by Peter Mayle
The average age of cyclists, whom I always remembered as young men barely out of their teens, appears to have gone up, although the outfits remain misleadingly youthful. Brilliantly coloured blurs, gleaming in skins of emerald green or purple Lycra, whir along the road like monstrous low-flying insects. It is not until they stop at the café for a beer that you see the grizzled heads and ropy veins of men who qualified for pensions years ago. Where does their energy come from? Don't they know they should be riddled with arthritis and tottering along to the pharmacy instead of knocking off 100 kilometres before lunch? What are they taking?
What else but good food and a glass or two of wine? I once read a gloomy prescription written by the Greek physician Hippocrates: ‘Death sits in the bowels; a bad digestion is the root of all evil.’ If this is true, I have to assume that the long-lived Provençal bowel is a remarkably efficient item of equipment. Which, one can logically assume, is a direct result of what it has to deal with on a daily basis.
There are various worthy and quite appetizing theories to account for the healthy workings of the Provençal intestine. The regular consumption of olive oil is one. Or frequent doses of garlic, helped down by red wine – anything from one to five glasses a day, depending on which scientific study you choose to believe. (Five glasses a day seems a good round number.) But I have yet to see any theory from learned nutritionists that explains my favourite statistic. The rate of heart disease among inhabitants of the south-western part of France is lower than anywhere else in the country, which is already lower, so we're told, than any other developed country except Japan.
And what do they exist on, these fortunate people of the south-west? Low-sodium gruel? Macrobiotic bean curd? Nut cutlets, with an occasional wicked glass of non-alcoholic, sugar-free sparkling wine substitute? Alas for conventional dietary wisdom and the accepted rules of gastronomic prudence, a significant part of the south-western diet is fat, particularly goose and duck fat. Potatoes are roasted in it, beans for the noble cassoulet are smothered in it, confits are preserved in it, and foie gras is goose fat gone to heaven. (Foie gras was actually invented by the Romans. The French, never slow to recognize a good thing when they eat it, gave it a French name and with their customary modesty have been claiming it as a national treasure ever since.) How is it possible that this rich and delicious regime can be part of a long and healthy life? Can we look forward to the day when foie gras will replace tofu and the soybean on nutritionally correct menus? Can it be that fat is actually good for you?
This might well depend on where the fat comes from, but the food police are not in the mood to make any trifling distinctions like that. For years, they have lectured us on the evils of fat; any kind of fat. I have even been told that in California, where one can marvel at people constructed of nothing but skin, bone, muscle and health-giving amounts of silicone, authorities have seriously considered declaring fat a prohibited substance. Food products, even here in France, have to confess on their labels that they have committed a crime against the innards of society by including a percentage of fat. Fat has a terrible reputation. And so to find this corner of France thriving on massive amounts of something so sinful, so cholesterol-loaded and artery-threatening is, to say the least, mysterious.
Ever hopeful of discovering a link between foie gras and perfect health, I looked through several books on diet and nutrition, only to see the same old theories, variously disguised. But they were consistent about fat. It is a killer, so they all said, and if taken regularly will probably make you fall off your perch, clogged to death, in what should be the prime of your life. Looking for a second opinion, however unscientific, I decided to seek out a source closer to the grass roots of French nutrition. At first, I thought of consulting a chef, but the chefs that I know and respect are more concerned with taste, which they consider to be their responsibility, rather than with the state of your heart, which is your affair. All I could hope for from them would be advice about which Sauternes go best with foie gras. What I needed was a more balanced view.
Monsieur Farigoule can rarely be accused of having a balanced view, but I went to see him anyway, hoping that he might have picked up some nutritional knowledge during his days as a schoolteacher. I found him defending the traditions of France in his usual spot at the bar, in his usual state of high indignation.
This time, the villain was a bottle of Chinese rosé that some mischievous friend had found in a local supermarket and given him, no doubt to get his blood pressure boiling. He slid the bottle along the bar towards me, and I took a look at the label: Great Wall Rosé Wine, produced by the Huaxia Winery in Hebei, China.
‘First they try to inflict their truffles on us,’ he said. ‘And now this – this abomination in a bottle.’
Abomination or not, I saw that the bottle was half empty. ‘What does it taste like?’ I said.
He took a swig from his glass and chewed on it for a moment. ‘Dégueulasse – like a paddy field strained through a sock. And not a very clean sock, either. As I said, an abomination. God knows why they allowed it into the country. Do we not make the best rosé wines in the world? The Tavel? The Bandol? The Ott? And what can we expect next? Chinese Calvados?’
With that, he climbed on his hobby horse and galloped off on a ten-minute rant about the evils of free trade, the threat to honest French wine-growers, and the horrendous possibilities that could easily follow now the Chinese had their foot in the door. I tried once or twice to bring the conversation around to the benefits of a foie gras diet, but he wasn't having any of it. Chinese infiltration was the subject of the day, and for once the Americans were off the hook. However, it didn't get me any further in my research.
I didn't do much better with Régis, a normally reliable source of highly biased support for the French way of life. Of course foie gras was good for you, he said. Everybody knew that. And had I tasted the foie gras made by the Rivoire sisters in Gascony? Une merveille. But as far as solid medical evidence was concerned, Régis had nothing to offer.
In the end, I had to settle for Marius the funeral connoisseur, who beckoned me into the café one morning. He obviously had some news, but before he could launch into it I asked him if he had any theories about diet and longevity.
‘You can eat what you like,’ he said, ‘but it doesn't make much difference. La vieillesse nuit gravement à la santé. Old age is hazardous to your health. No doubt about it.’
At that, he brightened up, and leaned forward to give me the details of an interesting death that had just occurred. As usual when he discussed another man's plunge into eternity, he spoke in a low, serious voice. But it was clear that the story of l'affaire Machin gave him considerable enjoyment.
It seems that Monsieur Machin, now deceased, had been devoted throughout his adult life to the Loterie Nationale. Every week, hoping for fortune, he bought his ticket, which he tucked away for safekeeping in the top pocket of his only suit. The suit was locked in an armoire, and never saw the light of day except for a rare brief outing at weddings, and for one memorable five-minute period when the President of France was driven slowly through the village. Once a week, the armoire was unlocked and the old unlucky ticket was replaced in the suit pocket by a new one. This had been Machin's habit for thirty years – thirty years during which he had never won even a centime.
The end came suddenly for Machin, in the full heat of summer, and he was buried in the correct manner befitting his status in the community. (He had served for many years in the local post office.) The following week, such is the unfairness of life, it was discovered that his final lottery ticket was a winner – not of multimillions, but of a substantial sum that ran into several hundred thousand francs.
Marius paused to allow the injustice of it all to sink in, and to feign surprise at his empty glass. Before continuing, he peered around the café, as though making sure that what he was about to say remained confidential. There was, he said, un petit problème. Machin had been buried in his one and only suit,
as was right and proper. In the top pocket of the suit was the winning ticket, just six feet underground. And the lottery rules were very strict: no ticket, no money. To dig up the body, to defile a grave, was unthinkable. To leave it would be to lose a small fortune.
‘C'est drôle, n'est-ce pas?’ Marius nodded and grinned, a man with an infinite capacity for being amused at the vagaries of fate – always providing they affected someone else.
‘Not so funny for the family,’ I said.
‘Ah, you wait.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘The story isn't over yet. Too many people know.’
I had awful visions of grave-robbers creeping at night through the village cemetery, the scuffle of shovels in the earth, the sudden sharp creak of wood as the coffin was forced open, the grunt of satisfaction as the precious ticket was retrieved. But surely, I said to Marius, there was some way the family could claim the prize without disturbing the corpse?
He wagged the inevitable index finger at me, as though I'd suggested something ridiculous and impossible. Rules were rules, he said. Make an exception here, and it would open the door to all kinds of bogus stories about disappearing tickets – eaten by the dog, blown away by the Mistral, washed into oblivion by the laundry – there would be no end to it. Marius shook his head, and then, remembering something, reached into a pocket of his army surplus jacket.
‘I have an idea that we could work on together,’ he said, taking out a rolled-up magazine and smoothing the crumpled pages. ‘Take a look at that.’
It was a copy of Allo! magazine, the chronicle of minor celebrities that is an item of standard equipment in hairdressing salons and dentists' waiting rooms. Coloured pictures of the rich and royal at play, at home and, occasionally, at funerals. That's what had prompted the idea.
‘You once worked in advertising,’ said Marius. ‘You will see the possibilities.’
He had thought it all through. His scheme was to bring out a companion magazine devoted to prominent, recently dead figures. It would be called Adieu in France, or Goodbye for the Anglo-Saxons. The editorial content would be obituaries lifted from newspapers, illustrated with photographs taken during the lifetime of the chosen subjects – ‘Seen here in happier times’, as Marius said. There would be a regular special feature, Funeral of the Month, and advertising support would be provided by funeral homes, wreath-makers, florists, coffin manufacturers and – most important – catering services, a well-fed wake being an essential part of any self-respecting funeral.
‘Well?’ said Marius. ‘C'est pas con, eh? It would be a gold mine. Somebody famous dies every week.’ He leaned back, eyebrows raised, and we sat in silence for a few moments, contemplating death and money.
‘You're not serious,’ I said.
‘Of course I'm serious. Everybody thinks about it. You, for instance,’ he said, ‘you must have thought about how you would like to die.’
My hopes for an acceptable death could be summed up in one word: sudden. But this wasn't good enough for Marius. The old vulture was interested in the details, the where and how, and when I couldn't provide them, he shook his head in disapproval. One of the very few certainties in life, and I had given it less thought than what I was going to have for dinner. He, on the other hand, had made his plans; a perfect scheme, the final triumph, a mingling of pleasures that anyone fortunate enough to be present would never forget. In his enthusiasm, he might have been describing a treat that he had been looking forward to for years – which, if all went according to his expectations, it would be.
The first essential was a beautiful summer's day: a sky fading from deep to paler blue in the heat of high noon, a light breeze, the rustling chirrup from a choir of cigales providing background music in the bushes. Death in the rain, so Marius said, would spoil an otherwise agreeable occasion. The second essential was a good appetite, because Marius had decided that his final moments on earth should be spent having lunch on the shaded terrace of a restaurant.
A three-star restaurant, naturally, and one with a cellar containing wines of unimaginable elegance and expense: golden-white Burgundies, first-growth Bordeaux, late-nineteenth-century Yquem, vintage Champagnes from the oldest vines. These would be chosen, with no regard for price, several days before the lunch. This would allow the chef time to create a suitably exquisite meal to accompany the wines. Marius picked up his glass of the café's 10-franc rouge ordinaire, took a sip, shrugged at the taste, and continued.
Congenial company was also important on this special day, and Marius had already picked out an appropriate guest – Bernard, a friend of many years. Not only a friend, but a local legend, notorious for his reluctance to dip into his pocket for fear of disturbing his money, a man who had made an art of frugality. In all the time that they had known each other, Marius could only remember two occasions when Bernard had paid his way in the café, and then only because the toilettes had been occupied, cutting off his usual escape route at the time of reckoning. But he was a good companion, full of stories, and the two men would have hours of memories to share over the food and wine.
As for the meal – the menu de mort – Marius was still refining the exact procession of dishes. There might be a few deep-fried courgette flowers to alert the palate. Some foie gras, of course. Maybe a charlotte of Sisteron lamb with aubergines, or pigeon in spiced honey, or pork slowly cooked with sage (Marius was quite happy to leave the choice to the chef), and then roasted goat's cheese with rosemary, followed by a custard and cherry tart or a fresh peach and verveine soup…
He stopped, his eyes looking past me towards this future banquet, and I wondered how he was going to find the time or the inclination to die when there was so much on the table demanding his attention. A brief shake of his head brought his thoughts back to the climax of lunch.
‘This is how it will pass,’ he said. ‘We have eaten the meal of a lifetime, we have drunk like kings, we have laughed and exchanged stories, lied about our successes with women, vowed eternal friendship, drained the last wonderful bottle. And yet the afternoon is still young. We are not quite ready to leave. Another glass or two to settle the stomach, and what could be better than a Cognac made in 1934, the year of my birth? I raise my hand to summon the waiter – and then, paf!’
‘Paf?’
‘A crise cardiaque, a fatal heart attack.’ Marius slumped forward on the table, turning his head to look up at me. ‘I die instantly, but I have a smile on my face.’ He winked. ‘Because Bernard gets the bill.’
He sat back in his chair and crossed himself. ‘Now, that's a death.’
Later that day, I took the dogs for a walk on the plateau of the Claparèdes above Bonnieux. It was early evening, and over the mountains to the east a three-quarter moon was rising, pale and milky against the blue sky, balanced by the sun falling in the west. The air was warm and dry, sharp with the scent of the sariette that grows wild in pockets of earth between the rocks. The only sound was the wind, the only visible souvenir of man's presence a few yards of collapsed dry-stone wall slumped among the bushes. The view could hardly have changed in hundreds of years, perhaps thousands, and it was a reminder of the quick blink of time that represents a human life.
I thought of Madame Calment's 122 years, fuelled by chocolate and cigarettes, and of the nostrums that various Provençal experts had recommended to me for a long and healthy existence. Cloves of raw garlic, a daily teaspoonful of cayenne pepper taken in a glass of water, tisanes of lavender, the soothing lubricant of olive oil. None of my experts had mentioned foie gras, which was a disappointment; but then, neither had they spoken of an even more essential ingredient, joie de vivre – the ability to take pleasure from the simple fact of being alive.
You can see and hear this expressed in a dozen small ways: the gusto of a game of cards in a café, the noisy, good-humoured exchanges in the market, the sound of laughter at a village fête, the hum of anticipation in a restaurant at the start of Sunday lunch. If there is such a thing as a formula for a long and happy old age
, perhaps it's no more than that – to eat, drink and be merry. Above all, to be merry.
11
Discovering Oil
I was born in England during the dark ages of gastronomy, a time when most good things to eat were either unavailable or rationed. Butter and meat were measured out in ounces, once a week if we were lucky. A fresh egg was an infrequent treat. Potatoes came in the form of powder – I seem to remember it was called POM – to be mixed with water and turned into a tepid, off-white sludge. Presented with my first postwar banana, at the age of six, I had no idea how to unwrap it. Chocolate was an unimaginable luxury. Olive oil didn't exist.
