As weeks passed, the idea of the German and his wild beasts living above them became more and more intolerable. After a month they were very scared, a normal reaction to having lions so close. In the early days of the war, the newspapers reported that the Germans were not to be feared. They fired soft bullets which barely passed through clothing. If La Dépêche were to be believed, the Germans were so weak that the French soldiers could defeat them just by marching at them; the Germans would crumple like old sticks. It was the mayor who received the daily newspaper. Because he had a club foot, he was the only one with the time to read. Sometimes people wondered if he rewrote the copy on the orders of the préfet.
Whether the Germans could be defeated or not, the war went on and on. It lasted far longer than the fortnight promised at the beginning. After three weeks of combat, people talked of a torrent of gunfire, a hail of bullets, of German machine guns the equivalent of a hundred rifles, an image that terrified the villagers, as if each German soldier had a hundred rifles in his hands … The women began to realise that the men would not be coming back soon, and that in addition to taking care of this harvest, they would have to plan for the next one, and prepare for winter.
The sergeants had been right to draft in all the farmers. They knew that the strong countrymen would make formidable infantry battalions. But that left the women – the young wives and mothers and girls – to tend to all the rest of life, the animals, the children, the old people, the worn-out donkeys, the poultry, the rabbits and the meadows. In a world intent on destruction, all life was as fragile as a flickering candle. It was up to the females to be strong. One day, should the war ever end, they would be asked to receive back and console the men.
In Orcières, there was not a single able-bodied man except for the German. And the German, with his army of barbaric roaring lions and tigers, was, like all his compatriots, essentially an enemy. What was even more worrying was that the women did not know how to use the hunting rifles stored at the top of cupboards, and did not even want to touch them. Now that they were in charge, it was up to them to ward off fear and to avert danger.
But the roars of the lions and tigers shattered their evenings. The barbaric noise which burst out like a storm was becoming too much to bear. In the black of night, the growls bore down like another sky on top of them. Some believed they could hear in the noise the pleas of their men, refusing to die. Others saw it as a nightly reminder of the months of anguish and cries to come. The lions and tigers were roaring in hunger, the terrible hunger of enormous beasts weighing two hundred and fifty kilos, an insane hunger. The villagers wondered how the lion tamer would ever be able to satisfy their appetites.
August 2017
He was already bleeding. Franck had gone back down the hill. He wanted to climb the hill opposite this time but was battling with the brambles that stopped him from either going any further or turning back. When he had arrived back at the house, he had changed and immediately wanted to go up into the woods, convinced that he would find a signal there. However, the plants on the slope were prickly and dense, making it impossible to get anywhere. What’s more, his decision to wear shorts was proving disastrous, as the holly bushes and brambles tore at his legs, wrapping themselves around him as if trying to ensnare him. He could no longer go back down, nor could he carry on going up. After eight hours on the road, he no longer had the energy to fight, especially not for a tiny bit of signal.
Life is a constant logistical balancing act, and Franck knew that better than anyone. The role of a producer comes down to this – constantly finding solutions, calming fears, meeting demands, settling day-to-day problems and invoices, managing the whims and mistakes of others, being a father figure to directors as well as to actors. To be a producer you must always be strong, or else pretend to be, but he had no desire for this kind of trial in the first few hours of his holiday.
He would never be able to spend an evening without internet access. On shoots in remote areas, crews were willing to make all sorts of concessions – they were prepared to go for weeks without seeing their children, even if they had joint custody, to go without a bistro or casino, comfort or running water, but no actor or technician would ever agree to stay somewhere without a signal. Never. Anything but that! He groaned out loud, with nothing and nobody to hear him. He was on the verge of crying out. He thought to himself that gone were the days of Fitzcarraldo and its boat, lost in the jungle. That was the image that came to him as he found himself trapped in brambles that wound their long stems around him. Fitzcarraldo, a film that was emblematic of the madness you need to direct one. He looked at the unassailable slope in front of him, thinking it would be better to abandon it. Then, twenty metres ahead, in the middle of the tangle of leaves and bushy branches, he thought he could see a shape moving, a brown creature running towards the right. He had too much sweat in his eyes to see properly. Yet he heard a sound, the sound of an animal slipping through the bushes, moving away. He did not like this place.
Lise carried on exploring the house. She was getting to know it. The more she explored, the more surprised she was by how perfectly it matched her expectations. She tried out the chairs one by one and tested the unexpectedly new bed. The mattress still had a label on it and the base still had its plastic protector. Obviously nobody had ever slept in it. As for the house, that was no doubt another story. Lise thought about what it must have been originally, wondering who had lived there, and more importantly, who had decided to build it there. It was a strange idea to build a house somewhere so out of the way, and on top of a hill as well.
From above she saw Franck coming out of the woods, looking defeated. He was convinced he had imagined the creature, or else it was a frightened deer or wild boar; the wild scrubland must be full of them.
Lise watched from the window. Franck seemed completely different after an hour here, not just because of his torn polo shirt and messy hair, but also because he looked like a frail adventurer. He had clearly not lost hope of a miracle, that he might suddenly find a signal next to a rock or hill that would bring him back to life. A hundred and fifty years ago when building the house, some sort of water diviner had probably searched in the same way as Franck. Before erecting a house so far away from any river, you had to make sure there was an adequate water supply. Incidentally, where did the water come from today, and was there any in the taps? Lise thought back to the water tank the farmer had told them about. Suddenly she was seized by doubt. She went downstairs to the ground floor and hurried to the kitchen to turn on the tap. Nothing. Lise had forgotten this feeling of total distress, of not having a drop of water when you turned on the tap. Anxiously, she leant under the sink to see where the copper pipe was coming from. She followed it as it ran behind the furniture, then disappeared under the flooring, probably to emerge outside on the other side of the wall. But outside all she could see was a bulky trapdoor. She struggled to lift it as it was covered with a heavy stone, and there she discovered a clump of compressed straw, a dense and putrid mass. With great disgust, she pulled out the blockage of ancient compacted straw that concealed a secret hiding place. She feared she would come across a dead animal or a snake, but at the bottom there was a tap, lying forgotten in the shadows. She turned it with force and heard the magical sound of the water splashing on the stone sink. The other tap a few metres away was running fast; when she went back into the room it was spattering everywhere, but at least it was working. She approached the source of the gushing water and sprayed herself with it, like a nomad in the middle of the desert.