Coming on top of missing the men, the crushing exhaustion from doing all the work, the increasing deprivations, and the terrible fear of hearing one fine morning of the death of a son or husband, the cries of the lions were hard to endure. A feeling of doom quickly took hold in the village. If the lion tamer did not sense the curse on the land, no doubt his animals did. Their instinct must have told them they were in a place they should flee, that they should not live there, and that was surely why you could hear them roaring from down below. No doubt the wild cats’ only thought was to escape.
August 2017
Even if you listened carefully, you could hear nothing but birdsong and the hum of insects. There was not the faintest noise of any car or neighbour, not even a dog barking in the distance, or the sound of a far-off road or a plane, and not the slightest trace of human activity. It was complete happiness for Lise; for Franck, total anxiety. Once inside the house it was worse. He was oppressed by the silence of the thick walls, and felt literally cut off from the world, a feeling exaggerated by the damp coolness that is the fate of houses that have been shut up for a long time. He might as well have been in an underground cave, or even lost in space. The silence was even more complete inside than out: here, the quiet was troubling. Franck suddenly felt ill at ease, or at least out of his comfort zone, while Lise opened the doors and windows wide, cheerfully bringing life back to the dull interior.
On looking around they saw that the fridge was new. It was the only part of the furnishings on the ground floor that suggested the house was supposed to be rented. Everything else looked ancient, dating probably from the 1950s. Although perfectly clean, the gas cooker, wood-burning stove and bathroom looked as if they came from a second-hand shop or a film. Franck was immediately reminded of the palpable sense of unreality you get on a film set. It was something about the delicate round handle and old-fashioned bolt on the door and especially the section of sky-blue tiles surrounding the sink, a basin carved out of a single piece of stone of a sort that had not been made for centuries. As a producer, he instantly had the same feeling of anachronism that you experience when you visit a set recreating a bygone era, whether the nineteenth century or the 1950s. If the set designer has achieved their effect, you find yourself truly transported in time. As they explored the house, everything that unsettled Franck left Lise spellbound. It all delighted her. She seemed happy; for her it had all the elements of the dream package: quiet, nature, isolation. It was a good thing they were far away from everything.
With the shutters open, the house was bathed in evening light. There was something simple and unpretentious – or, in Franck’s eyes, dubious – about the vivid colours of the furnishings, which glowed in the warm light. Looking at the blue shutters and bright-red curtains, he could not tell if the decor was intentional or simply the result of the place’s history and successive owners. There was not much by way of equipment: a big table, four chairs, a gas cooker and a wood-burning stove. The basics were there, nothing more. The ground floor was made up of one large room, then a smaller room on the left, and a bathroom at the end. A wooden staircase led upstairs. They opened the shutters up there as well to reveal a huge bedroom, with four windows that looked out in all directions. Lise was delighted. Every time she pushed back the shutters in a room, she would rediscover the sea of hills outside, a view that enchanted her. She was comforted by the authenticity of the stone walls, the solid wood floor and the exposed beams.
Despite his discomfort, Franck was relieved. At least it wasn’t a scam. At least they hadn’t been taken for a ride. There was a house at the end of the advert. Lise, too, was relieved to find that her phone had no signal. She had been glancing at it ever since they set out on the track and had never had even a hint of signal, unlike on the road before the ascent. In the last few kilometres she had only had one bar, and eventually none; the little fan shape at the top of her screen was empty. But she was careful not to mention it to Franck. It seemed just as natural and wonderful to her as the sun going down in front of them, setting the slightest reflection in the bedroom alight: every lamp, every window, every mirror or piece of glass sparkled. It felt as though the sun were paying them its respects, greeting the newcomers.
Once they had opened the doors and windows and explored the house, Franck had a sudden premonition. He quickly went downstairs to get his phone from the door of the car and, to his horror, found that it had no signal. Frantically, he started walking up and down to try to find a connection somewhere, holding the phone out in front of him as if it were a remote control that could turn the world on again. He even walked along the crest of the hill and criss-crossed the whole meadow at the top, and still could not get a signal. Wherever he tried, he couldn’t even get one bar, and surely that was impossible. So, he set out down the big slope in front of him, hurtling down the beautiful meadow that rolled into a valley in the east, a good five hundred metres from the house. He crossed the whole hillside in his city shoes, catching his feet in the tall grass and going faster and faster.
Lise watched him from the window. She saw him rush down into the long sloping meadow, carried forward by momentum. It looked as if he were trying to walk slowly, but the slope was pulling him down. He kept his eyes on his phone without really looking where he was treading, as if trying to revive a small animal.
He turned around when he got to the foot of the hill, surprised that he had walked so far. The house seemed a long way away, or high up at least. At this time of day, the trough of the valley was in shadow, and it was almost chilly. Another hill covered with holm oaks and box rose up in front of him, a mound of dense, sloping woods that would be almost impossible to get into, unless you fought your way through the tangle of bushes and brambles.
Lise took in the valley from above, with Franck impatiently stamping his feet at the bottom. She looked in admiration at the slope in front of him. It was just as steep as the other one, but the thick vegetation and tightly packed trees made it look impenetrable. From the window, the green mass seemed to rise like a wave, especially with the sun beating down on its summit, lifting it up even further. Lise was in seventh heaven. She had what she wanted: all she could see were hills and trees, turning the house into an island in a bottomless ocean of green. She thought to herself that it must be crawling with animals; wild boar and wolves, foxes and deer. She knew nothing about the wildlife around here, but the idea crossed her mind and made her shiver a little.
Right at the bottom, Franck looked like a figurine. His pink polo shirt and city trousers showed just how out of place he was. She carried on watching him. He was walking all over the place, going left and right and staring at his phone the whole time. At one point he even went into the woods to see if he could get a signal.
‘Well?’ She had called out by way of encouragement, but he was too far away to hear. She watched him: absorbed in his problem, he was walking with his arms stretched out in front of him, like a diviner searching for water. She was happy to see this. Clearly there was no trace of an electromagnetic wave here, no Wi-Fi or hotspot, not even a telephone line. Nothing. Everything was as she had imagined, and it filled her with a deep joy. However, she knew it was not good news for Franck. Though he did not realise it, he was addicted, and she knew he would be furious – the man who was always on the internet, compulsively checking his emails and notifications, always waiting for news and lapping it up at the table and in bed, even while watching a film. In some ways, it was cruel to see him so disorientated. She knew Franck needed his phone for work and to keep in touch with his business partners. But she was still keen for him to try to live without it not so that he would give up the internet completely, but to gain a bit of perspective at least, and to find the peace he could no longer imagine. While she wanted to get away from harmful waves, she wanted Franck to stop worrying constantly about his job. Producers have no fixed hours, so the job takes over everything, and she wanted to see if he could manage to switch off. Sometimes a job takes up so much of your life that it consumes your very being, bringing its share of satisfaction but also constant stress. It was the first time she had seen him so destabilised, and the first time she had watched him from afar, standing out in the wild.