‘Not too thin.’

Franck looked around, as if worried he was being observed. Then with automatic generosity, the butcher held out the slice he had just cut, a strip of dark-red meat that hung from his knife.

‘Try it first, then you can tell me if you want your slices fine or not.’

Franck took the bit of ham as if it was an insect he had been told to eat. He didn’t dare say that it wasn’t for him, that it was a gift, but he came up with a perfect excuse in the nick of time.

‘No, really, I’ve just had coffee; I’ve still got a sweet taste in my mouth.’

The butcher looked him in the eye, then brought the knife to his mouth and gulped the meat down in one go, devouring it with his eyes closed and savouring the taste as delicately as he would a sugared rose petal. He chewed it for a long time, no doubt exaggerating his enjoyment of it. Not knowing quite what to say, Franck looked at the other things on the stall. He was confronted with relics of a bygone world, like an ethnologist trapped at some savage feast in the middle of the jungle. In some ways, by not eating meat, he was no longer part of this old world. But by not having children, he wasn’t part of the coming world either. Everything was mixed up in his head, and the memory of what that dried meat must taste like came back to him remarkably clearly.

‘So, how much do you want?’

‘I don’t know. Actually, I don’t think I want it any any more.’

‘You know what, I’ll cut you ten thin slices and give it to you for free.’

‘No, really—’

‘I won’t take no for an answer, I don’t have any customers this morning anyway. Then you can tell me if you like it and you can come back on Sunday. OK?’

Franck didn’t dare refuse. He thought about the dog and the pact that this would seal between them. The butcher began to carve the leg again as precisely as if he were whittling wood. Franck looked upon the repulsive sight like an anthropologist. Fifteen years ago, he had tried to co-produce a docudrama about Claude Lévi-Strauss. There would have been plenty of exotic settings to work with here. What he remembered of the project was fragments of script and stories of primitive harmony, of a time when man and beast spoke the same language and ate one another. Nowadays children were still given cuddly toys that they couldn’t stop chewing and hugging, as if they were animals themselves. He had never even held a baby and he knew that.