Do You Think I'm An American?

Note: If you recall an earlier post, I told you that our accountant here told us that whenever someone overcharges you the standard reply is, “Do you think I’m an American?”

Yesterday, I dialed the telephone number of a neighbor. A woman answered who I thought was the mother of the woman I was trying to reach. I explained that I was the American who lived down the road, because that’s the easiest way to describe myself. I tell all my visitors that if they get into our area and can’t find the house to ask someone where the Americans live. The other day, a French woman from Bordeaux was trying to find our house, and stopped to ask at the home of a very old neighbor. The old neighbor replied, “Oh the place where the American WOMAN lives.” My husband felt badly that everyone knows me but because he isn’t here as much, the neighbor didn’t know he existed.

It soon became obvious that I had called the wrong number. However, the woman who had answered asked me if I was interested in buying her house. Since this was such an odd reply to give to someone who had dialed your telephone number by mistake, I thought I heard her incorrectly. She had said that she had a chambre d’hotes and so I asked if she wanted to sell or rent her house, and she replied in French, “Whichever you want.”

I’m always interested in viewing houses here so I told her I’d be over at eleven. I thought that perhaps the house might be a good investment for us to purchase together with my brother who has said that he was interested in buying a place here. The woman was selling the property herself, and that would cut out the realtor’s huge fee (they take a much larger percentage than in the U.S.), it was located on the big river, and it was a tourist rental so it could bring in an income.

I rode my bicycle over. There was a man in the walnut grove. I complimented him on how beautiful his walnuts were. They were huge, and plentiful. Our recently relieved caretaker didn’t do anything for our nuts, and so they are small and pathetic again this year, and we’ve lost eight trees in the past two years. I later found out that this man was not the owner’s husband he was her caretaker. When I returned from my trip and described how beautifully kept the property was, my husband said I need to go find him and ask if he'll work for us. This will be a delicate operation for I don’t think it is good etiquette to try and hire someone’s caretaker. However, I am of the impression that he works part-time for this woman.

The man took me to the house, and fetched Madame for me. She was a pretty, well-kept widow, in her seventies, with her thick salt and pepper hair cut into a youthful, and flattering, “flapper” bob. She was excited to show me around her home. I loved the house with its beautiful original walnut doors and woodwork. Her furniture selection showed impeccable taste. The house was old and had been built a few hundred years ago by a wine merchant who needed to be on the river to facilitate transportation to the Bordeaux docks. There were three vaulted stone caves under the house. The woman had a lovely arbor covering a walkway which traversed the width of the house over which she had perfect pears just starting to blush and ripen along with, surprisingly, kiwis. The house was perfect. It hadn’t been ruined with renovations as so many houses here have been, and what renovations had been done, were tasteful. The house even had two built-in stalls for pigs and a larger one for a couple of sheep. The house wasn’t directly on the river, but it was a very short distance away. The only aspect of the house with which I could find fault was the modern house that had been built across the street. And even that fact didn’t bother me so much when she told me that the people who had built it and retired there were French from the north . . . at least they weren't British, Dutch, German, or American.

I was all excited thinking that I could convince my brother and my husband to purchase this darling property. When we were outside looking over her manicured grounds I asked her how much she wanted. She said that she would write the price down on a piece of paper. That’s never a good sign. I’ve had several instances here in France, when asking about the price of antiques, where the person doesn’t verbalize the price, they want to write it down as if the shock won’t be as dramatic if it’s a piece of paper telling you the bad news.

When we went in the house, she had me sit down at the kitchen table, and then handed me a piece of paper on which she had previously written out the price she wanted. I couldn’t believe what she had written. It was twice what I thought it should be, even in this heated-up market, and three times what I thought it should be in comparison to the 2001 market when we purchased our property. Factor in the rise of the Euro over the past two years, and she was asking for big money for a small house.

I told her that the price was too much for us. That her house was beautiful but that there was no way I could make the case to my husband to purchase the house at this price when he would make the unfavorable comparison to what we paid for our farm three years earlier. Her huge “I’ve found an American to buy my property” smile vanished and she now sported a slight scowl. She said that prices had gone up a lot since 2001 and I said I was aware of that, but that the house was just too expensive for us. I told her I’d talk to my husband and perhaps I’d bring him by to look. (I know he won’t buy it, but I want him to see how astronomical the prices are now.) On my way out, she handed me a rate sheet for her chambre d’hotes.

I pedaled my bicycle back home, passing by Grand-mère Foissac, who must be in her nineties, out weeding in her granddaughter’s garden. She was bent over hoeing in the garden by the river, a mother duck and her young paddling by in the background. Attired in a wide-brimmed straw hat, long skirt and apron she provided me with one of those rare glimpses of la vraie France. I silently wished her decades more of good health. After all, she’s what I’m really looking for here.