A Summer In Gascony

by Martin Calder

  Monsieur Fustignac raised his glass to me in a toast. ‘A la toa!’

  ‘A la toa!’ I repeated, clinking glasses.

  As he drank, the rim of his glass pushed up the tips of his moustaches into a pointy smile. ‘Have you heard of the sarri?’ he asked me, very earnestly.

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s the antelope that lives in the Pyrenees,’ he said. ‘The sarri has legs on one side longer than the legs on the other side, so it can walk on the mountainsides, but it can only ever go round and round the mountain in the same direction. The male sarris have longer legs on the right side, the females have longer legs on the left. They meet each other once each time they go round the mountain.’

  ‘But you must be joking,’ I protested.

  ‘I swear to you it’s the truth,’ he said, holding up his hands and making a wide-eyed expression of honesty. Under his beret, his old man’s eyes looked watery. I knew he was winding me up, but he made it sound so plausible. With a few more glasses of Brut de Monluc inside me I might have believed him.

  The sarri really exists: it is to the Pyrenees what the chamois antelope is to the Alps. In English it is called an izard. It looks rather like a goat, though it is not lopsided as Monsieur Fustignac described.

  The thought occurred to me afterwards that he might have been trying to tell me something about men and women, but the meaning, if there was one, was too obscure for me to fathom.

  While Monsieur Fustignac was telling me tales of strange animals Hans looked over at me, raising a questioning eyebrow, as if to say – well then, what do you think of the old rogue? I didn’t make any reply, in case Monsieur Fustignac noticed. Besides, it didn’t seem fair, the widower was there on his own. His paramour Madame Parle-Beaucoup and her husband were celebrating le 14 juillet elsewhere.

  Jacques-Henri came round the table to talk to everyone in turn. He wanted to make sure all his guests felt at home. He’d drunk, as they say in Gascon, un brave còp de vin and he’d been chasing his wine with slugs of Armagnac, the mix of drinks making him ever more loquacious. He leaned heavily on people’s shoulders at each stop on his way round.

  Angeline and Bernard didn’t have any children of their own. They were making a fuss of their nephew.

  ‘Hasn’t he grown, le petit Nicolas!’ exclaimed Angeline.

  ‘I am not le petit!’ he objected, irritated. He was nearly fifteen.

  Anja and Lotte were talking together in German; Anja was pleased to speak her own language for a change.

  Paul and Florence, I noticed, were getting on very well.

  Monsieur Fustignac stood up and proposed a toast to congratulate Jacques-Henri and Marie-Jeanne for such an excellent Bastille Day feast.

  ‘Bravo!’ said the whole table.

  Jacques-Henri tried to look modest and thanked everyone for coming.

  What was that I saw? Jacques-Henri giving Marie-Jeanne a peck on the cheek? This was the first public display of affection I’d seen between them.

  There was an atmosphere of bonhomie around the stone table. Everyone chatted and relaxed. As the wine flowed, the conversations grew more animated. I noticed a change take place in people’s bearings, their manner softening as the mantle of hard work gradually slipped from their shoulders. The warm day evolved into night; oil lamps were brought to the table and lit. In the lamplight faces glowed and eyes sparkled; we were all flushed and replete with wine and good food. I licked sweet, spicy lamb juices satisfyingly from my fingers.

  The méchoui was an indulgent interlude, allowing us to gather our strength for the hardest work of the summer. It marked the beginning of the busiest period for the Auberge. As they say throughout France, du 14 juillet au 15 août, c’est les vacances! From Bastille Day to the Feast of the Assumption, it’s holiday time. This was the time when most French visitors came to the Auberge, and Jacques-Henri was conscious of playing to a different audience.

  TOUR DE FRANCE

  THE NEXT EVENT AFTER LE 14 JUILLET WAS THE TOUR DE France. That year the Tour passed along the main road in the valley a few kilometres to the south of Péguilhan. Anja and I were keen to see it and wanted to know the best place to watch. On the morning of the day the Tour was due, Jacques-Henri gave us a lift down to the main road, picked a good spot and left us there, saying he’d be back later in the afternoon. He’d seen the race before.

  The road through the valley was long, flat and straight, a typical French road, shaded along both sides by lines of trees. We’d been dropped off near a small group of houses and barns by the road. We were the first to take our places on this empty stretch and it looked as though we were in for a long wait.

  After a while, a few cars pulled off the road and people got out. The residents of the nearby houses set up picnic tables and chairs on the grass verge, preparing to enjoy the spectacle and make a family event of it. One family invited us to sit at their table and have a glass of wine with them. Monsieur was proud the Tour was coming along his road. For people who rarely travelled, the race brought a glimpse of the outside world. This was Stage 16 of the Tour, from Blagnac to Luz-Ardiden.

  By the time the road had been closed off there were a few dozen spectators along our stretch. A gendarme came by to see order, casually pushing back his kepi with his thumb as he stopped to chat to us. Near where we were sitting we watched a man setting up his camera on a tripod, carefully positioning it to face the oncoming cyclists. There seemed to be a technical problem with the camera; he was becoming exasperated and swore under his breath, espèce de… His wife sat on the grass reading a book and taking no notice.

  We’d been waiting there for well over two hours when we saw the publicity caravan approaching. We stood up and went to the edge of the road. A fleet of strangely shaped promotional vehicles sped towards us, advertising everything from soft drinks to financial services. With their lights flashing and klaxons blaring, for a few minutes they formed a bright and noisy cavalcade streaking along the valley. As they sped by, representatives of the official sponsor of the Tour, the French bank Crédit Lyonnais, threw out handfuls of badges for the spectators to pick up. We collected a few that landed on the road just in front of us. They were in the form of the yellow jersey of the Tour leader, bearing the bank’s logo, CL, in blue.

  The scale of the event was amazing. The support vehicles, plastered with multicoloured company slogans, carried spare bicycles in racks on the roof and on frames attached to the back. Serious-looking team officials sat inside. In their wake came television crews from all over the world, with elaborate outside broadcast equipment; then came the team cars; and then silence descended and there was a long, empty pause. We felt a sense of mounting expectation.

  We knew the Tour itself was approaching when we saw the blue flashing lights of the motorcycle squad of the Garde républicaine, heading towards us in formation. They were wearing sharp blue uniforms, with gleaming white elbow-length gauntlets and white helmets. Each motard kept one hand resting nonchalantly on his hip as he rode his bike. The smart police motorcyclists reminded us that France was a land not just of farms and sheep, but also of ceremony and style.

  There was a sense of excitement in the air as the world’s greatest cycle race approached. Ahead of the cyclists came the referee watching the race through the open sunroof of his official car, marked Direction générale. Television cameramen, riding pillion on motorcycles, facing backwards, jostled for position to get the best pictures. When the cyclists finally came into sight, we heard a small boy nearby shout excitedly to his parents, ‘Ils arrivent! Ils arrivent!’ They’re coming!

  The cyclists came by in three groups, first the small breakaway group, the tête de la course, followed a few seconds later by the main peloton, chased by the stragglers at the back. They passed at such speed we hardly saw a thing, just glimpses of suffering faces, straining sinews, shiny helmets and garishly coloured Lycra, accompanied by the fleeting whoosh of wheels. Spectators shouted support and whirled their rattles. Then it was all over
, except for the following team cars and the rearguard of the motorcycle escort. We’d waited for over three hours in the hot sun to see about thirty seconds of cycling. The road was reopened and the people watching by the roadside began to disperse. There was a sense of anticlimax; we felt short-changed. We had no idea who we’d seen or in what order.

  We didn’t know what time Jacques-Henri would come to collect us. Noticing a huge log lying beside the lane that led off the main road, we went to sit on it and wait for him. The lane disappeared between fields of tall maize. A settlement of gypsy caravans stood on a piece of elevated ground. Their rooves were just visible over the thick green ears of maize. Some gypsies were moving about in the camp. We could hear their voices faintly, but we couldn’t see them. I wondered what their life was like.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be exciting,’ I said to Anja, ‘to run away with the gypsies?’

  ‘I don’t think you’d like it,’ she laughed, gently teasing. ‘Besides, they don’t accept outsiders very readily.’

  She was probably right.

  Rays of sunlight shone through the gaps between the maize stalks, slanting across the log where we were lazing, and motes of dust floated in the sunbeams. The maize gave off a dry, dusty odour.

  Two gypsy women, one very old and the other much younger, suddenly appeared around the corner of the lane and walked towards us. We hadn’t noticed them watching the race. As they approached, we heard them talking in a language we didn’t understand, which could have been Romany. They were a striking pair, with an air of intensity. The old woman was small and thin, with a wizened face like a seasoned walnut, her thick grey hair tied back in a knot. The younger woman was much taller. She had a pinched, bony face with feline features, and watched us intently with yellow eyes that didn’t miss a thing as they flickered between Anja and me. Speaking French with an accent that was thick and unfamiliar, the old woman did the talking for both of them.

  ‘You’re strangers round here, aren’t you?’ she asked. She fixed me with a penetrating stare and offered to read our palms for fifty francs. We were mesmerised and found it difficult to refuse.

  It was Anja’s turn first. The old gypsy woman took both of her hands by the fingertips, studied her palms for a few long seconds, brushed the fleshy mounds at the base of her thumbs, then looked her straight in the eye. She said some things about Anja that I couldn’t hear, then it was my turn. When she’d finished, we crossed her palm with a 50 franc note.

  Both gypsy women smiled, nodded, and walked on down the lane. They disappeared from view behind the maize as they turned the corner into their camp. Just then, from somewhere in the camp we heard the sound of a guitar strike up, strumming a seguidilla.

  It’s unlucky to repeat a gypsy’s prophecy, but one thing she said I feel I can tell. ‘This is a good time for you,’ she said, ‘and one day, when you’ve almost forgotten about me and this place, something you read in a newspaper will bring you back.’

  NO GRAIN, NO PAIN

  WHEN THE TIME CAME FOR THE FIRST WHEAT HARVEST, Jacques-Henri told me we were going to winnow the grain and store it up in the loft in the barn. On va monter du grain. He warned me it would be tough work. No problem, I can do it, was my response. Was I acquiring that legendary Gascon overconfidence? Was this my first gasconnade?

  The phrase monter du grain still makes me wince. It was one of the most physically unpleasant experiences I’d ever known.

  Out in the fields the grain was harvested with a combine harvester, la moissonneuse-batteuse, which was owned collectively by the local farmers and employed on the farms in rotation. The harvested grain was loaded into a trailer and brought to the barn by tractor, where it was tipped in a heap on the floor.

  The combine harvester had already threshed the grain, separating the wheat from the chaff. In the barn the grain was passed through a winnowing machine called a vanneuse, which cleaned the grain and removed the husks before it was stored in the loft. The vanneuse was a particularly nasty-looking piece of agricultural machinery. This model was very old. It looked battered and its red paint was chipped all over. A moveable steel pipe, about two metres long and fifteen centimetres in diameter, protruded from the body of the vanneuse, with a screw sticking out of the end.

  We lowered the screw into the middle of the grain heap. Jacques-Henri cranked a handle on the side of the vanneuse to start it up. The noisy, petrol-driven contraption rattled, groaned and clanked, and the screw inside the steel pipe rotated rapidly, drawing up grain from the pile. The grain disappeared up the pipe into the main body of the vanneuse, where it passed through a series of grilles, which cleaned the grain before it entered an aerator that expelled the husks and other waste material. The winnowed wheat grain was pushed out of the other side of the machine into hoppers, which went up and over and down on a continuous conveyor, like a paternoster lift, tipping the grain one hopper at a time on the floor of the loft.

  Jacques-Henri operated the machine while Paul, Bruno and I shovelled the grain from the edges of the pile towards the screw. It was gruelling work. We shovelled hard and fast to keep up with the rate at which the screw was drawing grain from the pile. The danger was only too real: get too close to the rotating screw and it would instantly take off a hand or half a foot.

  ‘My ancestors would have done this by hand, you know!’ shouted Jacques-Henri above the noise of the machine.

  Good for them, I thought, really starting to suffer.

  The vanneuse produced a fine, sharp dust that filled the air in the barn. We had to work with our tops off so the dust wouldn’t get under our clothes, where it would scratch and sting. The fragments of wheat chaff were barely visible and they were viciously sharp. Taking off my shirt wasn’t enough protection for me. The dust severely stung the whole surface of the skin on my upper body, as if I was being pricked with thousands of tiny barbs. I desperately wanted to scratch myself, but doing so made it worse. Jacques-Henri, Paul and Bruno’s bodies were hardened to the task, but my unseasoned skin couldn’t bear it. The machine went on scraping and grinding; the dust made the air in the barn stifling and oppressive, and hurt my eyes and my nose. I tried to keep going, but the pain became unbearable. Eventually I couldn’t stay in the barn any longer and I asked to be excused.

  I walked outside to take a deep breath. Standing in the sunlight, I shuddered with the intensity of the stinging. I stood there with my arms held away from my sides, the sweat running down my back cruelly added a tickling sensation to the burning. Angry pink blotches appeared on my skin where I’d scratched it.

  I went into the farmhouse and took a cold shower. Standing perfectly still under cold water, trying to get my breath back, I said to myself – there’s no need for this! I could pack up and leave now. I’m sure Anja would understand. Perhaps she would come with me? Gradually the pain eased and my sense of reason returned. When I went back to the barn, Jacques-Henri, Paul and Bruno had finished the work. The grain pile had gone. I was worried about what they might think, but they recognised the discomfort I’d been in.

  Jacques-Henri’s only comment was a piece of wry understatement, ‘Ça pique, eh?’ It stings.

  I took part in winnowing again the following week and the experience wasn’t much better. Although Jacques-Henri was firm about work, he was always fair-minded and he let me off all grain winnowing after that. Of the many and varied tasks that were thrown at me through the course of the summer, winnowing was the only one I couldn’t hack and the only time I seriously questioned whether I wanted to stay. Oh la vanneuse!

  LE PERCHERON

  JACQUES-HENRI WAS IN AN EXCEPTIONALLY GOOD MOOD. THE news had arrived in the post that the farm had been officially awarded organic status and could label its produce de culture biologique.

  ‘All stagiaires can have the afternoon off!’ he announced.

  Anja and I decided to have a look at the events on the village noticeboard. Péguilhan’s information point was a rather shabby wooden board attached to the wall next to the c
afé, plastered with posters announcing forthcoming local events. A colourful poster advertised a concert to be given by a Pyrenean male voice choir, Les Chanteurs du Comminges. A picture of the Chanteurs showed a group of mature gentlemen, singing enthusiastically, dressed in red, white and black costumes, with big red bowties, red cummerbunds and floppy black berets. Nearby villages, Ciadoux, Escanecrabe and Nénigan, advertised their festivals. Musical notes dancing around on the posters gave notice of the entertainment to be expected: DJ ANIMATION and DISCOMOBILE.

  We stopped to look in the small village church that stood right on the road. It was a simple, stone building, with small windows and a belfry with a short, square spire. A big wooden porch covered the area in front of the door, which was unlocked during the day for anyone to walk in. I lifted the heavy iron latch, pushed open the door and we stepped down a few steps into the nave. It was dark inside, the air was cool, and there was a musty smell that seeped into the nostrils. Our eyes took a few moments to adjust to the dimness. The interior was an odd mixture of styles: the dun-coloured stone was painted with classical designs on the back wall, brightly coloured murals were on the side wall, and in the side chapels painted statues of saints were perched on high ledges. Half hidden in a corner was an ancient baptismal font, a lump of stone with primitive figures of saints carved into the base, so worn they appeared as ghost-like faces emerging from the masonry.

  Near the church stood the village war memorial. We looked at the list of names and saw two Cazagnacs.

  The Mairie was the only modern building in Péguilhan. The main doors were open; the cleaning lady was polishing the floor. We asked her if it was OK for us to have a look around.

  ‘Of course, be my guest, Mademoiselle, Monsieur,’ she said, pleased to play an almost official role.

  The main hall was largely empty apart from stacks of chairs along the sides. On the end wall hung a tricolour and below it stood a bust of Marianne, moulded in cream-coloured plaster, the female personification of the Republic wearing a cap of liberty with flying ribbons. Marianne looked rather lonely in the empty hall.