France Profonde

Cache Cache Peur is still the kids’ favorite game. Whenever a crowd of kids convenes this is the one that keeps them all, big and little, boys and girls happy for hours. It is the one activity that always creates cohesion and keeps them out of fights and out of our hair the longest. Which is strange, because the object of the game is to scare one another half to death. It’s hide and seek with the bonus that you get to escape from your hiding place to shriek spookily at, the seeker, just as they were about to catch you. The game works I think, because it has the vindictive revenge response built right into the rules. The scariest hider wins and he or she gets to be the seeker in the next round. No one even seems to fight for that honor. Everyone will get their turn to be freaked out of their wits as they hunt for friends in the dark closets on that scary third floor. What I don’t particularly like about this game is how it reinforces my kids’ fear of their own third floor.

There is a bathroom on the third floor and two perfectly good bedrooms, lots of storage. The kids won’t go up there alone. At night Lucien continues to wake me to accompany him on potty runs long after he gave up that routine at our S.F. apartment. I accept the late night sleepy and sloppy hug gladly in exchange for lost sleep. But I still would rather the kids felt safe here in their house. Lucien is clear he prefers the “castle” on an acre next to the woods, over his city bound two bedroom apartment in S.F., but only barely, because “the France house is scarier.” He would like to live in a biiiiggg castle with a biiiigggig yard but with no ghost. I keep telling him, the ghost is gone.

We never see or feel or hear the ghost. Philippe and I are immune. He is a safe and sound cynic. You can’t fear a ghost you don’t believe in. I am not as certain. I don’t want to offend the believers in my community. I also hope to avoid the sneers of nay-saying scoffers, mostly American. I am agnostic in this as in many other questions of faith. Who am I to say? Let the ghosts speak for themselves. I haven’t had any personal experiences with ghosts, not since ours became an owl. But I am becoming more and more of a believer every day living among the mystics here in this corner of France.

There are lots and lots of magical events in this part of the world. You catch wind of the little miracles around here all the time. The latest one is particularly interesting to us. Philippe has a bad case of eczema on his hands. This doesn’t keep him from using and abusing his hands sun up till sun down every day all summer long out in the garden. But it does keep him from doing the dishes. And they hurt and are rough and ugly. Creams aren’t helping.

A friend of ours saw them and told him about a geurisseur. Later we met with Hippo directly. It was Hippo who took his daughter to see this old farmer reputed to have powers. The girl has been suffering from eczema since she was a baby. She’s 13 now. The farmer, HIppo recounts, got off his tractor, out in his field where they had tracked him down. He apparently took a look at Louanna, her skin, her dad, nodded and told her to write her name on a piece of paper, go home, drink a lot of water, and rest up. She would be tired. They did as they were told. And with in three days her eczema was all cleared up. He apparently works with handwriting. She got a light case again afterwards. But not like before. I want for Philippe to go.

You bring things like this up, and you start to hear about the fire healers. Many people here apparently have the power, in their hands to heal the pain and effects of burns. A treatment takes a few moments, or in worse case scenarios, a few treatments may be necessary. But people with serious burns all over their bodies can be healed, completely, with no pain or scars or drugs or medication. I have heard about a dozen of these cases. Everyone around has seen the results.

The magnetizeurs can relieve back pain, sciatica and other internal ailments with a simple laying on of hands. My friend experienced this healing on her debilitating lower back pain. I called for one when my dad arrived from America with a disc squeezed out of alignment. The local magnetizeur, Gurloff, from Holland, gave dad much appreciated relief. And then Alexis did. And the doctor’s recommended operation has been put off indefinitely now.

The plumber we had over to discuss the excellent work he did on our pipes, and to plan for future plumbing adventures we will have together, stayed on, for a pastisse and we talked about his experience with Les Sourciers. Not sorcerers like witches but sourciers, the sort who find water. He turns to these guys when nothing else works. One of them uses a stick, another one a pendulum, and within minutes they can find the source of water on a 10 acre property, the leak in a house full of pipes, or the puddle under the foundation indicating something else more serious again. He might know a healer as well who works on skin. He will ask his wife. She keeps the family memories. He is sure there is a guy in Thonac or maybe it’s Rouffignac. No one can logically explain how this stuff works. But no one doubts that it does.

I thought Philippe was barking up the wrong tree when he asked about the rumor of a local healer at the pharmacy in Rouffignac. But no one scoffed, deferred to their white-coated scientific supremacy, prescribed any drug-laden creams or mental health aids. The pharmacist asked the lady in line behind us if maybe she could remember the name of that geurriseur just out of town. They had to think a while. But they gave us a name. Philippe hasn’t called yet. As Hippo mentioned, maybe he should put off healing the ailment that gets him out of doing dishes. Or maybe he’ll call the guy tomorrow. It’s a difficult step for a self-identified Cartesian to take, leaps of faith going so against the grain.

The kids on the other hand have no difficulty leaping. They are fearless believers in all they can imagine. Lucien asks great questions about how light sabers really work, how big pokeman is in “real life” etc. And Cleo has a beautiful theology about the tooth fairy. In France, the agent of tooth redemption is a mouse, not a fairy. So Cleo has had to reckon her belief system against her friends’ belief systems. She wisely concluded that, “it is what you believe it is.”

But now the kids believe our house is haunted by ghosts. They have a couple of good sources on this. One of their gang, Babou, is the nephew of one of our winter tenants. His aunt Pauline was really our first friend here. She served us our first beers at the Marjolaine where she worked during our first summers here. She also knew Mme Tooth. She is one of the few people who attended Mme Tooth’s service here, in the grand room. She dated Mark Lawrence for years, and his parents were the Tooth’s closest friends. They fill the pages of the Mme’s dinner party record.

Pauline lived here for a year with her next boyfriend, a young man very erroneously dubbed Sunshine. He wasn’t. And their year together here wasn’t sunny. They were on the skids. And Pauline spent a lot of lonely nights here while Sunshine was out DJing the party circuit. There are parties here and near here.

One night, alone and cold and sad surely, she was woken by a loud bang. A second loud banging struck the ceiling above her head. There is a guest room up there, nothing in it. She is not under the roof or an attic where weasels or badgers could be fooling around. She knows the sound of the owl. The cats slept outside; the squeaks and squawks of the house were familiar to her. This was none of those. The bang came again and she says it was aimed at her. It said to her “Go, get out of here.” And she did. She grabbed her clothes off the floor and she pulled them on as she ran down the stairs. She finished putting her shoes on in the courtyard. She fled to her car and was going to drive to a friend’s house. But the neighbors had a light on. So she pulled up there to finish the night curled in a ball on their floor. The ghost in the house was thereby outed to the world. From then on the stories started coming in.

And there are more. Many more.