Far and Away…

“I alternate between feeling sympathetic toward humanity and being a misanthrope. When I’m sympathetic, it usually means I haven’t been around people in awhile.”

John R. Lindensmith

There is a farmhouse, a mas, in the countryside some miles outside of Arles.  It is not terribly accessible – I only noted it from the elevated aspect of an abandoned railroad embankment that cuts through the rice fields about a kilometer distant.  There are no major roads nearby.  Other than the gravel-topped and weedy embankment, closed to any traffic save the occasional solitary hiker or emboldened fox, there is the cul-de-sac dirt road that leads to its private drive about a half kilometer the other side from the raised path.  It sits in the middle of flat and stretching fields, far from any noteworthy topography.  And yet this farmhouse has a hedge.  And not just any hedge, but a pretty spectacular one, easily twenty feet high.  From my vantage I can’t ascertain what it’s composed of, but it has the dark green of maybe bay laurel, or some kind of cedar, or cypress.  It looks to be a perfect square, about 60 meters to a side, you can just make out the gables of a roof appearing over the top.  And here’s the thing – when I say ‘perfect square’ I mean ‘perfect’.  It has been topiaried to an astounding geometric perfection.  All of the faces have been trimmed flat and even, plumb as a brick wall, the top as level as a table.  Even the sides facing the embankment where, again, no prying eyes will ever penetrate, are trimmed smooth.

On a subsequent bike ride, I managed to navigate to the access road on the far side, only to find the frontage along the road presents a soaring, impenetrable poplar brake, at least 60 feet high, that further shields the farm from view.  This is someone who values their privacy.  And is very fastidious.  And patient – a hedge this size and density can take several generations to reach this point.  Perhaps misanthropy is an inherited trait?

There are scant other clues.  Sometimes I hear the faint clarnkeling of sheeps’ bells.  Branches of some kind of tree rise from the center of the compound, possibly a small private orchard?  I’ve never seen a vehicle exiting or entering the (fairly imposing) gate.  Chimney smoke, once.  Tempted to walk closer for a better look, maybe ring the bell?  There has to be a bell, a place like this would have some kind of weathered, verdigris-encrusted chain to pull.  But approach from the embankment would mean cutting across tilled fields; the driveway is a bit too imposing, and though I haven’t seen any yet, the Provençal farmhouse dog is more formidable than any hedge.

There is a life going on inside.  There must be an array of equipment simply to keep the hedge in trim.  There are meals being cooked, tasks being carried out – if the perfection of the exterior is any indication one could extrapolate an almost manic tidiness.  There are mice in the cellar, possibly a cat or three; bats nesting under the eaves and in the hedge, an even more reclusive fox in burrow beneath the woodpile.  There is a wall-mounted phone that is rarely used. There’s a record in the dust of generations that brought the farm to this quiet, solitary point.  And there is someone – I imagine, rightly or wrongly, a single soul, probably male – puttering around and keeping it just so.

And I think I would never be able to live like that, cut off from the outside, entrenched in my ways, wearing ruts in the floorboards as I inward gaze.  Then my phone rings; a number I don’t recognize.  I let it go to voicemail.