JOHN VC

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After a long drive straight north across the broad Toulouse plain we entered the Dordogne, where roads twist helplessly in the depths of jig-saw canyons that have cut hundreds of feet straight down into a vast flat plain of limestone. Now and again, high on a sheer grey wall, we see clusters of square holes pecked into the rock, which once anchored floor and roof beams of medieval farmsteads. Farmland in the narrow canyons is so valuable that stables and bedrooms and granaries were stacked one on top of another, like storage boxes, out of the way. Occasionally one comes across one such conglomeration (you can’t call it a house) that hasn’t burned or fallen down. For the most part the road runs next to the ice-clear river, opening up one postcard after another of neon-green fields, bright water and gray cliffs. If you were to climb up on top, you’re in thick scrub-oak woods, cleared here and there for apple orchards and vineyards but mostly untouched and good only for wild pig and mushrooms.

Ancient Man liked this two-story limestone landscape; this is where Lascaux and many other Cro-Magnon caverns full of art are found. So did Medieval Man, whose clifftop bastides, or fortified towns, are reminders of the 13th century wars when this rough terrain was the front line between the inherited domains of the Norman kings of England and those of their cousins who stayed home. Today, you park outside the massive gateway and enter without a sentry’s challenge, thread your way between immovable ancient buildings, and eventually emerge in a cobbled square dotted with umbrella-covered tables, where awaits a tasty snack and the International Herald Tribune in shady quiet.

We found the other half of Enid’s family at the back end of a huge old apple orchard, in a farmhouse that had been pleasantly modernized by a Belgian doctor. Out on the terrace, the sunset over the Dordogne woods was sublime, the local wine hit the spot, and the grand risotto cooked and proudly served by Alicia and her cousin Emily was so fraught with coming-of-age chills that I would have savored it if it had been boiled mud (in fact it was terriffic.) Ben will remember Rufignac for a while, I think, since it was on the farm roads here next day that I introduced him to the stick shift. This was to continue a family tradition of exotic initiations, begun when Tony (secretly) took turns with the Iranian drivers on water runs when we were working at Maragheh back in 1975. European gearboxes are smooth as silk so Ben did OK, shifting down for curves and all. Whenever we stopped, however, it was usually a while before engine, clutch and driver could reach a fresh agreement.

This region is characterized by two outstanding features: place-names ending in “-ac”, and goose liver pate (how you say, foie gras). After loading up the grandparents and tying the suitcases on top, we set out for Provence via a string of medieval ac-towns buried in the woods and valleys. Beginning with Rufignac, we went on to Chilhac, Figeac (birthplace of Charles Boyer and of Jean-Louis Champollion, of Rosetta Stone fame), Souillac (where a windup-toy museum entranced Grandma), Mayrac, Alvignac, Padirac, Aurillac, and Sousceyrac, and en route passing by signs to Bergerac, Milhac, Payrac, Salviac, Auliac, Fleurac, Lanzac, Pinzac and Salginac-Eyviques, to name but a few. Are we in Languedoc or Languedac? But then we figured out that the oafish peasants had clumsily knocked the handles off another word that the Romans left behind — “aqua”, for a spring, which is what you get a lot of in limestone terrain.

If you figure to be reborn on this earth but you haven’t been a very good person, perhaps (all things considered) you should get the authorities to set you down somewhere else than the Dordogne, lest you find yourself hatching out there as a goose. This karma is not for you. The currently human tourist, turning in at a quaint half-timbered farm house to buy some “delicious a la ferme” foie gras , would do well to avoid the tour, which adds new meaning to “delicious” and a fresh reason to go strictly upwards on the wheel of life. A cheery old lady sits down on a stool and, with a toothless grin for the audience, claps a flapping goose between her knees, hauls its neck straight, sets a giant funnel in its gullet, ladles up about a gallon of corn mash, and starts grinding away with a hand crank to ram the whole mass down the poor thing’s distended throat. Goose cannot even swallow to keep up — it is like a living hose pipe — and makes not a sound, not that it could be heard for the gagging noises offstage. When released it falls over for a minute before staggering off. The French consider this sort of thing quaint, and write nursery rhymes about it. They are amuse that the Americans (but even more, the incensed Scandinavians) should prefer to dwell on the feelings of the loser goose, rather than those of the happy farmer.

Coming to the upturned edge of the 200-mile wide table of limestone that defines the Dordogne, we toppled over into a series of hairpin turns and coasted swiftly down a thousand feet into the Gorge de la Tarn, which we followed for the next 40 miles with barely enough room for the car, the deep, slow river, and the occasional solitary house. It’s like a wild and lonesome moor, inverted as a canyon. A side canyon makes a little flat for a modest old-fashioned resort, where kids launch kayaks and inner tubes for a 10-mile float. We stopped for monster ice cream sundaes and a long look at the skyline of weirdly water-eaten limestone crags like giant rotten teeth, grey and orange and brown. The river was a chain of deep green pools connected by gentle riffles, and the distant echoing yelps of the floating kids sounded like seagulls.

Eventually the walls of the canyon fell back, a coal-mining town appeared and went astern, and suddenly the road signs were all about Avignon — we are in Provence! The road runs straight east through fields of blazing sunflowers, acres of barley like soft fur, and row on row of grapes. The road is shaded by an endless row of poplar trees on the south side of the track. The LA guy nods appreciatively - these folks know about sun. A little later there are industrial suburbs, and then we roll out onto a wide highway, which slowly curves around Avignon’s magnificent city wall. Through the occasional arch in the wall emerges a cobbled street, and inside we see vistas to distant fountains, people walking along under trees so huge and matted together that the shade under them looks like dusk, sidewalk cafes, statues, medieval churches. Looks OK. There was a time, when things in the Vatican got a little too hot for them, that a gang of bishops set up a rival operation here in Avignon. The “false Popes” lasted long enough to build a fortress-cathedral in the middle of the city, a sort of squat sumo giant of a building, and for local wags to make up a silly song about certain people dancing, so to speak, on the bridge at Avignon. The “Pont d’Avignon” collapsed into the Rhone some years after the last dancer was cut down, so we didn’t go see it.

I think we knew we were going to like Provence, when at about 10 pm we wound up hunting for something — anything — to eat. We hadn’t been smart enough to shop on the way, and the house we had rented was way way out in the vineyards. By the time the owner had given us the tour of the premises and the formalities were concluded, somewhat prolonged because our group command of French required us to negotiate the details by semaphore, night had crept upon us. We set forth to forage with growling tummies and not much hope of finding anything open this side of Avignon, provided we could even find Avignon. The closest habitation was the ancient little hamlet of Goult, a dimly lit huddle of dark buildings hanging on a sandstone peak about 2 miles away. After some wandering we got to a likely track. Up the hill we went, everyone getting ready to be a good sport about it, and after a few narrow cobblestone turns found ourselves in front of what looked like a noisy bar on the town square, enclosed by absolutely silent and unlit three story houses. Was everyone asleep, or all out carousing? Hoping to find a sandwich or some pretzels at a back table, we entered, feeling doomed. Well, it was indeed a noisy bar. But a smiling girl led us upstairs and out onto a quiet balcony with the stars and rooftops at our elbows. A menu of amazing things appeared, followed by an equally amazing dinner. It was like being in a fairy tale. I wish I could remember what we ate… but in fact each night, in one village after another, we had food that was just as good or even better, and the dishes sort of whirl around in my bewildered memory. Maigrette (duck breast) roasted in wine sauce, pigeon with blackberries, mussels with wild mushrooms and dill, almond-crusted trout, spinach pie with walnuts and goat cheese, pumpkin and sorrel soup, and more and more, all beautifully presented , served by friendly lassies, in nice quiet rooms. What heaven!

The greatest sensation, however, was the lavender ice cream(!) at dessert. “A local specialty,” we were told. Indeed, this is lavender county. In sheltered canyons the vines give way to stone-walled fields where the lavandre makes solid neon-violet masses that look like spilled paint. With a foreground of butter-yellow scotch broom along the roadside and scorching red thistles clustered here and there, the aged retinas feel like they’re in kindergarten again. And thanks to ferocious anti-developer laws that slap unbelievable taxes on anyone who dares to build a new house on agricultural land, and brutal zoning regulations that prohibit the slightest exterior modification to any habitable building over 75 years old, all that the rich folks can do, as they swarm into this bit of heaven on earth, is to buy old farmhouses or village homes and fix ‘em up inside. In this way Provence remains a land of hilltop villages and wide fields, where the local folks share in the prosperity and the farmers stay happily on the farm. We explored around and kept asking about the lavender ice cream, and eventually a restaurateur gave us directions to where it was made. Miles from anywhere, we followed a dirt road through a pine forest to a huge old stone farmhouse on the edge of a bluff. It was a hot afternoon, but the shade under giant umbrellas set up along the front of the house, looking out over vineyards to the horizon, was cool and pleasant. Not a sound was heard except cicadas in the walnut trees, and tinkling spoons at work at nearby tables. A hearty maiden with vanilla scoops for breasts brought us a 20-page illustrated menu of ice cream creations that literally brought gasps to our lips. Globes of melon, lime, blackberry, tangerine, lemon, passionfruit, ginger, mint, thyme, rosemary, violet, coffee, cinnamon, vanilla, mango, currant, cherry, pear, peach, pineapple, and the fabled lavender were combined with fruits, creams, syrups, nuts, flowers, leaves and feathers in dizzying edible sculptures between which there was no possible choosing. But of course we chose, and gorged, and wallowed, and sighed in vast contentment, there in the gentle shade of a perfect day.

This story has gotten very much longer than I planned, so we have to skip Fontaine-de-la-Vaucluse, an ancient spa hidden within mountainous gray cliffs, where an entire river surges out of a cavern. In this wild and beautiful place Plutarch wrote his yearning sonnets to the unattainable Laura (a housewife, one gathers, of Avignon), and where the first paper mill in the world still makes paper with its medieval water-driven wooden mallets whacking and thumping in their foaming boxes of old rags. We must also skip Marseille, with its wonderful sea food restaurants lined up along the Roman wharf, and the little coastal resort town where we watched games of boule under the sycamores. I have to mention the look of the country behind Marseille, the “Bouche de Rhone”, where upthrust alpine foothills that once reared thousands of feet straight out of the Mediterranean, like cyclopean drilling towers, are now half buried in the sediment of the Rhone delta. There are no transitional slopes or foothills, just flat sand lapping against the slab-sided massifs, which makes them look oddly as if they are lying on the surface instead of protruding through it. In the dusk, driving across this uncanny “giant landscape” of disconnected shadowy shapes looming near and far on the endless plain make one feel exactly like an ant on a dinner table.

Aix-en-Provence, where we stayed on our final night, is another lovely and ancient town with wide, deeply shaded avenues to stroll and snack on, centered on a multi-story roccocco fountain with nymphs and gorgons. It was a memorable experience, all in all. We’ve seen the paintings and photos and heard others talk about it, but now we have our own memories of the clean, dry air of Provence, the purple distances, the rugged canyons and wide peaceful valleys, the eye-piercing colors and the wonderful food. Most of all we enjoyed visiting a land where the inhabitants regard its centuries of history and its beauty — not just the trees and birds, but all of it — as their cherished personal inheritance.