What made it harder to accept was that it had taken centuries to fertilise the soil here. Entire lives had been spent picking stones out of the ground, stones that had then been used to build walls between plots of land. Chalky soil had become arable land through the villagers’ ancestors’ toil. Before the vines died, precious Malbec from the area had made up fifty per cent of the Bordeaux market. It had been a rich region but now, again, the land was being ruined, this time by the rains; it was running away, just as the men had been stolen away. Now everything and everyone was deserting the village.
In an effort to quash some of the villagers’ more outlandish theories, Mayor Fernand and Couderc, the schoolmaster, reminded everyone that the previous winter, 1913, had been severe too. Long before the arrival of the lion tamer, people had been making dire predictions, swearing that the weather had gone mad. From January to March 1914, conditions had been appalling. Snowstorms had gone on until May. To refresh villagers’ memories, the mayor got out last year’s newspapers (having kept them to use as kindling), showing photos of tornadoes twisting the Roussillon vines. Almost all those newly replanted vines had been torn from the ground. In L’Illustré National he found the very image of the Promenade des Anglais in Nice that had made such an impression. It showed the storm-hit promenade and the shoreline littered with wrecked boats. The Baie des Anges, which they would never see, was on the front pages, battered by the elements, as if after a flood or a hurricane. Couderc reminded everyone that in the winter of 1913 all people could talk about was trains trapped in snow and the route between Marseille and Bordeaux being blocked for days. From November until spring came, the weather dominated the newspapers. Even in Lot and Tarn there hadn’t been such cold weather since the time of Napoleon III. This proved that the problematic weather was nothing at all to do with the German.
People tend to forget past catastrophes just as they fail to see new ones developing. Some women, when they saw those photos of frozen fountains and springs, told themselves that the harsh winter of the previous year had been a premonition of things to come. The icy beaches and vines bent under the weight of snow had not lied; they were foreshadowing a tragedy – proof that pessimists are always right. From now on, it would be wise to heed the old people, those who said that the roaring of the wild cats boded ill, and was causing the storms. It was time to listen and to take steps before the mayhem spilled over onto the villagers down below. They were living with a sword of Damocles hanging over them and the fear of it falling was a harder burden to bear than if it had actually dropped.
August 2017
Franck couldn’t sleep. At two in the morning he got out of bed and went to stand by the window, oppressed by the darkness outside and the complete absence of any points of reference. As his eyes adjusted, he noticed the outline of the hills in the distance, a faint distinction between sky and land. Apart from that, he could see nothing and no one; there was no light, whichever way he looked. He went out of the house in just his shorts and walked a little. Everything was quiet. And yet he was not calm, for there was a constant hum: a crunch in the distance that he took to be the sound of footsteps, or maybe the rustle of leaves; strange hooting; the brush of wings; it never ended. Every time he turned on his headlamp to point it at the area in question, a swarm of insects flew into his face; tiny moths darted at him from below. He even swallowed one or two of them. But when he turned the light off, he felt anxious again. In the darkness he could sense the presence of thousands of beings around him; he felt he was at the centre of a troubling world, populated only by insects, animals and creatures lurking in the shadows. When night fell, this planet belonged to them, a planet of millions of invisible beings where humans had no place. He had a strong sense that he was not accepted by the wildlife that surrounded him.
At three in the morning he went back to the room. He wanted to turn on the bedside lamp that Lise had dimmed with a scarf and turned off when she went to bed, but didn’t dare, for fear of waking her. The room was plunged in darkness, just like the house, like the nearest trees, immersed in shadow like the whole universe. A little earlier, at around midnight, the sliver of moon had still cast some of its light on the landscape so you could see the trees, the hills, the car and the little shed that must once have stored tools. But the moon had since disappeared to the west, and thousands of stars were twinkling in the sky without casting any light below. He remembered that while researching the holiday online, he had come across an expression that he immediately disliked: ‘the Black Triangle of Quercy’, an area of total darkness with no light pollution at all. He was right in the middle of it.
It was ten past three. His phone was now only good for telling the time and for shining a light in the room. He still didn’t want to go to bed. The idea of sleeping with the windows and shutters open filled him with terror. He could feel the presence of the darkness like an ink that would seep into everything. But it was too hot; you had to open everything to get even the slightest draught. He went out onto the little balcony beyond the French windows and felt the silence of thousands of hectares cut off from the world. Then the hum started up again, even louder. He kept watch. In addition to the heat, mosquitoes were buzzing all around him; when one of them came close to his ear he slapped himself and killed it. He went back into the room, taking care not to make the wooden floor creak. He sat in the old armchair so as not to wake Lise. He wanted her to sleep; it reassured him that she was sleeping. Her breathing was slow and peaceful. When she used to travel constantly for shoots and promotional tours, she had got into the habit of wearing an eye mask and earplugs. She was in a deep sleep, completely untroubled by anything. Franck could see her at the other end of the room, in the big bed. How come she wasn’t even bothered by the mosquitoes? He shone the light of his smartphone on her; she had pulled the sheet over her face, so the mosquitoes didn’t stand a chance. She had fallen asleep like that, happy in the simple setting. All evening Franck had watched her getting on with things. He couldn’t believe she was so comfortable in this rural set-up; she seemed to be in her element, though she had never lived in the countryside before.
It was 3.32 a.m. It felt as if they were floating on the dark lake of the ground floor. The downstairs doors were also open to let in the air. Above them was the attic, from where faint creaking sounds came. When they were going to bed, Lise had told him it was the heat making the beams contract, or else a barn owl – indicating that she knew what a barn owl was and wasn’t scared of them. Where did she get her composure from? She had fallen asleep to that, swallowed up by the silence of the stars. Before going to bed she had gone for a long walk around the water tank without a light, not even from her phone. It had only been a few hours and she had already stopped automatically reaching for her phone. He picked his up again and turned off airplane mode to see if by any chance there was a signal at night. He stared at the rectangle of light. Then he heard noises outside, noticeably louder than any before.
He got up to look out of the window, gazing in the direction where they had seen the yellow eyes earlier, eyes too far apart to belong to a cat. He couldn’t see anything, and yet the noises continued, sounding like footsteps muffled by the grass, heavy footsteps, coming from the very bottom of the valley. Franck refused to be frightened. He was not going to spend three weeks here; he would never be able to stand it for that long; he was not interested in this type of holiday. Tomorrow morning, he would find a town where there were people and shops to buy the papers and, more importantly, a bistro where he could sit and connect to the Wi-Fi … That was all he wanted: to find somewhere civilised. Perhaps he would even make up an excuse to go back to Paris, unless a genuine reason forced him to return anyway. Liem and Travis had not taken holiday; they would be sleeping peacefully in an air-conditioned room in Paris, with no creaking or other noises. He was the only one panicking in the darkness in the middle of nowhere. Standing there on high alert, surrounded by strange noises and scared stiff, mirrored what was going on in his professional life. He was a producer whose last two films had been flops; TV networks and banks no longer trusted him, and vultures were circling around him – ambitious young men ready to swoop and buy up his film library, knowing very well that he needed the money …