A Pinch of Time Read online

  I’d forgotten the heart that Gé had engraved in the wood! Hidden from prying eyes, a metre from the ground, on the side where the trunk is only thirty centimetres from the terrace’s retaining wall. A heart with an arrow through it: “G loves D.” The naïve symbol of an illusory future.

  Even the quaint name of Caterwaul Lane had disappeared. That backwards part of the village now had an arrogant faience plaque, pompously claiming a new title: “Old Kiln Quarter.” Need I say more? The page has been turned, vaï!

  THIRTY

  Antoine brought us into his workshop.

  “In Moustiers, you make faience and not porcelain?”

  “We don’t make, have never made and, hopefully, will never make anything other than faience. Porcelain is an industry; faience is for artists.”

  He took a plate and broke it on the edge of a table.

  “Look, Nela, the red earth inside it: our earth! Black dirt that’s fertile, that produces what’s called ‘yields,’ where farmlands and pastures grow – we have none of that here. Our earth is poor. But it’s fine too, warm in tone and soft to the touch.”

  He put a humid lump in Nela’s hand.

  “Feel the smoothness: a real caress! That is our Provençal earth – earth for artists. With it, everything becomes easy. Remember, Dodo, you take it, you knead like this, you shape it. Then you cook it: 1,020 degrees Celsius. Here, in this oven.”

  “You don’t use the old one anymore?”

  “No, these days they’re all electric and a hundred times easier to adjust. The secret of all great ceramics is the way the piece is cooked. The solidity of the piece depends on that.”

  He took a fragment.

  “It’s very hard. Break this piece.”

  “I see what you mean.”

  “Then – you know this, Dodo – you deburr the piece, you touch it up, you play with it until you get what you want. Then it’s time to temper it in semi-liquid raw enamel. There, in that tub. Personally, I use only the traditional process, applying the motif with the grand feu technique on raw enamel. A secret Pierre Clérissy learned from a monk in Faenza. Then comes the most delicate part of the operation: the decorations. Your work has to be perfect, because it’s impossible to touch it up if you make a mistake.”

  “And what do you do when you mess up?”

  “Look, over there, that big garbage can. Just toss it in!”

  He put his words into action. A long shot through the air… basket! He obviously wasn’t short on practice, old Toinou!

  “So the pieces you don’t mess up are done?”

  “Daïsé, Nela, not so quick! Once they’re decorated, they’re cooked a second time: nine hundred degrees Celsius, to fix the colours and whiten the enamel. You remember, Dodo, when my father and grandfather let us in here? We circled them like flies until they let us show what we were able to do.”

  “All I remember is that I wasn’t very good at it!”

  “Gérard was good, especially for the motifs. Would you like to try, Nela?”

  “Why not?”

  “All right. Take a piece of clay here, right, and roll it in your hands until you get the shape of an olive. Then crush it with your thumb, like so. Show me. Good. You now have a flower’s corolla. Then sculpt it with this knife: the petals, the pistil, the stamen…”

  “Hum. Like this?”

  “Exactly, trim a bit off here. Good. Now make us a stem: five centimetres long, no more. No, slimmer. Good. Attach it to the corolla.”

  “Okay. And what if I bend the stem a little?”

  “Good idea. It’ll be prettier still.”

  Meanwhile, the oven’s heat indicator rose. It would be almost ready for the first cooking by the time Nela finished the colours.

  “Okay, follow my lead here. Yellow first. Good. Now, with the edge of the knife, draw the petal’s veins.”

  And there was Nela’s bouquet: cornflowers, peonies, and buttercups, all with brilliant corollas. Twelve knife-holders that would be cooked in the “grand feu” style, in scarcely more time that the Courbons, bakers from father to son, would need to make their anchovy fougasse.

  Our visit to Moustiers would last only two days. Two days during which we visited every corner of the village, crisscrossing the streets looking for long-lost friends always happy to see me certainly, but their words quickly turned to bitter reflections. Two days spent in a dizzying search for things that no longer were. Soon it was time to leave. Soon the tourists would arrive, and just the idea of being stuck among the hordes of mass tourism made me shudder. I was impatient to quickly put distance between myself and this unspeakably sad present.

  We left the land of my childhood through wide doors open to the sky – the Verdon gorges! A few kilometres higher and we reached the hilltop village of Aiguines. Barely noon and time to eat. We stopped at the Altitude 823 Restaurant long enough for scrambled eggs with truffles and a pan of sanguins, those delicious brick-red mushrooms that grow at the foot of pine trees. A long look over the Sainte-Croix Lake, dotted with tall multicoloured sails… An instant of happiness in which all but the tranquil scene and rich flavours had lost its importance.

  Then, back on the road. We climbed a few kilometres and left the forest that surrounded the village behind, then came upon the ramparts of the Verdon. Nela was eager to see the Emerald Valley that I’d spoken of so highly since our arrival in France. A real mountain road, full of twists and hairpin turns, three hundred metres above a torrent swirling in its narrow bed. The road forced us to slow down and imposed a slow contemplation of the landscape, which pleased my navigator. “Stop, Dominique!” She would have taken a picture at every new vista – the Sublime Cornice, the Cavaliers’ Cliff, the Mescla Balcony… Blown away, mouth agape, Nela fell silent. Anything you could say about the imposing cliffs and vertiginous peaks would be inferior to reality.

  The road led us to the medieval village of Trigance, from which we would quickly descend all the way to the coast.

  THE CURTAIN FALLS

  A wonderful start to the evening: twenty-three degrees at six o’clock. In Toronto, autumn is a season of colours. The leaves on our trees are beginning to redden, and soon enough they’ll lose them in a blaze of ochre and brown, scarlet and red. Except, of course, for our beautiful blue fir that will resist the cold and snow all winter long.

  We would have our aperitif on the terrace and our meal in the dining room, with the door to our yard open, of course.

  On the table covered with a white Portuguese tablecloth, each faience flower is set above and to the right of the plate, lined up with the three glasses.

  A simple meal, truly Provençal. As an hors d’oeuvre, we’d have toasted bread with tapenado on them (an easy recipe: crush black olives, capers, anchovies, a clove of garlic, pepper to taste and a drop of olive oil – then add half a glass of booze “to make the olives sing,” as Eugène would say) and a few other spreads, wild boar pâté perfumed with juniper berries (easier still; just open the can). As the main course, a magnificent pistou soup! Followed by a cheese plate (goat and ewe, mostly) and a mesclun of various greens (the vinaigrette: olive oil, wine vinegar, a hint of garlic – and two or three basil leaves, yes, absolutely!). Then, to finish, the toucinho de céu and a profusion of oreillettes (Nela’s magnificent interpretation, once again, following Henriette’s recipe, though calling them filhós), not forgetting a few California figs and other chilled fruits. And, of course, coffee, tea or herb tea (linden). Not to mention the fruit brandies.

  Nela would start making the oreillettes around six-thirty (the dough had been waiting since our return from Nova Era), and I would begin the tapenado and the vinaigrette around seven. (She would have finished the oreillettes then; best not to be in the kitchen at the same time). Our guests wouldn’t arrive until seven-thirty, “French time.” I would heat the soup up then – gently: “Pistou butter must never cook!” Virginie would say.

  The cycle of my French pistou soups would last more than half a century: fr
om the summer of 1943 to the autumn of 1998 – from the very first that my mother made us in Moustiers out of nothing at all until the last one she made us in Marseille, as per Gérard’s request.

  In between, death had been at work in our family. Roger was the first to go, killed at the wheel of his Berliet after hitting a sheet of ice and sliding into a plane tree. Then it was Aunt Marie’s turn; she had heart trouble. Followed six years later by her mother, Grandma Rose, whose life ended in bitter despair. My father died in the early 1980s. The following decade, everyone went: Uncle Émile, his son Jean, Uncle Eugène, Félix, Aunt Henriette, then Aunt Virginie, stricken like her mother by the loss of her child. All gone in the space of seven years.

  Under this avalanche of bereavement, my mother, then an octogenarian, was like the walking dead. In other words, she fell into deep depression, and her talent in the kitchen suffered too. Her autumn 1998 pistou, prepared on the occasion of one of my many trips to Marseille, was completely ruined. Not paying attention properly, my poor mother had bought the wrong variety of basil. And her soup was thin and not smooth at all. The noodles weren’t cooked enough, the potatoes had been forgotten and so had the ham. A real catastrophe! Perhaps, subconsciously, she no longer wanted to pit her cooking skills against her dead sister Virginie’s. I’ll always remember Gérard’s face and the look he threw me behind his aunt’s back. On his face I could read criticism, resignation, and much compassion for her shipwrecked soul. He bravely let himself be served again and, he – ordinarily so picky – ate his second bowlful down to the last spoonful without flinching. And to think it would be his last pistou. Now there is no one left in Marseille to turn the pestle in the mortar…

  For Gérard, the consecutive deaths of his father, brother, and mother were like thrusts of a knife of pain that entered each time more deeply. He had never married, and now he felt like a shipwrecked man on a deserted island. Without warning, he had to face himself, convinced that there would no longer be anything interesting in life. Through his open wounds, an immense lassitude and incurable taedium vitae poured into him. When, at my initiative, we would conjure up our childhood memories – stockings that didn’t owe their silk to the mulberry tree, trains of which he was the great conductor, our epic gastropod hunts – he was barely able to smile. I would say to him, “When you’re better…” But he let himself be taken by the first sickness that came along, on the eve of the new millennium that he obstinately refused to enter. And that my mother, already in her ninth decade, would be the first to leave, six years after her nephew.

  Now, in Toronto, my pistou soups are no longer what they used to be. Exotic with their Provençal accent (no, Gé, I’m not exaggerating), they represent my personal and occasional contribution to meals with my Canadian friends. Typical Canadians, meaning that their origins are diverse enough that, if ever there’s another Flood, they could fill out the crew of a new ark that this time would be charged with saving the human race.

  At the end of the evening, once the guests have left, I help Nela do the dishes. And if, as I’m drying our beautiful tureen from Moustiers, the good genie we are all waiting for would appear and offer me three wishes, the first that would come to mind would be, my time come – in hora – to find myself at a long table on a sea of clouds next to my cousin Gérard. Then, following the order that they themselves have chosen, my beloved Mireille next to Grandma Rose, my Popaul and my Roger shoulder to shoulder, and Aunt Henriette and Nela (who would be discussing filhós and oreillettes), Aunt Marie and Uncle Émile, and Félix, Jean and Lili, my other cousins.

  Then, Virginie would arrive, tureen in hand, escorted by her faithful Eugène. And everyone would applaud long and hard around that joyous table, while a few available leaves would wait in a corner for future generations.

  “And Virginie’s soup, Eugène, how would it be?”

  “The most fragrant, the most satiny, the smoothest, the tastiest of any pistou!”

  For six to eight people

  Ingredients:

  For the soup:

  2 yellow onions

  6 potatoes

  4 zucchini

  1 small leek

  300 grams dried beans (red and white)

  The pistou “butter”:

  6 garlic cloves

  6 ripe tomatoes

  2 cups fresh basil leaves

  300 grams grated cheese (parmesan, gruyere, and red dry Edam, 100 grams each)

  For the combination:

  500 grams pasta (tortiglioni or penne rigate)

  200 grams snow peas

  1 slice of ham without the skin (San Daniele)

  olive oil

  sea salt

  pepper

  Preparation:

  1. The Soup

  In a heavy kettle, sauté the onion in two spoonfuls of olive oil. Then pour in 2 litres of salted water. Bring to boiling and add the vegetables, except for the peas and the tomatoes. Boil vigorously. After cooking 45 minutes, remove the beans and blend the mixture.

  2. The Pistou Butter

  In a mortar, begin by crushing the garlic, tomatoes and basil leaves with a good pinch of sea salt. Slowly add 10 mL of olive oil. Then add the grated cheeses, continuing to blend with the pestle until the “butter” is smooth.

  3. The Combination

  Mix together the soup and the butter while heating. Cook the pasta in the combined ingredients (12 to 15 minutes). Five minutes from the end, add the snow peas. Then, when everything is cooked, add the diced San Daniele ham just to warm it through. Let the pistou stand several hours. Reheat before serving.

  Afterword

  The Provençal Language in Moustiers and Marseille in the 1940s

  During the time in which this book takes place, the countryside of Provence was largely bilingual, whereas in Marseille, the Provençal language appeared only through the local variation of French.

  In Moustiers, the population, no more than three hundred souls, speaks Provençal as its mother tongue and French as its official language. Learned at school, where Madame Dupuis kindly asks the pupils to leave their “patois” at the door, French takes over at the post office, the police station, and at the doctor’s and notary’s offices. Though it shows up only sporadically, and according to the individual’s looks, you might say, at the butcher’s, the baker’s, and the grocer’s (an Italian), and is very rarely invited to the gossip sessions where women knit on the church square and to the men’s sacrosanct games of boules, where many a glass is raised.

  As for the population of Marseille, the largest city outside of Paris, it has always been one of many colours, and therefore polyglot, as we see in the scene at the Saint-Charles train station. Still, it is made up of mostly Provençal people. Though that is the demographic reality, between the two world wars, the Provençal language lost its status, defeated by a language that was both national and international. That’s business for you. But before its retreat, that clever language was able to leave its trace in the singsong accent of Marseille,[11] a type of French that, like Massalia itself, born of the distant couplings of foreign princes, sprang from the mixed northern and southern origins of the language itself.

  So, Antoine and his mother, cousin Marcel, cousin Jeanne, Tavé the gamekeeper – all these Moustiers characters use their Provençal at the slightest provocation, whereas Uncle Eugène, Virginie, her sisters, young Dominique’s cousins and all the rest of the family speak the particular language of Marseille quite naturally, and use Provençal only occasionally and approximately. Where Madame Audibert says pécaïré, Grandma Rose settles for peuchère, a Frenchified version of that interjection.

  Perfectly bilingual, Uncle Émile, who has made a career for himself as a Marseille harbour fireman, is a special case. Just like Uncle Roger, a native of Toulon, who has known Moustiers forever, thanks to his older sister who married, like Aunt Marie, a pure-blooded son of the soil. Roger’s deep knowledge of the place, the customs, and the language of the countryside helps him revive a moribund conve
rsation with the shepherd Pau-Parlo (“of few words”) who, “having unlearned to speak because of excessive solitude,” settles for a wave of his hand and a smile.

  All these estrangié words that fill A Pinch of Time are easy to understand, thanks to their context. They should not prove indigestible for our gentle readers.

  Endnotes

  1 Translator’s note: The expression baiser Fanny means to score no points in a match. The losers of a pétanque game who didn’t manage to score a point, in the South of France, had to kiss the behind of a female cardboard cutout (sometimes a sculpture or naked buttocks made of clay).

  2 Created by Pierre Laval’s government under orders from the German authorities, the CWS (or Service du travail obligatoire in French) sent some 650,000 people (including 40,000 women) to Germany to join the prisoners of war, “the 1940 guys” who numbered about a million. It is estimated that some 260,000 people managed to escape the CWS.

  3 The French Militia (called the Milice) was a political police force that the Vichy regime created at the end of January 1943, based on the Gestapo. Under the supervision of its founder, Joseph Darnand, also its Secretary-General, it followed Pétain’s ideology of forceful repression and was the most patent symbol of collaboration with the invader. After occupation, repression.

  4 On November 7th and 8th, 1942, under the American General George Smith Patton, an Anglo-American force got a foothold in Algeria and Morocco. Operation Torch was a military success that worried the Germans. In the home country, retaliation was immediate: the Huns took over our fields on the 11th – a symbolic date – and began to devour our potatoes. Economic exploitation was a heavy burden for France, which quickly became the primary food source for the Reich. Vichy said nothing. But the Résistance quickly declared its intentions. On November 27th, French sailors off Toulon were surprised at dawn by elite units of the Kriegsmarine, and preferred to scuttle their ships rather than let them fall into enemy hands.