Down in the village, Mayor Fernand had been wise enough to invent a story that would persuade people to accept the German’s presence. He told them that this saintly character’s conscience had prevented him from joining up because he loved the French and refused to fire on them. He made it known that he was a pacifist, a rebel who refused to follow orders and spill blood. Couderc, the schoolmaster, backed the mayor up in this. They both wanted to reassure the thirty or so remaining inhabitants of the village, especially the women. In any case, even were the Pope or God himself to settle up there, Mont d’Orcières would still be cursed. The great overhanging rock, with its brutal cliff edge rising above the village, was like a frontier between earth and sky. It loomed. And was hated even more in the winter months. From November to April it blocked the sun in the morning, casting the village into shadow until the afternoon.

If that man succeeded in living on the deadly mountain, if he managed to survive on those lands after all that had happened there, it must be because he was the devil incarnate. After he arrived, the lions’ roaring and deep terrifying growling carried down to the village on the evening winds, heart-stoppingly brutal, yet silken. The cattle and the few horses left in the village were unsettled by the sound. At each roar, the mayor’s old nag or the doctor’s unbroken horse whinnied as frantically as if the stables were on fire. The leonine cries frightened the dogs as well. They were so scared by the noise from on high that they did not even bark. The roaring rang out in the evening, but also in the morning, like a daily warning, sending shivers down the spines of the villagers.

Coming on top of missing the men, the crushing exhaustion from doing all the work, the increasing deprivations, and the terrible fear of hearing one fine morning of the death of a son or husband, the cries of the lions were hard to endure. A feeling of doom quickly took hold in the village. If the lion tamer did not sense the curse on the land, no doubt his animals did. Their instinct must have told them they were in a place they should flee, that they should not live there, and that was surely why you could hear them roaring from down below. No doubt the wild cats’ only thought was to escape.

August 2017

August 2017