June 10, 2015
I have become friends with Chantal, a woman who lives down the street from me, on rue de la Charite. Chantal earns some money by selling beautifully embroidered bags for all sorts of purposes: vide-poches to put earrings, cuff links and the like atop a dresser; trousses with zippers to keep make-up and other small items in; decorative pillows, laundry bags and even purses.
Born in Algeria, she lived for many years in the countryside outside Marseille. Her two children grown, she lives, for the moment, in the house of a childhood friend, her meagre resources (she is divorced) making it necessary to accept her friend's charity. She lives there with Baboun, her large black dog, now elderly.
His age notwithstanding, Baboun retains a liveliness that makes him and Beau natural companions. I have taken to walking Beau on the path towards the fields with Chantal and Baboun a few times a week in the late evening, just before dark. It is cool then, and the path, a cut between the fruit orchards and vegetable gardens, leads to a stream above which can be seen the remnants of the old bridge to Trausse, now impassable. Years ago the bridge was a shortcut to Trausse, but during a period of heavy rain, the flooding loosened the bridge's supports, so that it is now sealed off to traffic.
The result is that the first part of the walk ends in a locale that would have inspired Romantic artists in love with ruins to render the scene in all its poetic beauty. Baboun loves to descend to the stream below and cool off, Chantal tells me, suggesting Beau might like to do so too. However, Beau is too small to manage the effort safely, so hangs back.
Beau is not too small, though, to imitate Baboun in eating the grasses around the cherry trees nearby. Chantal has been picking the cherries off the trees before they rot, as whoever owns the land seems uninterested in culling them. In small villages, when land is not actively managed, gleaners appear. Technically, gleaning is only allowed after the harvest is brought in, but with many people living on limited means, land is put to whatever purpose those willing to work it see fit to engage in, the legalities be damned.
For instance, there is a poulailler --a chicken coop, complete with hens laying eggs, and a rooster-- flourishing in the land behind the back of my house. Further down, in a declivity in the land, there are potagers --vegetable gardens. A few times a week, a young man drives his van past the easement behind my house and that of my neighbor, to tend to his onions. So Chantal's taking of the cherries from trees that belong to someone else is far from unusual. She picks a tree and harvests the fruit, making jams and that easy-to-make pastry called a clafoutis from her hoard. Anyone who has a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking has probably made a clafoutis from Julia Child's recipe.
But clafoutis here come with the cherries in the cake unpitted. --Even in restaurants, the dessert is served that way. Julia Child renders the recipe with greater sophistication in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, with pitted fruit, but clafoutis are quick desserts made with pancake batter. So the fruit is rarely pitted, the consumer beware!
Chantal having culled the cherries she wants and put them into a small sack, we return the way we came and I leave her at my door. Beau and I have a quiet evening and turn in at about 11:30 p.m.
At 1:30 a.m. I am awakened by the sound of Beau retching. He has something in his throat he can't get out. His breathing is unaffected, but something caught in the throat may require an emergency visit to the veterinary hospital in Carcassonne a half hour away. I sit up most of the night with Beau, who about 5:00 a.m., finally vomits up food and the offending substance --the grasses he consumed in imitation of Baboun on our earlier outing.
Returning to bed, I awake an hour later than usual and wonder whether Beau will be able to swallow his food this morning, and whether I need to drive him to the veterinarian two towns away, in Rieux Fortunately, that is not the case: Beau swallows his fish oil capsule and the salmon treat I give him with it without the least problem. I give him a bit less food as a precautionary measure: he eats everything quickly.
--And promptly starts hopping around like a jack rabbit, running around the house, as he is wont to do mornings. What a relief!
No comments:
Post a Comment