14th July 2010 – A Distinct Lack of Onion Soup

Sitting back on the settee that evening and sliding slowly forward, I considered flies. Really, flies should have known better than to go near Fontsoleil. After all, there was a bead curtain across the door to deter them and a kitten who liked to torment them. They should have got the message. There was even a sticky thread hanging across the ceiling to trap them on a suspended death row, from where we could periodically hear the feeble buzz of airborne death. But still they came, and still they came. It was mostly thanks to the neighbour’s goats, which seemed to cultivate them as if they were planning to make fly jam to complement their cheese, but then never got around to it, leaving an airborne surplus of fat-winged annoyance. That day, though, we were suffering from a veritable invasion. The weather was hot and a little muggy, and whilst eating lunch outside earlier we had been enveloped in a black pointillist cloud. They were crawling all over the cheese and the melon and the bread, although they appeared not to like the olives at all, so olives suddenly became unusually popular amongst the humans around the table. Eventually we put a sieve over the cheese board, but still they managed to find their way in. How did they do it? Sumo wrestler flies, lifting up the sieve while we focussed on the olives? Bizarrely, too, it felt that day as if the innocuous fruit flies had turned vampiric. Goedele and I learned the lore that biting flies – as well as cats washing behind their ears – meant that a storm was on the way. It would be a few days before that would be proved accurate.

My fly deliberations had been provoked, however, by my amazement at how libidinous they all seemed to be. I was sitting there with a book, minding my own business, and they kept landing on me in pairs and going for it without a scrap of shame. I had never been aware of the procreation of flies before; perhaps there was just something in the air that day, but I couldn’t avoid being aware of it as I sat there. Each act of fly sex lasted all of a second. They mounted each other like dogs and their buzzing intensified, and if they happened to be standing on my bare skin at the time I was subjected to a very odd vibrating sensation. The fly underneath – which I presumed to be the female, but knowing nothing of the anatomy of flies I could well have been mistaken – spread their wings to allow the one on top a more comfortable experience. Afterwards the man – or at least the one on top – rubbed his front legs together as if to say that was good, what’s next? I decided that flies had commitment issues. 

My ridiculous thoughts were distracted by an equally ridiculous kitten jumping onto my head. At Fontsoleil there was a four month-old kitten called Bali, and I was in love with him. I thought that he was probably a Russian Blue shorthair. I went through a phase of seven-year old obsession when I learned all the common breeds of cats, and some of the more obscure ones, too. It came just before the bird obsession, and just after the dinosaur one, and had left me with pub-quiz cat knowledge and a collection of feline figurines. 

 Bali was a joyful little cat, happy chasing flies, or his own tail, or trying to attack whatever pen anybody might be writing with. In the mornings he mewed for affection after a long night on his own, and was generally happy to curl up and be stroked, and he purred as if he’d swallowed a miniature motorbike engine. His fur was baby-soft and his paws were warm and leathery – though his claws and teeth could already do some serious damage to both soft furnishings and skin – and his tiny tongue was like gently heated sandpaper when he illicitly licked my fingers clean after I had eaten. I decided to give up on men. I would grow old gracefully and independently with a graceful and independent cat as my companion.

While I was staying, Bali was going through the great feline right of passage: learning to chase mice. I witnessed his first catch alive (and dead) from my usual cross-legged vantage point on the settee, cat and mouse skittering across the floor, backwards and forwards in a mammalian dual of size versus speed.  I unexpectedly found his second catch one morning, regurgitated at the bottom of the stairs and seeping through the sole of my left sock. It was mildly disgusting, but he was so endearing while he chased that I soon forgave him his vomit. Whilst preparing to pounce he was as still as stone, except for wiggling his bottom coyly in the air. I couldn’t help but laugh.

On the other hand, perhaps I wasn’t really in love with him. He had an irritating habit of nipping toes when nobody was watching, and hiding under Goedele’s bed until she turned the light out and then jumping out at her, making her scream. One night he kept trying to go to bed with me. I took him out of the room once, and returned to my mattress only to discover that he had somehow sneaked back in there before me. We repeated this nocturnal charade twice, by which time I was finding it less than amusing, although I’m sure to him it was a brilliant wheeze. Close to irate, I took him out of my room and threw him down the stairs. I heard him land with a thump at the bottom. My heart stopped, and I felt so guilty that I knew I would never sleep, and had to go downstairs to make sure he wasn’t injured from his flight. He had disappeared, and wasn’t in my room when I returned, so I presumed that even juvenile cats were capable of taking a hint once they had only eight lives remaining. 

At mealtimes and in the twilit evenings it was another story again. At mealtimes he liked to pounce up onto the table, even though it was strictly forbidden; he would send cutlery catapulting all around and, all dangerous implements disposed of, he would indulge in his penchant for licking the goats’ cheese. In the evenings he was like a tired child, hyperactive and irritable at times, sleepy at others. In short, he was an impossible cat, and a fickle free spirit.

It hadn’t occurred to me until the day was upon me, but that summer I would be in France for 14^th July: the French Day of Independence, more commonly known as Bastille Day, when the entire population took a holiday to commemorate the storming of the Bastille. Ever since reading When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit at the age of 11 or 12, I had wanted to experience Bastille Day celebrations at first hand, and here was my opportunity! In retrospect, basing my expectations on a semi-fictional account of celebrations in wartime Paris when I was to be attending the celebrations of 21^st century ardèchois town Lamastre, population circa 2000, was setting myself up for disappointment. Where was the bustling atmosphere? Where was the singing? And where was my bowl of onion soup? I had to bring myself back to reality; after all, I was far from Montmartre! 

Given the size of Lamastre, the firework display that was on offer was a delight. Michelle had dressed up for the occasion and adorned her beautiful eyes with dark smudges of kohl, to the surprise of Goedele and me; we quickly retired upstairs to change into more festive clothing. Inhabitants and tourists alike lined the bridge and the riverbanks where the display was being held. The acrid but enticing smell of cordite mingled with gasps and oohs and applause and the muffled mewls of frightened toddlers, their faces buried in their mothers’ legs. The finale was nothing if not incredible, larger than any I had seen at home, although, if I had been designing it, I would have made some subtle changes. I would have made the final flashes form a French flag in the sky with red, white and blue explosions in a glorious fiesta of nationalistic nostalgia. And the music made me laugh in spite of myself. It was 26 years off, and in the wrong country. The Bastille was stormed in 1789, so why on earth had the decision been made to play Waterloo, when that battle was half a century later in 1815 Belgium? I couldn’t fathom it: ABBA just wasn’t right!