Amour Provence (19 page)

The mistral gave a gust that shook the metal gate and made Auri start.

“Aurélien!” his father shouted from inside, “
S'il te plaît
, can you come here for a minute?” Auri pulled his long legs from under the table, but he did not stand. Now that he was fourteen he'd been growing in such steady spurts that he
found himself, suddenly, surprisingly, taller than his father, who was a large man. He positioned himself on the edge of his seat and then took a breath, making sure not to move too quickly. His father could wait, and Auri would purposely make sure that he did. He rested his hands on his thighs. He might be tall, but he'd never look like his father. The circular glasses that he wore made his round head look like a
pétanque
ball and his snubbed nose was that of a clown. He'd once admired his father, but at times he found it amazing that Jeannot Pierrefeu had managed to catch and marry Mathilde, Auri's mother. He'd heard that Jeannot's friends Didier Falque as well as the artist Thierry had hoped to win the heart of the beautiful Mathilde. Auri didn't know how his rubber-faced father had managed to beat out the others. Of course, his father was intelligent, no denying that. Jeannot had gone to university and was able to converse about practically any subject, plus he could do anything with his hands. And he was funny, wickedly, hilariously funny. He kept Auri's sister, Ada, in stitches, but Auri didn't find his father's humor at all amusing anymore.

Auri remembered as a child looking with awe at Jeannot dressed head to toe in leather, ready to take him on his motorcycle for a ride up and down the hills and onto the rough tracks of mountain passes. On those miraculous afternoons, the vine rows had flipped by like the cards so skillfully dealt at his father's weekly game of belote, when friends would come to the house and his father would make everyone laugh with his droll jokes. How he'd longed then to be just like his father! But now being around Jeannot simply annoyed Auri and it was impossible to hide his disdain.

“Aurélien,
viens
!” Jeannot called again. And though Auri had been about to stand, he sat on for a minute or two longer, hoping he was provoking the same angry feeling in his father that he felt. He turned and looked at the vineyard, now bereft of grapes harvested by a family friend who in return supplied his father with a few cases of mediocre plonk, a ridiculous waste because his father knew how to make good wine, just as he knew how to do everything else. One autumn when Auri was twelve, he and his father had gone into the fields to do the
grapillage
, the late harvest, when vineyards are open to anyone who wants to gather the last bunches of grapes left on the vines. His father had an old crank press and they squeezed out the grape juice together and began the fermentation in a huge plastic
cuve
.

“These late grapes make a beautiful sweet wine that will last for years,” his father told him. “I'm naming this one after you, Auri, since you made it. We'll open the first bottle to celebrate your sixteenth birthday! ‘Château Aurélien' will go perfectly with your mother's chocolate cake!”

But Jeannot always seemed to give more than he got in return. If he'd sold the vineyards to Manu Dombasle, then perhaps Auri could be going skiing with his friends over school vacation. But his family never did the least extravagant thing because his father didn't have a regular salary. He was an artist, a mason, an
homme à tout faire
always on the run, unlike the parents of Auri's classmates, who had nine-to-five jobs and made sure to always escape somewhere wonderful during school holidays instead of remaining stuck at home like Auri's family always was. Jeannot's friends called him a
soixante-huitard
because he still believed
in the revolutionary ideals of 1968, but he had been too young to actually participate in the demonstrations. Auri now thought his father was a royal phony, and Jeannot's lack of concern about money grated because it set them apart.

At last, he got up slowly on his slender stork's legs and went through the side door into the kitchen. The designs of black scorpions and chirping birds on the tiled wall jumped out at him, along with the eternal
cigale
, the insect whose loud, percussive whir symbolized hot summer days that were now long gone. An owl, a magpie, and a fat toad, all figments of his father's imagination, were stuck to the wall behind the stove, around the sink, and even on the old wooden beam above. A toad suited his father all right! He should make only toads, giant toads as big as he, because they looked just like him! Maybe they'd sell better than his pots and jars,
terre cuite
trays and vases that sat in his large studio, where the shiny metal chimney of the kiln reached like a signal higher than the tops of trees down on the plain by the river. The sign outside in the shape of a Greek amphora read:
JEAN-NOËL PIERREFEU, POTIER.

Just beyond the open door of the back room, Auri's new room, Jeannot stood with one hand on his hip, a large metal hammer gripped in his other fist. He looked around when he heard the sound of Auri's footsteps. “Can you come give me a hand?” he said. “I can't hold this hatch open by myself.” Auri didn't say a word, merely stepped forward, making it clear that it was an imposition on his usual Wednesday afternoon off from school when he should be allowed to do whatever he wanted. When his father lifted, Auri curled his
fingers beneath the heavy hatch and Jeannot pulled through a coil of black-coated electric wires, running them swiftly around the floor edges to the places where plugs and light fixtures would be installed.

It was a cool day, but Auri's hands felt hot with the effort of holding up the heavy wooden door that must have once been used as an entrance for goats or sheep. His grandparents had told him what the place had been like in the old days, before the vineyards had been planted, back when the fertile plain was full of sunflowers, fields of swaying grain, and fruit trees that enrobed the valley and the rising hills with their springtime pinks and purples. Nothing of those days was left, except for the occasional apricot or cherry tree, or the old peach tree from which his mother made jam every year, even though the peaches, when perfectly ripe, were of an unequaled perfection, sun-warmed, right off the branch, sweet and deliquescent as a dripping honeycomb.
Deliquescent!
Auri felt angered that a word his father used had slipped so easily into his thoughts. He bent his knees and focused angrily on his numbing fingers. His father leaned forward, his body halfway through the hatch, and Auri imagined letting go. A grin creased his pale unlined face, but he continued to stand stock-still while his father hauled in another circlet of wire.

“If you like, I'll teach you how to run these electric lines so you can do it yourself one day,” said Jeannot. “It's good for a person to know how to do a little of everything.” That was another one of those oft-repeated phrases that made Aurélien roll his eyes. Most adults said the same things over and over, as if they had very small brains with only a few mundane thoughts that popped up at certain preordained moments.
His father liked to use Provençal words too. “Did you know that in the Provençal language fruit trees are feminine, not masculine the way they are in French?” His father was always repeating things like that too. “
Pêchière, pommière, poirière
—after all, a tree that bears fruit should be female, no?” And they had their own
pêchière
, the peach tree that his father always touched with his fingertips when he passed, as if he were a druid honoring some local deity. Auri's grandparents were almost as bad with their Provençal sayings. They'd grown up speaking the dialect, but they were not within the perimeter of Auri's wrath and their words didn't grate on him the way his father's did. Those two white heads were harmless, mostly tending their kitchen garden and taking long walks together up into the mountains. They were like a pair of fluffy goats. How could you be angry at a goat?

In response to his father, Auri made an effort to use his most bored and disgusted voice. “If I ever need electrical work, I'll hire someone.” His own voice often shocked him, coming out as it sometimes did in a surprisingly deep, unruly growl. But this time it was nothing more than a mousy squeak that belied his insulting words. His voice was not to be relied on these days. His mother, Mathilde, predicted that by the following summer he'd have the low, constant tones of a man.

“It's good to be independent,” Jeannot replied. “You don't want to get stuck having to hire someone for every little thing. You're free when you can do it yourself.”

“Are we almost finished?” asked Auri.

“One more minute.” Jeannot pulled up another coil of
cable and just as it came through, Auri let the hatch fall full force on the rubber-coated wires.

“Merde alors!”
Jeannot jumped up, his dark eyebrows knotted. Auri stepped back and held his chest high, but he felt no bigger than a cockerel. A month ago, his father had hit him for the first time, a quick hard slap on the cheek at the dinner table when Auri complained to his mother that he wanted a new mobile phone, the kind that most of his friends had. “Jeannot!” Mathilde had exclaimed as Auri sat back in shock, his hand pressed to his burning face. Neither of his parents had ever physically punished him or his sister, Ada. When his father apologized afterward and offered to shake hands, Auri's heart had given a painful twist, but he did not extend his hand in return. As far as he was concerned, a line had been drawn.

That afternoon, he stared into his father's face, breathing to himself,
I dare you!
Jeannot bent his head and said, “Your hands got tired.
Ça va
. I'll lift this time.” He patted Auri on the shoulder before bracing himself and yanking up the hatch.

Aurélien didn't dare hesitate, but instead of bending to the task, he stuck his leg out and used his heel to drag the rest of the cable through the little doorway. He wouldn't bother using his hands, as that might make him look like he was a willing participant, or perhaps even apologetic.

“I want to finish wiring your room today because Thierry's having a show in Marseille this weekend. I'm going down to give him a hand.”

Auri liked Thierry, a painter who was so massively muscled that he resembled one of the old cylindrical
poteaux
,
the mounded stone well covers that still dotted the hillsides. With his long Fu Manchu mustache and his ribald stories, he always made Auri laugh.

“Are you bringing any of your sculptures?”

“No, I'm just helping out,” said Jeannot. “I know how Thierry likes his
tableaux
displayed.”

“Is he paying you?”

“Thierry is always generous.”

That meant that his father was probably getting nothing. Jeannot had many friends and seemed to live day-to-day doing whatever presented itself. When the spirit moved him he made his pottery. In the summer, when the tourists came, he was often flush. But it was edging in on winter now. If only he had a father who was a shop owner or a businessman, everything would be so different!

Auri's mother, Mathilde, was also a potter, but she made small things in her own electric kiln. She also worked part-time at a horticultural store in town where she was paid the SMIC, minimum wage. Auri didn't like it when on market days she would go through the piles of used clothing that the ragman brought, picking out things for the whole family. His sister, Ada, didn't seem to mind. But Ada was only ten and didn't know any better. The idea of old clothes disgusted Auri. Now he refused to accompany his mother to the market that had once been so extremely entertaining with the buskers and the music, the man with the performing monkey, and the packages of hot, sugarcoated churros that had crunched delectably between his teeth.

With the hatch closed and slip-locked, his father sat down on a three-legged stool that they'd found in the small
vaulted cave under the house. He'd stained and varnished it, and the wood shone dark amber.

Auri was surprised to see his father sitting in the middle of the day. Generally, Jeannot never stopped, always going here or there. But today he leaned his head on his hand for a moment and was very still. Then he yawned and stretched his hands up. “
Ouf!
I just had a
coup de fatigue.
Better have a coffee to wake me up. Would you care for a soda?” Auri would have liked one of the Oranginas that his mother had brought home as a special treat, but he shook his head. He didn't want to give his father the pleasure of his acceptance or have to sit down with him at the kitchen table and watch him drink his coffee.

“I'm going back outside. I have homework.”

“When you've finished I'll run you into town and we'll pick up the gears to repair your bike.” Auri shrugged. Bicycles were for little kids. His friends rode scooters now.

All at once something rumbled and a painful, squeaking crunch came from outside. His father leaped to the window. At the edge of their property, Manu Dombasle, dressed in his usual blue overalls and dusty boots, rode his tractor between the rows of grapevines. As Dombasle passed the corner of their terrain where the peach tree grew, his tractor swerved and he ground the side of it into the bark of the tree.

“Damn that
connard
!” said Jeannot. The last time Manu Dombasle and his father had spoken, Dombasle had made a stink, saying that vineyards should belong to vintners, not to those who knew nothing about them.

“Come on, Manu,” Jeannot had cajoled him. “Maybe we
can come to an agreement—you could rent some of my vines.” But Dombasle wanted to own the land, or nothing. For him, land was the only thing that counted.

“It's strange that he wants that bit of property,” Auri's father had said. “He already sold off his best parcels and it's clear that he could care less about making good wines. What a waste!”