In the shade of the linden tree, the thermometer was pushing 100° F on Friday 18 July. The sun had decided to embalm the world. After a long series of meditations in full sun, Uncle Michel blacked out. Despite his feeble protestations, we convinced him to go and meditate in a shadier place. In exchange for a packet of sweets, Caroline agreed to watch over her uncle, who, sitting against the trunk of the linden tree, was coming round with a cup of herbal tea brought to him by his wife. The ‘tea’ had such an off-putting aroma that a second packet of sweets had to be promised to the Brat to make sure she stayed her mission.
The family was bubbling around the front door of the house, and, inside, the women were putting all the furniture back in place.
“And now to work!” announced my dad, with a resounding clap. “We’ll start in the bedrooms, rake out all the bedding and dismantle the beds. After that, we’ll deal with the plaster partitions. As from today, no more shirking… we haven’t got much time left to find the pendent,” he concluded with a calculated look at Valérie.
He vocalized his intention, “Joseph and Valérie, go and dredge the pond. If ever there’s a rainstorm, it’ll get murky and impossible to search. Any objections?”
Yes. Quite a few actually, but we knew there was little chance of being heeded, so Valérie and I trudged off to the pond with a spade and a metal rake, the one Uncle Émile had mended.
Close by, the abandoned chicken pen sadly awaited the return of its former tenants. The sight of the stagnant, muddy, smelly pond water was ghastly.
“It stinks,” complained Valérie dropping the rake at her feet. “I’m fed up with these vacations,” she groaned. “I am so bored! And I didn’t meet any cute boys at the lake. The only decent guy I’ve bumped into so far is the notary!”
“Oh, really? Did you see him again?” I asked, with a tinge of anger for some mysterious reason.
“Yeah. He’s often there to ‘manage’, as he says. In fact he just hangs out at the bar looking at girls. He’s such a cool dude.”
She looked towards the house and added under her breath, “I think he’s flirting with Mom. You should have heard all the bullshit he comes out with to make her laugh. But the main thing is we get free ice-cream and drinks whenever we want.”
“So what does he talk about?”
“Oh, I couldn’t care less really. Mom deals with all that. Caro and I just order whatever we want from the bar and then join Auntie Agnès burning her butt off on the beach. It’s too hot to work, Jo. Do you mind if we go and lie down over there?”
I didn’t mind. I dropped my spade and we went to bask behind the chicken pen to keep out of sight. My cousin was wearing her usual shorts, which enhanced her now beautifully tanned thighs, filling me with guilt. Her sensual curves and delectable moist treasures hidden from the eye caused an inevitable stirring, which Valérie picked up on very quickly because she smiled, gazing at me like a snake hypnotizing its prey. This diabolical and delicious female was playing with me, sharpening the weapon that she would wield for the rest of her life: desire.
“By the way you’re looking at me,” she whispered, “I can’t be that ugly?”
“I’m not looking at you,” I protested, going crimson in a nanosecond. I was just looking at your... your… um…”
“Yeah, right!” she chided, “You guys are all the same! You ogle girls’ buns, give them a date, and we know the rest of the story…”
“I wasn’t going to give you a date!” I clumsily remonstrated.
“Not you stupid,” she retorted, shrugging her shoulders. “I was talking about guys in general. I’m sure you just stare at girls, but other guys, well I know what they’re like. If you kiss them, they get wandering hand trouble and want to go further, if you get what I mean. It’s quite nice sometimes though. What do you think?”
Hunched in a ball, I was praying that this little bitch wouldn’t ask me the dreaded question, but she did, “Have you ever made love?”
I hated myself for being so weak, but the she-devil gave me no respite. I squirmed as she fired her cruel questions at me, “Go on, tell me. Between cousins, we can say anything (please ground, swallow me up) “Have you already slept with a girl? (beam me up Scottie) You’re not a virgin, are you? (what have I done to deserve this?)
Shrill, I blabbered a pathetic, “A virgin? Course not… no… Oh là là!”
She wasn’t fooled for an instant, and her mocking and vaguely condescending smile was far more humiliating than any words. But I soon realized that this intrusion into my private life wasn’t to humiliate me, but to pave the way for HER BIG announcement.
“In any case,” she announced voluptuously, “I can assure you that I am a fully fledged woman, if you see what I mean? (Nope) One of my friends, he’s training to be a mechanic, and he told me I passed my MOT successfully. I’m roadworthy!”
She burst out laughing, proud of her triumph.
I didn’t have time to find out the name of the technician, nor the technical ins and outs of her ‘vehicle testing’ (which she would have been delighted to tell me in great detail) because suddenly, we saw a man coming into the property with a large crate tied to the back of his bike. He stopped a few meters away from the house, unsure of himself. It took us a millisecond to recognize Mr. Criquot, municipal worker, part-time grave-digger and full-time mental retard.
The tribe had obviously noticed, because we heard animated shouts coming from the kitchen.
Uncle Émile’s blaring voice rose above the others, “By golly! Look who it is! It’s Gégène!”
My uncle came out open-armed to welcome the newcomer.
“Come in, Gégène, come in. Come and have a drink!”
Entertainment being rare in these parts, we watched Criquot Esquire as he greeted my family all came rushing to meet him, and then as he unfastened the crate. He picked it up in his arms, let the bike clatter to the ground, and entered the house to a standing ovation.
Valérie and I wouldn’t miss the Gégène show for all the tea in China. We rushed to get a good place. At last, some amusement!
Entering the kitchen, we saw the crate on the table; Mr. Criquot was seated between my father and uncle Émile who, making the most of a badly needed break, put a can of beer into each hand. Like children, we all waited impatiently for the clown to begin his act. We sat in a corner and waited for curtain up.
My father opened the show, “So Toady” he blurted out, and then hastily trying to cover up his blunder, “…huh Eugène. This is a very nice surprise indeed, isn’t it?” he said to his audience.
The audience dutifully agreed.
“Oooh yeah!” replied the simpleton - simply (nothing more normal than that) and squawked a singular “Heeeheeehee!”
This was nothing compared to Toady’s full-blown laugh, a laugh that my father and uncles, by the looks of the amused complicit winks, were about to cheer on to its paroxysm. Still, we were already primed.
Auntie Agnès suddenly leapt up and ran to the door, “I’m going to get Michel. He won’t want to miss this!”
“You’re right,” said my mother, “it’ll cheer him up. Tell him to hurry though; I don’t know if Mr. Criquot – and she gratified him with a wide smile – is planning to stay for long.”
The Toad had just started on his second beer. He’d downed the first in three gulps. Uncle Michel and his wife erupted into the room. The color was back in uncle’s cheeks and, by the way he grabbed his chair from Aunt Nathalie, he had obviously recovered very nicely.
“So, Gégène,” asked my father “what brings you here?”
By way of a reply, the Toad emptied his second beer in one go. Then he peered inside the empty can as though some critter had crawled inside it, played with it in his hands, shook it, and jerked it to his lips to siphon out the last dregs with his tongue.
“Not very talkative. Thirsty though,” commented Uncle Émile, laughing. “If he finishes his dinner like he finishes his beer, washing up must be easy!”
Everyone guffawed, including Toady himself, “Heeeheeeheehahaha!” he brayed a hilarious and more complete expression of his crazy laugh. Patience though, the best was yet to come.
To take him to his heights, my father and Uncle Émile tried to goad the Toad, but he just nodded with his toothy grin (with more gap than tooth) and moronically repeated “Oooh yeah… Oooh yeah’. Sometimes, during the conversation (if you could call it a conversation), his response would change; he would reply “Oooh no… oooh no”. Fortunately, we sometimes hit the jackpot, but never in its complete version, despite continual efforts made by my entourage. It was getting infuriating.
In desperation, my father brought him two more beers which Mr. Criquot emptied as speedily as the first. Unfortunately, instead of making him more loquacious, alcohol stunted his brain even more (if that was possible). His eyes became glazed, his grin frozen, and he was no longer responding to the questions we fired at him. We had to find something else, try to revive his attention.
To my utter dismay, the Brat performed an amazing feat. She knelt down beside Gégène’s crate and, curious, examined it for a long time before she blurted out, “Hey. What’s inside? Is it moving?”
The question miraculously aroused Mr. Criquot from his lethargy. A flicker of light flashed in his eyes and, opening his toothless mouth wider, he answered, triumphant, “It’s the cat!”
“The cat?” everyone chanted, amazed.
“Oooh yeah!”
Teetering, he got up, took the wooden crate, pulled it to him, and then sat back down. He got out a pocket knife and started cutting the rope tied to the lid. As he was lifting it, there was a horrifying meow, a meow we recognized instantaneously.
“It’s Joyeux!” we chanted in chorus.
Our astonishment grew as the feline suddenly darted from the cage, caterwauling as it leapt over The Toad who tried to grab him by the tail (in vain), and scrammed out of the front door, hackles on end. Nobody tried to stop him because he looked so ferocious.
The cat’s sudden flying leap had sent a wave of fright among the women.
“My God!” fumed Auntie Cynthia, “that animal is a wild beast! Why on earth did you bring it back here?”
“It could have taken someone’s eye out!” said Auntie Nathalie.
Unprompted, the Toad at last delivered the unedited version of his laugh. Either the latest event lit some spark of intelligence in his thick skull, or the women’s hysteria made him happy, and he suddenly brayed a splendid “Heeeheeeheehahahawwww!” which took the women’s mind off their recent scare, and gifted us with a comic bouquet final welcomed with a festival of happy faces and booming laughter.
“Ah, the ole dog, the ole dog!” sputtered Uncle Émile. “He’s a real number!”
The ‘ole dog’ watched us with his contented idiot grin. We offered him another beer to egg him on, but he just drank it down in silence and kept on grinning.
A voice piped up above the rest, dampening the general hilarity, “It’s time we stopped our little game,” Uncle Gus announced. “Mr. Criquot isn’t a circus freak. We should kindly thank him for bringing back the cat and stop plying him with drink.”
“Oh là là!” protested Uncle Émile, “What a bundle of laughs you are! Look at Gégène, he’s happy that we’re taking care of him. He can have a laugh with us at least!”
He turned to the Toad and said, “You’re enjoying yourself, aren’t you?”
“Oooh yeah!”
“You see,” concluded my uncle, shrugging his shoulders, “everyone’s happy.”
“Oooh yeah!” added the Toad.
“We still don’t know,” said Uncle Michel, “where he found the cat and why he brought it here.”
My father turned to him and said, “That’s easy. Gégène probably thinks the cat still lives here. God only knows where he found him though.”
He addressed the cat finder, “Where did you find the puss, hey?” Where was he? We’re not running a cattery here you know, so don’t start bringing us all the neighborhood strays.”
No reply came, so my dad repeated his question in a tone generally used to address small children, matching Mr. Criquot’s mental age, “Tell us now. Where was the pussycat?”
The cattery man frowned as if thinking hard (must have hurt) and finally responded, “At the cemetery.”
“The cemetery, of course!” exclaimed my mother. “Maïté told us that she often saw the cat up there!”
“Oooh yeah!”
“Thank you for your kind thought, but this cat doesn’t belong to us any more,” explained Auntie Agnès slowly, to make sure the message went home. “It belongs to Maïté, Mademoiselle Castet’s former housekeeper. You do remember Mademoiselle Castet, don’t you?”
Against all expectations, a radiant smile (surprisingly expressive) lit up his face and he responded, “Oooh yeah! Mademoiselle Lucie was very nice. Sometimes she made pancakes and she gave them to me when I came here on my bike.”
He added confidently, “I often came here on purpose to see… for the pancakes!” he added. “Mademoiselle Lucie’s pancakes were good, they were. Oooh yeah!”
This was the first time we’d heard him use so many words all at once and, after these lengthy explanations, he got up, picked up the crate and bid us farewell at the threshold.”
“Are you leaving us already?” exclaimed Uncle Émile, regretfully.
“Oooh yeah!”
And without commentary, he tottered towards his bike escorted by the whole family. After some trial and error, he managed to pick up his bike and attach the crate to the back. My father and Uncle Gus helped him and, as soon as it was done, the Toad clumsily straddled his steed, bid us a last farewell and then keeled over in the grass. We ran to his aid, dragged him under the tree while the women went to fetch a towel steeped in icy water to try to bring him round, to no avail. Despite Uncle Émile’s vigorous rubbing, he was comatose.
Uncle Gus put his ear to Mr. Criquot’s chest and after a few seconds, declared, “Still breathing. He’s just blotto. We’ll just have to take him back.”
“But we don’t know where he lives,” commented Uncle Michel.
“What if we left him at the cemetery?” suggested Uncle Émile, pragmatically. “When he comes round, he’ll find his own way.”
My father eyed his brother with a disapproving air, “For God’s sake, Émile, is that all you think of your fellow humans? What about solidarity? Where’s your humanity?”
“That’s so true!” Auntie Agnès protested. “It would be just criminal to abandon this poor man. What if he had a bad turn?”
“Alright, no need to go on!” croaked Uncle Émile, shrugging his shoulders. “Don’t go thinking I don’t care about humanity. If you don’t want to leave him at the cemetery, why don’t you call Mr. Murou? He must know where the bugger lives.”
“That’s more like it,” concluded my dad. “And I mean, he could kick the bucket at the cemetery (an unusual place to die admittedly) and we could be found guilty of non assistance of a person in danger. Think before you talk!”
That clinched it for Uncle Émile. Of course, seen from that point of view, humanitarianism took a bit of a knock.
Uncle Gus went to call Mr. Murou who arrived half an hour later. He parked his van not far from the linden tree where the Toad was snoring in a deep stupor. We stood around the sleeper, watching over him as he rested, commenting on his various body jerks: furrowed eyebrows, fidgety forehead, twitchy nose, sporadic jolts, snores, sighs and other sonorous manifestations.
Mr. Murou stepped out of his van, raised his arm skywards and apostrophized the supine shape at our feet,
“Well my little feathered friend, this time, you’ve really done it! Just look at the state of him!” he fumed. “This is where our tax payers’ money goes! To think that I created a job especially for this moron!” he lamented. “Anyway,” he sighed, picking up the bike lying nearby, “it takes all sorts to make a world!”
The mayor opened the back of the van, lifted the bike in, and then came back with a forced smile, “I didn’t even say hello properly. I do apologize, but what with this charlie, technocratic farming policies, the drought, national insurance costs...”
He chanted the long list of current grievances that afflict smallholders, all the while shaking (crushing) hands. The more the list went on, the more his face showed signs of deep tragedy.
He ended with a flourish, his eyes cloudy with tears, declaring in a voice filled with emotion, a henceforth classic, “This will be the death of smallholders I tell you!”
Then he turned to Gégène, still drowned in his alcoholic vapors, “I’ll just have to hoist him into the front seat,” he sighed. “Can’t say I’m not used to it by now.”
“Seems he’s got a penchant for the bottle,” observed my dad with a wry smile.
“He certainly does,” confirmed the mayor, “and there are always idiots who ply him with drink, believe me!”
It really wasn’t hard to believe. Assisted by my dad and my uncles, the mayor soon had Mr. Criquot alias Gégène, alias the Toad, alias ‘Drink-the-barrel-dry’ and other such pseudonyms, slouched in the front of the van,
“He’s not a bad fellow,” remarked Mr. Murou closing the door. “When he’s drunk, he’s even….”
He was searching for a flattering adjective. “Well, it’s not that he’s presentable, but, uh…”
“He’s good company!” boomed Uncle Émile with a laugh.
“Quite!” agreed the mayor, echoing the laugh. “I’m still wondering what he’s doing here.”
“Simple,” explained my father. “In fact it’s all in his honor. He brought us back the cat of our defunct aunt, found skulking in the cemetery.”
“The cat was skulking… not our aunt!” added Uncle Émile.
“As I said,” said Mr. Murou nodding, “he’s not a bad guy. Now that I think of it, I’ve often seen the cat near its ex-mistress’s tombstone. Incredible really, how faithful some animals are.”
“The only one who was,” muttered Uncle Émile.
“You’re forgetting Mr. Criquot and Mademoiselle Passy-Coucet,” said Uncle Gus.
“Gégène? You must be joking!” replied his brother. “He didn’t look that sad at the funeral.”
“I think I’m right in saying that Eugène had some affection for your aunt,” commented Mr. Murou. “It is quite possible that on the day of the funeral he’d drunk too much or, more likely, had a moment of absentmindedness. It happens to him sometimes.”
Funnily enough, we’d noticed.
To celebrate this eventful day, we invited Mr. Murou to supper. The good fellow cheerfully accepted, eager to find out how we were getting on (how thoughtful of him). He wasn’t much help for the third enigma, but he assured us of his moral and material support, at least for the loan of his tools.
His curiosity now satisfied about our family affair, following the demise of smallholders (an inexhaustible subject in itself), the burden of detestable ‘farmericide, craftsmanicide and small businessicide’ taxation, the conversation ended up on a subject that ordinarily wasn’t a burning issue in our family, but which caused an out-and-out verbal brawl between Uncle Émile and Uncle Michel.
Uncle Émile liked to punctuate his comments with Occitan expressions, mostly vulgar ones, and he pointed out a few differences between the Catalan language as spoken in Languedoc-Roussillon and the Occitan language as spoken in the Bearn. To everyone’s amusement, thereafter followed some fruity homegrown comparisons, spiked with saucy swear words. Uncle Émile, who had a deep attachment to his roots, was delighted to flaunt his Catalan culture, which boiled down to profanities – in French disgusting, but which took on a flavor, finesse and unexpected panache in Occitan. Take the famous expression ‘goddamn’ for example. Depending on the circumstances and intonation used, it can express anger, surprise, annoyance, joy, admiration, pain (a whole range of sometimes opposing sentiments) without ever sounding hackneyed like when it is used in French.
Mr. Murou and Uncle Émile were in the middle of a comparative analysis of ‘come and have a drink!’ – a very popular expression in the countryside and eminently cherished by my uncle – when an exasperated Auntie Cynthia snapped,
“Sorry to interrupt, but would it be too much to ask you to continue your conversation in French? Most of us don’t know a word of your dialect, so, be kind and go onto more interesting subjects, or at least more understandable ones for your entourage. Thank you so much.”
“Of course,” apologized Mr. Murou. “You know, for me, patois is not only a pleasure, but it’s also a way of respecting tradition.”
“The man of the soil understands, but the man of Light disagrees,” declaimed Uncle Michel. “There are no traditions that cannot be left behind. An enlightened man once said ‘You must be able to leave everything behind you in order to go forward’. We must think on a universal scale, racial mixing, Esperanto…”
“Well you haven’t left your bloody stupid ideas behind, have you!” scoffed Uncle Émile.
Oh là là! A violent storm was brewing judging by the aspiring ‘enlightened’ man’s fiery look.
The first thunderbolt struck, “As usual, you haven’t understood a word I’ve said! I’m saying it’s not worth stirring up the ashes of a dying language to uphold obsolete behavior and thinking!”
“Obsolete?” growled his brother turning a pretty poppy hue. “What about respecting the language of your ancestors, hey? You of course, with all your New Age bullshit from America, you’ve given the finger to your roots! You go on about heritage, but you’re doing exactly the opposite, casting it to the wind!”
“What the hell are you talking about? – ‘language of our ancestors’ – what rubbish,” spat Uncle Michel. “Anyway, which ancestors are you referring to, your parents, grandparents or your great grandparents? Or further back? Why not go back to your Cro-Magnon roots while you’re at it? After all,” he chided, “you’ve kept the main physical and mental characteristics!”
“I’m talking about my ancestors the Gauls!” thundered the Cro-Magnon man. “Because before being French, I am a Gaul! It’s our duty to honor and remember those who founded our civilization! You couldn’t care less! Of course, you’ve sold out to Anglo-Saxons! Sold out!”
“Ignoramus!”
Things could have gotten out of hand had Uncle Gus not intervened to pacify the situation, “Come on. Stop getting all het up. It’s true that the langue d’Oc is a Latin language and therefore belongs to our cultural heritage.”
“Ha! See!” spluttered Uncle Émile enraged. “Listen to your brother. He’s studied at least! He knows what he’s talking about, unlike some!”
“It’s also true,” continued Uncle Gus, “at the risk of disappointing you, my dear Émile, that before the Roman invasion, these Gauls you seem to revere, didn’t speak Occitan.”
Uncle Émile was thunderstruck.
“Really?” he stammered in consternation. “So… what did they speak then?”
“They spoke Celtic, my dear, Celtic. And I remind you that it was the Celts who founded the first civilization in Europe. After the invasion of Gaul by the Roman armies, the Celtic language disappeared, replaced by Latin and its derivatives, Langue d’oc and Langue d’oïl. In fact, if you really want to speak the language of our Gaul ancestors, you’ll have to learn Celtic. Unfortunately, it’s a dead tongue (unlike Uncle Émile’s which was alive and never short for words). You see, Émile, respecting cultural heritage is a relative notion because, as Michel pointed out earlier, where does it all really start?”
In a move to calm the storm he’d seeded, Mr. Murou got up with a Cheshire grin and declared, “Listen, I propose a general reconciliation over a few good bottles of some local wine. My cousin from Madiran has just given me some of his latest produce. And it’s not the worst either. His wine was selected by the church during the last visit from our Holy Father Pope Jean-Paul II in Lourdes. Drink just one sip and half of your sins are already forgiven,” he said with a complicit wink. “And, we can play a little round of belote while we’re at it; it’ll calm the nerves.”
The poor man didn’t know what he was getting into. A game of cards in our family was an excuse for a lot of squabbling. His offer was joyfully accepted by my father and his brothers, all except Uncle Michel who went to lie down, contending that he hadn’t recovered from the day’s aggravations.
Nobody insisted on him coming back (and above all not Uncle Émile) because without him, there were four potential players and therefore no bickering about who would play the first thousand; they would leave that dispute for the first round.
“Are we ready?” bellowed Mr. Murou to all.
“We’re ready!” replied my dad and my uncles in unison, getting up from the table.
The invitation wasn’t for the women. That was taken for granted. The night had started to open its bat wings and we hovered on the doorstep to watch the men climb into the mayor’s car. The engine roared, coughing out volutes of diesel fumes. The headlights came on, the car crunched into gear and gently reversed back to the front porch.
Winding down the window, my father poked a jovial head out of the window and shouted, “We’re going with Mr. Murou; it’s more neighborly! And we’ll help him with Gégène. Émile has got him on his knees!” he laughed. “He’s a real nanny our Mimile! Bit of a tight squeeze, but we’ll manage!”
“Don’t come back too late,” said my mother approaching the van. “And don’t drink too much…”
“Hey, ho, we know what we’re doing; we’re adults remember!” interrupted my father “It’s just four or five miles away. We’ll be back in a jiffy! Time to let our hair down!”
“He’s right,” piped the impatient voice of Uncle Émile next to him, “vacations are for letting your hair down!”
A final “letting your hair down” faded into the distance as the van chugged off leaving its diesel fumes to merge with the night air. The engine could still be heard way into the hills, followed by the angry barks of the neighborhood dogs. My mother and Auntie Nathalie anxiously listened to the last traces of sound as it dissolved into the distance.
“I don’t know why,” sighed my mother, “but I’ve got a niggly feeling.”
“I don’t like to think of them on these little roads at night,” sighed Auntie Nathalie.
“Stop worrying,” chirped Valérie, taking them both by the arm. “There’s not a soul on these country roads at night, and Mr. Murou is a sensible chap. Chill out aunties, be cool! As Uncle Émile said, you gotta let your hair down!”
We all went along with this final intention and went to bed to rest if not our minds, then at least our bodies.
It is written and verified that the best things always come to an end. The card players returned at around five in the morning, desecrating the serenity of the night (and our sleep) with their din. Not only had they let their hair down, they were pig-drunk (I don’t know why we say ‘pig-drunk’ because I’ve never seen an inebriated pig). Now, at this unearthly hour, the common denominator between my father, his brothers and the porcine species was the intensity of their shrieks.
Raked out of our slumber, we rushed from our beds, convinced that there had been a terrible accident.
On the doorstep we witnessed a heartwarming (or deplorable, whichever way you look at it) spectacle of boozers and heard the sound of the martyred cogs of Mr. Murou’s van making a quick getaway: a wise move on the mayor’s part given the wrath and indignation on the faces of my mother, Auntie Nathalie and Auntie Cynthia. Crabby, the wives went to retrieve their spouses who were still cavorting at the door.
“Oooooh! There you are?” slurred my father. “Aren’t you in bed yet?”
Uncle Émile swerved over to him and said, “See, Nanard, I told you, we didn’t have to hurry. The children aren’t even in bed yet,” he observed, pointing a shaky finger at us.
Then he yammered out a bawdy song about the forbidden love of a priest and a whore.
Uncle Gus shuffled up to us. It was the first time I’d seen him in such a drunken stupor. I hadn’t thought it possible.
“I told Mimile!” he shouted, holding on to Uncle Michel who was watching them with a sorry smile (the enlightened man was of course disapproving of all this rowdiness), that the Gauls spoke Celtic! Celtic I told him!” he repeated, shaking his brother’s arm.
“Fuck the Celts!” bellowed Uncle Émile. “Me, I’m Gaulish from Gaul! And I couldn’t give a monkey’s about history!”
Then followed a volley of swearing in which the intellectuals stood no hope.
“That’s enough!” shouted my mother angrily. Either you lot calm down right now, or you leave the house immediately! What example are you giving the children?”
Auntie Cynthia, after a consternated and disdainful look at her husband, drily snapped an order to Valérie,
“Look after your father. I can’t bear it. My God! What a disaster! To think I gave the best years of my life to this man!” she spat before turning tail and going back to the caravan.
She was a few feet away when she suddenly whisked round again, “And don’t bring him into the caravan! He can sleep outside! It might freshen him up!”
“Ouh là, my poor… poor Gus,” said Uncle Émile sadly, watching her as she strutted off. “Looks like you’re in for it. The boss doesn’t look too happy.”
“Yeah,” commented my father laughing. “Not too happy with you these days. You’re gonna have to watch out. My wife shouts,” he said, chuckling and grabbing her by the waist, despite her vehement protestations, “but she’s not nasty. You’re not nasty, are you my fat goose?”
“You are just impossible!” replied my mother bursting into tears.
“With you lot, it always ends up like this,” sobbed Aunt Nathalie.
“What? What my little hen?” mumbled Uncle Émile, “you’re not gonna start too, are you? Such a scene for a little night out among friends!”
In desperation, ‘fat goose’ and ‘little hen’, accompanied by Auntie Agnès, went back to their pens under the mocking gaze of their roosters.
My father went with them squawking “come little hen, come little goosey!”
Still hanging onto Uncle Michel’s arm, Uncle Gus shouted, “The Gauls spoke Celtic!”
What a sight for sore eyes I thought, watching my dad and his brothers with amusement. Murou had better not come back in a hurry. They must have tasted a fair amount of his cousin’s local wines.
They went on like this for another half hour, yelling their heads off until alcohol and fatigue got the better of them. Finally, they decided to hit the sack. But, before going off to drunken paradise, Uncle Émile performed a ‘sweet little song’ he’d learned from one of his grand uncles.
We were expecting the worst and, as usual, we were not disappointed.
“This is a song,” he explained with a gurgle, “that Nanard and I are going to sing together. It’s called: Nancy the whore (I had never heard of this great classic, but the title was already promising). Can you remember the tune?”
“Can I remember?” his co-singer said, offended. “Go on! You start.”
“OK. Listen up. It’s a very nice song!”
He took a deep breath and started to mime an air trumpet,
“DO YOU KNOW THE WHORE NAMED NANCY
WHO GAVE VD TO THE WHOLE CAVALRY?’
And then my father piped up,
“I KNOW THE WHORE NAMED NANCY
WHO GAVE VD TO THE WHOLE CAVALRY!
Uncle Gus joined in and mimed a trumpet with his right hand tooting,
“TATATUM TATATATUM TATATUM
TATATUM TATATATUM TATATUM!”
After singing this single verse at the top of their voices, they stopped, puffed out.
“Of course,” Uncle Émile getting his breath back, said “that’s not the full version; I can only remember the chorus... it was a long time ago.”
It didn’t matter. We’d all had our fill by now!