“What do you think?” asked Mary Jo. “About what?” “About everything. The village.
” We had just completed our first tour of Autignac, population eight hundred, burrowed deep in rural Languedoc. This was home for the next six months. This is where our two kids—Eva, fourteen, and Joseph, nine—would go to school.
This is what we had picked, of all the options available. A knife edge of Mediterranean sunlight sliced the central square in two. To our right, in a hot wedge of shade, the white plastic tables and green plastic chairs outside the Café du Commerce were talkatively half-occupied.
Two bikes leaned against the nearest table. A pair of men sat across from each other in tight jerseys and half shorts, with two glasses of white wine sweating on the table between them. “I think it’s a perfectly beautiful village,” I said.
“It’s just not a particularly beautiful village, is all.” * “What’s ?” asked Joe. “What’s what?” “ .
” He was pointing to the first of four dishes the Café du Commerce was proposing for lunch. “ ” I said thoughtfully, as if deciding how best to explain it to him. But I had no idea what a was, nor what the stuffing in a might be, nor what it meant to be .
I did not know what a was either—item two on the laminated menu. Nor, in fact, did I know what number three, , was, or whether it would taste good . I did recognize item number four—rather a classic—referred to in this part of France, it appeared, as .
T.