Early one summer morning, a couple of years ago, I was walking along the railroad tracks off route 895 near the village of Molino. It was early, before 7 am, but the air was already warm and heavy with moisture. Mist rose off the Little Schuylkill and floated in wisps above a marsh where two blue herons were busy fishing. Looking around me, I was filled with a sense of the beauty and harmony of Nature.
Then I rounded the bend. Atop five or six utility poles sat a committee of vultures. On the ground, the skeleton of a deer, what had recently been its carcass, lay next to the tracks, picked dry to the bone.
The vultures followed me with their eyes, and as I advanced further down the tracks, they changed positions, spreading their wings, rising into the air and settling on the next pole, not letting me out of their sight.
They were waiting, for another train, for another strike. They were waiting for me to turn into a carcass. They were hungry and saw me as a potential next meal.
This month, in the dead of winter, I got to feel what it’s like to be a vulture. I went to my first public auction. I joined a “committee” and honed in on the prey.
I’m partly joking of course, but only in part. Above all, I’m not criticizing or making fun of others, because the “vulture spirit” swooped down and took hold of me.
It all started with a newspaper, a weekly called Le Perche, the name of the region where I have my country home. I buy the paper faithfully every Wednesday, the day it appears, and read it on the train to Paris, paying special attention to the classified ads. For months, I’ve been on the lookout for a particular kind of auction, a sale of the contents of what the French call a maison bourgeoise, the home of a family belonging to the upper middle class.
About a week ago, eureka, I found one. I cut out the ad, visited the on-line site, and printed the photos of objects that interested me.
On the Saturday morning of the sale, under a dark sky, in pouring rain, I set out for the town of Longny-au-Perche, driving about twenty miles through hills and forests that reminded me a lot of Schuylkill County.
Once I arrived, I drove in circles looking for the site of the sale and only found it once I parked my car in the municipal parking lot and set out on foot. I had believed I was looking for an auction house. I ended up in front of the maison bourgeoise. All its contents and the house itself were up for sale.
We, the “committee,” tramped through the house, opening drawers and closets, trying out chairs, testing mattresses, rifling through boxes, elbowing anybody who got in our way. We handed over blank checks in exchange for a bidding number. Then we continued to comb through the contents of the house, waiting impatiently for the sale to begin.
A rich life had been lived there, rich in terms of experience and love. A happy couple had spent a long life together, some of it abroad, in Asia and Africa, at a time when France still had colonies in those parts of the world. The house was filled with their souvenirs.
And they had cherished their home and organized it with great care. I recognized a sense of order, not rigid or obsessive, but put in place so the inhabitants of that house could get on with the more important things in life. Monsieur played pool in the billiard room; Madame was an amateur pastry chef and had a veritable laboratory for baking in the basement of their home.
Then they got old. They moved from the master bedroom upstairs to a back bedroom off the kitchen, perhaps once meant for domestic help. They went from a double to single beds. Medical equipment filled the last room they shared. One died; then the other. Their grown and already aging children had no use for what they had lovingly accumulated throughout their long life together.
Sensing their story as I studied their things, I felt like one among a horde of intruders, soiling with our muddy boots and shoes a lifetime of intimacy.
But my scruples were superficial. I wanted to be there as much as the rest of them, the professionals from the antique barns that pop up regularly along the main roads in the region, a few Parisians with upscale antique shops, lots of young people selling their wares on line, the curious, those looking for a bargain, a crowd where most people seemed to know the rules.
Despite the rain and the cold, in a house with all the doors thrown open, the rooms were heating up. I had to wait my turn to go up and down the stairs and there was a line in front of certain rooms. The billiard table had a lot of success, as did a 19th century children’s bed, a cross between a cradle and a boat, perfect for Winkin, Blinkin and Nod “setting off in the night into a sea of dew.”
So many things awakening so much craving for what we did not yet have! But if we were wily bidders, not bidding too much but just enough to clinch the deal, we could leave at the end of the day, our craving satisfied.
I know what I want but have no idea how to get it. I’ve never bid at an auction before and hold tight to the number issued me in exchange for my signed blank check.
The agents of the auction house are entering the rooms, pushing us towards the doors, down the stairs, locking doors behind them, chasing us outside, into the rain and cold, where the sale will take place.
The auctioneer, called a commissaire-priseur in French, member of a tight-knit and exclusive corporation, is the only one who looks dressed for the occasion (I’m not, I thought the sale would be inside and once it’s underway, I’m shaking like a leaf). He’s wearing a handsome flat cap made of Harris Tweed, a padded-jacket to keep out cold and rain, wide wale corduroy trousers, and thick-soled black boots.
Standing on a wooden chest, gavel in hand, he is about to set the sale in motion (to be continued March 26th).
