There’s no cemetery in Carmac. The dead are buried in the neighbouring towns. But animal corpses are allowed. At the foot of a tree or in the corner of a garden. Here, animals die where they lived. Men don’t have such luck.
The small chapel overshadowed by a row of hundred-year-old plane trees doesn’t have much use anymore. People take refuge there in the summer, when the air becomes unbreathable. A haven of silence, coolness, and shade. Inside, thanks to the cold, moist stones, it feels like breathing deep within a cave. In the month of August in Carmac, everything burns. The grass, the trees, the children’s milky skin. The sun allows no respite. The animals drag, too; the cows produce less milk; the dogs sniff at their food, then return to the shade, nauseous…
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