Save Me From Myself

There’s a small village, part medieval, 17 kilometers from here, with a giant tower, the remnant of a fortress from the Hundred Years War jutting majestically out of its center. The village is perched on top of a high hill, overlooking small, bright yellow wheat fields interspersed with dark green woods. The centre ville is not as bustling as my nearby village, but I make a weekly trip to visit an English-French bookstore run by a very cute and charming British woman. Her appearance reminds me of the French actress who played the lead role in the movie Chocolat. She is a refreshing person to spend time with and so unlike the rest of us foreigners here – she is quiet, she listens to you when you speak, and she remembers what you told her when you last spoke with her. Her bookstore is in an old apothecary shop which she purchased and didn’t remodel. I admire her for leaving the shop as it was.

The little bookstore is a dream destination for me. The woman has impeccable taste in books because they exactly mirror what I would choose if I owned a bookstore. I was happy to hear from her that she sells the same amount of books printed in French as she does in English. Right now I’m reading Diary of a Man in Despair. It is the illegal diary of a German royalist, Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen. The time covered in the diary is from May 1936 until he was arrested by the Nazi’s in October 1944. He was shot in the head by the Nazis in Buchenwald in February 1945. The book is fascinating because it chronicles all sorts of gossip about Hitler, Goebbels and other Nazi big-wigs, and it chronicles the rise, and presciently predicts the eventual failure, of Hitler’s schemes. Surprisingly, Reck-Malleczewen predicts in 1939 that Europe must become one country in order to overcome the nationalism that gives birth to the wars which ravage the continent.

I heartily endorse the blurb on the book cover from The Sunday Times’ Frederich Raphael who said of the diary, “I beg you to read this bitterly courageous book.”

What amazes me about the book is that when it comes to political thought, I have much in common with an early twentieth century male German royalist! I marvel and puzzle over this fact even when I don’t have the diary in my hands. If reincarnation is a real phenomenon, then I suspect I must have been Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen.

He contends that the car has done more harm than alcohol. I couldn’t agree more. You’ve read here how I despise what the car has done to Europe. However, I find great comfort in the fact that someone, with a brilliant mind was obsessing about this problem back in the thirties. Reck-Malleczewen’s writing has shown me that my opinions regarding the modernization of Europe are those of an elitist, conservative, German baron. He contends that the women in Germany were getting fat because of processed food. Not a novel concept now, but in his day, when corporate fodder was just hitting the shelves, it was an original idea. He claims, and I agree, that capitalism has created “mass-man” an automaton whose only pursuits are money and sex, and as a result society has no need for the realm of the intellect. He decries the loss of the small farmer to the encroaching plague of modernization. He screams at the top of his lungs about the greed and rapacity of the modern international corporation; placing the blame for World War II squarely on the shoulders of the new breed of German industrialists such as Krupp and Farben whose objective was to put the cheapest product (“radio” to use his example) in the hands of every person on earth and so they were the financing force behind Hitler to open borders and dominate world trade to feed their bottomless digestive systems. Reck-Malleczewen weeps over the industrial destruction of the forests and the rivers in pursuit of the almighty mark.

All that brings him despair brings me despair. Our torment is one and the same. And I must wonder, why am I obsessed with what was destroying Reck-Malleczewen’s way of life? Why, as an American, a capitalist, why cannot I accept the American way of life? Why am I fleeing to southwestern France to grasp at a few years of living in a dying world . . . a rural, corporate-free world that Reck-Malleczewen pronounced dead in 1936? I ask myself these questions, and I have no answers. I just know that with each passing day, I become more anti-technology, sadder that wild Nature is being gobbled up to make particle board and toilet paper, more anti-car. I have no desire to travel to Toulouse or Bordeaux, running the depressing suburban gauntlet of super highways, traffic jams, McDonald’s, Pizza Huts, and track housing in order to spend time in the charming centre ville which is being taken over by Virgin Records, The Body Shop, Starbuck’s, and the French versions of the same.

My husband broke the bad news to me that Walmart will be sponsoring Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France this year, and that this same marketer of corporate excrement has purchased a German chain of stores and is plotting its takeover of Western Europe. My little ville commerçant has two supermarchés whose presence is ameliorated by the fact that we still have a master butcher, four bakeries, a small biologique épicerie, and a small greengrocer. However, if I want bottled water or toilet paper or laundry detergent, I do have to stomach a trip to the supermarket.

Sunday, I made a lunch for twenty-five of the neighbors. On Friday morning, I attempted to purchase the ingredients at the outdoor market in my village, but the place d’Eglise was so packed with English-speaking people, I regretfully gave up the quest and headed the next day for a big supermarket in the big city of our departement. I reasoned that I could load up with ingredients in one trip and I would save myself a lot of time and perhaps money. I always say I’m never again going to the supermarché, but I always override that resolution and I go at the beginning of my stay each summer . . . mainly because I want to make a show of being frugal for my husband. But, after my harrowing and depressing visit this Saturday, I declare NEVER AGAIN. NEVER AGAIN!

The French are very polite people when they are in their small shops. They’ll wait quietly, patiently, and without complaint or the rolling of eyes for the butcher to make his way through the long line of customers until it is their turn to order. However, put a shopping cart in a large supermarket in the hands of a French person, and they forget every rule of etiquette their grand-mère taught them. Perhaps it’s the fact that they must fight with the more aggressive British and Dutch for shelf advantage. Perhaps it’s the fact that they always imagine themselves to be a Le Mans entrant if they are in control of four wheels. I don’t know the psychology behind the behavior, but it must have something to do with the hyper activity engendered by the HYPERMARCHÉ. The giant superstore turns every person who enters its portals into insatiable, aggressive creature lacking what could be called human decency. “This only costs five euros, I must buy it. Get out of my way. I must buy it. It’s such a good deal.” It doesn’t matter that this cute little mass-produced piece of dreck is what is destroying the world I love. I will buy it. I bought it, and wouldn’t you know it, someone who attended my party, was kind enough to bring me a companion piece to what I had purchased! It still had the cute little corporate bellybutton scanner sticker attached to its bottom.

I left the hypermarché feeling as if I must immediately take a shower to wipe off the corporate spittle that spewed forth in the anticipation of profits, showering my head and face as I stuck my carte bleu in its salivating maw. I pushed the trolley to the back of the rented, diesel spewing mini-van, and shoved the bags of garbage into its rear end. Here I sit, three and a half days later, obviously still in deep angst over the experience of paying someone to make me feel like crap. I’m mad at myself for my lack of control in not following my resolution. I was willing to sacrifice an hour of my life to pick through their pathetic vegetables, and to be bamboozled by the old “loss-leader” five-euro water pitcher trick.

When I returned, defeated once again by the maw, I didn’t have much interest in eating lunch. My husband asked accusingly, “Did you go to McDonald’s?” I was proud to answer, “No, absolutely not.” However, I must admit that I had thought about going. I was hot. The thought crossed my mind that, since I had already soiled myself by shopping at the supermarché that a cold, chemical brew of Diet Coke wouldn’t do any additional harm. As I passed the point where the car had to turn towards the sin or towards home the siren song was shrill in my ear. But I didn’t go. I wanted to go, but I didn’t go. I had Preston with me, I didn’t want to set a bad example. The first step is to admit that you’re addicted. Then it is one day at a time. Or should I say, one Diet Coke at a time?