Peter Mayle - A Year In Provence

It was not the first time that 1992 had been mentioned as the year when the whole of Provence would be showered with foreign money, because in 1992 the Common Market would come into its own. Nationalities would be forgotten as we all became one big happy family of Europeans. Financial restrictions would be lifted-and what would the Spaniards and Italians and the rest of them do? What else but hurry down to Provence waving their checkbooks and looking for houses.

It was a popular thought, but I couldn't see why it should happen. Provence already had a considerable foreign population; they had found no problem buying houses. And, for all the talk of European integration, a date on a piece of paper wasn't going to stop the bickering and bureaucracy and jockeying for special preference which all the member countries-notably France-used when it suited them. Fifty years might see a difference; 1992 almost certainly would not.

But Massot was convinced. In 1992, he was going to sell up and retire, or possibly buy a little bar-tabac in Cavaillon. I asked him what he'd do with his three dangerous dogs, and for a moment I thought he was going to burst into tears.

"They wouldn't be happy in a town," he said. "I'd have to shoot them."

He walked along with me for a few minutes, and cheered himself up by muttering about the profits that were certain to come his way, and about time too. A lifetime of hard work should be rewarded. A man should spend his old age in comfort, not breaking his back on the land. As it happened, his land was exceptional in the valley for its ill-kempt appearance, but he always spoke of it as though it were a cross between the gardens at Villandry and the manicured vineyards of Château Lafite. He turned off the path to go into the forest and terrorize some birds, a brutal, greedy, and mendacious old scoundrel. I was becoming quite fond of him.

The way home was littered with spent shotgun cartridges fired by the men whom Massot dismissed as chasseurs du sentier, or footpath hunters-miserable namby-pambies who didn't want to get their boots dirty in the forest, and who hoped that birds would somehow fly into their buckshot. Among the scattered shell cases were crushed cigarette packets and empty sardine cans and bottles, souvenirs left by the same nature lovers who complained that the beauty of the Lubéron was being ruined by tourists. Their concern for conservation didn't extend to removing their own rubbish. A messy breed, the Provençal hunter.

I arrived at the house to find a small conference taking place around the electricity meter which was hidden behind some trees in the back garden. The man from Electricité de France had opened the meter to read it, and had discovered that a colony of ants had made a nest. The figures were obscured. It was impossible to establish our consumption of electricity. The ants must be removed. My wife and the man from the EOF had been joined by Menicucci, whom we now suspected of living in the boiler room, and who liked nothing better than to advise us on any domestic problem that might arise.

"Oh là là." A pause while Menicucci bent down for a closer look at the meter. "Ils sont nombreux, les fourmis." For once, he had made an understatement. The ants were so numerous that they appeared as one solid black block, completely filling the metal box that housed the meter.

"I'm not touching them," said the EDF man. "They get into your clothes and bite you. The last time I tried to brush away an ants' nest I had them with me all afternoon."

He stood looking at the squirming mass, tapping his screwdriver against his teeth. He turned to Menicucci. "Do you have a blowtorch?"

"I'm a plumber. Of course I have a blowtorch."

" Bon . Then we can burn them off."

Menicucci was aghast. He took a step backwards and crossed himself. He smote his forehead. He raised his index finger to the position that indicated either extreme disagreement, or the start of a lecture, or both.

"I cannot believe what I have just heard. A blowtorch? Do you realize how much current passes through here?"

The EDF man looked offended. "Of course I know. I'm an electrician."

Menicucci affected to be surprised. " Ah bon? Then you will know what happens when you burn a live cable."

"I would be very prudent with the flame."

"Prudent! Prudent! Mon Dieu, we could all perish with the ants."

The EDF man sheathed his screwdriver and crossed his arms. "Very well. I will not occupy myself with the ants. You remove them."

Menicucci thought for a moment and then, like a magician setting up a particularly astonishing trick, he turned to my wife. "If Madame could possibly bring me some fresh lemons-two or three will be enough-and a knife?"

Madame the magician's assistant came back with the knife and lemons, and Menicucci cut each into four quarters. "This is an astuce that I was taught by a very old man," he said, and muttered something impolite about the stupidity of using a blowtorch- "putain de chalumeau" -while the EDF man sulked under a tree.

When the lemons were all quartered, Menicucci advanced on the nest and started to squeeze lemon juice back and forth over the ants, pausing between squeezes to observe the effect that the downpour of citric acid was having.

The ants surrendered, evacuating the meter box in panic-stricken clumps, climbing over one another in their haste to escape. Menicucci enjoyed his moment of triumph. "Voilà, jeune homme," he said to the EDF man, "ants cannot support the juice of fresh lemons. That is something you have learned today. If you leave slices of lemon in your meters you will never have another infestation."

The EDF man took it with a marked lack of graciousness, complaining that he was not a lemon supplier and that the juice had made the meter sticky. "Better sticky than burned to a cinder," was Menicucci's parting shot as he returned to his boiler. " Beh oui. Better sticky than burned."

THE DAYS were warm enough for swimming, the nights cool enough for fires, Indian summer weather. It finally ended in the excessive style that was typical of the Provençal climate. We went to bed in one season and woke up in another.

The rain had come in the night, and continued for most of the following day; not the fat, warm drops of summer, but gray sheets that fell in a vertical torrent, sluicing through the vineyards, flattening shrubs, turning flower beds into mud and mud into brown rivers. It stopped in the late afternoon, and we went to look at the drive-or, rather, where the drive had been the previous day.

It had already suffered in the big storm of August, but the ruts made then were scratches compared to what we now saw: a succession of craters led down to the road, where most of the drive had been deposited in sodden piles. The rest of it was in the melon field opposite the house. Some of the gravel and stones had traveled more than a hundred yards. A recently detonated mine field could hardly have looked worse, and nobody except a man who hated his car would have attempted to drive to the house from the road. We needed a bulldozer just to tidy up the mess, and several tons of gravel to replace what the rain had washed away.

I called Monsieur Menicucci. Over the months, he had established himself as a human version of the Yellow Pages, and, since he had a regard verging on the proprietorial for our house, his recommendations had been made, so he told us, as though it were his own money at stake. He listened as I told him of the lost drive, making interjections- quelle catastrophe was mentioned more than once-to show that he appreciated the extent of the problem.

I finished talking, and I could hear Menicucci making a verbal list of our requirements: "Un bulldozer, bien sûr, un camion, une montagne de gravier, un compacteur…" There were a few moments of humming, probably a snatch of Mozart to assist the mental processes, and then he made up his mind. " Bon. There is a young man, the son of a neighbor, who is an artist with the bulldozer, and his prices are correct. He's called Sanchez. I will ask him to come tomorrow."