Picnic in Provence

What would happen, dear reader – if we decided, one day soon - very soon - to have lunch a bit south of here? Provence to be exact. Just a simple picnic of oozing goat cheese from Banon, wrapped in a chestnut leaf. A wooden panier of the first white peaches, downy with fuzz. I haven’t found the good bread yet, but the local boulangerie sells a excellent apple cake – moist and yellow with the give of slow cooked apples and the glint of sugar crystals on top. Would you care to join me? Let me explain. We've done something a bit crazy. We've up and moved. To Provence. A small village called Cereste, about an hour outside of Avignon. I’ve been keeping it under wraps because I didn’t want to jinx what, until now, seemed like a long shot - a distant dream. I love Paris; it’s been my home for nearly a decade – maybe even the first real adult home I’ve ever had. But G. and I have been looking to make some changes – refresh and take charge of our personal and professional lives – and of course, give Augustin, who just turned 10 months old – a world of green to conquer.We found the house by happy accident. My husband is a great admirer of René Char, famous French poet and leader in the Resistance during WWII. Last Spring, when I was 6 months pregnant and unable to fly, we decided to take our Easter holidays in the South of France – to explore the region where Char lived during the war – the landscapes and events described in his most famous poems.

When we arrived in Cereste, our English hosts were curious. They were accustomed to guests passing through for a day or two on a tour of the hilltop villages nearby – but here we were, a round and waddling woman and a frankly tired looking man, staying for ten days. We know now, it was a date with destiny.

When our hostess learned about our special interest in René Char – she got very excited. Turns out, history was living just up the road. During the war, Char had a passionate relationship with a young woman from the village, whose own husband was a prisoner of war of Germany. Char’s lover had a daughter, Mireille, who was 8 years old in 1940. Now 76, she had just written a book about her childhood with René Char. Would we care to meet her…

And so it went. The next afternoon we found ourselves invited for coffee in Mireille’s vaulted stone sitting room, the ground floor of the old postal inn they had meticulously renovated – looking at letters in Char’s hand, his pencil box, his radio equipment – listening to tales of the Resistance, the Gestapo, and Char helping her with her homework by the fire. In true Provencal style, we lingered on through the afternoon: one coffee, a second, one cognac, and another.

Before we left, Mireille asked G. if he had any other questions. He did. Char refused to publish under the German occupation; instead, he buried his manuscripts in the cellar of Mireille’s family home. After the liberation in 1945, dug up the notebooks and sent them to his close friend, the author Albert Camus, in Paris. Published as Feuillets d’Hypnos, these poems remain Char’s masterpiece. Where, G. asked, was this famous hole in the floor? That’s easy, said Mireille, we still own the house.

The next morning, we found ourselves in the 17th century cellar of La Maison Pons, which had been Mireille's family home for 5 generations. Gwendal and I ducked as we followed Mirelle down the impossibly narrow steps at the far end of the room. The vaults of sand colored stone above our heads gave the space a slight chill, which, apparently, extends even into the heat of the Provencal summer. Mireille cleared away some empty wine bottles and pointed to a low wooden shelf, about a foot from the earthen floor. “That’s where Char buried his manuscript,” she said. “He came back for it after the war.”
Gwendal looked down. This is the man I love, I thought. A man who can be so visibly moved by a dent in the dirt.

“We used to store pigs down here,” continued Mireille, “In those days we ate everything. We sealed the cutlets in a layer of fat, and when you wanted one, you would dig it out.” As we were turning to leave, she stamped her foot on the packed earth floor. “My uncle Rene – he was Char’s driver during the war – before he died he said their might still be guns buried under here. But we never looked.”

We entered the house through the small sitting room, it's open fireplace stained with smoke. It was a strange little house, two steps up and three steps down to every room. Walls thick and cool and white.

Before we left, we went out to the garden, two large stone terraces overlooking the surrounding fields. “You can feel that your family was happy here,” I said. “We were,” she smiled briefly, “but I am sad now. I gave this house to my daughter, thinking that she would come back to the village, but instead she wants to sell it.”

And there it was. Our date with destiny. We both felt something of our future in these walls. We went back to the B&B, spent a sleepless night in front of an excel spreadsheet, and the next morning went back to ask them if we could buy the house….

It's taken the better part of a year to get ourselves sorted. One of the oddest things about writing and launching the Lunch in Paris book these past few months is that I've been reflecting on the past while also trying to construct our future. So here we go. We are off on a new adventure, and I hope you’ll join us. There’s so much to discover.

Char said it best:

Impose ta chance, serre ton bonheur et va vers ton risque. A te regarder, ils s'habitueront.

Les Matinaux (1950)

Impose your chance, hold tight to your happiness and go toward your risk. Looking your way, they'll follow. (The translation is mine, and rather liberal...)