At that he started to laugh like a madman, then he started up his chainsaw.

‘You’re pretty devious, aren’t you!’

And he made a move towards my daughter.

I completely freaked out; I was powerless, with my crutches sinking into the loose earth. I couldn’t call Hildegarde, who was now too far away and who wouldn’t have heard me shouting over the noise of the machine.

Juliette, however, was not at all frightened as she watched him approach.

‘Don’t touch that tree!’

‘It’s heading for my house with the lianas it’s putting down into the soil to form new trunks. Move out of the way, I have to cut it down.’

‘No!’

‘And why not? I’m the one who planted it! I can’t see why it should be forcing me out of my own house.’

‘It provides shade and it’s a home for the birds. You, on the other hand, you don’t do anything useful.’

‘That’s not true! I’ve planted and nurtured thousands of plants just like it.’

‘Yes, but now they’re managing just fine on their own and this one here wants you to let it grow where it pleases. You’re not going to cut it down, that’s all there is to it, or else you’ll have to saw through me too!’

And she clung to the trunk like a koala.

Ten years old and five years of Tata Hildi’s activism.

He switched off the motor and turned back to me.

‘And how did you get this idea of saving the world into your head?’

‘Looking at the protest marches in the street below my apartment. Every time I wondered how you could really change things instead of implementing initiatives that systematically make people take to the streets. And then, when I was researching our ancestor, Auguste, I came across a quote from Flaubert that’s as contemptuous as it is relevant: “The people accept any tyrant provided they’re allowed to keep their snouts in the trough.” Every time it’s taken away from them – the trough, that is – the populace will start bawling and take to the streets in protest, while resources become increasingly scarce, animals disappear, the seasons turn upside down and the sea fills with plastic. We’re never going to get anywhere like that. So the idea came to me to somehow make it so that people find their trough so disgusting that they end up turning away from it or tipping it over with their snout. Because truly, it really is disgusting, it’s just that nobody wants to see it because it’s far too inconvenient to have to change the way we live.’

To which Hildegarde, who in the meantime had made her way back towards us, added, ‘We’re going to wreak havoc, Blanche and I.’

He looked at the three of us, then he smiled.