Because Mazan is the setting for my memoir-novel X in Provence, I often get asked whether there is something about this village and the area around it is that spawns evil. No, I answer, there’s bad everywhere, just as there’s good everywhere. The fact that “the perfect” husband committed hideous acts against his wife, Gisèle Pelicot, in their Mazan home along with dozens of male recruits, should not tar the village or the region itself, should it?
As a newbie moving to Mazan from a bustling, career-defining, money-spinning Asian city, I was immediately struck by the carpe diem, baby, phenomenon. Life was about taking the time to indulge, “to wring out of each day as much self-gratification as you could, which, as a theory, wasn’t bad at all only in practice it tended to, well, make people lazy about earning a living.” Talk about multidimensional culture shock. I found that what mattered most in this rural setting were sex, food, wine and parties, slathered with mounds of gossip. The more I settled into rural Provençal society, the more I caught the whiff of sexual intrigue that suffused every single gathering, from the tête-a-tête chats over coffee to the famed fetes that were held at the roomy Mazan residence, described in the book.
Speaking of fetes, X in Provence is explicit about where the booze that fuelled these three-day revelries was bought. A10-minute drive from Mazan, on the outskirts of Carpentras, lies the Leclerk supermarket. It’s the usual suburbia behemoth with brightly lit aisles brimming with goods on stacked shelves. It is the supermarket where Monsieur Pelicot was caught filming under the skirts of several women, leading to the discovery of his vile crimes against his wife, a four-month public trial and a 20-year-prison sentence for him and jail time for most of the 50 other perpetrators of rape and sexual assault. I’d bet that many of these locals bought groceries from Leclerc in Carpentras. I know the supermarket well. I used to shop there.
Lerclerc, incidentally, plays an instrumental role in the ménage-a-trois held at the Mazan home of Alain and Rai (the key protagonists). It’s where Alain bumps into Monique, who he’d had a fling with more than a decade before. He decides on the spot she’s a perfect candidate for a tryst with Rai, his live-in English paramour. Monique eagerly accepts his proposition and Rai marvels at how easy it is to set up this session. A bit of play between consenting adults, no big deal. Indeed, all the sexual antics that are described in X in Provence, including sex club and mixed sauna romps, are carried out with the consent of the women – and men. So far, so nothing harmful. It’s the inner circle socializing that Rai finds disturbing.
X in Provence states: “There was an element of Machiavellian liaisons dangereuses in the sexual machinations that went on socially” in and beyond Mazan, perpetuated, admittedly, by both sexes. “The men were hardly blameless. There was a rampant strain of male chauvinism and something else pertaining to the gang: an incestuous underbelly. I began to wonder if there was something in the water or the wine that fed it.”
It was as if an invisible choreographer was directing. “Put a hand on her leg”, “Make a suggestive comment”, “Flirt with her boyfriend”, “Sit on his lap”, “Give your most provocative pose”. “Bend over that way”. “Pout your lips like this”. You get the picture. The constant sexual undertones and overreach were hard to ignore. But whether or not the sexual cinema I witnessed in the social circles I moved in was more pronounced in this bucolic spot than in other regions of France, I cannot say.
Nor do I know if Mazan has more Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde characters than other villages. In X in Provence, Alain, well-respected in the Mazan community, is a narcissistic, misogynist type, probably more of a classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Utterly charming, loving and empathetic one moment and emotionally icy and verbally abusive the next.
“So Mr. Hyde, which side does he come from, the Basque or the Venetian?” Rai’s sister asks at one point in the book, referring to the origins of Alain’s parents. Not that it matters a jot since the nature of Rai’s obsessional love compels her to be submissive to Mr. Hyde.
On the spectrum of multiple personality disorders, Monsieur Pelicot is surely at the extreme end, with two completely different identities, the one, an apparently ideal husband, the other, a calculated pill-poisoner and monster rapist.
One thing I can say about Mazan is this: It has given France and the entire world an icon of immeasurable courage, a warrior for justice, a woman who held her head high as the men in the dock tried but failed to smear her with shame. Gisèle Pelicot. Out of ashes arises greatness.