Vacation Part 2: Bergerac, and the Ballet

Benji saw me whisper to Rebecca, and saw her laugh indulgently.

"What was the joke?" he asked.

"Oh..." Eyes turned to me. I didn't really want to tell it. If I refused, of course, they would insist and thus, exalt the joke. Then it would be a disappointment when I finally did tell it.

"Je ne sais pas la dire en francais..." I pleaded.

"That's okay, say it in English." I wondered if Benji was actually British. He wasn't. His accent was. I told the joke. What happened to the cannibal that was late for dinner. Baptiste translated the joke into French for the rest of the party, then translated the chorus of "quoi?" back into English for me.

"He got the cold shoulder."

Translation. Explanation. English expression meaning battre froid à quelqu'un. Or maybe tenir à l'écart. Also a cut of meat.

Baptiste is a friend that I met through a mutual friend. Rebecca and I are staying with him in Bergerac for a few days before we take off for the Pyrenees. We will see him again in Paris. Tall. Dreadlocked. Music enthusiast and avid reader. And excellent cook. I am still picking errant bits of duck out of the greasy pan. This is rapidly becoming gross; the pan is cooling and the grease is beginning to... the only honest word is "congeal." I am struggling vainly to follow the threads of conversation around the table. From the general hum themes emerge now and then and I understand them, well enough to comment on them. But by the time I've worked out the grammar, I've been distracted by another conversation, and the first conversation has sunk back in. Disappeared. Seamless, drop of water in a puddle. Every so often, someone gets the attention of the rest of the dinner party and tells a joke. We are fourteen at a tiny table. The guests vastly outnumber the wine glasses. We pour our wine into any old cup, heedless; the bold and unconventional. Emancipated. Some people worry about wine glasses. We do not.

After dinner, Baptiste and I will grab a ukulele or a guitar and learn "Take Me Home, Country Road." It takes every one of the four chords I know on the ukulele. We play country songs from O Brother Where Art Thou. We try to play the George Brassens songs I promised I'd learn but haven't quite yet. We don't play a lot, because this isn't that kind of night.

Baptiste offers to show us around the Christmas Market tomorrow. Vegan food. Organic food. Local beer producer... your beer handed to you by the man who brewed it. Je suis producteur. On est producteur. Hot wine. Strange, loquacious man selling vegan food. Should've sat elsewhere, because the aforementioned will not shut up. "Don't talk while you're eating!" It's my life, man, and your food is... well it's okay. Stinging nettle soup. Artisanal soap. Man chipping flint into arrowheads, making fire. Bookshop, back home. Singing in the Rain tomorrow evening.

We agree to the Christmas Market, and to things we do not yet know about - it's your town, we'll follow you. Then we descend to our basement guest room. The space heater works. Tant mieux; In spite of the sunshine today there are still pockets of snow clinging to shadowy patches outside. We'll have to change places in the night when one of us gets too hot.

I must have heard a round dozen or so jokes in French tonight. I can't remember a single one of them.

***

Our last day in Bergerac was spent almost entirely in one of Baptiste's favorite restaurants: The Bodega. Spanish style food. Rebecca and I shared a tapas plate. Then the main course. Washed down with Sangre del Torro. Out on the front porch under the awning. The rain... pleasant when it doesn't make you wet.

After lunch, we went inside for coffee. Baptiste disappeared for a few minutes, then reappeared with a deck of cards. We played a game (the name escapes me) in which you place cards on top of other cards, looking for a... repetition of some kind... when you see it, you slap your hand down on the deck. I don't really remember. I won a couple of times. I don't usually do well with fast-thinking and observing sorts of games. I was the President. That was part of the game. President, Vice-President.

After the card game, when we still had over an hour to kill, Baptiste and his cousine showed us card tricks.

On the way back to the station, we stopped by Benji's residence, a house that he is restoring. Beautiful, and old. God knows how old. It's like that with a lot of things in France. We walk inside. There's a wide doorway leading to a living room on the left and a stairway on the right. Ben leads us back to what must be a den of some kind, where he's laid out a makeshift bed on the floor. There's an overgrown garden behind the house; this will be tilled, groomed, replanted. We retrace our steps and climb the stairs. At the top of the stairs, we saw a large room filled with bookcases filled with books. Then, up a narrow spiral stair to the attic. He'll completely redo this whole area. Talking and motioning with his hands, he levels walls, installs doors, raises handrails. Interesting guy, Ben. An artist. His work is stacked against the walls of a sunlit upstairs room. Salt and pepper hair. His face still seems young. Sharp eyes. Always seem to be observing the scene from just above or beyond it. And perfect English, I'm sure I've already mentioned. At the party two days ago, he observed:

"The cat never eats the dog's food, but as soon as the dog arrived he immediately ate all of her food. Dogs are quite ecumenical in that way."

That's an example. Not everyone uses the word ecumenical, and to use it to say that a dog will eat anything was a stroke of brilliance, I thought.

***

For the second time in almost as few days, I found myself on the tram in Bordeaux, drumming on the vertical aluminum handles, with very limited time to get to where I needed to go and do what I needed to do. Arrive. Get to Jonah's. Upstairs, shower? (probably no time), change, walk over.

We were going to see Swan Lake. I knew the music - everyone does - but I had never seen a full ballet before. I have wondered, a few times on this trip, to find myself enjoying things that I might not have even thought much about a few months earlier. Wine is one of these things. I have opinions about wine now. I wonder if my new taste for wine is anything to do with Rebecca. The timing is, I can't argue... suspicious. Let see, how long have I liked wine? A few months... and when did I meet Rebecca? Oh well... I like to think that I'm open to new experiences. That's why I'm here, after all. In France. In Europe. At the ballet tonight. In my new outfit.

I had been genuinely surprised, a few days ago, to discover that old, loose-fitting jeans and graying tennis shoes were not considered appropriate opera-wear. I think Rebecca finds my lack of polish and savoir-faire amusing... cute, maybe? This is what I hope, anyway. God you're beautiful, I thought, standing in front a mirror. I called to Rebecca in the other room, apologizing for looking so good, for raising the bar so high. I needn't have bothered. When she stepped into the room, many thoughts occurred to me, each one sounding more stilted than the rest. "Picture of elegance": True. Lame-sounding. You look beautiful, I told her reverently. She did.

"Deux billets, s'il vous plaît."

Apparently, this request did not plaît: The woman behind the counter attended to us with thin-lipped impatience before stepping away and leaving us at the counter. I looked around, theatrically confused, until another, much sweeter, clerk motioned us over and sold us tickets for the best seats she could manage to find us. Then, stepping into the hall, we bought a program and went to find our seats.

There's no point in trying to describe the beauty of the ballet that evening. Part of the reason is that we only saw half of it. Next time, better seats. Tickets in advance. Still, what we saw and heard left my chest aching dully. At intermission, the woman next to us asked us if we were English. We told her we were American, and she told us that she has a son in America. Had married an American girl. She told us she had left her husband and little niece behind to see tonight's show. Wanted to see the ballet, those philistines of a niece and a husband be damned! Later, as we sat in a nearby restaurant called the Bodega (second of the day if you're counting), Rebecca confided that she wanted to be just like that old lady, and go to ballets and things even if her husband didn't feel like it.

"So what did you think of the ballet?" She asked.

"I... I liked it." (Much more than that, but talking about it wouldn't add anything to it. It was beautiful.)

We sat in the noisy bar, thinking about the show, humming the themes. There is a beautiful kind of solitude in disappearing into a noisy bar. In my memory our high, round table was an island -  peaceful, isolated - in a sea of the self-absorbed and raucous. Our thoughts were still on the spectacle we had just left; we were savoring the aftertaste and enjoying each other's company. Around us people were shouting jokes, trying to be the last to say something apt or witty or intelligent about whatever topic. I looked at Rebecca, and did not tell her I thought she was beautiful. You tell her too much, it probably doesn't mean much anymore.

"I liked it," I finished.

Rebecca, in front of the Grand Théâtre, where we saw Swan Lake.

Soon... Part 3: The Pyrenees