Wild Dog E-Book

Serge Joncour

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 554

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Franck and Lise, a Parisian couple in the film industry, rent a cottage in the quiet hills of the French Lot, with no phone signal, to get away from the stresses of modern life. A mysterious dog emerges, looking for a new master. Ghosts of a dark past run wild. They meet a German lion tamer, who took refuge during the First World War . . .Faced with nature at its most brutal, the holiday-makers are about to discover that man and beast have more in common than they think.

Leseprobe

Serge Joncour is a novelist and screenwriter. He was born in Paris in 1961 and studied philosophy at university before deciding to become a writer. He wrote the screenplay for Sarah’s Key starring Kristin Scott Thomas, released in 2011. Wild Dog, winner of the Prix Landerneau des Lecteurs in France, is the first of his novels to be published in English.

Jane Aitken is a publisher and translator. She was awarded the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2009 for her work in promoting French literature in the UK.

Polly Mackintosh is an editorial assistant and translator.

WILD DOG

Serge Joncour

WILD DOG

Serge Joncour

Translated by Jane Aitken & Polly Mackintosh

Pushkin Press

A Gallic Book

First published in France as Chien-Loup

Copyright © Flammarion, 2018

English translation copyright © Gallic Books, 2020

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Gallic Books,59 Ebury Street, London, SW1W 0NZ

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention

No reproduction without permission

All rights reserved

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781805334293

Typeset in Fournier MT by Gallic Books

Printed in the UK by CPI (CR0 4YY)

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

CONTENTS

PART I

July 1914

Spring 2017

August 1914

Spring 2017

August 1914

August 2017

August 1914

August 2017

August 1914

August 2017

August 1914

August 2017

August 1914

August 2017

September 1914

August 2017

PART II

September 1914

August 2017

September 1914

August 2017

September 1914

August 2017

September 1914

August 2017

October 1914

August 2017

October 1914

August 2017

October 1914

August 2017

October 1914

August 2017

October 1914

August 2017

May 1915

August 2017

May 1915

August 2017

May 1915

August 2017

PART III

August 2017

May 1915

August 2017

May 1915

August 2017

June 1915

August 2017

July 1915

August 2017

July 1915

August 2017

July 1915

August 2017

July 1915

August 2017

July 1915

August 2017

July 1915

August 2017

EPILOGUE

PART I

July 1914

No one in the village had ever heard sounds like that coming from the hills. Wild, desperate sounds. The first shrieks rang out around midnight, distant at first, but moving closer and closer. Even the old people could not identify the source of the noise. It was as though some frenzied ritual were taking place up there in the woods, a savage brawl that seemed to be making its way towards them. At first the villagers thought it must be foxes or lynxes fighting over captured prey. The feverish sounds of these small, rabid beasts making their kills often disturbed their nights. Or it could have been the distinctive howling of local wolves, which pitched their cries to make the pack sound more fearsome. Previous attempts to keep them at bay by scattering the ground with strychnine had been unsuccessful, so tonight villagers young and old were roused from their beds to bang spoons against their pots and pans in the night air, a tried and tested method of keeping wolves away.

At night, the woods were alive with hidden sounds and rustling movements. Under cover of darkness, animals reclaimed their territory, free from human interference. In the village it was often possible to make out the sounds of unseen beasts hunting, mating or fighting. The night belonged to them, and this night more than any other.

‘It almost sounds like—’

‘Be quiet!’

As the hellish chorus rounded the hill, the sound became more distinct and the villagers were able to make out barking – savage, broken barking that could not have been a wolf and was too loud to be dogs. Only deer could make that kind of noise. It must have been deer that were heard that evening, high on buckthorn berries or driven wild by fear of an unseen predator. But this was the first time their shrieks had torn through the countryside with such demonic fervour. It was no use rattling their crockery now. There was nothing to be done but remind their children that at night deer are even louder than dogs and their barks are lower, more guttural and more frightening. During the rut, the bucks’ calls that seek to ward off their rivals seem also to reveal their own desperation. Something must have truly frightened them, however, to cause them all to cry in unison. No one in Orcières had ever heard so many of them at once. They seemed to be hurtling down towards the houses by the dozen. No one was scared of the deer, of course, but everyone felt troubled by the prospect of whatever it was that had caused them so much terror.

Panic spread quickly through the village that night, perhaps because for weeks now it had been haunted by a larger threat. Since the spring, the newspapers had been full of worrying headlines. This had already led some men to search in their cupboards for their carnets militaires, just in case they were needed. The silent fear that they would be called away from home circled ever closer around the sons and fathers of Orcières, as if they were a pack of frightened deer. Even in the furthest depths of the countryside, it was clear that the world was subject to the whims of a handful of royals most of whom were related to one another. Sovereigns pictured sailing or playing tennis in L’Illustré National were part of prodigious dynasties that linked the King of England to the Kaiser to the cousin of the Tsar and back again; these family ties were about to be torn apart in spectacular fashion. As the summer wore on, tensions rose. It was already unbearably hot, and fear cast a shadow over everything. Europe was a tinderbox; the armies stood waiting as the commanders squared up to one another, forming pacts, not through kinship but because they were preparing for the worst. Meanwhile, in the village, men and women would stay outside talking for as long as possible before going to bed, savouring the evening air as if this were their last chance to do so.

No one wanted a war here. In any case, war was surely an impossibility, especially in Orcières, hidden away at the furthest edge of the causse and several days’ journey from the nearest border. But that Friday even the calmest of spirits were troubled. The villagers wondered what was lying in wait for them up there, what predator had sent those deer running down the hill in terrified droves. Every summer they were newly surprised by the piercing cries of fighting bucks locking antlers and circling their rivals, but the barking had usually stopped in the time it took to roll and smoke a cigarette. The terrible sound persisted this time, until everyone in the village felt swirls of fear coil around their hearts and linger on their lips, like the stale end of a cigarette.

No one knew it yet, but on this late July night they were poised on the brink of war. In the little hamlet tucked away amid the hills, it was unthinkable that in just a few hours the sound of alarm bells ringing across the countryside would bring the summer swiftly and abruptly to an end. In a few days’ time, the war would start to devour their men by the trainload, and by its end, four terrible years later, it would have destroyed four empires and fifteen million lives. But in the early hours of this summer Saturday, what the villagers were most afraid of was the wave of terrified sound that descended on them from the hills. Groups of deer hurled themselves down into the valley in their dozens before disappearing westwards beneath the moon, which was hidden behind a shroud.

When, at last, it was quiet again, the villagers could hear the trudge of heavy footsteps coming from the woods. They were accompanied by the sound of clinking metal, indicating the approach of someone with an animal. The cloud had shifted and the moon was now shining brightly on the thickets surrounding the village, where something was moving through the undergrowth. Those with more active imaginations wondered if they might see a giant wolf emerging from the shadows, dragging a limp foot caught in a hunter’s trap, or even the infamous Champawat Tiger. In fact, it was a hooded, monk-like figure that came into view, accompanied by a weary-looking mule, bowls clinking on the haversack on its back. The adults crossed themselves as the children crouched behind them in fear. No one here had ever seen a pilgrim pass through the village. Walkers heading south from the Auvergne had once crossed the woods on their way to Spain, but it had been a long time since anyone had come through the village to reach Santiago. The appearance of this harbinger of doom should have alerted them to the fact that this night marked the end of an era. That this was their last evening in the old world and that the new day would herald the beginning of four years of suffering. The sight of the wandering stranger should have helped them realise that tomorrow they would wake up to the dawn of a new age which would be rung in with madness, gunfire, fear and, above all, blood.

Spring 2017

The advert promised an oasis of tranquillity, a simple gîte tucked away in the hills. It was hard to make much out from the three available photos, but they seemed to confirm this description. Zooming out on the map, the house was a tiny dot in an ocean of green, surrounded by peaks and valleys in the heart of the Causses du Quercy Natural Regional Park. Lise was convinced she had found a peaceful hideaway. Others might have said the back of beyond. According to the blurb the simple house at the top of a hill had been built in the nineteenth century. The nearest neighbour was ten kilometres away, the nearest town a twenty-five-kilometre drive.

Lise had come across the advert whilst browsing the internet. Most people would have clicked away from the page after reading the description, but in many ways the house provided exactly what she was looking for: nature, sun and isolation.

And it really was isolated. Lise noted with interest that the gîte came with far fewer amenities than the other houses advertised on the website. It seemed to have none of the conveniences of a normal holiday home: no swimming pool, no air conditioning, not even a television. There was also no telephone, which meant no Wi-Fi.

That was what persuaded her that she had found the perfect place. For years she had longed to cut herself off from the world by spending three weeks with no internet or phone, and here was the perfect opportunity to go completely offline.

‘Lise, can you imagine us going three weeks without the internet?’

‘I could do it.’

‘Well, I’m telling you now, I couldn’t. Because of my job, I can’t be offline.’

‘It would be so good for us. And we’d be away from all the noise and pollution, and especially the radiation …’

‘Lise, please don’t start all that again.’

For several years now, Lise had claimed to suffer from the harmful effects of electromagnetic radiation from phones and Wi-Fi. This was the reason she wanted to get away from it all. More than anything she wanted to lead the healthiest existence she could, waking up with the sun and then watching it set in the evening, living in the moment, aiming to do nothing more than walk, meditate and breathe air that was free of noise, waves and particles. Further research online had revealed there was an organic supermarket in the nearest village. The rest could be picked from their surroundings; she could already see herself foraging for berries and roots in the garden. This was what she had been dreaming of: three weeks in the depths of nature, in the wild, cut off from everything.

‘Look, Franck, you just don’t get that many holiday homes that don’t have Wi-Fi or a TV. It’s lucky that I happened to come across this one, and it’s free for all of August, too!’

‘That’s exactly what I’m worried about. Don’t you think it’s strange that no one has commented on the page or left a review? And what are we going to do with a hundred and twenty hectares of forest?’

‘Nothing at all. That’s the point.’

‘Lise, it’s not going to be very relaxing – no air conditioning, no TV … There probably isn’t even a kettle or a toaster.’

‘You can’t go a few weeks without a kettle and a toaster?’

‘No, I can’t. I’m a modern man; in the morning I need my kettle and my toaster. And there’s no pool! Where did you even find this site? Are you sure it’s not dodgy?’

‘Franck, you’re just scared of it just being the two of us for three weeks, without our friends and their kids and their motorboats, not even neighbours to distract us.’

‘If you’re looking for rest and relaxation, why don’t we go on a cruise, or trek through the desert? I get emails advertising those kinds of things all the time. Trust me, there’s plenty of other places in the world you could find your peace and quiet.’

‘Because your idea of relaxing is planes and trips, and big groups. Being surrounded by other people, following a schedule, having a plan – that’s what you call a holiday?’

‘Well, anyway, your website says you need a 4×4 to get to the place. Look, it says there, “4×4 recommended”.’

‘OK, so we’ll rent one!’

‘Lise, do you know how much it costs to rent one of those things?’

‘Probably less than going on a cruise.’

The warnings about the track leading up to the house were unambiguous, and whilst Franck saw this as yet another reason not to take the house, for Lise it was further confirmation that she had found the perfect place. According to the description, the road leading up to the top of the hill was extremely steep and in poor condition, hence the need for a vehicle with four-wheel drive. To see for herself, Lise tried searching for it on Google Earth. There was no postcode, just the name of the local area, and she had to scroll over acres of emerald screen before she found the right place. This had to be the house; it seemed to be the only one for miles around. She could make out the track in question curving towards it. On-screen it was difficult to gauge how steep it was, a winding pale streak twisting away from the main road that stood out from its surroundings like a line of chalk on a blackboard. When they zoomed out they could see the house was surrounded by hills, trees and scrub, but no other houses. To the east of the house though, a flash of something sparkling caught their eye, a circle of light glittering in a dark patch of shadow. It could have been a ray of sunlight caught on camera or a reflective surface. Franck zoomed in further get a closer look, but all he could see was a white shape.

‘What do you reckon?’

He was already feeling oppressed by the prospect of three weeks out in the sticks with nothing but trees and hills for company.

‘I reckon there’s something fishy about this website.’

‘No, that bit of light over there – what do you think it is?’

‘I don’t know, Lise, probably a mirror or something. Or a pool of water.’

‘There you go. You can swim in that then!’

‘At least check if there’s reception up there.’

‘A reception?’

‘Phone reception, Lise.’

August 1914

The bell at Orcières-le-Bas no longer chimed, but everyone in the village heard the alarm being raised across the countryside. The hellish toll of church bells frantically ringing tore through the sky from nearby Limogne and Villefranche. It would be some time before the village forgot that terrible sound. Every time the wind blew, people thought they could hear the desperate ringing that had plunged the country into terror on that sunny summer afternoon.

The portentous pilgrim and his mule had spent the night at the doctor’s house. Of the thirty or so households in the village, this was the only one that had room for a guest. There were several reasons for this, one being the considerable size of their farmhouse, and another that Doctor Manouvrier and his wife, Joséphine, much to the surprise of the rest of the village, had no children. The pilgrim set off for Santiago with his mule the following day at dawn, unaware that he had woken up in a country at war. To avoid finding himself at the mercy of his fellow men, who might have proved less forgiving than God, the pilgrim would probably have had to turn back at some point. Or perhaps he fell down one of the many sinkholes in the region. No one ever found out what had become of the pilgrim and his mule, and they certainly never reappeared in the village; but everyone remembered that the day they walked into the village was the day that war broke out.

That first day of August was glorious. The harvest looked set to be exceptional and the crops were plentiful; the landscape glowed with rich colour. But, whether they were working in the fields under the sun, or resting in the shade of the walnut trees, everyone in the village felt the same sense of dread. Tucked away in the craggy hills of the causse, Orcières was thirty kilometres from the nearest police station, but, as in every other village in France, the sound of bells ringing and a poster hastily put up in the main square were enough to tip their world into a new kind of chaos.

By decree of the President of the Republic, the mobilisation of the army and navy has now been ordered. All animals, vehicles and other necessary equipment required to support this effort will also be requisitioned.

Spring 2017

‘Peace and quiet guaranteed.’ Even the heading above the description on the website was depressing. Franck and Lise had never gone away together for more than ten days at a time. Their holidays were mostly spent by the sea, in houses rented with other friends, more often than not surrounded by plenty of other people. They had never chosen to take themselves off to somewhere so remote just the two of them.

‘I don’t think so. Sorry, Lise.’

‘Look, Franck, I don’t want to fight about this. After everything I’ve been through in the last two years, I’m not fighting about this. It’s not a big deal. I’ll go on my own.’

‘It’s you that I’m worried about, Lise. What happens if you don’t like it after a couple of days? There’s literally nothing there, it’s in the middle of bloody nowhere. I looked it up on Google Maps and there’s nothing nearby, not even a village. Just hills and trees.’

‘That’s exactly what I’m looking for.’

‘Don’t you think there’s something a bit funny about the website? There’s something about it that doesn’t feel right.’

Franck had compared the page with a couple of other rental websites and found a few things that worried him. The house had clearly not been up on the website for long, as no one had left a comment or a review. Perhaps even more unusually, it was almost June and the gîte was still free for the whole of August.

‘I think that’s a good thing!’

For Lise, the fact that the house was still available when everything else was booked up was further proof that it was meant to be. They were meant to rent it. As for the lack of amenities, she had already come up with a plan. If there was no washing machine, she could already see herself washing their sheets in the river and hanging them outside to dry in the fresh air. There was nothing that could have put her off the house – more than anything she wanted to get back to nature, to practise meditation among the trees, to paint something other than city scenes and urban life, and to walk off the beaten track, safe in the knowledge she would not encounter another soul.

The person whose contact details were given on the advert seemed to take a long time to respond to emails, and when they did the messages gave little away. Twice Lise had dialled the 0065 number provided. The voice on the other end spoke neither French nor English, and when someone rang her back it was always at two or three o’clock in the morning and the caller never left a message. But the website was certified; it couldn’t have been a scam. In any case, Lise had decided not to let any of this worry her. This would be her approach to life from now on: she would let her instincts guide her.

Franck was also gradually coming round to the idea. He told himself that at least if it went badly, he would be proved right. He wouldn’t labour the point, he would simply say, ‘You know, I said from the beginning we’re not cut out for country living.’ He wasn’t worried; he knew it wouldn’t end up being three weeks there. Work would give him an excuse to make regular trips back up to Paris, and he would have plenty of ways to limit his time there. Unlike Lise, he had no desire to cut himself off from civilisation and not see anybody.

‘You know no one would come and visit us there, right?’

‘So that’s what you’re really worried about! You don’t think we’ll be able to cope for three weeks on our own, just the two of us, do you?’

‘No, Lise, I just think that … you don’t know what it’s like, living in the countryside.’

His own feelings aside, he reflected that for Lise this would be a chance to test her intuitions about her health and the new daily regime she was putting herself through. She wanted a month away from absolutely everything that was bad for her. Spending such a long time fearing for your partner’s life takes a toll on a relationship. Even if at times you’re not sure you still love each other, even if you often have arguments and swear that it’s over, when one of you suddenly finds themselves waiting months for diagnoses and test results, then all that love that seemed to have faded is revived; all that love you’ve stopped showing each other comes back with renewed force. He had lost count of the number of times he had told himself during the six months of her treatment that if he lost Lise, he would lose everything. He didn’t make sense without her. He had enormous respect for the courage she had shown all through her illness, for the way she accepted the doctors’ appointments and treatments without doubting them, or without appearing to. He admired that in her – her ability to stay calm and relaxed. Since Lise had recovered, he had taken care of her. Without making it obvious, he looked after her, even though he knew that she was more resilient than he was. He understood how her cancer had affected her, her need to get close to nature, how furious she became each time she switched on her computer and discovered dozens of Wi-Fi connections available, how she disliked seeing everyone on their phones in the street, on the Métro or in cafés, because now she could physically feel the electromagnetic radiation. She felt irradiated by the waves from those millions of connections, phone calls and networks which were always there, passing through us, to say nothing of the hotspots and myriad communications on RER trains and in cafés. And on top of that were the warnings about pollution and air quality, the constant reminder that, in the city, even breathing was dangerous. She had grown to hate the scooters and the buses belching black fumes, the coaches which kept their engines running even when they were at a standstill, the lack of consideration that was at the root of everything. She worried about the ever-increasing traffic or the daily revelations about the pesticides everywhere or the endocrine disruptors found in green beans … At least, at the gîte, there would be no farming nearby, no fields, just limestone plateaus.

She wasn’t thinking of changing her way of life, but she was absolutely certain that her environment was toxic. It was like a daily assault, and, from what she understood about the gîte, whilst there she would be safe from pollution. She had emailed the owners with a question that probably surprised them. She asked if it was correct that there was no internet, and more importantly, no mobile signal at the house. They took three days to reply, ‘No, sorry, no signal at the house,’ fearing that was the wrong answer.

August 1914

When war was declared on Saturday, 1 August 1914, people expected human deaths. What they did not foresee was that alongside the tide of humanity sent to die there would also be millions of animals. In cities and in the countryside, horses were requisitioned even before troops had been gathered. Mobilisation posters that had mouldered for years in drawers in town halls were dusted off, pasted on walls and a date inserted in the box provided. Immediately, in response, husbands, fathers and sons filled entire trains taking them to kill those other husbands, fathers and sons who had been designated their enemies. Animals that had done nothing to cause war were caught up in the madness.

All over Europe, animals were enlisted for war. Hundreds of thousands of terrified horses were sent into battle, ridden by light cavalry or dragoons, carrying officers through the battlefields or towing all that was yet to be motorised. Oxen were yoked to cannons on impossible paths. It took three pairs to pull one wagon overloaded with munitions or kit, or heavy artillery weighing tons. They were exposed to the line of fire. All the docile, loyal animals man had domesticated now found themselves engaged in the fury of war and became targets for the enemy.

As soon as hostilities began, everyone was ordered to declare all their animals to the army recruiters. The prospect of war seemed to have unleashed madness. It was a madness that led to kennels and pounds being emptied in order to quickly train up dogs to sniff out mines or gas. Fearsome hounds and cuddly lapdogs alike suddenly found themselves in the heat of combat, detecting bombs. Sometimes they were loaded with explosives and a fuse and sent to blow themselves up in the enemy trenches. Just as the Romans threw flaming pigs at Hannibal’s elephants, so, in 1914, men forced sheep onto minefields so that the mines exploded under hooves rather than feet.

Mankind, overnight it seemed, embraced barbarity, rage and death, that universal blight that affects all species. In the space of four years, generations of men were wiped out, along with millions of horses, oxen and mules, and as many dogs, pigeons and donkeys. And that’s without counting all the game mown down in the insanity of gunfire, all the wild animals caught unawares by bombardment, all the deer and foxes slaughtered without even having the honour of being hunted, and the hares obliterated in scorched earth. Other animals were poached by shadowy figures desperate for something to eat.

Sheep, cows and goats were requisitioned from farms and dragged off to combat zones for meat. Every day trainloads of trembling animals were taken to the front to feed soldiers exhausted by fear and fighting. Thirty-five thousand cows a day had to be killed to keep the troops going. And even that was barely sufficient for the millions of hungry soldiers who were served soup, cold by the time it reached them, in which there was no sign of meat, only kidney beans, which were starchy but unsatisfying. The cows or sheep which had been sacrificed to assuage the hunger of the troops had been boiled in stock and broken down so much that they were almost useless.

Men who were fit and healthy had left for Gramat or Cahors to cram themselves onto trains for the front, but it was still necessary to get the harvest in before the weather worsened or the crops spoiled, so it had to be managed without them. According to the newspapers, in big cities men were proud to go and fight, so fired up by the idea of killing the Boches that they climbed onto the trains singing. But, in villages, men departed downcast and in tears. The women left behind also had to give up their horses and oxen, and even their mules and donkeys, if they were any use, because until factories were working at full capacity, the war effort needed horsepower. Their precious pigeons reared high up in the dovecotes were all recorded or set free; sometimes gendarmes killed them on their own initiative, for fear that they would be used to help the enemy.

The one thing in Orcières’s favour was that it was hidden in the hills, and gendarmes did not normally go there. So the mayor, Fernand, hid the flocks that were grazing up on the summer pasture from the requisition committees. He hid two hundred sheep, keeping them safe, away from prying eyes, in the meadows beyond Mont d’Orcières. And he also, a week later, said nothing about the five lions and three tigers which arrived in his village, eight large wild beasts hidden away behind the yellow and red panels of Pinder’s Circus wagons. Eight deadly dangerous animals, roaring and enraged.

August 2017

Franck and Lise had set off that morning. Their aim was to arrive mid-afternoon to pick up the keys at the agreed place and get to the gîte in time to explore the surroundings before nightfall. With a bit of luck, they might even be able to get back down to do some shopping, if they could find a town, and the shops didn’t close too early. They were confident that at the height of summer there would be something open after seven o’clock.

Yet, from the very beginning, nothing had gone to plan, starting with the traffic jams on the way out of Paris. It was the first time they had had to leave in peak holiday traffic on a Saturday at the beginning of August, and they got caught up in the big rush. Then at lunchtime there was the endless wait at the service-station restaurant, followed by a problem starting the huge hired Audi 4×4, driven poorly by Franck. It was as complicated as it was cumbersome, but it was all they could find to rent.

After the motorway, there was a main road and then a series of small roads, at which point the satnav was so inaccurate it seemed they would never reach Orcières. Again and again, they would be nearly there, only to get further away once more. The directions the computer voice gave seemed to contradict one another. Franck began to doubt whether the place really existed. From the start he had had a nagging feeling that they were being taken for a ride. He had always thought there was something odd about the advert. The telephone number they had tried to call was in Asia – Singapore, to be precise – and even though it was possible that the owners lived there, there was still the strange fact that they only ever responded via email. Maybe the advert was a hoax, and they had been defrauded of their €1,400 deposit.

No expert in hire cars, Franck finally understood why he couldn’t get to Orcières. The vehicle was so big that the rental company had put the satnav in camper-van mode for safety purposes, and because of this it only recommended the larger roads. The narrow or steep ones were never suggested, so they were just circling around their destination.

It was seven o’clock by the time they finally reached the village where they were supposed to be picking up the keys, Orcières-le-Bas. It was more a sparsely populated hamlet with tracks leading to a number of unsignposted farms. There was someone waiting to hand over the keys in one of these, though they could not tell which one, as no names or house numbers were visible at the entrances. It was still so hot – the dashboard read thirty-six degrees – that the shutters on the doors and windows were kept closed. Three times they knocked at doors without success. The fourth time, someone appeared.

‘Sorry to disturb you, but do you know where Monsieur or Madame Dauclercq lives?’

The old woman replied coldly, ‘The Dauclercqs are the last farm, at the end on the right.’

Franck saw in his rear-view mirror that she was eyeing them suspiciously, probably because of the size of the car and its imposing appearance. They finally found the right farm, La Combe.

This time, Franck drove the 4×4 straight into the yard. He noticed a figure at the back of a shed: this must be Madame Dauclercq. He hooted in a friendly manner, but instead of coming towards them, the elderly farmer headed towards the house. Franck and Lise got out of the car to follow her, but the woman had already come out again with a bunch of keys, holding them in front of her as if to get rid of them, clearly indicating that she had nothing to say to them. Even so, Lise tried asking some questions, to which the woman replied sharply.

‘Is the house on the hill up there?’

‘No, it’s not that hill, it’s the one six kilometres further away. At the hairpin bend you take the track on the left and go up.’

‘Thank you. It’s pretty here.’

‘You think so? It’s too dry.’

‘And for shopping, do you have to go to the village at the bottom of the hill?’

‘No, there’s nothing there.’

‘But there is a shop in the village, isn’t there?’

‘There isn’t a village any more.’

Irritated, Franck shot back, ‘Wait, there is a supermarket; I saw it on the internet.’

‘If you want shops you have to go down to Limogne or Saint-Martin, but it’s quite a drive.’

‘Oh really? How far is it?’

‘A good half-hour.’

‘So not far.’

‘Yes, it is far.’

As he was speaking, Franck noticed a surprisingly large kennel near the shed. The kennel must have been at least one and a half metres high, as if it housed some sort of enormous dog, but at the moment it was empty.

They were still standing in front of the woman, who was herself still standing on the doorstep. She had not asked them inside, much less offered them a drink. Franck felt that not only were they bothering her, they were also incurring her sharp disapproval. From this he concluded that the woman had no wish for the gîte to be rented. Quite clearly it wasn’t hers and she was only looking after the keys, but deep down, for whatever reason, she didn’t like the idea that it would be occupied.

‘And where are the owners?’

‘Madame Henderson has been in a retirement home for a long time.’

‘Henderson? That wasn’t the name on the advert.’

‘That’s their business.’

‘It’s not a local name?’

‘No.’

‘I see, and how old is she?’

‘Not far off ninety-eight, maybe even a hundred.’

‘But then who placed the advert?’

‘Her daughter – she’s in America or somewhere. That’s why we have the keys. Otherwise do you think I’d bother with all this?’

‘And Singapore, why is the telephone number for Singapore?’

‘How should I know?’

‘Sorry, Madame Dauclercq, I just want to make sure I understand. It is you that looks after the gîte?’

‘We help out, that’s all. My husband mows the fields, and believe me, you have to mow them every month at the moment, otherwise it would be a jungle up there, a jungle, I tell you. I hope you’re not expecting a beautiful lawn. You’ll see as you go up. Even when we cut it, it grows back straight away.’

Franck gestured to the barn and mischievously replied, ‘But I imagine that works out well for you; all the grass you mow for them makes hay for you, right?’

‘In a way … Let’s just say it suits everybody.’

‘And has anyone rented the gîte before us?’

‘The girl used to come for a bit in the summer, but they live a long way away. And then with children it’s impossible. I hope your children are older – or your grandchildren, I don’t know …’

Lise and Franck never knew what to say in this situation. As if they were at fault for not having children, as if it weren’t possible to not have children.

‘We don’t have children,’ said Lise, as casually as possible.

The woman found this strange, as strange as the big black car that had thrown up so much dust when it came into the yard, dust that was still floating in the air.

‘Then you’ll be fine, but it’s tough living up there; there’s no telephone, no heating and no pressure in the taps. And I should warn you that there’s a big open water tank behind the box trees, but you mustn’t drink from it or you’ll get cholera.’

‘I hope you’re joking …’

‘I’m telling you because that’s what everyone used to say. In any case, I wouldn’t give that water to my goats.’

‘Is it deep?’

‘Of course, it’s huge! It’s only animals that drink there – it attracts them. You’ll hear them at night, trust me, and sometimes they fall in. A drowning animal makes a lot of noise … Right, well, I have three rows of beans to pick, and I’m behind, what with the heat today …’

Lise answered with disconcerting good humour: ‘But that’s great! You know what, we’ll do our shopping with you. Can we get some beans from you?’

The woman was not won over but was tempted by the offer, though she did her best to hide any satisfaction she might have felt. Her bad mood quickly returned, and she told them to come back tomorrow as the beans were yet to be picked. Lise, with an eagerness that was remarkable in the circumstances, asked if she had eggs by any chance. The farmer stared at the Parisian the way you might weigh up an enemy, as if asking, ‘Who the hell are you?’

‘We’ll see tomorrow. I’ll save you some, I promise.’

Franck didn’t know what to say or do to make his exit. He watched Lise approach the woman to shake her hand. He admired Lise’s natural warmth and profound empathy. Although he didn’t really know what had kept their relationship going for the more than twenty years they had lived together, what was certain was that he envied her way of always seeing things in the best light and finding the good in the most dislikeable people. She would have found some humanity in even a murderer or a monster.

The Audi again threw up a thick dust as they left the yard. Franck surreptitiously examined the kennel. He could see it now in the rear-view mirror; it went back a long way, as if it were the opening of a passage to hell from where enormous animals emerged, huge dogs with rabid bites.

August 1914

At all significant moments in history there are freethinkers prepared to swim against the tide. The lion tamer was one of them. Wolfgang Hollzenmaier. That was the name written in gold lettering on the circus wagons. Years before the church bells had rung out, he had taken the decision to stay silent. Other than his interior monologue, he would speak only to give orders to his lions and tigers. He had worked with them for the past fifteen years in the biggest and best circuses in Europe and directed them with peremptory commands in German. Even though he was a performer, a lion tamer and German, the mobilisation applied to him too.

In the preceding few years, travelling shows had reached a peak of popularity. Circuses brought joy almost everywhere they set up their big tops, whether on the outskirts of a city or in a remote market town in the country. But the moment war broke out, travelling troupes were forced to disperse and cease performing, becoming bankrupt overnight. The artists and handlers mostly found themselves conscripted, like other civilians, and so did the clowns, jugglers and acrobats, who were pressed into service in the infantry.

Faced with this sudden catastrophe, the lion tamer had only one thought – to save his animals. He didn’t want to abandon the big cats in their cages, but nor did he want to release them into the wild, leaving the world to cope with their possible cruelty, adding animal savagery to the chaos of war. He decided to ask the mayor for permission to hide up there on the rocky hill above Orcières. As well as his wild animals, which stayed well hidden, the lion tamer had a large dog of a kind that had never been seen in those parts before. It was a black and tan sheepdog; the mayor told everyone it was called a ‘German shepherd’. People thought that the Germans mixing breeds to create dogs that were huge and haughty, muscular and ferocious-looking, was proof of their arrogance.

Animals were requisitioned from everywhere, including the circus. Horses and donkeys were taken first, but also elephants, which were used for earth-moving or to stand in for oxen sent to the front. In Lot-et-Garonne, where Wolfgang was when war was declared, the Pinder Circus’s three elephants were recruited to work the fields the very next Tuesday. They were put into extra-long harnesses and replaced the beasts requisitioned by the military authorities.

After a few days there started to be food shortages. Over most of Europe people abandoned their principles and began to kill animals in zoos to ease their hunger. People ate buffaloes and sea lions, camels and llamas; in Prague two giraffes and some kangaroos were eaten. In a world where nothing made sense, news of these things travelled fast, partly because they were shocking, and partly because they provided some distraction.

As the murderous spree continued, some donated their own animals to the war effort. But in border areas when some people refused to slaughter their domestic pigeons, it was decreed that those who did not empty their dovecotes would be liable to the death penalty. A few weeks later, hundreds of huskies were taken from Alsace to the front, to provide support for the mountain infantrymen who were dealing with early snow in the Vosges. In this mad war, it seemed as if the entire animal kingdom were being called up – but there was no place for big cats. The lion tamer understood that the fascination his lions and tigers had always exerted over crowds was very likely to count against them now. They were no longer sought after for their astonishing beauty, but because they would make a very tasty meal.

*

It took only two days for the circus to break up. The big top, the circus ring, the clowns, jugglers, acrobats and horsemen all went, and Wolfgang found himself alone with his beasts. With no trailers or stage, what could he do with his big cats but hide them? He would have to conceal himself as well since he would be classified as a deserter, missing from action. He needed to hide quickly and it would have to be nearby, somewhere in the deserted plains of the causse. On the evening of the fifth of August, after two days of heading due east, he turned up in Orcières-le-Bas with his two wagons and two display cars hitched to four horses. He asked to see the mayor.

This was not the first time the lion tamer had been to Orcières-le-Bas. A month earlier, on the advice of the slaughterman, he had come with an empty wagon to collect the bodies of ten ewes that had died of fright during a storm that had roared down from the summit of Mont d’Orcières, the hill with the abandoned house. The lion tamer had immediately realised that no one wanted to set foot on the hill, believing it to be cursed. Now that he needed somewhere to hide, he remembered the unhappy crag and said to himself that it would be the perfect place for him and his lions and tigers.

There was no one to guide him up the impossibly steep track. And when he reached the house, he found it had no lock, only a hermetically sealed thick door. There were a few panes missing from the windows, but he would have the time to repair them. At least on that benighted hill, he would be protected from the rest of the world. It would be the perfect hiding place for the lions and tigers, because, although they feared nothing and had no predators, in this world of war their days were numbered. They could sense that things had changed. They had already noticed that it was harder for their master to feed them. Everything depended on the lion tamer being able to provide food, for if their master could no longer guarantee their sustenance, he would lose all authority over them. Then he would no longer be able to defend or protect his beasts and they would have no choice but to attack and eat him.

But up there, on the rocky summit, he would be able to re-establish the status quo. And more importantly, he would be forgotten; he would have the mountain all to himself, a mountain less sacred than Noah’s and less noble, no doubt, but no less exposed to the extreme violence of the elements. He settled there with his animals. A Noah without a wife.

August 2017

The Audi was very powerful, but Franck was hesitant about starting up the hill. He got out of the car to have a look at the slope, wondering if the car would make it up a hillside that was almost vertical and full of potholes. There was no signpost, but this must be the turning. From the road, the track went off to the left just as the farmer had told him, an access road that was even steeper than a parking ramp, ravaged by rain, the ground cracked by the sun. He made sure he was in 4×4 mode. From below, the track looked like a tunnel formed of holm oak and box, dense masses on either side that joined at the top. He noticed rocks showing through in some places, so he would have to be careful not to swerve or stray from the track. That said, he was excited by the prospect of testing the motor; at least now he could unleash the three hundred horsepower that he had been holding back, making sure not to exceed the speed limit. They refastened their seat belts and took off as if they were on a fairground ride.

The ascent quickly proved challenging, especially as it was two kilometres long; two kilometres of stony, potholed track with a forty per cent incline. He struggled to rev the engine enough to pull the weight of the Audi whilst trying not to gain too much speed. The rocky ground gave way beneath the tyres; the car tilted so far at every turn that he feared it would roll over or spin off the side of the road. The sensors were beeping on all sides, the monitoring system going crazy, but still, rather than stopping, Franck kept his foot down, the stones spraying out from under the wheels like a hail of bullets. The track seemed to go on and on. Franck was becoming increasingly tense. He felt as if they had fallen into a trap, realising that there was no chance of turning back and that the higher they climbed, the deeper the ravine to his left became. He felt increasingly panicked by how high up they were, while Lise hung on tightly and told him to carry on, as if she were finding it exciting …

This went on for five minutes, five minutes of an arduous ascent, five minutes of driving a car that was far too big while listening to its bodywork screeching. The polished metal had been scratched by branches the whole way up, and in the last few metres the slope had become so steep that Lise and Franck had their backs pressed flat against their seats, as if they were in a plane taking off. Then they were driving through shady pines. They approached the summit through rows of tall conifers. Still pinned against their seats, they could see the sun above the tops of the hills and then, suddenly, they found that they were horizontal once more, as though they had finally landed. From the crest of the hill, the surroundings looked like another world.

The panorama that opened out in front of them left them awestruck. At the end of the shady track the landscape jumped out at them. They had a 360-degree view, bathed in evening sunshine. Even Franck was moved by it. The hill stood like an island in the middle of an ocean of green, and from the top, you could see out over swathes of identical hills that seemed to go on forever. They stayed in the car, gazing at the scenery in total amazement. They felt as if they had entered the highest layer of the stratosphere, rising above the everyday reality of the world. They still could not see the house. The track was bordered by a low drystone wall, and the gîte must be at the end of it. They would just have to keep following the crest above the exposed hillside.

But instead of driving on, they stayed where they were, recovering from their journey and absorbed in the view. The landscape was a wilderness of hills and woods that stretched into infinity. Looking eastwards, Franck imagined seeing the area from above like on Google Earth; he imagined the causses, then the Massif Central, then stepping over the Rhone to the Alps, and Eurasia and the Ural Mountains beyond …

‘It must be behind the trees over there.’

‘What?’

‘The house!’

Lise pointed to a grove of various types of tree surrounded by cypresses on their right. There was a eucalyptus in the centre, and next to it an oak tree that was probably a hundred years old. The house must be on the other side of this wooded sanctuary, which offered a solitary patch of shade on the bare hillside. Lise wanted to go for a walk to take in the view, drinking in the fresh air. It was the perfect place for her; she felt so lucky to be there, outside the world. Franck was speechless. He – who would have much preferred to meet friends in Corsica or on a boat, or to spend two weeks in a civilised seaside setting – was struck by the beauty of the place, then immediately overwhelmed by the feeling of absolute isolation emanating from it.

Yet the sun shining on the glossy emerald hills filled him with wonder. Some landscapes are like faces: as soon as you see them, you recognise them. Franck had gone on shoots all around the world for his job, but he had rarely had this feeling that the landscape was welcoming him. It was probably due to tiredness and the desire to rest. They had been on the road for a long time, and they were as exhausted as they were relieved to have made it up the hill after hours of driving in the summer heat. They still had to see the house and find out what it was like. He was expecting a nasty surprise, but at least they would still have this spellbinding view, even if he knew that, for him, the attraction would last no more than a couple of days.

Lise wanted him to take her hand. They had never been alone like this before, never lived in this kind of environment and never been lost in nature, just the two of them. Even when they went to the desert three years ago, they had never left the group, and apart from one night in a tent, they had gone back to the hotel every evening. This time their isolation was much more tangible.

As they marvelled at their surroundings, they became aware of a faint smell of rotting coming from the warm scrub. Franck frowned and looked around him, searching for a dead animal. Just before the grove of trees, he saw a large patch of box. Leaving Lise to her own thoughts, he walked up to the wall of green, and the bad smell got stronger as he approached. The belt of two-metre-high box trees was indeed hiding something: a perfectly rectangular water tank, like a swimming pool more than six metres long, made of very old cement that had turned black with time. He went closer. The sides were barely a metre high, but the basin looked deep, full of stagnant, murky water with green spots floating on the surface. The water level was low, or perhaps the water really was very deep. Franck’s eyes struggled to adjust to the gloom. But when he looked closer, he could see the shadowy lake two metres below; thick, dark water covered in an array of tiny flora that had seized their opportunity. There was no dead animal though; the smell was perhaps coming from those rotting spots on the water.

Meanwhile, Lise was slowly turning her face to the sun, making the most of the panoramic scene. When she turned around again, awestruck, she could no longer see Franck and, for a moment, she had the terrible feeling that she had lost him and was utterly alone. She was overwhelmed by a horrible sensation of total distress and abandonment, coupled with infinite contentment. Alone.

August 1914

The lion tamer could make himself at home up there and stay as long as he wanted. The mayor had handed the area over to him. He was not even asked for rent or any other quid pro quo. Perhaps the mayor thought the village would benefit from the illusory protection of the wild animals. Ever since all the healthy men had left for the front the village had been fearful. Fernand had already hidden a flock of ewes in the hills, more than two hundred of them, so why not hide some lions and tigers as well? No one ever went up Mont d’Orcières any more. Certainly no one would have wanted to live in that house, because the land was cursed. Everyone left it well alone.

‘If the Hun wants to live up there, let him get on with it,’ people said, as you would say about an enemy advancing on a minefield. ‘Let him settle in that sorry place; it’s the devil’s land. He won’t last long and nor will his lions …’

Mont d’Orcières had once been covered in fertile, exuberant vineyards, but at the end of the nineteenth century they had been devastated by phylloxera, and carbon disulphide and coal tar had been poured over them. The people would have tried anything to eradicate the disease afflicting their glorious vines, and the chemicals had burnt deep into the layers of soil. But the yellow insects had still won. Here, as everywhere, phylloxera had wiped out the vines, proving that even tiny insects can change the face of the world. For the last thirty years the land on Mont d’Orcières had been considered cursed. Not only had it been poisoned with chemicals, but its shadow loomed over the village, contributing to the feeling that it was the harbinger of doom.

At the beginning, the phylloxera infestation had been like a war. A war many thought it would be easy to win. Even though the insects skipped across whole areas, jumping from one vine to another at the least breath of wind, people refused to view it as fatal. Yet even the most optimistic quickly understood that this was a war that had been lost at the outset, a war against a tiny little parasite a few millimetres long, which managed to destroy the vines across the whole of the country. The entire nation lost to the insects. Over the course of a few springs, all French vineyards were decimated by the greedy aphid, a minuscule creature that buried its eggs at the height of summer like mines that would explode the following spring in the form of docile nymphs, which in turn began to suck the sap from the vine stocks, drying them out and killing them from the bottom up.

There had been vines on Mont d’Orcières for two thousand years. The limestone plateau of Quercy was excellent wine country. In the Middle Ages, this was where black wine was produced for the tables of kings, and for export to England. Back then Bordeaux was merely where the wine from all along the Lot river ended up. But after the advent of the sap-sucking insects, and their treatment with naphthalene and carbon disulphide, the vines were reduced to rows of burnt stalks, aligned like fossilised soldiers or Pompeii gladiators.

Nothing would grow on Mont d’Orcières, not even new grafts, because the soil was too chalky. Around Bordeaux, on the other hand, the new grafts took quickly because the ground was soft and well irrigated by the Garonne river. The Orcières winegrower and his wife, exhausted by a succession of harvests ruined by chemicals, tore up what remained of the vines before setting fire to everything and hanging themselves from the big oak tree. They even threw the casks and the wine press into the flames, so that the conflagration took over the whole hillside, devouring the vegetation round about, including the juniper above the rocks. Everything was destroyed except for the house and the handful of trees which gave it shade. By making a human chain and passing buckets of water up from the reservoir, the villagers had at least been able to save these.

As the land was damned anyway, the German might as well move in there with his big cats. He might survive but no one could prosper up there. Not even lions and tigers and their master. The mayor lent him the house and land for as long as he wanted. At least his being there on the roof of the world with his cages and carriages would mean that they had one strong, able-bodied man in case of emergency. As for the lions and tigers, no one was sure if they should be frightened of them or not. Everyone knew about the Champawat Tiger, shot by an English hunter; the newspapers had reported her killings constantly. In areas where wolves still prowled, the image of that Bengal tiger that had killed four hundred people in India had awakened ancient fears. Other than in newspapers and illustrated books, creatures like that did not exist for the people of the causse