The Honest Truth

Christine keeps looking shiftily at the road. We’re sitting around eating a lunch of roast chicken and various mayonnaise salads at the picnic table. Sascha, Ruth and I are still wearing our farm clothes after weeding all morning. Today Christine’s son, his girlfriend and their one-year old twins arrive chez Herman.

After our “confrontation” not much has changed, except I feel I understand Herman a little better. He has an inner battle between his intellectual and practical side that he takes out on others. A very academic man who chose to move to a farm to lead a self sustaining life and is failing miserably at it. He calls doctors “incompetences de la vie” (incompetents at life) while he lives in a cloud of rotting food and bugspray. He despises “the bourgeois” and spends his time reading philosophy, right-wing blogs, and drinking good wine.

When Christine came back to the farm two days ago her demeanour had changed and her eyes looked puffy. Maybe they had a fight in the car? Everyone was subdued that night. Herman was mad at us for making salmon for dinner while he was at the train station instead of his suggested meal of eggs Benedict on stale croissants with a weed from his garden he insisted was inedible.

The day before it was  pouring rain in the morning. He had me tying bundles of sticks together with string for his fireplace in a barn  he calls “the hangar”. He calls the process “faggotage.” The girls were cleaning up the “latierie,” a musty shed converted to room decorated with cobwebs, peeling paint, and a damp bed.

Herman came out from the house to where I was working and we started to patch up the chicken coop that Edwina the sheep had busted through. We sat in silence nailing wire into the wood. When he spoke, he told me Benjamin, Christine’s son, had been in a car accident last year, and hasn’t been the same since. No one was hurt, though he, the newly born twins and his wife had to spent the night at the hospital.

Christine’s eyes dart from the road  to the table, counting the seconds until she can be sure her family is safe. Her son and his girlfriend live in L’Ile de la Cite, an hour outside of Paris, but are coming here to work on their medical theses for two weeks while grandma babysits. We finish lunch and sit outside in the sun reading. After a couple of minutes, we hear some commotion, and Christine’s voice becomes high pitched with excitement.

What happens next is in s-l-o-w m-o-t-i-o-n. A young man with jet black scruffy hair walks into the living room and bends down. His pants are low and his underwear says HUGO BOSS. A pretty, bubbly late-20’s looking girl comes to the porch door to shake our hands. Her name is Marie. Then the man comes to the door. He’s wearing black sunglasses and moves them on top of his head. His eyes are dark pools of the richest chocolate and a perfectly sized moustache sits atop his full lips. He is the most beautiful man we’ve ever seen (second only to Alex Derry and Daniel Girard, of course).

Benjamin shakes our hands and we mumble whatever French we can remember. We linger awkwardly around the door as they unpack the car and their beautiful twins, Edgar and Rose, run around the living room. Stuffy doctors? Straight-edged parents? The sexiest man alive and his beautiful girlfriend just arrived on Herman’s farm.

We walk over to the pool to digest. How is it possible that on Herman’s decrepit property, the same place where it’s a hazard to open the fridge and we spend hours listening to right wing ideology, that we’ll be co-existing with these people? And what do they think of Herman? Thank god for Christine and her wonderful genes (it should be noted Herman had no part in creating Benjamin).

“I don’t think I can talk to him,” I say to the girls, as we all take deep breaths. Despite our varying tastes in men, we all agree this one is beautiful.

We spend the afternoon away from the house. Partly to give the family space, partly to give ourselves time to digest what the next couple of days will be like. We were ready to flee the farm a few days ago, but now, maybe we should extend our stay…

That night we have a lovely meal. Christine cooks a delicious pot roast. Around Benjamin, Herman is quiet. It’s a miracle. No asking our thoughts on war which are inevitably wrong or telling us what he knows about our lives. When Herman lived in Paris with Christine and Benjamin, they never got along. Benjamin treats Herman with a patronizing humour, and when he expresses his offbeat opinions, Benjamin challenges him. We-are-slowly-all-falling-in-love.

Benjamin speaks confidently. He and Marie are 30. He is verrrrrry french, uses his hands a lot and draws out words like “nooooooooooooon” and “voillllllllllllllllla.” His movements are sharp and decided. He could say anything, and I’d believe him. Marie is sweet and funny and probably really smart but…let’s talk more Benjamin.

The twins are asleep and we’re drinking wine and wine and wine. For the first time, Herman and Christine pack it in before us. We start talking about music, which Benjamin and Marie love and know a lot about, and Benjamin brings out his laptop. He plays some songs while Marie hums the words beside him. We probably look like dogs with our heads titled sideways and our eyes doopey. Ruth is so nervous that when she goes to say Iggy Pop it comes out “Iggy Bowie.”

Marie decides to pack it in next. After all, they both insist they’re getting up at the crack tomorrow to start working despite the fact it’s 2 a.m. and five bottles of wine later. Benjamin stays and plays us a couple more songs. His hair is all messed up and he passionately recommends bands for us to check out. Anything you say…

The next day is our last. In the morning, after weeding between stones on Herman’s patio for an hour, Benjamin comes down. He’s got bed hair and is wearing boxers and a t-shirt. “Comment ca-va les filles?” he says standing in the doorway smiling, with a cup of coffee in his hand. “Bien,” we all say in unison. Then he offers us some and we all say yes. When we finish work there are fresh croissants on the table, which Benjamin and Marie bought in town. We eat and watch Marie feed the twins.

At lunch, Benjamin sits between Ruth and I AND OUR LEGS TOUCH. I don’t speak the entire time.

For dinner, Herman has invited a couple we’d been introduced to earlier, Jacques and Claudine. We had a glass of wine at their house earlier in the week where Jacques openly hit on us, Herman told them we were bad workers, and Claudine joked about her and Jacques lack of sex-life after his heart surgery. Ah, the French.

Benjamin is ignoring Jacques who he rightfully thinks is a putz,and Claudine is trying to tell a story but is giggling too much for anyone to understand. Claudine and Jacque’s daughter of 30-something years sits there miserably, and their 12-year old grandson, Lucas, sits red-faced in a white collar shirt drinking coke.

The food is incredible, because Christine cooked. Quiche, potatoes, beef stroganoff, salad, cheese and bread. For dessert, a delicious chocolate cake made by Claudine. The oldies sit on one end of the table, and us girls, Lucas and the beautiful couple on the other. The best part is, we can barely hear Herman’s babble or Jacques come-on’s. Oh, and, we’re all sitting across from Benjamin.

When the Prouteau’s leave (Jacques and Claudine’s last name, which Benjamin tells us with glee means fart in French) we all sit outside drinking and smoking. There’s a storm about to come, and the sky’s black and heavy, ready to burst. A few drops fall, a warning sign, and then the lightning begins. We go inside and sit in the dark, damp livingroom and watch through the open doors. Christine and Herman sit together on one seat and Benjamin and Marie on the other. We decide to go upstairs and pack, and when I come down later to grab something, they are still all up and drinking wine together.

That night our windows, the kind that you push outward and can rotate upside down, flip inside out from the vicious wind. Rain hammers on the windows, and the twins wake up screaming.

In the morning, all is calm. We’re up at 7 to catch our 8 o clock train. Downstairs, Herman is predictably smoking a cigar and on the living room floor sit four empty glasses of wine. We boil water for tea and stick our croissants in the oven. After loading our knapsacks in the car, we go inside to say our goodbyes.

We knock on Benjamin’s door and a groggy voice says “Oui.” I open it a crack and say, “Nous partirons  maitenant.” He comes out of the room in tight underwear and no shirt. S-L-O-W M-O-T-I-O-N. We all try our best to look him in the eye. He hugs and kisses each of us and says, “J’etait enravvisant de vous connaitres.” He was enravished to meet us.

After driving us to the train station, we say goodbye to Herman and Christine. Herman forgets my name, which I didn’t take offence to considering the other day he didn’t remember his cats’.  Though he didn’t teach us a damn thing about farming, we learn that not everything beautiful has to be organic.