A second week recovering in bed in this pleasant south-facing bedroom. If I sit up, my back resting against whitewashed rock, I can look out of the window across 30 miles of oak forest to the Massif Des Maures, a coastal mountain range. As the day progresses, these indistinguishable mountains are altered by the changing light until finally and dramatically the softer evening rays reveal the folds and valleys in topographical detail. The revealing doesn’t last more than five minutes and I try to remember to look out for it. Then the mountains darken and, after a last commemorative glow, vanish.
Last week there was a violent electric storm and downpour every afternoon. You could set your watch by it. It’s like living in the tropics during the monsoon here in the south of France at the moment. Wonderful to watch, though, from high up, in bed, through an open window, with an undeterred nightingale flinging his heart out against the storm.
Every day a nurse comes. There are two, alternately: one tall, one short. They ask me how I’m doing, glance at the wound, stab me in the thigh with a thin hypodermic needle and leave. The tall one I struggle to understand. When I fail altogether, she repeats the same sentence at the same speed only more vehemently. This tall one is incurious about her surroundings. Sick people’s homes no longer hold any interest for her, only what lies under our dressings. That, and her impatience with foreigners not understanding, is absolutely fine by me. I’m amazed that the French state should send anyone at all.
Ricci once spent a year in jail practising his harmonica technique by blowing and sucking on his fist
The short one first arrived during the afternoon monsoon and thunderstorm soaked to the skin and shrieking.
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