In this world of exhaustion, only the body of the lion tamer, strong and upright, seemed not to suffer. Joséphine saw him when he came down to the village to collect straw, early in the morning. She thought about him all the time. When she observed how his body was sculpted like a gladiator, she remembered seeing his naked torso at the circus at Villeneuve, as he performed his act. That day, when she sat in the front row, the magnificent body was right there in front of her, lit by spotlights. She had watched him as he moved within his wild animal kingdom, and, at the sight of the semi-nude body in the midst of the lions, the audience had feared that he would be killed at any moment. Afterwards she had seen him dressed as Spartacus on the red-and-gold posters advertising the circus. They were still displayed all over the area. And now that body had held hers. Which meant that on the mornings she saw him in the village, she was careful not to look at him directly, although she was aware of him. In this world of solitary despised bodies and the hideous vision of her husband’s body somewhere, it was not possible to look at his body, nor should she be thinking about it. Yet he haunted her. He haunted her, this lion tamer whose body she was astonished by. He haunted her to the point of taking up more of her thoughts than the memory of the body which, for five years, had slept there, right beside her. Now she didn’t even know if Dr Manouvrier’s body was still whole or if it was in pieces mixed with earth. It was unimaginable to think of him any other way but intact, when, actually, he had probably been blown to pieces by a bomb. The body which for years had lain in the same place in the same bed. For years they had loved each other without touching each other, but he had been there. Every time the lion tamer passed in front of her window, she was furious at the thought of the greedy war which had taken possession of everything, depriving people even of what they didn’t have any more. The war took everything from you.