| StCirq |
Oct 2nd, 2012 06:30 PM |
SO goes into town to do an errand, and I go through the cabinets on the ground floor and the kitchen to try to clean out stuff we need to discard. He comes back 45 minutes later with a big grin on his face and announces “I found Madame L.! She was outside when I drove past, so I stopped and asked her if it was her, and she said yes, and I told her (in French!) you were here and she wants to see you as soon as possible! How lucky was that?” I’ve told him many a tale about this wonderful neighbor of mine, so he has some background on her and our relationship over the years. I’m not wasting a moment getting down there to see her, so we pile into the car and drive to her house. Even though she lives just on the other side of the grotte next door to me, it’s far easier to drive up over the house and down the other side of St-Cirq, past the old washer-women’s pool and the pond and up by the mayor’s office – make a full circle, in other words, rather than backup down the lane into the grotte parking lot and try to turn around. And when we get there, there is the issue of being able to park without impeding traffic (such as it is) up and down the narrow lane. We squeeze into a small side-of-the-road space just past her house, and I go down the lane on crutches and knock on her door. And there she is! The wonderful woman who has taken care of my house for 20 years, who embraced me as a foreigner immediately and shared so many moments with me and my family over the years, always in good humor, always kind and helpful, always inviting me to spend time with her family members and friends, always leaving jars of confit and cans of pâté for me, always just being the best neighbor a neighbor could be.
It’s hot, really hot, but we sit outside because at this point I can’t really make it up over the stoop of her house, and we catch up. She’s got a spate of new grandchildren, everyone’s doing reasonably well, her garden got so fried in the heat this summer she gave up on it, but her peaches are coming in nicely. She’s given up the ducks and geese and just has chickens now, but some of them are young and producing only small eggs. The mayor is having an affair with his secretary. Madame G.’s husband has abandoned her, probably because of all the copains she has. There’s a new community center being built along the “main road” into town by the mairie. The Dutch lady has sold her place to a family of Canadians who are building an enormous house up in the hills. M. Teillet has expanded his house up on the ridge, and her grandson Benoît, who always said he never wanted to set “un pas” in St-Cirq now wants to buy a place there and is already living up in the hills in a small house. Raymond and Nadine are doing well. Other sons, whom we don’t know well, are fine, too. Life is good. She’s had carpal tunnel surgery, shoulder surgery, and phlebitis, but she’s 85 and she’s here! I get back into the rythym of talking with her, even with all the oops! And behs! and bombas!, and SO follows along well. It’s getting on nap time for Madame, so we take our leave and promise to stop by some evening soon. I am refreshed, with a glad heart because sometimes people can just be so good.
Then to La Rivière to check email, which really is my last (and dwindling) interest in keeping connected to my regular life (at this point I am completely ready to just emigrate and stay here forever). Bees and wasps have been bothering me since we got here. One day in Les Eyzies at the Café de la Mairie, a wasp was hovering around me mercilessly, and I kept fending it off. A man at an opposing table kept fending it off, too, so that I would shoo it in his direction and he would shoo it in mine. Eventually, this became amusing, and we exchanged words about how ennuyant this particular wasp was and which of us it would eventually pick as favorite. But today at La Rivière I have only just gotten my email open when I am attacked and stung by one. It’s been years since I’ve had a wasp sting, and MAN does it hurt! It’s bad enough to be crippled, but now I have a right upper arm that is red and swollen and really painful! The proprietors immediately note that Madame était piqué and bring me some vinegar, which helps, but that darn bite bothers me for the rest of the trip, even after I treat it with the crème d’arnica I find in one of the bathrooms.
Tonight Monsieur Baillon, M. Vialenc’s colleague, comes to see what treasures or junk he may want to buy. He shows up with a huge truck and a very timid, pensive 4-year-old son named Emory (hardly a French name, as far as I know) and gathers a fairly large group of things which he piles in the living room. We negotiate a price, lower than I want, but at this point I just want to get some things accomplished, and he and Emory haul it to the truck. It’s nothing special, mostly wicker chairs and baskets and some dishes and old prints. It’s a very perfunctory visit, but it seems the Baillon family is a truculent one of few words.
Then Franck comes by, just for a neighborly visit. I think he and Onamu are just glad to have some new people around – they just keep showing up, bearing gifts or not, to sit on the wall with us and chat. We tell him that we’ve seen Madame L., and he says they all think she’s a sweetheart, too. His 5-year-old son got all dressed up today to go to school and put his backpack on, only to find out that there’s no school on Wednesdays in the Périgord…and he was disconsolate. He’ll finish cleaning up the pool area tomorrow and gives us his card so we can keep in touch once back home.
In honor of Madame, we open another of her jars of confit tonight and devour it against a backdrop of stars and a gibbous moon.
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