Letters from France: Getting to Know You

He is slim as a cigarette, with white skin, and black hair. His eyes are blue, the whites very white. From his lower lip to his neck, he has executed the slimmest facial hair design I’ve ever seen, perhaps two hairs wide. He must be an expert with a razor. Surely, he is deft enough to help me navigate the medieval banking system I need to join. My banker is only here on Fridays, mostly he is in the next town over. Ultimately, even he cannot perform miracles, but he can make the process of establishing a bank account charming and pleasant. I could have an account by Friday, a month after arriving, and I learned a new French word, “papperasse” which means paperwork, but implies red tape and hassle.

It was also time to get my hair colored and cut. I finally caught up with the coiffeuse when she happened to be open. A fourth generation hair dresser, her family has always operated out of this shop. She pointed out chairs that had belonged to her grandfather, who also tailored men’s suits, and a cabinet that she had transformed from one of her mother’s sinks. Her mother was born in the house I’m living in.

She herself is interested in wild plants and natural foods. As my color processed, she went to the pots out front, snipped some verveine and mint, and made a tisane, an infusion, for us, as well as for some of the other shop owners on the street, who were sitting outside enjoying the sunshine. Their chatter hummed through the door as she started clipping, and clipping, and clipping… I really got my euros’ worth that day.

The aptly named, huge Monsieur Bloch arrived the day after I called him. He and his assistant with the permanent grin and a Muttley snicker, cleaned out the chimney, but pronounced that the flue door was inoperably stuck open. While the handyman was in the linen closet lowering the temperature on the water tank, he turned and asked, “So, you’re a writer, eh?” I nodded, and with a faraway look in his eye, he commented, “Writing is such an important thing to do. It helps you understand your soul.” You never know where you’ll find a poet. Then, when he yanked on the string I couldn’t pull, to open the window vent above the stove, the string broke. The big, handy poet will come back to fix that next week, he said.

The air cargo arrived after an unbelievable 26 days, and although the delivery guy couldn’t get the truck through arches leading to the village center, he did haul my pallet over the cobblestones through the town, past everyone, to my doorway in the alley. In it were my creature comforts and my disassembled bike. The butcher gave me the name of the guy who used to have a bicycle shop in the village.

When I drove up to the little house, all the dogs started barking, and the frazzled man shouted over the fence, “Why did those people in the village send you here? I’m retired!” When I explained my bike needed assembling, he growled, “Okay, lemme see what’s in the box.” He fussed as he pulled the parts out, but, once a wheel man, always a wheel man, and he liked mine. Phew. HIs commentary proceeded nonstop as he worked, telling me all about the United States, its geography and economy, how amazing that we have a black president only 150 years after slavery had ended (he had read Uncle Tom’s Cabin), and that Americans, except me, are big, and including me, nice. He invited me to stop by for a glass of wine next time I am out for a bike ride

.

We loaded the bike in the used car I had just bought from the village garagiste. He said, “You know, he’s only had that garage for a year or so. He was an expert repairman for Renault before that. I knew him when he was a little boy. He’s a great guy, totally honest and upright.” Phew, again.

So, after four weeks here, I’m starting to understand how things work, seeing the warp and weft of this tightly woven community, and making connections with people who might become friends. No matter what, each person in this village is important to the others and to me, in their function and their relationships to others. So far, so good, pretty slow, and increasingly comfortable.