*****FRENCH POSTCARDS *****

I was in a quandary as to just what to put on a bio page. Any background details on me would be complicated by the fact that, aside from a Vermeer here and there, things without dialogue hold no intrinsic interest for me. We can discuss characterization and expression till the sun goes nova, but as for the rest of it -- whither comes the Egan? What is Doris, who is she, that all our pervs commend her? -- What difference did it make?

Then it came to me. I could put my trip to France up here. Because it's my Web page, and nobody can stop me!

And I have done so. The scenes which follow were originally posted for some online friends, so they're (obviously) not formally written. This isn't Paul Theroux or Mark Salzman. You're lucky I haven't uploaded any of the snapshots; once I figure out how to use Paintshop Pro, even that fragile safety will be gone.

As We Open...

Our heroine has been invited by her old friend, Cathy, to accompany her to the south of France, where they can spend Christmas at her father's cottage on the outskirts of the small village of Blauzac. Our heroine, cognizant of the advantages of no hotel bill, agrees. She's never been to France before...

POSTCARD ONE: Getting There.

I met Cathy at the gate for the Air France flight -- where she proceeded to wave a diamond ring under my nose and tell me that she was getting married on Tuesday, January 3. (That's today. So if she ever shows up in this topic again, you guys can give her best wishes. :))

I did what any good friend would do. I expressed my best sentiments on the occasion and thrust two giant containers of Aunt Jemima pancake syrup at her. (Not a wedding present -- her father had requested them weeks ago. He said he didn't care if we brought Christmas presents or clothing, his only hopes were pinned on the Aunt Jemima syrup. Cathy agreed to take them in her backpack since my luggage was, er, considerable.) We then discussed the meaning of life until the line for boarding was called.

Air France did well by us foodwise (it being Christmas Eve, we got yule logs for dessert), and I met "Parisian indifference" for the first time. Anybody see that UPS commercial that starts with a young Frenchman sitting in a cafe? You hear the voiceover: "I am boaahhrd. I am seek with boredom." (As the police tow away his delivery truck in the background.) "The bourgeois capitalists waiting for their packages... let zem wait." The two flight attendants on our side of the plane were like that -- one in particular. As she slapped down the headphones on seat after seat, without looking, an expression of distant contempt on her face, Cathy and I turned to each other. "She is boaahhrd," we said, collapsing in giggles. However, despite the warnings I'd received, that was the only unfriendly experience I had with any French person. Perhaps it would have been different if we'd stayed in Paris.

We changed planes in Orly Airport. After taking a monorail to another terminal, walking around, etc., it was getting near to boarding time for the Air Inter flight to Nimes. I glanced at Cathy's luggage and remarked, "I guess you were able to fit those two containers in your backpack after all." She looked at me with a frozen sort of expression, and it dawned on both of us that the two containers of pancake syrup were still back in their plastic bag on the floor of the Air France plane.

Cathy galloped away to speak to various airline representatives, returning just in time for us to board. The woman at the Air France desk had told her, several times, that if the syrup had been in a plastic bag, it was most likely in the garbage by now. So we settled into our seats and prepared our excuses for Cathy's Dad.

Just before take-off, I saw a flight attendant lift a mike, and heard (insert French accent here:) "Cathereene Roseman!"--followed by a couple of lines of French. The way they said it, it sounded like a life-or-death crisis. So I stood up, Cathy climbed out of her seat-and down the aisle came running a little middle-aged woman in an Air France uniform, carrying a very familiar white plastic bag. We threw a stream of "Merci!'s" at her.

And then the pilot came on the loudspeaker: "We are sorry, ladies and gentlemen, we were delayed for a few minutes by technical difficulties... we will be taking off now." Forty minutes later we were flying over the peaks of Les Cevannes, poking up here and there through the cloud layer. The cloud layer itself was like an endless white arctic tundra, until the sun rose and turned it to pink and purple.

Then we were down in Nimes airport, a little place surrounded by green fields. It was just after dawn and the world felt fresh and clean. Cathy's father was waiting for us. He expressed his happiness at our not forgetting the maple syrup.

Postcard Two: The Sacred and the Profane

Cathy's father lives in a house on the outskirts of Blauzac, a village of about 600 people set atop a hill, surrounded by meadows and farms. We had to speed along some curving roads to get there, with rather alarming drops on my side of the car, but with spectacular views of an old river below.

The house looks like any old stone house on the outside. On the inside there's a living room with a modern fireplace, polished wood floors, and nifty furniture; a kitchen with a tile island; sliding Japanese doors leading off to a sitting room; and three bedrooms upstairs, along with a study and a balcony. Bathrooms up and downstairs -- quite a deep, inviting tub downstairs, though I never got to try it out...

I agreed that it would suffice.

We dropped our bags and drove off for a quick walk around the town of Uzes ("oozess"), which is near Blauzac and actually appears on some maps. Now, Cathy is no doubt jaded when it comes to all this, but I'll give you my impressions as a naive Jersey girl. We'd driven through Nimes on the way back from the airport, and it and Uzes struck me the same way. There was a constant visual sense of beauty; not of material wealth, but of pure aesthetic. Any one of the streets we walked down, if it existed in New York City, would be a landmark block, and people would say, "You live there? How lucky you are!" The buildings are of a whitish local stone, tinged with grey and gold. Everywhere -- Nimes, Uzes, Arles -- are the same red tiled roofs, mellowed with age. The streetlamps are of wrought iron. The windows are huge, with weathered wooden shutters of blue and green. There are balconies, and flowers wherever possible, even in winter.

Everywhere you walk, there are sudden glimpses of casual, underplayed loveliness. You pass gates that mark off courtyards, or stairs that climb and twist past flowerpots, old painted doorways, and sleeping cats. You pass through narrow medieval streets and emerge into squares with cafe tables or plane trees or the facade of a cathedral.

The other main adjustment an American must make -- besides the constant assault of beauty -- is the lack of convenience. Stores close down at lunch time, sometimes not reopening till 2:30 or as late as 4:00. And of course, there's the state of the... facilities.

In other words, I made my first acquaintance with a Turkish bathroom right there in Uzes. You go down a flight of stairs as though you were entering the subway (they're not necessarily underground, but this one was), and open a door. There you are greeted with the essentials: A cement floor, a hole, and (in a huge concession to comfort) two cement footrests on either side.

The floor is not the sort of place you would want to lay your coat, purse, or jacket; so it helps to have a confederate with you, upon whom you can thrust these items before you enter this room, lock the door, and face the adventure the gods have chosen to send you. Needless to say, paper is optional, as are sinks.

I know that the town fathers of Uzes would not be pleased, but between the general dullness of jetlag and the cold, this room is the one I remember most vividly from my visit to their excellent town.

Postcard Three: It's Pretty, It's Quiet... It's Making Me Nervous

It was still Christmas Day, so after a post-Uzes nap, we got up, had a lovely dinner, and exchanged presents. After which we fell gratefully unconscious once again. I was introduced to Florence (Flor-ONCE), Cathy's father's girlfriend. She was very sweet, and though her English was twenty times better than my French, there were charming gaps in her vocabulary. I was up before Cathy for breakfast next morning, and Florence exerted herself to entertain me, telling me about the area -- about the wealth that used to be taken for granted among the people of Les Cevannes, back when it was a commercial center for silk. (Nimes has always been known for fabric -- "denim" is cotton "de Nimes.")

She told me about the old silk factories, the mulberry trees, and how the women would raise the "little snakes" and throw the cocoons into tubs of boiling water to loosen the thread. Now that cheap silk is available from the Far East, there's no point in the industry any more, and the people who lived in the hills have moved away. Those who remain live in poverty.

Florence herself lives alone, out in the country. "It's much quieter than here," she said. We both paused for a moment to listen to the absolute silence, and I said that I found it hard to believe it could be much quieter... She told me about walking in the woods and swimming in the river in summer, and asked me about Jersey City. Did I feel safe coming home at night? I told her that mostly I did, although one always worries. She assured me that she quite understood. She herself often worried, when she walked alone -- about wild boar. Yes, I was far from New York in many ways.

Wild boar, in fact, are quite a hazard. They can grow as tall as your waist, several hundred pounds, and they are not always in a good temper. One attacked Florence's car while she was driving, actually knocking it some distance. Hunters go after them in groups every year. She described the last hunt, which covered several villages in the area and netted over a hundred boar.

The lower east side began to seem relatively innocuous.

Postcard Four: Sex and the Single Statue

More boar stories from Florence as we rode with her to Avignon, where she was catching the train. The roads were... sigh. Have you ever seen the famous photograph by Cartier-Bresson, "En Brie"? You're looking down a long road bordered by trees, meadows on either side. In the distance the road curves and the trees continue their beautiful, inevitable, geometric progression.

I almost grew jaded to this. Almost.

We dropped Florence off and parked just outside the city walls of Avignon. The heart of the city is enclosed by medieval, ramparted walls, high and majestic-looking. I wouldn't want to besiege this place. The city is beautiful in the same vein as Nimes and Uzes; it didn't really matter what street you walked down, so we followed along behind Cathy's Dad like two ducklings.

Cathy had a craving for a meringue, so I dropped into a patisserie with her... oh, my. The choices were incredible; the cases were full of intricate little marvels. I thought about getting a Noel Buche (a miniature yule log); I thought about getting one of the little cream pastries; I had many evil, hedonistic thoughts, in fact. But it was getting close to lunch time, so I pretended to be above all this. Had I known it would turn out to be the best pastry shop I found, I might have fallen for it with less resistance.

It was cold that day, bitter and windy, and I tried to hold my coat closed tightly over my scarf. The wind swept in right off the Rhone and right through your bones, just the same. I looked longingly at the cafes we passed and thought, "hot chocolate." Avignon is a tourist city, geared toward summer, when fetes and festivals and plays go on and the hotels are full and parking a car anywhere near the city is impossible. In the winter, as my guidebook said, it can be a "windswept and cheerless place."

Cathy and I headed for the logical end of any tour, the Pope's Palace. We got in just before they closed at noon, and as we walked through, silent young men would appear and close and lock the doors of each room behind us. It was enough to make a Jersey girl nervous. There were carvings and tomb monuments and paintings and such, but for some reason I would focus in on things like: The floor. One room had delightful Dutch-type tiles all over it, with birds and flowers and oddities. And: The ceiling. There were ceilings that came out of some Norse, Tolkien-illustrated book -- carved and painted wooden beams that cried out for Vikings, or at least elves, underneath.

Interesting moment: I bought a couple of things in the gift shop. The saleswoman turned to me, and before I could even ask her how much it was (in English), she said, "Fifty-seven." I went away wondering if I had "Anglais" stamped to my forehead.

Afterwards we tried to find our way to the bridge from the famous song. ("Sur le pont d'Avignon... ") We ended up climbing some steps that led to more steps... that led to more steps... that... well, I lagged behind Cathy and her father. Steps have never been my strong suit. An old Frenchman stood leaning against a wall near the head of one group of steps, looking north over the Rhone; he saw me huffing and puffing and a big, friendly grin came over his face. He moved aside when I reached him, obviously inviting me to take up as much room as I liked by the wall, and spoke to me in French. Hopefully a smile and a "merci" were enough...

The pope's garden was at the top of all these steps; a lovely place with a fountain and swans -- one black swan, the first I ever saw. Out came the camera... Poor Mr. Roseman. He wanted us to march off to the bridge, and there I was, fascinated by waterfowl.

Postcard Five: Sex and the Single Statue, Continued

We finally won a glimpse of the bridge from the top. Half of it was washed away in the 1600s, but the rest of it seems firmly intent on staying around for a while. We descended again and walked randomly around the streets. By then it had warmed up. On the way out of the city we passed a small museum and for the heck of it we went inside.

It was light and airy, with an inner courtyard with trees and benches. There were only two small wings, but they were full of surprises. I walked from one room into another, and there without any warning was Brueghel's "La Kermesse." It covered a good section of the wall. I stood staring at it, hearing in my mind the rhythmic poem: "In Brueghel's great picture, The Kermess/The dancers go round/They go round and around/The squeal and the blare and the tweedle of bagpipes/Of bugle and fiddles, round as the thick-sided glasses whose wash they impound/Their hips and their bellies off-balance to turn them/Prance as they dance/In Brueghel's great picture, The Kermess."

(It's a circle dance, you see, that's why it's a circular poem. I only wish I could recall who wrote it... )

And near the entrance -- really the first sculpture you see -- is a statue of a delightful, handsome young man, his back to you. His neck is twisted round so you can see his face, for he's looking down with smug delight at his... tail. Yes, I had to look twice. He's grasping the little tail with one hand, running it through his palm, and very silky it looks, too, and very pleased he seems to be with himself in an innocent way. Cathy had circled the statue and was on the other side. She said, "He's got a really neat little member on this side, too." So I checked it out, and he did. The title said that he was a "Faun Playing With His Tail," but there were no goat's legs involved. Maybe that's why it seemed so weirdly, yet innocently, perverse.

The museum had been closed for a couple of years and only just opened. We just happened to be walking by...

Along the way, we did stop for lunch at a cafe, where they served the meal du jour in two courses -- an enormous amount of food -- and Cathy's Dad gave us his theories on why middle-class French people have a better lifestyle than their American counterparts. I got up to use the bathroom and Cathy said to me, "Uh... you might want to leave your coat and purse here."

"Oh," I said. "It's one of those."

Feet getting tired yet? Care to rest a bit in this convenient cafe? "Garcon! Chocolate, pour deux!" And when you feel quite up to it...

Postcard Six: The Romans in Perspective

I had heard of the Pont du Gard, a double-tiered Roman aqueduct spanning a river somewhere in the Provencal countryside, and I'd seen a sketch of it in one of my guidebooks. But nothing prepared me for the scale of the thing, or its grace. We stopped there on the way back from Avignon. You pull into a small dirt parking lot, walk down a road, and there, looming above you, is IT. It arches across the river gorge in a series of perfect curves, and as you look you can see the tiny shapes of people walking across the topmost layer; and your perspective shifts as you realize it's even bigger than you thought. A mere two millennia old, and still a more-than-adequate way of crossing this river... The Pont du Gard is the force of yin in stone: graceful, enduring, and deceptively strong.

A highway crosses the bottom-most layer today. We walked out along the arches, to the right of the road. The view over the river was spectacular (and yes, out came the camera... ) It's an old, dark, quiet river that's seen a lot; and its banks are green with trees, one or two villa-like stone roofs visible among the leaves. The sun was setting behind hills to the west. I took great care making my way between the wall of each arch and the edge of the aqueduct -- it was a long way down, and my body was still out of tune from jetlag and all those steps in Avignon.

This was beauty of the intense, solemn, shivery variety; and had I been alone and not on the edge of exhaustion, I would have climbed the long way to the top layer, sat near the edge and contemplated eternity. It was the sort of place that called up that kind of response. As it was, I made my way carefully back to the road, where I saw that the view on the other side of the river was every bit as gorgeous.

And then we went home.

And that was Monday.

Postcard Seven: Mediterranean Blues

I am building an imaginary city, you see. It's for the book-after-next. [EDITORIAL INSERT, TWO YEARS LATER: Now the city of Herse, in the Stephen Price stories.] It's a small place, on the Mediterranean, east of Italy at much the same latitude as Provence. In true genre tradition, it's a haven for expatriates, spies, traitors, soldiers, and intriguers at love and politics. But although I know and love my hero and his mysterious sidekick, and know and love his friends and opponents, and grasp some of the undercurrents of the town, I was not entirely sure of what the place looked like. And I'd never seen the Mediterranean.

"You've never seen the Mediterranean?" asked Cathy's father. "We'll have to go."

So we drove off Tuesday morning, full of jam and coffee. It was a seasonably warm day, and a blazer and scarf were more than enough.

Over the course of the week I grew to know the route from Blauzac very well... over country roads, through the next village (St. Anastasie), past the sign that says "Pont Submersible," past the pont itself, and through the lovely village beside the river, with the medieval walls (Dion, I think). This time we kept going until we reached a neverending strip of highway that might have been transplanted directly from Route 17 in north Jersey. Passing mediocre store after store, low boxes of buildings that went on forever, I began to forget I was in a foreign country.

We stopped first at the little town of Aigues-Mortes (from which point, I was told, Louis took ship for the Crusades, although now the place is landlocked). It lies in the midst of the Camargue, the marshlands that border the Med, and it's more of a fortress than a town, enclosed by medieval walls. The "Constance Tower" defines one corner (where they kept the Protestants shut up, I gather). Aigues-Mortes is not exactly a big place -- we walked in one gate, through town, and out the back into a field, in about ten minutes. It will not surprise you to learn, however, as it no longer surprised me, that it was beautiful inside. Cafes, little shops, and the usual lovely buildings with balconies, shutters, flowers, cats...

"Do you want to stop at a cafe? Do you want to walk around some more? What do you want to do?"

"I want to see the Mediterranean," I said.

"Well," said Mr. Roseman, pleased, for he was clearly growing restless in Aigues-Mortes, "we won't see it here."

And off we went.

La Grande Motte is a planned town built on what used to be marshes. The architects were told to go crazy, so they obliged. Looking down the curve of coast toward the town, the horizon is dominated by tall, white... pyramids. Many French hate la Grande Motte, but I thought it was rather neat.

We parked. "There are restaurants here," I was told, "and a promenade... and..."

Staring toward the expanse of sky at the end of the street, I said, "No..."

Yes. The Mediterranean, gray with winter. Waves ran in against a soft sand beach backed by a white stone promenade. I went down the steps, across the shelf of sand, knelt and put my hands in the water.

Not too cold, and not too hot, as Goldilocks would say. Just right, if a bit sandy. We strolled along the promenade further up-coast. The little streets that run along the resort towns here have a familiar air to them -- pizza joints, cheap restaurants shuttered up for the season -- anyone who's been to the Jersey shore would have the rhythm of it in no time. Before we left the coast, I made use of one of the local freestanding bathrooms. (I know you all like to be kept updated on the state of the plumbing.) A couple of these were tested out in NY last year, and I'd already met them in England. You drop in a coin, enter a tall, metallic spacepod, shut the door, use the plastic toilet, and then get the heck out of there before your 15 minutes are up and the place disinfects itself.

Before they got all the bugs out, a little French boy was actually disinfected (lethally) in one of these structures. But that was some years ago. (BTW, after my first Turkish experience, Cathy and her father asked me what I thought of them. I said, "It beats what we've got in New York, which is nothing.") I feel a deep gratitude to the Victorians, however.

And so on to Montpellier, one of the most beautiful cities in the country...

Postcard Eight: Everyone Here Is Too Damned Pretty

Montpellier has been a university town for centuries, I was told in the car on the way there. Rabelais came here to study. (Cathy's father, a teacher by profession, provided continuing background data wherever we went. I was listening to most of it, but I'm not always a demonstrative listener, and it occurred to me later that he may have wondered whether I was paying attention.)

Cathy's father also has an antipathy to paying for parking, but in Montpellier he surrendered at once to the inevitable and drove us into an enormous underground parking lot. We took an elevator upstairs to a shopping mall that was much like any shopping mall at home, except for the pastry cases outside the supermarket and the cheese extravaganza within, both of which I noted immediately for future reference. It was lunchtime, so I ordered a cheese-croissant-sort-of-thing with Cathy while her father ducked into McDonalds. ("A Frenchman told me about this," he defended himself. "He said, 'Have you tried these things called Chicken McNuggets?'")

We emerged from the mall into a huge city square crowded with pedestrians. (The Place de la Comedie is forbidden to cars.) The architecture is the first thing you notice; it's obviously beautiful in a different vein from, say, Nimes. (Although I think I prefer Nimes, slightly, myself. But you can see in the lines of the cities that Nimes used to be a working man's town, where Montpellier speaks of money and a leisured class.) The buildings are wedding-cake pretty; white, not the gold/gray of local stone, with domes and lacy tiers of balconies.

I showed some photos the other day to someone in a tavern in Manhattan (one of the comedy writers who tortured me in Disneyland, in my earlier adventures) and when she came upon the picture of the square in Montpellier she grabbed it up and said, "That's beautiful!" There were more people in Montpellier than in any other city or town I saw. It was like walking in New York. We made our way through the crowds in the Place de la Comedie, past a long, mysterious fountain behind which the sculpted shoulders, heads, and arms of people emerged, crying toward heaven. There was a walkway beyond that ran on a lower level than the square itself, so I said to Cathy, "If we could see behind that, would the rest of the figures be standing there?"

"I don't know," she said. Then we were distracted by the carousel... I don't know what it is with the French and carousels. When we stopped for lunch in Avignon there was a carousel in the square outside, packed with horses with lively painted eyes and flying manes, and while we ate we could see it starting up and children coming to play. There was a carousel in Nimes. And here in Montpellier, there were two in the Place de la Comedie.

Eventually we turned out of the square and boulevard into the narrow, twisty streets. The medieval atmosphere of the city is only partially mitigated by the fact that the streets (while soaked in ambiance) are lined with designer shops. It is a place targeted to people with money (again, much like New York). The streets are also filled with young men on motorcycles and scooters; leather-jacketed, with dark, sullen eyes, full lips, and gorgeous heads of hair, striking James Dean attitudes wherever possible as they assist incredibly pretty young girls onto the backs of said scooters. (Said young men will duck their heads with charming shyness and excuse themselves when they're in your way; attitude does not supercede politeness in these here parts.)

I commented on the overwhelming good looks of the people around us. "There are a lot of young people in Montpellier," said Mr. Roseman.

"Because it's a university town," I offered obligingly, not having forgotten the initial lecture.

"That's what I wanted to hear," he acknowledged.

It may be so, but I don't remember the guys at Columbia looking like this. Nor the girls, to be perfectly honest, loyal though I am to Barnard. Bet my classmates could talk biochem with the best of them, just the same, dammit...

Postcard Nine: In the City of Money and Beauty, Continued

As we wandered the streets we kept an eye out for our secondary quest: finding Cathy a wedding dress. She was getting married three days after our return. The true-hearted shoppers among you know how hard it is to find the right dress at the best of times; and here we were limited by a number of factors. "I don't want white," Cathy had said, "it's too traditional."

"Of course," she added as we searched, "black isn't appropriate either... and I guess neither is red... and we've already established that I don't look good in browns and beige... " I thought we'd finally reached agreement on the idea of a white/black combo, but they all got the thumbs down, too. ("It's a skirt and blouse. I don't think I want a skirt and blouse. It should be a dress... ")

In short, no outfits were purchased in Montpellier. Eventually we wandered back to the square and past the fountain with the giant people supplicating heaven. I said, "I want to know whether the rest of them is there, or not." "I don't see how we're going to find out, unless we get down there somehow," said Cathy. So I climbed up onto the wall of the fountain to see what could be seen.

"Get up here, Cath," I said. She climbed up and we both started to laugh. The bodies of the figures stopped at exactly the point where eye level in the square ended. Thrift, thrift, Horatio.

We went back through the mall, making a last dress foray on Cathy's behalf, then began the drive home. By then it was dark. On the way out of town we passed a magnificent new block of buildings with a Georgian facade, the sort of thing you'd assume was a museum or government palace. I was told it was designed for low and middle-income tenants. Then we crossed over a bridge, and I looked down to see a fountain set in the middle of the river, bursting with spray lit pink and blue and green by colored lights. The river was lined with shops whose signs burned with complementary colors. And then we were out of Montpellier and on the route to Blauzac.

I forgot to mention that while I stood beside the pastry counter waiting for Cathy and her father to emerge from the supermarket (land of a thousand cheeses, wine, and gourmet food), I saw a woman in a genuine wetsuit walking around in one of the mall fountains. She peered under the lights, and kept checking underwater with her hands and occasionally walking over to consult a bored, middle-aged man who paid no attention to her. Eventually Cathy came out and as we watched we tried to create a scenario in English. ("Look, she's found it!" -- as the woman tried, excitedly, to get the man's attention. And as the man went on chatting to his cronies, we supplied, in our awful French accents, "You cannot possibly have found it. You are only a woman. I will tell you when you've found it...")

Actually, we had no idea whatsoever as to what was going on there. Such are the mysteries of travel.

And that was Tuesday.

And after an unconscionable delay, we bring you...
Postcard Ten: Nimes, My Kind of Town (the Park is Up and the Boulevard's Down)

Nimes (NEEM). Boulevards, parks, fountains, Roman ruins, twisty streets... and the obligatory shutters, balconies, flowers, cats... It was my favorite, and perhaps for that reason, I find it difficult to zero in on. A couple of long boulevards lined with plane trees run from the epitome-of-the-civilized-park at one end to the Roman arena at the other.

Where should we begin... All right, we'll go with the Romans. They were first chronologically.

I don't know what the Romans did with their arena in winter, but the present inhabitants of Nimes cover the center with a dome. In true practical fashion, the space is used as a tree nursery. You look down from the seats and see bucket upon bucket of cellophane-wrapped trees standing in the sand where men fought and died. An ironic and superior use of space, I thought. OTOH, they remove the trees and the dome in summer and have bullfights instead, so the ethical progress is not perhaps as complete as it might be.

Cathy and I climbed all over the seats. We had a ball, and even she (the jaded one) got into it. There are steps in places, but often the best way to climb was just to maneuver from one level of seats to the next. The levels are tall enough to make this difficult for a person with one bad knee, so I climbed with great awkwardness, my only advantage over the original audience being that I didn't have worry about robes. (Doris's fashion advice: Going to the arena? Wear jeans and a leather jacket.) (Come to think of it, that's Doris's fashion advice for a great many activities in life.)

Behind the seats, in the outer shell, are dark, spooky corridors on the bottom levels and light, open corridors on the top levels, where you can see out beyond the arches, over the red roofs of Nimes. (And yes, out came the camera... ) We stood beside an arch and looked down at the square below, with its blue and yellow flagstones and intimate cafe and a charming house with three tiers of balconies draped in flowers (opened onto by blue French doors that matched the flagstones). (And this kind of thing is everywhere!) And we waved, trying to get the attention of the man crossing the square -- Cathy's father, who after umpety-ump years in Europe is bored with ruins. ("Once you couldn't pull me out of them," he said. "Now I think of them as ruins.")

I suppose there's something strange about two people playing in the cultural artifacts of a past civilization. Serious to them, toys to us. Although I couldn't help wondering, in those dark halls on the lower level that emptied out into the arena, just what the people had thought who were waiting there, two thousand years ago.

After we filled up on Romans -- including the Maison Caree, a temple that's now a museum of Nimes, past and present -- we wandered around the streets, and I could see that "let's find Cathy a dress" look coming into Mr. Roseman's eyes. We passed through another square where cafe tables were set up outside an old church and music was playing. Not live music -- there was a loudspeaker attached to the church wall. It was some kind of New Age air, pleasant in a shivery way, and it went with the square and the beauty of the day. It was so appropriate, in fact, that it took me a moment to consciously pick up on its existence -- it fit the surroundings eerily like a movie soundtrack.

And there in a street off to the right, we passed a boutique with three mannequins in the window. The center mannequin wore a short dress of ivory lace. The one on the right wore a rather frightening purple creation. The left mannequin wore something nondescript. Cathy paused. "That's nice," she commented. I glanced at her fearfully, having reason to suspect her taste. "Er... you don't mean the purple thing, do you?" "No, no -- the dress in the center." Mr. Roseman and I looked at each other, then we pulled Cathy into the shop.

Postcard Eleven: Nimes, its Flora and Fauna -- Continued

The French want to communicate with you. It just isn't always easy... Cathy's father, not wanting to get in our way, stayed by the door. Cathy approached one of the two saleswomen and asked about "la chemise in the window." (The saleswomen were both quite young, in their early twenties, and very pretty, like so many other young people we ran into. They were also perfectly coiffed and made up, adding to some of the discussions Cathy and I had later as to whether all these good looks were due to genetics or culture.)

"La chemise." The young woman looked faintly worried, as though she were smelling some perfume she couldn't identify. Cathy gestured and pointed, and eventually the woman asked a question in French. "Yes!" said Cathy, in a voice of intense relief. "La robe, la robe!" She turned to me. "I was asking to see the 'slip' -- no wonder she was confused."

(I was reminded keenly of the Thurber story in which he's driving a car with a Russian emigre in France -- "Gauche, gauche!" "You mean droite?")

Meanwhile I was distracted by a display of three long, gorgeous gypsy scarves, made up of pieces of silk sewn together, some plain, some designed. Cathy got into the mannequin's dress (the only one left) and we all stared at her in the mirror. (I did my staring from underneath three flowing scarves, like some overly enthusiastic Isadora Duncan.) "It needs something," she said. "A black jacket?"

I went to the rack and pulled out a black lace top. The saleswoman, looking agonized, came over and snatched it from me, pouring out a stream of French. Cathy's father approached. "She's saying this goes with the black lace dress, and does Cathy want to change?"

I explained to him what we were doing, and he turned to the young woman and began telling her. Before six words were out of his mouth, she actually grabbed hold of his arm with both hands, leaning on him in an ecstasy of relief. "Vouz parlez Francais!" "Oui," he said.They exchanged a few sentences, and she ran to the rack and pulled out a short black Bolero jacket.

This was judged acceptable. I won't torment you with the further details of our purchases, but Cathy came away with the dress and jacket, and I came away with all three silk scarves. The woman took my Visa card along with the scarves, saying, "Le deux?" "Les trois," I corrected, proud of being able to actually use some words from my incredibly limited vocabulary. "Pour les cadeaux," Cathy's father explained to her, and she put them in a gift bag with a shiny gold ribbon.

Flushed with our success, we wandered back to the car by way of the park, a truly civilized oasis. It was neither large nor small, crowded nor deserted. It was the proper size for a park, with just enough people to give a sense of community and enjoyment. There were fountains, of course; and children riding ponies, and other children being pulled along in a pony-cart. Not that we can see into anybody's heart, but certainly as I looked around I couldn't find anyone who looked miserable.

As we crossed over a pond I glanced down and saw a feathered creature perched at the edge. It might have been a duck, except he had a wattle under his chin, and I'd never seen an animal like it. "Oh, look," said Cathy, straight-faced. "It's a water-turkey." I turned and stared at her suspiciously. "Is that true? --You're making that up. You're playing with my sense of reality." We went on walking. "The chicks hatch under water, you know." "Stop it!"

I should add that in simply strolling around Nimes we passed several fountains, some old and some new. One of the newest was made up of a long mall with a rectangular pool, flanked by two large stone squares at each end. The squares faced each other -- and I mean with actual faces on them. I kept staring back at them, intrigued, as we went by. And I thought of the giant metallic cube that passes for public art in a space near where I work in New York, and was disappointed. Even the garbage cans in Nimes -- made of heavy, stationary stone, sculpted on top -- are designed for aesthetics as well as trash.

"You know," said Cathy, "once the chicks are hatched, they have to fight their way to dry land -- " "Oh, shush."

Postcard Twelve: Proud Home of the Vincent Van Gogh Café

Well, I did write up a fuller description of my visit to Arles, but I've decided not to post it, because I didn't enjoy it that much, so how fun could it be for you? This may be partially because my cold, held down to a constant sore throat and hacking by a volley of vitamin Cs and Sudafeds, exploded on Wednesday night. By Thursday morning I'd gone through a box of tissues and Cathy and her father kept saying, "You sound terrible. You probably want to rest." Ha. I was in France, we were leaving on Saturday morning! "I want to go to Arles." "This could get worse, you know, if you don't rest..." "Really, I want to go to Arles... " (In much the same voice Fox Mulder might say, "No, I really do want to hear about those lights in the sky.")

So we went. I sat in the back seat with my tissues, a sack of cough drops, and a plastic bag to use as a trash can. I was, in short, a Disgusting Object.

As for Arles, it's a down-at-the-heels kind of place, a tourist town, more blatant than many -- and yes, the home of the Vincent Van Gogh Cafe. From the impression I got, it was also the home of the Vincent Van Gogh Sweet Shoppe, the Vincent Van Gogh Bait'n'Tackle...

I will say, though, that the view from the top of the Roman arena is spectacular. And off the main street, there are little pockets of beauty in unexpected places. And I fell in love with the American bathroom at the McDonalds.

And that was it for Arles. We drove back to Blauzac, and I was offered the chance of getting up early next morning for a last trip to Uzes (really a lovely town), where they were meeting someone for coffee; but I declined, saying that I would probably be up late working on breathing.

Friday was a drizzly sort of day. I was feeling better, and since Cathy's father was throwing a cocktail party that evening, we'd been signed up for the preparations. (I have always wondered if there are really people in the world who have cocktail parties, and whether I would be one when I grew up. No matter how old I get, I seem to be in a crowd that gathers with stunning casualness and orders pizza to be eaten while sitting on the floor.)

I made a last walk into Blauzac in the evening (more about this later). At seven, guests began arriving -- beautifully dressed, impeccably mannered, charmingly accented; all that one could ask for in what could be the only cocktail party I ever go to if we don't count the SFWA Bash.

Most were French speakers with varying commands of English. Some were expats; a German, an American/British-by-way-of-Geneva couple, etc. Based on some overheard gossip both at this party and elsewhere, a suspicion I'd had about expatriates was amplified -- there is a percentage of them that like to drink heavily, and this may well have something to do with why they're not at home anymore. (Earlier Cathy and I had discussed how the British expats in Blauzac seemed reminiscent of the people in the EF Benson books.)

Almost everybody at the party was terribly, terribly polite, and perfectly willing to discuss inconsequentials until we all reeled with boredom. (We'd already done so with a British woman earlier in the day, until she left, no doubt driven from our presence by the tedium of our mutual conversation.) But there was an American woman I fell in with, as one of the few English-speakers, and I liked her immediately. She was a bit short, pretty, middle-aged, and very comfortable-looking. (The American half of the couple living in Geneva.) And she had a habit of stating exactly what was on her mind -- usually the thing that everybody was thinking, but no one was saying... and saying it in such a way that it was no longer threatening, but on the contrary, rather funny.

In short, she reminded me of a New Yorker. :) We talked for hours. The funny thing was, everybody else seemed to like her style, too; she was popular among the so-very-polite Continentals. When the party was over, Cathy asked her Dad where Emily was from.

New York, he said.

It's a short way home.

Last Postcard: A Gold and Grey Melancholy

The south of France used to be a winter refuge, historically. Now crowds come in the summer, the better to enjoy the over-hundred-degree days, glaring sun, and hordes of flies. (At least, this was the impression of summer I picked up piecemeal from people's remarks.) I was glad to be there in December, when most of the days were mild and the fields were mellow and misty.

Communication was, on the whole, easier than I'd expected. My scraps of high-school French, combined with all the common sources our two languages share, made (for instance) road signs almost entirely understandable. When a sign said, "pont submersible," I figured that this bridge was probably not a good bet when the river swelled. When you approach a traffic circle -- of which there are endless numbers -- a sign earnestly informs you that "vouz n'avez pas la priorite." And upon reaching said circle, it drives the point home with a "yield" sign marked "Cedez la passage!" -- All right, there's no exclamation point on that last one, but I always heard it that way in my head.

As for the people I met, they made every effort. Sometimes it was hard to put off my New York shell of Ignore-Thy-Neighbor. Walking in Blauzac by myself on my last afternoon I came to a wall at the end of a street, overlooking the side of a hill. Two very tough-looking teenage girls sat on top of the wall, smoking and chatting. Really, they had a hard-bitten look about them, as though they were ready to hop on the backs of motorcycles and ride off to terrorize a small town. In New York, you pretend not to see people like that. Of course, in New York you pretend not to see anybody -- it's safer that way. When I reached proper proximity, they burst into identical friendly smiles and said, "Bonjour!"

After the party preparations had been made, Friday evening, I took a last walk into Blauzac to pick up more tissues and take a final look around. The night was very still and the air was cool and clear. I passed lit windows where people were preparing dinner. The few villagers I met said, "Good evening." Since it was still some hours till the party, and I was hungry, I went into the boulangerie, hoping I could handle the communication thing on my own.

The baker was a short, handsome, middle-aged fellow, who apparently spoke no English whatsoever. "Je ne parle pas Francais," I warned him, a sentence that I would probably have to tattoo to my forehead if I stayed in the country much longer. I then tried the old point-and-look-confused method, with "Qu'est-que c'est?"

He threw himself into the problem. Gesturing to the middle row of goodies, he said, "Le sucre!" Waving a hand over the top row, he said, "Le sel!" --It took me a minute, but I realized that rather than tossing names or ingredients at me he was trying to tell me the difference between his sweets and savories. I pointed to the middle row and tried "Qu'est-que c'est" again. This time he started slowly reciting ingredient names until I heard one that sounded a lot like almond paste. (And a good choice it was, too. I told him it was tres delicieux, hoping I wasn't making that word up, and he asked me my nationalitie, and we got along very well considering neither of us had a conversational clue.)

Then I went out to the side street in front of the old church square to finish the little almond pie. I stood there and munched and considered how much this side street looked like the part of town where my hero (he of the imaginary Mediterranean city) would be living, and I thought about his coming home at night after one of the adventures proper to one in his sphere of life. Really the only thing that would have spoiled the picture was a short, pudgy redhead nibbling on an almond pie, but since my camera couldn't pick that up, no harm was done.

Then I walked through the village for the last time. I don't remember how long ago it was that I walked at night and felt relatively safe. At the top of the hill I looked out over the meadows and farms, invisible in the dark, and saw a stream of lights flowing along a hill road in the distance. The quiet was tangible, amazing to someone like me who barely notices the four-lane traffic anymore outside her apartment at home.

I waited to get bored, but it wasn't happening. In fact, I could have stood there a lot longer, but I didn't want to worry Cathy and her father, who no doubt were expecting me to pay for a box of tissues and return home in a businesslike fashion. So I turned and went back.