Day 9

Fridays are gardening days. It’s been cold and windy today, but Chah and Vik and Meg have been here and a lot of gardening has been going on with me safely socially distanced shouting encouragement. The vine has been cut back so that light is once more penetrating the dining room window and the surviving grapes have a chance of doing well. Carrots have been sown and protected from gardening cats and a climbing frame for the courgettes to climb up has been built.

Now it has started to rain with a vengeance so I am glad to be inside. I have looked at the TV guide for this evening and it is all rather disappointing, so I suspect I shall be ferreting about in YouTube seeing what I can find. In the past, I would have happily spent the evening reading. I don't know if is a symptom of age or lockdown, but reading in the evening sends me straight to sleep. Reading has become a morning activity.

Meanwhile here is a whole series of books for you to enjoy. If I had planned this right, I would have reviewed the first in the series, not the last, but I didn’t and I can’t remember it in enough detail to try to rehash one now. All I can say is I really enjoyed it and I went on to read the whole series as they were published.

Today’s Book: A Hero of France

Alan Furst is an American journalist who has lived in France for long periods and for a time taught at the University of Montpellier. While working as a journalist he travelled widely through Eastern Europe. He writes excellent thrillers. I’ve read most of them and enjoyed them all. A Hero in France does not disappoint. It is the latest in his Night Soldiers series and is set in wartime Paris in 1941 and records, day by day, the activities of Mathieu, leader of a Resistance group that runs an escape route for allied pilots who have been shot down over France.

It begins:

‘Occupied Paris, the tenth day of March, 1941’

and in the first paragraph not only introduces us to Mathieu but also, in a couple of deft phrases, tells us all we need to know about life in occupied Paris. The narrative, in the third person, but mostly from Mathieu’s point of view, gives a day to day account of the life of a Resistance group – the tasks they undertake and the problems they face – logistics, financial, security. We get the odd glimpse of people’s personal life, but as Mathieu says, it’s best not to know. Surprisingly, this does not make the characters faceless ciphers. Instead, it brings us into the narrative because we, as readers, are operating under same security rules as they are. We know what they know and no more. I think this makes us care more about them than if they had been fully fleshed out with biographies and back stories.

The language and tone of the book is always low key. Furst uses no literary devices to hype up the tension and, paradoxically, the lack of fireworks and heroics, make the book all the more exciting. I could not put it down and read it in one long, late night sitting. Having said that, the book ended too soon. It is complete, but you want to go on reading.

Furst has written many books set in the war, and many of those set in Paris and I cannot think of a better way to understand what war is like for the civilian and the professional than to read his books. They are enlightening and hugely enjoyable. Here is a list of his thrillers based around the Second World War:

Night Soldiers

   1. Night Soldiers (1988)

   2. Dark Star (1991)

   3. The Polish Officer (1995)

   4. The World at Night (1996)

   5. Red Gold (1998)

   6. Kingdom Of Shadows (2000)

   7. Blood of Victory (2002)

   8. Dark Voyage (2004)

   9. The Foreign Correspondent (2006)

   10. The Spies of Warsaw (2008)

   11. Spies of the Balkans (2010)

   12. Mission to Paris (2012)

   13. Midnight in Europe (2014)

   14. A Hero of France (2016)

You may recognise the titles, because some of them have been filmed.

Music

Le Chanson

This is a selection of chansons by Juliette Greco. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL9-zbFHxjY

Here is an interview with Greco now in her nineties.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/feb/17/juliette-greco-miles-davis-orson-welles-sartre

Food

Chicken Liver Pate

This is another basic recipe that you can play with. You can also make it veggie by substituting mushrooms for the chicken liver.

Basic Recipe

Chicken livers

Brandy

Cream

A generous knob of Butter

A dash of oil

Cream

 

1.        Prepare the chicken livers by cutting out any sinuous or discoloured bits. Slice into strips.

2.        Put the butter in a frying pan that will take all the livers. Add a dash of oil to prevent the butter burning, because you want it hot.

3.        Add the livers and stir fry, turning all the while, until it ceases to be pink. This should be no more than a couple of minutes. You do not want to overcook the livers or you will end up eating leather.

4.        Turn the heat low and pour half a glass of brandy into the pan, taking care it doesn’t catch fire.

5.        Braise the livers in the brandy for a couple of minutes, then transfer to a small blender.

6.        Turn the heat up and reduce the brandy sauce by about 1/3. Turn heat right down and add cream. (The amount is to taste. How rich do you want your pate?) Don’t let the cream boil.

7.        Season with salt and pepper to taste.

8.        Transfer the liquid to the blender, scrape all the crusty bits from the sides of the pan – they taste the best.

9.        Blend to the texture you prefer.

10.   Transfer to a bowl.

11.   If you want, you can melt some more butter and pour it over the pate to seal and keep fresh.

Eat with a fresh baguette and a glass of wine.

 

Variations

1.     Add chopped:
onions
garlic
bacon
mushrooms
prunes
chilli
orange zest
and fry gently in butter and add to the livers in the blender

2.     Crack some black pepper and add it to the pate after blending

3.     Coarsely chop walnuts, pistachios, pine nuts and add to the pate  after blending

4.     Seal the pate with a port jelly instead of butter
Soak 3 gelatine leaves in water for 10 minutes
Gently heat 250 ml of apple juice with 1tbsp of port (or sweet sherry), until just below the boil.
Add the gelatine and stir until dissolved. Don’t let the gelatine boil.
Cool to blood heat and pour over the pate.
Refrigerate until set.

Picture

This is the Boulevard Montmartre at Night by Pisarro, painted in 1897. A rather faded reproduction of it hung in my bedroom when I was a child. Looking at Paris on a wet night always made me feel very secure in my warm dry bedroom. You could almost smell the wet pavements.

Unconsciously I began to understand what perspective was. I spent ages trying to paint reflections on wet pavements vanishing away into the distance - with very little success. All my pictures had this sort of composition:

with everything, no matter what,  marching off into the distance.

The original hangs in the Jeu de Paumes in Paris.

http://www.jeudepaume.org/index.php

I first saw the original when I was about fifteen. I was rather disappointed that it was much brighter than my copy – a bit gaudy, I thought. Mine was much more realistic!

I still have it, though the frame is very battered and the glass is cloudy. I haven’t hung it yet because a corner of the glass got broken when I moved. I really should reframe it and decide where to put it, not so easy because it is also quite large for a house with very low ceilings.