Encore Provence

by Peter Mayle

  In fact, Bernard has regular clients that he has dealt with for years, and we would be going to see them once the buyers and sellers had stopped circling each other for long enough to establish the day's price. But for the moment, free of my responsibilities, I was able to roam and look and listen.

  There is a furtive undercurrent to the truffle business. Sources of supply are kept secret. Demand is largely fuelled by cash, for which no receipts are given. Safeguards and guarantees don't exist. Irregularities – sometimes indelicately described as swindles – are not infrequent. And this year, as if to confirm the worst fears of Monsieur Farigoule, the villainous Chinese are busy interfering with the French market. Their secret weapon is the Tuber himalayensis, an oriental fungus that looks and even smells like the genuine Tuber melanosporum from Provence. However, there are two important differences: the Chinese impostor sells for a fraction of the price of a genuine truffle, and it tastes, so I am told, like rubber shavings.

  In theory there shouldn't be a problem. Side by side, there would be no danger of confusing the varieties. But what has happened, according to market rumour, is that certain unscrupulous businessmen have been mixing the two – a few genuine truffles among a batch of Chinese fakes – and charging top prices. If there were ever to be a popular excuse for the revival of the guillotine, this would surely be the one.

  During the first half hour or so, I had noticed that buying and selling were slow. Even so, there was a good deal of muttering between the courtiers and the suppliers as they worked towards agreeing a price per kilo. Since there is no officially fixed price, everything is negotiable. Also, if a seller is unhappy with the Carpentras price, there is always the chance that a better deal might be possible at the Saturday market further north in Richerenches. So it doesn't pay to rush in. It wasn't until the first big transactions were made that the day's price began to settle at around 2,700 francs per kilo.

  This was the signal for portable phones to come out, presumably so that the news could be relayed to every corner of the truffle world, and one could be sure that the price wouldn't stay at 2,700 francs for long. As truffles travel north, their value increases enormously, and by the time they reach Paris the price is likely to have doubled.

  Business was beginning to pick up. I was standing by one of the courtiers scribbling a few notes when I became aware of a presence lurking close behind me and turned, almost bumping into the nose of a man peering over my shoulder to see what I was writing. I'm sure he thought I had some secret and valuable inside information. How disappointed he would have been, if he'd managed to decipher my English scrawl, to find nothing more than a few observations on what the well-dressed truffle dealer was wearing.

  Thick-soled, dusty boots, bulky jackets with zippered inside pockets containing brown envelopes filled with cash, berets – one with an ingenious arrangement of ear flaps – modified yachting caps, a wide-brimmed black fedora, and long scarves worn bank-robber style, wrapped around to conceal the face up to eye level. A sinister effect, spoiled only when the scarves had to be lowered to uncover the nose for ritual sniffing.

  Most of the men and women were middle-aged and of rural appearance, but there were a couple of noticeable exceptions, leather-clad young men with hard faces, cropped hair and gold earrings. Bodyguards, I immediately thought as I looked for bulges under their jackets, probably armed and dangerous, obviously there to protect the wads of 500-franc notes that were being shuffled from hand to hand. After I had watched them for a few moments, it became clear that they were keeping their elderly mother company while she haggled over half a dozen tiny truffles in a muddy plastic bag.

  Bernard decided that he was ready to sell, and we found one of his regular contacts behind a small table at the edge of the crowd. Like the other courtiers, his equipment was a mixture of ancient and modern: a portable bar-scale of the kind that has been in use for a good 100 years, and an electronic pocket calculator. The truffles were examined for colour, sniffed and transferred from the baskets to a bag of cotton mesh. The bag was hung from the hook of the scale, the sliding brass balance adjusted until the level of the bar was horizontal. Bernard and the courtier studied it, looked at each other, nodded. The weight was agreed. The courtier then communed with his calculator before tapping on the keys. He showed the figures to Bernard, screening the calculator with a hand as though he were displaying a saucy photograph. More nodding. The price was agreed. A cheque was made out (Bernard is a paragon of legitimate practice in a murky business, and doesn't deal in cash), and the morning's work was done.

  Now for the cabaret, Bernard said, and we pushed through the crush and into the bar. The noise was considerable, despite the secretive conversational technique that I observed being used by many of the truffle men. They seemed to be incapable of saying anything without shielding the mouth with one hand each time they spoke, presumably to foil eavesdroppers like myself. Priceless information, like the state of their liver or the weather forecast, is therefore kept from prying ears; or it would be, if they didn't bellow behind the baffle of their hands.

  The combination of country accents, half-swallowed sentences and the ever-present barrier of the hand made conversations difficult to follow, and I managed to understand only two exchanges. The first was easier, because it was directed at me. I'd just been introduced to one of the dealers, a gaillard, a strapping hulk of a man with stomach and voice to match his height. He asked what I thought of the market, and I told him I was impressed by the amount of money that was circulating. He nodded in agreement, his eyes flicked around the bar, and he loomed closer, one hand up against the corner of his mouth in case anyone else should overhear the Force 10 whisper: ‘I'm rich, you know. I have five houses.’

  Before giving me a chance to reply, he had moved on to the end of the bar to surround a small man, wrapping one great arm around his shoulders as he leaned down, hand to mouth, ready to impart further information of a highly confidential nature. I suppose it's a habit developed over many years in a business that makes a fetish of discretion, and I wondered if it extended to his domestic life. Did he and his wife ever have a normal conversation, or was it always a succession of mutters and winks and nudges? I imagined them at the breakfast table. ‘Pssst. Do you want another cup of coffee?/Not so loud. The neighbours might hear.’

  The second revelation of the morning concerned a truly remarkable item of truffling equipment; something, I think, that only a French mind could have invented. It was described with graphic gestures and a certain amount of spilt wine by a dealer who claimed to have seen it in action.

  The device had been made for an old man – an extremely old man – who had been born and bred near Carpentras. For his entire adult life the truffle had been his passion. He was impatient for the coming of the first frost, and his winters were spent out on the foothills of Mont Ventoux with his dog. Each Friday he would come to the market, his linen sack crammed with a week's work. After selling his truffles, he would join the other men at the bar only long enough to have one quick drink, always a Suze, before leaving to resume the hunt. For him, a day spent away from the pursuit of truffles was a day wasted.

  Time went by, and the old man's body eventually paid the price for a lifetime of stooping and crouching in bitter conditions, those years of exposure to the winds swooping down from Siberia that can make a man's kidneys ache with cold. His back gave out. It had to be kept absolutely straight. Any deviation from the perpendicular was agony, and even walking was a painful effort. His truffle-hunting days were over.

  Nevertheless, his passion persisted, and he was lucky enough to have a friend who brought him, each Friday, to the market. It was better than nothing, certainly, but his weekly visits turned into a source of frustration. He could look at truffles. He could scratch them. He could sniff them, but – because he couldn't bend – he could only sniff those that were placed in his hand or held under his nose. More and more, he found himself missing that thrilling headlong dive into a full basket, to be
surrounded by the perfume that had been such a pleasurable part of his long life. His colleagues at the bar pondered the problem.

  I was told that it was a veteran of the Second World War who came up with the idea, which was very loosely based on the design of the old military gas mask. It was a museau télescopique, or extendable snout. At one end was an abbreviated mask that covered the nose and mouth, with a wide elastic band to secure it to the head. The mask was attached to a canvas tube, pleated like the bellows of a concertina, and at the far end was the artificial nostril, an aluminium funnel. Using this ingenious extension to the nose, the old man was able to go from basket to basket, inhaling to his heart's content while keeping his back painlessly, comfortably straight. A triumph of practical medicine over cruel adversity. How I would love to have seen it in action.

  By eleven o'clock the market was over. Many of the truffles that had been bought were already on trains, racing against further evaporation as they left Provence for Paris; or, in some cases, for the Dordogne, where they would be presented as natives of the Périgord. Truffles from this region are considered to be superior – like Cavaillon melons or Normandy butter – and therefore cost more. But café statistics, which I'm inclined to believe more than most, claim that up to 50 per cent of the truffles sold in the Périgord originate in the Vaucluse, where prices are lower. Naturally, as with so much in the truffle business, this is unofficial. Any request for confirmation will be met by an innocent, unknowing shrug.

  I know of only one fitting end to a morning spent in a truffle market, and that is a truffle lunch. You would certainly be well served at a specialist restaurant like Chez Bruno at Lorgues (‘the temple of the truffle’), but Lorgues is a long way from Carpentras. Apt is closer, and in Apt you will find the Bistrot de France, a cheerful, busy restaurant on the Place de la Bouquerie. Posters on the walls, paper napkins on the tables, a convenient little bar just inside the entrance for those in urgent need, the smell of good things in the air – it's a fine warm place to walk into after hours of standing around in the cold. All the finer because, during the season, there is always one particularly good truffle dish on the menu.

  We arrived just before twelve-thirty to find the restaurant already crowded with winter customers, people from the town and nearby villages, speaking the winter language, French. (During the summer, you're more likely to hear Dutch, German and English.) Facing the entrance were two gentlemen sitting side by side but eating alone, each at his table for one. This is a civilized arrangement that I very rarely see outside France, and I wonder why. Perhaps other nationalities feel more strongly the primitive social urge to eat in small herds. Or it may be, as Régis believes, that a Frenchman is more interested in good cooking than in bad conversation, and takes every chance he can to enjoy a solitary meal.

  The tall thin waiter with a voice like warm gravel showed us to a table, and we squeezed in next to a couple intent on the slippery joys of raw oysters on the rocks. A glance at the short, handwritten menu reassured us that the truffle supply was holding up; all we had to do was decide on the first course, and from previous visits we knew the need for caution. The chef is a believer in cuisine copieuse – ample and sometimes more than ample portions of everything he cooks – and it's easy to be overwhelmed before the main event.

  Artichokes seemed safe enough. They arrived, half a dozen of them, à la barigoule, with parsley, celery, carrots and ham in a warming, scented broth that went straight to the cockles of the heart. The people at the table next to us were by now eating their main course, a beef stew, using their forks to cut the meat and using pieces of bread, like edible cutlery, to guide each mouthful on to the fork. Bad manners in polite society, no doubt, but very practical if you want to eat a daube without sacrificing the juice.

  One of the less obvious signs of a well-run, professional restaurant is the sense of timing displayed by the waiters, the rhythm of lunch. If the service is too slow, there is a tendency to eat too much bread and drink too much wine. This is bad, but the opposite is worse. If the service is too quick, if the waiter hovers and bustles and tries to steal my plate before I've wiped off the gravy, if I can feel his breath on the back of my neck and his fingers drumming on the back of my chair while I'm choosing a cheese, it ruins everything. My palate barely has time to take in one taste before having to adjust to the next. I feel jostled and unwanted. Lunch has been turned into a speed trial.

  Pauses are essential; a few minutes between courses to allow the appetite to recover and anticipation to set in, a chance to enjoy the moment, to look around and to eavesdrop. I have a terrible weakness for collecting snatches of other people's conversations, and occasionally I'm rewarded with unusual fragments of knowledge. My favourite of the day came from a large but shapely woman sitting nearby who I learned was the owner of a local lingerie shop. ‘Beh oui,’ she said to her companion, waving her spoon for emphasis, ‘il faut du temps pour la corsetterie.’ You can't argue with that. I made a mental note not to rush things next time I was shopping for a corset, and leaned back to allow the waiter through with the main course.

  It was a brouillade de truffes – the classic combination of loosely scrambled eggs studded with slices of black truffle, served in a high-sided copper saucepan that was left between us on the table. We were two. There was easily enough brouillade for three, presumably to allow for any evaporation that might have taken place on the journey from the kitchen. Fork in one hand, bread in the other, a grateful nod in the direction of St Antoine, the patron saint of truffle growers, and we started to eat.

  The flavour of a truffle is the continuation of its scent, complex and earthy, neither mushroom nor meat, but something in between. It tastes, more than anything else I know, of the outdoors, and there is a nicely balanced contrast in the mouth between the crunchy texture of the truffle and the bland smoothness of the eggs. You will find truffles in dozens of more elaborate recipes, from millionaire's ravioli to a Sunday-best chicken, but I don't think you can beat simplicity. Eggs, scrambled or in an omelette, make the perfect background.

  We somehow finished the third person's portion between us, and rested. The local corset expert was talking about the benefits to one's forme of correct posture. The thrust of her argument, delivered between mouthfuls of apple crumble and cream, was that you could eat what you wanted as long as you sat up straight and wore sufficiently sturdy and supportive undergarments. I wondered if the editors of Vogue were aware of this.

  The tempo of the restaurant had slowed. Appetites had been satisfied, although the more ambitious customers were still showing signs of life over the choice of desserts. I felt I should have a taste of cheese, a bite, just a little something to go with the last glass of wine. Modest servings, however, were not on the menu. An entire Banon arrived, a disc of cheese wrapped in dried chestnut leaves and tied with raffia, firm on the outside, softening by degrees to an almost liquid centre, salty, creamy and pungent. Somehow that, too, disappeared.

  A wonderful, simple lunch. Nothing to it, really, apart from excellent ingredients and a chef with the confidence and good sense not to muffle their flavours with unnecessary sauces and trimmings. Leave well alone, serve plenty of it, and respect the seasons is his formula. When truffles are fresh, serve truffles; when strawberries are at their best, serve strawberries. I suppose this might be considered a slightly old-fashioned way to run a restaurant. After all, in these modern times everything from asparagus to venison comes to the table by plane and is available all through the year. Heaven knows where it all originates – hothouses, food factories or different hemispheres, I imagine – but there it is, whatever you want, at a price. Or rather, several prices.

  It costs more, obviously. It won't be as fresh as local food, despite the miracles of refrigerated travel and a process that I've heard described as ripeness retardation. And, worst of all, it ignores the calendar, so there is none of the anticipation, none of the pleasure to be had from the year's first glorious dish of a seasonal delicacy. A gre
at shame to miss that.

  Spring is coming. Soon the courtiers of Carpentras will put away their scales and their adding machines, the gendarme will be able to give his whistle a rest, and the market will close down. The poachers and their dogs will move on, doubtless to some other nefarious activity. The chef at the Bistrot de France will change his menu, and fresh truffles won't be seen again until the end of the year. But I'm happy to wait. Even for truffles, I'm happy to wait.

  13

  Green Thumbs and Black Tomatoes

  It must be at least twenty years ago that garden chic began to spread, like a delicate high-priced creeper, across the plains and valleys of the Luberon.

  It came in the wake of the refugees who made their escape every year from the dank climates of the north. There was no doubt that they loved their second homes in Provence. They loved the light and the dry heat. And yet, looking around them once the novelty of sustained, predictable sunshine had worn off, they found that there was something missing. The countryside – mostly the greys and greens of weathered limestone crags and wizened scrub oaks – was striking and often spectacular. But it was also – well, a little bare.

  There was lavender and broom and rosemary, of course, and vines and cherry trees, maybe even a dusty, long-suffering almond or two. But these weren't enough to cure the itch for something more lush. The refugees began to pine for conspicuous colour and ornamental vegetation. They missed their shady bowers and their flowerbeds. They wanted what they would call a proper garden – a riot of roses, great swags of wisteria to soften all that stone, trees that were noticeably taller than they were. And so, with a brave disregard for local conditions, they set about planning decorative oases among the rocky fields and terraced hillsides.