Le Sud de France 6.4 : Journées Taurines, the Days of Bulls

The young men stood nervously rocking on the balls of their feet, waiting for the riders and horses. The long allée of plane trees leading into the heart of the village was full of people. New parents pushed strollers, old folks walked slowly with canes and teenagers gossiped ceaselessly on their mobiles. Every one of them passing easily through the tall red, steel barriers that had been erected along the allée. They chatted and laughed in the street, oblivious to the danger the young men next to them were anticipating.

The gardiens are France's cowboys

In the distance, from the direction of the village recycling bins, came the clacking of hooves on hard asphalt. Within seconds, the young men could see the Camargue gardiens and their graceful white horses turning the corner and racing down towards them. The tightly packed horses surrounded something, something dark and foreboding. In a ghostlike blur, they flew passed the young men. Just visible between the horse’s flanks were two black bulls.

After several circuits of the village the bulls are tired and can be caught up with.

The youths took off after them, running as fast as they could. They tried to catch the bulls and a few got close enough to grab an animal’s tail for a few seconds, but most did not. In frustration, some of the young men shouted out at the rapidly disappearing animals.

“When I catch you, you lousy son-of–a-cow, I will turn into a McBurger!”

The young men show their cajones.

“Hola bull, I had your sister for dinner. Nice steaks, she tasted great! I’m waiting for you.”

Then, winded and sweating, the young men stopped and bent over to catch their breaths to the scattered applause of a few friends. For those who touched the bulls’ tails there was visible elation.

Welcome to our village’s “Journées Taurines” or “Days of Bulls.”

We are located in the Herault, halfway between Spain and the cattle ranches of the Camargue. Raising bulls and bullfighting is a tradition in the Languedoc and many cities have arenes (arenas). The larger venues, like Nîmes, Carcassone and Béziers, are part of the “corrida” circuit that the toreros travel each year. While bullfighting may be a controversial sport, with its ardent supporters and equally ardent detractors, the Journées Taurines is not a bullfight at worst it is bull annoyance.

The bull running began Saturday and continued on Sunday. The first year the event was held one of the organizers stepped out in front of a bull and taunted it. The taurine was not impressed and flung the man into the air, a moment immortalized on YouTube.

Thinking of breaking out?

Thereafter crowd control and public safety became a big concern. This year along the Avenue de la Gare, the tree lined road that leads into town, the village workers erected heavy, red steel barriers. About two meters tall, there was enough room between the bars to allow people to pass through them, but not enough space for a large animal. However, there was a glitch in this security arrangement. No one cared that you were supposed to stay behind the bars. People just passed through them and continued on their merry way, as though nothing were going on. The event announcer kept telling people to stay back behind the barriers but no one seemed to pay any attention to him except for the local band, Fanfare Banzai. They wisely sat well back from the barriers and played their music from the terrace of a nearby restaurant.

This old guy threw his hat at the bulls to get them to run faster.

The horses and bulls made a wide circuit down the allée and around through the fields. Each time they came down the Avenue, the crowd stepped aside to make room for them and cheered a little, then just as quickly stepped back out into the street.

As the village photojournalist, I loaded up my professional gear, long lenses and all and covered the “action.” And, there I stood out in the middle of the street, cameras at the ready, ignoring the taunts and the warnings of several British friends who shouted from behind the barriers.

Fanfare Banzai played from the safety of the restaurant.

Even Diane added to the chorus, begging me to come back to safety.

“No,” I said proudly, “I am a photojournalist and my job is to get the photos.”

My sang froid rising, I added, “I’ll be okay because I will stand next to this old lady and her two little granddaughters. Surely, not even an angry bull would harm a child or the photographer standing behind her.”

Then I heard the sounds of the approaching horses and I began to have some misgivings about my plan. Luckily, the little girl looked up at me and smiled.

The horses flew by us and I hurriedly snapped frame after frame. Most of these shots, of course, were photos of the rear ends of horses, young men, and bulls. No, Pulitzer there. Clearly this event would not rise to level of an Ernest Hemingway bullfight, there was not even going to be a broken arm much less a Death in this Afternoon.

After a lot of taunting this taurine chased a kid across the arena. 

Then I realized what the village’s little secret was. These bulls were rather young. Imagine if you will as one year old, sweet, and gentle Ferdinand the Bulls, rather than some sort of steamrollers of death. As herd animals they ran, dare I say, happily in the safety of the horses? 

Notice how small the bull is.

Moreover, unlike Pamplona where the bulls chase the people, in Tourbes people chase the bulls and try to catch up with them. Sure, these frisky steers could hurt you but you literally have to get in their faces to do it, as that event organizer did in that first running. Cattle are nearsighted, that is why toreros use red capes to get their attention, to get hurt you have to get in their way.

A log day of running bulls draws to a close.

“Gardiens,” the cattle ranchers from the Camargue marshes of the Rhone, operate these bull runnings all around the region. They are in control of the animals and having raised them are aware of each one’s mood and attitude. I’ve written about the gardiens before. These are the French cowboys who at the turn of the 19^th century hosted Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West Show when they were forced by bad weather to spend a winter camped in the Camargue. The gardiens learned a lot about riding and roping from the cowboys and adopted both American style saddles and clothing.

People without barriers watch the loose bulls.

Although the weekend went well and there were only minor injuries, some question remains about whether or not there will be a Journées Taurines next year. While the bulls were well behaved, the people were not. With dozens of people milling about oblivious to the bulls, horses and men racing by, it was an injury lawyer’s dream and an insurer’s nightmare.

Most people totally ignored the barriers. The bulls, on the other hand, recognizing the danger these people posed, wisely sought shelter with the riders and horses. Facing the horde of reckless moms, wandering children and incautious grannies, that was the smart thing to do. In their hooves, I would have done the same.

Sud de France 3.2: Flaubert’s Q-Tips.

 I hit something hard and crunchy when I bit into my croissant this morning.  It was a dark brown chocolate bar stuck in the middle of the pastry. Zuts alors, the lovely redheaded boulanger’s wife had mistakenly given me a croissant “au chocolat” instead of a croissant “beurre.”The two types of croissant look identical and you can only tell them apart by their delicious names. 

It made me think about words and the great French writer Gustave Flaubert, who wrote Madame Bovary. Flaubert was known as a slow writer because he spent a lot of time searching for the “bon mot,” for just the right word. He’d take weeks writing a single paragraph over and over. He wanted to find that one word that once in its place would fit so perfectly that the sentence would become simply unchangeable. Just perfect. 

A young Gustave Flaubert circa 1850-60

His efforts produced some of the finest novels ever written. As an artist he struggled with his words because he understood that even ordinary words contain powerful implications and textures.

And this isn’t an  “out there” idea. I think that names and words are always affecting our ordinary lives. Here’s a very simple example of what I mean. I ran out of Q-Tips today. I had brought a couple of dozen with me from the States but now they were all used up.  

So I put Q-Tips on my shopping list and later in the day went off the supermarket. When I got there I realized I had no idea what the damn things were called in French.    

I asked one of the supermarket staff,” S’il vous plait. Ou est les Queue Teeeps?” She stared at me for a moment with that “Oh, Monsieur is a moron from space” look in her eyes and shrugged. 

Left alone I began to think to myself, “If I were a French Q-Tip what would I be called?”

English creeping into France

Having no good answer to this deep question, I simply began a methodical aisle by aisle search of the store. Starting in first aid products working my way through shampoos, air fresheners, soaps, toothpaste, skin crèmes and finally makeup. Nothing. I moved on to tissues and paper supplies and was about to give up when there on a bottom shelf, half hidden by bags of cotton pads, I saw a familiar blue packages. There were the Q-Tips or as the package called them in French “bâtonettes ouatés.”

“Bâtonettes ouatés” translates as “little sticks of cotton wool.” Now that’s a lovely name for Q-Tips. Bâtonettes! That works for me because Q-Tips absolutely look like drum majorette batons, scaled down for mice.

And this was a very Flaubert moment because it points out how French differs from English in subtle ways.  

Look at “Q-Tips,” it is a very sterile name, very impersonal and industrial. Do we even know what the Q stand for? Bâtonettes ouatés on the other hand is descriptive of what the item is and has a sweetness to it.

There are other examples. In America we drive cars. Drive has a pushy sound to it like driving a herd of cattle over the edge of a cliff. In France one “conduire le voiture” or conducts the car. You escorting the car get to a place, much gentler than driving. 

Give way

 At traffic roundabouts signs here say “cedez le passage” which means “give way” as opposed to the American “Yield!” The French are struggling as English slips into their language. When new things come along they try to create new French words that retain a descriptive quality, a French identity. 

For instance, since email means enamel in French they’ve taken the words for electronic mail--courrier electronique—and shortened them to courriele. A word with rolling Rs that’s not quite as corporate and hard as email. I like this softness in the language as much as I like the way the French find workarounds to get along. 

More english in France

Flaubert wanted to write realistic novels devoid of the flowery language and “higher emotions” of the literature of his day. In his search for the bon mot he created works that soar with emotive power and that shaped the French language forever.

I’d like to think that not so long age someone who had read and loved Flaubert had been the one to give Q-Tips a French name of bon mots like bâtonettes ouatés.

Photos and text © 2010 Steve Meltzer