2nd July 2010 - Valentin

Cue the arrival of Valentin.  Valentin was a fifteen year old German coeliac, the son of a family friend. His school – presumably a Hauptschule, the least academic kind of German school which focused on more vocational subjects – required him to spend a fortnight working on a farm. Being abroad wasn’t obligatory, but as he had the opportunity, and in any case spoke near-fluent French, it had seemed a sensible decision for him. He had a healthy interest in tractors and farm machinery and was to shadow Pierre during the day, helping with the cows and the hay bales. As I either worked alone in the gardens or helped Anne-Marie in the wine cellar or with the housework, I saw him only at mealtimes, and there he was diluted by the rest of the family. At night he was to share my room. Since Caleb had left I had commandeered the proper bed, meaning that Valentin would have to make do with the mattress near the ceiling. Now, I had nothing against sharing a room with him. He was a teenage boy, and reminded me of some of the less savoury pupils whom I’d taught in North Rhine Westphalia, and his socks were freakishly large, but aside from that he was generally inoffensive. But it just seemed a bit odd. I was sure that in the UK it wouldn’t have been allowed for a minor to share a room with an unknown adult. But then, I reminded myself, I wasn’t in the UK. I was in France, and they did things differently here.

It was at around the time that Valentin arrived that I discovered the joy of walnuts. On the work surface by the hob was a large glass jar filled with pieces of walnut. Valentin had brought some gluten-free flour with him, and Anne-Marie, wanting to make an effort – and also wanting to eat biscuits – whipped up a quick batch of little walnut biscuits: slightly sweet, slightly bitter, utterly nutty and delicious. But this meant that the walnut jar was empty. To rectify this, I was introduced to a mammoth brown paper bag; it was the kind in which coal might have been kept. In fact, as it sat next to the fireplace, I had rather assumed that it did contain coal. But no, it was a sack of whole walnuts, and floating on the undulating brown sea of shells was a silver nutcracker. 

I set to work. Pulling a handful of nuts out of the bag, I noticed that they were strangely dusty to touch, the shells drying out my hands as I turned the smoothly and unevenly ridged spheres over in my palms. Tentatively I put the first one into the oval hole of the nutcracker, and squeezed the handles together. With a surprisingly loud crack, the shell split in a million ways, showering the room with tiny shards. Embarrassed, I unearthed the dustpan and brush from underneath a basket of clutter and swept up my mess. From that moment, I had learned my lesson: to keep my spare hand around the nut and apply pressure on the handles slowly. I became addicted to the satisfying muted snap as the shell split in two, and feeling the sound in my palm. It became a challenge to me to try to extract the nuts intact. I was fascinated by their form, brain-like and burnished. The nuts went into the jar. The shells were saved for the weekly lighting of the furnace. I looked forward to the furnace being lit as it meant a hot shower; despite the heat wave, the shock of cold water on my body still made my muscles contract uncomfortably. However, the furnace did have the inconvenience of being directly underneath my room, meaning that once a week, sleep didn’t come quite as easily.