Encore Provence Read Free Page A

had been gutted prior to renovation. While he was walking away, he looked back at the snug fit of his car in what would one day be a shop window and nodded at it, a moment of bonding between man and machine. It was as if together they had achieved a significant victory.
    For me, moments that make up the texture of daily life define the character of Provence as much as the history or the landscape. And if I had to choose a single example of what I missed most in America, it would be a country market; nothing out of the ordinary, just the usual collectionof stalls that are set up each week in every town from Apt to Vaison-la-Romaine.
    They have an instant visual charm, these markets, with their bursts of vividly colored flowers and vegetables and their handwritten signs, the stalls shaded by ancient plane trees or tucked up against even older stone walls. They might have been artistically arranged for a postcard photographer, or for the high season, to be dismantled and forgotten at the end of summer. But you will find them in January as in August, because their bread and butter come from local inhabitants. The tourist is just a dollop of jam. Welcome, but not essential.
    Stall-holders and customers know each other, and so shopping tends to be slow and social. Old Jean-Claude’s brand new smile is much admired while he selects some cheese, and there is some debate as to the precisely appropriate texture, given his recently fitted dentures. A Brie would be too sticky. A Mimolette, too hard. Perhaps some Beaufort would be best, until the new teeth have had a chance to settle in. Madame Dalmasso is plunged into a state of profound suspicion by the tomatoes. It is too early in the year for these to be local tomatoes. Where have they come from? Why hasn’t their place of birth been written on the sign? After some investigation—a squeeze, a sniff, the lips pursed—she decides to throw caution to the wind and to try half a kilo. A bearded man wanders back to his stall, a glass of rosé in one hand and an infant’s feeding bottle in the other. The bottle is for a baby
sanglier
that he has adopted, a tiny wild boar, its black snout twitching at the scent of milk. The flower lady gives my wife her change, then ducks under her stall to reappear with two freshly laid eggs which she gift wraps in a twist of newspaper.On the other side of the square, the tables outside the café are filling up. Above the hiss and clatter of the espresso machine, a voice from Radio Monte Carlo, in raptures of enthusiasm, describes this week’s competition. Where do they find these people who never have to stop for breath? Four old men sit in a row on a low stone wall, waiting for the market to end and the square to be cleared so that they can play
boules
. A dog sits up on the wall next to them. All he needs is a flat cap and he’d look just like the men, patient and wrinkled.
    As the stall-holders begin to pack up, there is an almost tangible feeling of anticipation. Lunch is in the air, and today it is warm enough to eat outside.
    There are two undeserved results of our time on the other side of the Atlantic. The first is that we are thought of as experts in all things American, and are regularly consulted about events taking place in Washington and Hollywood (now almost the same place), as if we knew the politicians and film stars personally. The second is that we are in some way considered responsible for the spread of American tribal customs, and so we often find ourselves pinned to the wall by the accusing finger of Monsieur Farigoule.
    A self-appointed guardian of French culture and the purity of the French language, Farigoule can work himself into a lather over everything from
le fast-food
to
les casquettes de baseball
, which have begun to appear on previously bare French heads. But on this particular autumn day, he had something infinitely more grave on his mind, and when he leaped from his bar stool to corner me he was clearly very