High up in the hills and far from everything, the house had forced him into radical isolation but it also gave him an overview of his own life, of himself in some ways. From up there, he could see where the enemy was coming from. He knew he was connected to the house in some way to the house, as if the building and the dog had been trying to tell him something about himself all along. The place had a feeling of serenity and immense tranquility about it, even though it was in the middle of savage countryside that could be filled with violence. The endless wooded hills looked so peaceful, but the dog had made Franck aware of the rivalries being constantly fought out in their midst; the blackbirds, the jays and the tits themselves were only singing to keep others away. All the animals in this no man’s land were eyeing one another closely, always trying to work out which one was going to eat the other.

He drove along with all the windows open, watching the bars on his phone disappear one by one. With every bend he got deeper into a place that was free from all constraint, completely wild. He slowly returned to the hills, not listening to any music, but looking at the now familiar landscape in which he almost felt at home as if he had just performed some sort of ritual acceptance. He now knew the land was not neutral: he was following in the footsteps of the woman, the man and the lions, if they had really existed. He felt strangely linked to these characters that time had forgotten, beings from a different century. Their history was still somehow hanging in the air, in memories that people were trying to silence or forget. He thought of Lise. She was perhaps still asleep in the wide-open house, the doors and windows as he had left them. The dog would probably be there already, waiting for him in the shade of the oak tree. Everything was waiting for him there: the living and the rest.

May 1915

May 1915