The butcher still hadn’t finished carving. Watching the blade glide into the thigh made Franck very uncomfortable. He looked up at the medals nailed to a wooden board, trophies that had been won in competitions, alongside a row of framed certificates. He thought about his own office in Paris and the prizes from relatively prestigious festivals. A good fifteen of his films had won awards, and just as many had been nominated for several prizes.

‘Impressive, all these medals. Bravo …’

‘The Famille Bardasse, butchers for six generations. We’ve been feeding local people for more than a century. The kids around here get their muscles from us.’

‘You can get muscle from other things too …’

‘Oh really? From beetroot and lettuce? No, you need to eat muscle to make muscle. That’s what nature intended.’

‘Maybe.’

‘For centuries, we’ve fed the men in these parts by butchering animals. Our meat has nurtured the living. That’s quite something, don’t you think?’

Franck’s expression was set in a grimace. He didn’t know what to say without pointing out that it was truly archaic for modern man to eat animals, but he didn’t want to start a lengthy debate.

‘I’m telling you, the Bardasse family even fed lions!’

‘Oh really, in Africa?’

‘No, here. There were lions around here in my great-grandfather’s time, and the old man used to give them the fifth quarter – in those days butchers bought the animals alive, you know, and killed them themselves. Well, I say old man, but he wasn’t actually old at the time.’

‘What’s the fifth quarter?’

‘All the bits humans don’t eat.’

Franck looked at him suspiciously, annoyed at being told tall tales. The man was clearly making fun of him, taking an easy opportunity to tease the tourist with his stories. As a Parisian, Franck couldn’t stand the provincial habit of treating newcomers like fools. The world had been against him all day, what with Liem and Travis, and now he responded in the way he hadn’t managed earlier.

‘Why are you telling me all this crap? Do you take me for an idiot? Is that it – you think I’m an idiot?’

The butcher drew back, knife in hand, genuinely taken aback by Franck’s annoyance.

‘Whoa there! Easy now.’

‘Sorry, I’ve had too much coffee. I thought you were making fun of me.’

‘No, I’m telling you it’s true! There used to be a guy who raised wild animals in the hills, and then one day he was eaten by his lions. His wife wanted to carry on feeding them after he died. Staying with the lions kept her close to the man they’d eaten, and if that’s not love …’

‘Is this some kind of legend?’

‘Yes, it’s a legend, but it’s true. Anyway, one of the Bardasses fed the lions after this guy died.’

Franck remained bewildered.