LITMIR.BIZ

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immediate impact of the sound waves from our courtyard.

      It’s probably just the dead nuns who collectively turn in their graves every time Sesame’s blues echo against the stonewalls of their convent.

      But on a weekday, when the children are at school and the grown-ups at work, it does sometimes become wonderfully quiet in the street. Then it’s just me and the soothing whirr of my computer. Sometimes the mistral wind howls around the corners of the house. Sometimes the cicadas sing as if they’re taking part in a talent contest. In winter a few snowflakes may swirl past the window. In autumn the leaves of the plane tree flutter endlessly downwards to form a rustling orange-brown carpet outside the door. Once a day, come sunshine and rain, I hear our postwoman’s scooter outside the gate. No other traffic, no noise, no excuse not to write. Alas.

      Then I’m reminded again of why I’m here. Not to perpetually wash dishes or stick plasters onto other people’s children’s knees or listen to my husband’s noisy chansons, but to write stories. And then I do that.

      Our house was once upon a time the village bakery, Madame Voisine tells us, and until a few decades ago the American’s house was the local school. Madame Voisine lives around the corner, opposite the lavoir, a kind of stone bath beneath a roof where for centuries the village women did their washing by hand. The good old days, Madame Voisine sighs, le bon vieux temps. Madame Voisine’s nostalgia for the good old days beside the lavoir is mainly due to her insatiable curiosity about her neighbours’ doings. Back then you could listen to the juiciest stories while scrubbing your sheets along with the other women. These days you sit all alone in your house and watch the sheets go round and round in your washing machine. These days you have to make so much more effort to find out what’s going on in other people’s homes!

      As you can gather, our street was once the social nucleus of the village: the bakery, the school and the church so conveniently close together – feeding the stomach, the mind and the soul all in one place, so to speak – with the communal laundry and gossip mill just a few steps away. These days, residents must indeed make a bit more effort. The current bakery is a block away, the school a block further still. And the church is hardly used any more except for weddings and funerals.

      The social nucleus, too, has moved, to a piece of open land behind the abbey. Here, on the banks of the Herein River, boules is played every summer afternoon. This is where you now hear the gossip you would previously have heard outside the church or at the laundry. Boules, also known as pétanque, is the common denominator in the village, the great equaliser, the binding factor between the pique-culs and the newcomers, between rich and poor, young and old. Even between men and women, these days. Although it remains a predominantly male game, in our village there are always women who play along.

      The only distinction made is that between serious players and everyone else. The serious ones gather at an official ground – three tidy lanes, stone benches for spectators in the shade of stately poplars, a wire fence to keep out the philistines. The philistines, in other words everyone else, play in the parking lot, in the park, in the square outside the church, wherever they can find a level piece of ground. It doesn’t have to be all that level either. The philistines play more for pleasure than for points. If the ground slopes a little to the right, or is so rocky that the iron balls veer off in unpredictable directions, that just makes the game more interesting. I know what I’m talking about. I’m one of the philistines.

      Yes, I’ve also become a fan of boules. I’m a woman who’s never had any patience with any sport before. But then, never before have I come across a sport that can be played with a glass of pastis in the hand.

      Not that I’m much of a pastis drinker. The cloudy aniseed drink tastes too much like liquorice for my liking. No, rather give me the glorious light red wine from the Côtes du Rhône vineyards. Raspberry cooldrink is what I call it. Just the thing to quench your summer thirst. But I must admit I like the story of how pétanque originated.

      Long, long ago it seems there was a more mobile Provençal ballgame called la longue. But on a historic summer’s day in 1910, a player was too drunk to manage the three steps that the rules required you to take before you threw the ball. So he aimed his ball from a stationary position – and voilà, a new game was born. Born out of pastis, you might say.

      That’s our town. Feel free to close your eyes and imagine you are sitting on the verandah of the bar across from the boules ground. You can hear the clink clink of the iron balls and the babbling of the river. Somewhere from deep inside the bar you can probably also hear Jean-Pierre’s voice. Haven’t I told you he’s always there? You can smell lavender and roses, ice cream and strong black coffee. And aniseed, of course. You raise the glass in your hand and take a careful sip of pastis. Just to see what it tastes like. Santé.

      Well. That’s the romantic version. The picture-postcard of life in Provence.

      The rest of this book is all about what you won’t find on a postcard.

      2 Ten weddings and a funeral

      The abbey opposite our house is still called L’Abbaye, but these days the triple-storey building with its large stained-glass window is used as a wine cellar. This is quite appropriate in this region around the Rhône River where wine has become a kind of religion. And believe me, a good bottle of Châteauneuf du Pape can indeed be a mystical experience.

      But the church stays a church. Although it’s no longer in use every Sunday, it is still a building where religious rituals are carried out. If you live opposite the church, these rituals inevitably influence the rhythm of your life. The hours of your day are measured by the bell in the stone tower. They say you get used to it, that after a while you don’t hear it anymore, the way you stop hearing the trains when you live next to a railroad. That may be true, but I’m nevertheless grateful that our bell isn’t one of those overzealous ones that sound every half-hour.

      Our bell is polite enough to raise its voice just three times a day. And not in an arrogant way, more like a shy little cough. Ting, ting, ting. The first little cough comes at seven in the morning to make sure you’re awake. Not quite loud enough to wake you if you’re not. At twelve noon, another little cough sounds to wish you bon appétit. And at seven in the evening, a final little cough calls the children home from the street, to come and bath, set the table, do the homework. Truly a civilised bell.

      When it comes to church rituals, however, the bell has a duty to perform. At Easter and Pentecost it calls urgently, pealing so that you can hear it throughout the village. If a couple are getting married, the bell shouts for joy. When someone is buried, the bell mourns. Slowly, solemnly, heartrendingly.

      Fortunately, there are more weddings than funerals, especially in summer when brides come from far and wide, even from other countries, to marry in the romantic stone chapel and hold a dazz­ling reception in the former abbey next door. The dead don’t come from far and wide, only from the immediate vicinity, and they die unscheduled throughout the year. But during summer I’d say that we have an exchange rate of around ten weddings for every funeral.

      The weddings are both a pleasure and a pain for those of us who live under the church’s wing. It’s always exciting to watch the preparations, the stone staircase of the abbey being decorated with bows and flowers, the caterers and musicians delivering their equipment, all the bustle that reaches a climax with the noisy arrival of the wedding party. It’s the custom here that every car in the wedding procession – and all passing cars, too – hoot loudly and persistently. Just so you’ll know that a wedding procession is on the way when they’re still in the next village.

      But this noise is nothing compared to what you can expect late at night. Once the reception is in full swing, we lie in bed listening to booming techno-music, disco from the seventies, American pop from the eighties and nineties and – much worse – French pop from any era. Now and again we’re surprised by a live music group that makes a more pleasant kind of noise. Last summer there was a jazz band hired by a wealthy British wedding party, which played the loveliest swing from the forties, with a hoarse singer who sounded exactly like Satchmo. We made our supper under the plane tree last until long past midnight and felt as if we had the most expensive

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