From the above, it may sound like the weather has changed, and it has, but I have to say I think I love Narbonne more in the autumn than I loved it in the summer, and I loved it in the summer plenty. It’s not just because the tourists are gone (earning us more searching looks from the locals, to whom we have transitioned from annoying cash-cows to genuine curiosities), or because the short bursts of intolerable heat have passed, but because we are, at last, living real life among les vrais Narbonnais. The local shops that were closed in August have reopened, the kids are back in school, and the air is full of chatter. Plus, the athmosphere has cooled and the light, slanting in just so, has a tinge of warm orange to it, which casts everything in a nostalgiac glow, even though we have no idea what we should be nostalgiac for in a place where everything is still new.
Yesterday, riding out on my bike to pick up the kids, I had ten minutes to spare, so continued on past their school to the Rue Droit (which is the Via Domitia) to pick up some “milk.” As I went down the marbled cobblestone, I passed schoolgirls talking and laughing, some kids gathered in the square right before the Roman gateway to the old town sneaking cigarettes, and men putting out tables to get their restaurants ready for the first people in for supper. I passed Musique et Paroles, the big used music and bookstore that had been closed until the middle of September, now open and busy with people, and noted with delight the sign in their window: “We have lots of English books!”
Then to the little hole-in-the-wall grocer, a shop the size of four phone booths, packed to the ceiling with cans and bottles of wine and crackers and cookies, and on the floor a couple small crates with onions, shallots, a few pieces of fruit. I bought my milk (the old gentleman squinting first at the prices and then at the coins I hand him) and then it was back on the bike to get the boys. All of it under this bronzed light and crisp, clean air. I feel sometimes these days that I’m living in a movie about someone else’s life. I keep waiting for an angry voice to call “cut!” and for someone to usher me off the set and back onto the 401 or wherever it is I really belong …
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With daily life comes increasing ritual, which is both soothing and pleasurable, and also a reminder that what was special six weeks ago is normal now. You might see it from the outside by the slowing pace of our posts to this blog: the rare has become common. There’s nothing wrong with this, as it doesn’t exactly equate to taking any of it for granted, but part of me feels sad at times about it because it means time is passing and I’m no longer marking it the way I once did. The weekdays are now settled: we all get up around 7:30, have some breakfast, and one of us walks the kids to school. That person then swings past Le Moulin, resists buying everything in the shop, and comes home with a baguette and perhaps a croissant or a treat for later.
It’s 9 a.m.
Unlike in Toronto (at least for me) the day remains open, like a gateway thrown wide on the view of a long road. For someone used to working in stolen hours, these long, free days are a revelation. I’ve written the last three long projects in my life in intense hour-long or two-hour-long spurts, plunging forward, blocking the madness of daily life out, and coming out the other end of these fragments of concentrated work feeling like I fit a watermelon into an acorn shell. Now, with all my time my own, I have to force myself to slow down. To stop and rethink the way I work. The way I read. Why it is I’m drawn to certain things. It’s not merely like being locked in a room with one’s self with no distractions: that’s exactly what it is. I love it, but it reminds me of one of the two recurring dreams I have: I’m walking down the street and spot something shining on the sidewalk. It turns out to be a coin. I bend down to retrieve it and see another one a couple of feet away. I go to get that one and spot a third. And so on. The vista of endless days and their riches is like this, and the same thought occurs in life as it does in the dream: if this windfall is endless, what I am going to do with it all? (I’m willing to find out.)
This is the weekdays. On the weekends, we transform into tourists. The weekend before last, we went back to l’Hérault and took a 12km canoe ride down the river toward the Pont Du Diable. Anne has promised she will write this day up in all its glory, but as a foreword of sorts, here’s a picture of the day:
Ben and Max hunting for frogs below a 2000-year-old Roman guard tower on the Hérault RiverIt was one of our most memorable days of many memorable days so far in France.
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On the Wednesday, Michael Ondaatje came to visit. He’s on tour throughout Europe for Divisadero, a book you should read. He was in Toulouse to visit friends with whom he’d stayed while researching the novel, and I met them for lunch and then brought him back for a couple of days in Narbonne. Max and Ben have a thing for Michael O, who they don’t realize is a famous writer, and Anne and I enjoy watching them crawl all over him.
(In this picture, Michael is explaining his Greek navy joke to the kids. Maybe he doesn’t have the touch with children we think he does. The joke: Why does the new Greek navy have glass-bottomed boats? So they can see the old Greek navy.)
We all went to the market on Thursday and packed our purchases in a cooler so we could drive directly to the Abbaye de Fontfroide, a Sistercian abbey located about 10km from Narbonne. The abbey was occupied by the order from the time it was built in the 9th century, to when it fell into disuse at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1907, it was bought by a family, and it is still privately owned (nice life), but they allow tours. It was a gorgeous spot, drenched in sunlight, and full of history. This is a picture of the main courtyard. People live here now.
The inner gardens
One of the modern stained-glass windows in the abbey. This window, and four others like it, is made up of shards of glass collected from bombed and ruined churches in France after WWII.
One of the modern stained-glass windows in the abbey. This window, and four others like it, is made up of shards of glass collected from bombed and ruined churches in France after WWII.
We went home and cooked up a devastating feast, including another wonderful serving of cèpes, this time done in garlic, olive oil, and parsley. Ondaatje can also cook. Well, he can wield a spatula, at least. And he sings a little. (To mushrooms.)
Enjoying the fruits of our labours. Ben is still hung over.
We took Michael back to Toulouse on Friday, dropping him off at the airport and picking up, at the same time, Anne’s old friend, Brenda. As Brenda is still here, it would be unseemly to speak of the wonderful time we’ve had with her, so when Anne has time to summon her awesome powers of description, you will hear about the rest of the week as well as life on l’Hérault, and when I’m not as sleepy as I am now, I will tell you about the magical Mas Blanc, and our visit with Bob and Isabel Huggan, who I now know read this blog, and so I must take some extra time to make sure I get our visit right and to try and think of a couple of nice things I can say about these truly rotten people.A Maxime moment
This is for those of you who spend a portion of your lives trying to decipher the wonder that is Maxime Redhill-Simard...
For years, I have been performing terrible card tricks for the boys, but despite the rank amateurness of these tricks, they have done stalwart duty in producing wonder for almost seven years. One of them, a trick so basic you’d think a squirrel would figure it out, has long been a cornerstone of my “act.” It involves letting the child choose a card, which is then placed on top of the deck, which is madly shuffled for as long as the child likes, after which the top card is turned over and it’s the chosen card. I won’t insult your intelligence by telling you how this is done. However, last night, while doing it for Maxime, he spotted the trick and went wild with delight, laughing and jumping up and down and shrieking that he’d figured it out. Which he had, the clever squirrel. So I went off and learned a new one from the internet. In this one, the child picks a card, and then he puts it back into the deck, shuffles it as long as he likes, after which the magician comes back and finds the right card in the deck. This one I did a number of times to a look of increasing bafflement on Maxime’s face, a look which was replaced by the sixth iteration by an expression of the purest admiration. An hour later at bedtime, obviously still floating on the pleasure only an impenetrable mystery performed by one’s father can produce, Maxime came to me in my chair, gave me a huge hug, and then pulled back a few inches, gave me a look with Bambi-like eyes and said, “So, will I see you tomorrow?”
A classic Maxime moment, jumping into "The Gourd" swimming hole at Mas Blanc
