Château de Courtomer
"The Parts are Wearing Out"
by Bill Bonner
Poitou, France - "Elizabeth rounded the edge of the house. There, in the back yard were two of Pierre’s prize cows. Sleek. Fat. Muscled. They were the kind of limousine cows that butchers must dream about. “Oh no....they’re going to eat our flowers.” She called Pierre. “Just close your gate so they can’t get out onto the road,” he advised. “It’s too dark for me to get them now. I’ll come in the morning. “And don’t worry; they won’t eat your flowers.” He was right. They didn’t eat them; they trampled them.
We got on the ferry last week. The wind was strong. The waves were high. The sea was rough. After a quick dinner, we returned to our cabin and lay down. We were afraid to get up. The ship was pitching and rolling so much, we feared we might get sick. Better to go to sleep. The next day, the sea was calmer and we got into Cherbourg without incident.
It is a long drive from the top of the Cotentin peninsula, on the north coast of Normandy, down to our house in Poitou. Along the way, the colors changed. From the green fields of Normandy, we passed through the pale grass of the Loire Valley and then on to the stunted corn and limp sunflowers of Poitou. “It’s a disaster,” Pierre reported. “The grass is all dried up over in their pasture. They came over to your place...I guess it really looked greener on the other side of the fence.”
Dressed in baggy shorts and a short-sleeve shirt, his sturdy legs tanned, his dark hair turning white at the edges, our neighbor is retiring this year. After a lifetime of trying to coax a living out of the poor soil of the area, he seems happy to be moving on. Pierre walked the cows back to where they were supposed to be, fixed the fence, and then joined us in the kitchen for a cup of coffee.
“So...what happened since we were gone?” is the same question we’ve posed each summer for the last 30 years. Pierre brings us up to date. Most of the news is about the neighbors who died in the last nine months...and those who are getting close.
We are in an area of Europe where little changes. Except, like an old man, it stoops over a bit more each year. Families don’t have children the way they used to. And those they do have tend to grow up and leave. Left behind are aging parents and grandparents, retirees and hangers-on.
To make matters worse, its main industry - farming - is becoming harder to do. Small farms are no longer viable. Big farms require large, sophisticated and expensive machinery. Pierre is retiring. Finding someone to replace him won’t be easy. Some landowners are giving up. They are planting trees, renting to large, commercial enterprises, or simply letting the weeds take over.
It was while we were discussing the grave state of French agriculture that Damien came over. “A cup of coffee?” we suggested. “Sure...” Damien wore a pair of loose working pants, topped by a t-shirt that was either very dirty or a drab brown color designed to look like it was dirty. A part-time handyman, Damien is more of a retainer than an employee...more like family than hired help. He is growing old too.
For the last twenty years, he has tended the vegetables, cut the grass, cut up the fallen trees, fixed the gutters, unclogged pipes... and made war on the ragondins (a giant water rat from South America that now infests rivers and ponds in Europe.) He traps them. He shoots them. He poisons them. They come at him in his nightmares. lIt is a war he seems to be losing. Yesterday, we walked down to the garden and startled two of the animals - young ones, about the size of small rabbits. They had come up from the canal next to the garden to eat plums that had fallen on the ground.
As a gardener Damien has two short-comings. He is color blind, so he can’t always tell when things are ripe. And he has a dislike for flowers that is almost as intense as his hatred of ragondins. Given his druthers, he would spray round-up on them all and pave the flower garden with asphalt.
Damien took the cigarette out of his mouth and sat down at the table. “The weather is supposed to break tomorrow. We’ve had a terrible heat wave. Everything is cooked. And did you see the fire? Somebody must have tossed a cigarette out of a window and it set fire to the dried-out bushes and grass next to the road. They had fire trucks from all over on the scene. But they got it under control pretty fast.” Damien gave a chuckle. The fire must have livened things up.
Last year, we worked with a grandson and framed out a studio apartment in one of the barns near the house. We didn’t really need another bedroom, but it was a fun project. While we were gone, Damien had finished it: he put up the insulated wall board and layed down an oak floor. We thanked him. “That took me the whole month of January,” he explained. “And then I was in such pain from bending over I had to go to the doctor. They tell me I have a pinched nerve. I’m going tomorrow to see what they’re going to do about it.”
Damien, too, is eyeing retirement. He grew up in an orphanage, went to work at 16, and has done physical jobs all his life, generally preferring brute force to labor-saving improvisation. “The parts are wearing out,” he says. We were all sitting outside, under an umbrella. The day was just beginning but it was already hot. “Bonjour.”
Across the gravel driveway came a tall figure...tanned, thin...with binoculars dangling from his neck. He was wearing only a pair of cut-off jeans and flip-flops. Edouard looks like someone in his 40s...but he is actually quite a bit older. He goes about in warm weather with as little on as possible because he suffers from a rare nerve disorder that makes it uncomfortable to wear clothes. He is a member of the family...handsome...clever. Though not a blood relative, he has been with us, off and on, for more than 50 years.
“I like the heat. But last week, it was too hot, even for me. I slept on the couch in the kitchen, where it was cooler than my bedroom.” The kitchen is in the oldest part of the house. Its thick stone walls keep it cooler than the rest of the house.
“But I don’t like the drought. The trees are drying up. Several of them are dead. You lose an old tree and you can’t replace it. I mean, you can put in a young tree, but not a noble, old one. And the birds like the old ones. “An old tree takes time…decades…to develop. You can create something new,” he continued philosophically. “But not something old.” As we puzzled over what he meant by that, Edouard pulled up a chair. He prepared himself a tea, which he drank through a silver straw, like an Argentine drinking mate.
After a few minutes of conversation, we all got up and went to our separate occupations. The day grew hotter and hotter. But as it went on clouds appeared in the west. They growled as we sat down for dinner. Then, after a long evening at the table, with wine, cigarettes, candles and conversation, we went to bed with the windows open (there is no air-conditioning) and heard the rumbling in the distance. During the night, as we lay, warm and dry in our beds, lightning flashed…thunder cracked…and the rain poured down.
The next morning, we went down to find the kitchen floor – barely above ground level -- flooded. A gutter had clogged up, sending a Niagara of rainwater splashing under the door. We baled and mopped...using a dust pan to scoop up the water. “Well,” said Edouard, looking on the bright side. “Maybe the drought is over.”
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