“The hills are on fire and you are cut off,” announces the hirsute chief of the four pompiers who have descended from the fire engine. “Someone set light to the trees in the pine forest over on the other side of the hill. We almost had it under control, but le mistral is picking up fast, changing direction and we can’t contain it.”
My eyes are weeping now from the smoke as well as these words. The heat is beating like a drum and tightening my skin. It is raining ashes. They are drifting through the air and falling on the terraces and floating in the swimming pool. It is like a blanket of gray snow. I have no idea what will happen to us. “Should we dive into the pool?” I ask weakly.
“No, go on with whatever you were doing. We’ll keep you informed.”
Continue with what we were doing! Even those rare moments of literary inspiration pale in comparison with this real-life drama.
An army of men pours out of the red vehicles and begins pounding up the hill. Each man carries what looks like a knapsack on his back. In all, approximately one hundred and twenty men are beating their way toward the summit of our hill. I have never seen so many fine-looking, fit fellows. Whatever fear had taken hold of Julia and our two girls has been forgotten. They are giggling and posing as dozens of handsome, lithe, young firefighters in their navy-blue uniforms go charging by. I confess to also being thrilled by them, their maleness and phenomenal physical prowess.
Now the pool is being sucked dry, and the chlorinated water transmitted up the hill by meter after meter of ample piping to be sprayed onto the fire. The dogs won’t stop barking. Puppies are peeing and scooting all over the place. We are overwhelmed by noise and activity and chaotic fear.
What will happen when the pool is emptied? I ask myself. Certainly there is not enough to quench this conflagration. Will the fire then beat its way down the hill, killing the men and burning all in its wake? How can they hold such a fury at bay? Never mind, put a stop to it.
Suddenly, three or four of the small planes are arriving, droning and circling like great angry insects. They fly low, barely ten meters above the treetops, dropping tons of red powder on the wall of flames. Then they circle back, heading for the bay. I watch them dive, plunging their noses into the sea, nozzling up gallons of salty water. They return, one after another, a ceaseless aggressive procession hell-bent on beating back this twist of nature. Gallons of the Mediterranean Sea mixed with the red powder are dropped like bombs onto the flames. And so it goes on. Four planes, each making ten or fifteen trips an hour. It is a mesmerizing spectacle.
“Rather puts to shame those air shows you took me to when I was a kid,” I whisper to my father, who is as always deeply impressed by such displays of organization.
“You’ve got to hand it to the French,” he mutters, but he’s not really talking to me. He’s somewhere else, lost in his war, perhaps. I cannot say. I lean in and give his hot, peeling flesh a stroke.
I want to walk up the hill to get a closer look, but Michel and Quashia call me back. The weight of the red avalanche, they warn me, is sufficient to kill anyone foolish enough to be standing beneath a plane’s load. I listen to one shrill crack after another as whining trunks snap and collapse to the needled earth, and I consider the fate of those firefighters, all of whom are at risk should the plane misdirect its lethal cargo. I have always harboured a child’s romantic regard for firefighters and lifeboat men. They have always been my heroes, and nothing today dents that illusion.
BY EVENING, THE FLAMES have been beaten back. Slowly, the engines begin to reverse and depart. We are left with an empty pool, exhaustion and a strange sensation of deflation mingled with immense relief. Something tremendous and sinister has roared through our day, and now a disconcerting, cautious tranquility has taken its place.
“We’ll be back tomorrow,” the chief tells us, “to refill your pool. We’ll be keeping a couple of men on the hill tonight in case the wind picks up. It needs only one burning ember…” It is usual here for the mistral to drop at night. No matter what gale force it has blown during the day, by evening it quietens. I have always found it one of those curious feats of nature—how the wind knows when the sun is setting—but it is so. We are left with a view that is as clear and pure as freshly drawn water.
Michel and I hike the steep, stony track to survey the extent of the damage. Four young men are standing together. Their eyes shine blue and bright beneath faces smeared with soot and sweat. Everyone shakes hands. They are welcome to join us for dinner. They thank us but do not accept. It is not possible for them to leave the site. In any case, as always, they are well prepared. Stores of water and food have been lodged beneath a living tree. Its verdant life is almost jarring amid so much blackness. Charred tree trunks are lying like history everywhere the eye can see, but not on our land. Not one tree, barely a blade of grass has been touched. Now I understand why the local councils are so strict about keeping the land cut back. There was nothing for the fire to take hold of, nothing to burn.
Still, the sickening aroma of fire is everywhere. My cheeks are burning just from standing so close. Heat rises like a sauna from the charcoaled earth. Everywhere, tortured black skeletons of trees are etched against the fast-fading day. Our water bassin has been drenched in red powder.
“You should cover that,” a young fireman remarks.
It is true. Quashia has been nagging us about it all summer. I step up onto a three-rung ladder attached to the side of the bassin and peer in. The water within is tinted pink, and there are several birds floating lifelessly at surface level. Did the fire carbonize them, were they caught in a slipstream of wind and heat or have they fallen victim to a normal day’s drowning? Pine needles are inches thick on the bed of the basin. The water looks stagnant as well as pink. Its murkiness could well be the reason for our rusty water.
“We’ll clean it out for you tomorrow,” one of our night-watch team reassures us.
A curl of smoke can still be seen here and there among the embers in what remains of the dwindling light and curling roots, snapped and torn from the dry earth. Pines that were dead but not burned have been uprooted, ripped from the earth by the sheer weight of the water falling on them. The newly dead surround us in an arboreal cemetery. Life laid waste against a ruined sky.
We should leave them to it.
“Bonsoir. If there’s anything we can do…” calls Michel.
They shrug shyly and then an earnest-faced, dark-haired fellow in his early twenties steps forward. “Monsieur?”
Michel turns.
“Nous avons vu les chiots… ils sont à vendre?”
The puppies, are they for sale? they are asking.
We have eight to give away, I tell them.
Two young men now step keenly toward us, assuring us they would give them good homes. Sans doute. It is agreed, they will take one each. Tomorrow morning, before they go off duty, they will choose their puppies.
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Sunday, is almost as eventful as the previous day. Cars arrive, a huge tanker bearing almost a reservoir of water negotiates the winding drive, splintering what’s left of the fig branches in its wake, to refill the pool. This is followed by an official from the council administration, who arrives in a sleek silver-gray Renault. He is a short, stocky individual who wears a dark gray mustache and struts like royalty with his hands clasped behind his back. Most unusual, I think, because a true Provençal’s hands are half his conversation. When I run downstairs to greet him, he asks to speak to the man of the house, which infuriates me. It is typical of a certain machismo which is prevalent on this Riviera coast.
“He is busy,” I insist. “How can I help?”
He shrugs, wearied by the knowledge that he must deal with a woman. “I need to inspect,” he informs me curtly.
“The fire damage?”
He nods impatiently. But of course! Squinting, he looks about him with a calibrating eye, ascertaining what we have or rather what we have not, because that certain turn of the mouth and
pout of the lips tell me that he considers the place a ruin. “Beaucoup de travail” is his informed opinion. It makes me laugh because it recalls the estate agent, Charpy, who fled at the prospect of the work needed here. I am way past bothering to explain that as far as we are concerned, renovation is part of the joy of the place. Instead, I offer to escort him up the hill. We make our way to the back of the house, where he halts and tilts his head skyward. It is clear that he was not expecting such exercise. Glancing at his watch with a monumental sigh, he begins the climb, leading, not following.
The young men who have kept guard all night look very weary and desperately in need of showers and clean clothes but are as cheerful as the evening before. We all go through the handshaking routine, and they lead the council official on a guided tour of charcoaled tree trunks and grizzled brush. I stay where I am, taking in the view. The dense scent of charred wood pervades the early-morning air with the same persistence as last night. He takes his time, this official, crunching across acres of ravaged land before he finally returns to me.
“You are to be congratulated,” he announces.
I am quite taken aback.
“Vous, votre mari, vous êtes des bons citoyens, and you are most welcome here in our commune.” He shakes my hand warmly. “I want to meet your husband.”
We traipse back down the hill, and I feel as though I am in the company of a different human being. He is whistling, looking about, pointing at this and that, nodding at the ruin and our olive terraces. The young men follow, carrying their rucksacks and moving wearily. Michel offers everyone coffee, but the firemen prefer to get off home. They leave, promising to return later to choose their puppies. Over a glass of vin rouge—it is not yet ten o’clock, and our parents regard this man with shock—the council official asks Michel what we do for a living (ah, les artistes, maintenant je comprends!) and if we would object to a photographer from the local gazette, the Nice Matin, dropping by. Not to photograph us, he reassures, but to take shots of the damage. Our privacy is sacred. Michel gives our consent.
The rest of Sunday is a series of comings and goings. The fire brigade returns to make a reconnoiter and decides that two more men are to be posted. “There is a light wind, and you can never be too sure.”
The photographer arrives, an unshaven scruffy chap, who appears far more interested in the girls in their bikinis, who lap up every glance of attention as though it gives credibility to and feeds the rising temperature of their sexual awakening. And then the crowning moment of the day, the four firemen return late in the afternoon, spruced, shaved, showered and dressed in civvies. Handsome as mythological gods. Four of them in one battered outdated car. The girls rush to and fro, combing their hair, changing their clothes, searching out lipstick, snitching mine, and then return to posed composure in deck chairs in the garden, making quite sure that every puppy has been dragged to their sides.
Much bending and caressing and displaying of helplessly adorable creatures takes place and, I suspect, arrangements to meet later in Cannes for cups of coffee. Finally, four yawning puppies are chosen. They cannot be taken tonight, as they must spend a little while longer with their mother, which means that each of the young men promises to return at regular intervals to keep an eye on “his chosen companion.” One young fellow must have lost out, I mutter amused to Michel, who is blithely unaware of what I am talking about.
After supper at our table, the girls, with dear Hajo as their escort, scuttle off to the bright lights of Cannes while we, the veterans, settle sedately on the upper terrace to watch the new moon and the stars appear. After a mistral, the view is always crystalline, as though the whole of nature has been polished. We can see every detail on every hill. Fortunately for the girls, we cannot see what they are up to in Cannes!
Tomorrow our parents are leaving. It is a sad yet complete moment. We have experienced the gamut of life’s offerings together here: birth and death and time shared. As always, farewells create a deep and melancholy emptiness within me, and I feel the loss swelling as Michel opens the final bottle to be shared between us all for this summer. We sit in silence, quaffing, listening, appreciating the soft sounds of evening. And then, suddenly, there is a noise that none of us recognize. Short, sharp, tiny and repeated.
“What’s that?” asks Anni.
We all of us listen concentratedly. Frowns and bemused expressions take shape in the candlelight.
I watch the families puzzling over the distant hiccuping and I simply cannot resist. “It’s the schnecken, Anni, the snails.”
“What about them?”
“They’re sneezing!”
CHAPTER NINE
TRACKING THE OLIVE
Summer is slipping away, like the silent falling of petals. Everyone has left. We are on our own. The swallows gather, autumn sets in, rustic and rather rainy. The land grows green again, revivified. Grass, dry and brittle as old bones during all those hot months, shoots up overnight, and daisies sprout everywhere. They are crisply white, innocent and child-like, an unpretentious flower. I stroll along the terraces, studying the ripening olives, which are a light violet now, or piebald green and mauve, picking slender-stalked handfuls of wildflowers. I carry these back to the house to place in jars on the tables. They swoop and lift toward the first tendrils of sunlight creeping round the corner of the house, and I am delighted by their ordinariness.
It is Saturday morning. Herby scents in an immaculately well-washed day. Michel is somewhere at the foot of the hill, planting a wheelbarrow full of purple and white irises which we have dug up from numerous terraces where they are multiplying in wild profusion. He is using them to create a border to our new fence and the arbuste of laurel.
René arrives, bearing two plastic shopping bags full of small black grapes. “Framboises,” he announces. I am confused.
He laughs at my expression. “These grapes are known as raspberries.”
“Why?”
“Taste them.”
Surprisingly, they taste exactly like raspberries.
He is about to escort us—we were expecting him the day before yesterday, but no matter—on a visit to one of the farms he tends in the arrière-pays, the hinterland. He and I make ourselves comfortable on the upstairs terrace and settle down to un verre while we wait for Michel to complete his gardening chores. I glance at my watch as René pours our chilled beers, and I smile silently. It is not yet ten-thirty. Years of restraint, of broken diets followed by insufferable guilt, sleepless nights and a sense of inadequacy, all to stuff myself into costumes a size too small but befitting the television or silver screen: someone else’s notion of sex appeal. And here I am, bright and early on a Saturday morning, dressed like a Mediterranean construction worker in boots and shorts, facing with delight the frothy liquid on the table in front of me, learning to live at peace with the hedonist in my soul.
“Thirsty work,” proclaims René, lifting his glass. For a second I think he must be referring to my inner reflections, and then I notice his attention is directed toward poor Michel, whose silhouette moves in and out of view as he bends and rises in the process of digging and planting.
René begins to recount tales of his life as a truck driver before he retired. He has an extraordinary assortment to tell of the years of German occupation here on the coast, when he and his truck were used by the Resistance to ferry food from place to place after curfew, so no French families went without. He paints a tantalizing picture of “man and his trusty steed”—in this case his truck—of rations redirected, une petite escroquerie here and une petite escroquerie there. He must have been hard at work on the trail of Robin Hood.
Escroquerie. I love this word. Although it is not specifically a Provençal noun, it does seem to sum up so much of the way of life here. Une escroquerie is a swindle…
My attention returns to our sanguine-complexioned olive man. He is now describing to me in detail, using his hands for dramatic effect, how to skin and eat a hedgehog. The cooking is not complicate
d, he assures me. Is he thinking I might rush to the butchers and give this a go?
Boil it first in a bouillon, then slit it open down the middle of its soft side—its belly side—“as though cutting open a cushion,” and peel the skin off the same way you would a diving suit!
“What about its quills?—
“Bah, they fall away as easily as picking out cotton stitching once the animal has been boiled.”
I cannot picture adding this recipe to the cookbook, but I refrain from saying so. Another staple food here during the Second World War, again during the occupation, was the guinea pig. According to René, guinea pigs, cochons d’inde, are an excellent source of fat. This was an important factor, because fat was always in short supply, and it made the meat edible, too. Any animal that has plenty of fat on it makes good eating, he explains. I am beginning to think I prefer the rigors of the actress’s diet!
He reaches for another bottle of the blond beer, tops up his glass and embarks on his descriptions of the occupation of the grand hotels and maisons particulières along the coast, of shells exploding, of the Maquis preparing for the liberation. Here he interrupts himself: “Do you know why the Resistance or underground forces were called Maquis?” he asks, but does not wait for my response. “Because that is the name of the brush or scrubland that grows all along these Mediterranean and Corsican coastlines—to take to the bush, to go underground. And so they were named le Maquis. They were very active here in Provence, and without them it is unlikely that the Allied invasion of ’44 would have proved such a success.” I had known this, but I feign surprise and René shrugs that Provençal shrug. He genuinely delights in telling tales, and I seem to be his perfect audience. He goes on, swiftly describing nights spent in the shelters—not all misery, according to him, which leads him quite naturally to the wartime romancing of a nightclub singer in Marseille.
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