Nominally it is a real one because of a little known 17th century aristocrat; a Baronet whose rank corresponded roughly to that of châtelain.
Baronet Pierre-Emmanuel Sauvette had had the wherewithal to appropriate a shelf of mountain upon which to build his home. He even put down, at considerable personal expense, a marble floor that we have covered in fir pine needles, ankle deep, as a courtesy to Calculus’s ailing joints.
Nature’s carpet
The needles give off a pleasant smell of freshness, which mingles with the odour of Indian cigarettes and home-grown marijuana. In summer we add – to the floor – herbs and flowers harvested from local meadows, thus reviving a good 16th century tradition. This is a shame, thinks Martha as the marble had come to be attractively burnished by age.
Modest château
There has never been a grand entrance to announce the château. No twin pilloried portico, not even a driveway to speak of. Just a schist trek, signalled by a cairn of granite rocks.
The building is really a glorified farmhouse; a rambling structure with thick walls, which, over the centuries, underwent a series of modifications. The barn and stables enlarged. In this way successive generations of Sauvettes (and their horses) were accommodated in more comfort.
The last of the masonry modifications happened prior to the revolutionary years because in a time of tumult the shiny new republic extracted from the nobility grovelling letters and substantial sums of monies. Even minor (less wealthy) members had to cough up. Meaning the Sauvette family fortune was virtually wiped out. The Republic though did keep its word over an arrangement that allowed the Baronet Sauvette’s descendants to retain the property’s deeds. So, on the eve of the Second Millennium, it was the same family that sold up; circumstances again conspiring against them.
Communication breakdowns
The problem was chestnut trees, growing unchecked alongside the mountain roads. Their branches snapped, damaging the lines and leaf entangled cables. In bad weather the power connection also failed. Pylons felled by high winds of winter.
The weather, combining with the remoteness of the château, in effect disconnected the Sauvettes from the world of dig-ether-al. A world which of course runs on electricity. Humongous amounts.
Dig-ether-al had come to be considered indispensable, presenting the Sauvettes with an insurmountable problem. Privately funding access to electricity – from half way up a mountain – was beyond their means. And, as their requests for state aid were repeatedly turned down, they reasoned their situation – deprivation of high quality dig-ether-al -would last a long time. So they sold up, moving to the bright lights of a city where electricity was cheap and dig-ether-al easy to have. Modernity had thus finished what the French Revolution started: the excising of entitlement from familial aristocratic property. Entitlement now came only with money. Which explains why the château of Sauvette became a second home to a fancy Parisian restaurateur.
In terms of financial influence Paris has fast outstripped a Brexit impoverished London. It is in the independent states of Berlin, Paris and Milan, where money now concentrates. Cities with legal privileges and juridical ramparts.
The restaurateur, finding he was too busy to spend any time at the château, sold up. The château bought, on a speculator’s whim, by a gay couple from Brussels who’d made their fortune breeding highly loquacious budgerigars. The transaction done, through Sage Transfer, on dig-ether-al. Completed in milliseconds. In eighteen years the Belgians never once visited their acquisition whose very existence has probably escaped their minds.
Ownership/property
Not concepts to which we willingly subscribe. Nobody in their right mind can seriously doubt the truth of Proudhon’s famous maxim: all property is theft. Stuff at the château belongs to everybody, making it non-property. Not that we have a closed mind on the subject. There are no taboo subjects, including conventional property laws.
The Kommune’s basic belief system has its origins in the 1960’s hippie movement. A brand of democracy that Martha has ironically named châteaucracy. For it directly contravenes the social mores commonly associated with the Middle Ages: a reversal of the feudal hierarchies; a rejection of patriarchy.
Full living entitlements bestowed upon each resident, regardless of their gender or sexual proclivities.
Zeitgeist of zaniness (hippy history)
The 1960’s was an era of heightened social conscience, marked by acts of freakish generosity. Certain rich individuals gifted the deeds of their land to God!
That the château’s legal owner might be none other than God was an idea that naturally appealed to us.
Alas, such acts of eccentric idealism are nowadays most rare. More likely, says Martha, the owner(s) have died intestate with no direct descendants. The deeds would then be in a legal suspension until an heir is officialised.
i console myself by thinking any person, with a legitimate claim and desire to move here, will need both an appetite for rural isolation and very deep pockets.
The château is badly in need of repairs: the pitted doors; the holes in floorboards; the cracked wood lintels and the fissured plaster façades. Calculus and Martha have chosen to view such defects as though they were ‘good’ character traits.
Our presence at least is stalling the process of further disintegration. Calculus says we should see ourselves as occupying the château more in a care-taking capacity. In his mind this is intellectually justifiable. Ownership being ultimately a social construct. We are all mortal, and occupy land or buildings for a finite span of time.
i do my best to think along these lines but i have yet to feel it is right. That feeling, says Calculus, will come in good time, acquired, like an Aristotelian virtue, through practice. i listen and nod, yet a part of me remains resistant to the idea. Whenever Koockie borrows my blue poncho, i feel rather put out. You can’t help feeling what you feel.