At Home in France

by Ann Barry

  After that, crêpes became my regular lunch fare. For breakfast, I discovered a delicious pastry called kouign-amann (the pronunciation of which I never quite mastered), a Breton specialty that has a crisp exterior and a buttery, almost creamy interior. I scanned bookstores for a regional cookbook with the recipe and eventually found it in a slim paperback lyrically titled Balades Gourmandes, 77 recettes de la Bretagne et des pays de la Loire. Among its charming illustrations of old posters and photographs is one of an elderly peasant woman plucking chickens. A skinny naked chicken, like one of those rubber versions you sometimes see in a circus clown’s act, is nearly swallowed up in the depths of her capacious lap, with its neck dangling over one knee. She is gesturing with an outstretched arm, an animated expression on her face, regaling someone out of sight with a story. I stared at this photo time and again, trying to imagine what her tale could be. Just scanning the recipe for kouign-amann, I could see why it was so outrageously good. It called for twice as much butter as flour! The recipe is time-consuming, requiring four tours, foldings and rollings of the dough, each followed by fifteen-minute chillings, to create flaky layers as in a croissant. I plan to try it at home some Sunday morning, but I know that, food being more than a question of taste, I’ll never be able to replicate it. I won’t be seated in a tiny village café by the sea as the sun does battle with the early-morning fog and the brisk, briny air has caused me to work up a keen appetite. Some things just don’t translate.

  For dinner, I had nothing but seafood—oysters, mussels, lotte, rouget, lobster—and whatever dessert featured apples, usually a warm tarte aux pommes, once with the wonderful cold contrast of a scoop of honey-nutmeg ice cream.

  On the outskirts of Pont-Aven, Gauguin’s stomping grounds, there is the Trémalo Chapel, whose sixteenth-century wooden Christ is said to have inspired the artist’s Yellow Christ. It paled, of course, next to the shocking egg-yolk figure in the painting. Even more fascinating, though utterly nondescript, was the tiny sixteenth-century chapel at Nizon. When I entered, no one was there. It was so still that I thought I could hear the flutter of angels’ wings, or was it just the wind at the door? There was little by way of ornamentation, save for some ancient and worn painted wooden statues, with their blessed innocent faces staring fixedly into space. Here were priceless antiquities, completely unguarded and vulnerable. Anyone could have made a heist. I daringly reached up—what if someone caught me in the act!—and touched the craggy, timeworn cheek of one.

  From there, I drove a short distance away to the fascinating small fishing village of Kescott, with its cluster of Hansel-and-Gretel-type thatched houses. I surreptitiously peeked inside as I strolled by; it would be like living in a dollhouse. They were probably no longer owned by fishermen, but by wealthy Parisians who stocked them with antiques and tended their colorful flower gardens.

  At this easygoing pace, the days slipped by. I had already decided to return to Brittany before I’d even left. At the end of the coastal journey I stayed at the Hotel de la Plage, in Sainte-Anne-la-Palud. In La Belle France, a monthly newsletter to which I subscribe—I’m a complete sucker for any guidebooks or publications relating to France—I read that Sainte-Anne-la-Palud was reputed to be an unhappily married Cornish princess who was magically transported to Nazareth, where she gave birth to the Virgin Mary—a new twist on the story of my namesake that made me feel specially anchored to this place.

  The hotel was a great rambling white house lolling at the edge of the sea, the coastline reminiscent of Maine. My room opened to the vista of a cove of smooth sand, placid blue water with white curls of waves lapping at the shore, lavender hills down the coast. I’d arrived at the end of the world. Before dinner, I took a forty-five-minute run inland, with views of lush green hills dotted with cows. Farmhouses glowed in the rosy late-afternoon light. Occasionally, in the distance, I saw a glint of sea. When I got back, I took a luxurious bubble bath (the only time I ever pamper myself this way is at a spiffy French hotel), and was ready for dinner. The floor-to-ceiling windows in the dining room, literally at water’s edge, provided a sweeping view of a motionless sea. That evening, the other diners were a young couple with two impressively well-behaved small children, and two older couples; together they created a gentle, comforting murmur of conversation. As dinner progressed, the light changed from a brilliant silvery white that dramatically illuminated the clouds to a fiery red ball sinking into the sea. Did this call for romance? Did I wish at that moment to be sitting with the love of my life? Yes. There are such times.

  Early the next morning I took a solitary walk on the beach. The sea was as calm as a pond. Pebbles and shells crunched under my running shoes. I scanned the beach as I strode along. I’ve collected shells from time to time but always find that they seem uninteresting when I get them home. Then I spied an unusual-looking rock, flat on the bottom and rising into a pleasingly miniature boulder shape. It was a pearly gray green, with strands and webs of white running across the surface, like the tracks of some natural force that had left its mark long, long ago. It fit handily into my cupped hand. Today it sits on my window ledge and can call back with a glance that magical place.

  I packed my bag and tossed it in the front seat, with one last glance past the dunes. I resolved to come back—though I’ve said that before of other places. It would be when I wanted a retreat, to drop out of the world for a space of time.

  Locronon, a tiny medieval town. Châteaulin, Carhaix-Plouguer, Rostrehen, Pontivy, Josselin. I whispered the names of the towns as I drove along, softer than the guttural ac villages of the Lot: Carennac, of course, and Vayrac, Gintrac, Padirac, Souillac, on and on. I had once asked Charles, who is a history buff, why there is a proliferation of acs in my region. Charles’s answer to such questions are always elaborate.

  Ac, Charles explained, is a shortening of the Latin ending acum, which was affixed to a name to indicate “place of” or “villa of.” The form appeared when names started to be written down in Latin, usually in lists of parishes or in monastic charters. The earliest records are from the ninth century, but probably that is only the tail end of a process of writing down names in Roman Gaul that goes back to the era just after Caesar’s conquest (about 50 B.C.). The form acum or iacum was applied to both personal names and to existing Celtic places. Thus Pauliac or Tauriac suggest the villas of Paulus or Taurus. Carennac, on the other hand, suggests “the place of the quarried stone,” based on a possible Celtic root carenna. The place-names of the old Haut-Quercy region, he postulated, may be among the least affected by historical change in all of France. Neither the Visigoths (in the Garonne Valley) nor the Francs (north of the Vezère) contributed much settlement to the area, and so antique forms of place-names are more common there.

  As I traveled inland, the crêperies tapered off. Eventually, I reached Chartres for an overnight stay before going on to Paris. In the afternoon I revisited the cathedral I’d seen many years ago. For some reason—perhaps because it had struck me the first time as so amazingly intricate and jewellike—it had seemed smaller then. Now it soared. That night after dinner I watched a television program in my room, a sort of musical special presenting the top hits in descending order. The range of music offered a little something for everybody. I was enraptured by one singer, a man well into his sixties, the quintessential French chanteur, with his squashed angling hat and dapper suit, woeful eyes under eyebrows pitched at forty-five-degree slants, like facing grave and acute accents, an ash-laden cigarette dangling from his lips. Despite the cigarette, he managed to sing a song of—what else?—unrequited love. After the program I turned off the light and took in a last fairy-tale view from my window of an illuminated château casting its exact upside-down reflection in the river.

  I decided to skip breakfast that morning. I’d be in Paris by noon, so I could have a big lunch at the end of the journey. It was Monday morning—a bleak, cold morning typical of mercurial April—and traffic was heavy on the autoroute leading into the city. It soon
began to rain, not a mild spring rain but a hard-driving, blinding torrent that showed no signs of abating. Cars and trucks (monstrous trucks that spewed sheets of water in their wake) had all turned on their headlights. I turned off the car radio in order to concentrate fully on my driving. I was in the center lane of the one-way three-lane route. Suddenly I heard a loud grinding and thumping sound, which I at first mistook for some alarming external force. Then, to my utter horror, I realized it was me, the car, which then began to jolt like a bucking bronco. I let up on the gas pedal immediately and managed to ease into the right-hand lane, at which point the engine died. I coasted onto the extremely narrow shoulder, the right side of the car smack against the guardrail, the driver’s side nearly flush with the lane of streaming traffic. My heart raced. I turned off the motor. At least I was safely out of traffic, although in a terribly vulnerable position. I looked around me for any landmark. There was only a blurred, endless horizon, without a sign of civilization. I had no idea where I was. I studied my road map, but since I’d been confined to the featureless autoroute and hadn’t been paying attention to signposts—it was going to be a straight shot, Chartres to Paris—I couldn’t figure out my location. Even a rough estimate, though, indicated no outlying villages or towns.

  The natural impulse, of course, was to summon help. I inched my way out of the car—I could only open the door a crack—and was instantly whipped with lashes of rain from the zooming cars and monster trucks (poids lourds). I stationed myself at the rear of the car and waved frantically. I felt about the size of a bug. No one stopped. No one would stop, I realized before long. This was the Monday morning rush to Paris. My light wind-breaker was completely soaked, worthless under these conditions. I scurried back inside the car. I tried turning over the engine—please, please, I begged it. Stone-cold dead, without even a whimper or cough.

  I was staring out the front window, trying to still my mounting panic, when I saw—could it be?—a yellow signpost marked s.o.s. 800 M. How far would that be? My runner’s standard—ten kilometers equals six miles—told me it couldn’t be far. I set off at as brisk a pace as I could manage in the whipping rain. I was walking for what seemed an eternity. How far to go? The rain felt like tears streaming down my face, but I couldn’t cry. If I let go, I would crumble. Suddenly a car pulled up on the shoulder behind me. I spun around and ran to whoever my savior might be. I opened the door a crack. The driver, an elegant middle-aged woman with soft curly black hair, a pert hat, and stylish suit, looked as if she had important business in Paris. Her expression, however, was motherly and concerned. She motioned me inside the car. I thanked her, rather hysterically, for coming to my aid and described the problem. She eased back onto the autoroute and shook her head regretfully; the best she could do was drop me at the SOS station. That would be wonderful, I exclaimed. And how did the SOS work? She explained that I simply had to push the button and respond with the number of the SOS station. That would indicate my location. Help would be on its way, she assured me.

  We drove on for several minutes. How far back was the car now? I’d lost all sense of distance. Soon she pulled onto the shoulder, beside a thick steel pole—not the sort of shed or way station I’d envisioned. She reviewed the procedure: push the button, wait for the response, and speak into the receiver with the SOS number. There was the number; she pointed: 113. Cent treize, I rehearsed. She was désolée that she couldn’t do more, she said, with a stricken look on her face. I felt myself reflected in her expression and knew I was a sorry sight, wet and bedraggled, and obviously distraught. I summoned all the words in my repertoire to express my gratitude.

  The pole was on the far side of the guardrail. I vaulted over. Cent treize, I prepared myself. I pushed the steel button and waited. Almost instantly, a man’s voice crackled through the small speaker—“Allô!” I announced the SOS number. He asked for a description of the car, the license number, and my name and address. Over the roar of the storm and hell-bent trucks, I shouted a partial response (je suis Américaine, en route à Paris, etc.). “Une bonne heure,” he said. A good hour before the truck would arrive. It was nine-twenty.

  The walk back to the car took approximately fifteen minutes. I wormed inside and leaned back against the headrest. I was sopping wet and shivering with the cold. I reached into my bag and changed my drenched jacket for a sweatshirt and my sodden Rockport walking shoes for running shoes. I occupied myself with the what-ifs. If the car could be repaired right away—assuming I would be taken to some sort of garage—I could go right on to Paris and that would be the end of it. If the car couldn’t be repaired, I could call the nearest Avis office (I’d arranged for the rental through a New York office of the company). They were responsible, after all. They should arrange for me to get to Paris. Or, that failing, there surely would be a train or bus into the city. I had no need of the car in Paris, so nothing would be lost by that. It would work out.

  An hour passed. The rain continued in relentless whipping sheets that rocked the car. I had nothing to read, but even if I had, it would have been difficult to concentrate. I kept my eyes peeled on the rearview mirror for a sign of the tow truck. I was both fatigued and jittery—and hungry. I began to contemplate what I would have for lunch. Soup, definitely. Then maybe a big puffy omelette. A cheese omelette. Dessert. Something warm. That wonderful Breton apple tart came tantalizingly to mind. Oh, for a cup of coffee! Then I closed the curtain on this line of thought: it was making me miserable.

  It was nearly eleven o’clock. Over an hour and a half. What could be the trouble? I’d been able to describe the car, but I hadn’t had the license number to give the man. He’d said it was not essential, but what if that had caused a problem, after all? I could picture some small-minded individual along the bureaucratic chain claiming that nothing could be done without the license number. Give it some more time, I advised myself. Une bonne heure. Who knew what that really meant? Weren’t the French notoriously late?

  I avoided glancing at my watch too frequently. Time seemed to be moving slower and slower. My brain began to fester. How would they know in which direction the car was from the SOS? And how could they know how far I was from the station? I’d never pinpointed my exact location. But then how could I? And wouldn’t they have asked? The doubts began to plague me. Maybe if they at least knew that I was in a westerly direction from the SOS, it would be helpful. Why not go back to the SOS and give them the license number this time? But I should run. What if they arrived and didn’t find me at the car? Would they bypass me? I’d have to keep on the lookout for the tow truck on the way to the SOS.

  Once the idea took hold, I was possessed by it. I climbed out of the car, jotted down the license number, and set off at a somewhat lumbering run through the rain. At the SOS, I bounded over the rail, pushed the but ton, and waited for the allô. I gave my name and announced that I had the license number. But before I had a chance to relay it, the sharp, splintered voice commanded, “Retournez à la voiture!” The message was delivered in such a militaristic and alarming manner that I was rendered speechless. This had been a mistake. I sloshed to the guardrail, leaned my stomach against it, and swung my right leg over. As I gymnastically followed with the other leg, my running shoe caught in the lip of the rail. I spun in the air and landed on my side in a twisted heap, my shoe still hooked in the rail. I lay in the gushing, mucky river of rain. For an instant, for one hopeless instant, I considered just lying there and letting go, letting the rain and the mud and my exhaustion overtake me. I can’t think when I’d ever felt so defeated, so abandoned, in my life. I worked my foot loose and slowly, very slowly, rose to a standing position, testing, testing. My wrenched knee protested. Nothing was torn or broken, but I was reduced to a hobble. It was going to take me forever to get back to the car. A refrain of my father’s jingled in my head—one of his little slogans for life that had an unpleasant edge to it: when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

  At long last I reached the car, drenched and chilled t
o the bone. Could the tow truck have come and gone? I could hardly bear the thought. Stiff-legged, I eased into the car. I needed to examine my knee and was frightened of what I might find. There was a pair of slacks in my bag. My wet jeans were stiff and heavy, but I managed to wiggle out of them. The knee was angry-looking and swollen; I cupped it tenderly in my palms. The other knee, to my surprise, was bloody and bruised. I pulled on the dry slacks and wrapped my arma around myself. I glanced at my watch. Twelve-twenty. Une bonne heure had turned into three. I drew into myself. It was important to keep the reins. I was walking a fine line in my mind and had to stay the course. I sat, with my head back, and thought, really, of nothing at all. I’d gone past worrying anymore, past thought, past caring. Something would happen.

  And so it did. In the rearview mirror I saw the miraculous, joyous sight of a tow truck! Could it be? Could it be my tow truck? I bounded from the car and hailed it. Sure enough, it pulled up smartly in front of the car, as if, indeed, this was its destination. A short, stocky, uniformed young man jumped from the cab and tipped his cap. I could have smothered him with hugs and kisses. I no longer cared that it had taken him half a day. The important thing was that it was over, all over. Without a word, he slid into the car and attempted to start the motor. Not a peep. He slid out, made a slitting-the-throat gesture, and said simply, in the universal language, “Kaput.”

  The tow truck was already loaded with one automobile mounted on the rear platform. The driver jumped into the cab to release a spare platform behind. With amazing agility and speed, he hooked up my car and reeled it onto the platform. He instructed me to climb up front into the cab of the tow truck.

  The door handle was as high as my upstretched arm. I yanked on the enormous thing and managed to open the door, which was at the level of my head. I mounted the high step with my good leg and stood poised like a flamingo. Inside, crammed into the single passenger seat, was what I took to be a Japanese family: a woman with a young girl in her lap near the driver’s seat and beside her her husband. Where was I meant to sit?