Monday, May 7, 2012
The Day After

There is no joy in much of Nice today, after Nicolas Sarkozy's defeat. In fact, there is fear. I am invited to the home of friends of a friend in New York, Josiane and Pascal Szymezak, Sarkozy voters. Josianne and Pascal live in a house in the village perche of Saint Andre de la Roche, a house that belonged to Josianne's grandparents, who emigrated from Italy, Two out of three of the other guests at the poolside lunch are of Italian descent --Pierrot, a lively man in his sixties who grew up with Josianne and lives in the house above theirs on the mountainside; and Michel, whose family is from Corsica, and lives in the area as well.

Josianne has a hair salon, Salon Regard, which is her own. She began working in a hair salon her mother ran when she was thirteen years old. As French law required schooling up to the age of fifteen, at which time there was an examination to be passed, Josianne's family had to ask for permission for her to work at that age, although she had already passed the school-leaving examination. To work she went, she said, working twelve hours a day --as she has for all her life.

Pascal --or Pascalou, as he is known to friends-- is an expert and writer on Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Pascal has done the Paris-Dakar road rally, he has ridden on Route 66 and Route 50 in the United States several times --all on Harleys, with which he has been fascinated since he was a child. He has written several books about the brand, as well as contributing articles to journals about the make, and writing feature articles for Nice-Matin, the local newspaper.

I chat with Josianne about the election results: she doesn't see how Hollande can keep his promises: to bring back the 60-hour workweek, to create 60,000 new teaching positions, to double the minimum wage (known as le SMIC, its acronym), to tax incomes of a million euros or more at 75%, to withdraw French troops from Afghanistan, to rengotiate France's commitment to the European Union. Worse, she thinks that the closeness of the vote suggests that France is a divided nation.

Pierrot and Michel arrive simultaneously, and on being introduced to them, the conversation proceeds at a furious pace, as they are talking about the election and bring me into the conversation. Pierrot is impish, with blue eyes and a face like a mischievous schoolboy. Despite his gentle demeanor, he too, believes Hollande is unqualified to be President. Michel, an athletic man of middle age, darkly tanned, is concerned about the integration of immigrants into French society.

"We are, all of us, from immigrant families, but from families that learned the language and the customs so that we could take our places in the society to which our parents came. The Maghrebins --they have no intention of doing so. If a child is reproached publicly by the teacher or the school administration, the parent says one thing in public, but privately praises the child for not submitting to French rules. The immigrants from Vietnam, from Cambodia --they bother nobody. Even the Moroccans --they can be considered apart from the rest of the Maghrebins. These keep to themselves, but they are integrated. The other immigrants from the Maghreb --especially the immigrants from Algeria, because of the war --they have a grudge against us. They don't like us."

As to Marine Le Pen? "Her economic policies would take France to ruin, although she has pinpointed the immigration issue."

As to the economy, public spending --fueled by the high rates of compensation of public workers-- if continued, everyone believes, will only further deepen France's indebtedness, and the ability of its economy to restart.

Lunch breaks up the rather gloomy conversation, and turns it in happier directions: Pascal has used his brick oven to make socca, a kind of Nicois crepe, along with pissaladiere, a Nicois pizza, and bread. He has also made a black olive paste from olives in thei garden, among other things to spread on toast. An artichoke salad of artichokes also from the garden accompanies small steaks and sweet potatoes. A platter of cheeses --Brie de Meaux, Franche-Comte, Roquefort, Tome de la Montagne, Reblochon-- served with salad, follows. After the cheese course, brownies Pascal made, along with cookies are served. After the dessert, coffee and chocolate are served.

Pierrot presses his own olive oil. I speak of a well-known Nicois brand of olive oil, Alizari, which provokes laughter: Alizari has no olive groves, it buys its olives from Spain and from olive growers in Nice and presses them, selling them as its own brand. The lovely can is a major selling point, but someone else's olives make the oil.

Pierrot's wife has gone to Calvi, in Corsica, to visit their daughter, who lives there with her husband and child, so the talk turns to the pork sausage from the island, known as l'Ile de la Beaute (the Island of Beauty). The pigs on Corsica are not fenced in, they range freely, eating acorns and chestnuts, which gives their meat its particular taste. However, here --and Pierrot is careful not to offend Michel-- the same thing is true as for the oil made by Alizari--

"It's true," Michel says. unoffended, "Some of what is marketed as Corsican pork sausage is actually Spanish pigs brought to Corsica and processed there, so that the meat can be said to be Corsican. If you want Corsican sausage you have to buy it from small producers in local markets, not in the grands surfaces." (A grand surface is what the French call any big-box store, such as a supermarket.)

The conversation turns to other French-influenced countries, one-time colonies. Michel is particularly vocal:

"Senegal --what a punishment! Your arrive, and until you leave, people never stop touching you, asking for money. Morocco is the same. Now Maurice --there people leave you alone and let you go about your business and relax. But those other places --you might as well be in prison." (Maurice is the French word for the island nation off the southeast coast of Africa known to English speakers as Mauritius).

Shortly after, everyone but me leaves. I have a long conversation about the United States with Pascal --he speaks fluent English, and several of his books describe in details the stops along Route 66, along with photos of Pascal with some of his American travelling companions. We make comparisons about our two countries, Pascal correcting me against thinking that every corner of French is cull of cultivated people.

When I say he must be speaking of the Auvergne --its capital is Clermont-Ferrand, where the Vichy government had its headquarters, he tells me that by comparison to the places he is thinking of, the Auvergne, which is a tourist destination, is sophisticated. Try Correze, he says (this is the departement most associated with Francois Hollande). He is from a family that was based in Paris, but his grandparents lived in the departement of Le Nord, on the Belgian border. The area used to be the associated with dyers of cloth, but now there is little industry there, and the unemployment rate is among the highest in France.

"I remember going there to visit my grandparents every few weekends, and being struck by how utterly different from Paris, how provincial it all was."

When I make a comparison between the middle of the United States and France on that score, he corrects me again.

"The difference is that in France, no one leaves where they came from to look for something better. Everyone wants to die among their own. In the United States, you can come from a small town, but there is nothing out of the ordinary in moving to seek something better. Here that is not done."

I say I wonder whether that does not have something to do with the fact that in France everyone is registered by law with the local police department, always thereby registering their movements with the authorities, whereas in the United States, we have a right of travel guaranteed by our Constitution.

"It's more than that, its a way of thinking. In the United States people do the things they need to do to improve their lot pretty much on their own. In France that is called la mentalite des colons --the thinking of the pioneer settlers. The term is said in reference to those French who emigrated to the colonies where there was little national administration to supply much of anything, so everyone had to fend for themselves. In comparison, those in France thought themselves privileged not to have to, even if in reality, they did not really live all that well."

When I ask him whether, based on his experience travelling through l'Amerique profonde --the heart of the United States, he thinks that people live all that well-- he agrees with me that as far as food goes, people live better in France. --Which is a function of France's smallness, relative to the United States. Distribution systems are less-local and much larger in a country more than fifty times larger than France. However, many French do not appreciate the size of the country, being content to go to either New York, San Francisco, or Los Angeles, and basing their opinion of the country on their experience of one of the three.

Pascal's comment makes me reflect on the difficulties inherent in understanding a country not one's own. Pascal is unusual in that because of his interest in an Harley-Davidson motorcycles, an American brand, he has traveled most of the length and breadth of the country, which he knows better than most Americans. A ponytailed, blue-eyed man with the build of a roustabout, his natural curiosity and outgoing personality, has made him friends everywhere.

In September, he and Josianne will fly to Reno, Nevada and then drive to Lake Tahoe, Nevada. The reason for the visit? After living together twenty-five years, they will be married --in the one state whose marriages France recognizes, incidentally. They will not be riding motorcycles --Josianne has no interest in them.