Rainy Retreat in Antraigues

It has been raining for three days in Antraigues.

This is not a complaint. The oil stove is going, Rita is somewhere in the kitchen with a pot au feu that has been simmering since this morning, and I am on the sofa with a book I have been meaning to read since March.

The plaster walls in this house crack a little more each winter. The light goes early. By three in the afternoon we have the lamps on.

There is a particular quality to a rainy day in a village of three hundred people when you have nowhere to be. The sound of it against the terrace. The smell of woodsmoke from somewhere up the hill. The fact that the only decision of the afternoon is whether to open another bottle before or after dinner.

We have been moving more or less continuously for seven months. Cities, trains, new apartments every few weeks, the low-level administration of being always somewhere temporary.

This is not temporary. This house has cracking plaster and a sofa that has been worn into exactly the right shape and a kitchen that smells like a Wednesday in November should smell.

Rita calls from the kitchen. The pot au feu is ready.

The book can wait.