It unsettled him to hold a woman like this, to breathe her in. At once he thought of Léa and Théo, and of the other lionesses and the tigress. He could guess what they would make of the smell of Joséphine. If he got too close to a woman who smelt like jasmine, the wild cats would be jealous. Once, in Provence, an over-perfumed woman had kissed his cheek just before the lights went up on the circus ring, and all through the performance the perfume had upset the animals. At the time he had twenty big cats with him and that day the lions didn’t understand why the man who knew how to control them, the master who controlled them, was giving off the jasmine scent of a doe. It was as if a doe were giving them orders, a doe telling them to sit, to get up, to stand on their hind legs and to growl. That day he had had to cut the act short. He was a prisoner of the scent which meant that his lions and tigers no longer obeyed him. He had had to withdraw under the uncomprehending gaze of the public and the mocking faces of the children. The lion tamer had left the ring before the wild cats and had not taken a bow. All because of a scent just like that of the woman he now felt sink into his arms. A woman belongs to another world and to hold a woman close was disorientating. He felt soothed, at peace. It was so long since he had felt that, he thought without anger or unease. He could hardly believe it. He was looking at two small breasts, and what came to him was the unthinking desire to lay his head down on them, just once, as if to breathe her in, before biting more deeply, but he restrained himself whilst dreaming of sinking his teeth into her.

August 2017

August 2017