French Lessons

Star-Spangled Reflection

Last week an American friend invited me to a “Star-Spangled Banner” party. 

I met Susan last year in a jolly French-for-Foreigners class here in Antibes.  She and I were two of the three Yanks in the group, she by far the most nationally rah-rah among us.  She was the one, for instance, who brought candy to class on Halloween. 

And so this invitation to an American party was hardly a stretch.  Susan is a member of the International Club, the organization that was hosting the Star-Spangled Banner party.  The occasion was advertised as nothing less than a “grand gala.”  Its raison d’etre?  Obama’s inauguration, of course.  The bash would commence with a specially formulated “Yes We Can!” cocktail.

At first I made excuses.   Don’t get me wrong; I am wholly behind this force of change in America.  My problems were real ones:  The event was Sunday evening.  Monday morning starts at a gallop around this household.  There’d be the pre-dawn buzzer, the just-post-dawn school drop-off, and my new, terribly serious, take-down-this-dictation-and-make-it-punctuation-perfect French class. 

Yada yada yada.  Frankly, new American administration or not, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to go.  Susan was fine, but I didn't really want to mingle and booze for hours with a bunch of Yanks that I’d probably not befriend ANYWAY if we all lived back in the United States. 

In the end, Pierre convinced me that Susan’s invitation was a privilege of sorts.  She was offering me the chance to see yet another aspect of life along the multi-cultural French Riviera.  I agreed to go along.

Over the next few days, integration – or a chosen lack of it – was the topic on my mind.  Why did some folks feel the need to form clubs around themselves – to create barriers of protection against the real culture in which they lived?  Why did others, like me, almost shutter at the idea of joining any club with no basis other than socializing?

My Welsh writer friend Lynne, who I met alongside Susan in the jolly French-for-Foreigners class, is firmly footed in this second camp.  Integrate into reality; don’t join expat clubs.  Learn the language with precision.  Deal directly with plumbers and auto mechanics.  Install your own WIFI.  Discover, master, and assimilate.

Except, maybe, in the area of certain foodstuffs and pharmaceuticals.  Lynne admitted to me a couple weeks back that she’d just unearthed (and patronized) an online company that ships 30 kilos of real British food and toiletries – Heinz baked beans! McVities Hob Nobs! Aussie 3-Minute Miracle! – to France for a single shipping charge of GBP9.99 ($14)!

I think I’m like Lynne.  It is the two of us who skipped out on that first French-for-Foreigners class, a veritable social hour with an occasional sprinkling of language instruction if time allowed.  Now we scoot across the road, first thing on Monday mornings, to a serious, grammar-ridden class taught by a retired school teacher with a grey ponytail and perfectly precise punctuation and pronunciation. 

That’s how we’ll improve our French.

And with the stream of builders and French-speaking acquaintances who take up residence in Bellevue, I cannot help but feel in touch with those aspects of the real France. 

Sure, there are times when the English-speaking world wins out.  I’m thrilled that Dr. Laurent, our family practitioner, speaks good English, even if he usually prods me in French.  I’m grateful that we have a church that provides English-based spiritual growth.   And I, too, find myself stocking up on Alpen cereal, microwaveable popcorn, Crest WhiteStrips and Neutrogena body wash – a mélange of American and British items that are just, well, better.

But for the most part, I believe in assimilation – to the degree that I can do it anyway.  I have chosen to live in France.  Let me get the most out of the experience.

Why do you have to speak French at all in Antibes? 

This was a real curiosity a few weeks ago to Rachael, my no-nonsense, English osteopath-friend whose practice is based in the Anglophone quarter of old Antibes.  Her colleague is Australian.  Their clientele is largely the British and Antipodean yachting community. 

Rachael’s French is perfect, she says, but she never uses it in Antibes.  She tells me there’s no need.  And anyway, her friends would think she’s being posh.

I’m shocked by the revelation.  I tell her that I don’t live near Port Vauban, Le Blue Lady Pub and Geoffrey’s British food store (see my blog dated September 3, 2008), where all the yachties hang out.  I live on the other side of Antibes.  But to Rachael, Antibes is Antibes, and it’s all basically Anglo-friendly.

I’d not taken particular notice before.  Yes, people sometimes help me out with my French.  Even our gardener likes to pop into English when we chat.  But the hairdresser will do her best to pretend she doesn’t understand a word of my French – probably because she doesn’t, which is exactly why I’ve subjected myself to the Perfect-Punctuation-and-Pronunciation French-for-Foreigners class.

Last week while waiting in old town, I had a few minutes to work on my homework for this new French class.  Notebook, workbook and dictionary in hand, I scooted into the nearest café.

I admit this café was Le Blue Lady Pub.  The yachtie hangout, the one right next door to Geoffrey’s British commissary.  I also admit that I was overjoyed to see a newly advertised beverage:  a very un-French latte.

I ordered a latte at the (very un-French, long, wooden) bar and asked the barman to bring it to my table.  All in French, of course.

As I sipped my beautifully layered latte out of a glass tumbler, I stabbed at the elusive French subjonctif verb tense.  Again.  On occasion I tuned into the world around me.

It was English.  Everyone, absolutely everyone, was speaking English.  Even the barman.

Maybe Rachael was right – at least in some ways.  I could just choose where to go in Antibes and thereby live out all my days without uttering a phrase of French.  End of story.

An intriguing idea amid my study of the wretched, French subjonctif.  Mais non! 

Not that there’s anything wrong with a bit of the homeland every now and then.  I don’t want to get all cranky about it, like Mark did.  Months after dropping that French-for-Foreigners Social-Club course, I still shake my head over a comment made by Mark, that third American, a sun-seeking Californian.

During our first session everyone had introduced themselves by their vitals – name, nationality, what we were doing here.  At the end of class, Mark and I found ourselves chatting among the same small group.

“I knew you were American,” he told me.  He meant that he knew it before I’d opened my mouth.

I shook my head.  And so? 

“Normally I avoid other Americans,” he said.

Charming.

But behind Mark’s bluntness is that very idea of integration that I actually appreciate, even if rather impolitely posed. 

This “Star-Spangled Banner” invitation loomed.  I was going along.  I didn’t feel completely up in arms about this fact, but I dug deeper to figure out what bugged me.  And I found a telling memory.  A good memory.

During my junior year of college at Northwestern, I was the Resident Assistant at an all-women’s residence hall.  Early that year there was an all-out clamouring by a few white residents that the blacks were excluding them from their table in the cafeteria. 

A quickly assembled and well-attended “fireside chat” in the residence hall produced some insights.  An enduring one for me is the fact that minorities, when expected to assimilate with the majority for the bulk of their hours, need to have time to relax among their own group.  They need to be themselves, to do and say what they wish, to stop being something of a curiosity or outsider to the mainstream.  At one point during this fireside chat, white women even found out what black hair felt like, and vice versa. 

It’s the same story worldwide.  Filipino housekeepers and nannies collect in Hong Kong’s Central on Sunday mornings.  Urban, African-Americans segregate themselves on weekends in joyful services of worship.  And so expatriate communities the world over seek their own outlets to unwind.

A couple hours before the Star-Spangled Banner party, which would unfurl at l'École de La Croix Rouge (School of the Red Cross), I phone Susan about attire.  Casual, right?

Smart casual, actually.  She tells me that she’d shipped her sweater with a big American flag on it back to the States.  Did I have anything with stars and stripes on it?

Uh, no.

The first thing Susan and I do at the party is arrive on time.  The next thing we do is take pictures in front of twin American and French flags.  The third thing we do is slap on nametags.

At a French party you can talk to someone for two hours and never find out his name.

Bunches of red, white and blue balloons hang in appropriate corners of a brightly-lit, bare-bones hall that amply accommodates 60-or-so attendees.  A couple decked out in leather vests and cowboy hats pour drinks, including the “Yes We Can!,” while a well-synched jazz ensemble plays more-than-background music.  The crowd, which chats in discrete groups, is older than I expected.  Susan and I, in our early 40s, fit comfortably into the youngest third of attendees. 

So this isn’t going to be an endless, Sunday night beer brawl.

I meet a few folks.  Their accents are largely American, but not wholly so.  The people are mostly professionals – financial folks, a magazine editor, a chef, a travel agent.  I realize that there are ex-pats around the world who choose to assimilate entirely.  There are those who shut themselves off.  And there’s the middle path that chooses to delve in and out, depending on circumstances.  I’m standing among this last group, and it really isn’t so bad.

Next up:  An American quiz.  Another tried-and-tested, American way to encourage folks to mingle.  Susan, my host-companion who’d managed to find a sequined stars-and-stripes knit top in her wardrobe, would emcee the results at the end of the evening. 

As I circle answers on my quiz paper, Susan introduces me to George, the club’s president.  The organization is only a year old, he explains.  The single membership requirement is to understand English, though – yes, indeed – most members speak French, too.  Americans represent only 10% of the club; Brits come in at 30%, and it’s because of them that there’s a membership cap of 50% for any single nationality.  Even a few Frenchmen have joined the group. 

As much as I feared a room full of stars-and-stripes-waving Yanks, this group is thankfully diverse.  Now I should mention that the heads of the local American Club and the Democrats Abroad are in attendance at the event, too, and they’d make their own welcome speeches.  But to be fair, a simple flip through the classifieds in the English-language The Riviera Times newsmagazine (copies of which are available at the event) unearths a stream of nationality-based clubs all along the Riviera:  Australian Club, British Association, Cercle Nordique, Club Scandinave, Commonwealth Club, Nederlandse Club, Rivieraklubben (Swedish), South African Club….

Tonight isn’t necessarily All-American or All-Anything, but that option certainly exists.  For lots of expats.

Over the course of three hours, we share an all-American, barbeque-style dinner (high on grease, low on green) and ample desserts (which, in my opinion, forgive any wrongs).  We watch a film about Obama’s international.  We listen to a spot of karaoke by the resident diva. 

And then it’s Susan’s turn at the mic.  She dangles a heavy, brown bag chockfull of American foodstuffs – boxes and tins and jars she’d carried back from America in her very own suitcase – that would go to the lucky winner of the American quiz.

As she reads out the answers, I realize those couple, educated guesses about a statue in New York’s Central Park and the minimum age requirement for a US President were, indeed, correct.  I had, in fact, scored 10 out of 10.

Then, in front of the assembled crowd, Susan presents me with her big goody bag.  I don’t even get to share the wealth.  No, the entire sack is, rather embarrassingly, going home with me, Susan’s friend, her companion for the evening.

Suddenly I feel a pang.  They must think Susan fed me the answers.  And as time’s getting on anyway, I bid a hasty retreat.  Susan makes her goodbyes, too.

I fully understand the immensity of my prize – a good 15 pounds of American pharmaceuticals and foodstuffs for which Susan had allocated precious space in her suitcase.  I understand so thoroughly that I break under the weight of the bag.  Out in the parking lot, away from on-looking eyes, I tell Susan I can’t take the prize.

She insists.  In the end, I can only bring myself to keep those items that I know, for 100% certainty, our family will use and enjoy.  A jumbo tin of pumpkin.  Another of refried beans.  A simple cookie mix.  Back to Susan’s cupboard go her Hellman’s light mayonnaise, Hormel chili, Brach’s red hot candies, Reese’s peanut butter cups, Crest toothpaste, and a wealth of stuff that I am too embarrassed even to recall.

Francophile or not, one who chooses to assimilate or separate, I understand one thing.  We folks with shallow roots on this Riviera coast have one trait that pierces our very cores:  A well-stocked pantry of imports.

My story could’ve ended here.  But Monday lunchtime, as I rehash the prior night’s event with Pierre and remind him of the food we could be eating, he declares that he doesn’t need to import anything special into France.  He lives here – and so he lives like the Frenchman.

Maple syrup?  Canadian maple syrup?  I suggest.

You can get it here, he says.  And, indeed, you can, even without visiting Geoffrey’s British commissary.

With the final slice of baguette at his plate, Pierre fetches a jar of peanut butter from the fridge.  He smears the remaining spoonful thickly onto the face of his bread.

But the peanut butter is for dinner – for Laurelle!  I complain.  We have a finicky preschooler stomach to accommodate.

Don’t worry, Pierre says.  He’ll go to Geoffrey’s after lunch to buy another jar.

To Geoffrey’s?  The British shop??  Why not go to the local Intermarche or Casino?

Pierre has to explain to me because I actually despise peanut butter. 

The French shops, he says, don’t carry the REAL stuff.

Lunching on Nuggets

Francophile Anglophones relish yarns about this land that’s our home for the year:  The plumber who stomps off his job in a melodramatic huff.  Strikes that wipe out a city’s services.  The festival of chestnuts.  The four-hour lunch.  

We’ve certainly stumbled into our share of charming, Peter Maylesque moments.  But life in this section of France, on the Cap d’Antibes – a roughly one-mile-wide-by-1.5-mile-long peninsula that juts into the Med between Nice and Cannes – lends us an altogether different layer of insight to French life. 

The Cap d’Antibes has served as playground through the ages to Lisa Minelli, Roger Moore, Belgian king Leopold II, Duran Duran, Pablo Picasso, Fred Astaire, P. Diddy, the Aga Khan, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Henry Kissinger, Bono, the Duke (former King Edward VIII) and Duchess of Windsor, Jimmy Goldsmith, Mick Jagger, Ringo Starr, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor – just to name a very few of the luminaries who’ve turned up on its land.  And so this corner of France yields certain bonuses to the stories about fêtes, grèves and boulangeries that we know and love.

A casual chat can put you in-the-know on local stories that reach well beyond our little peninsula.  Suddenly you’re linked unwittingly to celebrity and infamy, eminence and scandal by a mere degree or two of separation.

Pierre and I took Bernard and Angela to Antibes’ Café Kanter last Friday lunchtime.  It was a postponed, holiday thanks to our estate agent friends for their continuing efforts in overseeing Bellevue’s accounts, and in helping us track down a good plumber when we need one.  We all feasted on le plat du jour, a tasty aïoli de poissons – and on juicy morsels offered up by these well-connected agents.

For starters, did Pierre and I know that construction had stopped at le Château de la Croë?

Non!  On Abramovich’s villa – the most famous estate on all of Cap d’Antibes?  The chateau that our guests continually photograph from the deck of any rented boat we tour around the peninsula?

    Abramovich’s Château de la Croë dominates the tip of the Cap.

Mais oui, it is apparently true.  Roman Abramovich, the big name Russian oligarch, has been the Cap d’Antibes’ most-discussed occupant in recent years.  In 2004, he purchased the decrepit Château de la Croë estate:  seven hectares at the tip of the Cap and a white shambles that had endured serious fire damage and three decades of abandonment.  Such was its prominence that, looking back at the ruin from the vantage of the sea, I’d originally assumed it an historic monument that someone, somewhere would restore to the public. 

But it was Abramovich who’d sent in the tractors, creating today’s fairytale chateau nestled within ample, manicured gardens, complete with helicopter pad and 24-hour, well-muscled security. 

That le Château de la Croë still requires work is hardly obvious from the outside (though as we know personally, homes on the Cap seem to remain in a constant state of disrepair).  But now we have the inside track.  Thanks to the liquidity traps that recently have cornered many wealthy Russians, the Cap’s most talked-about homeowner must sell either his beloved Chelsea Football Club or one of his four mega-yachts before continuing work on the legendary estate.

 Bernard and Angela are always full of the celebrity scoop.  You’d never guess it looking at him, a plump man in his 60s who favours cardigans and comfortable loafers.  For our lunch he wore black on black, a choice that exuded far more chic than his usual, muted earthy tones.

Angela’s wardrobe, on the other hand, is always a showstopper.  Every time I meet her, I have to guard myself from examining her outfit too closely.  I want to work out just how many layers she’s wearing at one time and, worse, how much chunky, costume jewelry she can pile over her garments without causing her neck to slump forward. 

The day of our lunch Angela dressed more modestly than usual.  I counted only three layers of clothing, the dominant colour being plum, which is the new black.  She’d piled her hair high on her crown and fixed it in place with heavy sunglasses.  Adorning her get-up were heavy rhinestone-encrusted earnings; a rhinestone-encrusted bow and black velvet choker; a low-cleavage-length golden, link chain with a one-inch, spherical pendant; and an equally long, silvery chain with a chunky, four-inch cross pendant.  The golden ball clinked the silver cross whenever Angela moved her ample torso.   

I’d been quite proud of the brightly coloured and elaborately painted Ghanaian beads I’d chosen for this lunchtime rendez-vous.  But in Angela’s wake, any shock of fire-engine red or electric blue that adorned my body looked like a splash of honey beige. 

Our foursome’s conversation branched out from Abramovich.  I’d be quite wrong to report that, as we supped on delicate white fish and peppery fruits de mer with the classic garlic mayonnaise, we didn’t touch on everyday subjects like the economy.  Yes, it was bad.  Tumbling house prices.  Little home turnover.  Layoffs at Bernard and Angela’s favoured society of notaries, the French equivalent of real-estate lawyers.  Even our established and successful real-estate agent friends feared meeting payroll over the coming year. 

We could’ve discussed these subjects anywhere in France (or the industrialised world, for that matter).  But discourse takes a different edge on the Cap.  People don’t wallow in the financial headlines.  Pierre, in fact, has begun buying the Financial Times just once a week.  He finds it too depressing.

No, au contraire, life on the Cap d’Antibes is good!  Look at the water!  The sky!  The mountains!  This was our agents’ advice, Angela making a flourish in the direction of the sea.  This place is still beautiful! 

Bernard and Angela , we must remind ourselves, are real-estate agents.  Bad as things may be, these two would remain chipper for this client-sponsored, lunchtime celebration.  Even Bernard, despite his habitual gloom, remained upbeat for the duration of our meal.  Our conversation again hovered at the crevice where reality meets pop culture. 

What news of our Russian neighbour?  I asked.  The one who listed his house for the unseemly EUR 27 million?

Another Russian offered him EUR 20 million, Bernard said.  Yes, it is unbelievable.  (The property may offer a prestigious pied dans l’eau location (situated right on the water, or literally “foot in the water”), but it has no land.)  The owner declined his countryman’s offer.  He probably wishes he’d accepted it today, Bernard said, but with the Russians you never know what’s real and what isn’t.

Pierre’s turn at horse trading.  Did Bernard and Angela hear about the owner of the Aga Khan house?   

The Aga Khan’s former home on the Cap, a permanent “work in progress” after the local government blocked its over-arching “renovation.”

Now Pierre had the scoop.  The “second-tier” Russian oligarch was found in his homeland, pickled in a jar.  Yep, stranger than fiction.  At least it’s good for turnover.

But we hadn’t time to dwell.  There were bigger fish to fry.  Or dip in aïoli, as it were.

Abramovich’s enduring celebrity in the Cap has, in fact, been gazumped in recent weeks.  As much of the (even occasional) newspaper-reading world knows around here, the King of Column Inches himself also owns a property in the neighbourhood.

A recent Bloomberg article touted one Guillaume Turquois as the estate agent who’d sold Bernard and Ruth Madoff their Cap d’Antibes townhome.  But the Madoff’s true agent – the one who represented them rather than the listed property – sat at our table.  The bejeweled Angela. 

It was ten years ago that the couple came to the Cap looking for property, she said.  Bernard Madoff had wanted to purchase one pied dans l’eau villa for EUR 11 million (in decade-old terms), but Ruth convinced him otherwise.  The couple had been robbed of their jewelry when they rented on the Cap in the prior year.  What’s more, Ruth argued that a stately home, like the one that besotted her husband, would bring the world to visit.  She wanted a lock-and-go retreat.  Somewhere she could enjoy time with her husband.

  Modest townhomes populate the estate where the Madoffs own their property.

Thus the townhome with a semi-obscured sea view that has appeared in the papers.  The Madoffs spent eight weeks a year here, our lunch companions explained, in May, June and September.   Both golfed, playing everywhere in the area.  Her French was pretty good.  His wasn’t. 

Bernard and Angela should know these details.  It was they who dined with the Madoffs when the couple stayed on the Cap.  It was they who maintained the Madoffs’ accounts here and (as reported in my 15 December 2008 blog) who plugged the EUR 700 hole in their balance for the annual taxe d’habitation, only to regret the charitable act a few days later.

Our agents also maintained the Madoff’s property.  Inside the townhouse, we learned that Bernard Madoff had installed a teleconferencing system with no fewer than four video screens.  Given what we know today, he obviously needed to stay in the loop at the office despite prolonged visits to the Cap.

This reality disturbed Angela.  The scandal was perpetuated right here.  Right here on the Cap d’Antibes.    

Ruth Madoff actually rang Angela over the holidays.  At first our agent thought the overseas call merely brought seasonal good wishes.

But no.  Ruth’s first words were these:  Are you willing to talk to me?

Of course, Angela had said.  Why not? 

But that’s what struck our femme-in-the-know.  She was, apparently, one of the few. 

Ruth had a simple question.  What’s the townhouse worth?

And now, after the property’s brief spell on the market, there’s an unusual stroke of good housing news the world over.  There’s a stink bid on it. 

It’s pennies-worth of good news, too, for the laundry list of Madoff clients.

One Madoff asset on the Cap d’Antibes that extends beyond Bernard and Angela’s remit is the couple’s 27-meter (89-foot) yacht.  Moored in Port de la Gallice, the Mangusta Leopard is called “Bull”. 

Seems to me the name is appropriate on more than one level.

The boat may fall beyond our agents’ remit, but they certainly knew about Bull.  Like the fact that the vessel’s twin propellers protrude from the stern so that the yacht can create a gigantic rooster tail of spray when cruising at a full throttle over 40 knots per hour – an attention-grabbing cigarette boat on steroids. 

And they knew that Bull’s crew are gone – all except for her captain.  He’s staying with the ship, without pay, until she’s sold.

And why stop there?  What our agents didn’t know of our questions during that lunchtime, Angela would decide to find out.  A few days later she’d phone Bull’s captain.  Simple as that.  She’d learn that the Madoffs purchased Bull 18 months ago – new, not secondhand.  She’d find out that they paid a tidy EUR 6 million.  She’d hear that they – or someone else – made good use of the yacht, clocking up 280 hours in two seasons.  She’d understand that, according to the captain, the Madoffs will be lucky to fetch EUR 4 million for Bull in today’s market.  (Any takers?)

Our news-ridden meal was rounded out by enormous portions of homemade praline and vanilla millefeuilles.  (Why not?  Life is good!)  A round of strong coffees later, we headed our separate ways, Bernard and Angela back to their well-connected hive, and Pierre and I back to the house they once sold us. 

Our lunchtime conversation could’ve addressed the usual French line-up:  fêtes (Yes, une fête foraine is back at Antibes’ Port Vauban.); grèves (We did touch briefly on this topic:  Local train drivers remain on strike.  In fact, the government is now handing out free February season passes to qualified individuals.); and boulangeries (I hesitate to admit it, but Pierre and I still debate the perfect baguette, with almost daily frequency.). 

But we avoided these likely topics.  This is, after all, the Cap d’Antibes.  One newsy lunch later, and I’m in-the-know.  I feel connected to the headlines – the very ones that I may choose not to read. 

I realize anew how atypical this little peninsula is within the whole of France.   

Or is it?  Didn’t each of these glamorous, big-name stories share one, simple thread?  There is a financial crisis out there, and it has real, meat-grinding teeth.  People are talking about it.  People – even those who once treaded the very highest peaks of financial gain – are getting hit.

Maybe chatter around the Cap d’Antibes isn’t so unusual after all. 

Cooling Off with the Chauffagiste

Sunday lunchtime Pierre, Laurelle and I dined in Cannes – on the beach.  Blue skies, sun ablaze, kids skipping over an undulating, sandy beach.  We even spotted a few folks wearing t-shirts (even if they were jumping the gun a bit).

 

What utter bliss after the drizzly, bone-biting madness we endured in Antibes during December!  Or, for that matter, over the Christmas period in Toronto.  Grey skies become sunny.  Snow drifts become sand dunes.  Insulated boots become conventional shoes. 

 

And our streets in Antibes are still decorated by shimmering lights – those most festive illuminations that the local mairie stumped for on behalf of its good citizens in the run up to la Fête de Noël. 

 

What unexpected joy!

 

The bliss didn’t return immediately, though, as our family of three again set foot in Bellevue last Thursday afternoon.  Still decked out in our Toronto-proof, winter coats, we felt relatively warm.  Then we remembered that we’d returned to France, actually to the south of France.  And that we were INDOORS.  

 

We checked Bellevue’s thermostat.  16 degrees Celsius.  The bulk of our living space within Bellevue’s stone-cold, limestone walls was a mere 16C (60 Fahrenheit).  (Yes, it is true that I’m one who chills easily, but 60F is cooler than it sounds.  Remember there’s no sunshine indoors, and being right on the ocean, the air is hardly dry.)  Worse, a few rooms in Bellevue, like the TV room, came in at only 12C (53F). 

 

If I put my three-and-a-half-year-old child to bed in this house, I reckoned the government could haul me in for abuse.

 

Pierre and I retained our warm coats – no such chance for an active preschooler – and Pierre rang Mr. Martin.  The chauffagiste.  The heating specialist who’d installed Bellevue’s heating and air-conditioning system.  The man who’d programmed the computer, the brain that governs the temperature controls throughout the house.  The one we quietly called the “Professor” for his scholarly approach to things mechanical, and for the reading glasses that perched halfway down his thin nose.  

 

Mr Martin’s assistant answered Pierre’s call.  You didn’t receive our email? 

 

No, what email?

 

The one saying that Mr. Martin will no longer work at Bellevue.

 

Quoi?

 

The assistant summarized the message.  Quelqu’un d’autre a travaillé sur le système. 

 

Simple as that.  We’d allowed someone else to work on Bellevue’s heating system.  The sin merited corporal punishment:  We should freeze.

 

Pierre interjected.  We’d called in the reserve chauffagiste only when we couldn’t reach Mr Martin.  We had no heat!  There was a flood in the entry way!  And it was first thing one Saturday morning!

 

In fact, the only reason Mr Martin even knew about Mr Marc was because our fill-in chauffagiste had identified a few problems.  We were the ones who’d brought these two master technicians together.

 

Mr Martin’s assistant was immovable.  “On ne fait plus d’intervention.”  No whining.  No whinging.  End of story.

 

Not only were Pierre and I cold; we were gobsmacked. 

 

“Have you ever heard of this before?” Pierre said, hands flung wide, head shaking gently, and smiling – smiling! – in utter disbelief at the French and their ways.  What sort of guy drops a well-paying job, particularly in this construction climate, because someone else rescued our misery?

 

As the sun set over the back of Antibes that first night of our return, I replaced my bulky coat with three sweaters and began to unpack.  Pierre, meanwhile, headed into the basement to switch on Bellevue’s floor heating, a stop gap for certain rooms in the house.  Then he began to track down Mr Marc.  As the chill crept deeper into our bones, we learned that Mr Marc would swing by at 5:30pm.  He’d save the day – again.

 

The round chauffagiste with tired eyes arrived promptly.  He fiddled with Bellevue’s innards for a good hour and a half.  As I busied myself with the scant offerings in our kitchen, Mr Marc rehashed with Pierre what he’d learned in December from his meeting with the Professor. 

 

It was, indeed, Mr Martin who’d installed Bellevue’s heating and air-conditioning unit a few years ago, in the run-up to our residence of the grand, old dame.  In creating the unit he had, in fact, picked up on his prior work for a Danish family who’d originally intended to occupy the space (but who met an unfortunate financial fate thanks to the high-tech debacle). 

 

The Danish family never had intended to occupy Bellevue during the winters.  There was no need for heat.  Our heating system was therefore an add-on, a postscript to the pre-existing air-conditioning bones commissioned by the Danes.

 

Perhaps, Mr Marc suggested with some delicacy, Mr Martin’s rebuttal was his way of extracting himself from a project that had vaulted over his head.  It was the way, he said, that things were done in France.

 

Interesting.  Bellevue’s heat honestly hasn’t worked properly since we’ve occupied the place.  That’s some two-and-a-half years.

 

This visit with the new chauffagiste brought another lesson.  An epiphany, more precisely.  And it was all because of a back flow valve.

 

A what?  I asked Pierre, as he recapped Mr Marc’s visit over our scraped together dinner that night. 

 

A back flow valve.  Bellevue’s heating system, Pierre reminded me, required hot water to circulate through her veins.  Indeed, the boiler sizzled with 55C water.  And yet some rooms within Bellevue – including the whole of the lower level – remained wholly neglected by this bounty of warmth.

 

Hours of prior investigation had produced no real answers – just a lengthy work proposal.  A new pump to circulate heat downstairs.  Bigger pipes.  A booster pump to push hot water more forcefully through the whole house.

 

Then Mr Marc stumbled upon this back flow valve…which had been installed backwards.  Backwards!  The valve basically stopped most of the boiler’s precious, 55C water from circulating through Bellevue’s piping network.

 

Ca-ching!  One little discovery – the direction of a valve – had solved 90% of what ailed Bellevue’s heating system for two-and-a-half years.  It was a momentous occasion.  A lightening bolt.

 

That dear Mr Marc simply reversed the back flow valve.  Now that the system was loosed up again, he warned, we had to guard against Bellevue’s thermostat rocketing skyward.

 

Too much heat!  Oh joyous plight! 

 

Given Bellevue’s girth and her chilled, foot-thick, limestone walls, the warmth took time to infuse itself.  Night set in.  The drafts that seeped through windows and glass doors bit more fiercely than usual.  All we could do was wait on the floor heat, and on the system with its newly flip-flopped valve.

 

As I nodded off to bed that night, having first checked my daughter for signs of frostbite, my thoughts drifted to years back…sleeping in a down-filled bag under a flimsy canvas…fluffy warmth tucked right over my nose….  For a moment, I considered scurrying out of bed to snatch my woolen cap, just as I wore in my camping days – but fell into jetlag-drunken sleep.

 

Two days later I no longer worried about the French social services carting away my child.  Bellevue and her thick walls had become comfortably toasty once again.

 

Except in the pigeonnier, my workspace at the top of the house.  The heat has returned with a vengeance.  Here the air registers a balmy 28C (82F).  I strip off layers to work.

 

But I’m hardly complaining.  After all the bone-chilling grief, I’m afraid to make a peep.