Franck ran his hand over the dog’s back, cautiously touching its neck. Its coat was rough, thick. The dog was looking elsewhere, as if it couldn’t feel his hand and couldn’t care less for his affection. Franck stroked the top of its head just a little, still not daring to go too far.

‘Lise, have you seen …?’

‘What?’

‘It doesn’t have a collar!’

‘So?’

‘So it doesn’t belong to anyone …’

October 1914

October 1914

To be the master of an animal is to become its God. Above all you must provide food. Otherwise the animal will turn feral, or die. Food is the reason an animal gives up its liberty. But lions only eat animal flesh – dark-red pulsating flesh, newly wrenched from life. Like all big wild cats, lions and tigers need the meat of other mammals, which are not necessarily slower than them, but weaker or isolated. They kill their prey with brute violence, ripping open the flanks of antelopes or buffaloes, devouring the flesh of their victims and deciding more than God which animals are to live and which to die.

In the wild, this happens naturally, but, for the lion tamer, feeding eight big cats five kilos of fresh meat every day was an impossible challenge. That was why he had decided that on Sundays they would go hungry. He had always made them fast one day a week, on Wednesdays. But since the outbreak of war, he had added another fast day. The lions must be made to feel pangs of hunger. This saved him from the burden of finding fresh meat every day of the week, but also accustomed the big cats to hunger and lack of food, reinforced his power over them and showed them he was still their master. He had to drum into the animals that, without him, they would not eat. Their lives depended on him.