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the end of June, with the beginning of the true heat. The village was built on a hill, and the stone buildings that faced full south seemed to suck up the sun and store it overnight. In private houses, shutters could be closed against the glare and the steadily rising temperature, but commercial establishments were not so fortunate. Their display windows invited the heat, and magnified it. And so Arnaud was obliged to modify his working methods to suit the climate. He cleared the window of anything perishable, replacing the usual arrangements of sausages and prepared cuts with a notice informing his clientele that his meat was being kept in the cool storage area at the back of the shop.
    Naturally, the butcher himself needed some relief from the heat, and by early July Arnaud had adopted a more practical uniform than the canvas trousers and cotton sweater he usually wore. He still kept his
tablier
, the long white (although frequently bloodstained) apron that covered most of his chest and extended down to his shins. But beneath that he wore only a pair of old black cycling shorts, snug around the hips and buttocks, and rubber-soled clogs.
    Business, already healthy, became even more brisk. Items hanging on the hooks behind the counter were suddenly much in demand, since to reach them Arnaud had to turn and stretch, exposing a muscular back and legs to the waiting customer. Expeditions to the cool area where the rest of the meat was kept were also very popular,involving, as they did, close proximity to an attractive and almost naked young man.
    There were changes, too, in the appearance of Arnaud’s customers. Everyday clothes and cursory grooming were replaced by summer dresses and makeup, even scent. The local hairdresser was kept unusually busy, and visitors to the village could be forgiven for thinking that the women they saw in the narrow streets were dressed for a fête. As for the husbands—well, those who noticed put it down to the weather. In any case, their wives were treating them well, with the extra attention that a touch of guilt often provokes, and feeding them like prizefighters in training. The husbands had no complaints.
    July continued like an oven, one rainless, blistering day after another. Dogs and cats tolerated each other, sharing pools of shade, too stunned to squabble. In the fields, melons were coming to ripeness, the juiciest for years, and the grapes on the vines were warm to the touch. The village sprawled on its hilltop, stifling in a cocoon of hot, still air.
    These were difficult days for the butcher, despite his flourishing business. He was finding that making friends in a small, closed community is a slow and cautious process. A newcomer—even a newcomer from a mere thirty kilometers away—is treated with guarded politeness in the street but excluded from the homes of his neighbors. He is on probation, often for several years. He is a foreigner; in Arnaud’s case, a lonely foreigner.
    To add to his problems, the demands of his business left him very little time to make the journey to Avignon, where the lights were brighter and social opportunities more promising. His working day started shortly after sunrise, when he would come down from his cramped apartmentabove the shop to swab the floor, sprinkle it with fresh sawdust, evict dead flies from the window, arrange his cuts, put an edge on his knives, and snatch a cup of coffee before his older customers, always the earliest, began to arrive just before eight. The hours between noon and two, while the rest of the world was taking its ease, were often spent picking up supplies. Wholesalers refused to deliver to the village; the streets were too narrow to accommodate their trucks. The afternoons were slow, early evenings the busiest. He was rarely able to close before seven, and then there was the gray torrent of paperwork: the day’s receipts, suppliers’ invoices, government forms requiring confirmation that the
code sanitaire
was being