I didn’t realize when I met Alex that he would take me to so many places that I would fall in love with. He does it nonchalantly… I usually don’t even know we’re going anywhere until, suddenly, there we are.
This weekend, while we were at his house in Breuillet, we hopped in the car a little after dusk and headed down the Route d’Arpajon, past all the fields that, just this summer, had reminded me of the farms that dot upstate New York but that, this weekend, seemed oddly foreign and vast, especially for France, which had always seemed like such a small country to me.
We drove and drove; I listened to the air whip into the car from the small gap between the window and the car door, a gap that couldn’t be closed. I felt oddly safe riding in the car with Alex in the dark of the night… safe like I had when I was just a child, before I knew what “credit crisis” and “oil reserves” and “Presidential elections” even were. I allowed the car to rock me into submission, content in not knowing where we were headed.
The farm appeared out of nowhere… the same farm we had visited at the end of Indian summer, after the Journées des Plantes in Courson . The first thing I saw was a giant neon sign: Bonnes Fêtes! It was so out of place out here in the middle of nowhere, and yet it was perfectly normal. How odd.
We got out of the car and stepped into the whipping cold. I always forget how much colder it is outside the city. Alex saw a group huddled around a metal trash can spewing flames and ash, and we headed over. He was embraced, an old friend, and I stood on the fringe, as usual. I got passed around the circle for the bise that I still wasn’t used to… I’m still not. Everyone reached for the habitual cigarette, and they began talking. I began listening.
Alex has worked at this farm for the past few summers… apparently all his friends have. Léon’s father owned it, and now Léon sat here by the fire, waiting for customers to come buy Christmas trees. He seemed just like Alex, just a boy in his working clothes. He chatted with Alex a bit—the news and the weather—and then he suddenly turned to me.
I had met him before, months ago, but the fact that I was still around interested him for some reason. “Et toi. C’est quoi ton histoire?” What’s your story? I nearly laughed when he asked… I hardly know the answer to that myself. Writing all this down had started out as a journey towards an answer, but halfway through I realized that it was a story in the making, and I’d never be able to tell it, never be able to boil it down to something so simple. But I tried.
“Well… when I was fourteen, I moved to France,” I started, the now-familiar French words that make up the first sentence of the story I am constantly telling sliding easily out of my mouth, like lines rehearsed for a school play. But as soon as a potential customer approached, Léon was all business.
He turned away from me suddenly, slipping his gloves on over his rough hands and marching purposefully into the forest of pre-chopped trees. Anyone who says the French have no work ethic have never seen Léon work. He grabbed a tree and shoved it through a contraption that placed a net on it, hoisted it over a shoulder, and marched it over to the car. “Merci!”
And suddenly, he was just Léon again, just Alex’s friend who lazily moseyed back over to where we were standing around the trash can, reached for his pack of cigarettes, pulled one out and lit it, all in slow-motion compared with the definitiveness of his actions before.
“Donc?” he said, suddenly looking back up at me. “Ton histoire?” I hadn’t realized that I was this interesting… my being American has long since stopped being a novelty to most people, but to Léon it still was. I tried my best to summarize my story, realizing suddenly that the whole thing was decorated with “et puis je suis allée à…” And then I went to. That’s my story. And then I went to.
It sounded tiring, and Léon was surprised. “Just to learn French?” It seemed so oversimplified to me, and yet it was true: I like to look back and rejustify my decisions so they sound more romantic, but the truth is, each and every time I sent myself here, it was to learn French. To further immerse myself. And since I’d been in Paris, I’d hardly immersed myself at all.
As if he could hear my thoughts, Alex said his goodbyes and put me back in the car, back on the road to God-knows-where. This time, we headed to the town of Janvry, just a few miles away, where Léon’s brother, Justin, was working at the famous Christmas market. We were a little bit too late: it was the last day of the last weekend of the market, and most of the vendors were closing up. We wandered down the alleys of the market, and, at the risk of pulling out a cliché, I felt like a kid again.
Christmas has lost most of its charm for me: I abhor the plastic decorations that get thrown up every fall, weeks before Christmas. But this was something different… something closer to the markets I had loved so much in Salzburg, and even the tiny market on the Champs-Elysées in Paris.
The Christmas festival in Janvry was even better: there were live animals and food and stands selling trinkets and gourmet sausages and cheeses. We stopped by the stand where Léon’s brother was working, and suddenly, like in a dream, the entire group that had been huddled around the fire at the farm was there with us.
We latched on, traipsing back to the beginning of the market. I had no idea where we were going, but by this point in the night, I was used to it. I heard something being offered to me, and I shrugged instead of asking for an explanation. We stood in a line, Alex ordered, and reached over the counter for two white plastic cups, handing one to me. “Attention, c’est chaud.” Careful, it’s hot.
And it was hot. I had never tasted mulled wine before… and yet this vin chaud was everything that winter and Christmas meant to me in a tiny plastic cup. It smelled like my Christmas tea, full of spices and fruit. It was warm, and not just because it was heated: drinking chocolate is too sweet, coffee never warms the soul. I’d always been partial to tea, but vin chaud warms from its temperature and its alcohol, slowly curling the warmth within you, too lightly to notice until you’ve finished your cup and chewed the orange from the rind.
Tossing the white cups seemed like too little ceremony for the drink I’d just finished, but to everyone else, it was, like everything, normal. To Alex, it was the same winter beverage he’d been drinking since he was a child. To me, it was an epiphany, although the grogginess it brought to my thoughts prevented me from decoding exactly what it was.
We headed back to Léon and Justin’s booth and started tearing everything down, loading it into trucks. For forty-five minutes, everyone else made themselves useful, but, like back in Mouvaux, I suddenly felt like everyone was in on a big secret, and I had no idea what to do. After a few minutes of standing inside, looking for things to do, but mostly getting in people’s way, I headed back outside and stood in the alley, watching the sky.
I doubt this is the impression that most people get of the Marché de Noël in Janvry: Alex and I have decided to go back during opening hours next year, but I’ve always had an obsession with being a part of something: it’s the same feeling that makes me hate being a tourist. I’d always rather be a local, an employee. Someone who belongs in a place as opposed to someone who comes just to look, like looking at animals at the zoo. I’m fairly sure that my favorite memory of the Marché de Noël in Janvry will always be watching Justin back a huge trailer truck back through the alley, knocking the gigantic oversized Christmas ornaments strung over the entry right and left. Everyone in the vicinity tried to direct him, but Justin, in his elfish hat with bells on the ends, wouldn’t hear it, and he parked exactly where he wanted, exactly where no one wanted him to park, a true Frenchman.
Marché de Noël de Janvry
http://janvryvillage.free.fr/
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