10/10/2005. Our own little piece of Provence

Sometime in the late 80s, I sat riveted before a screen, watching the movie Manon des Sources (Manon of the Spring). I was transported by this story of treachery and revenge set in the Provence hills back of Marseilles, but even more, I was smitten with the countryside in the film--its stones, its fragrant garrigue (scrub land), the sun-bleached bones of its mountains, and its secret springs. In this film, which closely follows Marcel Pagnol's novel, as well as in its prequel, Jean de Florette, a spring is central to the story. The seduction of this film was so strong that I immediately made a decision that seemed nothing sort of fantastical at the time: I had to move to France.

About 12 years later, I did. But sharing my time between Paris and Normandie, while full of innumerable charms, was still very different from living in Pagnol's landscape. Denis and I, after many long weekends spent in various parts of southern France, talked about someday buying a mas (small country farm house) in Provence. But for me, this was a remote eventuality--too delightful to bear thinking about for the longing that squeezed my heart whenever I did. As a way to innoculate myself against disappointment, I told myself that Provence would be already all 'bought up' by the time we ever got around to looking seriously. And so,my dream of inhabiting the land of sun, stones, and herbs could remain just that--a dream.



So, when Denis proposed that we spend a few days looking at property in Provence after we got back from China, I of course agreed with alacrity. But I maintained an internal reserve. I figured this was just a fact-finding mission for the distant future.

The last week in August found us combing the countryside around the town of Forcalquier, on the edge of the moutainous region known as the Luberon. We had identified this is an area that we both very much loved--both for its landscape and the fact that its character hadn't been destroyed by multimillion dollar renovations. Denis had lined up in advance visits to several promising sounding properties, all of which, by the end of three days, had turned out disappointing in one way or another. We were still trying to get in touch with an agent in Forcalquier who was specialized in the sort of thing we were looking for: old stones, preferably not yet tampered with by renovation.




After many missed phone calls, she finally called us back. Denis had his cell phone plugged into speaker mode while we drove. We arranged with the effervescent voice at the other end to meet at her office the next morning.

Fall seemed to be in the cool, damp morning air as we met the person who was every bit as bubbly as her voice. Full of smiles, she bundled us into her car and wheeled us off to look at places. The first, a rather tumbledown stone house, was pretty, but under the shadow of high tension wires. No to that. Next, a fabulously renovated mas with a tasteful (e.g. not turquoise) pool, high on the mountain of Lure. But it was both too expensive and too small for us, and the location--while beautiful--was too austere for me.



Mylène Murano--for that was our real estate fairy's name--figuratively scratched her head. She had two more properties to show us, she said. One was an ultra-modern 'architect's house', also in a mountainous location. She and Denis, who was in the front seat, proceeded to talk animatedly about this one--how wonderful it would be for someone who has lots of art (such as Denis) and what a great deal it was. Meanwhile, I cringed in the backseat. I was sure that Denis was going to love that cold, contemporary house, that it would be the buy of the century--and that I would hate it. However, it couldn't be seen until the next morning.

Meanwhile, said Mylène, she had another place that had just been listed a couple of days ago. We just might like it, she said, although it was some distance from Forcalquier and actually closer to the village of Banon.



My ears perked up at the mention of Banon. I love that village, and what's more, it's the home of one of France's most famous cheeses--a chevre wrapped in chestnut leaves and tied with raffia, making it also one of the prettiest. Definitely on my gastronomic map, you might say. I was jerked out of my reverie when the woods that had been flanking the narrow mountain road we were on suddenly gave way and sunlight flooded the car. Mylène nosed the car down into a broad valley.






A small jewel of a village hung suspended on a hill to our left. "That's Revest des Brousses," Mylène informed us. "We're almost at the house now." We turned right through the belly of the valley and pulled into a driveway.


I practically held my breath. Anyone who has hunted for a home knows the feeling: the mystical image you create in your head, or your heart, of the Right Place; the unbearable suspense each time you go to check out a property; the combination of hope and despair that roils in your stomach as you see it for the first time. But as this house registered on my visual screen, I felt hope tipping the scales.




The house was actually two buildings: the first, an actual house (on the right in the photo taken from the back at left, and on the left in the photo at the head of the article). It was what you might call a 'bastidon'--a little bastide. (A bastide is the sort of rather grand, rectangular house characteristic of Provence, and is what you usually see featured in magazine article restorations.) Separated from the house by a small courtyard was a bergerie, or sheep barn, part of which showed signs of having being inhabited at some time, probably by shepherds or farm workers.



A 'room' on the far side of the bergerie had lost its roof, and to my delight a fig tree--that colonizer of ruins--had sprouted there (photo right). One thing was certain: this place certainly had old stones. In fact, nothing but. While the front and sides of the house had been rather badly stuccoed over, the back revealed its true nature. Identical to the bergerie, the house too was built of the native sandstone gleaned from the surrounding fields. Only the stone around the windows and doors was 'taillée', or carved into blocks. As I gazed at the stones, I felt keenly how it was but a bit of the natural environment molded by the hands of men and women into human shelter.



These were stones that told a story, a story of the life of this farm. High up on one wall of the bergerie, a brick-barred window meant that there had once been a pigeonnier there--a 'pigeon room' for raising theses succulent birds prized for the table. The pigeons would fly free and return to their home through the openings between the bricks, which were too high and too narrow to permit marauding mammals to enter. Below the pigeon entrance, a former window--framed with blocks of stones--had been filled in with fieldstone. Undoubtedly this window had been closed off during the mid-nineteenth century, the period of French history when the tax on buildings was proportionate to the number of windows, a practice which suddenly led to many dark interiors. So just how old were these buildings?

Mylène: "Judging from the architectural details, I'd say 400 years plus."

I: "..."


She turned out to be right. The arched entry beneath the stairs in the first black-and-white photo is a key 16th century characteristic, we read after buying a stack of books on the architecture of the region.


The ground floor of both the house and the bergerie consisted of an intriguing array of rooms, all with vaulted stone ceilings, each obviously with its own purpose. Gripped by excitement, I flitted from one to the next. Here, obviously, was a fruit cellar; I could tell by the shelves and the remains of a few decaying wooden crates. Several had been stables, as they had mangers, or were still caked with accumulations of manure (for the garden!! my heart pounded...).






Another contained a mammoth oaken barrel. (Oh, surely this was too good to be true!) Of course, every farm made its own wine... Another had blackened walls clearly indicating that it had housed a wood-fired bread oven.










Denis was if anything more excited than I. He immediately launched into visions of what to do with each room of both the house and the bergerie. This was easy to do, as the bergerie had not been touched by any restoration or remodeling, while the house had only had an awful bathroom installed and some fireplaces plastered over. Wonderful stone stairs led up to the 'back' entrance into the kitchen, which still retained its traditional plaster and wood niches for a pendulum clock, storage of dishes, and vessels of olive oil.





A stubbed-off flue betrayed where the cooking fireplace had been, and a niche beside it the former location of the potager. This word, meaning 'vegetable garden' in modern French, is the Provençal name for the traditional cookstove of the region, made to be filled with coals from the fireplace and provide the slow, gentle heat needed to simmer farmhouse dishes such as the daube.





Although several of the rooms had been replastered and painted white, traces of exuberant Provençal color remained here and there: the soft golds and peaches of the native ochres from nearby Roussillon (which were also, by the way, the inspiration for the colors of this website), and the soft gray-green traditionally used on contrasting woodwork. The stairwell from the kitchen landing to the upper floor also retained its original ochres (see photo bottom of article), still glowing after all these years of neglect, although traditionally Provençal houses were given new coats of ochre inside and out at least once a year.



To the southwest of the house was a lavoir and fountain, a communal clotheswashing tank/water source typical of such structures which were built all over Provence in the 1800s. It was filled with stagnant water. Where had the water to feed it come from?

"There's a parcel of land up the mountain behind the house that goes with this property," answered Mylène. It has a couple of shepherd's cabanons in ruins and...a spring. The water used to be piped down here to the house, but the tiles are ancient and broken up. Now the water just flows free and a farmer uses it to irrigate his fields up the hill. But the water belongs to this property; it just needs to be captured and piped down again."

I was stunned silent, merely blinking at Mylène, whose face was haloed by the late afternoon sunlight behind her. My vision was blurring, like a movie showing a flashback. I was replaying the Pagnol films in my head, for they tell the story of a life-giving spring which is secretly and nefariously diverted, thus starving out its rightful owners. While Pagnol's country was closer to Marseilles, this bit of Provence where we were standing was home to Jean Giono, another beloved regional writer whose work was just as drenched in the local terroir as Pagnol's. In fact, Giono's nephew lives not a kilometer from this house where we were standing.

When we got back to Paris, I immediately bought a volume of the complete works of Giono, in French. I opened it, and began his first novel, Colline (Hill). This story, full of the place-names surrounding the house at Revest des Brousses, also begins with a spring. And with a lavoir, which tells of a past when the houses on the hill had been part of a village, and the women had gathered there to wash their clothes, and their hair, in the cool sheltering shade of the oaks surrounding the lavoir.

I hadn't yet read Giono's story when I told Denis that the first thing we would need to plant at Revest des Brousses was a native oak by the lavoir. The oak will be the first step in bringing this house back to life, as we listen carefully to the lives past whispering from its walls.

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