Uncovering the soul of a mas

For months now, our house in Haute Provence has seemed to be in destruction rather than construction. A blue crane hovers over the buildings like a giant bird of prey, seemingly poised to dismember our mas stone by stone. The ancient ceramic tiles it has plucked from the roof are sorted and stacked all about. Likewise, stones lie carefully categorized and stockpiled like so may puzzle pieces. A gigantic pile of rubble--the plaster which covered the inside walls--chokes the courtyard between the house and the bergerie (sheep barn) beside it.

Just beyond the lavoir, or clotheswashing fountain, are enormous piles of mixed earth and old manure. They were excavated from the ground floor, whose vaulted stone ceilings used to shelter goats and sheep. Nunzio Murano, in charge of our restoration--has carefully deposited them there as I requested. This slightly sunken spot has been identified as the historic site of the property's potager, which was irrigated with the gray water from the fountain. The old manure and enriched soil will serve to bring this garden back to life.

But this period of seeming wanton destruction is rather a time of revelation. What seems like destruction is instead a painstaking peeling off of the most superficial layers of the house in a quest to reveal it as it once was--and was meant to be. Most of the house now has been carefully décroutée--literally "decrusted"--the layer of crépis or stucco chipped away from the stone beneath to reveal the character of the walls before modern maintenance concerns obliterated them behind a blank pasty layer. The "decrusting" has completely changed the aspect of the house from sad and downcast to proud. The very stones seem to rejoice in their liberation, free to soak up the Provençal sunlight once again. Lizards immediately set up housekeeping in their crevices. The house is beginning to come back to life.

Less obvious are some of the actual changes we've made thus far. We've added over two feet to the height of the roof, allowing us to raise the ceilings on the second (main) and third floors, and make these rooms more spacious and airy. But the proportions of the original rooflines have been carefully conserved. We are restoring the kitchen fireplace and adding a fireplace in each upstairs bedroom. When all is done, a total of four chimneys will protrude from the roof, but the new ones are impossible to differentiate from the existing one, so perfectly traditional is the work of Mr. Murano. Farmhouses in the region of Banon where we are traditionally have the main door entering off an elevated porch. This porch on our mas was uncomfortably narrow. We widened it, which also created a more spacious room beneath on the ground floor.

But, all in all, we have used a very light hand in making any changes. Our desire is not to transform this humble mas into the sort of glitzy "house in Provence" choking the pages of home decoration magazines. In fact, we have such a visceral dread of this phenomenon--which has utterly destroyed the character of beautiful villages like Gordes--that we wear a virtual necklace of garlic against this evil vampire. Our goal is to bring this house back to life as it was once was--with minimal nods to the demands and desires of modern life.

The core of our mas is over 400 years old. It is what is known as a villa romaine--a Roman house. You can follow the history of its expansions in the traces of different stonework on the exterior. Disguised by a set of built-in shelves, we have found the vestiges of a potager--not a vegetable garden in this case but a masonry stove fired with wood coals and used to slow-simmer rustic dishes--adjacent to the fireplace in what is now the living room. Its presence is a sure indication that this was once the central room of the house--truly a "living" room in the sense that, as site of the hearth used for both warmth and cooking, all activity was centered there.

The "architect" of our mas knew what he was doing. A paysan or farmer deeply rooted in the character of the Provençal coutryside, he knew how to design a good house, perfectly integrated into its environment. The fact that "design" was certainly not part of his vocabulary doesn't preclude that this house was built with garden-variety Provençal genius. The house is impeccably oriented--its back to the piercingly cold winter mistrals, sunny in winter, and shady and cool in summer. A stunning view of the nearby hilltop village of Revest-des-Brousses is perfectly framed by its windows.

Sometimes, the builders of this house seem to send us messages from the past, directing us on how to recreate it as it was meant to be. We had wrecked out a huge and ugly bathroom that took up most of a room adjacent to the kitchen that we wanted to use as a dining room. We had planned the doorway to this room for a corner of the kitchen. But when we took out a cheap set of shelves set into a recess in the kitchen wall and removed the plaster, we discovered the original door linking these two rooms. A stroke of genius, this door lies on the axis of the beautiful view of the village that is framed by the window beyond, and allows this view to be enjoyed from the kitchen.

Removing the plaster from the inside walls has worked changes on the inside aspect that are as striking as those on the outside. For one, we have discovered the handhewn stones framing the doorways. The ceilings denuded of their plaster disguise reveal handhewn beams and the traditional Provençal soliveau ceiling. This construction, painstakingly restored by Mr. Murano, reminds me of the traditional vigas of New Mexican architecture. In the case of the soliveau, the spaces between the beams are bridged by planed pieces of wood intercalated with plaster. (In the past a Provençal version of adobe was used in the interstices.) The beam-and-soliveau ceiling is richly textural and incredibly warm compared to the sterile starkness of the plaster.

One of the things I love most about our mas is the character it gains from all its add-ons, which are at the back (kitchen side) of the house. Not only does each one have a story to tell, but all together they create an intriguing geometry and what we call in French, "de la gueule." It has character. There is a deep, dark room housing a gigantic wine barrel, which of necessity was built inside this cellar, as its diameter is much wider than the door. Of course, I dream of making my own wine in there some day. In the meantime, I'll be content to start just aging other people's!

There's a vegetable storage room, with some old claies (wooden storage racks) scattered about, and a woodshed. Now, for the best. At the back end off all this, like a half-forgotten afterthought, is a room completely blackened on the inside. Its sole unglassed window even wears a blackened brow of ancient soot.

Inside, other than the black trace of long-ago woodfires, there is unfortunately nothing. But once, this room housed a huge wood-burning bread oven. And within a few years, it will again. But for all its eviscerated, empty interior, this room bears the most touching testimony of all to the past. On the soot-slickened stone of the doorframe are layers and layers of graffiti--rough figurines and words, some unintelligible. But clearly visible is the name Jeanne Gabert. Maybe one day, when I can spend weeks at a time here, I'll have the time to research the history of our mas in the regional archives at Sisteron. Meanwhile, I can only fantasize about Jeanne. I imagine her as a girl of fifteen or sixteen, feeling bored while she waited for the bread to bake. I picture her framed in this stone doorway, with long dark hair and a lively bosom. She is craning her neck to see a young shepherd passing in the alley behind the house with his flock and flashing her eyes at him.

On the other side of the bergerie is the sole tree that still survives from the past of this farm. It is a gnarly quince, clearly neglected for a good forty years. When Denis saw it, he dismissively said that of course we'd cut that down. I practically leaped at him. For many reasons, uince is one of my very favorite fruits. I love how completely unmodern this fruit is (I know, I'm a sort of kitchen luddite), with its woody core, and thick, inedible waxy skin covered with a scurf of fuzz. The hard flesh of the quince, inedible raw, must be cooked long and slowly to transform its woodenness into sumptuous, deep rose red, yielding flesh of the most intense perfume in the fruit kingdom. In fact, ripe quince exhale an intoxicating aroma even raw, the only way of judging ripeness in this fruit which never becomes soft until rotten. The old quince tree behind the bergerie is loaded with huge, glowing yellow fruits, stubbornly clinging to life and offering up its perfumed orbs as it has for decades. This tree is for me the only living link with the past inhabitants of this place.

There's been an inordinate amount of luck involved in our finding our mas in Provence, not the least of which has been finding Nunzio Murano. He simply followed in the trail of fairy dust left behind by his sister, Mylène, our beloved real estate agent who led us straight to this house as surely as if she were the right hand of destiny incarnate. I'm sure Mr. Murano has old stones of Provence for bones, so sure is his instinct for how to treat them and his respect for the architectural traditions of Haute Provence. Thanks to him, we can come down from Paris every three or four weeks, secure in the knowledge that our project is being conducted as we would if we were there--only with much more experience, and such modesty! Mr. Murano's hands tell the story of a life dedicated to the love of vieilles pierres--the old stones which he handles with such sensitivity and devotion. And his face, well--take a look. What you see is the very spirit of Haute Provence.

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