The Truffle Square:
Having missed the marché aux truffes before
Christmas I try my luck again on the first Friday after New Year. The day is
clear, and as the sun rises just after 8pm, the clouds disperse under a strong
cold wind. I drop the children at school and race along the dual carriageway of the D942 toward Carpentras
hoping to see some thing of the ritual Michelle de La Pradelle describes in her
chapter on the Truffle Circle. I am already
late, as it’s now passed 8.30 in the morning and it is hard to find parking,
but I manage to reach the open entrance area to the Hotel Dieu at around 8.40am
where a group of mostly men, in various coats, hats, and boots mingle and chat
amongst each other, occasionally moving between groups, shaking hands and
greeting one another. By their demeanour and the casual nature of the groupings
I feel a tinge of disappointment for it appears that they have just spilled out
from the grand building after the market has taken place. I have gone and
missed the Market again.
To make up for the disappointment I walk through
the small crowd, divided by small tributaries of space, to catch some of the
ambience and spirit of this unique ritual. I feel a certain tension as I clutch
the cloth bag I have brought along with me. I am made very aware that I am not
part of this gathering, but there is no obvious odour and no sense that I am
witness to anything but a small gathering of acquaintances meeting to chat on
market day. The only difference in this gathering is the apparent uniformity of
clothing and of age – most of the individuals are middle aged or a little
older. I leave the throng and cross to the Place du 25 Aout 1944 to look at the stalls. Here I catch an overwhelming perfume of
vanilla mixed with cooked chicken and decide I must use my nostrils today. But
the mistral and the fresh winter air conspires against me, driving the scent
quickly away and up into the clear blue sky. Maybe that’s why the crowd outside
marché aux truffes was not infused with the conspicuous pungent smell of wild
truffle. And maybe, just maybe the market has yet to take place…
I glance back and see that the crowd is
thinning but I can see no one coming away from the Hotel Dieu. In fact the
throng in front of the building are made up of the rabassier just gathering prior to the market. Presumably not wanting to
appear too eager or too craven they waited outside the Hotel in a show of
nonchalance until nearly 9am to enter the courtyard and prepare themselves for
the trading. I follow them in and see that the square of tables surrounded by
metal barricades that had appeared so empty on my last visit, like a stage set
emptied of its actors, was now filled almost along each side. The members of
the crowd I had seen outside milling around had now revealed small cloth bags
or taken from baskets bags and placed them in front of them so they face into
the open space in the middle of the truffle square. This simple gesture almost
certainly belies the heroic effort and careful preparation that each rabassier has taken in preparing their small offerings. But instead of
feverish anticipation that often accompanies the buildup to a market auction
there is a strange reluctance to show interest in any sale before it actually
commences, as if the participants in the market are holding back. In this it
recalls the rather cold auctioneering of say the contemporary fine art market
stuffed full of anonymous agents for superrich collectors. But here no one
tries to look into the contents of the others bags – it is up to each
individual seller how much or little they wish to reveal of their unburied
treasure – some have turned down the sides of the bags so that the truffles can
be easily seen but others make no effort to open their contents for viewing. It
is nearly 9am and the rabassier seem to be more
alert, when a late arrival enters the square, a woman dressed in a bright green
coat looking a little hurried and tired, searches the backs of her rivals for
her place at the table.
This arena of exchange concerns a very
peculiar commodity, displayed in almost perfunctory fashion (though the plastic bags and battered baskets de La Pradelle
describes have now been largely replaced by small linen sacks some with Marché
aux Truffes printed on the outside). Some sellers have folded down the sides of
the sacks to reveal their finds while others simply place their bag on the
table and wait with their ‘black diamonds’. Now, there is a flimsy moment of calm before the tables
finally filled up, and latecomers trying to squeeze in to show their finds. The
wind whips into the courtyard and kicks up leaves in a funneling swirl that rise over the courtyard. Then precisely on
the stroke of 9am, as the clock chimes its last bell, another group of individuals comes in the
right hand corner of the barrier. They enter the centre of the tables and start
circulating quickly. Some can be seen talking briefly and intently to a seller; over 3 or 4 intense minutes
all the trading is completed - up to 60 to 70 small sacks of truffes will have
changed hands in a series of precise conversations where how, when, and what
you say, may seal or break the deal.
It appears that what is most important is not how they look
but how they smell, how they feel and how much the seller is willing to hold
onto his or her maximum price. For the buyer it is mostly a question of quality
but also of trust. And yet for both the rabassier or his agent and the buyer or trader it is precisely how each nugget
of truffe looks that really counts – in its utter authenticity, its nobbliness or
dirtiness which distinguishes it from other products - for it is far too precious to be
scrubbed and cleaned, or represented as a prime specimen, as all its precious
juice, its essence and concentrated earthiness resides in its hidden interstices which quality
must be reckoned only from outside. The buyers circle the tables at first almost
nonchalantly, regarding the bags and their guardians with swift approval. Then
slowly the activity draws closer and the traders start to look at the truffes,
dipping their hands into the bags, feel and scrapping the produce. Some put
their heads right into the sacks, sniffing and snuffling the contents as if
they were a truffle pig or dog searching out these succulent bonbon of the
terrain in the roots of oak trees. They sniff, poke, turn, touch, scrape and generally man
handle the contents of the bags. But this must all be part of the game, that
quick exchange of gestures that ripens the words that will clinch the deal. The sellers look on almost
indifferently – they know that their finds are good, that they are ‘genuine’
truffles from the Ventoux and must be accorded the proper value. Here it is a
sellers market, the trader/buyer
merely competing with each other over how much if any of this luxury object they can obtain without overspending.
ICI REPOSE
« Je les connais
tous, les sites humains d'où sont partis les hommes, l'abri du charbonnier, la
cuve à vin creusée dans la paroi du roc, le poste à feu oublié du chasseur et,
quelque part en un lieu hanté de moi seul, perdu dans la broussaille, cette
aire immense avec des talus et quatre grands fossés mangés par l'herbe. Un
vieux peuple, rude et sensé, au cours d'une migration énergique, avait sans
doute établi là, jadis, son camp à l'ombre de la Terre. »
'I knew them all,
the human sites from which man sprung, the charcoal burner’s shelter, the wine
vats dug into the cliff, the hunters’ fiery point, and somewhere, in a place
haunted by me alone, lost in the scrub this enormous clearing edged with four huge ditches, eaten away by grass. An old people, rough and sensitive, during
a great migration established their camp here, at the earth’s shadowy edge.'
(Bosco – author’s translation)
Much like my ignorance of Henri Bosco, I
was blissfully unaware, as I stood in the cemetery at Loumarin admiring its
tranquility and beauty, that it had recently been the centre of a political and
symbolic storm. A storm encapsulated by the terse phrase:
ICI REPOSE
For Camus’ beautiful resting place unlike Bosco’s was not wholly assured. Larger forces, represented by powerful partisan politics, and a brutal nationalism, had been working to undermine the peaceful graveyard. Camus’ name and his mortal remains were being summoned – his literary terroir, claimed as a national treasure – by the President, who in his wisdom: "... thought it would be a particularly pertinent choice." Sarkozy also told assembled journalists that a final decision had yet been taken, but "[It is] a project which is extraordinarily close to my heart." Thus the President, somewhat out of the blue, had suggested that Camus should quit his provincial slumber, be torn from his adopted Provencal soil, and come to rest in Paris, as a full national hero, worthy of full honours in the Pantheon. The signs had been there, if one had been attentive to them. Not least in the way Sarkozy had appropriated Camus’ words early on in his Presidency while on a state visit to Tunisia. Looking out across the Mediterranean, back across the bright blue sea toward France, he had listened ostentatiously to a Camus text being read out loud to him. Camus as the foreigner and the outsider, independent in mind and thoroughly outspoken, apparently appealed to Sarkozy’s own sense of marginal ancestry, and bolstered his credentials as a President with an urbane, civilized and generous appeal[1]. Although it was much debated and then commented upon, whether he had really read much, if any of the writers’ oeuvre. His reputation as a hater of both books and all literary study preceding his effusive confession that the project ‘was extraordinarily close to my heart’, seemed to have dampened his announcement.
Was this really such an astute political
maneuver? This project to recuperate Camus, scourge of the far-right (and even
more famously the far left), resistance fighter, champion of the oppressed and
unrepresented, the poor and marginalized. All initiated at the insistence of President Sarkozy, this former Interior Minister of France who
famously called the youth of the banlieue 'scum’ (racaille, a term that bears implicit racial and ethnic resonances). All any
one, not fascinated in the politics of this situation, could think when he made
this controversial proposition, was what the hell would Camus of made of it all.
This turning over of the soil, and this digging into the past, from interior to exterior and back again all in one shameless move:
Maman died
today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. I got a telegram from the home:
"Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours." That doesn’t
mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday. (Camus - The Stranger 1.1.1)
Nothing could be stranger than this abrupt
turning over of truth, this meddling in and reconstruction of ancestry, and yet
simultaneously, nothing could be more familiar, more heart warming to the consummate outsider:
‘It was
pleasant; the coffee had warmed me up, and the smell of flowers on the night
air was coming through the open door. I think I dozed off for a while.’ (Camus - The
Stranger 1.1.14)
Just as abruptly as he had been reawakened into
public consciousness, Camus was allowed to doze off again, rooted into his
Provencal garden, a petit paradise. But this had nothing to do with any
goodwill on the President’s part. It was because Camus’s son would not agree to the
disinternment. The Élysée Palace had somehow failed to get the consent of the next of kin,
before making this important public announcement. While Camus’ daughter was less unequivocal,
apparently vacillating, his son was not for turning – his father would never have wanted such ostentatious honour. Then again perhaps this
was all part of the plan to make the suggestion publicly – a demonstration of a
certain broadness and imagination on the part of the famously unliterary,
uncultured President – let it hang there, in the media, and then quietly let it
slip. Maybe now he can suggest another Pantheonista – someone closer
politically to him (Celine perhaps) – and let Camus respose in peace beside his wife…
But I can only imagine, if they ever tried
digging up the coffin and attempted to exhume him, that the rich bed of
plants and fauna that now luxuriated over his body had broken through the casket, and
turned his mortal remains entirely, transformed into a rich sweet compost; so with the
appropriate degree of absurdity, and with the writers characteristic parrhesia, finally dissolving all attempts for a proper, decent disinterment!
[1] An Élysée adviser,
Georges-Marc Benamou, told journalists that Camus's "non-conformism in
relation to France's elites" appealed to the president, the son of a
Hungarian immigrant, who likes to paint himself as having come from a wholly
unconventional political background, as an outsider inside the Palace.
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