Scarcely had the little cloister of the Mas Vieux seen — or rather, seen anew — the light of day, than the Magalis were alerted by one of their own kin who worked there as a labourer. Madame Magali, née Estramuri, immediately summoned the Magali tribe to a sort of council meeting and gave an outline of the situation. While those best equipped took the hint, the more ignorant ones listened to her respectfully as she emphasized the importance of the discovery and listed all the benefits that could accrue to the village as a result: the cloister would attract crowds of tourists; petrol stations would open surrounded by shops selling postcards and local souvenirs; guides and interpreters would be seen coming to and from La Penne: all this would benefit the Magalis, and the little snack bar that had become the Magali Restaurant would feature on the gastronomic pages of the Guide Michelin. A road suitable for motor cars would have to be built, of course; two kilometres from the Mas Vieux to La Penne, 500 metres from La Penne to the main road. Not a great deal in actual fact; Monsieur Niox, the Parisian millionaire, would put up the money and would make a profit from it. Without further ado, Madame Magali dispatched her husband to the Mas Vieux. Forty minutes later, he had already returned.
“Well?”
“Well, to put it simply, he sent me packing. And he wasn’t even polite. As far as I can see, he doesn’t want to pay for the road.”
The following day and the day after that, the missions and delegations gathered pace. The Magalis offered their work free of charge, then did their best to obtain a departmental grant. Infuriated, Pierre refused to let them in.
Whereupon the pirate-patriarch Magali, a serpent coiled round his staff, turned up in person. Wearing an Alpine hunter’s beret over his grimy locks, his belly squeezed in by an orange-coloured leather cartridge belt that was always empty, his gun slung over his shoulder, and reeking of wine, the elderly tramp, these days as plump as a sow but still a pirate at heart, forced his way in.
From the back of the chicken-run, Pierre was astonished to see this Silenus disguised as Tartarin7 loom up; he wished he could have shut the door, but the Mas Vieux in its state of demolition no longer had any. Magali had already launched into a lengthy utterance that contained everything: welcoming greetings, descriptions of the beauties of the landscape and its hidden dangers, offers of protection against the natives whom Magali knew better than anyone since he was one himself, all embellished with local legends.
“You’re very lucky, Monsieur Niox, to have this lovely little chapel, aquelle poulido picholo capello, which is famous hereabouts, dans lou païs! When you come here at Christmas, you will get a surprise! serès étouna! And I promise you, a great paour, a fright. At midnight, some Capuchin friars come to sing the Mass here, maï les verras pas, perqué ésiston pas! But you won’t see them, ’cos they don’t exist!”
“Is my chapel haunted?” asked Pierre in amusement.
“Haunted, I didn’t say that,” protested the old mountebank, superficially enlightened but innately superstitious. “It’s the people from these parts that tell a tale from the year one thousand: of a little monk who got bored at the cloister, right in the plaço, the very place, where you are. He poisoned his abbot and took the crozier and the ring and the wife and lou resto, all the rest! The other monks got married the same day and then they all ran away with the vases and the chasubles and the relics and they became robbers on the road to the Alps. These brigands were friends of the devil, but they weren’t fâchas avec lou Boun Diou, they weren’t angry with God and every Sunday they came back to their chapel — your one, eh! — to say Mass. Finally, the Bishop of Digne, he expelled them and he brought back order and gentilezza dans lou païs, but they poisoned him too, put some veneno in his ciborium, and started up their hellish practices again, un vido d’inferi.”
At this point the old man winked with his little red eye and he implied in a few enticing words that it was Pierre’s responsibility to recreate equally alluring debauchery in these deserted locations. As for the road, Magali would take care of that. In a fit of inspiration, he pointed out the site for the future Grand Hôtel du Cloître on a ridge not far away, with its tennis court, its garage and its swimming pool where the lovely tourist ladies would frolic.
Pierre listened in total dismay.
“Maï! You’ve done a good deal, Monsieur Niox, God knows. Your land must be worth gold! And then the building sites, they’re gold in bars.”
In a flash, Pierre saw this five-act tragedy unfolding:
LE MAS VIEUX
Centre for Tourist Attractions
In a voice strangled with rage, he said:
“My house is my own. No one shall set foot here, you least of all. You will kindly get the hell out of here!”
“But Monsieur Niox, you haven’t understood a thing—rein comprès,” said the astonished old man indignantly. “Perhaps you think que van vous vola that your view is going to be stolen from you? Magali does not steal views, he’s an artist! He admires your cloister, reckons it’s a building of public utility! A national treasure! You’ll be awarded a decoration, monsieur, as a reward for vostre descouverto, your discovery!”
“Now listen to me, Magali,” said Pierre, foaming with rage, “Do you see this gate? By this evening it will have a door and a padlock, and tomorrow, behind this door, there will be a pair of mastiffs and not a single human being is going to go near them, if he values his life.”
“Then que prétendès? What are your intentions?” said the old man, who had gone pale.
“My intentions are to keep my cloister to myself alone, yes.”
Magali burst into a paroxysm of fury and poured out a hail of Niçois invective that came to an abrupt stop; an unctuous smile spread over his face.
“Fassès errour, you’re making a mistake, Monsieur Niox, your cloister is la proprietà dé la Francé. It’s French property, and if what you say is true you could have the Commission for Historical Monuments on to you.” He paused for a moment and added in a meaningful tone: “The Commission for Historical Monuments is on friendly terms with our lawyer, Maître Caressa.”
And, removing his beret in the sort of grand gesture of mock politeness associated with declarations of war, Magali shuffled away.
Pierre did not even have the choice between conceding and resisting; conceding meant three stars in the Guide Joanne,8 wardens in caps parading through his olive trees, coaches from Marseille, shrieks of delight from tourists; resisting meant enduring daily and multifaceted persecution, both spiteful and relentless. But resistance would become impossible if Caressa and the Beaux-Arts people got involved. Pierre had no choice but to leave… leave, yes, but taking his cloister with him (he wasn’t going to surrender it to this gang if it was the last thing he did), and doing so quickly, for he risked being listed.
Within a few minutes he had drawn up his battle plan.
He paid and dismissed his workers after he had made them put up a temporary door, which he locked tightly. At three o’clock in the morning, he left by car for Ventimiglia; at eight o’clock he employed some Italian builders; he hired a coach, filled it with his workers and provisions, took his entire staff to the Mas Vieux under the supervision of an energetic foreman whose silence he bought, and within a few days he had dismantled his cloister piece by piece like a clock. He himself ran around, telephoned, gabbled away in Italian, operated the roller and the hoist and distributed tips. Once the work was well under way and while the stones, all numbered and sorted, were being lined up one behind the other on the ground, Pierre rushed off to Cannes, dashed around Toulon, and went as far as Marseille. Ten-ton trucks hired by him toiled up to the Mas Vieux during the night, through woods, amid avalanches of gravel. Throughout the day they were filled with small columns, foundation stones, arches, capitals and tiles. The following night, a night with no moon, the convoy hurried down from the hills, escaped to the coast and unloaded material at different points; at Golfe Juan into a tartane, at Cannes into an old yacht, at Salins d’Hyères a trawler took the cargo on board. In the evening this fleet cast off and transported the charming little monument, which had not moved for ten centuries and which was now sailing the high seas, to Port-Vendres, and from there, two days later, to Barcelona with all the papers in order, the blessing of the customs, and a certificate of origin.