Monsieur Dauclercq’s expression was hard to read. He might have been joking, or he might have been deadly serious. The sight of the dog’s monstrous face was giving Franck terrifying ideas. He imagined himself arriving up there to an empty house like yesterday, with no sign of life, then going up to the bedroom and finding the shutters still closed and Lise’s body there on the bed in the warm half-light, torn to pieces.

October 1914

October 1914

There were suffering bodies everywhere. First and foremost the soldiers who had offered body and soul to their country. Exposed to enemy fire, they were dazed, exhausted, wounded and broken by bombs. A few kilometres behind the men were the bodies of the women, fatigued by fear and deprivation, by having to replace the men in factories or in the fields, or by having to harness themselves to pull the plough, taking the place of animals sent to the front. People’s bodies were no longer their own; whether at the front or behind it, people had been forced to make a gift of them to the homeland. France had become a country of missing bodies.

In the autumn, the women understood that, in spite of the reassuring news and the supposed victories, the men would not be back to do the winter farm work. So it would be up to them to cut wood, clean ditches, repair paths potholed by rain and unblock gutters. They mustn’t wait for the men or the farms would be swamped with mud and manure. So once again women and old people would have to force themselves beyond their strength to make up for the absence of men, robust men accustomed to carrying loads since the beginning of time.