War is a carnival of terror, a purveyor of atrocities and sorrow; it treats men like animals. But here on the green causse, since there were no men to hunt, the war gave respite to the prey. And so wild animals proliferated. Boar, deer, foxes and wolves all profited from the absence of men and reclaimed the territory. In this great realignment of free land, it was only the lion tamer who continued to hunt. At the bottom of his igue he trapped animals to feed his beasts. Joséphine, in her role as guardian of the high meadows, felt completely detached from the war. Seen from up there, what the men were going through seemed like a faraway hell, and the women at the bottom of the hill must be sinking ever deeper into despair.

Around the hut, the hills were gentle and the animals easy to manage. It was not like in the mountains where the slopes were steep and you had to keep a close eye on the ewes. They must not be taken to steep slopes in case they slipped and fell. Here the hills undulated and the meadows were lush; the sheep slept on the flat. Every morning Joséphine rose at dawn. The sun stayed behind the mountains to the east for a little then slowly came out and woke the world as the birds began to sing, day returning like rosiness to cheeks. Joséphine was there, an attentive observer. There was always a fox that had lingered to catch field mice before returning to the woods as the buzzards and kites positioned themselves on posts or in trees, perching on anything they thought high enough to give them a good view of any movement in the grass. The boar and deer, so active at night, now slunk away into the shadows. People said that the wolves had returned but Joséphine had not seen any. And she could not hear the lions from here either. Now all she could hear of the lion tamer when he was not with her was his voice inside her head, that voice speaking its imperfect French. She kept his words and their shared intimacy for her evenings and for her nights; he never left her.

Spending her days in a state of original destitution, she felt as if she had gone back to the dawn of time. She did not even try to work out whether it was fear or selfishness, or perhaps generosity, that had brought her here. It didn’t matter. For the last two months life had recovered a semblance of enjoyment. Wolfgang came every other day. He never stayed more than a few hours, because he was afraid of leaving his wild cats unattended. But for the few hours he was there, they forgot everything; they loved each other, without even thinking of any future.