We follow him into the Tabac-Presse where he gets those intriguing little Oropur gel-caps (they allegedly whisk unpleasant smells from the inside of your body) when other specimens of the town’s inhabitants grab our attention. Scattered all about the musty, diminutive shop, these are women. They make more noise and wear more color; in groups, they are to the single man what television is to the phone book. There are four of them if you count the little one (a chiffonnade of blond curls with this year’s brand of pink, alien-looking stuffed creature dangling by her side) and spread fairly evenly across the generational scale. The older one has more of the local twangy swagger while the younger ones play to a more Parisian tune.
It’s not eleven in the morning and the conversational flutter is climbing up the schedule all the way to the evening hours with a growing anxiety :
“Oh look! The market will start winding down soon and we must get some edible lavender for the chicory salad – but the sun is shining and we must profiter de la pool at its warmest, look at the dragonflies going to sweet little town on the camellia… Shall we have the coconut milk blanc-manger for dessert or the peaches will go bad in a few hours, they are so perfect now… Aperitif in the garden would be lovely with some Saint-Germain and Champagne and the wrinkled-thyme olives, yes, we’ll watch the martinets square dance in the sunset, you saw them too, didn’t you? But what about a late stroll in the village, a little window-shopping and a pastis by the old place where the Gypsy kings play tonight?”
Dilemmas, dilemmas, indeed, and if one isn’t armed with the fiercest decision willfulness it’s dreadfully easy to end up papillonning the day away without making the most of those precious 15 hours of continuous sunlight…
So here we settle and here will be your lesson of the day, my sweets, very fin de siecle as it is, how to artfully extract the utmost enjoyment out of every minute of life’s ever-vanishing circumstances… It’s a trick question, of course, as you very well know already if you are to be indeed my little renegade children…
First some explication de texte , to buff off on your french a little: turn to the next page please.
