MENTONE - France.

There was a strong man behind this garden, with a simple idea and a pining feeling.

Mr. Vicente Blasco Ibáñez decided to settle in Mentone, southeastern France, around 1920, when his life was coming to the end. It had been a turbulent and passionate life begun in Valencia, Spain, in 1867. His lively and rebellious spirit, combined with an overbearing desire for adventure and an innate dynamism, poured in an intense political activity and in those of journalist and writer; not to mention his genuine but demanding love for beautiful women. He fought for political and social reforms, paying his republican convictions with escapes abroad and imprisonments. In 1901, he suddenly left his seat as deputy, to devote himself to conferences, writing and travels. If critics did not appreciate his exuberant and impetuous style, people loved all his copious production. After the First World War, rich and famous, he chose, with his second wife Elena, the South of France as place of residence in a voluntary exile.

At that time, the Blue Coast was the centre of the world for the multi-millionaires, who came from Europe, Russia and America to spend lazy and amusing days in a place where they could satisfy every desire. Villages and small towns lined the coast, glossy postcards from the Mediterranean Sea. Mr. Ibanez’s request to the estate agency was simple: everywhere but Mentone; his uneasiness mostly related to all those people with serious pulmonary problems who searched for relief in its mild, unique clime. Nothing suited his needs until, in an early spring morning, the agent led him to see a plot outside Mentone, close to the Italian border. He was disappointed, maybe angry but when they reached it a ribbon of orange flowers in bloom reminded him of his native Spain. He stood in silence, stunned and moved by their oily perfume. The village of Mentone was a pinkish silhouette in the distance, with the profile of steeples high above that of houses in terracotta hues, in front of the eternal blue of the sea.

Built a house means find its own place in the universe. He decided that his place had to be more than a luxury villa with a garden. His never-ending love for literature, and the desire to arrange his imposing book collection, inspired the idea of a place where writers could meet to exchange elevated thoughts and create immortal prose.

His intention is still clearly stated from the entrance: above the gate, surrounded by high walls, blue ceramic tiles portrait three famous European writers: Balzac, Cervantes and Dickens. The decoration spreads in a shiny, pale blue trail of tiles where, surrounded by yellow, orange and pink roses, the name and the purpose of the garden is written in white, first in Spanish then, on the two opposite sides, in French and English: The Garden of the Novelists. Two shields, under the Spanish inscription, celebrate the flowers and fruits of oranges and citrus, while on the two sides’ smaller shields recall, with a fountain and roses, the name he chose for this place: Fontana Rosa. But, when the gate opened, in a late morning of June, all dreams of luxuriant vegetation in an intriguing scenario, under the Mediterranean sky, vanished: all I could see was an erecting yard. Masons, plumbers and carpenters were more numerous than gardeners, and the residential buildings in the background seemed out of proportion with their flowered terraces and striped awnings hanging over it. After his death in 1928, the property passed a long period of neglect and decline till, in 1970, it was given by his heirs to the town of Mentone. The sale of several plots has reduced its size but not interest and attention, and in 1990 it was classified Historical Monument.

Works to recover and rebuilt proceed in several directions, with thrilling results. On the left, just after the entrance, a little instable and lost in the grass, stands and impressive hemicycle: The Rotunda de Cervantes. Wide steps lead to a small basin lined by simple flower beds. The water mirrors a carousel of happy putti that go singing and dancing, naked, fat babies craved in a cream stone. Above it, coloured stripes of ceramic tiles attract the glance. It is the story of The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha narrated with a hundred of amusing tiles that show the adventures of the crazy character and his miserable horse. Slender, white columns stand against the green of cypresses and oranges highlighting the bust of a severe Miguel de Cervantes. The Spanish writer was his preferred, but others deserved his praises, among them, in his personal parade were Boccaccio, Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, Goethe, Tolstoy and Zola. Their bronze busts, made by the Russian artist Léopold Bernstamm, were scattered in different areas of the park shaded by tall palms, Ficus and araucaria. In the garden, small areas were created with benches arranged around fountains or small basins. They were surrounded by columns or pergolas covered with wisteria and invaded by the perfume of roses and jasmines planted in the back of the benches. Ceramic tiles covered all surfaces with different styles and subjects. Many of them, as different citrus plants and the first gardeners, were imported from Spain while others were produced locally. Andalusia gardens with their Moresque suggestions, features and architecture inspired him, in particular Seville and its Maria Luisa Park.

Several buildings composed the property. The aquarium is a bizarre concrete cube supported by pillars with ionic capitals and fantastic decorations of butterflies and fish. Here, Mr. Ibáñez housed the fish he used to offer to his numerous guests when they waved goodbye. The columns that sustain it create an arcade where, once, the gigantic posters of the movies drawn from his books were hung, while today old photos show the estate and its habitants in their best days. A stony, dusty path turns around the house at the end of the arcade. An elevated villa appears with a large library, a private cinema and faded walls. The staircase that takes there ends in a long pergola, in course of restoration, from which you can look at the garden. Its quiet, fecund atmosphere is disturbed just by the impertinent train whistles. Mr. Ibáñez sacrificed the proximity to the sea to the newness of the railway so that his friends, coming from Paris or Nice, could arrive with no troubles just outside his door. He did not renounce to the sea. A watching tower, with an unfinished elevator and charming crenellation, stands on the edge of the property, close to the station. Its windows are closed and the name Fontana Rosa stands on its top, written with white tiles on a blue background, as an original station signs.

There is still a lot of work to do, but all the buildings, the benches, the garden will come back to its original brightness. The simple idea of a man who lived with no fear and chose the sea and the orange flowers for his last days will not be lost.

Garden visited:
Fontana Rosa, Mentone, France June 2008.

Further readings:
Milano, seduzione e simpatia - Vicente Blasco Ibanez; a cura di Teresa Cirillo - Napoli: Alfredo Guida (1993)

Photos:
Travel in a garden.

Le testament français, Andreï Makine

It is not the first time I visit a place following the pages of a book, but this time the spell was subtler: I was travelling towards a country that exixts just in the memories of a man. His words were a mighty suggestion. They woke up a vague curiosity and gave it shape and substance, those of a travel to Russia.

I never thought about the book while I was away, but once at home pictures of that country glide in my thoughts. Sometimes, they echo the pages of the book.

In the morning, in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, a woman sat on a chair observed the mass of adoring and exhausted tourists without a word, wrapped in a shawl, with a long, thick braid, where she had collected her hair now white and comfortable shoes. In a maze of collections and floors, every room opened to the public is controlled by a woman who spends the day walking within the narrow boundaries marked by the doors and trying to resist to sneaky attacks of slumber, favoured by the warmth and the boredom.
Late in the afternoon, not far from the Moskovskaya metro station, old women sold flowers and berries. They stood in small groups; covered with layers of clothes, equipped to face sudden rains and cold winds not unusual in August. Bags and bundles put behind; at their feet, violet berries filled up plastic glasses and bunches of season flowers leant out capacious buckets. As the month progressed, the electric blue centaureas left way to warm yellow rudbeckias and cheerfully, bold dahlias, nicely arranged in simple compositions. They wrapped quickly the chosen bouquet in a plastic bag while money disappeared in their pockets, a needed contribution for their pensions. Attentive and proud, they turned away easy smiles and photographic machines with torrents of unintelligible words and eloquent gestures.

Babushka is the Russian for grandmother. In the book the term is extended to the middle-aged women depicted in the first pages. In a not distant past, in a village lost at the edges of the Russian steppe, they lived in rural, wooden houses that, among their planks, kept the intense smell of traditional life, of dark shawls and frozen winters. As the mad man of the village entered the courtyard, where a group of old Caucasian women was perched in whispers, they swarmed scandalised in their houses. Just the narrator’s grandmother, Charlotte, did not escape but talked to him with hearty and controlled words. She was not a babushka. In spite of the harsh experiences of her life, so exceptional for an Italian reader but so sadly common for people who live in the Russia, she had not lost kindness and concern for people, she never gave up. Her face mirrored her inner peace. The endless horizon of the steppe, the limpid, silent air and the pungent smell of the grass had damped bitterness and pain in a simple life of readings and friendship.

I found woods of pine and birches, marshes, pastures and small lakes outside Saint Petersburg. Wooden houses submerged by late summer flowers lined the road where, on Sunday evening, women and men sold their vegetables to people who were driving back to the town. That evening I sipped a soup with mutton and dried cherries, with fragments of dill scattered on the surface, sit alone in a smoky restaurant.

“Le potage de Sibérie”, these words flashed in my mind a couple of days ago, when I saw tidy bundles of herbs arranged in a corner of the stall, at the market. The Siberian soup, dried grass and roots soaked in hot water, was the last resource for a starving, young Charlotte and her mother, during an unreasoning cold winter in a country ravaged by war and revolution.

In the daily food market on Vasileskij Island fruits, vegetables, flowers, cheese, poultry and more were attractively on display. The Neva River was right at the end of the road, with huge keels unloading wood and cruise boats. People moved quietly among the booths. But, under a leaden sky that threatened rain, I did not see a boy and his sister who, expelled unjustly from the long, desperate queue, looked at each other with understanding glances and whispered words in a foreign language: “Bartavelles et ortolans truffé rotis…” These words took them away, in a distant town by the sea, with a misty air stirred by seagulls and a salty smell, away from a gloomy day, and nervous, tired people who queued for hours to buy few oranges.
Their grandmother, Charlotte, had taught them those French words.

At twilight, on a terrace flooded by flowers, overlooking a blazing steppe, a French woman told her grandchildren about France, her native country. She mixed memories with fragments of historical events, the romantic characters of popular books with the sensual rhyme of lyric poems; she used foreign words and clippings, following the bounds and unexpected turns of curiosity rather than the regular pace of a chronological order. It emerged the “Atlantide français”, the French Atlantis. It was a magic, unintelligible world to which the narrator’s studies and researches gave more solid foundations but less dreamy atmosphere. Then, it became his secret refuge, a hidden world for a solitary, proud and surly adolescent, who did not hesitate to renegade it when his life changed dramatically. It was turned into jokes and anecdotes for his new friends, with the rage of a deceived boy and the pain of a now orphan child. But, he could not cancel it, as he could not deny the reality in which he was living. Mad with rage he faced Charlotte. In a melting summer, he reconciled with her and himself following new words that told him about her Russian world. Adult, he left Russia for France where reality almost killed him until the memory of Charlotte invaded his thoughts. Her words were a mighty suggestion. They seized him and showed his way, that of a writer that today lives in France.

Further reading:
Le testament français, Andreï Makine Mercure de France, Collection Folio

Photos:
Travel in a garden