Today I took the bike to nearby Estavennens. In fact, I visited Estavennens almost a decade before Grandvillard, when Nadia took me and three Georgian violin students from Geneva on a journey to the mountains. We hiked somewhere I can't remember the name of, though I remember what we saw, including dessicated frog silhouettes flattenened into dust near a lake, and spectacular mountains, and the most enormous bull imaginable. Then later, she took us all to the Poya celebrations at Estavennens. The hillside was covered in parking places, marked out with sawdust, which I thought clever, and huge tents were erected, and there was a blacksmith hammering out cowbells and selling them, and alphorn players making a wonderful din, and tractors from all different decades, and cows of every imaginable breed including the extinct Aurochs. I don't know how this one got there, but there it was, all red and shaggy and blinking at us from inside a roped pen. There were cows decked out in flowers, and tankards of ale, and sausages and much rejoicing. The Poya is when the cows come down from the mountain pastures, on their strong legs and with wreaths around their necks. Or I think so. Well anyway that was in 2000, in August I think. I remember that all visitors paid something and were given a small cowbell to pin on, to show that payment had been made. So everyone tinkled. I gave my little bell to my mother, who put it on her rearview mirror in the car in Gibsons.
Without all that, Estavennens is one sleepy village! It's nearer mountains than Grandvillard, and in fact at one point, you're right smack against them. As with Grandvillard, the railway station is a twenty minute walk. But only one store, which looked full of dusty tinned goods and seed packets. No wonderful bakery, no stunning Laiterie. There is even more of the cow about Estavennens. Cowbells decorating houses, paintings of Poya processions from quite a long way back, many medallions and cow signs, huge metal advertisements for the Holstein, etc.
...Oh something funny just happened. The phone rang and a girl tried to sell me some weight-loss pills! So they're afflicted even here by cold-callers. When she heard I spoke English she gamely switched languages, saying «You aare afflicted by obeeseetee? Are you worried about health and feetness?» That was easy! «No actually, I'm not worried at all! I'm incredibly fit! I'm great! I'm really fabulous!» A pause. «Oh. I am really sorry!» If only all cold-callers were that easily put off.
Anyway. Estavennens. Piles of manure at the side of the street and barn doors everywhere. Geranium baskets, lace curtains with folky motifs. And guys in yellow t-shirts were constructing a swimming pool in a backyard and the radio was playing a French version of 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight...A-weema-weh...'
Now, a few days ago a grey-haired man with a slightly hippie-ish look about him came by to apologise to the people for whom I'm housesitting that he hasn't been able to make any fruit-bread because he's injured his thumb. I was playing the piano when he arrived and after we had established the business about the fruit bread and the fact that the Wezranowskis were away, he told me I was welcome to visit him and his wife in Estavennens, and they love music and have a piano. His name was Andrew and he explained that theirs was the house covered in vines and with a wild garden. Indeed it was. There was a cactus garden in the front with flowering varieties galore, and wonderfully wild nettles and flowers and bushes in a sort of controlled profusion at the side, and driftwood, gnarled and interesting, about the front, so that it looked like a house on the beach in Sechelt. Inside it was even more like a house on the beach in Sechelt. Smelling of old wood and fireplace, with guitars, fraying Chinese tapestries, lutes, handmade pottery and artistic 1950s modernism here and there, dried flowers and breadboards with hunks of hard bread. An extremely old, amiable cat that blinked often and slowly sat on the kitchen table, and a rescue dog named Lucky appeared incredibly friendly but I was told that one has to know him at least five days before putting out one's hand to pet him. A shiny black Schimmel upright was perfectly tuned and had piles of dog-chewed Bartok on the top of it. I played and sang Bist Du Bei Mir and they wept. I was given tea in lovely delicate bone china, and also some fried oat mush with raisins, quite, quite tasty. The back garden has two lovely interesting trees twining round each other. Erika, Edward's wife, told me that their new neighbours, constructing a modern house next door, had asked them to get rid of all of their wild garden and wrote to the authorities about it. An inspection was made, and a compromise was offered. Erika and Andrew get rid of parts of the wild garden, and eliminate these two trees, because they cut off sun from what appeared to be a barely-used barn door on the other side, and the leaves interfere with drainage! Erika said that the trees had been seeded there by birds, and that they hadn't planted them, and that to get rid of them is stupid and sad. «Estavennens is a sort of an island, and we are an island on the island.» They are very cultured people, and have a huge record collection, with Richter and Haskil and rare 50s and 60s early music recordings, and also piles of dusty back-issues of a magazine called «Du» which looked like a kind of German version of Horizon. They have told me to visit often.
