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

August 2017