Le brevet

Le Brevet

The boys passed the brevet exam, assez bien. The assez means fairly, and steals from the bien, but the grade itself means with honors. This is the examination taken by kids graduating middle school or college, around age 15.

The brevet is quintessentially French: The students are tested on French, Mathematics, Social Studies (including European history of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, the geography of France, and civics of the French government) and Art history. 

The last involves a presentation to include power-point slides and sound files before an audience of external examiners who assess the students' spoken French and their understanding of art in its social context. The topics are chosen from music, dance, architecture, sculpture and painting.

My boys rehearsed their presentations in which they contrasted Miles Davis’s Summertime to Louis Armstrong’s rendition of It’s a Wonderful World, and Frieda Kahlo’s My grandmother, my mother and me to Van Gogh’s Self portrait. They studied Steve Reich and Sidney Bechet, Stravinsky’s ballet Rite of spring, and the architecture of the Empire State building.

There is no science exam for the Brevet. The French have their priorities. Every city has a Rue St. Exupery, a Metro station in Paris is called Picasso. On a visit to the tombs at the Pantheon, we saw fresh flowers on the graves of Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Dumas, and Braille, the man who brought poetry to the blind.

What I don't miss

We have been back for more than a month. In the morning, I expect to see the Med, but it is so far away. Then I wake up.

For some fine reasons, mainly plumbing and bathroom related, I am glad to be the US. Here they are, in no particular order.

The shower and bathroom. The shower works, no bathtub and plastic curtain needed. The water is soft, the soap lathers, and my hair looks terrific. OK, I exaggerate. My hair doesn’t stick to my scalp with an attitude of defeat and surrender.  The sink does not have tenacious white flecks of chalk.

The toilet. I enjoy the exhaust fan, a feature missing in the toilet in the apartment in Antibes. Another missing feature was a window. So we lit candles in the toilet. The French place the toilet in the center of the house and hope that it will smell great. To compensate for the lack of ventilation, the French throw in a bidet.

Absence of bidet. The bidet in France looks like a commode, with a difference. The one in our apartment had a black rubber plug with a chain intended to block the drain. Water flowed in from the edges of the porcelain rim. I have not seen the proper use of bidet demonstrated, but I imagine it involves sitting on the porcelain edge with the nether regions soaking in water. Then one inserts one’s hand to pull out the plug and waves the wet hand, allowing it to air dry. I sealed off the bidet with yellow tape to prevent inadvertent use. The bidet was across from the commode with 8-10 inches between the two. The gap allowed one to walk into a shower, 2 feet by two. I also sealed off this shower. I didn’t want to clean it or deal with it, and I was afraid that items of clothing would fall into the bidet.

The other bathroom in the apartment contained a sink and a bathtub, no toilet. I mean no toilet that one could see, but there was archeological evidence of removed commode, screws and holes in the walls and floor. Also a pipe in the wall, open and empty, and emitting a certain smell. We stuffed that pipe with bubble wrap which effectively solved the problem.

More on water drainage, leaky ceilings and heavy rain in the next.

Dinner guests

Jeroen and I invited ourselves to Chez Titou to learn the secret recipes for the tapenades he sells at the market. “It is only a small outfit,” he told us. “It’s not a factory, not a big shiny kitchen, it’s a small laboratory. I work there by myself, there will not be room for the three of us.”

Titou was seated outside a garage-sized workspace at a picnic table and was playing with his cat. The table was white plastic as were the chairs, the vinyl table cloth with Provencal grapes and tomatoes was covered with empty plates and the left overs of an Italian dinner. Titou’s wife Evelynn stepped out to greet us. The atelier, once his kitchen, was now her ceramic studio. She showed us her wheels, glazes, ovens and finished pieces made of local red clay, bowls, plates and mugs. She used to be a baker but gave that up; she sells her pottery at a bakery in Vallauris which her sister and brother-in-law run.

Titou showed us his new atelier, air-conditioned to meet regulations.He has several refrigerators including a walk-in one where he keeps anything likely to spoil. He roasts his peppers and tomatoes in his home kitchen. Olives and olive oils of different origins kept in closed tubs of plastic were stacked three to four high into little towers.

I took a few photographs and prepared for action. There was no action, nor were any secrets shared. “It has been a matter of trial and error,” Titou confided. “I don’t have any recipes written down. I taste as I go along.”

Titou kissed us goodbye. We invited his wife to visit us in Ann Arbor where she can meet other potters and trade secrets. And then, because I was running out of things to say, I invited them over to dinner in Antibes.

I made a soul-less dal that went well with a spineless rice, rescued only by a vegetable dish made from carrots, potatoes and green beans spiced with panch phoran. The evening was not a total disaster because the guests didn’t know better, and because I pulled off a good dessert, idiot-proof mango mousse made with canned Alfonso mango pulp and crème fraiche. The rosé helped, to give credit where it’s due.

The Final Countdown

Countdown

 I was filled with a sense of despair that lasted a month. I hadn’t done all the things I’d hoped while in France and I was running out of time. As I submit this just after returning to the US, I  will be honest enough to admit that none of these goals was met.

1. My dark secret, one I’ve shared with too many strangers to be much of a secret, was that I had planned to read Finnegans Wake this year. I’d got up to page 250 or so, following the text while listening to Patrick Healy’s reading on Ubusound. It’s free. I’m not bored with it but I  am not excited by the puns and many languages and the magic of dreamland and the references to Adam and Eve and tangential excursions to whoknowswhere, the kind of word Joyce would have coined if only he’d thought of it. The questions I have for myself are: Why am I doing this to myself? Am I a masochist? No, I usually nibble on chocolate while I listen and I’m not suffering. It’s not like listening to the orchestral component of Hindi film music. I think it’s because of Joyce’s experimentation of sound and sense that goes beyond language, like machine code of computers, primal, pre-verbal. In Ulysses, he’d used nearly every word in the English language, and then he felt the need to go beyond. Is this virtuosity for its own sake? I suspect it is. If it had been written by a lunatic, would I be reading it? Probably not. Is the reader as pretentious as the book? Probably. I am unlikely to boast about this dubious achievement or wear a T-shirt that says “I’m as awake as the Buddha and Finnegan” or some such, I’m more likely to admit to reading this only if under threat. Will I finish it? Yes, only because I can put it behind me and not do it again.

2. Improve my French. Yes, I do speak better than I did 10 months ago, but I need to listen to Learn French by Podcast, Coffeebreak French and News in Slow French as much as I can. I recommend these programs whole-heartedly as opposed to my half-assed recommendation of the Wake. Listening to all this stuff involves the continuous use of headphones since my family does not share in this quest for self-improvement. I have this Brahminical need or greed for more knowledge for its own sake. It’s going to be harder to keep up when not in France.  I should watch French films with subtitles to allow for better comprehension at a literal level; I recognize that my inability to enjoy French cinema is limited, not by language but by imagination and culture.

3. Write a novel. I thought I’d put that in for good measure. I had planned to write a lot but I didn’t distracted as I’ve been with travels, family and work. Work comes in the way of a writer’s progress, alas. In this economy, one should be grateful to have a job, even one without benefits, and I shouldn’t be complaining or blaming lack of progress on work such as it is. Other reasons for not writing include fear of failure, fear of success, fear of criticism, fear of not having anything to be afraid of.

4. Read Le Petit Prince in French. I got about halfway through and dropped it. I don’t have an excuse except I know how it ends and I’ve heard it dramatized in English where it sounded pompous if not pedantic with lines that sank like, “That which is important is not visible to the eye.”

5. Knit that sweater for my mother. I did finish it, but like all the other knitting projects I’ve undertaken this last year, I expect to unravel and start over. I did knit a swatch, no, not really, but I did check measurements, but it does not fit well, much too large. I can’t expect my mother to grow.

6. Grow two inches taller. Given the poor record of fulfilling any of the other items on this list, I may as well add another failure. As long as it doesn’t involve wearing heels. It’s hard enough to walk on level ground on flats.

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.