Finally, at long last, the moment has arrived. We are about to begin our very first harvest: la cueillette des olives. It is a critical period because the fruit has to be gathered at precisely the right moment and in the correct manner. The olives do not produce top-quality oil if picked too green. On the other hand, if the fruit is left on the trees too long and it overripens or grows wrinkled, then the drupes begin to oxidize, which gives a bitter, unpleasant taste to the oil.
This year, our first as olive farmers, we have a bumper crop. We will lose some of the fruit if it is not gathered and delivered to the moulin within forty-eight hours. René says we will need help, particularly in light of our lack of experience. We accept his counsel, and the following morning—the first occasion since we met him that he turns up on the day he said he would—he brings with him a motley collection of harvesters. Each of the five gatherers, one woman and four men, is presented to us, and each steps forward to give us his or her name and profession. They treat us deferentially, with what we suppose is the respect normally shown to proprietors, oléiculteurs, of a grand domaine. This puzzling behavior makes us both a little awkward. We have not come across this class barrier here before. We would prefer a rather less formal relationship, and I offer them bottles of water, for the day is warm and I want to lighten the mood.
“Nous avons, nous avons tous,” they assure us politely and retreat. They set about unloading their cars, parked on a flat grassy bank which skirts the base of the hill and the lowest of the terraces. It is a beautiful morning. The birds are chirping. There is heat in this late-November day. We leave them to their work and head off to begin our share of the picking at the top end of the land, promising to return later to see how their share of the récolte is progressing. I suspect René has divided us into two groups so that should we, with our city fingers and clumsy unskilled ways, damage the fruit—all too easily done—our basket loads need not be mixed in with those collected by the professionals and won’t destroy the acid balance at the pressing.
What excites me is the thought of that first taste. There are over fifty different varieties of olives, and I have bought and tasted and cooked with an assortment of oils. Some were virgin, others were extra-virgin, while a few bottles were of a lesser quality or mixed varieties of olives. We will soon be trying a single-variety oil cold-pressed exclusively from our cailletier olives. Perhaps at some point in my life I have used oil pressed from this southern French variety, these rocky coastal hills, without being aware of it. Even if that were the case, they were not from here, not from this very hill. A modest geographical nuance, but it makes a world of difference to us. Part of the thrill lies in the expectation. Does this farm, our humble terraces, produce fruit that can be classed as first-class oil? We can only wait and see. Until then, there is hard work to be done.
The gathering is backbreaking. And time-consuming. And there is no way around it. René does not hold with wooden rakes. No, every olive is gathered from the trees by hand, stretching from ladders or climbing up in the branches and reaching out to pick each olive individually, for they do not grow in bunches.
“But I read that the wooden rakes are good. They’re used on many of the well-known estates,” I protest.
He shakes his head adamantly. “No. Whatever anyone says, the rakes can cause damage. Two or three olives growing close to one another, almost a cluster, the rake is bound to bruise at least one. No, we will climb the trees. You, Carol, can take a ladder.”
So here I am, battling with branches flicking me in the face, wobbling and gripping for dear life. On top of which, when I have managed to clutch hold of an olive or two, I must take care not to squeeze it too hard or hold it too long in my sticky palms and overheat it. And the nets, both white and green, that encircle the base of the trees have to be considered for fear they may split. Worse, if the foot of the ladder gets caught up in the netting, I and the ladder will topple over, spilling two hours’ work on to the ground. It is about now that I am beginning to wish we had bought a vineyard. At least cultivation and harvest are at ground level.
OUR FIRST VISIT TO the moulin. Heading off into the hills with René once more, we are planning to visit two mills, about twenty minutes apart. René wants us to choose where our fruit is to be pressed, particularly given my preference for all matters organic. Our first stop is at the mill he recommended. He brings the harvests from his other farms here, and like so many of these traditional land matters, it is family-run. Altogether, on his four farms, including ours, he is husbanding seven hundred and twenty trees, so, not surprisingly, he is a familiar and well-loved face at the mill. When we arrive, he takes us first to the shop that the family runs above the mill. Set on a cobbled hill, this is the tourist arm of their trade.
Once inside, everybody kisses and embraces and we are introduced as the patrons of the villa-farm in the hills overlooking the coast. During a brief tour of the merchandise—Provençal napkins, various jams and soaps and objects such as pepper and salt shakers carved out of olive wood—we observe the steady flow of men with children, or lone adolescents, bringing their farms’ early season pickings. Their olives are delivered in large woven panniers, about the size of a modest laundry basket, resembling those which in bygone days were strapped to the sides of donkeys or packhorses. Other loads are delivered in plastic crates, and a few arrive in bulging sacks that look like outmoded coal bags—though these are discouraged now because they do not meet the latest European Union standards of hygiene. The fruit is placed on a whacking, great metal scale, where it is weighed and then stacked on the floor in a line alongside a chute which will shunt the gathered drupes down to the level of the mill.
While all this weighing and stacking is taking place, a cashier is filling in lilac tickets and handing them out. The tickets provide each farmer or gatherer of the fruit with a receipt which states the precise quantity of olives delivered. Later, after the pression, it will also confirm the quantity of oil pressed from those olives.
How the oil is measured is fascinating but somewhat difficult to grasp—convoluted, I’d say—and dates back to the days when farmers arrived with their olives in measures known as une motte. Literally translated, a motte is a mound. One measure, une mesure, is equal to twelve and a half kilos of olives, the cashier—one of only two staff at the mill who is not a member of the family—explains to us.
“Why twelve and a half kilos?” I ask ingenuously. It seems a curious figure for calculation. René then jumps in to explain that the containers used in the olden days carried precisely twelve and a half kilos. (I refrain from asking why.) Across the lip was a measuring stick. When the loaded olives were even with the measuring stick, it contained twelve and a half kilos. Twenty of these containers equal une motte.
“I see.” Up to this point, I wasn’t confused. Now it grows a bit foggy, at least for a pea brain such as mine, which is quietly trying to multiply twenty by twelve and a half!
Until today, I have always blithely assumed that so many kilos of pressed olives liquified into so many liters of oil. When I mention this, Michel nods his agreement but René and the staff of the moulin shake their heads gravely. “Mais, non,” they tell us. “The production of oil is valued and measured by weight.”
What!
One liter of oil, we learn, weighs nine hundred grams, or nine tenths of a kilo.
Lord!
If the fruit is ripe and healthy and plump, therefore rich in oil, it is hoped that a measure (twelve and a half kilos) will achieve 2.7 kilos of oil which, divided by nine hundred, translates at approximately three liters of oil. In other words, after a phenomenally complicated calculation, the ideal is to produce fruit which will yield three liters of oil for every twelve and a half kilos of olives, or sixty liters for every “mound.”
Phew! We are exhausted, my head is spinning and it is not yet half past eight in the morning. I am about to ask why the system is calculated in such a mind-bogglingly difficult way when Michel grabs me by the shirtsleeve and says, “While we’re here, chérie, why don’t we buy some of their tapénade?” Anything to stop me from further scrambling our brains.
To reach the level where the mill is operating, René ushers us back out of the shop onto the cobbled street, through another door to the left of the one we have just exited and down a rickety flight of narrow wooden stairs. I feel as if I am going backward in time. Added to which, the temperature is falling. At the mill level, it is almost arctic. Every exhalation is visible.
We have gone backward in time.
As we enter the mill, our senses are socked by the thumping and turning of a whole array of machines, and the air is so thick and heavy with the dense aroma of freshly pulped olive paste you feel you want to shove it off you, just like a blanket. At eight-thirty in the morning, it makes my head reel, as does the rough red wine handed to us to accompany thick wedges of locally baked bread topped with ham cured from a pig reared and slaughtered in the village. It is a peasant’s breakfast offered to us by a wan girl of no more than fourteen, who is accompanied by her brother of about nine.
Once we have been fed, the children retreat politely to stand guard at the table groaning with the family produce. Silently, arms at their sides like small soldiers, they await the next batch of ravenous oléiculteurs. René is battling against the din to explain the mechanics of the machinery, but I am more fascinated by the children. They look like waifs, serious-faced with dark penetrating eyes that, though kindly, might have witnessed a thousand hard seasons. It seems incredible to me that our farm is situated somewhere equidistant between this world and the gaudy glitz and escroquerie of Cannes.
The noise down here is impossible. I cannot hear or understand a word that is being spoken. René talks on, lips moving. I have no idea what he is explaining. I turn to the miller, who says nothing. He has returned to his work. Both he and his assistant are wrapped in scarves knotted at the neck and substantial jackets, although they are moving continuously, shunting trays of mashed olive paste and enormous bottles filled with the freshly pressed green oil. All around me, machines are milling, thrumming, spewing out liquid or excreting dried paste. A fire is roaring behind a small glass window, no bigger than a portable television screen. It is fueled by dried olive waste. Each ancient machine feeds the next, it seems. They are interconnected as though it were some enormous Rube Goldberg invention which today, according to the miller—who beckons us over into a corner away from the racket—is taking four and a half kilos of olives to press one liter of virgin oil. Most of these early-season fruits are not quite ripe enough, he explains. The fruit arriving after Christmas, when it has had longer on the trees to plumpen and grow black, should be better and produce the optimum.
We are led through to a cave where labeled bottles glow with oil growing gold instead of green as the sediment settles. They await the return of their owners, who will cart them away and store them safely in cool, darkened depositories. This mill, I see, is rigorous about making certain that no grower’s olives are mixed with another’s if they are a single-estate press such as ours will be.
I am fascinated by how the remains are put to good purpose. Olive oil soap is made from the residue of the third or even fourth pressings, and the desiccated paste is burned in the fire which heats the water and operates as the central heating system, such as it is here. Ecologically speaking, the olive is an all-rounder. Nothing goes to waste. Every last drop of oil is wrung out of the fruit, and only in the making of tapénade is the pit extracted and thrown away.
Before we set off for the second mill, the longer-established of the two, everybody shakes hands enthusiastically. “Next time, Christophe will be here,” we are assured. He is the patron and has “parti pour faire la chasse.” Gone hunting. There is much kissing and backslapping and promises to meet again soon. They enjoy the idea that foreigners take an interest in this most venerable of trades.
“Beaucoup d’Americains visitent içi,” we are told. Thumbs and fingers are rubbed together, heads nod gravely, all to express the sums of money handed over by the Americans in return for trinkets, souvenirs and glossy books detailing the history of the olive and Provençal life.
“And the English?” I ask hopefully.
As one, the family shakes their heads. I appear to have touched upon a sensitive and sorry subject. “Mais, non,” returns Madame in a conspiratorial tone. “Les Anglais have no interest in anything!”
THE SECOND MOULIN IS an altogether different affair. Situated in a field at the end of a deserted lane in the middle of nowhere, it was founded in 1706. It looks as though it originally must have been a peasant farm with an outbarn, which at some early stage was transformed into a mill and never decorated since. The crumbling outer walls of the edifice are of a washed pink which is popular in certain parts here but which I feel belongs more comfortably in Suffolk. First impression: there is little about this place aside from the surrounding countryside and mountainous backdrop, that is welcoming.
One step in the door and we are directly in the mill, a cavernous space, with a room temperature barely above above 40°F. It is sunless and gloomy. There is no shop here, no tourist attractions of any sort, which rather pleases me. As before, we are instantly knocked backward by that dense, palpable odor of crushed olives. Here, though, there is no offer of comforting slabs of bread and ham and red wine to douse our senses. There are no trimmings whatsoever. The place has one function: the cold-pressing of extra-virgin oil.
The pressing wheel and floor have been honed out of massive slabs of craggy stone rendered smooth by centuries of use. Somehow, the heavy stone adds to the keen wintry atmosphere. I exhale and watch my breath rise like smoke. Ahead of us are two farmers engaged in business with the lady miller, or the miller’s wife, who appears to be discussing their accounts. René, because he has visited here only once before, is not quite sure who she is. We are all strangers, which suits me because it allows a sense of discovery.
René guides our attention toward the stone wheel that crushes the fruit. It is so imposing, almost monolithic, that I shiver at the thought of getting any body parts trapped beneath it. It is stained with what look like clumps of dark peat, but on closer inspection we see that, of course, it is coated with trapped olive paste. Passing along to another completely indescribable contraption, we find oil at its base, trickling at a snail’s pace into a dustpan-like box made of olive wood. The arrival of the oil appears to be a discreet, low-key affair; none of the slosh and flow of the last establishment or the horrendous ear-splitting noise, but then, to be fair, the machines here have completed their last pressing for the day, even though it is only a little after half past ten.
Looking closely, with René drawing our attention here and there, we learn that this system requires more fruit for less yield. It takes approximately six kilos of fruit to produce a liter of oil here, even with the ripest and richest of drupes. René closes his eyes and goes through a swift mental calculation. If we use the other moulin, Appassionata can expect, on average—depending on the weather and the harvest—to press approximately two hundred and fifty liters of oil a year. Here we would net fewer than two hundred.
“Yes, but here it is cold-pressed, extra-virgin.”
“The other, too,” he assures us.
“In any case, two hundred liters is more than sufficient for our needs,” I counter.
Michel quietly reminds me that our share would be, in the first instance, eighty-three or -four liters, while here, somewhere around sixty-five. The remainder is René’s. I glance at René, who merely shrugs.
The miller woman, who wears her gray hair slicked back in a tight, uncompromising bun, boots, a full woollen skirt and velveteen shirt, is paying us no attention, engaged as she is with her clients. They are weighing panniers of violet olives and calculating figures: the cost of the pressing, no doubt. Perhaps for the first time, I am made acutely aware of this as a business, not a dream. Olive farming and oil pressing is a livelihood, and these people are close to the land, bearing its vagaries and hardships. They cannot afford the romance that swims about in my head. I wander off to investigate further, and to be alone.
Beyond the mill, though still under the same roof, I discover a cave with storage spaces dug out of rock and cut with stone-shelved corners. It is windowless and dark. Two or three dozen glass jars cased in wicker are stored there. Each must be capable of holding fifteen or twenty liters of liquid.
“They are called bonbonnes à goulot large. In the olden days, the Romans stored their oil in tall clay jars which were originally turned or baked in Spain and then shipped to Italy. They were not dissimilar to the oval terra-cotta pots you keep in your garden and fill with flowers. These are a more modern version, if you can describe anything in here as modern.” It is René. He and Michel are once again at my side.
Some of these thick-necked demijohns, the bonbonnes, are still empty, while others have already been filled with the deep green, freshly pressed oil, which from this distance and in this crepuscular light, resembles sea-water or steeped seaweed juice. Judging by its color and the juice slipping heavily into the dustpan apparatus, the quality of the oil here is richer, more luscious and aromatic.
“I like this place better,” I whisper to Michel, who laughs and replies, “Mais, oui, chérie. The question is which mill would better suit our needs. Not which would serve us as a film set!”
“I still prefer this one,” I confirm calmly.
Outside, the morning is warming to a bright clear day, so clear that we can see the shrubby details on the surrounding hills and valleys and the snow caps on the high, distant alps. I close my eyes and inhale the fresh air, rich with the smell of pine resin. The heat of the sun against my eyelids is a comforting relief.
STROLLING BACK TO OUR car, we learn from René that there is an olive tree growing in Roquebrune which we might like to take a look at. There are several villages down here with that name, but the one he refers to is the rather glamorous Roquebrune-Cap-Martin situated, on the mountainous road between Monte Carlo and Italy. Michel knows the place. In fact, he has visited it on several occasions. Its marvelous restaurant, le Roquebrune, which has been owned and managed by the family of Mama Marinovich since its inception, has been a favorite of his for years. The village is also known for its medieval houses cut into the rocks. There, a few kilometers from Menton, the gateway to Italy, grows an olive tree believed to be a thousand years old. Who planted it? I ask. Does anyone know? Who would have looked upon it?
It is fifteen hundred years too young to be a souvenir left by the Greeks and almost a millennium too young to have been planted by the Romans during their marches north from the heart of their empire while constructing the Via Aurelia, the great highway stretching from Ventimiglia to Aix. The Romans, with Agrippa as their consul, were building roads and tracing out this land of Provincia, creating cadastral surveys and scientific mappings before the tree was ever in existence. Even Charlemagne, crowned emperor of the West in 800 A.D., preceded it, as did the Saracens, who were looting and sacking the littoral even while Charlemagne and his children were dividing up the country for their heirs.
Might it have been a peace offering to the counts of Provence from Rome?
A thousand years after the birth of Christ, somewhere around the date the tree was planted, Provence was being returned to Rome and inaugurated as part of the Holy Roman Empire. The Saracens, having created havoc and terror for a hundred years, had been conquered and driven out, and Provence, though back under the ruling thumb of Rome, was enjoying a certain independence, a bit of peace and quiet after so many centuries of strife. Alas, it was not to last. Within a century or two, the counts of Provence ceded the province to the counts of Toulouse and they to the counts of Barcelona and so the chain goes on, right up to the liberation of Provence by the Allies from the Germans in August 1944, which our friend, René, standing beside us now, bore witness to.
Still, this noble tree is believed to be one of the oldest in the world.
By what stroke of fortune has that one single specimen survived? Michel suggests we make a detour, a slightly elongated one, approximately one hundred and ten kilometers round-trip, and pay homage to this most holy of trees. This I agree to wholeheartedly. René, who does not want to come with us, bids us bon appétit and leaves us to it.
Less than an hour later, our car is swooping and turning like a bird in flight along the mountain road. It is a giddy, spectacular altitude. The endless hairpin bends on this infamous descent, then ascent, from La Turbie, with its magnificent Roman ruins, make you catch your breath when you look down to sea level and pray to God your brakes won’t fail. There’s precious little chance to enjoy the view if you are driving. Michel is at the wheel. He drives fast, but with great skill, and I am leaning out the window, unafraid, hair flying in the wind and whipping my face, eyes watering, thrilled by the panorama all around me, following the sweep of hundreds of meters of rocky face which lead dramatically to the Med.
Somewhere near here, Princess Grace of Monaco lost her life when her sports car went over the cliffside. She was killed instantly. From where I am now, you see why. The memory of that accident sobers me for an instant, and I crawl back into my seat and gaze at the rock faces towering to the left of us.
It’s then that I spot the village high above us, rising out of the stone toward a linen-blue sky. It resembles a picture from a book of fairy tales illustrated by Arthur Rackham; even more so when I realize that, perched atop its pinnacle, is a castle with a tower.
We park the car at the foot of the village in what was the ancient castle’s barbican and hike the winding lane to the vieux village. Much to our dismay, because we are starving, every single restaurant is closed. This is not about being closed for lunch. It is that time of year, la fermerture annuelle, November 15 to December 15, when so many buinesses shut up shop in preparation for the upcoming festivities; Christmas and the New Year are a busy season on the Côte d’Azur. But we are not too disappointed, even if our stomachs are rumbling. Our noontime is flooded with warm winter sunshine.
We stride and puff and arrive at a perfectly empty place, and what strikes me instantly is that there is not a soul about, though there is no sense of this as a ghost town. In the center of this pleasingly airy square is an olive tree, fenced and surrounded by benches. It is unquestionably an aged specimen and well preserved, but I had expected something more spectacular. The girth of its trunk is probably three meters which is barely more than our own trees. I stroll to the cliff’s edge and look out across the rippling water, lambent in the sunlight, toward Cap Martin and, in the other direction, to the kingdom of Monaco with its curiously out-of-place skyscrapers. Michel comes up behind me and wraps his arms around me.
“I’ve had a good look. I don’t think that’s the tree we’re after,” he says. “Let’s investigate.”
We make our way through the vieux village up a hill, down a winding stairwell—everywhere tiled and cobbled and polished with the gleaming shine of a proud housewife’s stoop—passing through Place Ernest Vincent with its obsolete prison until we spot a sign for the olivier millénaire.
“Look,” I cry.
Triumphantly, with the air of adventurers whose navigations are confirmed on track, we begin to descend. A profusion of hillside trees fluffy with green leaves similar to the willow—a variety of tamarisk, if I am not mistaken—overhang the pathway. We are plunging down a steep path. In former days a donkey trail, no doubt, used to transport victuals from the fields at sea level up to the homes carved out of the rocks. We are walking in the footsteps traced by a billion and more travelers, by soldiers, other lovers, by farmers and farmhands, to pay homage to a tree. And lo and behold, two hundred or so meters farther along, there it is, growing out of a wall on the terraced cliffside. This elephantine miracle is not fenced in. It is not on display. It is simply there. Being. Its roots, like a banyan tree’s, sprawl everywhere. Branches, roots, reaching out like an octopus, stretching, bursting its banks with the sheer determination to live, to survive. Its force is taking earth and stone with it.
Michel and I stand side by side, silenced, gazing in awe at this monumental symbol of creation. Then we spin around, seaward, to take in the view unfolding before us; flocks of starlings swoop and tack against a vigorous blue sky. Even at this precipitous height, we can hear the gentle lap of the water washing the coastal rocks and beaches so far beneath us. We incline our heads and gaze down upon the coastline, eyes eastward to the cap of St. Martin, where Yeats once spent a holiday, Queen Victoria was a regular visitor and the architect Le Corbusier drowned.
Everywhere is warm and still and calm; calme in the French sense, meaning untroubled and at peace. Without a word, we reach for each other, and I feel the warmth of the sun on Michel’s skin.
“Je t’aime.”
Rarely have I felt so in harmony with life, so humbled by its magnificence. I pace out the distance between the farthest visible reaches of the trunk extensions and measure fifteen meters. Here we are, some nine hundred feet above sea level, in the presence of a growing organism that has stood sentry over this landscape for ten centuries. I can comprehend the millennia of reverence given to the olive tree, to its wisdom and unmatched nobility.
For a heartbeat, all seems clear. The world is pure, and the miracle of life washes through me.
We return to the village, deciding to continue our ascent to the castle, moving closer to the sun, passing open windows which overlook one of the most breathtaking coastal views I have ever laid eyes on. I pause and catch snippets of language, barely audible radios transmitting in both French and Italian. We are on the border of both cultures, yet so much about this village was born of times when France and Italy were not divided as they are today.
The climb is winding, the lanes cobbled and tiled and pristine. From the keep, the views are yet again stupendous. Several hang gliders are drifting on slipstreams and silence out over the water. What a spot for hang gliding; to take off from here like a bird!
We walk on. I read aloud from a booklet given to us by the friendly lady at the ticket booth that we are about to discover the oldest castle in France, the sole example of the Carolingian style. It was built by a count from Ventimiglia, Conrad I, to keep those dratted Saracens at bay. Later, it was remodeled by the Grimaldi family, who, of course, still reigns over Monte Carlo.
What a coup for one small village to be in possession of the oldest castle in France and a tree claimed to be the oldest living olive in the world!
The leaflet also informs us that the inhabitants of Roquebrune believe that the creation of the world is a “thought from God,” and that while he was creating this village, his mind was particularly well disposed to man. For that reason, they value their good fortune and make it their business to honor their environment. Too right! With such a philosophy, they deserve their daily sightings of this seascape and their miraculous olive tree.
RENÉ TELEPHONES TO inform us that the moulin of my choice is to be closed down. Founded close to three hundred years ago, the very winter we choose to take our custom there, it is closing!
“But how can that be?” I cry.
“Because it does not meet the European Union health standards.”
His advice is that we take our olives to the mill he frequents, which is what we do. Frankly, aside from driving around the countryside in search of another mill, we have little choice. Half a dozen crates of olives are sitting in the dark at the back of our garage, waiting to be pressed. If we delay, they will oxidize. Though stung by an initial bout of mistrust and suspicion, I have no reason to be disappointed. The proprietor—the chap we did not meet the first time around—is a splendid fellow with cheeks as red as his checkered shirts and a paunch which flops over his sinking jeans. He welcomes us extravagantly, takes care of us admirably. And I warm to him all over again when that long-awaited first trickle of oil from our own pressed olives drizzles from the onyx tap.
“Venez vite, mes amis!” he bellows. “Venez vite!”
By now, it is spluttering and gushing green-gold gallons in fits and starts.
Nervously, excitedly, we pick our way across the mill floor—skidding and skating because the surface is an ice rink from the dregs of a season’s oil and paste—to taste, please God, our ambrosial liquid. It is a tense moment.
Michel, Monsieur le Propriétaire, known to us now as Christophe, and I lean in close over one single dessert spoon and inhale its aroma.
Will we like it? Will we be satisfied? We sip in turns. I go first. Six eyes meet apprehensively, but there is not a shadow of doubt. The texture is velvet-smooth with a flavor of lightly peppered lemons.
“Oh God, it’s delicious!” I croon.
Oh, we are mightily proud. Christophe, after filling a wooden spoon with another precious few drops, dunks a chunk of the local rough bread into the cloudy liquid and chews pensively. Save for the thundersome turning and clunking of machines, there is a gripping silence. His fils, the young miller we met the first time around, watches on while a motley clutter of farmers who are awaiting the results of their own pression flock around us eagerly. How they love these petit dramas. And then, in a thick Provençal accent, Christophe declares our produce “Beurre du soleil.” Butter of the sun, he cries loudly, followed by the all-important quality distinction, “Extra!”
Everybody cheers. There is much shaking of hands, slapping of backs, kissing and hugging and, of course, pouring of wine while Michel and I, grinning from ear to ear with the pride and happiness of a birth, are also doing our damnedest not to fall about laughing.
OUTSIDE, AT OUR TABLE in the garden, lashings of our very own burnished oil are being decanted by Vanessa and Michel from the five-liter plastic containers supplied by Christophe into numerous elegant or uniquely shaped wine bottles. All year we have been merrily quaffing their contents, cleaning them, collecting them and storing them away, for this most auspicious day. Christmas is upon us once more, and this one is to be celebrated. Clarisse is designing the delicate, exquisite labels, and while the others pour, we are spending our hours in front of a roaring fire ticketing the full bottles and dating them before Vanessa’s friend Jerôme carts them off and stows them away in the cool of the summer kitchen downstairs. Over the coming weeks, the olive fruit sediment will settle and the clear oil will become a glorious primrose gold.
Mellifluous music, carols broadcast live from Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, is playing on the radio. A blue fir tree perfumes our home with a spicy happiness. Michel purchased it from a bankrupt antique dealer in the square opposite the old port in Cannes where, aside from this festive season, retired gentlemen with dubious histories pass their afternoons playing boules. To honor this, our very first harvest, he has decorated it entirely in swathes of golden trimmings and glass.
The girls are spending their holidays with us this year, and along with them has arrived Jerôme, who is eighteen and disturbingly gorgeous. Twice I have invited him to come and help me in the kitchen, and on both occasions Vanessa has lovingly whispered in my ear, “Please, chère Carol, resist flirting with my friend.” In a day or two, Anni and Robert, Michel’s parents, will arrive, followed by my mother for St. Sylvestre, New Year’s Eve. My father and sister, both being in the entertainment business, are employed and staying in England. Still, Appassionata is stocked for a full house, and the holidays are set to be a joyous affair. Our turkey, for now we are in possession of an oven which stands alone in our empty, still-to-be-constructed kitchen, is being lubricated with oil from our own reserve. It is a moving and significant moment which we honor appropriately with flutes of champagne. To accompany our apéritif, as a prelunch appetizer, I prepare bruschetta, toasting thick slices of six-grain bread which I top with sliced tomatoes straight from my thriving vines and season with dried herbs and salt and then grill. While the toasts are still warm, I decorate them with strips of fresh basil leaves picked from our herb garden and generously oil them as a topping—Appassionata oil, naturally—adding only black pepper.
We gather at the table in the garden and eat in the end-of-year sunshine, chattering noisily in French—French language, French manners; we are knitting together as a French family—knowing that when the winter sun has begun to sink behind the cypress tops, slipping out of sight beyond the mountains, we can curl up indoors with books and music and doze in front of the fire. While the others clear the table and stack the washing, I disappear to my den for a few hours, to print out my scripts for Michel to take back to Paris after Christmas. He has clients waiting to read them. After, I intend to close the door on my work and forget about it for a few days. I need to rest, relax and partake of the holiday season with our loved ones.
As evening falls, the wintry sunset patterns the sky a pale, streaky rose. My work is done. I run my fingers across the stacks of freshly printed pages standing on my table in thirteen neat piles and turn to gaze out of the window. The Mediterranean coast is growing dark and still. I cannot see the fortress and dungeons where the Man in the Iron Mask was imprisoned, cannot even detect the silhouettes of the islands, but the images live on in my memory and have fed my story; thirteen episodes, partially set on that isle of Ste. Marguerite.
Beyond this private space, I hear the ripple of laughter. I smell that woody smokiness of crackling logs burning briskly. The others await me. Michel and his teenage girls, so staggeringly grown up, so suddenly filled with a confidence I am sure I have never known, and Jerôme, the first of what no doubt will be a long procession of handsome young visitors over the summers and winters to come. Summers to come.…
I don’t go to join them, not directly. I linger by the window, aware of my reflection, of me looking back at myself. I am in pensive mood, assessing what has been achieved. That’s often the way after a long work stint.
After so many years of wandering, I have found my base. We have our shabby home. We have produce, too—oil—and found good men to help us. We have a story to sell; with luck, it will be our way forward. With luck, it will settle our affairs with Madame B. Maintaining the house, its upkeep, is a struggle, but we are just about managing. It has been a productive year, and I am grateful for it. Still, something is nagging at me, tugging at my floating balloon. Can life really turn out this well? Can I really be this happy? What if it should all fall apart? I have opened myself up now. Yielded to love. Trusted someone. The loss would be twice as devastating.
Steeped in these dark evening musings, I am not immediately aware of the diesel van hiking the drive. I stare at it almost without seeing it and then move through to the salon, where the others are gathered.
Michel jumps to his feet. “Jerôme, s’il te plaît.”
“Who’s that?” I ask no one in particular. “Are we expecting somebody?”
The men hurry from the house while the girls, basking on cushions, pay me no attention. I stare at their concentration. Clarisse is sketching; Vanessa, ears plugged to her Walkman, is learning Russian from a tape; Whisky, the last of the puppies and no longer a puppy, is snuggled in her lap, and I hear several male voices shouting.
“Do we know what’s happening?” I ask again. Neither girl responds. Curious and bewildered by their lack of interest, I stride back to my atelier, to the window which overlooks the driveway, to find out what is happening. Quashia has arrived. He is accompanied by a faithful quartet of Arab colleagues who are all hovering by the rear doors of the van. I frown, puzzled. Michel is climbing into the van while he and Quashia converse. Two of the Arabs are then instructed to cross the driveway and collect a wooden pallet, which they place at the foot of the rear doors on the bitumened ground. Something is being delivered, that is clear, but what?
“Do either of you girls know what this is all about?” I shout.
They do not seem to have heard me. I am about to get cross when from out of the van comes a curious-looking plant, sitting in a saucer-shaped terra-cotta pot the size of an early television satellite dish. The plant must be exceptionally heavy, because it is lowered painstakingly onto the work pallet. Then slowly, awkwardly, Jerôme and the Arabs hump it along the walkway beside the pool and mount the outside staircase to our open front door, which is where I am now eagerly awaiting them.
“What in heaven’s name… ?”
“Where shall we put it?” begs Michel.
I turn, swamped in indecision. Half the room is already taken up by the Christmas tree. There are cushions everywhere. Presents, shoes, sweaters, general holiday detritus have all spread across the room. Michel does not wait for me to respond. The men are sweating and staggering.
“There,” he commands, and the plant is delivered into the house, lifted ever so carefully from the pallet and placed on the tiled floor. Quashia and the men bid us bonsoir, shake hands and retreat. Michel sees them out and returns to survey his gift. Or rather mine, for clearly I am the recipient: the only one who has not been cognizant of the arrival of this wonder.
“Happy Christmas, chérie,” he whispers and kisses me. “It’s not as ancient as the olivier millénaire, but as close as I could find.”
I am speechless, gazing at this extraordinary gift which stands six feet tall, has a trunk like a sculpted rhino’s leg and, according to its label, is South American and a hundred and fifty years old. What most puzzles me is that this spectacular exotic is growing in a saucer-deep pot. Doesn’t it have roots?
All eyes are upon me, waiting, girls grinning, as I turn to my husband and kiss him. “Merci,” I whisper, for I can barely speak, so overwhelmed am I by the sheer craziness of this man’s love. All niggling fears evaporate. What am I worrying about? It has been a wonderful year.