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.

Scarves

   

I think it’s possible to fool most of the people most of the time. When we lived in Valbonne, almost everybody spoke to us in English. I had to insist on speaking French with “Nous sommes en France, on parle français s’il vous plaît.” It worked for the most part, local residents indulging me as I stumbled my way through. At first I understood one word in ten. Over the last seven months in Antibes, after many session of Coffee break French, Learn French by Podcast and News in Slow French, I'm getting better at it.  With one-on-one sessions with Aicha Maroune, my polyglot friend and teacher who has taught me to speak better by correcting my pronunciation, I sound like a native speaker.
I mean native of Pondicherry. Chennai is not far, and one of my very favorite uncles lives there, so I don’t feel I’m stretching the truth too much, and yes, I know it’s a lie but it’s a nice one and makes me happy and I don’t hurt anybody and I am very good at justifying this. I would like to say I’m native Parisienne or Antiboise but I know nobody will believe me so I don’t bother. Perhaps in my next life, I will be French, not that I plan ahead.
It was pointed out to me by Mme. Mattice (rhymes with rice, go figure) that most, if not all, French women wear scarves. The éscharpe is like the cravat, or tie. It can be of any color or fabric and doesn’t have to match anything, allowing for free expression of artistic soul. I’m now wearing a black scarf under the misguided, unsupported  and unproven South Indian assumption that black and white match everything. It explains why a Tamil woman will wear a white blouse with a red Kanchivaram silk sari with a blueborder. I will soon upgrade to dark floral scarves in my effort to blend in, but I will not wear the infamous marbled silk scarves from Pondicherry .
When I wear a scarf, I’m spoken to in French. It speaks to the unconscious mind of the unsuspecting French people. I’ve experimented with myself as a control subject, scarf vs. no scarf. The scarf works 99% of the time.

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.

A Song and a Haircut

A song and a haircut

Our building, Les Remparts, overlooks the water as it stands at the end of Boulevard Albert Premier. In front of us is the little Place d’Albert 1er where men of all ages between 65 and 90 play petanque. Jeroen believes these men are sent out so that their wives can get a break. On any sunny day, there are four or five games played in overlapping territories much like cricket matches at Azad Maidan in Bombay. The games are just as vicious: Pastis, the anise-based drink laden with ice and changed from clear to white by the addition of cold water, does little to cool the passions of outraged men who should have won. Bah, oui, one should shrug off minor defeats over the immaterial, but who am I to say.
Les Remparts also boasts, yes, we boast, a nail salon, a brasserie, an Italian restaurant and a beauty parlor called La Nuance. We will need another writer to describe the first three, I shall hold forth on the last, La Nuance. (It is feminine, I checked on Google Translate.)
Jeroen made a rendez-vous, an appointment, for a haircut at La Nuance. The prices were posted in the window, and compared favorably to what we’d paid at F & C in Valbonne village where Caroline had last cut his hair. The salon, ok, saloon, was noisy mainly from conversations Joelle, the owner, had with her clients. She interrupted herself to attend to Jeroen and examine his hair, and discussed the matter at hand with Melanie, her dark-haired thin assistant.
“What kind of work do you do?” Joelle asked Jeroen.
“Try and guess,” Jeroen invited. He wore a black corduroy Ralph Lauren jacket, $60 at TJ Maxx, a blue full-sleeved ironed cotton shirt, blue jeans, black shoes. With his Arafat-style 3 day stubble, he looked every bit a Professor, or so he thought.
“Vous travaillez dans la mode,” she said. You work in  the world of fashion.
Jeroen has since been insufferable. He is convinced that he needs to be discovered.
Jeroen sent the boys over for their haircuts, and finally, a month later, it was my turn, not for a hair cut but for hair color.
Joelle asked if I wanted to go noire, jet black like Lili. That was too dark for me, something a little lighter. “Chataine francaise!” she decided.
I had no idea what she meant. “La chataine francaise, est-ce que c’est vert? Bleu?” This chataine francaise, it is green or blue?
She laughed. I would find out. 
I sat and waited for the color to set and read as most of the other clients began to leave. Could chatain mean blond? I can’t carry off blonde. I should have been born French, perhaps in my next life.
Jeroen came to check in and asked Joelle to sing. She rendered “Ne me quitte pas” a la Jacques Brel (to be found on youtube, JB, not Joelle. His version is better). It’s a song sung too late, after she’s left, and evokes pity rather than a rush to be at his side.
Lili washed my hair. She told me that she attends a vocational high school for hair (coiffeur) at Cannes le Bocca and works with Joelle part-time. She did not sing along.
I liked what I saw in the mirror: chataine francaise. It is a French chestnut, dark brown with red. Nothing alarming. Elegant.
I have the words to Ne me quitte pas. I will sing with Joelle when it comes time to get those roots again.

Progess Report

Progress Report from Collège Rouston.

The boys were integrated into the mainstream troisième class in early December, initially on a trial basis. We have survived the trial and are preparing to take the brevet examination in the last week of June. The brevet marks the end of middle school in France. Many of their classmates will not be going on to academic lycée: a few lads of Turkish and Romanian origin will take some vocational and licensing courses before joining their fathers to work in construction, one boy will start an apprenticeship at a bakery, a girl will start learning to cut hair. At the age of 16, the future is decided.  My boys cannot explain to their classmates why they aren’t looking for apprenticeships. A gap which has everything to do with privilege and nothing to do with language.

Meanwhile, we plod on. The math is easy, mainly a repetition of what they covered in seventh grade but with a French twist. The teacher, described by Mohan as “a nice guy who doesn’t like kids” yells at the class, “You are all nice people but you do nothing, and never try.” My first-born thinks this teacher is a jerk.

In the US, the grade A stands for average. The French average for writing  is an ambitious 10/20. The teacher would grade herself with 16/20, Victor Hugo would probably get 17, with a comment “Bon travail,” for encouragement. My boys could use a little of that encouragement. Wouter had “Dommage!” on his essay, which could be loosely translated as “Bummer.” It put him in a bad mood for a day. But he is not disheartened. The teacher told the boys privately that she wishes she could give them better marks because they work hard and turn in their homework and are improving every day. The kids in their class don’t do homework, don’t try. One boy, 15 years old and French born, doesn’t know why j’ai finit  is wrong or why it matters, not after 9 years of school. He doesn’t care.

The English class is taught in French. Wouter helps other kids with their work. The teacher thanked him once in public, and he said an American “aha.” A classmate raised a hand and said, “Pourquoi tu ne dis pas you are welcome?”

Some teachers don’t show up to class. No explanations. The kids are dismissed early. The Spanish and Science teachers are notorious for leaving school early. I can’t blame them. Who’d want to hang around in school all day to teach a class at the end of the day? Some of the kids don’t show up everyday. Some go home for lunch and don’t return for the second half of the day. A boy I’ve seen in a dark leather jacket shows up at school once a week for twice, never for more than a half day: he already runs a successful drug dealership with many satisfied customers. Many kids smoke outside the school gates, tobacco.


The boys have remained friends with their classmates from CLA, the original class they attended, French for foreigners. After a year of this instruction which focuses entirely on language, the students will have to repeat a grade to learn science and math, which will put them further behind their peers. Many of the kids from CLA get together to shoot hoops after school. Nobody here seems to have heard of AnnArbor which Mohan describes as near Detroit which does not shed light. Wouter says it’s between Chicago and New York. Most of the kids have heard of the Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan. For some reason, a leap of miscommunication, it is thought that my boys play club basketball with the Bulls. Disillusioning the believers requires more vocabulary than we have.

Wouter and Mohan have been playing ping-pong at lunch time at school. At the annual Roustan tennis de table competition, les Amercains did very well: Wouter is the champion, Mohan the runner up. They came home with a frisbee and a wall calendar from the local fire department, modest spoils of victory.

Art

Yesterday, we recovered from our day of sunshine to return to Mistral. The wind blew all day along, white-topped waves came at the shore, not rolling but pushed like a wall of many colors. I tried to name the shades of blue, but was rendered inarticulate: light blue, dark blue, deep-blue, turquoise, greenish-blue..and then what? Sea blue? Picasso had it easier, he could mix colors on a palate and throw them on canvas.
I accepted years ago that I would ever be able to paint or draw. Mrs. Mehta at Fort Convent had given up on me. I did not fail art because no one ever did; my report cards show 40 out of 100, the bare minimum to pass. I went through school without significant art instruction, only a sense of despair and failure.
In our days in Valbonne, I stumbled upon a flier for class that taught Mandala art. It’s easy to draw with compass and ruler geometric patterns and color them, something I could learn to do competently.  I could never find that class but instead I discovered Marlene’s atelier. When I went in to ask about Mandalas, I met Marlene herself and Annie Jaqueline who teaches abstract painting on Friday mornings. I signed up for four sessions. Abstract art doesn’t have to look like the object that inspired the work; the less a rectangle resembles a tree, the better. The most extreme example is Mondrian, all squares painted in primary colors to depict houses, forests, tulips, windmills and Mistral, as seen through the lens of his tortured soul.
In our first class, we mixed colors and dabbed away on art paper. In the second class, we advanced to drawing what we saw on the street outside the studio. I drew a house, its doorway and its windows, flower pots in the windows, a tree beside the outer wall of the house. Annie told me to paint in any color what interested me in my drawing. Soon I had a red-brown roof, a pink door and green-blue windows and nothing could stop me. A classmate, Muriel, remarked that my work reminded her of Matisse, the windows of the eyes on a face. That was all the encouragement I needed. My finished piece was exhibited along with the work of my classmates at the Mairie of Valbonne at its First International Abstract Art Exhibition.
Imitation is not the highest form of flattery, theft is. My painting was missing at the end of the exhibition. My children think that it might have ended up in the trash, my husband hopes that the paper was recycled. I survived Ms. Mehta and Fort Convent, these unkind comments didn’t hurt me. I reported the missing art to the local police who launched an area-wide search that, alas, has to stop at the limits of French jurisdiction at borders of Italy and Monaco. All they have found so far are some previously undiscovered work by Matisse but I remain optimistic.

Antibes and M.Greene

More on Antibes

I cannot see the yacht harbor at Port Vauban from my window. It lies to the East of Old Town. I’ve walked on the ramparts along the edge of the water towards Fort Carre where Napoleon spent time, possibly in captivity. The last time we went to Fort Carre, it was “exceptionally closed.” It’s a long walk from home, just past the limit of my endurance. I came home in pain and slept for many hours the last time I walked. Parking in that area in a problem unless you own a yacht, in which case you’d get a parking spot with a mooring berth. I don’t want to buy a yacht just to get a parking space. The yachts rarely leave the harbor over the fall and winter. In April, Antibes will proudly host its Annual Yacht show which brings in visitors from all over the world. They start at 10 million Euros and go up from there. I will save a lot of money by not buying any boats: they depreciate in value just like cars do.

Old Town is charming with narrow streets, surprising doorways, arches, paved with brick and limestone. I’ve taken some photos. The town was Greek and then Roman, so we have an open public bath where I’ve seen people wash clothes. At the heart of Old Town, beside the Mairie, is the Picasso Museum. Picasso's atelier was on the third floor, and he could see what I see from my terrace. Close to the museum is the open market where I buy olives and spreads, and cheese. Much of the produce is brought in, only some of it is regional. I expect in the spring it will feel more abundant.

The town is crowded with cafes, bars and restaurants. I haven’t visited the Absinthe bar and museum at the market, but I have been to Heidi’s English bookstore. I’m still buying books. It’s a need, and I get withdrawal symptoms when I’m far from a bookstore but it’s not an addiction because I can give it up anytime I want to. Around the corner from Heidi’s is the Harbor and a street lined with more cafes. The most famous of these is Chez Felix where Graham Greene ate lunch everyday with his mistress.

I asked a waiter if this was the same Cafe Felix, confused as I was by the Chez. The waiter, a good-looking 30 year old Frenchman, assured me that it is the very same cafe. I asked if he had seen Greene. “Je suis trop jeune,” he told me. He is too young to have seen M. Greene, M. Greene has been dead for 20 years, and left Antibes 25 years ago. I’ve just read the Power and the Glory and I am still swimming with the Mexican priest in the rain across the river, escaping the police and listening to confessions in stealth, and now I am told that Greene is dead, I don’t believe the news.

A mile from Cafe Felix is 26, Rue Pasteur, Residence des Fleurs, a modern apartment building. A sign states that the writer, M. Graham Greene lived here, with the dates below. Two apartments are for sale in the building. I wonder which apartment was Greene’s, did he have a view of Port Vauban? I hope he did. Everyone needs to be able to see the water.
“Who hath desired the sea, the sight of salt water unbounded?” Yes, Kipling.

Would it help me write better if I lived in M. Greene’s apartment where he wrote The Quiet American, The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Affair? Would I also have to drink as much alcohol as he did, smoke opium, spy for a government and have a series of affairs? I can’t handle any of that, and I wouldn’t make a good spy. I’d share the information with friends who read the blog. Nobody said that it's easy to be a writer.

I worship briefly at the shrine of Greene, lower my head and fold my hands, ask for a blessing. No coconut to break, no marigold garland to hang on the gate. I return to my own apartment, make myself yet another pot of tea and wish that Greene would ghost-write my novel.

The Antibes Apartment

We’ve been in Antibes for nearly four months, and I haven’t written anything for my blog. We are lucky to have a penthouse apartment in this town; the rent is not high and here again we are fortunate. We overlook the water from the terrace, on the right is Cap d’Antibes where the rich billionaires live. The poor millionaires live where we do, along the water in modern buildings on Albert Premier or in Old Town. I can see Old Antibes from my kitchen window, and also the snow on the mountains beyond Nice which is across the water. I see before the Cap, on my right, the sands of Salis beach, and the two sailing clubs for dinghies and wind-surfers. On windy days, para-sailors take off, rising as high as thirty feet into the air.

For the last three days, we had cold winds of the Mistral that blows from Eastern Europe, picking up water on its way. The rain is heavy, it hails rarely, but thunder and lightning are frequent. The glass doors on the apartment shake. They are single pane, and the gaps between the windows and the walls allow eerie whistling to fill the home. The heating, chauffage, is included in the rent, and I cannot say we get good value. I can hear the water trickle through the radiator at low pressure. The pump was replaced recently with marginal improvement. These penthouse apartments are not all they are cracked up to be.

It is sunny today, so I won’t complain. I dare not say it is too sunny or warm, but I am glad to draw out frayed yellow awnings which now work after Moumou, the Algerian-born handyman, fixed them. Moumou has been on vacation in Algeria for the last month and won’t be back till the end of March. He reminds me of the Indian Everyman who goes to his native place for a month or longer, forfeiting salary to be with his family; he is in a way, freer and possibly richer than some millionaires.

Lest you think I have surrounded myself with the Moneyed, let me tell you that I am close to Power. Our neighbour downstairs is the President. Not Chirac, not Sarkozy, not Hollande, but M. Claude. He is the President of the Co-Property, and is the driving force behind the recent repairs to the building. The outside was repainted over November and December, when metal scaffolding obscured much of the view from the kitchen window. The lobby downstairs has had new mirrors, and  best of all, we have shiny new mailboxes. The elevator breaks down once every month, and we climb seven flights of stairs. When it works, it opens inside the apartment in the hall, and a voice says, “Septieme etage.” I say “a vous aussi,”  I wish for you also the seventh floor. It sounds gracious, the right thing to say.

Dr. Sairam

Dr. Sairam and Chennai International Airport

In the last 6 weeks I’ve spent a lot of time in airports. I was at Chennai International after dropping my mother off at her sister’s place where I faced several relatives and a plate of sweets and deep-fried crunchies: jehangiri/ jangri unabashedly orange and sugary, appam, subtle in its beauty and filled with jiggery and cardamom, murukkus salted with black pepper, none good for the thickening wasteland. I was  smart enough to eat whatever was in front of me, cutting to a single word, thankyou, any discussion of fat grams and calories. 

On my way out, I must have brushed against some blooming plant, the only explanation I have for the creepy crawly caterpillars that attached themselves to my clothes. In the car while on my way to the airport, I discovered and pulled off the first caterpillar and gently dropped it to the floor. The second creature I pulled off my right arm and dropped less gently and stamped out, killing the possibility of a future butterfly or moth. At the airport, as I unloaded my stuff, my cousin found a few more to release into the afterlife. 

My hands were itchy: I knew that an itchy hand means that money is either to come or go, but I can’t ever remember whether it’s the right hand that itches when you’re going to run into money, or would it be the left? Is it different for girls? If both hands itch perhaps we are budget neutral, like a Black Jack player. My hands became redder after I checked in. They began to blister when I entered the bookstore. Would there be a pharmacy where I could buy an anti-histamine?

The bookstore manager sent me around the corner to the Apollo clinic. There was only one other patient there. The doctor in charge, Dr. Sairam made his diagnosis in under 30 seconds. When I told him my name, he laughed: his wife and mother have the same name. I lay on a bed, and Christina, a nurse, put a butterfly needle into a vein and injected hydrocortisone and an antihistamine. 

Apollo set up this clinic a year and a half ago. Dr. Sairam, burnt out from 17 years in the ICU, trained in emergency medicine and found himself practicing urgent care. He has attended to 21 patients who had heart attacks while at the airport, saved 21 lives. 

Earlier that day, he sutured a patient who fell in the waiting area. The suturing tray lacked toothed-forceps, and he talked to someone on the phone in the periphery of my hearing, stating in no uncertain words that suturing trays would have to be complete and meet his standards. He did not say or else, it would be unseemly. 

Twenty minutes later I was discharged back into the world of bookstores and airplanes. Then it hit me: Everyone had spoken to me in Tamil, something that couldn’t happen anywhere else. It makes all the difference, being spoken to in your own language, something I’ve always known to be important yet never had experienced.

 I am so grateful. Two days later as I rub hydrocortisone cream into my blotchy rash, I feel again a rush of gratitude. Thank you for the care, I want to say again. I don’t know that you saved my life, but I know you touched my life. Thank you.

Shopping at the Leaning Tower of Pisa (LTP)

On our way back from Florence we decided, after much debate, to visit the LTP. The best time to visit the Tower is on a rainy day in November. Lines were short indeed.

Construction on the tower began almost 900 years ago. The LTP was intended to be the bell tower for the cathedral at Pisa, but it was not the will of Allah.

The architect knew little of limestone or clay. He packed mud that shifted and gave when wet. As the tower went up for a mere 100 ft and began to lean, the architect hoped at first that nobody would notice. Hopefully construction would be completed and checks cashed before questions were asked. The identity of the architect is not publicly known, nor are we certain where he hid. I have my suspicions: I believe the name was Hulot and he escaped to France where his influence continues to be widely felt.

After three hundred years the lean was 5 degrees. Galileo measured g but he was unaware of the gravity of the situation. A total collapse was imminent and Pisa’s CAC (Committee Against Collapse) was formed. Attempts to decrease the lean by counterbalancing the tower, pumping concrete into its foundations and similar measures only served to increase the lean.

The best architects in the world were consulted. As in all bar jokes, discussions were multinational. The Japanese suggested pulling down the tower and rebuilding from scratch, the Chinese thought that a second tower should offer support in an inverted V for Victory design. The Russian solution was more complex: Remove the lowest part of the tower where the lean originated. The French? Well, they had to deal with other projects such as the pont d’Avignon immortalized in song. To be continued in the Hulot chronicles.

In 1990, the LTP closed for 12 years while its foundation was reinforced to restore the lean from 5.5 degrees to a more stable 5.0 degrees. To my eye, the lean at first glance appeared even greater; I estimated 10 degrees.

Walking up the steps is an unusual experience where the ears are aware of the tilt and the steps are worn smooth on one side of the spiral compounding the disorientation. Leaving the tower feels much like disembarking from a boat, one totters on level ground before regaining balance and composure. This could be a Buddhist metaphor, what is real and what is illusion and how easily do we buy into illusion and mistake it for reality.

To extend the metaphor, there are some terribly original tourists who will take pictures of themselves standing in line with the tower to prop it up or appear to. Do they feel better for their efforts? Does it add to good karma or is that also virtual?

Pisa has its share of vendors: Umbrellas with art work inspired by the Uffizi, watches with familiar brand names such as Rolex, a great deal at 20 euros, T shirts immortalizing Da Vinci’s man with Homer Simpson at the center.  More impressive were LTPs in plastic with an electric light within. I bought one of these to sit on the mantelpiece beside my plastic Taj Mahal, which also doubles as a lamp.

Les election du College Rouston

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The boys were settling down in their College (middle school in France) and the CLA, the special class for foreigners not fluent in French, when they got kicked up to the regular class to be integrated and civilized. They will be taught everything, including English, in French. This is on a trial basis for two weeks: time will tell. They seem to do better with homework than with listening comprehension in class. It’s hard when the teachers speak too fast.

They are more than a little worried. In France, students’ self-esteem is not a consideration, and feeling good about oneself is tantamount to over-confidence. There is little danger of developing an inflated ego. The teachers read out the scores on tests in class and discuss in detail each student’s mistakes. For additional humiliation, a student can be called to stand in front of the blackboard and work out problems for all to see. During these sessions, the teacher might pass comments like “Tu es idiot, stupide, nul.. Tu ne peut jamais reussi.” The last is a prediction, often accurate: You will never succeed.

To say a petit merci to Prof Tutta who taught them for two months in CLA, Jeroen and I brought a gift of chocolate. We weren’t allowed to see him without a rendez-vous but we could and did leave the gift with the concierge, the little woman who presses a button to open the gates of the school. We walked by her cabin without checking in, and she scolded us for a long ten minutes for slighting her. I kept apologizing with no success in appeasing her. Jeroen stared with a dazed look on his face, which can be translated in five (edited) words: “What is your problem?“

Wouter and Mohan have not thrown a party to celebrate this promotion. The reason for the non-celebration is purely social, unlike the promotion itself. The only kids they could invite are in their special class, and many are upset to be kept behind. Some of the older kids will be leaving this school at the end of December to return to their local schools and face immersion after 12 months of remedial French. I’m not sure they will all succeed, partly because some of them joined mid-year and started in the middle of the course. Like a movie you watch from the middle and can’t understand. I feel that way about French films even when I watch from the start and have subtitles to help.

The President of France, Francois Hollande has outlawed homework. This is partly because children are suffering from burnout and are dropping out of high school, especially kids with single parents working long hours who may not be able to help with homework. The growing disparity between kids with pushy parents and helpless parents has been a challenge, so rather than “No child left behind,” France has adopted a “No child gets ahead” philosophy to level out the playing field. Hollande also wants to have children promoted every year to stay with their peers despite lack of skills rather than have kids fail and repeat a year and get displaced socially. France will soon be more like America and may even consider renaming pommes frites to frites de libertie.

I am proud to tell you that Wouter was elected Class Representative of the CLA class. He ran a great campaign. A la Romney, Wouter had flexible stands on policies. More critically, he chose the perfect running mate: a lad from Turkey. This secured the block of five Turkish votes. With Turkey in the bag, the East-Block constituency (i.e. Romania and Lithuania) came also on board. The three Anglophone votes were secure from the beginning as was Mohan’s loyalty vote. However, with Wouter’s promotion to French-only education, CLA will now have to elect a new leader. Perhaps the boy from Romania who has invented a new language, a melange of Romanian and French, nouveau francais, which Prof Tutta cannot understand. I think he doesn’t try. Anyone can figure out “Moi etre dans toi classe.”

Soon my boys will be speaking English with a French accent. It doesn’t get better.

Our penthouse

For those needing directions to our new place: go down Boulevard Albert 1er until you run the risk of stepping into the salty waters of the Mediterranean. Look left, and up and find the flat with yellow sun-shades.

Rent-a-baby

If you want to experience French bureaucracy at its finest, you could do no better than to visit the Prefecture to obtain a Carte de Sejour, a long-term visa, needed by those wishing to stay in France longer than three months. 

There are things one needs to know before setting out on this mission. Getting a Carte de Sejour is not usually achieved in one trip. It took our American friend Julia three visits, which is about average. The line outside the Prefecture starts at 7 a.m. Local legend has it that only 50 people are served on any given day. Number 51 gets to return the next day at an ambitiously early hour.

The person in charge at the CNRS (Jeroen’s employer) gave us some forms and a list of documents to photocopy before leaving for an extended holiday. We needed recent photographs, copies of “useful” pages of our passports – we found out in time that they meant “used” pages-- proof of address, pay slips, letters from the CNRS, telephone and electricity bills, and marriage and birth certificates, offically translated into French. The translation office used by the French embassy in Washington DC is no good because, perhaps because it is does little to further the French economy. We triple checked everything and got there at 8 am when we saw two queues, one for the carte de sejour and a much shorter one for automobile registrations. Not as bad as we feared.

Two women from the Prefecture with white silk flowers in their buttonholes stepped out to answer questions. One of them looked at my paperwork and asked, “Are you from Sophia?” Jeroen said no, I said yes. Mine was the right answer; the CNRS is located in Sophia Antipolis. Jeroen, in his best French, was busy denying that we were Bulgarian. The woman said that we would be better off to have the paperwork sent to them from Sophia when the liaison person returned. Our situation might be too complicated for her colleagues to understand. We were not ready to turn back, not yet.

The doors opened promptly at nine. We entered the foyer, which brought Dostovesky to mind. The short car registration line opens into the same foyer. Some switched to join the front of our line, probably returning petitioners. People who’d arrived after we had in the morning were now ahead.

A Tunisian gentleman left the line for a few minutes and returned with coffee and directed us to a vending machine. Jeroen congratulated him on his country’s successful revolution and its influence and inspiration. He smiled and offered a sip of his coffee.

At the main desk, someone cursorily checked our dossier and gave us a token. We sat on orange plastic chairs in a busy basement room with monitors suspended from the ceiling to direct token holder to counters where they would presumably be served. Behind one of these counters was a woman in a red blouse looking at her computer screen and tapping on her keyboard. She had no clients. Was she playing Tetris? Her fingers moved too slowly. It had to be Minesweeper and she wasn’t about to be blown away. Perhaps she was a trainee, doing well judging by her sulk and the work she wasn’t doing. She got up once in a while to distract a colleague. More time squandered.

With A-36 in our hands, and A-32 on the monitor, we thought our turn was near. However, we hadn’t anticipated the wave of strollers and lovely children, bringing the room to life at 10 a.m. They formed a new line at the main counter and received golden tokens. From A-32 it went C-01, then C-02, and then C-03. An entirely different series claimed priority. The C-series, dedicated to the elderly, the impaired, the pregnant, and especially mothers with children who had skipped a morning dose of ADHD medicine.

When it was our turn one and a half hours later, it went smoothly. We were out in 20 minutes and in my hand I had a paper, a visa of sorts. (Julia says we’ve set a new record). Now that I can work in France, I want to start a business: a childcare facility across from the Prefecture in Nice. The rent-a-baby service would be a sister concern.

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.