As far as events in the Place de l’Horloge are concerned, Madame Gauguin is the one who knows all. Although busy about her daily chores, which require her to navigate at great speed the narrow and precipitous village lanes in her Renault Twingo, Madame Gauguin somehow knows who is coming and going, who is parking in the wrong place, and precisely when to address the strangers pausing irresolutely in their quest for the 12th century church further down the ancien chemin, which is also my street.
So, on the freezing fifth day of the new year, when Monsieur Dufours arrives in the middle of the Place de l’Horloge with a truck load of wood and climbs down from his cabin with mobile phone at the ready, Madame Gauguin is at his side.
Monsieur Dufours—a smiling young man with a mop of black hair and a laconic manner—is the one you ring for wood. In the first couple of weeks, my French, face to face, had been holding up pretty well, but I felt tentative about trying myself out on the phone. Putting increasing pressure on this tentativeness, however, was the daily depletion of the wood heap and the continued run of below zero temperatures. Working up to it over a day or two, I rang Monsieur Dufours and, with only a few amiable misunderstandings (no, I assured him, I wasn’t travelling from Australia especially to buy wood), he promised to arrive: Vendredi at eight-thirty, which is about when the first light struggles over the mountain. Bring some bois d’allumage—kindling—I added with last minute confidence.
On Friday I am up and ready, having a quick coffee in the pre-dawn darkness. Rue de l’église, my street, is cold and empty. Not a shutter twitches. And the Place de l’Horloge, the length of a cricket pitch away, is silent, its cobblestones gleaming with moisture. Further down the hill, a swathe of bright golden light spills with the aromas of fresh loaves from the narrow doorway of the boulangerie. All of which would have been romantic and appealing if I hadn’t been waiting anxiously for Monsieur Dufours—who is nowhere to be seen, not in the silences of 8.30 am, not at bustling 9.00 as the office staff of the Hotel de Ville across the square are arriving, and not at 9.30 when the builders renovating the Galerie d’Arts straggle in.
Directed to my very door by the indefatigable