French Lessons (4 page)

I’d been told to bring a
truffle with me, and I checked to make sure that the precious foil-wrapped lump
was safe in my pocket. Suddenly, there was the sound of iron grating against
iron, followed by the regular hollow clang of the bell, causing alarm and
temporary deafness among a flock of pigeons that erupted from the belfry. I
felt the pressure of the crowd, like a huge animal, pushing me closer to the
steps of the church. Then the doors were opened. With as much decorum as they
could manage while jockeying for positions with a good view close to the altar,
the members of the congregation nudged and jostled their way inside. The French
have never taken to the Anglo-Saxon habit of the orderly queue, which they
consider far too inconvenient for everyday use.

The church was warm and
bright and in noticeably good condition—the pale stone arches unmarked
and smooth, the woodwork polished, fresh flowers arranged around the altar. The
choir rustled its hymn sheets and discreetly cleared its throat. A current of
air brought a distinctive smell to the nose: not incense, not dust, not even
sanctity, but an earthy hint of the reason we were all gathered here. On the
lace-trimmed pulpit, set out like a row of arthritic black fists, were six of
the largest truffles I’d ever seen, each one a quarter-pounder at least,
brushed clean of every speck of mud. It was a sight to warm the cockles of a
gourmet’s heart.

There was none of the hush you would expect to
find before the start of a religious service. Some of my fellow worshipers
might have been keeping their conversations to a whisper, but they were
outnumbered by others who were in full voice—calling out to friends,
commenting on the flowers, the satisfying magnificence of the truffles, and the
size of the crowd, which by now had spilled onto the steps outside the church.
I could hear the clack of camera shutters and the pop of flashbulbs above the
buzz of talk as press photographers jostled with the television crew for the
best angles.

The arrival of the presiding priest, Père Gleize,
brought a semblance of calm. He looked as every man of the church should
look—a halo of silver hair, the face of a mature cherub, an expression of
good-humored tranquillity. With a smile of great sweetness, he made us welcome,
and the service began.

As the mixture of prayer and singing filled the
church with words and music that had hardly changed in a thousand years, the
modern world seemed far, far away—that is, as long as you kept your eyes
closed. Open them, and there was no doubt that you were in the twenty-first
century, although the television crew was trying its hardest to be unobtrusive.
Another contemporary touch was displayed by the altar boy, well scrubbed,
fair-haired, and altogether angelic, with the pneumatic snouts of his
Sunday-best sneakers poking out from the bottom of his traditional white
vestments.

The sermon began. Père Gleize had chosen to deliver
it in
lengo nostro,
“our tongue,” or Provençal, and
to my ignorant ear very little was familiar. It is said there are traces of
Latin and Greek to be found in the dialect, but the overall sound is like a
more orotund version of French, filled with wonderful rolling words:
escoundoun
and
moulounado
and
cauto-cauto
. Apart
from
amen,
there was only one word in the entire sermon I could
identify for sure. It was, not surprisingly,
rabasse,
the truffle, and
it was making its presence felt more and more strongly throughout the church as
collection baskets started going up and down the rows. A basket was passed to
the man next to me. He held it in both hands like a chalice, lowered his head,
and took a deep sniff before unwrapping the aluminum foil from his own
contribution and popping it into the basket with the other truffles.

To
encourage us in our giving, the choir performed a chant to Saint Antoine. And
he was left in no doubt about what was being asked of him:

Bon
Saint Antoine, donne-nous
Des truffes en
abondance
Que leur odeur et leur bon
goût
Fassent aimer la Provence.

In other
words, Give us truffles. Lots of truffles.

This was not the simple cry
of greed that it might appear to be. If Saint Antoine had done his stuff, there
would be plenty of truffles in circulation. And the more there were, the more
the house of the Lord would benefit, because, following tradition, the truffles
collected would be auctioned off after the service, with all proceeds going to
charity and the church.

The donations were taken back to be counted.
Those baskets that I could see looked comfortably prosperous, filled with an
extravagant salad of truffles and large-denomination banknotes. With God now
having been served by mammon, the congregation rose, and the choir sent us on
our way with Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus.” Outside, the rain
had held off—“Divine providence,” I heard one pious old
truffler mutter as he looked up at the sky—and the auction could take
place as planned in the open air, outside the Hôtel de Ville.

The
center of operations was a table in the square, and with the crowd beginning to
gather, the auctioneer climbed up to stand on top. He was one of the
confrères,
a gentleman who would certainly have walked off with
the
grand prix
for the most impressive mustache of the day. It was an
altogether-splendid appendage: luxuriant, with a fine upward, gravity-defying
curl, its wingspan almost as wide as the brim of his
confrère’
s black hat—a virtuoso among
mustaches.

Rumors of the day’s collection began to pass through
the crowd, and the news was not good. Buyers were going to have to dig deeply
into their pockets, because the contents of the baskets reflected this
year’s disappointing crop. There were barely three kilos (not quite seven
pounds) of truffles. Last year there had been seven kilos (more than fifteen
pounds). Prices would therefore be high. But according to Monsieur Escoffier,
the octogenarian
confrère,
it would be money well spent.
“La truffe,”
he was heard to say,
“ça
rend les femmes plus gentilles et les hommes plus galants.”
The
bonus of kinder women and more gallant men was surely worth a little
extra.

Giving each side of his mustache an upward flick with the back
of his hand, the auctioneer got down to business. With the aplomb of a veteran
from Sotheby’s, he prepared his audience for an expensive morning.
“Rain didn’t come in the summer when it should have,” he
said. “And so truffles are scarce. Extremely scarce. Now, as you all
know, the cost of rarity is high. But”—he spread his hands, palms
up, and shrugged at the crowd—“you can always economize on your
wine.”

He held up the first truffle for all to see, and a bid of
nine hundred francs came from the front of the crowd. The auctioneer peered at
the bidder with an expression of scornful amazement. “Can I believe what
I hear? A miserable nine hundred francs? This monster weighs two hundred and
twenty grams. And it’s spotless, ready for the omelette. Not a trace of
earth on it.” He looked down from his elevated position on the table at
the faces around him, one hand raised hopefully to his ear. A thousand francs
were bid. Not enough. He brought out his secret weapon, a sales incentive
Sotheby’s would kill for: God was on the side of the auctioneer.
“Do you want to be saved, you band of sinners? Come on! Pay up!”
Encouraged by thoughts of salvation, bidders pushed the price to fifteen
hundred francs (two hundred dollars), and the hammer came down.

The
auctioneer’s patter continued, liberally sprinkled with references to the
Almighty and recipe hints, until the last truffle had been sold. With the cash
that had already been donated, the morning’s total was announced and
greeted with applause: The sum of 24,700 francs had been raised. But the
auctioneer, still in the grip of sales fever, hadn’t quite finished. One
of the empty collection baskets caught his eye and tickled his imagination:
“This is worth a fortune,” he said. “It’s been
blessed!” Sure enough, the basket fetched a thousand francs. The magic
figure of 25,000 francs ($3,600) had been passed. One way or another, we had
all earned our lunch.

There is nothing like the
combination of cold weather and good deeds to sharpen the appetite. And the
highlight of the menu being served at the Richerenches village hall was
omelette aux truffes,
an inducement that has never been known to fail
in France. Rarely have I seen a crowd move with such speed and purpose, and by
the time I looked up again after scribbling a few notes, I had the
place
practically to myself.

The hall was a scene of amiable
chaos as everyone moved among the tables looking for their names on slips of
paper that identified reservations. I found my place and shook every hand
within reach during a blur of introductions. My neighbors were local, jolly,
and thirsty.

On occasions like this, I have always found that it is a
social advantage to be foreign. Wine is pressed upon you, and not only wine.
Advice of every kind is also offered—whether you ask for it or
not—since it is assumed that your education is probably lacking, and that
you need a little help in matters that only a Frenchman fully understands.

There is the truffle, for instance, the
Tuber melanosporum,
also
known as “the divine tubercule.” How would I, coming from England,
a country that this delicacy has chosen to avoid, know that the truffle cannot
be cultivated? It grows where it pleases, defying all attempts at artificial
production. That is why crops and prices vary so much from year to year. My
instructor across the table nodded, as though he personally had played a part
in the natural order of things.

I asked him what he thought about the
genetically modified food that was very much in the news at the time, and he
reared back in his chair. I might have insulted his grandmother or, perhaps
worse, his local soccer team. Tampering with nature, he said. No good can come
of it. It is nothing but a plot to prevent the process of reproduction, so that
farmers have to buy new seeds every year. A
scandale,
promoted by men
in white coats, agricultural bandits who never get their hands dirty. He looked
set to rant for hours, if he didn’t choke on his wine first.

He
was silenced by the arrival of an omelette, steaming and fragrant and
generously speckled with crunchy black slivers of truffle. It was a vibrant
bright yellow, the yellow that only comes from the yolks of eggs laid by
free-range hens, and the consistency had been exquisitely judged by the chef,
just on the firm side of runny. The technical term for this is
baveuse
(which sounds much more appetizing than its literal
translation—dribbling), and it is a texture that has eluded me for
years.

My omelettes, no matter how solicitous I am as I hover over
them, are never any more than scrambled eggs with pretensions. They don’t
even travel well, usually falling to pieces during their brief journey to the
plate. I have never been able to achieve the plump, moist, soft-skinned golden
envelope that slides so cleanly from the pan. I asked my neighbors at the table
if they knew the secret. How does one make the perfect omelette?

The
ensuing debate lasted for most of lunch, as I should have known it would. There
is never a single, simple answer in France to any question concerning food. Ask
how to boil an egg, and there will be a dozen different opinions, because there
is nothing the French enjoy more than arguing about food while they’re at
the table. Part of this, I’m convinced, is the opportunity it offers to
use the accessories of eating for dramatic gestures. Brandishing a knife is far
more satisfying than wagging the conventional index finger; setting down a
wineglass (empty, one hopes) with a decisive thump has the emphasis of an
exclamation mark; the maneuvering of pepper pots, mustard jars, saucers of
olives, and crusts of bread can often help to demonstrate a complicated theory
to the simpleton sitting opposite you. Today’s simpleton, of course, was
me.

My closest neighbor picked up his side plate and placed one end of
his fork on the rim. Holding his creation in one hand, with the fork acting as
a makeshift handle, he swirled it around energetically. “With the
omelette,” he said, “
l’essentiel
is the correct pan,
which must be made of cast iron.”

“No, no, no,” said
the woman sitting next to him. “Copper, lined with tin, is in every way
superior to your cast iron; it’s lighter, and a copper bottom is a better
conductor of heat. Therefore,
cher monsieur
”—she paused to
poke a finger in his chest—“your omelette is more evenly cooked.
Voilà.” She nodded as she looked around the table, obviously
feeling she had delivered a mortal blow to any misguided supporters of cast
iron.

Already I could see where I might have been going wrong. My
omelette pan was made from a newfangled nonstick aluminum alloy. I’d
bought it in America, unable to resist the salesman. “What you have here
is space-age technology,” he had told me. “If this baby sticks, you
come and see me, and I’ll give you your money back. Every cent.”
Sure enough, it never did stick. But it never made much of an omelette, either.
Even so, I decided to try the idea on the experts. “My pan is a kind of
aluminum,” I said. “What do you think about that?”

Monsieur Cast Iron and Madame Copper Bottom forgot their differences and
closed ranks, united in their derision. Shakes of the head, clicks of the
tongue, smiles of pity.
Non. Jamais.

Lunch continued, as did
the omelette lesson: A new pan must be seasoned two or three times with oil to
seal the surface. Before putting in the eggs, the pan must be preheated until
it is hot enough to make a drop of water bounce. The pan must never be washed
after use, just wiped with a paper towel. On these basic points there was
general agreement.