My friend, the earth
On top of a mountain overlooking the Côte d'Azure there is a shop owned by Pierre and Roche called Pierre et Roche's Gallerie. They sell gemstones from the region and sculptures presumably produced by either Pierre or Roche or both. There is nothing else for at least twenty kilometers in any direction. Just this solitary wooden hut covered in red vine with a flowery garden next to it that even from a distance feels like the entire point of the place: Pierre and Roche's impossible garden on top of the hill.
Leaves are falling. No one is there. The sun's afternoon heat is undone by a tree covering the garden, creating light patterns on the grass. There's a wooden bench too perfect to ignore, so I park my bike against a large garbage can hugging the shop, take out an energy bar and my water bottle, and sit for a while. I take out my ear buds, pausing the extended version of Curtis Mayfield's Move on Up, and the resulting silence becomes the wind pattering, the occasional car diving into the ravine ahead or out of it. There is a silent aspect to the eternity the sea in the distance suggests. I close my eyes, allowing the day's heat to transform into contentedness.
A banged-up Peugeot works its way slowly up the mountain and crackles to a halt next to the shop. Either Pierre or Roche gets out, a dusty face and thick glasses mid-sixties, slim and dressed in a thick navy shirt and long jeans over sandals. He looks at me sitting in his garden, nods courteously, and opens the shutters of his shop. I nod back too late. He steps into the hut, steps out a minute later with two empty wine bottles and places them in a crate. He smiles at me. I smile back and say "c'est magnifique," something I've been saying a lot recently.
"Oui, vraiment," he says and looks at a quiet road and a quiet life. He opens a new bottle of wine, fills a glass, and installs himself behind the counter, surrounded by rough cut amethyst and topaz, quartz, and little opal necklaces you buy when you are in love. Pierre or Roche will be there today, tomorrow, and I'm certain until their lives unwind, they will be there. One or the other. Keeping watch, selling little, caring not at all.
These are the pré-Alpes in October. The green melts into amber and ochre painted on trees harboring secret roads hardly travelled. It takes me a moment to get unstuck from Pierre and Roche's garden, but I get on my bike, nod to either Pierre or Roche, who does not look up, and I descend 1200 meters into Cannes, finishing the Route Napoleon. I booked an Airbnb with Catherine and Elliot, Catherine's dog, named after Elliot Ness. Catherine used to be a hotel maid until her retirement seven years ago. Her house is a nest on the outskirts of Cannes.
"You know Elliot Ness?" she asks. "That is his name, the cien, Elliot Ness."
"The Untouchables, oui," I say. "Intouchables," I try to amend, until I remember that Intouchables is different French movie entirely, and she corrects me.
"Non, pas Intouchables. C'est le film avec Sean Connery," she says.
"Robert de Niro, prohibition (said with a French twist), Al Capone," I try.
She smiles politely and says "oui, ah la, c'est une old film, eh?"
"Timeless," I say. "Sans temps," I attempt.
Elliot rubs up against me, grunting like only old terriers do.
"Douze ans," Catherine says.
"Ah, but these dogs can get quite old, can't they?"
"The mother she was fifteen." She looks at Elliot, who glassy eyed struts up towards her. "Ah Elliot," she says, and makes me a coffee, asks me what I want to do, Monaco, Nice, see a film? But I am sweaty and tired and hungry, and I just say dormir, shower, and manger.
An hour later I have removed 60% of my odor and masked the remaining stink with deodorant and Catherine takes me into the city with her car with Elliot in the back. Catherine makes sure I know the way back completely, noting all the landmarks on the way. I smile and already know I'll take an Uber back here.
"During the festival I have a producer stay here, he rents all the rooms and sleeps so late," she says this as the Mediterranean nears to greet us, and I have a wee moment as I see bronze tourists in straw hats beached along the coast, tourists in straw hats and designer clothes prancing along the quay, young tourists in straw hats holding hands and staring at the boats, the sea, the casino, and seven or eight stalls lined along the boardwalk selling selfie sticks and straw hats.
"I have made it," I say.
Catherine, busy avoiding the drunk-on-life-and-aperol tourists stumbling through red lights crossing the street, motions to the harbor, stops and lets me out there.
Cannes is a warm, pretty, and loud affair not built for people who are quiet, and just want to sit and read and drink a glass of wine in their unwashed clothes. There are no secret places in Cannes, just expensive ones. I think of Pierre and Roche, sitting up on their mountain in their impossible garden. Eve, Pablo, and the puppies on the farm south of Gap. I think of the brothers and their café in Crévéchamps, and I think of Marie in her wooden house in the Ardennes. I imagine them finding their piece of earth and saying: "This is it. Let me just sit here and look at the trees." I imagine the autumn hills already darkening, the cold offset by their kettles boiling. They'll turn on a little light. The silence as absolute as the wind and birds will allow. It is a romantic and lonely idea. It is also the most human dream I know.