I love farmer’s markets. Every week we have a small-town market on Wednesdays, and big trip to Bordeaux on Thursdays. We left at four in the morning, an hour that definitely belongs more to night than day. It’s so early that I feel a sense of urgency as we load up in the dark and drive out through the still fields of corn and sunflowers. As dawn sneaks up on us, the misty arcs of the watering devices slowly become visible against the lightening horizon. We set up while the sun rises and the first customers, almost exclusively all old ladies, form an impatient line behind the stand. Last week at Bordeaux the sunrise was an eerie blood red doubly reflected by the river, and by seven o’clock we were scrambling to cover the bread from the sudden downpour.
Even before the summer started, I worried about working the cash register. Math has never been my thing, ever since second grade when we learned addition by counting dots that had been drawn on each number. For example, the number 3 has three dots on its points. Now this works for 1, 2, and 3, but you can draw 4 in two ways, and I never agreed with the dot placement on 6 and 9. It was a newfangled system, a sort of ill-fated Phonics or Suzuki method that is catchy but only gets you so far. But maybe I shouldn’t blame my abysmal math skills on school, since ultimately my brain refuses to grope its way around numbers.
At the farmer’s market everything is about change. The euro is a beautiful currency, with colorful bills that are all, well, relatively new. The one and two euro coins are satisfyingly thick, and can add up to a lovely surprise in your change purse. Smaller than that, and things get messy—for a while I missed the quarter, but when you have 2 cent pieces somehow 25 cents seems unnecessary.
In addition to my acquired or inherited (thanks Mom) ineptitude for numbers and the somewhat foreign currency, there is the French way of counting. After sixty—soixante–someone get tired. Or, more likely, the poor guy realized that septsante sounded too much like sept cent (700) and that septante was just ugly. So, there is soixante-dix up through soixante dix neuf (60 +19). Then, to have a little more fun, we switch to multiplication: eighty is quatre-vingt (4 times 20). That of course makes the nineties into something ridiculous: ninety-seven becomes quatre-vingt dix sept, or in other words, 4 times 20 plus seventeen.
Regine who works the Wednesday market has never been one to mince words. “This one,” she says, grabbing my arm after I’ve just given a customer back the wrong change, “is a bit special.” She taps her forehead. “Americaine.” They both laugh. “Oh why yes! McDonalds.” says the customer in English. When I was still in Paris, the first word associated with American was Barack Obama. Now it is usually Michael Jackson. Either way, I’m glad I wasn’t here when it was surely Bush (“Boosh”).
Apart from the math problem, and the fact that I probably deserve all the concerned looks the customers give me, the markets are fun. There is a sort of motherly pride that comes when you box up a tartelette that you yourself made the night before. The mint in the tabbouleh was my idea! I want to shout when I hand over a box. Cheese cutting is especially fun. We have the moderately sized cheeses they make at the farm (au naturel, pimento, pepper, cumin, and a garlic basil that smells abominably), a few gooey ewe’s milk cheeses, and some very large tomes of Comté and Cantal.
First, you have to answer the questions about the cheese. Is it dry? Do you know how long it has aged? Then, you plunk the cheese on the cutting board and take hold of the long knife with handles on both ends. You place the knife on the crust to cut a wedge, and then you must always show the placement of your knife to the customer. You learn to offer smaller wedges to the men, who seem to relish telling me to go bigger, while most women take an odd pleasure in shuddering in horror and asking for a piece much smaller. With the huge Cantal, I have to stand on my tiptoes and use my weight to cut through to the bottom of the cheese. I like to think of it as my weekly musculation.
“Oh la, I’ve got to clean my nails tonight,” Claudette said the day before my first market. We were planting beans in her immense, extremely tidy garden. “When you go to cut the cheese and the customer is watching, it’s not so good to have all this dirt under your nails. Tuesday nights I always use a little lemon juice in the shower.”
I’ve never had a manicure and don’t give much thought to fancy nails, but it’s true that I notice when someone has dirty hands. I used to automatically pre-judge it as bad hygiene. Now I really understand why women wanted pretty nails to show they did not do manual work. Nail polish chips when you’re washing dishes all day.
After the market peters out around one, Vincent sets up a table in the shade with the leftover cheeses and breads. There is always a small crowd at the Bordeaux lunches, whether it’s Vincent’s old rugby friends or the prim ladies who sell honey next door. Once I sat next to a slick wine vendor who never took off his sunglasses. He told me that in a good Bordeaux, you can always find notes of chocolate and Cuban cigars. Another day I sat next to a bitter British expatriate, who (if I can believe him) spent his youth in Morocco trafficking weed.
A word about English-speaking expatriates. Those that I have encountered have been extremely friendly, eager for my attention in an almost desperate way. When you live in a country where you don’t really know the language, I suppose you are happy to talk to just about anyone. At first, I was always excited to talk to a fellow English speaker, if only to prove to myself that I could still be sarcastic (something that has not produced successful in French). But talking in English amidst all the French can be hard. Somehow, the words seem mushy in my mouth, and I can’t stop saying oui instead of yes.
There is a brash feeling of privacy that comes from speaking a different language amidst a crowd of people whom you suppose cannot understand. This may explain the annoying loudness of American tourists in the Paris metro. As a result of this shaky security, my expatriate conversations tend to become extremely personal. The British ex-pothead wanted very much for me to believe that Bordeaux was built from the blood money from slave trading, and that the British were mainly responsible for the glory of French wine.
Another old Welsh man once told me his scarily extremist views on immigration: they should all be sent back to Africa. At the time, we were walking literally through fields of gold during a particularly splendid sunset. Every Friday at eight, Claudette and her band of sprightly villagers take a two hour ramble through the neighboring fields. The eighty year-olds and I walk through fields of wheat at a brisk pace, “Are we going too fast for you?” Claudette asked me when I lagged behind to take a photo. We stop occasionally to discuss odd-looking weeds or steal plums from the neighbors’ trees. Until then, I had much enjoyed listening to this Welsh gentleman, his accent reminding me of some quaint character in Hobbitville. Behind us, one adorable grandmother had stopped to “faire pipi” in the woods. I watched her run (73 years old) towards us in the lavish light of the sunset as the Welsh man explained his political views to me, and it all felt ridiculously disconnected. This last week he was not there, and even though it rained on us twice during the walk, I enjoyed it much more.
