Of course, I know why I’d forgotten all about my phone: I’ve spent too long living in a world of paper. I’m feeling my way with these gadgets.
Cuneo gave me a hand with the masonry for four days and tried to teach me to regard cooking as being similar to lovemaking. His extraordinary lessons – master classes, really – began at the market, where the saleswomen are surrounded by head-high piles of tomatoes, beans, melons, fruit, garlic, three types of radishes, raspberries, potatoes and onions. We ate salted caramel ice cream in the ice-cream parlour by the children’s merry-go-round. Lightly salted, burned and sweet, creamy and cold. I’ve never eaten more perfect ice cream, and now I eat it every day (and sometimes even at night).
Cuneo taught me to see with my hands. He showed me how to recognise what needs to be handled how. He taught me to smell and to tell which ingredients were good together and what I could cook with them by their aromas. He put a cup of ground coffee in my fridge to absorb all the odours that didn’t belong there. We braised, steamed, fried and grilled fish.
If you ask me to cook for you again, I’ll charm you with all the tricks I’ve picked up.
My little big friend Samy left me with one final scrap of wisdom. For once she didn’t shout – she tends to shout. She gave me a hug as I sat there, staring at the sea and counting the colours, and whispered very quietly to me: ‘Do you know that there’s a halfway world between each ending and each new beginning? It’s called the hurting time, Jean Perdu. It’s a bog; it’s where your dreams and worries and forgotten plans gather. Your steps are heavier during that time. Don’t underestimate the transition, Jeanno, between farewell and new departure. Give yourself the time you need. Some thresholds are too wide to be taken in one stride.’
Since then I have often thought about what Samy called the hurting time and the halfway world, about the threshold that you have to cross between farewell and new departure. I wonder whether my threshold starts here … or whether it began twenty years ago.
Have you experienced that hurting time too? Is being lovelorn like mourning someone? Do you mind my asking these questions?
Sanary must be one of the only places in France where the locals smile when I recommend a German author. In a way they are proud that they provided a safe haven to various prominent German writers under the dictatorship. However, too few of the exiles’ houses have been preserved. Only six or seven; the Manns’ house was rebuilt. The bookshops seldom stock their works, even though dozens of them sought refuge here. I’m expanding that section in our shop, and MM has given me free rein.
She has also recommended me to the town dignitaries – imagine that. Monsieur Bernhard, the mayor, a tall, well-groomed silver fox, loves leading the parade of fire engines on Bastille Day. They show off every piece of equipment they’ve got, Catherine: tankers, jeeps, even a bicycle and some boats on trailers. A splendid display, and the youngsters march along behind, proud and relaxed. On the other hand, the mayor’s library is a miserable medicine cabinet. Sonorous names including Camus, Baudelaire and Balzac, all leather-bound, so visitors think: ‘Oh! Montesquieu! And Proust! How dull.’
I’ve suggested to the mayor that he read what he wants to read rather than what he thinks will impress people, and that he give up arranging his books according to the colour of the binding, or in alphabetical order or by genre. He should group them by theme instead. Everything about Italy in one corner: cookbooks, whodunnits by Donna Leon, novels, illustrated books, essays on Leonardo, religious treatises by Assisi, anything. Everything about the sea in another corner – from Hemingway to sharks, fish poems and fish recipes.
He thinks I’m smarter than I really am.
There’s one spot I really love in MM’s bookshop. Right next to the encyclopedias, a quiet spot where only the occasional little girl will peek in and furtively look something up because her parents have fobbed her off by saying, ‘You’re too young for that. I’ll explain it to you when you’re older.’ Personally, I don’t believe that any question is too big; you simply have to tailor your answers.