How It All Started

I was sitting in a strange, little hut on a hillside in the south of France crying my eyes out. My husband looked at me with a mixture of helplessness and exasperation on his face, the kind of look many men have when they are confronted with emotional women. Of course, it was only jet lag, but I didn’t know it at the time. I just felt miserable. We had come here to buy an apartment, and my German friend Rudi had found a fantastic opportunity for us. A small apartment in the medieval village of Entrevaux where he owned a garden plot and had built several small huts high above a wild river, among the olive groves. And I was in one of these huts now. It was a chicken-house converted into a small but clean bedroom. I was sitting on a hard foam mattress spread over on an even harder wooden plank, tired, exhausted and thoroughly depressed.

We had just come back from checking out Rudi’s fantastic opportunity, an apartment on the fifth floor of a large house in the village, the former palace of the bishop. Little on the outside now hinted at the splendor of a palace. It was a rather dilapidated house, façade crumbling, windows dull and the shutters hadn’t been painted in decades. However, in the south of France this kind of decay can be charming, whereas in the north of Germany, where I had grown up, it was unacceptable, and in the U.S., where I have lived for the past thirty years, it was also not tolerated. I tried not to let the dreary appearance of the palace affect my anticipation. We got a key from Madame Michelle who lived in an overstuffed, dark apartment on the ground floor. Rudi had told us that Madame Michelle, a well-groomed woman in her forties, was to be treated with the utmost courtesy, and we did our best. We said bon jour and merci several times while Rudi smiled at her and mumbled something that nobody could understand. He doesn’t speak French but pretends he does because he has been coming here for twenty years and believes that he knows everything about the French, including the language, and he never tires of sharing his vast knowledge with us. I caught myself whispering unintelligible nasals to accompany the bon jour and merci.

It was a vast staircase that led to the top floor. A large German shepherd was lying on a landing no doubt guarding the door behind which a radio played an Italian aria. Up we went, and my husband was getting out of breath. He is slightly asthmatic. Finally we reached the top floor where the servants of the bishop must have lived at some time. The price for the apartment was very low, but like all potential buyers I expected a beautiful place nevertheless. As it turned out, the condition of the apartment matched the price. I wandered from the hallway with its torn linoleum to the living room with its fake bamboo-covered walls to the bathroom with the hideous tiles and the kitchen that had nothing but a faucet sticking out of the wall. The bedroom was separated by a curtain from the living room and featured a large bed whose bulging bedding was hidden under an enormous bedspread. I opened a cupboard and stared at a used shaving-brush. Oh no, this wouldn’t do! The place felt as if a couple of centenarians had just died here. The apartment comes with all the furniture, Rudi explained. Does that mean the shaving-brush was also included?

My husband cheerfully walked around the apartment, stopped by the window and enjoyed the view over the rooftops. All of a sudden, I felt very tired and confused. It didn’t matter that we had come here to buy this place. I wanted to be at home, not here with the ghost of an old couple, not in the chicken-house among the olives.

That’s how it all started. We didn’t buy this apartment. Instead, Rudi told us to buy Madame Michelle some fancy candy as a thank you for her effort of giving us the keys. She didn’t own the apartment and didn’t really care who bought it, but I hope she liked the candy. I was ready to give up the dream of a French pied-à-terre but my husband wasn’t. We talked to a realtor, and he showed us several apartments that were for sale. One was very nice and well maintained with damask covered walls in the bedroom, a marble fireplace in the living room and thick oak beams in the ceiling. The rooms were spacious and sunny and looked out over the plaza with its shops and restaurants. It was a little gem located on the edge of the village right above a gushing mountain river. My husband liked it, but I wasn’t convinced yet. When my husband needs a pair of pants he walks into the first store and buys the first pair he tries on. He hates shopping and wants to get it done quickly. I am different. I try on fifty pairs of pants. Then I compare, agonize, compare again and after much deliberation I might buy one. Obviously, I am a careful shopper, especially when it comes to apartments.

It was all too strange, the language, Rudi and his German friends who also lived on garden plots outside the village and constantly told us what to do and what to think. So, instead of making up our minds we took a hike. It was fall, and the foliage on the hills and mountains around us was ablaze with colors. Red, orange, yellow and above it a clear, blue sky. The trail led us through woods of oak, beech and chestnut trees. The air was brisk; the sun was warm. On we went, feasting our eyes on the colors and barely noticing that they were getting duller. All of a sudden, the sky was dark. We turned around and headed for the road when the first raindrops fell. Once there we took shelter under a tree, and my husband stuck out a thumb trying to stop the occasional car that sped by. Three passed us; none stopped. My enthusiasm about France and the French was at a low point when one of the cars, a jeep, came back. A man, obviously a hunter who had been surprised by the rain, motioned for us to get in. There was only one seat beside him. The back of the car was filled with hunting gear. He directed my husband to the back and told Madame, that’s me, to get in beside him. It was a gesture of simple politeness toward women, unexpected but definitely appreciated in my rather disheveled appearance. I think I decided right then and there that we would buy the apartment. I am not sure if I ever told my husband that it was the casual charm of a French hunter that tipped the scales.

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