L'olivier au marché

L’olivier  au Marché

The covered market in Antibes is on my way to Old Town and the harbor. I go there primarily to buy olives from Titou (Thierry pronounced Tcherry like Chekov). We are invited to call him Titou, he knows our names, but we still say vous, not tu.
Titou is an artisan, and makes his own pâtes: black olives, green olives, garlic, lemon, sun-dried tomato, and also sells combinations of olives, never pitted, usually flavored with herbs and preserved in olive oil. We are free to taste everything he sells on pieces he pulls of a baguette. He rounds down what I owe and will often add something to try, a scoop of purple olives from Provence in a clear plastic container, as a gift.
A short, stocky man with big smile, he is a real-life person, I remind myself, not a caricature of a happy Frenchman. On Saturdays he is helped by the daughter of the man at the next stall who sells vegetables. I have not yet bonded with him, and I’m not sure I have the energy. Titou, on the other hand, is important: We have invited ourselves to his workshop/ kitchen to learn the nuances of making spreads. He is not too busy now; in the next few months his kitchen will be more active as red peppers and aubergine come into season, and more tourists arrive to flood the market, which would be a good time for us to visit his workshop in the heart of Antibes.  Titou is normally and inexplicably very happy, but gets even happier when the sun shines. He promises good weather next month.

It has been raining a lot, with a winter storm every other week. I like to watch storms from the warmth of my living room, through the glass and over the terrace. It is blowing today, sailing at the club will likely be cancelled. The parasailors will be out though: I’ve seen these intrepid men in their wetsuits fly twenty feet into the air, pulled up by the sail while standing on a board. It offers the freedom of a bird and I wish I didn’t find the wind so strong or the water so cold and wet. Gusts blow seagulls sideways, and even through the glass I hear them squawk. When the windows are open, I can strain to hear the sound of the sea, waves hitting rocks.

The apartment is heated my radiators circulating hot water. The one near my table had at first the charm and sound of a babbling brook. After a few weeks it drove me nuts, much like the effects of Chinese torture. Moumou, the Algerian handyman removed air from the pipes to still the sound, a transient benefit. The noise is back. Moumou says it’s because the pressure in the system is too low and there’s not much that can be done about it except to wait for warm weather when we can turn the heat off. I could possibly incorporate the sound of the water into the recording of Finnegans Wake I’ve discovered on the Ubu website. It might even make the book comprehensible as I follow the audio recording with the text. I could take questions about the Wake if you ask, Gentle Reader, but you might have to listen to long answers notable for sound more than sense. But please don’t ask me why I’m reading it: Like Mt. Everest, it’s there.