“Diable, she had great legs!” He grins and begins a saucy observation about his height and the length of her legs, seems to think better of it, glances at me in an impish way, blushes and deflects. Now he is describing the courting of a local girl, and paints pictures of their lovemaking on the beaches while guns were firing all around them. She was three years his senior and, in those days, was deemed a daring and romantic choice. Later, she became his wife and is housebound now.
Michel is ascending the drive with the wheelbarrow. He waves.
René turns his attention to more pressing matters: plants and l’entretien of the oliviers. The pruning and maintenance of all plants and the olive trees in particular clearly ignites his passion as readily as his reminiscenes of the good old days. While I listen and watch, I perceive in his piercingly blue eyes the joy of a life richly lived.
“Quite a lady’s man, eh, René?” I tease.
“Ah, yes, I’m very lucky,” he mutters, gazing out across the view, sipping his beer. “You don’t know the half of it.”
WHEN MICHEL IS READY, we set off on the first trip of what is to be our pre-harvest petit pèlerinage, our olive pilgrimage. This morning we are driving inland, winding up and around the leafy corkscrew lanes, gazing back onto spectacular coastal scenery: sweeping bays, a lone helicopter traversing an electric-blue sky, forests of sailboats like miniature flags waving back at us from the glassy expanses of the Med. We are climbing to a cooler altitude, a remoter province, a rural world where little traffic passes save for a few trucks and grunting soil-beaten tractors. Everywhere, with the exception of the olive and the cypress, the trees are turning striking tones of amber and ruby red. There is a remarkable stillness in the air. Twenty minutes inland, and we might have turned back the clock a half a century.
This particular olive farm is approached along a well-hidden track, a bumpy, rutted trail better suited to tractors than René’s diesel-powered Renault. The gate is well worn, askew and held fast with with a rusted padlock and chain. Inside the grounds there is a long straight drive climbing a steep stony path, flanked by terraced groves on either side. This leads directly to the farmhouse, set, rather like ours, halfway up the hillside.
The salmon-pink house, with its fading grass-green shutters, is an ancient bastide all but forgotten in this deep countryside. Situated south of a rocky mass of land known as the Pre-Alpes of Castellane, it looks out in sunlit seclusion across the valley toward a hilltop village named Gourdon.
Its edifice is cracked and aging. The Parisian proprietor, now well into his eighties, visits the farm for only one month during the year, in the height of summer. For the other eleven months, the place is locked up and unused. No one except René comes near it, which saddens me, recalling how neglected Appassionata had been when we first found her. To the left of the farmhouse are the stables. These have been converted into a bathroom—there is another in the main house—so that the old gentleman can shave in peace and not be pestered by his grandchildren first thing in the morning. A vine laden with pendulous green grapes gives shade to a cracked concrete patio. The look of the place reminds me of one of those early Dubonnet commercials I used to see on television when I was tiny. I had never visited France in those days, but the pictures struck me as so gloriously foreign, so happy-go-lucky, so much the French idyll. Perhaps that’s why I’m here!
This farm boasts one hundred and thirty trees, thirty of which are the originals and have grown on these terraces for somewhere in the region of two hundred and fifty to three hundred years. Their trunks are wrinkled and gnarled like old elephant skin. The younger trees, planted by our absent proprietor, are barely twenty-five years old but for the most part are fruiting well. They are of a different variety known as tanche. The ancients, with their thick tormented trunks, are of the variety known as cailletier, the variety we have inherited.
René picks off a drupe and hands it to me to examine. “The cailletier is renowned for the rich golden oil it produces as well as its superior quality. It is a tree rustiqe perfectly capable of sustaining long periods of drought, and in times gone by, its oil was sought after by the perfume houses, particularly those in Grasse, because that golden hue was judged a marvelous addition to any scent.” Locally, it is known as the Nice olive and exists predominantly along this coastal strip. It grows taller than any other variety of olive tree yet produces the smallest fruit. Take a trip deeper into the hills of Provence, and you will discover shorter, stubbier varieties. This is a natural protection against the harsh mistral winds which blow fierce and unrelenting farther inland, at higher altitudes.
We trail from terrace to terrace, watching while René checks on the progress of his purpling fruit. Suddenly he stops, pulls a mottled leaf from one of the young zinc-gray trees and turns it over with a frown.
“Paon,” he says sombrely.
“Paon?” I repeat, surprised, looking about for exotic birds. The word means peacock.
He nods, then explains. The peacock was a domestic animal on many farms in this part of France. When the male struts and screeches and fans open its tail, the compelling blue and green plumage reveals a series of circular black spots. There is an olive tree malady, Cyclocodium Oleaginum, known in layman’s terms as oeil de paon, eye of peacock, because its fungus scars the silvery green foliage with round black spots before jaundicing the leaves, which eventually drop from the branches. He hands us the leaf, and we both examine it. “Watch out for it on your trees.”
Even to us amateurs, it is obvious that the leaf has turned a dusty yellow and is dappled with dark brown blotches. I am concerned for the welfare of the fruit, but he assures us that this particular ailment will not harm the olives at all. However, if ignored, the leaves will fall, denuding every branch. Within a year, he warns us soberly, the entire tree will be bald. And it spreads fast. It is highly contagious.
“After the harvest—it is too late for this season, I would risk poisoning the fruit—I will be obliged to treat every tree on every terrace here on this farm.”
Naive on my part, of course, but I had not even considered the dangers of olive tree maladies, and I am rather horrified to learn from René that there are nine insect or fungus diseases for which we will need to keep a wary eye out. Some of these can be carried by the tools used to prune the trees. In such cases, the tools need to be disinfected after the pruning of each and every tree. He laughs when he sees my expression and assures me that such cases are rare here, more common in Algeria.
During the drive home, I remark on the number of hilltop villages in this part of southern France and learn from Michel that most are built on sites originally chosen by marauding Saracens as strategic lookout points best suited for the building of fortresses. Once these bloodthirsty invaders had been defeated and the region reclaimed, villages were constructed on the ruins of the defeated territories to protect the people against the return of their enemies or the arrival of future aggressors.
The Saracens—a collective name for Arabs, Moors, Berbers and Turks—have been painted by history as a thoroughly disreputable lot, invaders who did nothing for the region besides rape and pillage, but in fact made certain contributions to local learning and tradition. They taught the Provençal people much about natural medicines and how to utilize the bark of the cork oaks to make cork—where would the wine industry have been without it?—and to extract resin from the numerous regional pines. Their other significant addition to local culture was to teach the native people how to play the tambourine—not that I can own to having noticed a single sun-wrinkled Provençal roaming about the village streets or his places des boules, watched over by the silent shadows of towering plane trees, happily tapping his tambourine.
Dropping back toward the sea, descending into a gentler clime, we drive by squads of people mustering in the numerous country lanes and hidden grasslands. They are sporting baskets and sticks and do not look as though they are embarking on jolly weekend rambles; they seem intent on some far more seriou
s activity. And indeed they are.
“It’s the funghi season,” Michel reminds me. Ah yes, I remember the group I confronted on our own hill the previous autumn and suggest to Michel that it might be fun to try our hands at mushroom picking.
There is a village in Italy in the Apennines named Piteglio where, in the late nineteenth century, the inhabitants used to gather during the funghi season and collect three thousand pounds of mushrooms every day. We are neither so actively committed nor in possession of a hill quite so fecund. Nevertheless, on Sunday morning, a gentle, sunny late-October day, we go mushroom picking. Clad in Wellingtons as protection against the brambles and damp undergrowth, we pick our way up to the brow of our hill, where blocks of sunlight cut sharp right angles through the lofty trees. This is a delightful way of working up a thirst and an appetite for lunch, I soon discover. I hear and then catch sight of a woodpecker and a pair of whoopees. The earth is spongy underfoot and crackly from the sinking layers of pine needles. The scent of humid pine hangs in the air as we bend and forage. Fat cones, like sleeping Humpty Dumptys, turn and roll in our wake. The mushrooms are everywhere, barely hidden, soft and slippery, pushing up through the damp earth and pine needles. I have to watch my step or I squash them, or the big brown snails I find hidden on twigs and runkled leaves. Rich dark soil slides beneath my fingernails as I scratch and scoop at its surface. I want to feel the silky mushroom textures, but I am unsure about touching them. I am no expert and have little idea which of the funghi, the champignons, are edible and which are poisonous, and Michel is barely better informed. But, we tramp the woods merrily, searching and gathering with vigor, storing our hoard in woven wooden baskets. Once back at the house, working at our long table in the garden, we sort them carefully into floppy heaps according to their shape, size and possible variety. We have done rather well, and I fear we may end up wasting them.
“No, if they are all edible,” Michel says, “we’ll cook some in vinegar to preserve as antipasto.”
We place one example of each onto a tray, careful not to damage them, then hasten to the village. Our regular pharmacie is closed on Sunday mornings, so we visit another, where a thin, stooped pharmacist with greased flat hair peers at our pickings with disdain.
“I wouldn’t touch any of them” is his pronouncement.
We are silenced by disappointment.
“Are you sure, none at all?”
With the tips of two tweezerlike fingers, his pinky curled in the air like an old maid sipping tea, he begins lifting one after another by their tufted or fleshy stems still thick with dried earth. He twizzles each one in turn, glares at it and then tutts.
“Faux, faux,” he accuses, damning each poor vegetable before dropping it as though it were excrement back onto the tray. “Eat them if you like, but I wouldn’t.”
Michel picks up a vaguely mottled ocher example and offers it for consideration. “I thought perhaps this might be un lactaire, non?”
“Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn’t.”
Michel turns the mushroom over to convince the pharmacist. Beneath its fleshy cap, its corrugated belly, the gills are undeniably reddish. He breaks the stalk in two. The flesh inside is also red.
“Oui, peut-être ça c’est de la variété lactaire,” this dry-spirited chemist concedes without enthusisam. “You might try that one but none of the others. They are champignons vénéneux. Even that one might be riddled with maggots.” And with that he disappears, determined not to be moved to any height of joy.
“Merci, Monsieur,” we call after him with a twinkle.
We return home carrying our tray heavy with assorted poisons, to our table in the autumnal garden piled high with our seven stacks.
“I think he may have been a little damning of our efforts, but we better not risk it.” Dear Michel, he patiently gathers up our morning’s efforts and dumps the entire harvest into the dustbin. One dustbin full of decomposing, deadly mushrooms, and eight edible lactaire. Hardly competition for the Italian peasants in the village of Piteglio, but more than sufficient for our own consumption. Not even vaguely downhearted, we lunch sumptuously on our eight home-grown mushrooms, sliced into slivers and simmered lightly in olive oil seasoned with garlic, salt and pepper and chopped herbs from the garden, served with grated Parmesan and washed down with a bottle of red from Châteauneuf-du-Pape, all on the terrace in the autumn sunshine.
We learn later from our own pharmacist that the mushrooms we have eaten are known as lactaire délicieux or, in English, saffron milk-caps. “They grow beneath pine trees and are excellent.”
We vouch for their delicious nutty flavor and confirm that we gathered them from the summit of our hill in the pine forest.
“The Russians preserve them in salt, you know.” He shows us the chart he keeps on display for ignoramuses such as us, and we see at least one from those we threw in the dustbin. It is the large white variety known here as faux mousseron or, in English, fairy-ring mushroom. I am very taken with the notion that we have fairy rings of any sort on the land. On our way home, still in a mushroom mood, we stop off at the vegetable market and buy half a kilo of ceps to add to a risotto.
It is a perfect evening at the end of a tranquil, uneventful and too-short day, even though the clocks have gone back an hour. Already the sun is setting, and it is growing chilly. Lights on the hills are illuminated. Everywhere the comforting whiff of wood smoke trails the dusk. Michel is stoking the fire while, a terrace beneath him, I creep naked into the pool. A fig leaf turned saffron with the season falls from the tree and floats into the water to accompany me. The cold shocks my system, and my toes and fingers start to tingle. I splash and throw my body in unflinchingly, swimming fast and determinedly, growing accustomed to the icy temperature. I pound up and down, not daring to slow in case my flesh numbs. Then I leave the pool, heart pounding, flesh zinging, and run around the garden whooping and calling like an Indian on the warpath. The dogs are barking at me, and Michel runs out onto the terrace to see what is up. I am laughing lightheartedly.
“I think there must have been hallucinogens in the mushrooms,” he calls and returns inside to more constructive chores.
A DELUGE OF RAIN descends. Tropical in its intensity, it shocks. Day after day, it sheets across the hills making it impossible to discern the line of horizon between sea and sky. The sky glowers blackly. The days are somber. Drops the size of dinner plates splash into the pool, which looks as though it may burst its banks and roll like Niagara onto the terraces.
We are confined to the house, to our books and projects. To wine and food, to each other. I am at work on my scripts again, reshaping them to include Michel’s observations, but there are times when the labor goes slowly and I lose confidence and spend restless hours pressed against the long, steamy windows staring out at the clouds which have hidden the valley from sight. We are very short of money. I need to press on if we are to secure a contract to shoot next summer. The rain drips and sloshes, gushing and gurgling urgently from every pipe. Lightning strikes; the electricity goes dead. We run through the rain to the garage and switch the trip back on. It flicks on and then off again. We live by candlelight. Thunder rolls and roars. The dogs howl and whine, terrified. We drag them in by the fire to soothe and dry them. The rooms are pervaded with the smell of wet dog.
The baked land welcomes the weather. The plants suck it up greedily, but we are less grateful, for we are discovering cracks and fissures we didn’t know existed. Under the French doors, the water sneaks in and settles in puddles on the tiles. I hasten to the bathroom to fetch towels. I hear dripping and running and splashing everywhere, a cacophony of water music. Back and forth I go, armed with bowls and plastic pails to plug the invasive percussion. Fortunately, Di Fazio’s roof is holding. At every minute, I expect the whole thing to come crashing down on top of us, but this is an ancient house built of sterner stuff. It may shift and leak and groan like an old man sleeping, but it will never fall down.
Eventually, the rain s
tops. The sky clears instantly and returns to its crisp laundered blue. It smiles seductively as though the torrents never happened. The sun bursts brightly forth, the days grow warm again and my mood lifts.
The wise men of the olive world say that, as with the grape, the sun of September determines the quality of the fruit, but here is the difference: rain in October and early November is essential to give the drupe that final, essential burst of growth. Unlike most northern-hemisphere produce, the olive is not harvested in the autumn. It still has another six weeks’ to two months’ growth, and a nicely plumped olive, with its pulp rich in minerals and vitamins, produces a greater quantity of quality oil.
But this year, nature’s waterwork has overreached itself.
We stalk the terraces, taking note of the damage and the phenomenal growth that has taken place in the space of a week. Fascinated by the light and the luxuriance of the vegetation, I seek out the scents and sounds of a rain-washed world like a dog trained for truffle hunting. The orange trees, dead as mummies when we bought the house and which we have watched creeping back to life throughout the summer months, are now sharp, five feet tall, brilliant green spears of life. And, what is more miraculous to me, they are laden with round green balls. Minuscule oranges.
Such renascence hardly seems possible. I close my eyes. Like a squirrel preparing for harsh days, I store the fact that rebirth is a resource of life. Some creeping shadow warns me that I will need to keep it in mind.
A few feet to the left of the oranges, among the tufted grass at the root of the prehistoric olive trunks, I detect puddles of purple and green, tiny hard pellets. I pick one up to examine it and identify it as unripened olive fruit which the force of the rain has driven from the branches. I call to Michel, who is bent on his haunches to photograph a harvest of bulbs which have metamorphosed into dwarf-size narcissi overnight.
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