Quarter Year

That afternoon, I took a nap and he worked for a couple hours before the family went to town to pick up the third sister from the airport. Mike and I used the time to go into town and get a few things. The freedom of being able to just go to town was a huge deal to him. He had to take the bus to Nice a couple times. It only came twice a day and came back once a day. He had taken a different bus to a town down the road and had to hitch hike back.

Since all of the sisters were in town, we ate lunch by ourselves. It was fine, a simple meal, some vegetable soup, corn and beet salad and some bread. It was probably the nicest meal we had the whole time I was there.

My feelings about going back to the olive farm were these, I was neither excited nor dreading it. I didn’t feel that we had left on the best of terms, but they weren’t horrible. I went back because Mike was there and from what I understand, he went back because he had a respect for the place and felt a connection with it because it was the only farm that we had worked on.

Needless to say, I didn’t have the same nostalgia about the place that I did before. I was prepared to do crappy jobs and work alone and not really get a lot of positive interaction with the family, so it was fine when that happened. The first morning Mike went off to do the hard labor that he had requested and I was to make confiture (jam) with Claude. Mike had told her that I wanted to learn how to make jam and I was really excited and sort of shocked that it would happen. I was actually skeptical. And I was right, it was too good to be true. Claude showed me the process. You sit in a room with no heat (there was still snow on the ground outside), by yourself, washing the oranges in water that is barely above freezing level. Then, you cut them open to find no juice, but many seeds and you dig the seeds out. If there are too many seeds, you take the whole inside out and keep the orange rinds. They were the saddest of the sad oranges in the saddest of the sad settings.

I finished the whole bunch right at noon and we were off for lunch. After lunch we went back to work. I never got to see the end of the confiture-making process because I was too busy ramassaying (picking olives off the ground). This wasn’t my very least favorite job, but it isn’t too high on the list. In fact, when I got sick last year and Mike had to pick olives off the ground by himself, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back, the reason we ended up leaving so abruptly. It isn’t so horrible of a task if it is sunny and there are people around to talk to, but when you are sent to do it, it is almost degrading. It is monkey work and you feel less important.

That being said, I didn’t let it bother me much. I think coming to the farm with low expectations and the knowledge that I was only working for 2 days made anything bearable. I suspected that I would have these tasks, mainly because I knew how much time it took to earn Claude’s respect and I knew i didn’t have that much time OR the desire to do so this time. I just did my job until the bells rang 5pm, then went on my way. (we would later find out that WWOOFers were only supposed to work 4 hours a day, 5 days a week–we would work 6.5 hours a day, 6 days a week)

Mike was doing something else that afternoon, moving branches around or something and he would pass by and whistle at me. Even that quick exchange made me feel like someone cared about me and it made picking olives not so bad.

At one point, Claude needed me to cut the blackberry bushes back, so that Mike could dig them out. This job required that we work together, something which I believe Claude tried endlessly to avoid. It didn’t slow our work at all, but it did make it MUCH more enjoyable. In fact, we would have been much happier doing all the tasks together and probably would have worked better and faster.

That night we ate dinner with Claude in her place. Despite the fire, it was cold inside as usual. She wasn’t feeling well. When we got to her living room, there were only two comfortable chairs by the fireplace. I pulled over a regular chair from the table, but she said something and went off into the other room. She proceeded to take an electric saw and cut the legs off of a broken chair so that it was at the same height. I sat down. Claude told a story in French that I understood 1/3 of, then she went to bed.

On that night, we thought of the word for Claude–martyr. There is no other way to describe her. The sadness that we felt for the place the year before, I can’t help but think that is how she wants us to feel. The place doesn’t have to be sad at all. It is what it is because of what Claude and Margerite make it.

Mike later told me that Claude had told him that “people idealize this slow way of life, but it is hard, you are constantly fighting against nature.” Her life is a struggle because she makes it a struggle.

The next day was easier. I ramassayed alone in the morning and after lunch. They told me to go find olives on the ground and pick them. Most of the trees had been picked, so I had to hunt for them, but I filled two baskets full. I was a ramassaying machine. I was literally digging them up out of the ground to fill those baskets. This year I wasn’t doing it for Claude and Margerite to succeed, i was doing it so I could succeed at not being sucked down into their misery. At lunch, Claude came to the table with Margerite and Monique (the youngest, prettiest one, who we found out had cancer last summer). Monique seemed nicer this time. She was personable and real, still distant, but I think that’s how she was raised. Claude sat at the table with her head in her hands. She was so sick that she couldn’t even eat, but she still came to the table. It was a scene, people trying to talk without paying attention to the woman bent over in pain at the end of the table. She should have been in bed, but it was in her nature to suffer, and I think, have everyone else know she was suffering.

At 4:30, I took my full basket up to the house. Margerite gave me another quick job of pulling weeds in her garden. I could see Mike now, he was finishing up with pruning the Kiwi trees. It was a hard job and I didn’t envy any of his hard jobs. At 4:55, he came over and watched me work. He was done because it was close enough to 5pm to be done and he reminded me of that.

Mike took this picture when he quit at 4:55 and watched me work for 5 minutes.

Neither of us have jobs like that. We don’t quit at 5pm, we work until we finish or get to a stopping point and it felt incomplete to just walk away.

Before we went down to the apartment, Margerite told us that Claude needed us to work on Saturday. Mike had told Claude that we were going to go to lunch in Italy on Saturday and we needed to leave early. But, she needed us to work in the morning, so we did. Mike dug holes and planted fruit trees, I weeded a garden that I didn’t even know existed. We didn’t make it to Italy in good time. It didn’t matter, though, the place was closed for for repairs and we ended up eating elsewhere, but it was still bitchy. We could have been upset, but we really weren’t. I remember thinking as I was pulling up the lawn of weeds that covered the few puny lettuce leaves that I was just so happy that I was not sad. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it isn’t. I didn’t have to live like Claude and I didn’t have to think like Claude and even though she could keep us there working, when we wanted to be eating delicious Italian food, she couldn’t make us feel as miserable as she felt. It was a win. Wow, this is kind of a mean blog post!

And we did end up eating good Italian food. And the Italian people were nice to us and invited us back for a party! Which is one of the reasons we thought, “Why do we want to move to France instead of Italy?”