One remembers
landscape vividly but imperfectly. We arrived at Nice airport a little ahead of
schedule. It seemed to be the right place except for one thing—it was virtually
empty. Instead of forty car drivers holding up their signs, there were two. One
of them had our name on it, and the person holding it was an attractive, petite
young woman who leapt for our luggage and led us a few paces to a black
Mercedes. The first week of September is a very good time to arrive in the south
of France . The Parisians are back in Paris. The roads are empty—well, not quite
empty, but far from the vibe of the Atlantic City Expressway. The drive to
Salernes, though brief, is sufficient for one to experience most versions of the
generally superb French highway system from super-highways to country roads. And
all along the roads dozens of those little things you hadn’t remembered
perfectly—the miles of expertly constructed stone wall, the peculiar dry greens
of certain vegetation, the characteristic elegant road signs, the sometimes
hideous commercial signage, the huge open warehouses of tiles and ceramics. And
everybody driving new cars. Our first memories of the Provençal countryside go
back to the early 1960s, when vehicles were fairly sparse, and every other one
was a tired gray rattletrap Citroën utility truck, the farmer’s version of the
classic Deux Chevaux that we ourselves were driving. Salernes is a bit over an
hour from the Nice airport, but the only really challenging driving Ms. Celine
faced came in the last two hundred yards of the trip. As it nears our friend’s
house, the long private driveway features a dramatic curve on a sharp rise with
a rough masonry wall on one side and on the other a drop into a mini-gorge. So
far as I know, nobody has ever actually driven into this chasm, but the
possibility does come into one’s mind while driving by. When you get to the
straight and flat at the top, you are quite near the house, Saint Michel, and
you have a clear view of its side and one of its most delightful features, the
long stone patio or verandah that fronts the house’s broad side, overlooking a
delightful view, and on which its inhabitants spend a great deal of time
lounging, loafing, reading, conversing and most especially eating. It must have
been close to two in the afternoon when we arrived to find our hosts seated
around a table with other guests who had arrived before us lingering over the
remnants of what they described as lunch but seemed to feature glasses of orange
juice and the crumbled flakes from croissants. Just saying.
Even “luxury” air
travel, with which we had indulged ourselves, left me exhausted and with the
feeling that I had little furry sweaters covering my teeth. The rest of
Saturday, after a fairly brief period of joyous reunions, was mainly sleep. But
Sunday, the beginning of a new week, offered the opportunity for the
distinctively French experience of “market day”. Throughout the rural areas of
France, and especially in the south, regionally itinerant merchants set up their
tented or canopied outdoor stalls in prominent public places and hawk their
goods for half a day. Each town has its market day, and the merchants make the
rounds. The weekends are particularly choice from the commercial point of view,
and the comparative regional prominence of Salernes is signaled by its Sunday
morning assignment. The dramatic decline of Catholic observance is likewise
obvious in the arrangement. Fewer and fewer people attend Mass, and there are
fewer and fewer priests to perform it. At Salernes the town square is briefly
turned into a magnificent food bazaar: table after table of high quality
vegetables, charcuterie, seafood, steaming cauldrons of couscous and paella,
every variety of sausage and olive known to the race, cheeses, bakery goods,
novelty sweets. At a lower level of the town, in space normally reserved for
parking, is the market’s textile section. I did not visit it personally on
Sunday, but if the experience of previous years can be trusted, it increasingly
approaches the style of an American flea market rather an actual dry goods mart,
with lots of cheap Chinese stuff of the Dollar Store genre. But of course you
still find gorgeous Provençal tablecloths and some occasional nice handwork, and
everything has today’s engagingly multicultural French accent. I went home happy
with my purchases: mainly sausages. Joan was less happy. One man’s meat…But what
a great beginning to a week away.
Salernes Market on the town square
