Summer and Tourists 

With the time of year, tourists, like flowers after the frost, start popping up in our small “village perché,” sometimes by the busload.  The idea was that its location on top of a hill would save it from marauders - no such luck. The village is quite small; perhaps 300 people live within the actual village walls. However you could spend hours wandering around its circular streets getting lost. It has been sacked many times in its 10 centuries of existence and today it is routinely a stop on a tour of the area. So far, they are all French, often well dressed, the women wearing shoes with heels, which is a dangerous idea in a perched village with cobblestone streets. They often wear scarves artfully thrown around their shoulders in that “je ne sais quoi” way that only a French woman can – I think it’s genetic. Their heads are always looking down, intently studying a printed pamphlet or French guide book.

Naturally when they see us exiting our house, particularly with dog in tow, they assume that we will know the answer to all their questions about the village. My wife, Sarah, handles them as I have already learned that no matter how much my French is improving, I don’t seem to be understood any better than when I couldn’t speak French at all. Maybe it’s the accent. It’s clear I don’t come from these parts.

We are asked questions such as:  “Can the castle be visited?” “No, it’s a private house.”  “Where is the good luck pig?” – ah, this one we know the answer to, thanks to other persistent French tourists, who showed us where it was. “Where is the Chapelle Notre Dame?” – sometimes Sarah is tempted to say “Paris!”

What we really want to say is, “there’s really nothing outstanding to visit here.” There’s no Delacroix or Cézanne painting hanging hidden in any chapel. There's no one-of-kind Gothic or Romanesque style church.  It’s the village itself.  Sometimes you can see disappointment in their faces that so much is closed or off limits but we want to say “did you walk down this street and see the green door with the vine surrounding it, or the windowsill overflowing with flowers?” Better yet, go to the square, find a table under the trees and order a café or aperitif. Just sit back and enjoy the “here and now” of it all. There are no hidden wonders here -- the whole village is a wonder. Walk the twisting cobbled streets full of flowerpots; watch the life of a village as it goes through its daily routine. Any village is ultimately about the people who inhabit it. There is the buxom blonde waitress who serves the locals their café or pastis, immortalized in a book by Anthony Burgess, who continues with a smile and no hint of her fame. You might pass the elderly woman who pushes her old, arthritic grey poodle around in a baby carriage, or the chicly dressed woman in the Tabac that wears woolly gloves with the fingers cut out, the easier to handle the money and papers in the winter. And then there’s the Swedish painter who has been painting the same painting on the town square for 15 years. It stands as an historical document since the restaurant in the background has since burned down, the dog asleep under the plane tree has died as have the two old ladies sitting on the bench outside the church; and the little girl in the foreground is now a mother of two boys. But he continues to paint the painting of what no longer exists.

With the weather getting warmer, many villagers sit in their doorways or put out tables and chairs and move outside watching the life of the village go by much as other people watch TV.  Although there aren’t any front porches in a medieval village, this is the equivalent. It functions the same way, as a way to meet and greet one’s neighbors and perhaps share a glass of rosé.

So we watch the tourists and it makes us wonder, "have we missed something?" Are we blithely walking by something of interest and indifferently ignoring it? Have we committed the same “crime” in Venice and Istanbul and so many other places by concentrating on the dead, permanent monuments, instead of the subtle, living, changing, real world?

Just to be sure, we’re spending more time in the square and brushing up on any local lore so the next group of tourists that stop and ask us questions won’t catch us off guard. We’re also considering a different approach.  Maybe we should just start making things up! Our favorite playwright, Tom Stoppard, often writes that history is simply that which someone bothered to write down -- or make up!!!!  Hmmmm. Let’s see, “the notorious bandit Jean-Louis de Turenne ruled over the area from this hilltop retreat. Many of his victims’ bones can be found in the mortar in the wall surrounding the ancient castle…”  Maybe that’s a little too much, but we’re working on it.

We are Gary Legon & Sarah Legon; retired filmmakers of various documentaries and music specials, who have moved to the South of France.

(33) 0494 39 08 54 Callian France
glegon@gmail.com