Peter Mayle - A Good Year

Roussel led them through to the dining room, where an entire wall was dedicated to the pleasures of the hunt. There was an iron-barred cabinet, fully stocked with rifles; a stuffed fox snarling from the confines of its glass-fronted prison; an enormous sanglier head, mounted on a wooden shield and surrounded by more photographs of Roussel and his fellow warriors; and, hanging over the long dining table like a pungent shroud, the reek of garlic.

“A simple meal,” said Roussel as they all sat down, “such as a man might have after a day’s work in the fields.” It began with caviar d’aubergine, a cold purée of eggplant, and a plate piled high with the rolled, stuffed parcels of meat known in Provence, for some reason, as larks without heads. Roussel made a tour of the table, pouring heavy red Châteauneuf from an embossed bottle, and the sight of wine reminded Max of the next day’s rendezvous with the man from Bordeaux.

“I’m sure Nathalie Auzet told you about tomorrow,” he said. “She’s found an oenologue to come and look at the vines.”

Roussel finished pouring the wine into his own glass, with a roll of the wrist to catch the last drop, and sat down. “She called me tonight, just when you were arriving.” He shook his head and sighed. “These Bordelais-they think they can drop in whenever it suits them. But don’t you worry about it. I’ll deal with him. I’m sure you have better things to do. Leave it to me.” He raised his glass, aiming it first at Christie, then at Max. “To America! To England! To the entente cordiale !”

Christie was hungry, and being unused to Provençal hospitality-which refuses to take no for an answer-made the mistake of finishing her first headless lark rather too quickly. Madame Roussel replaced it at once, serving with it another dollop of aubergine, and giving her a thick slice of bread to mop up the juice. This time, alas, there was no urn to come to her rescue. She noticed that Max was eating very slowly, nodding and smiling as he listened to one of Roussel’s monologues.

“People will tell you,” Roussel was saying as he uncorked two more bottles, “that if you eat the tops of five raw cabbages before drinking, you can take as much wine as you like without suffering.” He made a tour of the table, topping up glasses. “Roasted goats’ lungs are supposed to do the same, although I personally have never tried them. But best of all, so they say, are the beaks of swallows, burnt to a cinder and then ground to a fine powder. You put a pinch or two of the powder in your first glass of wine, and anything you drink afterwards will have no effect on you at all. Voilà. ”

“Fascinating,” said Max. “I must make a note to buy some beaks.” He caught Christie’s eye and translated for her, seeing her smile gradually freeze when he came to the swallow’s beak recipe.

She shuddered, and took a long swallow of wine. “These guys and their beaks. Haven’t they heard of Alka-Seltzer?”

The meal moved slowly on to the main event, brought ceremoniously to the table in a deep iron casserole: a stew of wild boar, almost black with wine and blood-thickened gravy, accompanied by a gratin of cheese and potatoes and a further topping-up of Châteauneuf. Christie looked with dismay at the steaming plateful put in front of her, enough for an entire pack of famished dogs. Max loosened his belt. The Roussels attacked their food with undiminished enthusiasm.

There were, inevitably, second helpings. There was cheese. There were great wedges of tarte aux pommes, shiny with glaze. And finally, with the coffee and diamond-shaped almond biscuits, there was a compulsory snifter of Roussel’s venomous homemade marc.

By this time, Christie was anesthetized. She had arrived at that stage of overeating reached by certain species prior to hibernation and was barely capable of movement or thought, conscious only of an instinct to curl up in a quiet, dark place. Max was little better, and even Roussel had begun to show signs of wear, making only a token effort to persuade them into another glass of marc.

It had been, as Max assured Madame Roussel on the doorstep, a memorable evening. After a round of kissing and handshaking, he steered an unsteady Christie across the terrace and folded her into the car.

“I thought you did very well,” he said as they were driving home. “ California would be proud of you. I’m sorry to have put you through all that-I had no idea it was going to be such a marathon. Are you feeling OK?”

There was no reply. And when they reached the house, Max had to carry her, a dead weight smelling faintly of marc and almond biscuits, from the car. He took her upstairs, laid her on the bed, took off her shoes, and pulled a blanket over her. As he was putting a pillow under her head, she stirred, and whispered from the depths of her stupor, “No more. Please. No more.”

Max sat on the raised rim of the bassin, his head between his knees, wondering if the heart attack would come before or after breakfast. The heat of the morning sun and the overindulgence of the night before had turned what was normally a pleasant run into an exercise in masochism. He groaned, went over to the fountain, and put his head under the flow of cool water.

A screech from Madame Passepartout, who had been watching him from the kitchen window, cut through the fog in his brain. “Monsieur Max! Are you mad? That water! There are microbes in every drop. Come inside!”

Max sighed, and did as he was told. Madame Passepartout had taken it upon herself to assume medical responsibility for the cut on his head-his wound, as she called it-and had equipped herself with an interesting variety of salves and dressings, which she now laid out on the kitchen table. Muttering about the perils of infection and the virtues of sterility, she removed the old pink bandage and doused the cut with Mercurochrome.

“How does it look?” he asked.

“Silence,” said the great healer. “This part is extremely delicate.” With her tongue protruding from the corner of her mouth, she applied ointment and a covering of gauze before sealing off the area with an excessively large adhesive pad. “There,” she said. “I thought you’d prefer white this time. The pink was most unsuitable.”

Max smiled his thanks. “Have you seen Christie this morning?”

“No.” There was a pause while Madame Passepartout stood back to admire her handiwork. “But I have heard her.”

“That bad, is it?”

Madame Passepartout nodded. “That brother-in-law of mine, he has a head like a stone. He forgets that others are not used to these things.” She counted them off on her fingers. “Pastis, wine, and marc -a recipe for catastrophe. C’est fou. ”

There was the sound of footsteps making their slow and uncertain way down the stairs, and Christie appeared in the doorway, her face half-hidden by very large, very dark sunglasses. “Water,” she said. “Lots of water.” Like a sleepwalker on Valium, she made her way to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of Vittel.

At the sight of someone who so obviously felt closer to death than himself, Max immediately began to feel better. “Must have been something you ate,” he said. “Those almond biscuits are killers.” The sunglasses and the clearly unamused face turned toward Max for a moment, then turned away. “Seriously, it would do you good to get out,” he said. “Fresh air, birdsong, sunlight on the slopes of the Luberon…”

“Coffee,” said Christie. “Lots of coffee.”

Sitting outside the café after a liter of water and almost as much coffee, Christie was sufficiently recovered to take an interest in what was going on around her. It was market day in Saint-Pons, and stalls had been set up under the plane trees in the square. It seemed as though half of Provence had come to shop, or to look, or to be looked at.