School started again at the end of September. Couderc, although he had recently retired, stood in for the new schoolmaster who had been called up. He taught dictation as instructed by the authorities. According to the demands of the local education officer, he must teach the boys that Germans were barbaric, bloodthirsty monsters, devils … even though there was one living above them, a Hercules surrounded by big lions. However, Couderc did not go as far as to make them sing the patriotic songs mandated by the Minister for Public Education, refusing to use the school to produce future soldiers. He despised the new instructions emanating from Paris with their implicit message that the war would never end, and that even when it did, it would be essential to prepare for others, and that whatever happened Europe would erupt in turmoil. All the newspapers glorified the idea of the child hero, reporting hundreds of incidents where boys had taken up arms and gone to the front, and showing girls of twelve pouring water into the mouths of wounded soldiers. The villagers feared that the kids would be influenced by this and take it into their heads to go and kill the Hun and confront his lions.

When the women went to the fields, they didn’t want to leave their children on their own because of the lions. And they certainly didn’t want them going to play by the river as they had always done. They were worried they would go up the mountain, naïvely offering themselves as prey, because they were dying to see the lions up close … To discourage them, mothers resorted to old tricks. Once the sun had gone down, old Jean and Maurice hid at the edge of the wood or on the riverbank, and, under cover of darkness, made terrible howling sounds. They made such convincing noises that even the lions must have thought they were real. If the children were not frightened of lions, they were terrified of wolves. Wolves were part of the landscape and they were needed to inspire fear, which was why they would always be there. If one day there was an end to the war, which seemed unimaginable then, there would still have to be wolves, even if it meant bringing them back. Man needs to know he has enemies, something to fear, if only so that people can unite against them.

August 2017

August 2017

On the terrace, the customers gathered around the tables in the sun. Franck, on the other hand, took refuge at the back of the café. The motley chattering market crowd had disconcerted him, and he had had a strong sense of being unwelcome. He couldn’t get that butcher out of his head. The guy had singled him out, and he didn’t really know why.