Firenze

A colleague recently remarked that he’d spent two days at the Uffizi museum in Florence and hadn’t seen it all. Compare that to Art Buchwald’s man who saw the Louvre in under six minutes. Not an easy feat given the crowds but it can be done if you pick the right day (a Monday in March) and time (first thing in the morning before the artists are awake). Buy your ticket online, get a map to run up the stairs, see the Mona Lisa, dart down a corridor and see the Winged Victory and Venus de Milo. Choosing the right entrance is key, ignore signs (scenic route) and do not run. I’ll bet that the visit can be made in under three minutes.

We visited Florence and the Uffizi during our four days of quasi-homelessness after moving from Heathcliff’s house in Valbonne until the apartment in Antibes was available. We became Friends of the Uffizi in anticipation of the visit. It shortens the wait time time to enter to a mere five minutes and promises unlimited visits during the calendar year with a chain of subscribing local museums if you can drag yourself to see still more art.

The Ufizzi is a great place for art historians but I am no more an art historian than George Costanza was a marine biologist or architect. We joined tired tourists shuffling about from one painting to the next, from the thirteenth century down to the fourteenth as so on. Lots of gilded halos early on, giving way to the sixteenth century angels (Birds? Do they lay eggs?) and sunlight pouring through gaps in clouds.

We had the audioguide but it said little beyond, “Now you are in Room 13” after we punched in the number 13. We walked through the museum and at some point thought we were done, but no, it’s a lot like IKEA where like a rat in a maze you walk past lampshades and cutlery long after you’ve picked the table you came to buy.  The children finished long before Jeroen and I did (let’s blame my arthritis) and found the gelati stand.

Next was the Accademia where David looks beyond victory with modest eyes and exposed genitals. I thought about the not-David that had been chipped and smoothed away and the incredibly accurate surface anatomy, with cephalic and basilar veins, the dorsal venous arch incorporated in the sculpture. Michelangelo endured dissection much better than I did, and without the benefit of formaldehyde. I saw a grown man yawn before David, I blamed jet-lag. Naked sculptures of men and women graced the piazza outside, including a copy of David which tempted the average tourist to skip the real thing. The copy, alas, was done by an artist with less talent or with fewer than 10,000 hours of practice. We’ll never know.

The highlight of our trip to Florence was our visit to Signora Valentina’s home. She hosted my brother as a student many years ago when he was a student. On the first evening of his visit, she told him, in Italian, that her son was a zoologist, and unsure if he’d understood what she’d said, proceeded to imitate several animals to make her meaning clear. For our visit, she enlisted her niece, Costanza, an art historian who speaks English fluently and translated a book on thirteenth century Italian art into English and is often at the Uffizi. Signora Valentina said that I look just like my brother which I’m sure she intended as a compliment. She cooked a lovely vegetarian meal for us, three different kinds of pasta and a salad, all so good. I could go back for more.

At Hotel Carolus, we met two Tamil employees from Sri Lanka. One of them spoke of the precarious conditions of Tamils still living as refugee in tents of plastic with little security save the eyes of Geneva and expats Sri Lankans in the UK and USA. “The Tamils were betrayed by the Tigers,” he said. “They could have made a deal but no, hungry for power, they wanted it all. Just like the Palestinians under Arafat. Now we have nothing; we could have had something.”  His bilingual children speak Tamil and Italian, and play football. He plied us with coffee, and offered me Ceylon tea, packed, of course, he added wryly, in England. He also told me that he bicycled to work and lived across from Dante Alighieri's house.

The other gentleman, older, and softly spoken, plans to retire in the next year or two to the hills of Kandy. His wife and grown children run their little coffee plantation which also grows pepper and cardamon. He goes home every three months and has traveled all over Tamil Nadu, visiting temples. His favorite temple was Meenakshi in Madurai, and then, as an aside mentioned that he was Muslim. Yet, he said, Tamil culture, which is truly his own culture, includes temple architecture and sculpture and music. He has as much faith in art as he does in his religion and he can respect the frailties of other humans and their Gods.

Andre, the porter, was another gentlemen with Tamil ancestry from Mauritius. He speaks little Tamil but his grandfather came from the town of Chidambaram. I told him, in my best French, the legend of Nandanar, the untouchable, who in a dream was summoned to the temple in Chidambaram but was stopped at the door because of his caste. He was found dead in the sanctum the next morning, brought home by Nataraja. Since then, the doors of the temple have been open, and anyone can enter.

I cannot finish this piece on Florence without mentioning Giardino di Barbano at Piazza Indipendenza, a family-run Tuscan restaurant. They served a most delicious vegetable soup and good pizza and packed Tiramisu to go. We ate there every night while in Florence, as much for the simple food which satisfied soul and body as for Silvia’s gentle presence.

Au revoir Heathcliff

What became of Heathcliff?

I am asked over and over, “What became of Heathcliff?”
Did I bring him to Antibes with me?
Ah, gentle reader, read on but be warned that the passage below may not be suitable to be read aloud to young children (gratuitous violence PG13).

Something weird happened the day before we left the house in Valbonne village. I was, as usual, working on my as yet unborn but soon to be immortal novel, seated at the kitchen table when I heard Heathcliff’s meeouw. I opened the window and in he jumped, and hid himself between a chair and a cushion. He had the air of a cat who was frightened, perhaps chased and needing to escape from enemies. I couldn’t imagine that Heathcliff would have enemies, but one never knows. Really, one doesn’t, so I shut the window, keeping Heathcliff safer. I wrote a little on my computer (MacBook Air), read what I’d written and hit the delete key. It’s often better that way.

I made myself another pot of tea (Nilgiri orange pekoe), black, no sugar, poured myself a cup and contemplated Ved Vyas and how easily story-telling came to him. Yes, he had a scribe, but still, the Mahabharata was written two thousand years ago without spell-check. I wrote another paragraph and decided to keep it.

I heard a soft “Hello.” I jumped out of my skin. Nobody in sight. Was I hearing voices? Hadn’t I taken my medicine? I got out of my uncomfortable chair and walked around the house, checking. My cell phone was long out of juice. The phone was in its place. TV off. No radio. Computer muted. I must have imagined it. I returned to work.

“Hello.” An English accent, not ox-bridge, less refined, perhaps Leeds, Yorkshire, with the lo stretched out and the he half-swallowed and soft. It’s hard to write a classic with all these interruptions no matter how friendly. I looked around, no one. Did I say no one? There was Heathcliff. But it couldn’t be. 

I saw Heathcliff looking at me. Cats don’t smile, but Heathcliff was clearly smiling. He rubbed his back against my jeans (Levi’s, denim, size 4) and stood at the front door, commanding me to open it and let him out.

I sat back down. No words. It was impossible to contemplate leaving Heathcliff to the perils of Valbonne. Every cat, even one who sometimes bites and scratches, deserves an owner. So before we left the house, I had to kit-nap him. 

Next morning, I had a cardboard box lined with a towel, and an empty laundry basket to serve as a ventilated lid. I wore a strong pair of long garden gloves to capture, hold and transfer the cat into the container. I put out warm milk in a saucer. Suspicions were aroused instantly or did he smell a rat? We were always too lazy to warm up the milk. Heathcliff sniffed at the milk but would not taste it. He looked around to see if a human would volunteer to taste the milk and make sure it was safe for a cat. He surveyed the kitchen and left through the kitchen door.

I played cat-and-mouse with him, except of course I was the cat and he the mouse. If I could wait, he would return. He did, with a rough looking army of other street cats. They mewed collectively, loudly, as if aspiring to roar, stretching out claws. I grabbed Heathcliff. Was that stupid! The other cats jumped on me, shredding my garden gloves to, well, shreds. A black cat with yellow eyes bit me on my right forearm, just below the elbow. I released Heathcliff who ran away, an orange blur of stripe and claw. The army of cats walked out stealthily, ready to pounce if needed.

I washed my arms in the kitchen sink (see how I included it) with antiseptic soap and dabbed some Neosporin and put on a couple of band-aids. No need for stitches.
A black cat turned slowly in my direction and spat before leaving. Not very nice but before I feel the need to criticize someone, I think of what my father said about not rushing to judge because everybody did not have the privileges I’d known growing up.

If Heathcliff has taught me anything, it is that stray cats are like stray humans. One can love a stray creature, but strays will never be tamed, may never learn to trust or accept love. That doesn’t mean I can’t love Heathcliff or miss him, I just can’t take his behavior personally.

Suffice it so say that Heathcliff roams the rues of Valbonne. I will return there, often, to see him. I have an abstract art class on Friday mornings (more on that subject later, I promise), and will stop by rue St. Bernardin, perhaps with a can of tuna fish from Frederica’s grocery store.

My husband and children are doing well on Claritin. Cat allergy. If you believe that such an illness could exist, you’d believe anything.

M. Lausberg welcomes the New Antibois

It is not an easy matter to open a bank account in France. We tried the post office in a proletarian moment soon after we arrived.  We were asked to return the next day to make an appointment.  Your credit card does not help you get a phone line any more than the money you’ve stashed away in Switzerland. You need a French bank account. Jeroen emailed his colleague who suggested we try the Société Générale.

One does not just walk into a back in France. One presses a button and the security person releases a switch to allow admission. A sign at the door states that people in masks and are not admitted, and bank robbers must have a piece d’identite and a rendez-vous.

Monsieur Lausberg welcomed us at the Société Générale branch at Place de Gaulle without prior rendez-vous and plied us with coffee.  He is the man who deals with the foreign born. Although M. Lausberg does speak some English, we insisted on speaking French, using hand and shoulder shrugs with “Baah” sounds to fill in the many gaps which M. Lausberg filled. Agrafeuse is French for stapler, I bet most of my family, friends, readers and fans (see how I slipped that in) don’t know that.

What did we need to start a bank account? Piece d’identity, a passport works. Jeroen’s passport was acceptable, mine, not-European, was not. Then we needed proof of address and here we showed our rental contract for the house in Valbonne. He who triumphs first has made a mistake. There were two problems with the contract: It was in English and in my name. M. Lausberg asked us to get a French translation and have the proprietere change the tenancy to my husband’s name.

The French love paper. Not the kind you fold and tuck away in your handbag, or in Jeroen’s case pull out of your back pocket, dog-eared and ready to tear. The French do dossiers, file folders for four-holed punched paper safe in water-proof plastic protectors and a final flap with criss-crossing elastic bands that render third-line of security. I am told dossiers become a life-long habit, perhaps even an addiction but I don’t believe I am at risk.

Jeroen’s ATM card has a picture of Lucky Luke shooting faster than his shadow. If you don’t know about Lucky Luke, get on Amazon and buy the Goscinny’s. The Stagecoach. It features Jolly Jumper, the horse that can run so fast and play chess so slow and Jesse James. M. Lausberg prefers Obelix to Lucky Luke. It’s close.

M. Lausberg told us that his daughters spoke English and Italian fluently, whereas for him English was a heavy foreign tongue. He is of Belgian descent and can make better frites than any Frenchman. We offered to teach him essential English phrases for bankers just in case he gets transferred to the New York office in a dystopian future.

1.  This is a hold up.

2.  Unmarked bills

3.  Getaway car

4.  Burglary, theft, pick-pocket

5.  Armed robbery

6.  Drive-by shooting

7.  Don’t call the cops

8.  Ransom, kidnapping

9.  Let me see your hands

10.  I don’t got all day.

M. Lausberg punched our new address into his computer with obvious satisfaction when we returned to report our move to Antibes from Valbonne. The apartment we rent would cost a little over a million euros. Would we qualify for a loan?  No? Would M. Lausberg make some special arrangements to help us get that loan?  M. Lausberg’s vocabulary increased with a new phrase: White collar crime.

We are now officially Antibois and proud of it.  Why not Antibien? Or Antibais? M. Lausberg explained: Nicois from Nice, Marseillais (pronounced mar-sigh-yay) from Marseille, Strasbourgouis from Strasbourg, and Parisien from Paris, a cold grey busy city in the North that knows to pretty itself with black and gold. We are in the South of France.