He dialled Lise’s number for peace of mind, only half expecting a response. No ring of course; it went straight to voicemail and he didn’t leave a message. Imagining her alone in the house on top of the hill made him think about how vulnerable she was, but also how vulnerable he was – time had caught up with both of them. He imagined her still sleeping, still underneath the white sheet. Lise in an empty house with the windows open, Lise all alone in the middle of the remote hills, left behind by a world that no longer wanted her. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. An actress who doesn’t act is like a painter who has been forbidden to paint, or a writer prevented from writing. He was haunted by the image of Lise trapped in the isolated house, surrounded by animals that had come from the hill opposite, besieged by the wildlife that had run amok last night, by a pack of hungry carnivores or that strange big dog that would devour anything if prompted with a little click of the tongue.

September 1914

September 1914

Whenever men depart for war, predators range freely in the countryside. Wolves, foxes, rabid dogs and other feral savage beasts return to plague the farms. By the end of summer, fears were mounting. On top of the anguish of hearing nothing from the front, and exhaustion, deprivation and torrents of hail, there were the ceaseless lion noises that soured the cows’ milk and terrified the dogs. ‘Death is all around us,’ said the mothers.

Couderc tried to provide reassurance – not about the war, but the lions, perhaps. The retired schoolmaster was regarded by everyone as a wise man, an enlightened being, more knowledgeable because of his profession than the mayor or the préfet. Couderc had taught three generations to read and write. It was thanks to him that everyone in the village could measure their parcels of land, count their flocks and read the paper or their letters. And it was thanks to him that they were able to write those letters to the front which still went unanswered. Without the schoolteacher, no one here would have been able to communicate with absent family. Just to see the magnificent building in Cahors where Couderc had trained to be a teacher was to understand that a man who had graduated from such a place must be ten times better educated than a parish priest and a thousand times better informed than the ordinary man.