By Francesco Bianchini
In two weeks across Europe during the summer of 2003, 70,000 people died due to a heatwave. In August of that year, Dan and I were in France where nearly a third of the deaths occurred. The country was ill-prepared for such emergencies: air conditioning a rare convenience, nights difficult and restless, modest supplies of fans soon exhausted. The heat in Paris was especially stifling: the metro, usually too hot, brought coolness. Emergency rooms collapsed, morgues crammed, record temperatures wreaked havoc on livestock farms, and the French government was on vacation. To escape the heat there remained only the cellars, over which every self-respecting French home is built, and the churches.
O’er the ramparts still steaming
In the countryside – with trees and without the asphalt of cities – it was better. We had booked our holiday at two different chateaux in Burgundy. The first turned out to be a ponderous renaissance remake – dunce cap towers, crossbar windows, even battlements – but all fortunately surrounded by ancient oaks. Our circular room, directly under a turret roof, was hell. We slept separately, Dan on the floor, me on the bed, so as not to be disturbed by heat radiating from each other. But since there was no sleeping, at one point we groped our way down the grand staircase, taking care on each landing not to bump into the rusty baby carriages containing a collection of decaying old dolls, their glass eyes shining in the dark.
The eyes had it
Once outside, it took only a few minutes to realize that we were not alone. Other guests were also walking silently in the still and sultry night, their presence betrayed by the shaking of leaves, or by the creaking of a dry branch. When we grew accustomed to the murkiness, we saw that the others, like us, had shed the clothing that had stuck uncomfortably to our skin, which lay in piles next to urns and benches. Passing on the path, or glimpsed over hedges, we exchanged whispered greetings. Courteous and naked.
On the morning of our departure, from our perch atop the circular tower, we heard a commotion. Peering down, we saw fire engines in front of the main entrance. High temperatures had melted a beehive constructed over countless years inside a chimney. Honey was leaking from a crack at floor level in an elegant salon, where the fireplace had been blocked, and was spreading thickly and fragrantly on the expansive parquet floor.
The towering inferno
In our second chateau – a term completely abused in this case as it was really no more than a maison de maître – we occupied an ancillary wing on the ground floor, separated from the main residence by a forbidden gate. Curiously enough, here too, ghastly dolls were strewn everywhere: in the bedroom, on dressers, on shelves, even curled up on armchairs. The first thing Dan and I did was to rid ourselves of them, locking them away in closets, stuffing them in drawers. The second task was sweeping to collect dustpans full of dead insects. On one more suffocating than usual afternoon, the chatelaine sent her gardener with an invitation for aperitifs. So we finally were ushered past the gate, usually firmly shut – which we had only once discreetly approached upon hearing the furious screams of a domestic fight – and were then led down a steep passage into the wine cellar furnished hastily with garden furniture. If on one hand, the chamber offered coolness in those torrid days, on the other it was invaded by hordes of flies, crazed by the sight and smell of the snacks our hostess had prepared. Arranged on colored plastic trays were crackers, some round and some square, topped with slices of salami, a dab of mayonnaise, and a fly or two as garnish. Randomly scattered were dozens of mini Babybel, those French soap-shaped cheeses that must be unwrapped from red wax coatings. While Madame was doing her part by passing around the trays, the gardener appeared with a bottle of Crémant, a sparkling wine produced by classic methods similar to more famous champagne, but differentiated because that title is only permitted if it is produced around Épernay.
The forbidden gate
In the land of 400 cheeses
The gardener apologized because the bottle was not cold enough, and for an agonizingly long time he rotated an ice cube in each glass before pouring. We tried to start a conversation but could not take our eyes off that maneuver, which had extraordinary hypnotic powers. The sparkling wine was finished in no time, and as the man had not the foresight to put a second bottle in a cool place, it was necessary to repeat the ice cube trick – but this time we all did our own. Someone had the idea of composing melodies by rubbing our fingers on the rims of the glasses, and everyone tried their hand. The cellar was filled with the celestial sound of wailing crystal, and for a moment we might have been in a chapel. We began to laugh a lot, and then snatched fencing foils from the walls and started duelling, darting behind pillars, lunging, retreating. The second bottle of Crémant was finished much more rapidly than the previous one, and a third uncorked. Nobody wanted to repeat the swirling ice routine, so we drank the lukewarm liquid without at all caring.
