France Profonde

And then the ghost stories starting coming out of the woodwork. Our house has a lot of woodwork. And there are a lot of stories attached to it. And I decided that I ought to learn them. I was not really focusing on ghost stories. The house’s own history and the history of its previous occupants were good enough. One or two princesses out weigh an elusive ghost it seemed to me at the time.

This is the year that we took the sabbatical. And for the record, it was never actually a sabbatical. We called it that as short hand for “year off”. People recognize sabbatical and respect the notion over dropping out, dropping everything, and taking a chance on life in a depressed foreign economy. Who gets to do that? We didn’t do that exactly, but almost. Phil had some fairly good assurance that he would have a job to return to if things didn’t work out. So we took to calling it our “Année Sympatique” instead of sebatique/our “nice” year. It was nice enough of his employers to allow him the freedom to quit, but not really. Sans solde/Without pay. That is what it was. And it may have been several years with out pay, if we could have kept it up. We were planning on making a go of it even if we hadn’t really defined what that meant. We were looking to work though. I rewrote and sent out a couple hundred resumes, and we both signed up with the job development agency. But the real work I assigned myself was to learn about the house and then to write about it.

Most people who hear the brief version of this remarkable house’s story say something like that. “You ought to write about it.” Yes I know I ought to. And then it ought to be published and promoted and then turned into a major motion picture. I couldn’t agree enough.

I set down to do that. But I got distracted.

Living in the house was something all together different from summering in it. From very near the first day of that adventure we became residents and members of a very interesting community as opposed to being visitors to it. And that was very distracting.

First there was the fashion show in Plazac. Then the fashion show in Rouffignac. These are blogs in and of themselves. I will get to that. Ask me. But in brief these two events are remembered for quite frankly transforming my life. I honestly met everyone, or almost everyone I now know in Dordogne as a result of those two hilariously self-serious comedy acts. It was upon our annual first foray down to Plazac’s local café/bar/hangout, La Marjolaine, for a stamp and a match that I was stopped and stumped. “Mademoiselle”, I think the woman seated at a terrace table addressed me, “Vous vivez Plazac?” Do I live here? Why yes. Yes I do. And so yes, I guess I can participate in your first ever fashion show to be held at the salle de fete as part of the annual Fete de Plazac next week. Why not? I have oft replayed the moment when I accepted this rather random invitation under the very accurate instinct that I would probably meet people.

I met people. And then I made friends with people and then made friends with their friends. I got hired to an unwanted job by one of these people. Got involved in the personal problems of others. Juggled the issues between still others of them. I integrated, “quoi”.* And there went all of the free time in which I was planning to write my house’s memoirs.

But they continued to write themselves. Luckily.

Pauline had kicked things off with her revelation of having been haunted right out of our house earlier that same year. Soon I was meeting people who knew our house before they knew us to be its owners. This became a common encounter: “Oh you live up at Prouillac! How is the ghost?” Pauline’s father is a big believer. He was scared to visit his daughter during her sejour there. And our previous tenants, Dom and his son, and his girlfriend, and his son’s girlfriend, and his son’s girlfriend’s kids, and his kids on the days he had them, and their dogs and their dogs’ puppies had had sightings too, when they had lived there the year before. Now we get to hear about them. Gael says he always felt someone looking over his shoulder or slipping through the place when we used the upstairs bathroom. Emmy felt a presence under the eaves in an upstairs bedroom. Dom says he called the ghost our one time. He pulled up a chair, sat down and addressed her. “We live here now. Hope that’s cool.” It seems to have been. Mostly, if I understand it, they kept out of the big room upstairs. There were, what, twenty of them? and this, the largest of rooms was never put to use. It was considered her space. Off limits. It is the “oldest” room in the house. It is the coup de grace on any home tour, where we pause to let people soak in the very with 15thC feel of it. It’s the room that the historians wanted to check out for its reputed renaissance fireplace. (Good story) It is the room they held Mme Tooth’s funeral services in and the room we sleep in.

I make the bed religiously. The first years we slept elsewhere, upstairs and down. I felt that this room was too grande to be a bedroom, too awesome, not too haunted. I realize that I stayed out of this room because I thought it was too good for us. But I got over that. And we moved a bed in. And then a loooong time later, we moved a decent mattress in too and a dresser and the like. I’d still like to furnish it appropriately for its stature, with a four-poster bed or so, one of those giant trunks, leather couches. Meanwhile, I like to keep this room on the tour and try to entertain here occasionally. I think we poisoned our friends and ourselves though the time we entrapped them into shelling walnuts with us up there one winter evening in front of that very poor-drawing fireplace. I slept in very late the next day and then I washed all the bedding to get that forest fire smell out of them.

Then we invited new people over. People even newer to Plazac than we were. These were the parents of the other new kids at school. Their two boys were in the classes of my two kids that September. They seemed nice, cool. They got to rent the old postmaster’s house right across from La Marjolaine. The mayor got them that privilege after selling him one of his parcels. Sweet. Seems like an interesting house. They set up shop as potters in the garage. I liked their stuff. Whimsical. She was whimsical. She had a constant smile and wore bright colors which set off her pinkish strawberry blonde curls. I had one of my surges of magnanimous friendly pluck when I insisted that they come over for dinner some time. Friday! How about it?

They came. And for some reason I tested out my experimental faux sushi on them. I question this now that I have enough distance to realize the French don’t even know real sushi if they have not lived in a cultural capitol. My Californized rice based assimilation of cucumber, fish, and seaweed did indeed seem weird to them. But they seemed weird to us. So we’re even. She sat and smiled while her husband and his piano key sized teeth recounted his study of harmonics and the effects of resonating vibrations on our psychological health. I love this stuff. But my darling “Cartesian” husband has a short attention span when it comes to anything smacking of new-ageism; and more than that, he hates being cornered in one-sided conversations. He knows nothing about the healing virtues of harmonic resonance you see. The kids were excused from any pretense of testing or tasting the seaweed or rice or fish I had prepared as they asked me for bread and nutella. Alright.

I still managed to maintain a nice conversation with Ms. Potter. She is the artist, her husband the fire tamer. Pottery interests me. And I love learning about that sort of thing. I also love to hear about people’s forays into the esoteric. I find it fascinating. So I was wrapped by her declaration that she can “enleve le feu.” Here we were in the presence of a fire healer. I was practically tempted to burn myself so as to be able to testify to her magical touch. I got to ask loads of questions. She could not rightly explain how she does it. Her grandmother could and now she can. That is the mystery. When the kids continued to jump up and down on the upholstered dining chairs I did make tired noises though, and gently, eventually, ushered them out.

I commiserated with Philippe, did a hundred dishes and left it. The next school day, I was happy to have one more “friend” I could gossip with as the gaggle of mostly mothers huddled to usher off the school bus of little one’s on their way to “maternelle” the village over. It always seemed like the first day of summer camp or worse and not a daily 10 k school bus ride. Moms like to huddle is what it is. So I joined my pink haired partner in her curbside conversation with one of my closest neighbors; closest in proximity that is. They were making a date to meet so the one, or maybe it was her husband who was going to geographically purify and demagnetize the property of the other. Apparently, as Laeticia hosts regular purifying sweat lodges on her rather large plot of land, she had accumulated a lot of the spiritual muck that the sweat lodge attendees had burned out of their systems in that native American transplanted tradition. I love it more. The date was set.

And then my friend, the potter, turned to me, thanked me for the lovely meal, and then advised me, with real friendly concern, “You have got to do something about your house. C’est occupé. C’est veçu. You really need to do something about it. Reclaim your house. Its lived in. The spirits occupy your house. It’s not healthy to live like that.

I began to think about taking her advice.