Les Sacres du Printemps

Spring is a magical time – the maples and hornbeams are budding, dusting with pale green the grim lattice of dark bare branches that enclosed us all winter. With the birds back in force, the wisteria flowering and Wordsworth’s hosts of golden daffodils just finishing their annual march through the Quercy, the warm poetry of nature renewed can at last return to our frozen souls. I suppose my soul’s up for it, but quite frankly the rest of me is just too tired.

Every year it’s the same. When we close up the cottages for the winter, Sophia and I tell each other that this year, this year we will get most of the fixing up work done early, so that spring will not be stressful. And we always make a good start of it. But then winter makes its own demands and imposes its own limits. The cottages – not built with winter in mind – grow too cold to heat efficiently. So rather than struggle to get paint onto the walls before it freezes onto the brush, we shift our energies to the house, the land, other obligations. And next thing we know, there we are in March, every single March, making a mad dash to get the place in order before our first guests arrive for the Easter holidays.

It’s not just us – the entire countryside is on the move, getting ready for summer. Caves and castles are opening for business. Even the farmers seem intent on beautifying the place, carving the earth into immaculately ploughed fields, row after row of red-brown clouts of soil snaking deftly in synch with the surrounding landscape. When the tourists arrive, they will see the Quercy in its rightful state of pristine beauty, a land of sunshine and vineyards and clean tidy medieval villages.

Unfortunately the mass of work that goes into making everything picturesque seems to come all at once, and it’s not always so charming. Amid all the efforts to restore our surroundings to their perfect state of pretty, amid the cleaning and digging, the frantic painting and one particularly astounding feat of amateur electrician work that I honestly think could be compared to brain surgery, I found myself faced last Monday with yet another inconveniently-timed reminder of life’s less-picturesque side. I had to attend a school Parents Association (the “APE”) meeting.

I’m not going to prevaricate - these meetings are like dental surgery. I like the people, at least. Catherine the baker’s wife is the APE secretary, and she’s a good guarantee that the meeting will stay lively. Claire, Sylvie, Jean – I suppose I should be grateful for the social aspect of it. But after a few minutes of friendly chit chat, the fun and games stops, and the dark side of this otherwise idyllic world raises its venomous head. You see, apart from always cropping up when everyone is at their busiest, these meetings are entirely in French.

I don’t mean the language. That’s hard enough, granted, but the real issue is the French approach to doing business. There is a persistent Anglophone stereotype of the French as obsessed with talking in circles and hanging themselves up over bureaucratic nonsense. I get very defensive when confronted with stereotypes about the French, but this one’s true. Monday proved it. I spent three hours of my life listening to my dear friends talk about sausages.

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss arrangements for the Marché des Ecoles, the second annual plants and pastries sale we hold to raise money for everything from books to school outings. It was just growing dark but there was still a faint red glow on the honey-colored stones as I drove up the winding narrow road to the tiny hilltop village of Cassagnes for the meeting. This is good, I thought, this is real. We live here not to be permanent tourists gawking at pretty villages, but to integrate, to do my part. But the rosy glow vanished as soon as I entered that village hall. There were twelve people at that meeting, and at no point were less than four of them speaking. While the G20 tackled the global economic crisis in London, the Quercy G12 negotiated the details of sourcing and preparing the sausages and frites that are to be sold as lunch at the plant sale. The frites are sold in little open carton boxes. So do we need plates for the sausages? No, people put their sausages on top of their carton of french fries. But what about those people who want sausages but no fries? And what about bread? Is it included in the price of the sausage or do people need to pay extra. Should those who eat their sausages without bread be penalized by having to pay for bread they don’t want? We wouldn't want to show prejudice against all the Atkins diet aficionados in the Quercy, now would we? In English, viewed from a distance, it would have been worthy of Monty Python. Up close and in French, an hour of this becomes a human rights issue. 

And then, as if the various sausage and fries controversies weren’t enervating enough, things got political. I think there is some kind of strange rule that the smaller the community, the more complicated the politics. The three villages of Montcabrier, Cassagnes and St. Martin-le-Redon share a nursery and elementary school. The nursery school is at St. Martin and the elementary is in Montcabrier. Each of these schools has a separate Parents Association board, each with its own President, secretary and treasurer, as well as a second for each position. That makes a total of 12 Parents Association board members for a total of 48 kids.

Even in France this bureaucracy/constituency ratio of 1 to 4 seems kind of extreme, and yet, the simple suggestion of merging the boards has become a battle that makes the run-up to the invasion of Iraq look congenial. We Cabrimontains, as the largest village of our three-village regroupement scolaire, tend to let our power – we are nearly 400-strong, after all, compared to just under 200 souls in Cassagnes and in St. Martin -  give us imperial pretensions. Or so you might think listening to the debate. The fact is that the “debate” seemed to center more around how to organize a vote on the issue. Is it appropriate just to let people tick a box, or must we hold a meeting? The conclusion was that if we hold a meeting, only the people against the merger would bother to show up. But the by-laws seem to require a meeting, and a group of die-hards from St. Martin would insist on their God-given rights. We discussed the various options, and heard several impassioned pleas for a democratic resolution (including assured anonymity in the balloting procedures) until midnight rolled around. Had we stayed any longer, I have no doubt we would have discussed dimpled chads.

As it was, we finally all agreed not to vote on whether or not to have a vote, and then opened a bottle of cider and a packet of cookies to celebrate. Democracy was tested and endured, and the treasured independence of the good people of St. Martin was preserved.

We all stacked the chairs and tables back against the wall of the village hall, turned out the lights and locked the doors before heading home. It was a clear night, the roads silent and empty as I wound my way down the Theze Valley toward home. The moon hung as a yellow crescent low on the horizon, a Cheshire Cat grin suspended in the darkness. Not a single reason to object to the merger had been produced in that entire three-hour meeting. The moon kept smiling, and I couldn’t help but smile back. Sometimes I have no idea why we’re here. I’m still glad we are. 

A Moment of Epiphany

Our son came home from school with the fève yesterday. He always does.

Every year when we are packing away the Christmas decorations and Epiphany rolls around, Sebastian starts talking about the Galette des Rois and the fève, or bean, he is certain he will find inside. It’s a wonderful tradition. The galette, a pastry usually filled with frangipane, is supposed to contain one bean. Whoever gets the bean is “king” for the day. Sebastian, a six-year-old born to the purple if ever there was one, comes home with the bean and a little paper crown every year.

Of course the bean stopped being a bean more than a century ago, and was replaced by tiny ceramic figurines. In the old days they were little nativity figures, so whoever got to be king would come home with a miniature angel or Baby Jesus to put among other childhood keepsakes. Modernity being what it is, these days your child is far more likely to turn up a character from the latest Pixar film than a Biblical figure. I have to admit, that sharp little piece of ceramic lurking in my son’s dessert seems alarmingly easier to swallow than the corporate crassness of replacing Mary and Joseph with Asterix and Obelix. But the look on Sebastian’s face when he puts on his paper crown makes the risk seem worth it. He hasn’t broken a tooth yet.

Now, I’m not one to doubt my little boy’s suitability to be king every year, but I couldn’t help becoming a bit suspicious. At school they go through several of those pies every January, and Sebastian’s figurine collection is starting to pose storage problems. “I think there was more than one fève in that galette.” he ventured cautiously, interspersing his accented English with perfectly pronounced French words. “Actually, lots of kids got one.” This didn’t seem to diminish the excitement in the slightest.

When Sophia commented that the ones we buy at the supermarket have only one figurine, his highness shot us an exasperated look. “No, but Danielle’s dad made the galette for our school lunch. He must have put in lots of fèves.” He looks at his figurine proudly - this one is a somewhat sleazy-looking man in a yellow suit, with bits of almond filling still lodged under the ridge of his jacket. “Can I watch some television?”

I’ve never met Danielle’s father – unfortunately chance has dictated that I will always imagine him as a sleazy-looking man in a yellow suit – but he has made my day. Beyond the fact that our son survived yet another encounter with a school-sponsored choking hazard, I love knowing who baked Sebastian’s Galette des Rois. When I try to imagine a similar thing happening back in the US or in England, I keep running up against images of concerned parents objecting on the basis of hygiene laws, legal responsibility, child safety… Offering homemade pies from relatives of school employees – Danielle cooks the school lunches, among other things – seems to my American legal mind like a potential liability issue. Back home, perhaps it would be.

But the French, bless them, just don’t see it that way. It’s not that there is any lack of regulations. On the contrary, the French love them, and French bureaucrats are famous for wielding them with astonishing inflexibility and even a certain sinister pleasure. But, especially out here in the countryside, the law is made to be ignored if it gets in the way of more important values, like food.

This relaxed Gallic approach to rules has its downsides, as anyone who has managed to survive driving in France will appreciate. But in a tiny community like this, it’s priceless. Rules exist to guide behavior because, particularly in a large community, social norms are incapable of doing so. In a community of a few hundred people, however, where everyone knows everyone else (and, let’s be honest, is almost certainly everyone else’s cousin), the rules can be tucked in a drawer, to be pulled out only in time of need. As long as no one complains, there is no problem. No harm, no foul.

This doesn’t work in a community of strangers. Parents, as a general rule, don’t want random strangers feeding pies to their kids. But in a small community, there are no random individuals. Strange ones, perhaps, even a few scary ones. But in a village everyone is accountable to everyone. The cook in the school cantine is also your neighbor. Her husband works at your bank. Her brother-in-law is the cantonnier, the man in charge of local roadworks and other odd jobs around the village. And her father, turns out, is the guy who manages to pack all those figurines into the school’s Galettes des Rois. It’s all entre nous.

If it all sounds a little inbred and stifling, well, it can be. That guy who nearly got you killed by trying to pass you on a blind curve… before you start exploring fascinating subject of English versus French hand gestures, you may want to think twice about who he might be. Next week he could resurface as the grandson of the charming widow who lives in the farm up the road. He could be the mayor’s younger brother. Whoever he is, he is closer to you than you want him to be, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.

But this small town interconnectedness is also liberating. Danielle’s father is free to make his galettes for the schoolchildren. It allows Laurent the bus driver to give all the kids on his bus a piece of candy every day in symbolic defiance of his own diabetes (even in defiance of parents’ valiant but futile attempts to control how much candy their kids eat). In an age when, at least in the US, teachers cannot touch their pupils for fear of child abuse allegations, it allows Danielle to give the children hugs when they are down. In short, it paves the way for random acts of kindness.

And it means that Sebastian always gets to be king. This could be a problem…

"Flavor Week," French style

It’s so much fun to stereotype the French. The berets, the baguettes, the Pythonesque outraaaaaageous accents, it all begs for satire. Many of our preconceptions are, as one might expect, outdated, purely regional or just plain nonsense. Frogs legs, for instance. Yes, the dish exists, but after three years I have yet to see it on a menu. And berets, despite many Americans’ vague association of them with leftist European intellectuals, tend to be worn only by old French farmers, and even then they are not so common a sight anymore. And as far as I am aware monkeys, even here, do not eat cheese.

But this week I have been reminded that the legendary French obsession with food is, if anything, understated. The French are totally indifferent to breakfast, often sending their children to school on empty stomachs (which, when I think back to the Frosted Flakes of my youth, may not be such a bad thing). But the idea of a simple sandweeeesh for lunch is considered barbaric. So our village school has the luxury - deemed a necessity and sacred right in this blessedly civilized place – of its own kitchen for supplying the children with hot three-course lunches.

The things that come out of this kitchen are not quite what you’d find kids eating across the suburbs of America. The first course is generally soup, salad or cold cuts. Then meat and a vegetable side dish. We’re not talking turkey dogs and fries here: recent offerings have included duck breast, confit de canard (a traditional farmer’s dish of duck leg preserved in its own fat), veal ragout, quiche and courgettes gratinées, often followed by a cheese course. And then, yes, the occasional hamburger (the French way, no bun and blood rare).

But this masks the more important side of the Gallic food fixation. While it’s important what makes it onto the plate, more crucial is that the food be eaten from a plate, at a table, with others, and slowly. Food is not only about eating, it is about tradition, culture, a way of life. Process is as important as product. Montcabrier’s elementary school students – all 31 of them – sit down at table and eat their three course long lunches like little ladies and gentlemen. Comme il faut.

To shake things up a bit, this week Sebastian’s school is having its Semaine de Gout, badly translated as Flavor Week, intended to introduce the children to more exotic foods. In a country where they eat snails and reeking unpasteurized cheeses, that seemed to me like an ambitious goal, especially for first graders. But there I was losing track of the bigger picture. The French generally have little interest in foreign food – even in Paris you’re hard pressed to find much more than the occasional Vietnamese or North African restaurant as a nod to France’s colonial past. In a farming community like this one, where locally produced tripe and paté are the norm, Italian food counts as a cultural experience.

So Sebastian’s foray into international cuisine has included pizza, sauerkraut, and an unidentified meat in sauce which was meant to represent that most exotic of cultures – France. After all that excitement, I’m sure he’s relieved to come home every evening to his familiar old standbys like Thai green curry, and next week for the school menu to return to the comforting norm of duck confit.