Not just kids, everyone was there. Grandmères, grandpères, teenagers, everyone. It's a wonderful thing about a small village, that when there's an event, any event, everyone shows up for it. In three long rows of tables sat all of Villamblard, hoping to get lucky and win a canard gras (a fat duck), or a bottle of wine, or a ham, or hair products, or a coffee maker. Down the row I could see, people were drinking Cokes and beer. Smoking not allowed.
Many of the adults were playing big cards with four or five smaller cards on each one, with big glittering heaps of multicolored chips at the ready. Qine is a kind of bingo, with each card having three lines of numbers to fill. After the start of a new game, the first person to fill one row yells "Qine!", the person calls out the numbers so they can be checked for accuracy, and they get a prize. Then the game continues until someone gets two rows, and then three, for the biggest prizes. (Admittedly it took us until the end of the night for the rules to be entirely clear.) Since numbers are not exactly my strong suit in any language, one card was enough for me. I was kind of hoping not to win so I wouldn't have to call out my numbers in front of the entire village, and I was not disappointed.
When someone yelled Qine! and turned out to have made an error, the crowd was merciless. Jeering, booing, taunting, wild cackling ensued.
When we described the game to Julian at dinner beforehand, he was suddenly motivated to learn his French numbers. They are, for the computation-impaired, not so easy -- 70 is soixante-dix, or sixty-ten. 71 is soixante-et-onze, or sixty-and-eleven. The same thing with the 80s and 90s -- eighty-two is quatre-vingt-deux, or four-twenty-two, and 97 is quatre-vingt-dix-sept, or four-twenty-seventeen. At first Julian was asking Chris for the translation the second the number was called out, but then Chris started answering more and more slowly, and Julian began shouting it out himself -- correctly, and faster than I was translating it myself. Studious Nellie was working her card by herself, not minding numbers at all.
Sometime after 10 I sneaked out to go to bed, leaving the other three feverishly qine-ing. The report I got is that Julian filled his second row, Chris shouted Qine!, but it turned out that he needed two complete rows, not the second row complete.
The crowd was kind.
In the end, no duck for us. But the children got to drink some Coke and stay up really late, and Chris and I were happy to be part of the village, even if once again playing the role of the Hapless Americans.
