The Bean and The War

The Bean
I've now consumed numerous pieces of the galette des rois which I mentioned previously and understand it better in its various forms. What I had had before was one of two versions, as it turns out. This year I noticed what looked like rather appetising meat pies in the local bakery. These turned out to be an alternative version of the galette, stuffed with a sweet almond-flavoured filling rather than meat. And the crown that I mentioned can in fact be anything, often ceramic; I found one that was a ceramic face of a circa 18th century nobleman/woman. Whatever it's form, it is referred to as “la fève”,which is a bean, specifically a broad bean. I presume that in former times, when dried beans would have been a staple part of the winter diet, a dried bean was always to hand; though why it should be specifically a broad bean I have no idea. Maybe I'll ask Daniel if he knows.

The War
Montserrat, my neighbour who invited me to lunch just after my operation, invited me again today, with Mana. I think I mentioned then that she had been a refugee from Franco's Spain, her father having been on the republican side in the civil war. Anyway, we got talking about those times again after I asked her how she had felt having escaped from Spain only to find herself confronted by the Nazi invasion of France. She said that the Nazis had never been domiciled in the village but came up occasionally from Orange and Le Barroux searching for maquisards. There's a plaque just north of here in St Auban commemorating some that were caught and shot by the Nazis and, of course, there was the massacre in the Vercors, also just north of here, late in the war. The Nazis had their local headquarters in the chateau at Le Barroux, just south of Malaucène, and blew up the chateau on their departure. It's now been restored to its original state.

Apparently there was a good bush telegraph in operation during the war and, whenever the Nazis came up through the village everybody knew well in advance. When that happened, Montaserrat said she and her parents took a blanket and headed for the woods; had they been discovered, they would have been returned to the tender mercies of Franco or else sent to a concentration camp. Montserrat also said that there were several Nazi sympathisers in the village and one she knew of had had a contract on his head. However, when the maquisards went for the “hit” he was surrounded by a group of neighbours so the hit was called off and other factors prevented it from being planned again. She said that whenever she saw him in the village after that she wondered whether he knew how lucky he was to have survived to die of natural causes. It must have been strange to encounter a “dead man walking” like that.

I also asked Monterrat whether she considered herself to be primarily Catalan (which she is) or Spanish. To my surprise, given her background and friendship with Mana (whose politics are some way to the left of Mao Tse Tung) she replied that she considered herself to be Spanish. She did not agree with the eternal Spanish tendency towards separatism (even the Romans referred to the Spains rather than to Spain).

Monserrat, incidentally, is one of the few neighbours (Elise is another) who still use the wash-house across the road from me, to do some of her washing.