part of the Résistance during the war.
Char looked up from his desk: “My guys eat fine now, thanks,” he said and sent him on his way.
During the 1960s, this same farmer became the mayor of Céreste. “Et voilà,” Mireille told us, “the first thing the new mayor did was strip away any trace of Char and rename this square the place de Verdun. It was only recently that the village finally got a rue René Char, just below your street, where you’ll find La Maison Taupin, the house that Char rented with his wife when he first came to Céreste.”
People, and places, have long memories.
We walked down the main street, the facades of the buildings painted yellow, peach, and a fiery red—pigments reminiscent of the local ocher. We passed the town hall, a tall narrow edifice, its steps neatly swept of leaves, its balcony festooned with flags and flower boxes. We turned back into the old village; the warren of narrow lanes was already deep in shadow. The stroller jumped and rattled along the uneven pavement. There was light from a small window, the muffled sound of a television, the clinking of silverware and glasses. The rue de la Liberté was so narrow I could almost touch the walls with my outstretched arms. There were shutters of light blue and dark green, some freshly painted, others that needed a touch-up. I had walked down streets like this as a tourist, out at the wrong time of day, as tourists often are. It had never occurred to me that I would live here.
Two boys threw a ball back and forth in the small placette . We walked under a low stone arch. In the walls around me I saw echoes of other arches, a filled-in window, a going-nowhere door. These houses had been transformed so many times over the centuries that their entrances and exits, never mind their owners, were constantly subject to revision. Instead of making a jumble, these corrections gave an air of permanence, of survival. One more pair of new arrivals wasn’t going to change a thing.
We took a sharp left and found ourselves in the open air. The oblong tower of the church, with its wrought-iron steeple, caught the last reflections of the sun against the hills. This is what a cinematographer would call the golden hour, the glowing time just after the sun sinks below the horizon and before the dark sets in. It’s the hour of watercolor skies—discreet layers of cotton-candy pink, dusky rose, and periwinkle, when the fields are their deepest green, and the wheat has a halo that rises from the surface. We were standing on the medieval ramparts, the walls that once protected this small community from the hostilities of the outside world. Just below us was a field of lavender, the rows tidy and symmetrical. Just behind, a hedge of rosemary bushes. In the distance I could make out the summit of Reillanne, golden city on a hill. We enjoyed the view in the company of a set of flowered sheets, some undershirts, and two graying, pendulous brassieres. This part of the ramparts, due south, is now the site of the communal laundry line.
FIVE GENERATIONS OF my Russian peasant ancestors are rolling over in their graves. Long did they toil, sweat, struggle, to escape the shtetl. Hopeful, they passed through Ellis Island to live the American dream of a chicken in every pot and a dryer in every mudroom. And now one of their progeny is reduced ( voluntarily, no less) to hanging her washing on the line in the garden. Oy.
Gwendal, of course, thinks it’s perfectly normal to hang our undies out under the stars. It smells good. It saves electricity. It’s 110 degrees in the shade.
Yes. But.
I’m an American. And God help me, I love a good tumble dryer.
Not only does the sun not fluff your towels, it comes with folklore as well. One night, Gwendal hesitated on his way out with an armful of sheets and pillowcases. “I feel like there’s something about not hanging your white sheets out in the full moon,” he said.
Huh?
This was how I felt the first time
Char looked up from his desk: “My guys eat fine now, thanks,” he said and sent him on his way.
During the 1960s, this same farmer became the mayor of Céreste. “Et voilà,” Mireille told us, “the first thing the new mayor did was strip away any trace of Char and rename this square the place de Verdun. It was only recently that the village finally got a rue René Char, just below your street, where you’ll find La Maison Taupin, the house that Char rented with his wife when he first came to Céreste.”
People, and places, have long memories.
We walked down the main street, the facades of the buildings painted yellow, peach, and a fiery red—pigments reminiscent of the local ocher. We passed the town hall, a tall narrow edifice, its steps neatly swept of leaves, its balcony festooned with flags and flower boxes. We turned back into the old village; the warren of narrow lanes was already deep in shadow. The stroller jumped and rattled along the uneven pavement. There was light from a small window, the muffled sound of a television, the clinking of silverware and glasses. The rue de la Liberté was so narrow I could almost touch the walls with my outstretched arms. There were shutters of light blue and dark green, some freshly painted, others that needed a touch-up. I had walked down streets like this as a tourist, out at the wrong time of day, as tourists often are. It had never occurred to me that I would live here.
Two boys threw a ball back and forth in the small placette . We walked under a low stone arch. In the walls around me I saw echoes of other arches, a filled-in window, a going-nowhere door. These houses had been transformed so many times over the centuries that their entrances and exits, never mind their owners, were constantly subject to revision. Instead of making a jumble, these corrections gave an air of permanence, of survival. One more pair of new arrivals wasn’t going to change a thing.
We took a sharp left and found ourselves in the open air. The oblong tower of the church, with its wrought-iron steeple, caught the last reflections of the sun against the hills. This is what a cinematographer would call the golden hour, the glowing time just after the sun sinks below the horizon and before the dark sets in. It’s the hour of watercolor skies—discreet layers of cotton-candy pink, dusky rose, and periwinkle, when the fields are their deepest green, and the wheat has a halo that rises from the surface. We were standing on the medieval ramparts, the walls that once protected this small community from the hostilities of the outside world. Just below us was a field of lavender, the rows tidy and symmetrical. Just behind, a hedge of rosemary bushes. In the distance I could make out the summit of Reillanne, golden city on a hill. We enjoyed the view in the company of a set of flowered sheets, some undershirts, and two graying, pendulous brassieres. This part of the ramparts, due south, is now the site of the communal laundry line.
FIVE GENERATIONS OF my Russian peasant ancestors are rolling over in their graves. Long did they toil, sweat, struggle, to escape the shtetl. Hopeful, they passed through Ellis Island to live the American dream of a chicken in every pot and a dryer in every mudroom. And now one of their progeny is reduced ( voluntarily, no less) to hanging her washing on the line in the garden. Oy.
Gwendal, of course, thinks it’s perfectly normal to hang our undies out under the stars. It smells good. It saves electricity. It’s 110 degrees in the shade.
Yes. But.
I’m an American. And God help me, I love a good tumble dryer.
Not only does the sun not fluff your towels, it comes with folklore as well. One night, Gwendal hesitated on his way out with an armful of sheets and pillowcases. “I feel like there’s something about not hanging your white sheets out in the full moon,” he said.
Huh?
This was how I felt the first time
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