My research for Dark Spirit took me to France for six months. While I was there I kept an informal travel journal to amuse my friends at home. It’s a good thing I didn’t know what was really going to happen …

Into the Heart of Darkness: Six Harrowing Months in the South of France

July 1^st – 7 AM

It seems an appropriate day to begin a journal, a record of my impressions during this six-month stay in Salazac. I’ll keep track of my efforts to research and finish my novel. I’ve told everyone back home I’m going to finish it, so if I don’t, I’ll not be going back. I may end up having to change my name to avoid being traced by my bank manager, who so incautiously extended my line of credit.

For now the setting appears propitious for the task: I am living in a medieval village high up in the mountains, and my rental is a renovated medieval stone tower. Since the novel is set in 14^th Century Provence, I won’t be able to use the excuse that “there just wasn’t enough atmosphere.”

This morning I got up at 6:15, which oddly enough, is the same time I usually get up to go to work. Will I be able to keep regular office hours and produce the required word count? Probably not.

Salazac, as I’ve discovered, is quite isolated and I would be doomed without a car. It’s a good thing my landlady, Eva, has offered to rent me her car for a fairly modest 250 Euros per month. We’ll be sharing it for some of the time—I’m not sure I like the idea. There is less freedom to just get the keys and leave whenever I feel like it. Oh, there goes the village bell, which for some reason sets off the birds… I can see the church from here and can even see the bell ringing. It’s quite loud but sweet-sounding and is being rung in a rather timid and desultory fashion, as if the priest had run out of steam, or conviction, halfway through.

The terrace faces the rising sun, which is lovely, but I have to have my back to it in order to write. So from here I can see my living room and the village and about twenty swallows doing their morning aerial exercises: they love floating and rising in the updrafts of the mistral which is an incredibly strong north wind that has not let up since I got here. It’s been driving me a bit crazy… but today is a still day and the swallows are making the best of it by milling about. They are noisy and cheerful birds who do nothing but socialize. But then I remember feeding fledgling barn swallows at Wildarc and realize they must be hunting flies. The fledglings also consumed vast numbers of worms. But this group seems more carefree so they must be single and able to just hang out and play.

There is a large tree next to the terrace, and as I am up high, I can see right into the treetop. It is the abode of two cooing doves. I haven’t seen them, but boy can I hear them. Don’t get me wrong, I love doves and have always found their cooing romantic, but these two are saccharine and should be banned. Can’t stand these happy couples… cooing all day… how odd, the one sound I thought I would never hear in this village is the backing-up beep, beep of a truck, but there it is… an actual truck! It’s disturbing my 14^th century illusion. There, now it’s gone. The other inhabitants of the tree are some very odd-looking crows with white stripes on their sides. They look as if they were wearing white-trimmed black robes. They don’t caw like our crows: they sound like they have laryngitis.

Once in a while, for no apparent reason, they land in my tree and make a big fuss and then take off again. Sometimes I can connect the fuss with a hawk flying by. If they have a nest nearby, they probably won’t like me very much. So that’s it. A cool, clear, calm Mistral-free morning (slight breeze, but that’s ok) animated by the calls of many different songbirds. Shouldn’t really complain too much. But, of course, I will. Car-horn down the road. What can anyone be honking for in a place like this? Perhaps anther slow tourist driver like me.

I should mention that very far off in the distance is the sinister outline of a nuclear power plant. Twin towers. I can see them when the Mistral clears the air so effectively that even far off things are visible. I will keep my eye on these towers and observe them closely through my binoculars. If I ever see people running from the compound screaming and black smoke emerging from the towers, I’ll make sure to let you know. You will hear it from me first, folks, even before the international media get ahold of the news. Am so glad I’m not actually downwind from them.

All for now.

July 5^th

There is a bird that sings in the evening. He sounds like someone trying to call attention to himself, but furtively. Its call is a low whistle, oddly enough like that typical birdcall used in movies where the hero is trying to communicate with his comrades during a reconnaissance. The one where everyone else looks so impressed with how cunning and savvy the hero is. Well, here there is an actual bird that sounds like the hero pretending to be a bird. Hmmm. Nature imitating life, imitating nature. I’m getting dizzy pursuing this line of reasoning, so will leave it for another day. But I’m sure I’ve got something profound there.

Apart from the scorpion and the large spider who were ignominiously evicted from the livingroom last night, there is a whole contingent of spiders that has set up shop in the high rafters of my barn. They ply their trade in the corners and share them companionably as there are plenty of potential victims to go around with no need for competition. These ones are of the daddy-long legs variety and cause less terror than their fat-bodied cousins. Not sure why. And they definitely eat well as the barn is full of flies and mosquitos because I keep the French doors open all day (maybe in France I don’t need to call them that). I bought a very expensive mosquito-killer plug-in contraption and now wonder why I bothered. The spiders are much more efficient at it and work absolutely free … a waste of 11 Euros. Sometimes a sad little bundled-up bug will fall on the counter wrapped in cobweb.

I’m still tense since finding the scorpion and find it difficult to sleep. I check under every cushion and shake out clothes before putting them on. I must look like a crazy person, but there it is… somehow I never associated scorpions with the south of France—the desert yes, Baja, Death Valley, the Sahara, of course, but the south of France? Well, I hope that is the last scorpion I find inside the house, or anywhere else for that matter. It’s a very dry part of the world—the garrigue, they call it—so I suppose it shouldn’t come as a surprise.

The other night I went for a walk around the village and checked on the various creatures that live here. The cooing turtledoves appear to have had a marital dispute as I heard one cooing but no response from its mate. There was a stony silence. Then I observed one of the doves perched on a branch, it was muttering to itself (no, really, it was) as if saying, “you won’t get any cooing out of me, you wretch.” It flew off when its mate tried to land next to it.

The doves here are actually that shade we’ve all heard of so often and talk about without even thinking. Dove grey. They are of a creamy pale grey slightly tinged with lilac, such a soft creamy grey that you imagine you could sink into it: a poetic shade of grey. Why don’t our pigeons wear that colour? They are a pedestrian slate grey and they don’t coo.

Today I went into town to do some grocery shopping. I wore a new dress, very light summery little number that I imagined was flattering. Very cute with an apple green background and a white leaf pattern adorned with little purple flowers. About all you can stand to wear in this heat. So there I am in a large supermarket (decided to do the practical thing and just go to a supermarket instead of the more romantic outdoor marché), I’m dragging my little cart behind me and one of the straps on my dress simply gives up the ghost and breaks.

So now I’m holding one side of this flimsy dress with one hand trying to look nonchalant and also trying to keep my various purchases from tumbling out of the cart. For some reason vegetables are gigantic here and they are taking up all the space so that lighter objects are cascading off the pile and landing on the floor. It is one of those low carts that require one to lean down to place things. The problem with leaning down is that my strap is broken. I panick and in desperation, look around for the sewing notions section of the supermarket. By some miracle, I find it and add safety pins, needles and thread to my pile of vegetables and other foodstuffs. I go up to the cashier, manage to pile up all my goods one-armed, while pretending everything is just dandy. I do ask the cashier to set aside the safety pins as I have a wardrobe malfunction to repair. She seems to understand and sets them aside. By now I’m in a very bad mood. But I manage to load the car without making a spectacle of myself and go off to find a bathroom so I can repair my cursed summery dress.

I find an outdoor toilet, the kind you have to feed coins to in order to gain access. Once in, you have to press some buttons to activate the lights and lock the door. Because I’m a country bumpkin, I fail to do this and am suddenly in the dark. Anyway, I eventually figure it out. I discover that unlocking and then locking the door causes the toilet to flush. I manage to repair the strap and emerge humiliated and desperate for coffee. Why, why?? As you can see it’s all one romantic thing after another over here. I redeem myself by finding the lovely café my landlady pointed out to me which is inside a flower shop and predictably called the Cafe des Fleurs. So I sit there drinking iced coffee, trying to look poetic and mysterious. I don’t think anyone noticed but it doesn’t hurt to practice.

Last night I went for a walk around the village and found a gorgeous Ferrari parked in front of a house just up the road (well, everything is just up the road in this village, have I mentioned how tiny it is?) Must find out who lives there!

July 16^th

I found a fork in the river the other day. Not a geographical feature, an actual fork. Quite nice, too, bone handle with sterling silver decorative clasps and a sterling bee stamped on the side. I was swimming in the Ceze River and as I stood on the muddy river bottom, I looked around with some relief. It had been quite an odyssey getting to the point where, instead of sweltering in the car, I was cooling my heels, literally, in the river. I happened to look down and saw something shiny. My first thought was that I had found medieval treasure, a gold ring with some precious stone, at the very least. But, no, not treasure, just a fork. Still, I rescued it from a watery grave and decided to keep it. It’s not every day that you can acquire cutlery whilst swimming.

Two men, who sounded Eastern European, arrived at the riverside and began the laborious process we humans have to undergo to don bathing suits in public. The towels used for modesty, the contortions, the hopping on one foot and cursing when you step on something spiny, the distinct impression that you are being laughed at by the teenagers on the opposite bank. Their mastiff, on the other hand, ran right in with a huge smile on his face and proceeded to charge around the river energetically. He seemed to be training for some sporting event. I had to envy the freedom with which he was able to enjoy the water. He too had suffered from the extreme heat, had to endure the long car ride and felt thirst. But there the resemblance stopped. He did not need a bag full of equipment; bathing suit, sand shoes, sunscreen, towels, water bottles, maps, etc. etc. ad nauseum.

He could experience the river with absolute freedom and comfort. If thirsty, all he needed to do was open his mouth and drink. It’s a heavy burden being human sometimes.

But, that afternoon, I was in a mood to feel grateful to be alive. I had once again failed to take the correct exit out of the village, (due to a severe directional disability I get lost all the time, even with a map in hand) and had taken an hour and a half to reach a destination 15 minutes away. As I drove towards the town of Barjac, now condemned to continue along this inland highway because it was too late to turn back, sweltering in the car, all I wanted that afternoon was to go swimming. But I had to reach a certain crossing, turn left and then head back to Roque sur Ceze. So I finally did and was driving along another hairpin, twisting, winding road with a bit of a chasm on one side and a rock wall on the other, when I noticed the car coming towards me had veered into my lane and was headed straight at me. I had time to think, “she must have fallen asleep” when she woke up and turned the steering wheel just in time to miss me. I didn’t have time to veer away, I couldn’t have because of the chasm and the other alternative was the rock wall, so my life was entirely in this person’s hands. Immediately after I had the impression that I was breaking through an invisible wall called “the life I get to have now.” If she hadn’t woken up, the story would have ended there.

So once I reached Roque sur Ceze, found parking and dragged my belongings to the river, I was feeling pretty grateful to be alive. But it’s odd how casually we can drift from normal to tragic.

Less then an hour later, I had walked up the hill, (villages are always up the hill because that was how safety could be arranged by way of massive protective ramparts!) and had found the most perfect corner in the world, a little bistro with an outdoor terrace equipped with flowering bushes, with a bit of a view, a lovely tree like an umbrella providing deep shade, all propped up by picturesque mediaeval stone walls. There were only two couples and myself all sitting there; blissfully drinking something cool, and enjoying the scent of lavender. I was taking photos of pale green butterflies hovering over the lavender. A middle-aged woman was helping a young girl with the serving and, believe it or not after a while, once again, the whole scene made a subtle shift and we were all plunged into tragedy.

One of the men began to point to the very high wall nearby and said something in French. We all turned and saw a swallow struggling and flapping helplessly against the wall. One of her feet appeared to be caught on a string of some sort and she couldn’t free herself. She was near an opening in the wall and after a painfully long time spent suffering and slamming her body against the stone, she managed to creep up into the opening and rest. We were all horrified and much effort was made to find some way of reaching her. She was at least thirty feet up and there was another chasm on the other side of the wall. It seemed to be a day for facing the void. The young girl found a tall ladder and one of the men stood there considering the risk and decided, quite rightly, that it would be suicide. The ladder wouldn’t stand firm on the rocky terrain and it wasn’t tall enough to reach the bird anyway. It was impossible to do anything but watch the poor bird and its pathetic struggle against whatever it was that held her prisoner.

I tried to explain to them that they could call a wild animal rescue centre (they do have them in France) that there was a number you could call, but no one seemed to be able to go online to find it. So in the end we exchanged numbers and email addresses and I promised the two women I would call when I got home. The other customers left and I eventually made my way home in record time and sent an email to the nearest rescue centre. I didn’t have a phone then, so I couldn’t call. Just as I sent the email, I received another one from the young girl letting me know that the hirondelle had freed itself and was saved. On any given day, you can be one of three lives saved by chance, fate, or just plain good luck.

July 25 – Wardrobe malfunction Part II, or why I need a keeper

So I have to admit, I did hesitate before describing the events leading up to wardrobe malfunction Part II, or WRMII for short, because, frankly, how much humiliation can one’s ego take and does everything really need to be shared? But the whole point of this journal is to demonstrate the difference between the romantic idea of the south of France and the cruel reality. That is, as lived by me, perhaps not the best example of hap – I mean as opposed to hapless…if one isn’t hapless, does it then follow that one is possessed of hap? Doesn’t sound right somehow.

Those of you who’ve been paying attention (there will be a test when I get back) will remember the spaghetti strap debacle of July 5. Prompted by those events, I bought two more summer dresses designed in such a way that nothing like that could ever happen again. No straps but instead, good solid panels securely attached. The one I wore that day, a nice, sleeveless, flouncy one with purple flowers; seemed to promise absolute security. Loose fitting and equipped with a side zipper; it was light, fresh and surely le dernier cri in summer fashion.

I had three practical things to achieve that day in the town of Bagnols-sur-Ceze. I needed to buy a mosquito net for my bed as I had been having issues with bug bites (more on that later), I had to put gas in the car, or rather diesel, gas would be fatal, and I had to buy a Sim card for my borrowed cell phone. Given that I always go to full-service stations in Victoria (the single parent’s great luxury) and that I really didn’t want to make a fool of myself at the gas station; I had asked my landlady to show me how it worked in France. So I felt pretty confident that I could fill the tank and remember to put in gazole instead of gas and not cause a fireball to develop in the process.

I went about my day, found the mosquito net, went to the gas station, filled up (in a fit of insecurity I actually confirmed with the attendant that diesel was the same as gazole… he looked at me with pity); wandered through the outdoor market looking at various things and managed to arrive at the cell phone store before noon closing time. As I stood in the line-up, the nice middle-aged woman who was standing behind me pointed out that my side zipper was undone.

So that whole morning, as I went about my errands congratulating myself that I’d managed to achieve all these practical things in French, in a strange land, without major issues; I had actually been walking around with my dress unzipped. The gas station attendant’s pitying look took on a whole new meaning.

But to put things in perspective, it is a truism that middle-aged women are essentially invisible (except perhaps to other middle-aged women) and although a sad truism, I had reason to be grateful to it on this day. It’s possible that no one really noticed anything. So I leave it up to you to judge – do I need a keeper or should I be allowed to continue wandering around the south of France unattended?

…to be continued.

 

 

© Valentina Cambiazo