There is an older man in our town who sells fruits and vegetables out of a little store front near the church Saint Michel. The shop is little more than a small, dark cave under a building with stone steps from the plaza next door for a display counter. He rarely has more than a dozen boxes of goods sitting out in view, and we have frequently wondered if this is just a retirement project for him or a real business. Today, I can see dozens of fresh eggs carefully stacked in the middle of the cool floor, out of the sunlight. I’m sure he has a few truffles hidden in there too. It took us more than a year of passes-by before we stopped to look at what he offers most days of the week. When you want a couple of apples or some peaches, he knows exactly when each one will be ready for eating, and he will often say, “Today… eat this one, but the other is for tomorrow.” When he says this, it is with intensity. And if you happen to ask about something he does not have on display, he will look you over, perhaps to decide if you are one of those who buys, forgets, and then throws away the precious fruits of the earth. If he trusts you, he will dash into the tiny back room and return with some unexpected treasure. He never smiles, but one can tell that he is taking great pleasure, in giving you the same.
I caught him unloading boxes this morning and carrying them three and four at a time down the stone steps to his den of commerce. Other old men of the village would stop him on this short journey back and forth to joke and talk for a few seconds. They were speaking a local patois, part French, but mostly the old tongue, from the time when this part of Europe passed back and forth between France and Italy like chips in a poker game. I can’t understand it at all. It is lyrical, full of many more vowels and hard endings than contemporary French, which I barely understand anyway. And yet, I keep coming back for more.
