French Lessons

Double Vision

I’m living in two parallel worlds again.  That’s how I know this glorious breath of France is now coming to an end. 

 

It’s time to think about whether Laurelle’s black oxfords fit anymore – for school in Toronto.  Fresh air and sea salt always seem to add a size or two to her feet.  It’s time to return all her French library books and to sign-up for ice skating classes in the autumn. 

 

In an out of the way corner of Lou Gargali – somewhere that won’t overshadow my last precious moments here – I’ve begun to stash some French items I can’t live without in Canada:  my favourite vinaigre balsamique, le blé gourmande (quite simply, durum wheat), and hair conditioner.  (I know, women and their toiletries.)  I’d like to take home one of Jacques Vial’s oozing, wholly unpasteurized rounds of chèvre from Antibes’ Marché Provençal, but I think the Canadian authorities might get a little snippy.  

 

That said, last spring a French friend living in Toronto was thrilled to receive a care parcel from home:  pâté, saucissons (dried sausages) and hard cheeses.  The covert, cross-border food swap is quite remarkable.

 

Not that my last few days in the Côte d’Azur this season have been any less, well, Côte d’Azur.  The place is still offering up some gobsmacking stories.  Property gossip from Angela, our dear agent immobilier, is always a treat:

 

• We now know the rental price tag for Domaine la Dilecta, the sprawling property at the top of Cap d’Antibes where our family had the pleasure of spending the Fourth of July (see July 6, 2011 post).  You, too, can be King and Queen of the Cap in this 10-bed, 10-bath, 19,375-square-foot mansion and its 4.5-hectare park for a mere EUR 300,000 (US$429,000) per month.  That includes lawnmowing and pool maintenance, but no breakfast.

 

• After years of rumours, German heiress Heidi Horten’s property, a rare villa on Cap d’Antibes land that’s pieds dans l’eau (literally “feet in the water”, meaning nothing, not even a road, lies between it and the sea) is officially on the market.  The asking price is EUR 55 million.

 

• Back into the stratosphere, the top floor apartment over La Brasserie, a restaurant between “our” boulangerie and Angela’s real estate office, recently sold for EUR 1.5 million.  EUR 10,000-a-square-metre rate was significant for our seaside village of Antibes (though still a snip in Cannes).  An interesting trend surfaces:  The pad sold to a Frenchman.  He and his country folk are once again investing in Côte property.  After all, the banks aren’t paying anything.

 

Non-property assets also tempt the ritzy, summer clientele.  Pierre stopped into Cannes’ Cartier shop earlier this week.  A Russian mother and daughter were shopping for an engagement ring (which in itself is interesting).  Eeny, meeny, miny, mo.  The daughter couldn’t make up her mind between the ring for EUR 1.2 million and another for EUR 1.4 million. 

 

And the yachts along this French Rivieran shoreline!  For two weeks now, Roman Abramovich’s Eclipse has been anchored in Antibes’ bay, perfectly centered within the little porthole window that peers from my office onto the bay.  Poor Roman, the UK’s Mail Online reports.  Antibes’ authorities tell him there’s no space in Port Vauban for his 538-foot megayacht, the longest private yacht in the world.  The sole berth that could possibly accommodate his extravagance is a far-flung jetty occupied by super-wealthy Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal Alsaud’s jewel, a mere 265-feet in length (though nonetheless a storied vessel, having featured in the 1983 James Bond film Never Say Never Again as ‘The Flying Saucer’ owned by villain Maximilian Largo).

 

Yes, we have the occasional spat in the sunny Côte.  What the Mail Online didn’t realize in reporting the rude brush-off by Antibes’ authorities toward the king of Chelsea Football Club was that the Saudi prince actually paid for this jetty to be built.  His multi-decade lease is still running.

 

Closer to reality, Laurelle has lost her third and fourth teeth this summer, so Lou Gargali has enjoyed two visits by la petite souris.  The toothfairy hasn’t obtained landing rights in France, so French children rely on a little mouse for payment.  Except that Laurelle, who gets tenderhearted about any marginally collectable item, couldn’t bear to part with either of her teeth.  We’ve learned that a pleading note – and a small wedge of cheese – will ensure the souris’ money. 

 

I expect tooth number five will present a drama.  Will the toothfairy accept cheese?  We’ve never actually met her.  Somehow my daughter has managed to lose each of her four teeth so far under French jurisdiction.

 

A final note, too, for continuing readers of French Lessons who’ve followed this summer’s investigations:  Pierre and I enjoyed a last-minute invitation to visit the Aussels at none other than le Bosquet, the storied home occupied by Antibes’ last viguier (the local representative of the King of France) back in the mid-1700s; the very bastide that housed Guy de Maupassant in 1886; and the family home of our own home’s founding father, Edouard Muterse.  We stood in the salon where Edouard met his friends.  We glimpsed his office.  We ambled through the library he built and walked upstairs to see the space that housed his family museum. 

 

Pierre and I returned to Lou Gargali that evening feeling as though we’d somehow met this man who’s now long gone.  We held another precious gift in our hands:  The Aussels gave us a plate from Lou Gargali’s original collection, the very service used, quite incredibly, by Madame Aussel during her own childhood, a plate furnished for Lou Gargali by Edouard Muterse himself.   (To understand what on earth I’m talking about, and what has grabbed the fancy of readers this summer, take a look these posts in order:  June 30, July 15, July 22, July 30 and August 11, 2011). 

 

But now it’s time to go.  The July/August issue of Cannes Soleil will soon be pulled from the shelves in the neighbouring city.  Did I mention that Laurelle and I featured in a story on the revitalization of Cannes’ produce markets – picture and quotes and all?  Our fleeting celebrity soon will evaporate.  Summer’s expiring and so is that bit of fun.

 

So will end another favourite French escapade.  The alarm went off the other night just after midnight.  One of the sensors, we later learned, had rusted.  But in the heat of the moment, Pierre and I rushed outside onto Lou Gargali’s balcony to try to glimpse the theives’ escape.  At that very moment, the only thing missing was the clothes on a young couple beneath us, who waded from the shoreline into the sea.  Ah, l’amour….

 

Time for all this Côte d’Azur fun to stop.  School is starting.  Laurelle’s excited to show off the holes in her mouth to her Canadian classmates – and to share new lyrics to the traditional tune of “Happy Birthday”:

 

Joyeux Anniversaire,

Le gâteau tombe par terre

Sur les pieds de ma grand-mère

Qui sentent le camembert!

 

Happy Birthday,

The cake falls on the floor

On the feet of my grandmother

That smell of camembert (cheese).

 

Did I honestly believe at one time that French kids had perfect manners?

 

One thing’s for sure, though.  The field trips back in Ontario will be less interesting than those in the Côte d’Azur.  Last year one of Laurelle’s six-year-old French friends went on a field trip with her class to a winery.   

 

It is sad to say this temporary goodbye.  It’s true that I look forward to living in a unified world again, even if that world is the Great White North.  But we’ll hold France in our hearts, especially in the winter months – cheese, megayachts, skinny dippers, little mice and all. 

 

And I’m buoyed by the knowledge that we’ll return to the Côte d’Azur next summer where – in the continual pursuit to understand what makes this place so utterly mesmerizing to foreigners like us – I’ll be dishing up a whole new series of French Lessons.

 

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The Gelato Index

First, news from last week: 

Voting is pretty much unanimous.  Early indicators came from the crew at Plage Provençal, and you’ve confirmed it:  Our Bellevue is rightly known as Lou Gargali.  Now, if only switching the name was as effortless as the French shrug….

 

Now for something new:

It’s mid-August, and La Rentrée suddenly infiltrates the air.  La Rentrée is the French institution that resurrects itself as September looms.  The beaches and ice cream parlours begin their annual clear out – en masse – as long-time holidaymakers head back to the grind. 

 

Tomorrow (Saturday), French highways are already labeled “red” by Bison Futé.  Put this way, everyone who’ll be stuck in Saturday’s bouchons – and there will be hundreds of kilometers of them – knows ahead of time that the jams will exist.  Meanwhile, Bison Futé says today (Friday) will be a “green” day for half the country.  But of course no one will shorten their holidays. 

 

That Rentrée feeling steals up every year.  On Monday, the 15^th, mid-August exactly, I sat chez le coiffeur for some overdue assistance.  Only two stylists worked; the others idled at the front desk.  As Terrence wielded his scissors over my head, he looked onto the quieter pedestrian street and declared, “It’s the end of summer.” 

 

Just like that, it’s decided.  But it’s not just him.  In the streets of Antibes, the sauf lundi regime had returned in a silent, unanimous onslaught.  Outside the summer peak, Antibes’ shopkeepers run reasonably precise schedules, many of which include the phrase “sauf lundi”.  Except Monday.  This Monday afternoon gates reappeared over shop doors.

 

La Rentrée has got me all reflective.  It’s been a great summer, no doubt, but it’s been, well, different.  Of course, as readers of French Lessons will know, I’ve spent decent hours in les Archives Municipales, la Médiathèque and la Bibliothèque Antiboulenc.  That’s as good a reason as any to call a sea-and-sand Côte d’Azur holiday different.  But there’s more to it.

 

At the beginning of June, when our family returned to this sun-kissed land, we visited Gelateria Pinocchio in Juan-les-Pins.  It’s owned by friends and, as luck would have it, Pinocchio’s gelato is both luscious and lovely.  As Marc stacks the creamy goodness into a cone, he forms the shape of a rose.

 

“If gelato sales are good at Easter,” he told us in June, “then they should be good in summer, too.”  That’s the local economic indicator.  And what luck, Easter was good this year. 

 

But this summer’s gelato sales wouldn’t be strong because of weather.  According to Riviera Radio – if I must admit it, that’s the English-speaking station in Monaco – the average temperature in the Côte d’Azur during the whole of July was five degrees Centigrade less than average.

 

Think about that.  Five degrees Centigrade is nine degrees Fahrenheit.  And we’re not just talking about the odd, cloudy weekend.  We’re talking about the whole of the middle of summer.

 

And there has been rain.  Real rain in the Côte d’Azur!  Last summer we apologized profusely to friends from Leiceistershire who visited Lou Gargali in mid-August, coinciding with the only rain of the season.  (In fact, they didn’t mind the moisture.  Like I said, they were from Leiceistershire.  They brought anoraks.  They called the rain “lovely” and “warm”.)

 

One evening this summer as Pierre travelled, a storm cut out part of Lou Gargali’s power supply.  A loose shutter banged against an exterior wall, echoing through our home’s ribcage at the exact time I led Laurelle up to bed. 

 

“I think the house is haunted, Mommy,” she said.  The years flooded back.  When we signed on the dotted line in 2005, French contract law pointed out that we couldn’t back out of the purchase based on any servitudes occultes – any supernatural forces – that may afflict the place.  Maybe we should’ve considered the phrase more carefully.

 

As clouds have descended on the Côte, sidewalk cafes and restaurants have unsurprisingly felt the barometric pressure.  Even the four, seasonal snack shacks that reign day-and-night over the nearby beach, had their windows snapped tight for a couple days. 

 

Tourist traffic is different, too.  Higher campsite volumes have hit hotel businesses.  Arabs continued to take up residence in Cannes’ chichi accommodations, but Ramadan started in early August – and swoosh, out they went.  All put together, the Nice Matin newspaper said tourist numbers were up 10% in the Côte d’Azur this year – but that people were spending less.  Except, apparently, for the Russians. 

 

The attendant at Juan-les-Pins’ Pain de Sucre, a branch of the chic swimsuit shop, confirmed the year’s trend.  Her Italian clients traditionally come at the start of each season to select three designer swimsuits.  This year, she said, they bought only one new suit – if they came at all.

 

But don’t get me wrong.   It’s still the famed Côte d’Azur and all.  Roman Abramovich’s Eclipse megayacht – the world’s longest at a full 538 feet – is anchored in the bay outside Lou Gargali this week as I write.  Earlier this season we’ve gawked at Luna, “A”, Katara, Lady Moura and a host of other floating subdivisions.

 

Meanwhile, our postbox continued to suck in the usual, French Rivieran offerings, like these:

 

• A brochure from SL Cannes trumpeting “Our Chauffeur – Your Car”.  A chauffer comes to drive your private car, to the airport or anywhere else in Europe.

 

• A calling card for a “Luxury Car Wash”.  Cars need TLC, too.  Someone comes to your house to wash your car, starting at 60 Euros a pop.  (Surely the actual price will be a function of the grime, the make of the car, and the size of your property.)

 

• A handwritten note from a Cannes real estate agent:  “Merci de me contacter le plus rapidement possible.”  Thank you for contacting me as rapidly as possible. 

 

A single mail drop about Lou Gargali hardly resurrects the property heydays of 2007 and 2008.  That’s when the likes of Brad Pitt and Bernie Madoff – not that I mean to compare them – contracted to purchase apartments in Juan-les-Pins’ famed-but-ruined Hôtel Provençal for EUR 30,000 per square metre, so a source told me this summer.  Now the owner of the prominent shell does a small burst of construction every six months or so, just to keep his building permit alive. 

 

Interest is on pause at Lou Gargali, too.  A few years ago, countless people (mainly Russians) stopped by to ask how much – even though the house was hardly for sale.  This summer the enthusiasm was confined to an early evening.  The street gate buzzed.  A teenage boy was kicking his ball on the neighbouring beach and – whoops – it flew over our wall.  Could he claim it?  Pierre let him in – but told his five friends that only one person was necessary to fetch a ball.  They groaned.  He finally relented and ushered the boys in for a gawk.  “Nice place you have here,” one of them said politely, and in English.

 

A pause from the typical Côte d’Azur silly season has suited me just fine this summer.  I’ve hardly minded a drop in the beastly heat and humidity.  And anyway, I’ve spent far more time indoors than most anyone would consider permissible.

 

In the end, the strange summer hasn’t been bad either for Marc, our friend at Gelateria Pinocchio.  Even if holidaymakers weren’t frequenting the area’s restaurants or buying swimsuits with their usual gusto, they’ve been piling into rose-shaped gelato cones. 

 

Terrence at the salon is upbeat, too.  A cooler July means summer is delayed, he said.  September will be terrific in the Côte d’Azur.

 

Unfortunately, we’ll hardly know.  It’ll be the time of our own Rentrée.

 

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Tonton Edouard

When Jean Aussel and his wife first set foot in Bellevue – coming here to tell us the story of our home, while also allowing Jean’s wife the chance to revisit her childhood abode – one of the first things he did was hand me a simple gift.  The photocopied pages were spiral-bound and entitled Les Brises et Les Vents sur Notre Littoral.  The Breezes and Winds along our Coastline. 

 

Hardly a page-turner, I know.  It was an extract from the annals of the learned Société Scientifique et Litteraire in Cannes, dated 1939-1941.  But on closer look, I understood the relevance of the gift.  The author was Edouard Muterse.  The man who built Bellevue.

 

“He sailed a lot,” Jean said, giving the motivation behind the text.  “He had many sailboats in his life.  You could perhaps get up in the morning at a good hour, and you could look at how the wind rises, and the light … so he wrote this,” he said.  “And it explains Lou Gargali – it’s a Provençal name – for the morning wind….” 

 

Lou Gargali:  That’s the name Edouard gave to Bellevue – until some unknown person decided to change it. 

 

As I read the opening lines of Les Brises et Les Vents, Edouard’s character seemed to jump from the page.  A colleague, he wrote, asked him to share his personal observations from his long practice of sailing navigation along this coastline, and “je n’ai pas cru devoir refuser.”  He believed he ought not refuse.  Edouard’s phrases were stately yet conversational, sweet yet erudite.

 

Jean flipped to the back of the booklet.  “Et voilà!” he said.  “The man who constructed your home!”  It was the same black-and-white image Les Archives Municipales had given me a couple weeks earlier.  Edouard was probably in his 30s, with a thick crop of dark hair, a straggly beard and long, twisted moustache.  If he shaved off the forest he might be quite handsome.

 

Now Jean Aussel, Edouard’s grandnephew, and his wife were sitting in our living room.  That the octogenarian was sipping from a chilled glass of whiskey only suggested that his stories might become more prolific. 

 

We already had an inkling that Edouard Muterse was a generous man, largely through stories from Jean’s wife (see 30 July 2011).  He’d kitted out Bellevue (or shall we now call her Lou Gargali?) with lovely china as part of the rental package (and oddly, that very set, through marriage and inheritance, has returned to Jean’s wife own kitchen cabinet).  We also learned that Edouard offered his own property as home base for the local Girl Scouts.

 

Jean Aussel’s opening description of Edouard was as a “vieux garçon.”  An old boy.  That’s a way of saying that Edouard Muterse never married.  He never had kids.

 

“Edouard Muterse was the brother of my grandmother,” Jean said.  “He was a lawyer.  He never married, but he was un homme trés raffiné, trés sympatique, trés agréable” – very elegant, very likeable and very pleasant. 

 

He was born in 1878 at Le Bosquet, the house up the hill from our Lou Gargali, and the very place where Jean lives today.  Edouard studied law in Aix-en-Provence, where he became a lawyer in the Court of Appeals. 

 

“He was un homme trés attachant – a very captivating man,” Jean said.  “You’re an intelligent woman” – he said this presumably because I hounded him with researched questions – “so you would’ve liked this Edouard.  He had quite the sense of humour.  He played cards – he played bridge.  When my mother played cards with him, she’d come home at night and we’d ask her, “What did Uncle Edouard say?”  He always had a joke.”

 

When World War I broke out, Edouard was in his mid-30s.  He served in les Chausseurs Alpins, an elite mountain infantry of the French Army, and was shot.  While recovering in a military hospital in the countryside, the man recuperating beside him was the parish priest of Gonfaron, a little village in Provence.  The curé was, of course, also a vieux garçon.  The two men struck up an enduring friendship. 

 

On occasion, the curé visited Antibes.  He came here – and Jean indicated right here, the rocky beach just below Lou Gargali – where young men and women would swim and sail and basically make merry.  The curé saw these young women in their bathing suits and, as a priest in the 20s might’ve done, he got anxious.  He had to blot out these ideas.  So the curé from Gonfaron found a nearby path with cattails growing on either side.  The cattails formed a decent wall against women in risqué swimsuits.  He perched there, gazing upward toward the Chapelle de la Garoupe, his Bible in hand. 

 

Edouard and his sense of humour hardly let that image go.  Jean gave a bit more background before continuing the story.  “My uncle actually had a lot of money,” he said.  “He had a very easy life, so he bought a nice sailboat and an American car – the first American car before the war – the Hudson (pronounced “HOOD-son”) Terraplane.” 

 

So one time – this was the first half of the 1930s – Edouard and le curé drove the HOOD-son Terraplane for an aperitif in neighbouring Juan-les-Pins, a town that was making headlines for inventing waterskiing and inspiring Coco Chanel’s first suntan.  It was here, too, that the current female fashion statement was les pyjamas. 

 

“They were un scandale, les pyjamas, because they hugged the buttocks,” Jean said, curving his palms toward us in a polishing motion.  So right there, in 1930s Juan-les-Pins, three pretty women wearing les pyjamas passed in front of the curé from Gonfaron with their buttocks bien moulées.  Edouard didn’t miss a beat.  He called out to the waiter, “Garçon!  Garçon!  The cattails!  The cattails!”

 

“Like this, you see the life of Edouard Muterse!” Jean said amid our chuckling.

 

After serving in World War I, Edouard couldn’t bear the horrors of Aix-en-Provence.  He lived close to the square that housed the city’s guillotine; the gruesome device was still in use.  Worse, people kept asking Edouard if they could watch the executions from his home.  It shocked him, so he moved to Marseilles.

 

But Edouard often returned to Antibes, to Le Bosquet, to visit his father who’d become a widower at a very young age.  In this part of the world, family homes traditionally pass through the generations.  Nowhere is that more true than at Le Bosquet, a provençal home that has remained within a single family since it was built in the mid-1700s.  Edouard moved definitively into the storied residence when his father died in 1928.

 

That’s about the time that Jean Aussel put on Lou Gargali’s birth – the late 1920s or even the early 1930s.  It was somewhat later than I’d expected.  Edouard Muterse, he said, built our house with money he’d earned on the sale of land on Cap d’Antibes.  While the Cap today is covered with apartments and villas, back then the peninsula was largely wooded and full of scrub.  Sizeable tracts of this fallow land belonged to a few wealthy families.  

 

But times were changing.  It was the beginning of Le Front Populaire:  Sweeping social reform within France brought the first, paid holidays.  Meanwhile, Antibes’ mayor favoured development.  In 1920, Edouard donated 460 square-meters of coastal land for the development of our neighbouring Port de la Salis.  Between 1925 and the beginning of World War II, he sold great stretches of wooded properties between Lou Gargali and la Garoupe, another Cap d’Antibes shoreline.

 

As Jean spoke, the penny was dropping.  Edouard Muterse never actually lived in Lou Gargali.  He built our home for rental income.  Part of me was glum that the man never had occupied our home.  But at the same time, I was thrilled to occupy a small part of Antibes’ long and storied history, in a house built by one of the city’s most enduring and notable families.

 

Meanwhile, Edouard’s own home up the hill was always open.  ”Because he wasn’t married and he was quite an engaging man, everyone – all the Antiboise – called him ‘Tonton Edouard’,” Jean said, “as if he was their uncle.”  Uncle Edouard received lots of visitors.  He had a trés belle library, Jean said, and he collected succulent plants that he exchanged with “the whole world.” 

 

As if I needed to root Lou Gargali even more deeply into the history of Antibes, Jean described another of Edouard’s possessions housed within the welcoming Le Bosquet:  the so-called Galet de Terpon.  The oblong stone dated back to the 5^th century B.C.  Inscribed upon its surface was the oldest Greek inscription found in the whole of France. 

 

“C’est extraordinarire,” Jean underlined, as if I hadn’t already figured that out.  It was Edouard’s father, Antibes’ historian, who helped bring the discovery to light.  When Edouard died, his family contributed to their French inheritance tax assessment by selling the Galet de Terpon to none other than the Louvre.

 

Which basically brings us to the end of this tale.  Or is it just the beginning? 

 

The preliminary research and this encounter with Jean Aussel only has drawn me further into the Muterse rabbit hole.  The name Muterse jumps off library book pages at me like the beacon of the Garoupe lighthouse, up the hill from Lou Gargali, pierces the nighttime sky.  Antibes’ library holds more books written by Maurice Muterse, Edouard’s father – and even a couple entries by Edouard himself.  There’s an Avenue Muterse up near the train station.  The Galet de Terpon today resides in Antibes’ Musée d’Archeologie.  Of course I’ve paid a visit.  

 

The list continues.  Each discovery is a celebration of connection.  It’s a tribute to lives long past.  Time paves over their stories unless we stop to unearth them.

 

A few days after the Aussel visit, Pierre lunched with a local friend at Le Plage Provençal in Juan-les-Pins.  He mentioned my research of all things Muterse and the fact that Bellevue once was called Lou Gargali, supposedly after a particular morning wind.  Moments later he met the Provençal’s boat master, a deeply tanned, local man of 60-ish.  People here would call him “un vieux loup de mer” – an old sea bass.  An old salt. 

 

(The vieux loup de mer’s father, as it happens, was the previous boat master at the Hotel Provençal.  Rumour has it that he was the one who invented waterskiing.  And so, quite relatedly, this tanned, 60-ish man that Pierre met began waterskiing at age six and instructing at 12.  In his teens he was France’s national champion.)

 

Ben oui, the vieux loup de mer knew about Lou Gargali!  It was a cold wind that arrived in the early hours, he said, when fishermen were pulling their nets out of the water.  It didn’t come up often, but when it did, it scared them.

 

Pierre explained that the man who built our house also loved the water, and that he called the place Lou Gargali.  But someone, sometime changed its name to Bellevue.  General consensus that lunchtime was that Lou Gargali was a better name.  Antibes and Juan-les-Pins already had too many Belle-’s. 

 

So, Pierre asked me that evening as we prepared our meal, now that we’ve stopped to unearth the past:  Should we switch the name back?

 

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Bringing Out the Family China

It was clear from his first words that Jean Aussel was a charming storyteller – exactly as Emilie, my contact at les Archives Municipales, had predicted.

 

Jean, his wife, Pierre and I made our introductions in Bellevue’s courtyard.  The 80-something man had chosen a proper, long-sleeved, button-down shirt for the occasion despite the early evening’s thick, summer air.  His baritone voice, resonating authoritatively yet warmly, complimented the exterior workmanship of our renovated Bellevue.

 

Jean’s wife was his perfect complement – a trait not uncommon in elderly couples who’ve been together longer than most people have been alive.  Delicate, with a fair complexion and careful posture, she wore a white summer dress juxtaposed with a colourful necklace and earrings.  Yes, she agreed with Jean’s assessments of Bellevue’s exterior, smiling politely all the while.

 

But as we stepped over Bellevue’s threshold, it was she who was breathless.  Bellevue was beautifully open these days!  The entry had been enclosed before….  She merged into the living room, a real-life Alice cascading into the rabbit hole.  Memories flooded back.  The living room had been the dining room – and there, turning toward today’s dining room – that had been the salon.  But there were walls between the rooms.…

 

Laurelle bounded into the room with Sabrina, our au pair.  I prayed that “best behavior” would be as evident as it was supposed to be for our special guests.  Jean’s wife stooped down to Laurelle and asked her age. 

 

“Six ans,” Laurelle replied.  Relief.

 

“Voilà!  I was ten years old,” she said, “just a bit older than you when I lived here.”  Her family, we learned, moved to Antibes from Normandy in order to escape the war.  She had more to say, I was sure, but she hesitated, either out of character or politeness or both.

 

Pierre stepped up as MC.  We were very excited to meet them both, he explained – particularly me.  I wanted to learn the history of Bellevue.  I wanted to learn about her founder.  I wanted to write down her stories.  Pierre mentioned my blog and (after explaining the concept of a blog) explained that I write about cultural differences between life in France and North America – about things like the rigidity of French classrooms compared with those in North America, or the way the French insist on saying “bonjour” before starting any interaction.  Self-deprecation, he added, was always a plus in making these observations.

 

Jean caught onto the notion straightaway.  “Cultural differences – like we’re surprised that a villa like this has shoes right here in the entryway – right out in the open!” he said.  “I mean, it’s okay for a casual home, but here, in a nice villa…?”

 

Pierre delighted that his own personal gripe had been noted by a third party.  My husband counted the neat line of shoes under the hallway table.  “Fourteen pairs of shoes!” he said.  “Fourteen pairs!  Two belong to me.  The other twelve belong to my wife and six-year-old daughter!”  

 

And that, I explained, hoping to avoid that ongoing line of fire, was the perfect example of what Jean could write about in his own blog about crazy foreign folks who shack up on France’s good soil. 

 

But Jean Aussel was a man of bigger ideas.  What interested him at that moment was that we were connecting with local people and forming these insights.  “I expect you’ve already started making les racines here,” he said expectantly.

 

Les racines – roots – are a big deal in France.  Particularly among folks whose ancestral roots delve far beneath the Côte d’Azur’s sandy and sometimes transitory surface.

 

It was at about this point that I mentioned my dictaphone.  The couple had no fear of recording their voices.  And honestly, it was the only way – despite the painstaking revision – that I could understand all their enthusiastic words.

 

It was about this time, too, that I realized I didn’t know her name.  Jean never offered it, nor did she, and cultural and generational mores somehow prevented Pierre and me from asking.  And especially now, as sweet Alice floated further into her rabbit hole that was at once familiar – generating the spark of a faded snapshot – and then, in a single breath, entirely new, a dwelling that was totally disembodied from the space she knew as a child.

 

We moved onto Bellevue’s main terrace.  Pierre explained that we call it our “loge at the opera of life” because honestly, there’s always some activity that we can spy on from the perch:  boats and cars and motorcycles and planes, sun worshipers and picnickers, sailors and windsurfers, swimmers and divers and fishermen.  And here, something – something among this hive of activity – set off a spark. 

 

“We went fishing for les crevettes…,” Jean’s wife began.

 

Shrimp?  Pierre and I were stunned.  Today there were sea urchins – but hardly shrimp!

 

“Between the rocks – oui, oui, oui,” she said.

 

There was more.  Her parents wanted to buy this house when they moved down from the north to escape the war.  “I lived here from 1939,” she said, hesitatingly. 

 

Jean finished her thought as she searched for words.  “Her father left the north because he had four children,” he said.

 

“Et voilà,” she said.  Exactly right.  “And after, the Italians came to France…”

 

“The Italians,” Jean interjected, “they were allied with the Germans in the war.”

 

“They took the house and we had to leave,” she said.  “That was 1941 or 1942….  All along the sea, all the houses were requisitioned, and we had to leave.  The Italians moved in and the house was mined.”

 

“Mined?!”  Surely I didn’t hear that right.  My own mind raced to the builders and gardeners and pool installers who dug deep into Bellevue’s earth.  It jumped to playdates in which half-a-dozen kids bounded through the gardens.  And, like a good American brain, it rushed straight to the strength of our home insurance policy.  All in a couple seconds.

 

“They put landmines in the garage…,” she said.  Her memory was cut short by our clamour on the terrace, making me wonder, belatedly, what other areas of the house she was about to name.  And then, as if to make sure we got her point, she said, “If we walked over them, they’d blow up.”

 

“There was a period,” Jean explained, “when people living on Cap d’Antibes close to the water were evacuated.  They didn’t have the right to live here.”

 

When we headed upstairs, Jean’s wife became disoriented:  Her bedroom was gone.  Recognition of such a precious fact – the disappearance of one’s own, childhood room – was both slow and, I suppose, heartbreaking in its way.  Rooms were smaller and more enclosed in earlier times.  Where there’d been four bedrooms, today there were only two.  The ceiling above Bellevue’s grand, cylindrical staircase – now rising three full stories – must’ve been a storey lower.  The top part of today’s vaulting void was Jean’s wife’s bedroom. 

 

But a second terrace that existed outside her bedroom was unchanged.  Its views still must rank among the best on the Cap, sweeping from our own town of Antibes all the way – if you crane your neck – to Cap Ferrat, on this side of Monaco. 

 

The delicate woman was delighted by a sudden memory.  “I shelled peas here with my sister!  During the war…we were happy!”

 

On reflection, it’s that last phrase that was so poignant.  Something so simple brought great joy during the darkness of war.

 

She then focused on the sprawling, white house next door, a shockingly modern residence in former days.  She often played there with her good friend, the daughter of Georges Milton, a well-known singer and movie actor.

 

Jean galloped down memory lane, too.  Soon we stood on a small balcony overlooking Bellevue’s garden, where his conversation clung to this notion of rootedness that I can’t seem to escape.  Jean pointed across the road to La Collinette, a white villa with sea-green shutters.  He played there as a child.  The house next door?  It was bought by his grandfather, a well-known horticulturist.  And the house right up there on the hill, peaking out under the parasol pines?  Jean was born there.  Of course he was.

 

When we reconvened in Bellevue’s living room, I hoped that Jean Aussel’s nice glass of whiskey might fuel further stories.  But it’s her stories that I’m focusing on now, and one of my favourites had to do with the dishes she used as a child.  Edouard Muterse had purchased a pretty table service as part of the rental package.

 

“What’s funny is that I lived in this house, and then I married Jean,” she said, now offering her stories more freely.  “He inherited the furnishings that were in this house.  So now, the whole set of dishes came back to me!”

 

Her contributions continued.  She returned to northern France with her parents, but after the war her family bought a holiday home in neighbouring Juan-les-Pins.  (This town, if I may interject some history, was a hot spot during that era.   It was the place that had invented waterskiing and where – if the story is to be believed – Coco Chanel had recently discovered the suntan.)  The couple met each other through one of her sisters and married in 1953.

 

Fueled by the pause, and perhaps by the warmth of the whiskey, Jean began to tell stories about his own family, and to indulge my curiosity, particularly those about Edouard Muterse, the father of Bellevue.  At one point, he played on the small-worldliness of this whole episode.

 

“My wife knew Edouard Muterse before I did,” he said.  “She knew my uncle because her parents rented the house.”  But there was something else.

 

“My uncle was trés genereux,” he said.  His property Le Bosquet was a very large, wooded property with a separate cottage.  He loaned this cottage to les Guides de France, the French Girl Scouts.  Jean’s wife was a young member.

 

She continued the story.  “Every Thursday, all the Guides, we’d play at Le Bosquet.  It’s like this that I knew his uncle….  It was during the war, and the place was full of fig trees.  We were tellement, tellement hungry, and so we stole figs from Edouard Muterse!”  She added, “I don’t know whether he suspected or not.”

 

By the time Jean Aussel and his wife left Bellevue, my dictaphone had recorded nearly two hours of conversation.  That’s a pretty good indication of how long this blog post could be.  So I will leave you, just as she was every Thursday, hungry.

 

French Lessons is on holiday next week in – of all places given its recent, shocking atrocities – Norway.  Bellevue’s tale will continue in the following week with what’s left:  Edouard’s story.

 

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The Answer is Blowin' in the Wind

The hour of the phone call.

 

Having finally met Christian Aussel face-to-face in Le Bosquet’s front garden (see last week’s post), Pierre and I remained none the wiser whether Edouard Muterse really was the father of our beloved Bellevue.  But speaking for ten minutes with Edouard Muterse’s great-grandnephew – largely through the formidable barrier of his motorcycle helmet – made us even more intrigued about the possible ancestry of our French Rivieran home. 

 

I waited out the rest of that sunny afternoon in anticipation of an early evening phone call to Jean Aussel, Christian’s father and Edouard Muterse’s grandnephew.  Les Archives Municipales helped me track down the octogenarian to Le Bosquet.  He was “a charming man who always has a lot of things to say,” they told me.  Alas, he was napping at the time of our visit.

 

Just before 6pm, Pierre and I convened in Bellevue’s library.  It was the room with the best telephone connection – and the spot having the best Mediterranean views to keep six-year-old Laurelle occupied.  That said, jumping between the leather couch and a cushioned ottoman in the center of the room – which was what she was doing – wasn’t exactly the sort of occupation I had in mind. 

 

I tried to explain to our baboon that Mommy and Papa had an important phone call to make.  A really important call to someone who was much older than we were and who might have to listen closely to what we said.  I focused Laurelle’s energies through a strong pair of binoculars aimed out the library window.  From here she could inspect Billionaires’ Row in Port Vauban.  The secretive, Qatari megayacht Katara had just floated in.  The dazzling, white, 408-foot-long subdivision – bigger than Antibes’ Old Town, so it seemed – surely would keep her attention for a few minutes.

 

Pierre perched on the arm of the couch and took the phone.  I sat, pen poised, facing him.  It was an unfortunate state of affairs for my personal research, but Pierre was the one with the language skills – and the Quebecois charm.  Between the two of us, he had a far better chance of engaging Jean Aussel. 

 

One more thing.  We chose against the speakerphone.  I wasn’t thrilled about hearing everything after-the-fact, but throwing an 80-something-year old on speakerphone seemed rude.  And anyway, there was that baboon in the room.

 

Someone answered.  Very unusually for my husband – a man who, assuming he loved the stuff, could sell fois gras to a vegetarian – Pierre faltered on his introduction.  He jumbled his name, Bellevue’s street address and what he wanted into one, sweeping breath. 

 

I decided he was talking to an answerphone – a rarity in France, but still.

 

No, on second take, Pierre spoke to a person.  That person went off in search of Jean Aussel.  I figured it was an assistant, someone who helped the elderly man maneuver around his house.

 

My pen remained poised, but there was nothing to write.  Meanwhile, our calm six-year-old daughter became bored with captivating Katara and started using the binocs to peruse the bay.

 

Jean Aussel came to the phone.  Pierre’s posture straightened.  His language became polished.  The first piece of his introduction was – get this – that he was a Quebecois.  To the French, this word is code for “long lost cousin”.  The term immediately softens every French soul. 

 

Pierre perched on the couch, listening intently.  He was obviously intrigued by Jean’s conversation – amused even.  My pen hovered expectantly, but Pierre only tossed me a few words.  Jean was doing all the talking.

 

Finally – FINALLY – my husband brought me into the context of the conversation.  He launched the question that went to the heart of our search.  The Big Question that determined whether it was even relevant for us to connect with the fascinating family who lived in Le Bosquet – the one who had offered the celebrated Guy de Maupassant residence, the family called Muterse, and now Aussel, whose Antibois roots plunged widely and deeply into the good soil of this ancient city.

 

Dites-moi, Pierre said to Jean.  Tell me, was it Edourard Muterse who built Bellevue? 

 

My husband listened briefly and nodded.  I think his eyes actually twinkled.  He put his palm over the receiver and uttered the words I most wanted to hear:  “Edouard built the house!”

 

I punched my fist into the air and declared a victorious “Yes!”  “EM built home,” I scribbled – as if I’d ever forget that golden nugget.  In that single phrase, my nascent passion to unearth all facts and stories and details Muterse suddenly sprouted legs.  Real, firmly-rooted legs.

 

Pierre covered the telephone receiver again and threw me another, seemingly riveting morsel.  “It’s the same family!”  

 

Whatever that meant.  “Same family?” I jotted on the page.  If he forgot to explain, I’d ask.

 

Laurelle suddenly was finished with Katara, the whole of Billionaires’ Row and the most mesmerizing bay in the French Riviera.  She went back to bouncing between the couch and the ottoman.

 

Pierre repeated another phrase he just heard.  “Mille cinq cents vingt.” 

 

Numbers are the worst thing to understand in French.  I wrote down the words and then translated them into figures:  1,520.  And so?

 

Just as the bouncing baboon was working herself into a frenzy, and I was thanking God we’d decided against a chandelier in that room, Jean excused himself for a moment to check something with his wife. 

 

His wife?  I’d never thought of him having a wife.  Pierre covered the phone and leaned toward me:  “His wife – her family rented the house during the war years!”

 

Which was honestly incredible.  It made no sense whatsoever. 

 

The two men slipped back into conversation, talking quite delightedly with one another.  I began to worry that Pierre was gathering all the best, firsthand information.  All that’d remain for me would be his rehashing of Jean’s stories, an almost-precise remnant of their meandering telephone conversation.  But finally – finally! – Pierre mentioned we’d like to meet up with Jean for an hour or so.

 

The Frenchman seemed open to the idea.  The men were talking about meeting here?  At Bellevue?  Yes, yes, they were – tomorrow?  6pm?  Pierre was offering to collect Jean and his wife, but Jean insisted he not worry.  The elderly Antibois knew his way around this area pretty well.

 

At last my husband rang off.  “Jean – he’s a real storyteller!” he said.  “He’s incredibly lucid.”  There went my vision of the frail 80-something who needed a home nurse.  Then Pierre filled in the detail.

 

Edouard Muterse, when he built Bellevue, gave her another name.  He called her Lou Gargali. 

 

While I’d been aware of this name, I never realised it was Bellevue’s original name.  Exactly when the name changed – and by whom and for what reason – remained a mystery.  But Jean unpacked its meaning.  Lou Gargali was a Provençal term for a very unusual, morning wind. 

 

I thought immediately of the tumultuous winter we’d endured in Antibes a few years ago.  Living within Lou Gargali’s walls was like living inside a teakettle that was constantly approaching its boil.

 

Jean’s 1,520 number corresponded to – get this – the year to which he could trace his family’s land ownership in the area.  (That “one-thousand, five-hundred twenty” was a year never crossed my mind.  Think about it:  Ferdinand Magellan was still alive.)  Jean Aussel’s own, seriously established family was his current project.  He was writing a 500-page book about them.  He had only three pages to go.

 

But the bizarre, small-world and entirely riveting thing about this whole affair was that, as a young girl, Jean Aussel’s wife lived at Lou Gargali.  France is hardly a land of arranged marriages or family trees with no branches, so let me rephrase:  The wife of Edouard Muterse’s grandnephew lived in the house that Edouard Muterse built.  Her family rented Lou Gargali from Edouard during World War II, a grand travesty played out on Antibes’ very grounds.  Jean didn’t know the young girl at this time, but it was through this connection – Edouard Muterse and Lou Gargali – that they met each other.

 

Lou Gargali and her founder were probably responsible – just doing the math here – for a 50- or 60-year marriage.  At a minimum they deserved god-parenting rights.

 

And so it was she, Jean Aussel’s wife, who was the more interested in seeing Lou Gargali again.  She hadn’t been here since the 1950s or so.  Inside Lou Gargali – our Bellevue – lived her childhood memories of the war and, surely, of her parents and any siblings.

 

So tomorrow.  What should we do?  Tour the house and have a drink?  Offer the Aussels dinner?  What does a North American whip up for well-healed, French-to-their-bone-marrow guests without having to sweat over a stove? 

 

A dictaphone!  I need to find a dictaphone.  Pierre believes Jean’s going to give me 90% of what I’m looking for, so I don’t want to miss a single one of his precious, French words.

 

But what am I looking for exactly?  I need to clarify that, too.  Facts.  Characters.  Connections. 

 

In short, I’m seeking stories of the past.  Stories that will make Lou Gargali – our darling Bellevue – come alive.

 

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Villa Muterse I

Villa Muterse II?, my post a couple weeks ago, has generated feedback from several readers – this, after Pierre told me the blog lacked a certain punch.  He was right.  It probably did fall a bit limp.  But if the entry lacked a certain punch, it offered a certain content. 

 

So, readers have been wondering, what happened next?  Did I ever find out who built Bellevue, our beloved seaside villa in the Côte d’Azur that has attracted interest from passersby and celebrities alike?  Was it the brainchild of Edouard Muterse, the man who looked back at me through wire spectacles in the photos from Antibes’ Archives Municipales – the guy who was Président in the 1930s of both the Bureau d’Hygiène Sociale and our neighbouring Port de la Salis, the one whose father gave accommodation and sailing lessons to the famed novelist Guy de Maupassant? 

 

And not just facts, you wanted to know, but did I manage to track down any people with lucid memories and stories to tell?

 

The words of Emilie, the unusually helpful woman at les Archives, have rung clearly in my ears from the moment they arrived there.  Antibes isn’t large, she said.  There are a lot of people here who remember the past. 

 

All data points gathered from les Archives Municipales were directing me, the guided missile, up the hill from Bellevue to a property called Le Bosquet – a place whose former name, when Maupassant stayed there in the winter of 1885-1886, was Villa Muterse.  It was the home where, in his later years, Edouard Muterse lived – whether or not he was the one who actually built Bellevue.  (I must not lose sight of this unfortunate possibility.)  And Le Bosquet was the place where today, the Muterse family line lives on under the name Aussel. 

 

“I don’t know if you’ll have the occasion to meet the father, Jean Aussel,” Emilie wrote to me in an email a few days after my visit to les Archives.  She’d mentioned that the senior Aussel was in his early 80s these days, but as if in encouragement, her email described him as “a charming man and who always has a lot of things to say.”   

 

Le Bosquet also was charming.  But as much as I was drawn to the residence, I was also repelled.  What would happen, I worried, if the current family knew nothing of their past?  Worse, what if they didn’t want to tell it to some snooping American broad? 

 

So I did what all curious people do at the birth of any particular interest:  I googled it. 

 

As it happens, Le Bosquet is partly a chambre d’hôte today.  That’s to say it’s a bed and breakfast – with 4.5 stars, no less – run by Christian and Sylvie Aussel.  I learned that the property’s bones date back to 1750, thanks to an ancestor who was the last Viguier du Roy (king’s magistrate, a position that survived until the French Revolution in 1789). 

 

While the weight of Le Bosquet’s lineage only frightened me further, the online photos at least made the place look comfortable and charming.  It had a flesh-coloured stucco façade, pale green shutters, matching green umbrellas and a rambling-but-tended garden.  Exactly the kind of place you’d crave for some R & R.

 

This factoid about Le Bosquet being a B & B was incredibly fortuitous for someone who didn’t speak the local language perfectly.  Francophone phone conversations are a nightmare for me, contorting basic words into urgent-sounding jibberish – simply by removing the speaker’s face.

 

So one early afternoon, I convinced Pierre to take a bike ride with me up to Le Bosquet.  He has the language skills – and the Quebecois charm.  The French surrender their espressos and morning croissants for their long lost cousins.  And in truth, even if Pierre wasn’t exactly a fan of that earlier blogpost of mine, he admitted to being curious about the story behind it.

 

Shortly we stood at the gate of Le Bosquet.  Actually that makes it sound too easy. 

 

Shortly, after circumnavigating the private and blocked streets that surround Le Bosquet (which, I remind you, was supposedly a charming bed and breakfast), we found ourselves in front of an iron gate having a good dozen call buttons.  Inside the barrier lay a long, straight street lined with olive trees.  But nowhere, inside or outside the gate, was there the slightest announcement of a chambre d’hôte.

 

Fortunately one of the call buttons was marked “Le Bosquet”.  After several rings, a barely audible, male voice answered. 

 

Pierre made his opening bid:  Bonjour, Monsieur!  We purchased Bellevue a few years ago and we’re trying to discover its history, and my wife’s a writer – behind us a dump truck mounted the road in low gear – and anyway, she’s led to believe that an Edouard Muterse built our house.

 

The almost imperceptible voice said we probably want to speak to its father.

 

Pierre continued:  Oui, yes, that’d be great.  We were wondering whether we could take a minute or two now and make an appointment and….  Allo?

 

The call box was silent.  Pierre rang again.  No answer.  But what luck:  The pedestrian gate was open!  We scooted inside. 

 

At the end of the straight, olive tree-lined road, we found it:  Le Bosquet – just like its online picture, but with almost every shutter snapped tight.  The residence looked inviting but unwelcoming.  We sensed people nearby – there was that voice on the call box, and some garden tools were splayed out in the shade – but still, the area felt vacant.

 

Pierre and I called out.  “Allo?  Bonjour?” 

 

No one came to meet us.  We resolved to try again at the main road – but on retracing our steps we discovered we were now locked inside the gated community.  So again, google.  Reception via satellite on a Canadian cell phone proved the superior technology.  Someone would arrive. 

 

When Christian Aussel finally emerged from Le Bosquet’s stately entry, he wore a spherical motorcycle helmet.  It seemed to me a clever way to confine conversations with interlopers.  He had a compact, wiry build; dark, round eyes; and an olive complexion.  I guessed he was 50-something – at least as far as I could gauge within that space helmet.

 

Christian reiterated that we probably wanted to speak with his father, Jean Aussel, who was taking a nap at the moment.  The best time to reach him was between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. 

 

Oui – merci – but Pierre and I could hardly leave it at that.  Here we were, standing beside (though shielded by the astronomical headgear of) a relative of Edouard Muterse, the man I thought and hoped was the father of our Bellevue.  Part of me, indeed, was that meddling history junkie that Christian aimed to avoid.

 

But kindly, Edouard’s great-grandnephew wasn’t too reluctant to offer some of Le Bosquet’s history.  Yes, this was the place where Maupassant spent one winter.  It was only a winter stay, he said, because the Muterse family lived at Le Bosquet during the summers.  In winter they’d decamp to their city home near the train station.

 

Let me put this geography in context.  We’re not talking about a winter home in Aspen and a summer home in St Tropez.  Non.  We’re talking about a winter home in Antibes and a summer home in – you’ve got it – Antibes.  The distance between the two spots is about three kilometers.  Of course airplanes didn’t exist in the 1880s (and for that matter, Aspen was basically a newborn, silver mining camp).  Le Bosquet itself would’ve lain in the wilderness outside Antibes, a city that was still fortified (though not for much longer) by rampart walls and a vaulting access door that snapped shut each night at 8:00pm.  This sort of country property was only comfortably inhabited during the summer months.  

 

So I launch my million Euro question.  Did Edouard Muterse build Bellevue?

 

He may have built Bellevue, Christian said, but when his father died (already having outlived Edouard’s mother), Edouard came to live in Le Bosquet.  Christian had to spell out French tradition for us:  Parents always live in the big house.  When they die, the house belongs to their children.

 

Quick, mental arithmetic spun the arrow away from Edouard’ role as father of Bellevue.  A few years ago, someone told us that his uncle laid Bellevue’s plumbing in 1923.  Information at les Archives Municipales told me that Edouard’s father died in 1928.  The brief, five-year interval between these years hardly supported the idea that Edouard Muterse would’ve created a grand, new home – one that at the time was described as a virtual castle – only to move out a few years later.

 

Edouard himself had no children, Christian said.  We were still focusing on Le Bosquet.  The fact seemed to explain the property’s current situation.  In Edouard’s time the estate was a single, sprawling unit.  Edouard’s niece (who married an Aussel) inherited the place in 1948, the year Edouard died.  Her son Jean, now in his eighties and presently taking a nap, restored the property and today occupies the verrière, a vaulting, glass-roofed portion at the western end of the property.   Christian runs the imposing, central part of the house as a chambre d’hôte, while his brother Denis lives in the eastern section of the building, once a fig séchoir (drying room).  

 

Around this time the motorcycle helmet came off.  Maybe Christian was enjoying our conversation more than he’d expected.  Or, from the sweat pouring down his cheeks, possibly he was just hot.  He was busy working out which house was our Bellevue.  The one with the library and tower? 

 

Yes. 

 

The one on the water.  It was more statement than question. 

 

Yes.

 

I have the drawing for the front door, Christian said.  The guy who made it, Monsieur Mondini(?), is still alive.

 

Pierre was visibly floored by this revelation.  I was a few sentences behind, still taking the word porte (i.e., “door”) to mean our neighbouring port.  Soon, though, I realized the two men were talking about the magnificent, thick slab of walnut at the front of Bellevue that has intrigued us for years.  It groans on its hinges, Adams Family-style, and still took an eight inch-long, iron key until our modernizations. 

 

Pierre underlined the door’s beauty.  In the early days of our renovations, he explained to Christian, Bellevue had no surrounding gate.  A Russian actually stopped by and offered something like EUR 14,000 for our door.  Just the door!

 

Christian laughed.  A Russian?  If the guy offered 14, he said, we should’ve asked double!

 

Of course Pierre and I never sold Bellevue’s door.  Surprising and interwoven as this connection over Bellevue’s porte sounds, Christian now owns Monsieur Mondini’s woodworking shop.  Woodworking is his own trade, he explained.  Bellevue’s plans were simply part of the business he purchased.

 

The stonework surrounding our groaning door contained another, possibly related mystery.  The initials “RC” were engraved into the keystone at the top of the arch.  Philip, our builder, had told us such initials traditionally belonged to a property’s original owner. 

 

But “RC”, no matter how you morphed it, looked nothing like “EM”.  Perhaps Christian held the answer to another of Bellevue’s mysteries?

 

Edouard’s great-grandnephew was now interested that we were interested.  Do we know any local families in Antibes? he wondered.

 

Yes, I said, explaining that because our daughter attended school here for a year, we have the privilege of knowing local families.  We don’t just hang out with expats, I told him.

 

We are lucky to know these people, Christian said.  There aren’t so many of them.

 

In a city of 70,000 year-round residents, this last comment seemed strange to me.  But Pierre understood.  As ever with me and the French language, I was talking cross-purposes.  (Pierre later explained that Christian referred to a different sort of local family:  those with roots in Antibes.  The true Antibois have lived here for generations.  It was all about that deep-dwelling, French passion for le terroir – the land, and the values and mores rooted into it.  The real Antibois represented fewer and fewer of Antibes’ population.  And Christian was obviously one of them.)

 

Pierre and my “two-minute visit” was well and truly exceeded.  But our connection should endure.  Christian will come by to look at our door.  We don’t want him to fix its endearing moan, but it’ll be useful if he could look at the little bug problem.  I won’t mind a glimpse at the original drawings either.  More importantly, Christian gave us the telephone number for his father, Jean.

 

As Pierre and I biked back down the hill toward Bellevue, I punched the air in victory.  We found Le Bosquet!  We talked to a real person who was related to Edouard Muterse!  And we’re on the way to linking up with the fabulously interesting Jean Aussel!

 

And yet.  And yet, I can repeat the closing line from that prior blogpost called Villa Muterse II?:  I have yet to officially link Bellevue’s creation with the Muterse family.  But now, more than ever, I’m keen to do so.

 

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A Delectable Fourth

The French Riviera is renowned for its rambling estates and sumptuous villas.  Take Domaine la Dilecta.  So grand is this 10-bedroom, 10-bathroom, 19,375 square-foot (1,800 square-meter) residence and its 4.5-hectare park, it deserves the designation of Domaine. 

 

Domaine la Dilecta has intrigued me, more any than others, since my family began coming to Cap d’Antibes in 2005.  Part of it is proximity.  There’s something enthralling about the place just up the road, the one you stumble on during an innocent tour of your neighbourhood. 

 

I happened upon Domaine la Dilecta in this way, while biking the winding roads just behind Bellevue, navigating their circuit enclosed by high shrubs and fences on both sides, all the time climbing toward Cap d’Antibes’ working lighthouse.  But at one crossroads, the fences came to an abrupt halt.  Smack in front of me stood a crescent of 12-foot, black-iron spears with golden tips.  Their rods formed an artful fence fitted with golden lettering announcing, with determined majesty, the entrance to Domaine la Dilecta.

 

The estate’s downright grandeur is the other part that has kept me bewitched.  Peering between the black iron posts, the size of this single property on the Cap d’Antibes is truly breathtaking.  I could spy (and by the obviously-placed security camera, I was certainly spied upon) the sprawling residence, an exquisite example of 1920s, boxy architecture painted Mediterranean white, set nobly within a verdant, English lawn (or more precisely, an expansive park) at the end of a long, winding drive.

 

Rumour has it that an Italian family has owned this estate since the 1940s, which I’m guessing means they got it for a decent price just after the war.  Right next door to the Domaine is the Aga Khan’s former residence – now a famous ruin after one Russian oligarch tried to “improve” it (i.e., to grotesquely enlarge it, so the estate agents’ rumours go), when the mairie put the kibosh on unapproved works.  The property has remained vacant ever since, gaping chunks blown out of its beautiful, stone bones, its grounds growing wild for six years and counting.  Neighbours like this only enhance the mystique surrounding life at the top of the Cap.

 

In the past, I’ve parked my bike outside Domaine la Dilecta to photograph her and her imposing entryway.  But all that changed with some vague invitation on the Fourth of July.

 

Our Austrian neighbours here invited this Canadian-American family to a party on Monday night.  The fact that Monday was the 4^th, as in the Fourth of July, was hardly part of the invitation.  The Austrians insisted we must meet their good friends the Ps, who rent out the delectable Domaine la Dilecta for the summer.  The Ps were – as virtually every American would know – scions of a storied, fellow American family. 

 

Naturally, we accepted.  Putting two and two together, I thought about wearing red, white and blue to the event – but Pierre encouraged me into teal and pink, something sleeveless and silky and precisely Côte d’Azur.

 

At 7:50 p.m. sharp, on an oddly drizzly July evening, Pierre, six-year-old Laurelle and I link up with a small convoy of black vehicles emerging from the Austrians’ home.  We wipe sprinkles of rain from our windscreens as the parade weaves upward toward the Domaine.  

 

This time, the first time for me, Dilecta’s black iron gates open.  Our parade sweeps up the long drive to reach the magnificent, white residence.  At the same time, caterers run tables and chairs from a poolside marquee into the main house.  The weather has prompted last-minute changes.

 

The fleet deposits our brigade at Domaine la Dilecta’s doorway, adults and children in about equal number.  Our Austrian neighbour is there, glittering in chunky bijoux, frizzy hair running wild down her back.  The Ps, I learn, charged her with populating their party.

 

“I’ve brought 23 people!” she says proudly.  Her friends are Swiss and Norweigian, British and Austrian and – thanks to our threesome on this US holiday – Canadian and American.  Plenty of sequins populate the entry hall, but there are no red-and-white stripes or blue stars to be found.

 

Laurelle maintains her usual, 45-second routine of shyness, hiding behind my legs.  Then she bounds off full-throttle with a troop of six-to-nine-year-old girls.  They gallop freely through the stately Domaine la Dilecta like it’s Cinderella’s Castle at Disneyworld, each room an open invitation to be explored.  Laurelle darts back into view momentarily wearing a blue, sparkly top hat.  She’s headed to the disco cave, she tells me, and disappears again.

 

Meanwhile, the adults congregate in the Domaine’s salon, an airy room paved in black-and-white-checkered, marble flooring and graced by an oversized marble fireplace.  I weave between the other foreigners trying to determine how they, like us, have ended up in the Domaine tonight. 

 

But I want to be a child!  I want to run through the rooms and halls of Domaine la Dilecta to see her splendor rather than being cooped up in a single, though spacious and justly grand, sitting room with arching windows over an undulating, green lawn.

 

A mother has a right to check up on her six-year-old daughter, right?  Especially one that’s gone off to a “disco cage” (which is – I swear – how I heard it from my sweet, baby child’s tongue)? 

 

Vigilant mommy trots off to discover Domaine la Dilecta’s library, its wood-paneled walls decorated with frescos and intricate carvings.  She finds a dining room with an enormous, crystal chandelier and walls covered by mirrors that are mounted with rows of vibrantly coloured plates.  Vigilant mommy works out that the handle on an antique-mirrored wall in the hallway leads to a hidden bathroom.  She dodges caterers in a utilitarian butler’s pantry and goes in search of the disco cage, a musty building across the back driveway complete with black lights, full bar and leopard-motif carpeting.  (Here, I find my daughter dancing to rock music, quite innocently.)

 

I’m not meant to be playing nanny, I know.  Reluctantly at first, I return to mingle with the sequins – and to work out this enigma of Independence Day on the Cap.  Does anyone here but me (and my long-suffering Canadian husband) realize today’s a Big Holiday?  Earlier today, Yankee greetings flew into me via email from Ohio and Colorado, from England and up the road in Biot.  In London, a 10-foot statue of Ronald Reagan was unveiled outside the US Embassy. 

 

The Fourth of July, I am quite sure, remains a major holiday.  But here, the only evidence I find of red-white-and-blueness are a few little girls running around in blue, sparkly top hats.  I strike up conversation with a Brit.  I ask him, isn’t this the day the Brits like to call “British Thanksgiving”?  But conversation drifts away from any notion about the sort of independence that’s celebrated on the First by Canadians, the Fourteenth by the French and – does anyone realize it? – on the Fourth by the Americans!

 

At the dinner buffet table I catch up with my fellow American host.  It’s a marvelous party, I say to Mr. P.  Tell me:  Monday night is honestly as good a night as any to throw a party, but is this party meant to coincide with the Fourth of July?

 

The evening’s red, white and blue, it turns out, is out in the marquee by the pool house.  Yes, whether anyone else realizes it, this is meant to be an American Independence Day celebration!  And at that moment, it’s as if every other Yank at Domaine la Dilecta emerges from the gorgeous woodwork in one fell swoop.  Pierre and I share a dinner table with the Ps’ American houseguests. 

 

“To the Fourth of July!” we say, chinking our French glasses filled with Austrian wine in the royal splendor owned by the Italians.

 

Suddenly, not far away, fireworks explode outside Domaine la Dilecta’s arching windows.  We drift into the humid, nighttime air – the Americans, Canadians, Austrians, English, Swiss and Norwegians alike – and spread along the graceful terrace.  An expansive pool and fully equipped pool house is situated to one side of the grounds; the black, iron entry gates lie miles off in the other direction.  But our eyes are directed over the rolling greens, above a mask of surrounding trees and into the nighttime sky. 

 

“Just on time!”  Mr P announces with grandiose and comic charm.

 

Truth be told, the fireworks are probably going off at water’s edge for clients of the Grand Hôtel du Cap.  Or maybe, if I have my directions confused, it’s an extravagant Russian celebration emanating from Roman Abramovich’s Château de la Croë.  Or quite possibly, these fireworks are part of some festival d’art pyrotechnique, one of an endless stream of firework shows, usually set to musical scores, that sparkle and pop along the Côte d’Azur during the celebrated summertime.

 

But who cares whether these fireworks are French or Russian or the glittering backdrop to some Wagnerian aria.  For this single moment, we pretend the celebration is just for us, a small band of Americans who, sprinkled among the world, populates Domaine la Dilecta on the Fourth of July.  Rarely do I feel so patriotic as when I celebrate an American holiday on foreign land! 

 

The fireworks end and we head indoors.  The caterers are collecting plates and setting the tables for dessert.  Now – finally – evidence of the evening’s intent comes to light. 

 

On the tables are paper dessert napkins.  They’re red, white and blue – and in the design of the good, ol’ stars and stripes.

 

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Villa Muterse II?

Last autumn I took a French class in Toronto in which we read Bel-Ami, a novel by Guy de Maupassant.  At the time, I hardly knew that the author ranked among the most famous authors of the Belle Epoque. 

 

Nor did I realize that he spent the winter of 1885-1886, right after Bel-Ami’s publication, in our summer hometown of Antibes.

 

Nor – and I figured this piece out with a great deal of luck – that the famed de Maupassant stayed that winter in Villa Muterse, just up the hill from Bellevue, before our house was even built.  And Villa Muterse, I should add, was the ancestral home of Edouard Muterse, the chap who built our Bellevue in the early 1920s.

 

At least I think that’s the case anyway.  It’s the truth according to a booklet written about our neighbour, the Port de la Salis.

 

Whatever the reality, the history behind Bellevue’s birth appears to be an interesting one.  Throughout our five years here, the house has generated a good deal of interest from long-time Antibois, hopeful acquirers and mere passersby.  So I figured our grand dame was ripe for a bit of genealogical probing.

 

Wednesday afternoon I found myself in the lofty, brightly-lit Archives Municipales of Antibes.  On the welcome desk two stems of pink orchids gave life to a space otherwise stacked with books and files.

 

The receptionist immediately called for assistance.  A young woman appeared from the doorway at the back of the room.  She wore a tank top and jeans and thick, rectangular glasses, and had a tight, stubby ponytail. 

 

I was hoping to discover the history of our house, I tried to explain.  My French sounded more halting than usual, probably because I expected this French bureaucrat to shoo me back home for some non-existent paperwork before agreeing to talk further.

 

On the contrary, Emilie was happy to do some research.  And here, without an appointment or any documents related to Bellevue, I managed to swamp this young woman’s Wednesday afternoon.  She was either innately helpful or, I thought excitedly, keenly interested in my case. 

 

Emilie consulted that same booklet on the Port de la Salis.  She dipped into digital maps.  Armed with preliminary details, she headed into the back room. 

 

“The documents are heavy,” she said.  “I’ll only return if I find something interesting.”

 

I flipped through books at the back of les Archives Municipales while the raspy-voiced receptionist and her colleague played videos at the front of the room.  As time passed, I discovered that Edouard Muterse, my supposed father of Bellevue, was the son of Maurice Muterse, Antibes’ historian – and small world, I already knew it was Maurice, way back in the 1880s, who taught the novelist de Maupassant how to sail his yachts.

 

Conversely, Edouard Muterse was into the social services.  In the early 1930s, he was Président of the odd-sounding Bureau d’Hygiène Sociale.  Then again, I learned, the years between the wars were tough ones in Antibes.  At times, running water was a rare privilege in this city by the sea.

 

Eventually Emilie returned with two enormous, fabric-bound books.  Their spines were broken, and their yellowed pages were soft and torn.  She opened one of the volumes to a page entitled “Mallet”.  The text was handwritten, inscribed with exacting flourishes in old-fashioned ink.  She shared her notes: 

 

In 1824, the parcel of land on which Bellevue stands was part of a large holding by a farmer called Jonche.  He sold it a couple years later to a gun maker called Rey.  The land passed through the ages in this way, eventually belonging to Rigal, the storied banker from Cannes who swept into the Cap in the early 1880s with grandiose ideas.  Five years later Mallet, a diplomat, bought the property.  He still held it in 1914, a fact that corresponded with the tattered tome on the table.  But then the thread disappeared.

 

Could the lack of information relate to the beginning of a world war?  I asked Emilie. 

 

“Non,” she replied quickly, pursing her lips.  I should have no worries about the administration of this data.  She skipped out for a cigarette break and returned to suggest that we look at photos given to les Archives Municipales by the Muterse family. 

 

A black-and-white photo of Edouard himself popped up on the computer screen.  Taken around the turn of the century, he was in his early 20s, seated on a straw chair with his hands resting on a cane.  He had a thick crop of dark hair, a straggly beard and long, twisted moustache.  A pair of metal spectacles balanced on his nose.  If he shaved off the forest of facial hair, I thought, young Edouard might actually be a good-looking guy these days.

 

The photo’s caption labeled him as the stately Jean Baptiste Joseph Edouard Muterse.  He was born in Antibes and died here, too, in his villa les Bosquets – the very place up the hill that welcomed the novelist de Maupassant all those years ago. 

 

Emilie returned to the handwritten volume of land listings that lay open on the table.  “I’m fed up,” she said.  “I’m missing something.”  But the end of our day had come.  I thanked her profusely.  It was nearly 5:00pm, and les Archives Municipales closed at 5:00pm.  Sharp.

 

The next morning I returned to les Archives with Bellevue’s compris de vente, the sale agreement.  Oddly enough, Emilie was pleased to see me.  She still wore jeans and a tank, her hair pushed back tightly from her head, thick rectangular glasses bisecting her face.

 

The compris didn’t help one bit, so she returned to the original booklet about Bellevue’s neighbouring port.  At the back was a list of contributors.  Emilie pointed to Denis Aussel‘s name. 

 

“He still lives in Antibes,” she said.  “He’s about 85 now.  He might be able to fill you in.”  In fact, Antibes isn’t large.  There are a lot of people here, Emilie said, who remember the past. 

 

She made a couple phone calls – the people on the other end of the line were obviously intrigued – and returned to say that that Aussel lived at – get this – le Bosquet.  The home Edouard owned, just up the hill from Bellevue.  The building once called Villa Muterse.  The very place where de Maupassant stayed one winter.  It turns out that through marriage, the Muterse family line lives on in le Bosquet today, under the family name Aussel.

 

Again, the end of our time had come.  It was noon, and Emilie’s work at les Archives Municipales ended at 12:00pm.  Sharp. 

 

I have yet to officially link Bellevue’s creation with the Muterse family, but I’m keen to do so.  They’re an interesting cast of characters who are engrained in Antibes’ own family tree.  The Muterses are a breathing example of the French passion for le terroir – their land, and the centuries of culture, tradition, ideals and beliefs that are churned into this land.

 

And the deeper I dig, the more profoundly the Muterse roots sink into le terroir just up the hill.  Guess which door I’ll be knocking on next.

 

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Et tu, my friend?

One thing I’ve not discussed much here is the whole matter of “to tutoyer or not to tutoyer.”

 

On the surface, the choice seems clear.  My handy Collins French-English dictionary says that tutoyer quelqu’un (or tutoyer someone) is “to address somebody as ‘tu’.”  Tu is simply “you” when you’re familiar with that person.

 

Which all sounds easy enough.  Tutoyer your friends.  Address everyone else with the more formal “vous”.

 

The whole tutoyer issue came to the fore again Saturday evening as we hosted a sea of six-year olds and their parents.  One invitee was our friend Laurent, a guy who’s more business than beach, with his wife and six-year-old daughter.  In his first few words to me, an innocent “tu” flew out of his mouth.  I didn’t understand what he’d said – and actually asked that he repeat himself.

 

“Mais je m’excuse!” Laurent said kindly.  “Je vous ai tutoyé.”  Or as we French-speaking Anglos say, he tutoyer-ed (TOO-twoy-ehd) me. 

 

I apologized immediately for not recognizing this sign of friendship and said something stupid, like that tutoyer-ing me is great.

 

So why the big deal about the you-word?  Because we Anglophones are taught it’s a big deal.  Polly Platt’s book French or Foe? is like DeBrett’s A–Z of Modern Manners for foreigners trying to understand the French.  In it she writes, “The whole subject of “tu” for “you” is a can of worms.  Don’t open it if you can possibly avoid it.”

 

Platt explains it quite simply.  “Tu is for children and dogs – and other relationships that don’t apply to you, a foreigner:  close family relatives and school friends.”

 

I can unpack this last line for my patch of the Côte d’Azur.  Here in Antibes, only some locals are truly locals.  The rest of the French residents are like foreigners.  Yesterday I had lunch with Olivier, Antibes’ head of communications, and at one point I asked him where he was from. 

 

“Le Dordogne,” he said and proceeded to explain exactly where that is.

 

So when did you move to Antibes? I asked.

 

“Quand j’avais six mois,” he said.  At the ripe age of six months.

 

Yes, six MONTHS.  I triple-checked this statistic, but it was true, he didn’t consider himself a true Antibois because he wasn’t BORN here.

 

Put in this context, Polly Platt’s designation of me as a foreigner is pretty black-and-white.  Tu does not apply to me.  Ever.  The easy answer suits me fine.  Wretched French verb conjugations are different for tu and vous, so sticking with vous basically cuts my work in half. 

 

But suddenly I was standing there in my own garden with Laurent, a friend for the past two-and-a-half years (most of which I’ve lived on a different continent), and he was opening this verbal corridor that’s supposed to be shut tight to people like me.  All our prior conversations, and my emails with him and his wife, had always been conducted in the polite, vous context.

 

Platt’s corollary to this vous-tu rule of engagement floated menacingly into my brain:  Once you start tutoyer-ing someone, there’s no going back – unless you want to make enemies.

 

I should mention that a handful of other friends I know in the same context – as parents of six-year olds who attended school with our Laurelle a few years ago – jumped onto the tu train a while back.  To be sure, they were less formal sorts, more beach than business, and I’m sure I’ve been mixing my tu’s and vous’s with them ever since.  And honestly, who really cares but me?  Maybe I should just dive right in like Judy, my effervescent American friend here.  “I mix them up all the time – by mistake!” she told me.  “But I can get away with it.  No one gets angry.”  Maybe I should pull the American card, launch my tu’s, end up with vous’s and worry about it later. 

 

It works for some.  For me, I’ve simply tried to avoid the vous-tu divide with most French friends.  To start, I’ve tried to never use the word “you” when we speak or email.  Which, of course, can get a bit tricky.

 

Alternatively, the French have a pronoun “on” that’s completely impersonal but inoffensive.  It means “someone” or “anyone.”  On goes to the beach on a sunny day.  In polite company, on never helps herself to more than three varieties of cheese.  I always expect using on sounds pompous – like “One goes to the beach on a sunny day” – but the French don’t hear it that way.  Still, I can hardly summon on for every sentence.

 

My final trick is to dream up a way to implicate more than one person in my “you”’s.  “Vous” is the only way to say the plural “you,” whether for the closest relatives or complete strangers.  I often say vous les deux (you two) to a couple, shifting my eyes between them. 

 

The easiest thing is to stick to vous until I hit direct confrontation.  Someday, I hope, I’ll become a full-on, two-you person, mastering twice the verb conjugations and donning them out liberally.  The biggest game now is remembering which friends have extended my right to tutoyer (because, of course, once I start I cannot go back), and which friends remain more comfortable with the proper vous (because I, the foreigner, am ill-equipped to make the first breach of this boundary).

 

Standing in the garden amid the flock of children and their parents, Laurent was hardly apologetic about his foray into the tu world.  “Nous sommes des amis maintenant!” he said.  We are friends now!  And I must admit, hearing him say this felt pretty ace.

 

As the evening rolled on and I recovered from my cultural fumble, Laurelle bounced by me, giggling with a six-year-old friend.  Her soprano voice rang clear, “Est-ce que tu veux nager?”

 

Do you (tu) want to go swimming?

 

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Bon Courage

Visiting your local mobile phone service provider is the perfect way to rile up your nerves – even on a perfect day.

 

It’s our first full day back in the sunny, glorious South of France, and I find myself inside the France Telecom store in central Antibes, right next to le commissariat de police.  A few paces into this well-windowed store on the corner of a busy intersection lies a welcome mat.  Overhead hangs a sign saying something about getting en ligne for service. 

 

I’m here this Friday afternoon to find out whether France Telecom is able to offer me a SIM card to fit my new iPhone 4.  The iPhone 4 is Canada’s trendy, new gadget.  I purchased it at Toronto’s Apple store a couple weeks ago with strong assurances from the salesman that its new, smaller SIM card would be available in France.  The iPhone 4 was the phone everyone wanted, he reassured me.  France would not be left behind.  I should definitely buy my iPhone 4 in an unlocked format – that’s to say, free from a fixed service contract.  All I needed to do once I was overseas was slip a small French SIM card into my iPhone 4, and away I’d go.  Sure, I’d pay a fair whack for the phone upfront, but the money I’d save on international roaming charges would be well worth it.

 

The Apple salesman and I googled a few of France’s mobile providers like Orange and SFR, and yes, their websites were conversant in iPhone 4.  Moreover, I reckoned, the sales guy was Canadian – a kind and gentle Great White Northerner who was a few steps removed from Apple’s hyper breeding ground of the US.  He wouldn’t try to sell me something I couldn’t use.

 

My first visit to a mobile phone shop in France, just a few minutes back, was completely useless.  Orange, one of the conversant providers, didn’t carry the small carte de SIM.  This is how I find myself inside the larger France Telecom shop trying to figure out whether the en ligne sign applies to me.

 

Est-ce qu’il y a une ligne pour attendre?  I ask a balding man in shorts and a t-shirt who stands beneath the sign.  Is there a queue?

 

“Yes,” he says.

 

“Oh, do you speak English?”

 

“Non, pas du tout.”

 

Which is precisely what you don’t say to someone who’s trying to speak your native tongue.  It’s rude.  Basically it tells me my accent sucks.  If you cannot speak my language, don’t pretend to.

 

So I continue in my richly accented, Anglophonic French (making a mental reminder of the phrase une ligne d’attente for next time).  By his kind eyes and gentle smile (a French rarity), I honestly don’t think the man meant any harm.  He agrees that I can jump the queue and ask my quick question to the France Telecom rep.  If they don’t carry the new, smaller carte de SIM, I won’t wait en ligne.

 

Shortly a tall, thin salesman of North African origin confirms that yes, indeed, France Telecom does carry the smaller carte de SIM for the iPhone 4.  Several hundred dollars worth of relief sweep my soul.  I confirm that yes, I’ll attendre.

 

The rude-but-kind Frenchman soon passes by heading the opposite direction.  “Bon courage!” he says with another smile and walks out the door.

 

Courage.  That is literally what I need.  But I know the phrase actually means “good luck.”  I need that, too.  The existence of a smaller carte de SIM is surely only a tiny step toward getting French mobile phone service.  I am, after all, standing in the shop of a mobile service provider, in France no less, and I’m doing my best not to get all riled up.

 

The North African salesman beckons me toward a high stool in front of a computer screen.  I’m actually getting personal service in a mobile phone shop within, say, ten minutes of entering the store.  What luck!  He returns with a new, small-form carte de SIM for my phone.  We whip through the merits of a permanent subscription versus paying as I go.  We determine my new number, charge my phone, and figure out exactly which buttons to switch off so that I don’t chew up the entire EUR 155 charge on my phone in a single day.  (Due to some particularly greedy French downloading rules, I do not exaggerate.)

 

Meanwhile I’m pretty ecstatic that it’s all working out.  I manage to have adequate identification with me to get my new telephone number.  I actually remember the PIN for my French Visa card.  I get EUR 50 credit for free on my phone.  And I understand the vagaries of cell phone usage in France – all in the French language!

 

Vous avez beacoup de chance parce que votre français est meilleur que mon anglais,” the North African says.  I’m lucky that my French is better than his English.  (Where did that first customer go?)

 

I also have beaucoup de chance, he says, because la ligne d’attente is often out the door.  On Saturdays – if I’d waited one day to come in – le monde (as in the whole world) tries to cram itself into this France Telecom shop.

 

So I’m fixed up and ready to go.  I let the salesman know again how relieved I am that everything’s working – that France Telecom was able to provide the smaller carte de SIM, it being the new style and all.  I was afraid the small SIMs wouldn’t be available in France – but hey, he has proven me wrong.

 

“We only received the shipment of les cartes de SIM this morning,” he says.  “You’re the first client to buy one in Antibes.”

 

Which only makes me relish my bonne chance more enthusiastically.  I wish the salesman un bon après-midi – a good afternoon – and turn to go. 

 

“Bon après-midi,” he replies.  “Et bon courage!”

 

I think I’ve just used up my entire allotment of bon courage for this summer in France.  Courage, I fear, is precisely what I’ll need to survive.

 

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