemaker student, southern charm or no, forced them.
Colette was new to me. I’d read the Claudine books and Break of Day, which I thought was a classic. Soon Colette became my close friend. One of this life’s pleasures: a writer’s books can intersect with your life and lead you to the next largest space you can occupy. Her writing catapulted me forward. Even now, each time I pick up one of her books, her perceptions and images continue to wake up my perceptions. Life drenches her prose. She’s astute. I know the members of her family as well as my own. I follow every turn of her story, how she made her way alone, her mistakes, her droll perspective. Her story, compelling as it is, would not be enough to bind me to her. Story is not enough. She peels and sections and bites into experience like an orange. She’s wise and self-sufficient, two qualities I stand by. Her passion for roses, dogs, sunrise, and all the felt sensations of life runs through the molten alchemical process of selecting words. Her prose—immediate and spellbinding—lets me touch the hand of the writer herself. I feel most bound to her when I read about her childhood in Burgundy. Those years sustained her throughout her life. Her original house and garden remained a real and metaphorical world of home, her stern and passionate mother, the presiding grace.
My abiding friendship with her is only incidentally affected by the fact that she is dead. I know her intimately. In daydreams, I can sit down for a scrumptious lunch in her adored Palais Royale apartment in Paris. What would we eat? A delicious speculation. Oysters served on a bed of seaweed and ice. A champagne of Colette’s choice. A little pheasant stuffed with morels and nuts, a salad of field greens that she somehow managed to find at a street market. For dessert, wild strawberries, of course. What would we talk about? Prose style? Publishing? No. I’d tell her about the pink hellebores I planted under the crape myrtles, how my whole California garden revolves around what the deer won’t eat. We’d talk about politics, dogs, the boredom of dogma, winter coats, flamenco. The bouquet of red and purple anemones I brought attracts two bees. We’re fascinated to watch them roll in the vibrant petals. The warm hummm . . . blends with a few splats of rain beginning to fall in the garden below. We can watch this in silence.
Ed and I light out for the great medieval pilgrimage towns. Autun’s cathedral, boxed in by houses and buildings, is hard to see. Mad twisted gargoyles look down at us. One pokes his rear end outward so that roof water drains out of his bottom. The world’s first instance of mooning? I light candles for the desperately ill mothers of my friends Robin and Madeline, then look for the relics of Lazarus. The Romanesque stone carving of the Last Judgment compels me to stand awhile in the cold for a good look at the depicted lineup of humans waiting to be sent to heaven or hell. They catch every range of emotion—praying, hand-wringing, eyes cast to heaven, head held in hands. Clearly, they are scared. And graphically, a crab-claw descends to snatch each one up a level to the judging. One capital shows Judas hanging himself, his head drooped between two flowers. I’ve always pitied Judas, who threw away his big chance. Someone practices on the organ but without much force. The music sounds snuffed, as though organ and organist were locked inside a trunk.
I never find Lazarus. This time he’s not going to rise.
Pilgrims always come to Vézelay because the relics of Mary Magdalen reside at the basilica that bears her name. Vézelay—the name suits an exotic woman and is as intriguing as the place. The town serves as a grand entrance to the cathedral. Beneath the half-timbered houses and minute shops lining the street, vaulted basements once used to house the hordes who came at the beginnings of Crusades or out of devotion to the relics. The basilica looks small, with its bell tower and narrow facade, but a walk to the side reveals a long, buttressed structure with many windows. Inside, the soaring space feels open because of the white light falling through clear glass. The psychology of the plan: you are drawn through the long embrace of the nave to the luminous altar. The tympanum, recessed half circles over the front door, fascinates me. A master stone carver portrays an elongated Christ gathering his apostles before the crucifixion. His hands are expressionistic—enlarged and sending forth wavy rays of spiritual energy to his apostles, who must take His word into the world and convert the heathens. The variety of heathens imagined is amusing: dog-headed men, pygmies, people with enormous ears or snout-faces. Ancient cartographers scrawled there be beasties when the known terrain ran out. Here those beasties are given form. This enlightens me. How encompassing was medieval Christianity—even the fearful dog faces should be converted. Some of the apostles in the group look distinctly worried. The Romanesque imagination requires study. All those carnival, grotesque, whimsical, fanciful, monstrous figures came out of a fertile intersection of the pagan and the Christian. They manifest the rumblings of the collective unconscious, the worries about where the wild things are. One creature looks like a winged cow holding a suitcase.
The carved capitals of supporting columns are masterful. I especially love the one of grapes being crushed in a press, no doubt a metaphor for the blood of Christ. In one of the tourist shops, I buy a book on the carvings to savor later.
Ed spots a pâtisserie. The French pastry shops—aqua, blue, or pink with gold letters—look like their own confections. The little bell rings, and you’re welcomed into a tidy shop with buttery, warm smells wafting from the kitchen. The pastries are about form as well as taste. The rich puffs and ruffles and layers and colors form tasty morsels, but they also reward the eye. Ed chooses two or three delectables a day: delicate lemon or strawberry tarts, napoleons, pleated foil cups of dark chocolate, rustic plum galettes oozing juice. After each he says, “Viva la France.”
The village houses look private and closed. Lace curtains hang in all the windows. Not traditional handmade ones, these are machine worked with corny designs of gamboling horses, cats with balls of yarn, and windmills. No doubt made in China. Lace curtains exist solely for a hand to part them, for someone to peer secretly at the street. What’s going on there among those others? Especially that Mary Magdalen.
In the characteristic wine town Beaune, we choose the archetypal sidewalk café and linger under the plane trees. Henry James in A Little Tour of France describes Beaune as “a drowsy little Burgundian town, very old and ripe, with crooked streets, vistas always oblique, and steep, moss-covered roofs.” No longer drowsy, the town today perks with energy—inviting shops, the Saturday market, and locals out to visit with friends. I would like to photograph all the weathervanes. We find a heavy copper pot to take back home to Giusi, who cooks with us. We probably should go to the Marché aux Vins, which my notebook reminds me is at 2, rue Nicolas Rolin, named for the man who founded the famous medieval hospital here. There you buy a taste-vin, a tasting cup, and then by candlelight sample up to eighteen regional wines. Sounds overwhelming. I could taste three, then my active little buds would shut down.
Ed photographs the glazed orange, green, black, and tan geometrically patterned tile roofs on the hospital, L’Hôtel Dieu des Hospices de Beaune. Half-timbered sections, jacquard-patterned gables, and pitched roofs give a toylike appeal to the buildings. The colonnaded courtyard sheltered nuns going from wing to wing, carrying, I imagine, vats of boeuf bourguignon, and loaves of bread tucked under their arms. We walk through thinking of being sick in one of those red-draped beds. Not bad, as long as the illness were not the plague. Rogier van der Weyden’s great pain
ting, The Last Judgment, which once hung above the altar in the paupers’ section, crowns the hospital’s gallery. How sobering from the sickbed to contemplate the damned heading toward an inferno. Fewer in the painting look toward paradise.
The charity hospital was richly endowed, thanks to the fifteenth-century Duc de Bourgogne, who solicited donations to finance the construction and continuance. Sixty hectares of donated prime land proved to be the lasting boon. Thirty-nine vintages are created from these hillsides, and the hospital’s benefit auction every November on the third Sunday is one of the most important wine events in France.
In Beaune we’re in the heart of Côte d’Or wine country. Pommard is just down the road. In the wine shop the great bottles are lined up like jousting knights: Gevrey-Chambertin, Corton, Meursault, Pouilly-Fuissé, Puligny-Montrachet. A knowledgeable man helps us select a case. I’m already imagining bringing out these wines for our Italian friends.
Colette, with her innate understanding of the natural world, writes about wine in the most elemental way. A great vintage, she maintained, results from “celestial sorcery,” not the hand of the vintner. She writes:
The vine and the wine it produces are two great mysteries. Alone in the vegetable kingdom, the vine makes the true savor of the earth intelligible to man. With what fidelity it makes the translation! It senses, then expresses, in its clusters of fruit the secrets of the soil. The flint, through the vine, tells us that it is living, fusible, a giver of nourishment. Only in wine does the ungrateful chalk pour out its golden tears. A vine, transported across mountains and over seas, will struggle to keep its personality, and sometimes triumphs over the powerful chemistries of the mineral world. Harvested near Algiers, a white wine will still remember . . . the noble Bordeaux graft that gave it exactly the right hint of sweetness, lightened its body, and endowed it with gaiety. And it is far-off Jerez that gives its warmth and color to the dry and cordial wine that ripens at Château Chalon, on the summit of a narrow, rocky plateau.
A Year in the World Page 21