At Home in France

by Ann Barry

  “Monsieur a trouvé le chien!” I exclaimed to Simone when we reached the house. “Oui, Simone!” he said solemnly. Then he launched into an account of his detective work, circling the table in increasing excitement. She brought coffee and motioned to him with a sit-yourself gesture—as if he were an overwrought puppy. As she sipped her coffee her lips were pursed with a tight little expression of satisfaction at the triumph of justice. Monsieur Hironde went to the telephone book and jotted down the name and address of the owners of the dog. I glanced at the florid script: M. et Me. Maury. If I should experience any further difficulties, he said, I should contact them.

  Later I realized that while I hadn’t exactly received the sympathy I’d wanted, I’d certainly gotten consideration all around. Someone could have said that I was foolish—the foolish American—to be walking on a country road defenseless, so what should I expect?

  They could have defended their own, against the foreigner, and let it go at that. In the end, however, their reactions seemed instinctive. The matter was simple: I was owed money. And owing money was no small matter, according to simple country justice. It was recompense, not sympathy, that the victim was due.

  The next morning I packed up and closed the house. In Bétaille, I stopped at the doctor’s office to pay the bill and ask for a change of dressing. He commented that it was a good thing we’d located the owners of the dog—word travels faster than the post here. He wished me well and gave me his card.

  On my next trip, I met an engaging young South African couple, Gavin and Lillian Bell, acquaintances of the Servais, who compounded my distrust of country dogs. They were managing a small auberge near Salvignac for a friend who had gone back to South Africa to invest in a trout farm. When I visited them on a Saturday afternoon, Gavin had a dog story that topped mine. He was cycling along a nearby country road and came upon a freshly killed sheep, its throat savagely ripped open. Then another. And another. Finally, after passing nine dead sheep, all killed in the same manner, he came upon an Alsatian—“something like your German shepherd,” he said—in the throes of its tenth kill. The dog was drenched with blood. At Gavin’s approach, it ran off. Gavin found the owner of the sheep, who instantly guessed the owner of the dog. The owner of the sheep dumped his murdered flock on the doorstep of his neighbor and demanded payment for the lot—a tidy sum. The dog owner paid up. Then the sheep owner followed up with a further ultimatum: he would gladly shoot the dog or the owner could send him away. The dog presently resides in Paris.

  At this point, I was counting myself lucky—I could have been taken for a sheep—and resolved to meet the problem head-on. I consulted with Simone and Raymond about taking a different route—Bétaille aller et retour. Simone knew of no chien méchant in this vicinity. But Raymond winced and whispered to her under his breath, “Mais on ne sais jamais, Simone.” I asked Raymond if one could find a “gaz qui font les larmes,” my bumbling attempt at a term for a teargas gun. The light dawned and he exclaimed at the cleverness of this idea. Gaz lacrymogène. He found a scrap of paper—the flap of an envelope (all envelopes are saved for just such purposes)—and wrote down the words to present at the shop for la chasse in Bretenoux. Une bombe de défense! He snorted gleefully. Simone looked less enthusiastic.

  I practiced the word, lacrymogène, and entered the shop. The owner was discussing fishing gear with two gentlemen and paused for my request. I hoped this would not appear untoward; I suddenly felt burdened with my identity as the American woman with the house on the hill. “Gaz lacrymogène? Bombe de défense?” I said in low tones. Question mark, question mark—trying out the untested, I’m always afraid I won’t be understood. But this was taken, surprisingly, as a matter of course. The man produced a little capsule, just the right size to grip in a hand. Armed with my bombe, I headed home.

  On the patio, I gingerly removed the little red plastic lever, per instructions, and pushed the indented button with my index finger. Pffft, it worked perfectly. I read the fine print on the capsule, which contained a rather strange bit of information: Sa formule est spécifique pour une utilisation en lieu clos (clubs, discothèques, etc.). (This formula is designed for indoor use.) Nothing about dogs. The next time I saw Raymond, I showed him my bombe de défense and pointed out the baffling note. He looked perplexed, then perturbed. He took a moment before saying lamely, “Mais il y a des chiens dans les discos.” And he wasn’t joking—dogs go everywhere with their owners in France. Poor man. I suspect he’d rather me think there were vicious dogs than mad Frenchmen in the country’s nightclubs.

  So I take the Bétaille route, my handy bombe at the ready. Je suis prête pour la bête—ready for the beast.

  16

  NOT A DROP TO DRINK

  My concern about weather generally amounts to no more than wondering if I should carry an umbrella to work. For my neighbors, however, such matters have a greater import. More of their lives are spent outdoors: gardening, drying laundry, marketing. When I depart in the fall, I sense their despondency at the onset of winter, which will keep them housebound. In the spring they turn their faces unconsciously and gratefully to the sun. On each return visit I receive an update on the previous winter or summer. The October 1991 report: a summer of drought.

  It was a Sunday morning. I had had a long run along the river road and had just finished up a rich brunch of large slabs of golden Armagnac-scented French toast, country bacon, steaming black coffee. I had planned to take a little afternoon excursion and hurried to wash up the dishes.

  When I turned on the faucet, it coughed, gurgled, and sputtered. I turned it off—a little air pocket, a glitch, whatever, I thought—and tried again. This time there was no cough, but a gasping and hissing, as if it was drawing a last breath. And so it was. There was no water. The cistern, I realized, had run dry. And, of course—the bitter little pill—it would be a Sunday.

  I resurrected “Points on the Obvious and Obscure.” I quickly scanned passages under the heading of WATER:

  The cistern in the Cave holds about 1,200 gallons of rainwater, and is entirely supplied by water from the roof. Therefore, care must be taken not to use more than is really necessary. Unrestricted flushing is discouraged.

  The basin, shower, and WC discharge into a septic tank in the Cave which seems to work well as not much washing water goes down. It discharges through a long drain over the edge of the ravine at foot of garden.

  Not a word on droughts.

  I rooted around for the Pinckney letter, which I hadn’t reread for years, hoping to glean something there. What I found only unnerved me:

  I feel I ought to give you some information about the drains, dull though it may be. The sink discharges over a gully which is connected to a three-inch plastic pipe discharging well down the slope, so should never give any trouble. There is a four-inch drain connecting the WC to the fosse septic; the overflow from this goes into a four-inch pitch fibre socketed drain discharging at the far end of the garden. This drain we relaid ourselves, as it was done so badly by the French. The shower and basin connect direct to the four-inch drain, thus bypassing the fosse septic. Under a flat stone outside, the cave door covers a small rodding eye (a device unknown to the French). Be careful when you leave the house for the winter to draw off the water in the pan; we failed to do this once, with the result that the water froze and burst the side of the pan. There is a filter over the cistern in the cave which ought to be cleaned out every now and then, as it gets filled up with leaves; anyway it prevents them getting into the tank.

  What was a “fosse septic”? What was a “pitch fibre socketed drain”? “Rodding eye”? It left me shaken.

  What to do? Who to call? I decided to award this problem to the Hironde Rescue Squad. I stifled my reluctance to call on them on a Sunday—the day of the big midday meal with friends or relatives—and walked to their house. Luckily, they had no company and had just finished their lunch.

  Raymond took it all in stride. In fact, he seemed energized, after his nap-in
ducing meal. Immediately he was on the phone to the fire department, les pompiers. This seemed a dramatic solution, to my mind. Fire engines in Manhattan are a constant and terrifying presence. I’m accustomed to their wailing part in the general cacophonie backdrop, but when one carooms right past, blaring its dizzying alarm, I quake. I picture flames licking at windows, mothers clutching babies and leaping to their deaths. A fire is one of my worst fears. There is a frequently mentioned figure in our family, a Great-Aunt Mary, who was said to have saved every one of her dozen children from their burning house. The story, and Mary herself, had taken on the dimensions of legend. In the family album that I inherited after my mother died, there is a photogravure of an unidentified, staunch-looking woman surrounded by her brood, to whom I’ve attached this tale of heroism.

  Wasn’t a dried-up cistern a rather mundane matter for the fire department? Raymond’s decision seemed an over-reaction—but mine was not to question why.

  While Simone and I carried on a distracted conversation—the trials of the summer’s drought—I overheard his account to the man at the other end of the phone: his neighbor, an American woman, had a maison secondaire; the cistern had run dry. Pause. No, the house was not attached to the town’s water system. Pause. “Une heure et demi? D’accord.”

  A great wave of relief swept over me. Help was on the way within an hour and a half! I applauded. Raymond proceeded to give the firemen directions to both his house and mine, concluding with his phone number. He hung up. The firemen were in Cahors, he explained. Cahors, an hour’s drive away! What if my house had been on fire?

  Then he sat down, with a self-important lift of his shoulders. Assuming the grave avuncular look my problems sometimes elicited, he said that perhaps I should consider hooking up to the local system. Then I would avoid this problem, and my tap water would be drinkable. The initial investment was high, he said, but the yearly fee negligible.

  “Oui, ce n’est pas le Moyen Age,” I said jocularly. It did seem smarter than relying on this antiquated system based on iffy rainwater.

  So—he slapped the table—I was to return home to await the firemen. He wasn’t sure if they would arrive at my house or theirs.

  I diddled about the house for well over an hour and a half. Then doubts began to needle my mind. Where were they? Why not run, really run, over to the Hirondes; I would meet the firemen head-on if they were close, and could maybe put through another call if they were not. Just to see if they were on the way. Just to see that they weren’t lost, or had the wrong phone number.

  About halfway down the road to the Hirondes, moving at a steady clip, I heard the roar of a car behind me and a repeated honking. It was the Servais. Madame rolled down the window and shouted excitedly that the firemen had arrived at my house and, finding no one home, had come to their house! She’d called Hironde, who was on his way! “Allez! Vite! Vite!” She rolled up the window, and they sped off in a cloud of dust.

  Damnation. The afternoon had turned into a sort of Toad motorcar chase out of The Wind in the Willows, everyone tearing up the roadways in mad circles. I ran for home.

  A sparkling, cherry-red fire truck—looking like a very large toy you’d find under the Christmas tree—was parked in the drive. Several firemen were unraveling the fire hose, with Raymond in the lead. When he saw me, he raised his arms in grateful salutation.

  “La cave” I shouted. “C’est ouvert!”

  The firemen trundled into the cave. I drew Raymond aside. The flurry of officious activity made me wonder about the cost. “Vraiment rien,” he said—nothing really—but, with a shuffling of the fingers, indicated that a tip for the men would be in order.

  He bowed and said he would be off, with a slight mock mopping of the brow suggesting the strenuous activity he’d been through. I waited on the patio while the firemen filled the cistern in the cave, pondering the delicate matter of the tip. Having never called on firemen to refill a cistern, I couldn’t imagine what amount to offer. There were three of them, one who was apparently the supervisor and two younger men. Too little (ten dollars?) would be resented. Too much (forty dollars? fifty dollars?) might appear ugly-Americanish. I eventually settled on five dollars apiece—fifteen dollars.

  The men tramped out of the cave, looking oversized in their great slickers, hats, and boots—especially for this rather minor task. They wound the hose back on the truck; the whole thing had taken no more than a half hour. The supervisor advised me not to turn on the taps for several hours, in order to let the water settle in the cistern.

  I asked him, feigning ignorance, what I owed them for the service.

  “Gratuit,” he said graciously.

  Now was the time to offer compensation. I smiled faintly, feeling embarrassed and awkward—especially being a woman making this somewhat crude gesture. There are some things better left to men. “Pour votre ennui,” I said, slipping him the money.

  The lagniappe seemed to have struck the right note.

  Th us began a seemingly never-ending effort to connect the house to the local water system. I started at the mairie in Carennac, which, I discovered, is open on a limited basis. It is a rather stately but plain little building, set off from the main road next to the elementary school. Class was in session and I took the occasion to peek in the window. Some two dozen children were seated at their desks, reciting grammar drills. Their voices drifted like a muffled hymn through the windows. Their number surprised me. I’d never seen children on the streets in Carennac, a fact that contributed to the village’s placid atmosphere. I had seen kids on surrounding country roads, walking along with their copains—their buddies—or standing alone outside a house, waiting for transport. Where did they come from? How did they get here? I had no idea how the elementary-school system worked in the country.

  A stout, pretty woman, with a budlike mouth and the merest hyphens of eyebrows, rose from her desk when I entered the mairie. Her name was Madame Claudine Sanchez; her husband was Spanish. I explained that I was the owner of Pech Farguet, to which she nodded knowingly. The water system established by the former owners, I said, was inadequate. The Pinckneys, she assented in recognition. (Once again I was struck by the villagers’ knowledge about the particulars of Pech Farguet.) Not only was I unable to drink or cook with tap water, but the drought had been une catastrophe. The solution was to connect my house to the municipal water system. How was I to proceed?

  She came around the counter and led me to a table where enormous maps were mounted in metal racks and covered in plastic. With some difficulty, she eventually found the proper map. It was on a minute scale, such as the incredible série orange maps done by the Institut Géographique National that I keep at the house. Each and every domicile is recorded with an infinitesimal square smaller than the head of a pin. We hovered over the map. She pointed a bright red fingernail to Magnagues. My eyes traveled down the spiderweb line representing the road to the Hirondes’ house, then back up the road to the fork: to the left the Bézamats, to the right Pech Farguet. A little ant on the map, but there it was, my house. It was on record, verifiable, official, on the town-hall map!

  She circled back to the counter. Surveyors would have to investigate the property and determine the location of the pipelines—she believed they weren’t far—to which my house could be hooked up. The next step was to write a letter to Saur, the company in Figeac, who would do the job. They would then be able to give me an estimate of the cost. Here we go, I thought. I coughed apologetically. I was not too adept at writing letters in French, I said, especially one that required technical explanations. Could she possibly compose the letter for me?

  She glanced at her watch. It was almost noon. Lunch was beckoning. This presented a real conflict. “Alors”— she sighed—and drew out a piece of blank paper. Her letter was brief and straightforward, with just a brushstroke of formal French circumlocution. “J’ai l’honneur de vous demandez le rattachement à ce réseau.” (It is an honor for me to ask you for the connection of this ne
twork.) Voilà! Letter in hand, I went home for lunch and that afternoon sent off my copy.

  After a trip in the early spring of 1992—when I put through a call to inquire if my correspondence had come to anyone’s attention—I received a letter from Saur in New York, with a detailed two-page document setting forth the procedures that would be necessary for the branchement—the connection—as well as a printed folder with thirty articles devoted to the Service des eaux in the département du Lot. The estimate for the job was more than I’d anticipated. Yet, on the other hand, it didn’t seem an outrageous amount for such a major undertaking.

  Expenses for the house are minimal. I pay two taxes each year: taxes foncières and a taxe d’habitation. I have a basic Assurances Mutuelles de France with Groupe Azur, in Bretenoux, which covers fire and theft. The gas-and-electricity bill is automatically deducted from my BNP account twice a year. I try to keep some reserve funds in my bank account for the unexpected (one year a section of the roof needed repair). There is no phone bill to pay; it seems simpler to stop at the Carennac post office to make a call than having the expense and going through the rigmarole of paying bills. And, in truth, I prefer being phoneless, televisionless, radioless—out of touch, living a step back in time. Generally, Pech Farguet is like a little fort and percolates along at its own pace.

  After the initial expenditure for the installation, the bill for water would be quite reasonable, according to the Hirondes. A drop in the bucket, so to speak, and well worth it. For that I would save buying bottled water and trips to the Salges’ well. Friends had also pointed out that if and when I decided to sell the house—fat chance—this would be an important factor in its favor.