With that, she saw him go back outside. He hadn’t realised that she was on the balcony; he must have thought she was in the bedroom or attic. He didn’t even turn around as he was leaving. This time he had his backpack with him, and the two ropes wrapped around his shoulders. He walked briskly and began going down the slope towards the hills.

Lise watched him for a while. Then she returned to her canvas. She needed to paint the oak tree last, straight after the shed with the door that Franck had left ajar, somewhat ruining the painting she had in mind. The shed wasn’t at all the same with the door open. Yet it was pretty, and in a way it gave it some life. She knew that she was completely alone now, and relished the feeling as if it were an achievement. Apart from a few quiet, scattered cicadas, there was complete silence. But it didn’t panic her; instead she welcomed it like a fifth element. It was nothing like the forced silence you get just before filming a scene, an agreed silence where everybody is quiet at once, nor the dizzying silence of the theatre. No, it was a primal, elementary silence, a silence she got better at every time she meditated. Franck and the dog were gone; she could see them getting further away, at the foot of the hill one minute and then in the woods, and she was no longer worried about what they were going to do with the rope. She was close to utter peace.

June 1915

June 1915

In Orcières, it wasn’t what they heard about the war that affected people most, it was what they no longer heard. The silence of departed men was haunting, a constant reminder of their absence. Since time immemorial there had always been men here tilling the land; their voices could be heard all through the day, and not to hear them calling from one plot of land to another was more heartbreaking than the racket had been disturbing. There at the bottom of the causses, nestled between the hills and the chalky cliffs, the shouts of the men shepherding the animals in the morning no longer rang out. They could not be heard talking to the oxen so that they would stand quietly to be harnessed. There was no more ranting as the men guided the draught animals, nor swearing, and none of the everyday words that accompanied work and the hunt. When the men had still been there, they spent their lives outside, moving about, yelling and laughing. The women didn’t see them much but they knew they were there. Now all that was left of them was the silence that reigned all over, a silence that was rent by the cries of the lions; it was worse than death. Even the dogs no longer barked.