Antibes Got Talent.

France celebrates the Summer Solstice, June 21, as the Fête de la Musique, where musicians perform on make-shift stages at street corners. Our friend Malika from Tchad went to Nice to celebrate. She said in past years, the music there did not disappoint but we decided to appreciate the local talent. There were seven official locations in the City of Antibes and more than twice as many unofficial ones, and the City printed out a program with the times beginning at 19h:00 going on to midnight.

Jeroen and I were anxious to hear the choirs. The first, wearing uniform white shirts, was the choir of the Cathedral, which sang Mozart and other Classical composers. We sat on the steps that lead to the Picasso museum and listened for about fifteen minutes.  Jeroen and I were both inspired to join a local choir on our return to the US, and I felt the need to sing. More significantly, listening to the choir gave me a new confidence that I’ve never known: I can hold  the right note as approximately as the best of the singers we heard.

We moved on to the next choir, a secular senior community choir in the Salle d’Associations. This performance was not on the street but in an auditorium. Once again it was refreshing and liberating to hear amateurs. A man played the harmonica, a child of two ran onto the stage and clapped for himself, a cell phone rang. A tenor sang something soulful about amour, and I felt duly romantic until the soprano took over, when I found myself tensing up. The last piece we heard was a French folk song about a gypsy, which made me inexplicably sad. For so it is, I am much affected by music.

As we walked through Old Town, we listened in passing to snatches from more bands, notable for their courage and self-confidence. In no particular order, we heard a jazz band, some rock music with French kids in American T-shirts playing electric guitars and beating out an unimaginative 4/4 rhythm, a folksy charming group of hatted men serenading bonneted women, more soul-free rock, and a duet at Chez Felix which would have sent M. Greene home to work on a novel in which a man with a gun drinks too much whisky to remember all his sins when he goes for confession.

The Cheese Guys

 I  share with the world at large that I am a little in love with many people I meet every week at the market. If I were any more in love, I would be unable to leave France; it’s hard enough as it is to leave a bit of my heart here.

Let's start with my cheese guy. He wears a white kurta and runs a small operation. He makes his own soft, ripe and smelly cheeses from goat, sheep and cow milk and sells them in little cakes with a rind of dried cheese. One man’s flavor is another man’s stink, Jeroen finds the chevres flavorful, I don’t. I do love the gateau du fromage frais, cheesecake, sold by the  slice at three euros a piece. I usually buy two pieces expecting to eat them over the week but it doesn’t always work that way, I take a bit every time I pass the table and it’s gone too soon. The fromagier shared his recipe, the key ingredient is fromage frais, fresh cheese made by adding a culture to unpasteurized cow’s milk at room temperature and separating curds and whey a day or two later, voila, there you have it. Add eggs, sugar and bake on a thin pie crust till done. The tang comes from the cheese itself, the golden color from the yolk, and no lemon is added. I could have sworn there was lemon in the recipe. I shared my surprise to the dismay of the man imparting his closest secret, why would he ever add lemon? I had no answer.
The kurta is specially ordered from a store that sells Indian clothes to tourists. My fromagier claims, and I agree, that the kurta is comfortable, elegant, practical and distinctive, and good enough for Pandit Nehru. He has never been to India and is not quite sure if he was Indian in another lifetime. He warns me that after the end of June, the cheesecake will not be made for the duration of the summer in keeping with local custom. I tell him that if there is no cheesecake in July, I have no choice but to go to America where one can buy cheesecake any time of the year. “C’est pas la même chose,” he says, it’s not the same thing. I don’t argue.

The other fromagier, Jeroen's, does not wear a kurta and has a huge selection of hard and soft cheeses, including Dutch, Swiss, Italian varieties. He sells five Comtés of different ages, and as many Rocqueforts. There is always a line, thirty minutes long, and Jeroen joins it while I shop for vegetables and greet my friends. When Jeroen is at the head of the line I join him just so I can make eye contact with the cheeseman who deigns to give me a nod of recognition. He a muscular man, with the physique of a road construction worker, rough hands, longish hair and whitish shirt. His stall includes a fresh cream and fresh and salted butter section, and eggs, two euros for six. I always buy my eggs here. I’ve seen him give a kid a chunk of cheese with “This is delicious and it’s good for you.” Jeoren picks up four or five cheeses each week to better educate his palate. That's the purpose of the sabbatical.

Le boulanger

In four weeks we will have left this country of wonderful bread to return to the land of Wonder bread. I know I will have to bake when I return, and I know that nothing will compare to the baguettes we pick up at the artisanal boulangerie at the Ilette, across from Salis Beach in Antibes. We make two or three trips a day, the first before the boys leave for school, another before lunch, for who would want to eat baguettes already cool and four hours old. There is last run just before dinner, and on rare occasions, a boy is sent out to grab another loaf before the meal is over. It is convenient that the trip back and forth takes not more than ten minutes, but the lines are getting longer because of those tourists now infesting the city and the bakery as well.

Caroline, a recent graduate from a professional lycée where she baked cakes and pies, stood behind the counter until last week. She is pretty in an innocent and unconscious way, and has only recently started to wear a little make-up. Both Jeroen and I have grown very fond of her. She found a similar job closer to her home in Nice. I can’t blame her for wanting to skip the hour’s commute, but I know that her departure will make it easier for us to leave France. I made her a present of a scalloped blue seed-bead necklace with crystal, I’d combined different shades of blue to reflect the water off the coast.

I am in a relationship with the owner of the bakery. No, I don’t know his name, but that means nothing, I think of him as Jacques. One is free in France to fill in these lapses of  knowledge by using one’s imagination. I was hoping to establish a friendship which would allow me to go into the kitchen and watch the bread at every stage of the process: the measuring out and the checking of temperatures, the preheating to the kneading and the multiple rises, the final shaping and slashing, the steaming of the oven to the  finished product. When I enquired two months ago, I was told to ask again in September after the high season when there would be room to breathe. I was a little hurt, I will admit, and in my younger days when I was more impulsive, I might have gone so far as to boycott this bakery and grant my custom to a competitor. I did consider this course of action but a quick investigation revealed the absence of competition. In the old town of Antibes there are patisseries but no real boulangerie, nothing quite so compelling.

Over time, the proprietor and I have become friends of a sort. He winks at me deliberately and I am grateful for it. As I get older I am winked at even less than I was in my heyday. Sometimes he blows kisses in my direction and says “Bisous, bisous,” or kiss, kiss, which is charming indeed. My children see this as an act of kindness to a middle-aged woman. Jeroen is aware, and as usual, unfazed; he tells me not to worry, that I am not having an affair. I am duly reassured.