37.

October 1st.

Amber and azure, the Autumn colours dazzle and creep up the mountain sides. The oaks turn yellow the last, the poplars are first. The wet days have passed and it is again a pure sunlight, a clarity of slanting light that is good for picture making.

Shouts and the clamour of vehicles. Bertrand`s friends have had a good hunting this Wednesday afternoon and are yanking the carcass of a deer with pulley and chains into his barn. The dogs lie silent in the back of a truck, exhausted and anticipating a reward. The butchered meat is shared between the huntsmen, and the entrails and remaining bits and pieces are kept for the dogs. One of the men offers me a steak. Streaks of blood across the near white flesh, but I say thanks, no. I’m a coward and don`t say yet that I prefer to eat no meat. Then I think to myself that perhaps it is better to eat an animal that has had a relatively good and free life; perhaps I should say yes next time. They say boar is delicious.

Bertrand, of course, will never talk to Emile and Emile grimaces, bends his neck and draws his chin in if Bertrand passes. Marie and Sylvie both shrug helplessly and pass the time of day with comments on the weather, the laundry or the tomato harvest. Who knows what that is all about, but Emile, for sure, never gets to share the hunt spoils. I did once hear that there had been a disagreement about access some years back and now silence breeds contempt and worse.