Tarantula

1

Richard Lafargue rose early that Monday morning. His day would be busy. He went straight to the pool and swam a few laps, then took his breakfast on the lawn, enjoying the early morning sunshine as he absently scanned the headlines of the daily papers.

Roger was waiting for him at the wheel of the Mercedes. Before leaving, though, he paid a visit to Eve, who was still asleep. He slapped her gently awake. She sat straight up, startled. The sheet slipped aside, and Richard noticed the graceful curve of her breasts. With the tip of his forefinger he caressed her, tracing a path from her ribcage to the point of her nipple.

She could not help laughing; she seized his hand and drew it to her belly. Richard flinched. Straightening up, he started for the door. Once there, he turned. Eve had tossed the sheet off altogether and held out welcoming arms. It was his turn to laugh.

“Bastard!” she hissed. “You’re dying for it!”

He shrugged, turned on his heel, and disappeared.

Half an hour later, he was at the hospital in the center of Paris where he ran an internationally renowned plastic surgery department. But he spent only his mornings there and devoted his afternoons to a private clinic he owned in Boulogne.

He shut himself in his office to study the file on an operation scheduled for that day. His assistants waited impatiently. After taking the time he needed to think the case over, he donned scrubs and headed for the operating room.

The room was surmounted by a glassed-in gallery with tiered seating. Today there was a goodly number of spectators, doctors and students. They listened attentively to Lafargue’s voice, distorted by the loudspeakers, as he expounded the procedure.

“Well, what we have here, on forehead and cheeks, are large keloid plaques, the result of burns from the explosion of volatile chemicals. The nasal pyramid is virtually nonexistent, the eyelids have been destroyed. You are looking at perfect indications for treatment by means of tubular skin flaps. We shall be drawing for this purpose upon both the arm and the abdomen.”

With the help of a scalpel, Lafargue was already cutting large rectangles of skin from the patient’s stomach. Above him, the spectators’ faces pressed against the glass. An hour later he was able to show a first result: skin flaps sown into tubes had left the subject’s arm and abdomen and been grafted to his burn-ravaged face. Doubly anchored, they would serve to rebuild the completely ruinous facial integument.

The patient was wheeled out. Lafargue removed his surgical mask and finished his commentary.

“In this case, the plan of action was determined by what needed the most urgent attention. It goes without saying that this sort of intervention will have to be repeated a number of times before a fully satisfactory outcome can be achieved.”

He thanked his audience for their attention and left the operating room. It was past noon. Lafargue set off for a nearby restaurant. On the way, he happened to pass a perfumery. He went in and bought a bottle of scent, intending to present it to Eve that evening.

After lunch, Roger drove him to Boulogne. His visiting hours began at two. Lafargue hurried his patients along: a young mother and her son and his harelip, and a whole raft of noses—Monday was the day for noses: broken noses, overlarge noses, deviated noses … Lafargue palpated faces to left and right of the septum and showed before-and-after photographs. Most of his patients were women, but he saw a few men, too.

When the consultations were over, he worked on his own, catching up on the latest American journals. Roger came for him at six.

Once back at Le Vésinet, he knocked on Eve’s door and slid back the bolts. She was seated at the piano naked, playing a sonata, and she seemed not to register Richard’s presence. At the piano stool, she kept her back to him. Locks of her curly black hair bounced on her shoulders, her head bobbing as her fingers struck the keyboard. He admired the flesh and the muscles of her back, the dimples at its base, her buttocks … Without warning, she abandoned the light, fluid sonata and launched into the tune Richard so hated. She hummed along in a throaty voice, stressing the low notes: “Some day, he’ll come along, the man I love…” Then she deliberately hit a wrong note, stopped playing, and span the stool around with a twist of her hips. She sat facing Richard, her thighs apart, her fists on her knees, in an attitude of obscene defiance.

For a few moments he was unable to take his eyes off the dark fleece that covered her pubis. She frowned, and then with deliberation spread her legs even wider and slid a finger into the fissure of her sex, separating the labia and moaning.

“Stop it!” Richard shouted.

Gauchely, he proffered the bottle of perfume he had bought that morning. She looked him over sardonically. He placed the gift on the piano and tossed her a robe, demanding that she cover herself.

Batting it aside, she leaped to her feet and ran to him all smiles, pressing herself against him. She wrapped her arms around Richard’s neck and rubbed her breasts against his torso. He was forced to twist her wrists to get free.

“Get ready!” he ordered her. “It’s been a magnificent day. We’re going out.”

“Should I dress like a whore?”

He went for her, taking her by the throat with one hand and holding her away from him. He repeated his order. But she was in pain and suffocating, and he had to release her immediately.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “But please, please, get dressed.”

He went back down to the ground floor, anxious. To calm himself, he decided to look at his mail. He hated having to deal with the material details of household management, but after Eve’s arrival he had been obliged to discharge the person he had previously relied on to handle the minor paperwork.

He worked on the overtime due Roger and on Lise’s upcoming paid days off, but he got the hourly wage wrong and had to start over again. He was still poring over his papers when Eve appeared in the drawing room.

She was stunning in a low-necked black lamé dress, a string of pearls about her throat. When she leaned over him, her pallid skin was redolent with the perfume he had just given her.

She smiled at him and took his arm. He got behind the wheel of the Mercedes, and a few minutes later they were walking side by side in the forest of Saint-Germain, which was full of strollers attracted by the mildness of the evening.

She had her head on his shoulder. They didn’t speak for a time, and then he told her about his operation of that morning.

“You’re boring the shit out of me!” She spoke in a singsong voice.

He fell silent, a little vexed. She had taken his hand and was watching him in apparent amusement. She made for a bench.

“Richard?”

He seemed distracted. She had to call his name again. He came and sat next to her.

“I’d like to see the sea. It’s been such a long time. I used to love swimming, you know. A day—just one. Let’s go and see the sea. I’ll do whatever you want, after…”

He shrugged, explaining that that wasn’t the problem.

“I promise you I won’t run off.”

“Your promises are worthless! Anyway, you already do whatever I want.”

With a gesture of irritation, he asked her to be quiet. They walked a little more, as far as the water’s edge. Young people were windsurfing on the Seine.

“I’m hungry!” she announced, and waited for Richard’s response. He offered to take her to supper at a restaurant not far away.

They chose a table on a leafy terrace. A waiter came and took their order. Eve ate heartily; Richard barely touched his food. She had the greatest difficulty getting a spiny lobster tail out of its shell and in frustration produced a little-girl tantrum. He could not help laughing at her. She joined in, and Richard’s features froze. My God, he thought, there are moments when she seems almost happy! It’s incredible—and unfair!

Perceiving the change in Lafargue’s attitude, she decided to put the situation to good use. She gestured for him to lean over to her, then whispered in his ear.

“Richard, listen. That waiter, over there, he hasn’t been able to take his eyes off me since the beginning of the meal. I could arrange things for later…”

“Shut up!”

“But I’m serious. I can go to the toilet, make a rendezvous with him, and have him screw me later, in the bushes.”

He had drawn away from her, but she went on whispering, more loudly now, and laughing derisively.

“So you don’t want to? If you hide, you can watch everything. I’ll make sure to get us close to you. Look at him—he’s positively drooling!”

He blew cigarette smoke full into her face. But she didn’t stop.

“No? Really? Not like that, the quick in-and-out. I’d just lift up my dress … You used to like that, though, at the beginning, didn’t you?”

And it was true: “at the beginning,” Richard would take Eve into the park, the Bois de Vincennes or the Bois de Boulogne, and make her offer herself to men on the prowl. Then he would observe her humiliation from the cover of a hedge. But later, for fear of getting caught in a police sweep, which would have been catastrophic, he had rented the studio apartment in Rue Godot-de-Mauroy. There he prostituted Eve on a regular basis two or three times a month. This sufficed to assuage his loathing.

“You’re determined to be insufferable today, aren’t you, my dear? I’m almost sorry for you.”

“I don’t believe you.”

She is provoking me, he thought. She would have me believe she is quite happy to be in the slime where I force her to live. She wants me to think she gets pleasure from degrading herself.

Eve kept up her act, even risking a wink at the waiter, who turned as red as a turkey cock.

“Come on, we’re going now. We’ve had quite enough of that. If you are so keen to ‘please me,’ we can go tomorrow for your appointments, or maybe I’ll even ask you to do a little streetwalking…”

Eve smiled and took his hand so as not to lose face; but he knew perfectly well how mortifying all those metered encounters were for her and how much she suffered every time he made her sell herself: sometimes, through the one-way mirror in the studio apartment, he saw her eyes welling with tears and her face contorted as she strove to contain her distress. At such moments he reveled in this suffering, which was his only comfort.

They returned to the house at Le Vésinet. Eve ran across the grounds, undressed swiftly, and dived into the pool with a cry of joy. She splashed about in the water, disappearing beneath the surface for quick breath-holding bursts.

When she climbed out of the pool, Lafargue wrapped her in a large Turkish towel and vigorously rubbed her dry. She let him do it, staring up at the stars. Then he walked her up to her flat, where, as on every other evening, she stretched out on the rush mat. He busied himself with the pipe and the balls of opium, and brought the drug to her.

“Richard,” she murmured, “you really are the biggest bastard I have ever met…”

He made sure that she finished her daily dose. He need not have bothered: she had been missing it sorely for some time already.

After thirst came hunger. To the dryness of your throat, to the feeling that sharp-edged stones were ripping at your mouth, were added deep, diffuse pains in your belly, like hands wrenching at your stomach, filling it with bile and making it cramp horribly.

For days now (and the pain was so bad, it must surely be days), you had been crouching in your hole. But it was more than a hole, in fact, for it seemed to you, though you had no way of being certain, that the place where you were held captive was vast. The echo of your cries off the walls and eyes now accustomed to the dark almost convinced you that you could see the boundaries of your prison.

You raved continually, hour after interminable hour. Slumped on your litter, you no longer sat up. From time to time you raged against your shackles, biting at the metal and producing little growls, like some wild animal.

Once, long ago, you had seen a film, a documentary on hunting, with pitiful images of a fox, its paw in a trap, tearing at its own flesh, ripping it off in shreds, until the trap’s grip was loose enough for the beast to free itself and make off, mutilated.

But you could not bite at your wrists or ankles. They were bloody, nevertheless, from the incessant chafing between skin and metal. The flesh was hot, swollen. Had you still been rational, you would have feared gangrene, infection, the decay that, starting from your extremities, could invade your entire body.

But you dreamed only of water, rushing torrents, pouring rain—anything at all that could be drunk. You urinated with the greatest difficulty, and each time the pain in your back would be more violent. There would be a burning sensation running down through your penis, but only a few drops of hot piss would dribble forth. You sprawled in your own excrement; dried plaques of shit stuck to your skin.

Oddly, your sleep was untroubled. You slept profoundly, felled by fatigue, but your awakenings were atrocious and accompanied by hallucinations. Monstrous creatures lay in wait for you in the dark, ready to pounce and sink their teeth into you. You thought you heard claws scratching at the cement; you thought you saw the yellow eyes of rats in the shadows, watching you.

You called out for Alex, but your cry emerged as a scraping sound in your throat. If only Alex were there, he would have freed you from your chains. Alex would have known what to do. He would have come up with a solution, employed some peasant ruse. Alex! He should have been looking for you since you disappeared. Which was how long ago now? HOW LONG?

And then HE came. One day—or one night, for there was no way of telling. A door—right across from you—was opened: a rectangle of light that blinded you at first.

The door closed once more, but HE had entered. His presence filled your prison.

You held your breath, listened for the merest sound, and crouched motionless against the wall like a terrified cockroach caught in a sudden glare. You might as well have been an insect captured by a bloated spider and kept on hand for an eventual meal, when she would savor you at her leisure, whenever the whim arose to taste your blood. You pictured her furry legs, her great bulbous merciless eyes, her soft belly gorged with meat, throbbing, spongy, and her venomous jaws, her black maw preparing to suck the life out of you.

All at once you were dazzled by a powerful spotlight. There you lay, sole actor in the drama of your imminent death, ready for the last act. You made out a figure, a silhouette seated in an armchair ten or twelve feet in front of you. But you could not discern the monster’s features, lost in the blackness behind the light. He had crossed his legs and clasped his hands under his chin; he was contemplating you motionlessly.

You made a superhuman effort to get up and, on your knees, your hands palm to palm as though in prayer, you pleaded for something to drink. The words became jumbled on their way out of your mouth. Stretching your arms out toward him, you begged.

He did not respond. You stammered your name: Vincent Moreau, monsieur. There’s been a mistake, monsieur. I am Vincent Moreau. You passed out.

When you came around, he was gone. Then the true meaning of despair was borne in upon you. The spotlight was still on you. You saw your body, the pus-filled boils, the streaked dirt, the skin rubbed raw by the shackles, the crusted shit on your thighs, the long fingernails.

The violent white light made you weep. Another good stretch of time passed before he came back. Once again he sat down in the armchair facing you. At his feet he had placed an object that you identified instantly. A pitcher! Water? You were on your knees, on all fours, head bowed. He approached you. He poured the water in the pitcher over your head, all at once. You lapped at the puddle forming on the floor. You stroked your hair with trembling hands to squeeze out the moisture, which you licked from your palms.

He went and refilled the pitcher and handed it to you. Avidly, you drank the contents down in a single draft. Then a searing pain shot through your stomach, and from your nether end spurted a long stream of diarrhea. He watched you. You did not turn to the wall or seek to evade his gaze. Squatting at his feet, you relieved yourself, happy simply to have drunk. You were nothing now—nothing but an animal, thirsty, hungry, and battered. An animal that had once been Vincent Moreau.

He laughed. The little childish laugh you had heard before, in the forest.

He came back often with water. His figure still seemed immense to you behind the spotlight. His enormous menacing shadow filled the room. But you were no longer afraid, for he gave you water, and you read this as a sign that he meant to keep you alive.

Later, he brought you a tin bowl containing a reddish broth with meatballs floating in it. He plunged one hand into the bowl, grabbing your hair and pulling your head back with the other. You ate from his hand, sucked on his sauce-slick fingers. It was good. He left you to finish the food by yourself, flat on your belly, your face plunged into the bowl. Soon not a trace of the swill that your master had brought you was to be seen.

Day after day, the soup was always the same. Your jailer would come in, give you the bowl and the pitcher, and watch you guzzle. Then he would leave, always with the little laugh.

You regained your strength by degrees. You set a little water aside to wash with and always eased yourself at the same place, beyond the edge of the oilcloth.

Insidiously, hope was returning: your master wanted you…

Alex started violently. The sound of a car engine had intruded upon the silence of the garrigue. He consulted his watch: seven in the morning. He yawned. His mouth was dry, his tongue thick from the alcohol—beer followed by gin—that he had imbibed during the night before getting to sleep.

He grabbed the binoculars and focused on the road. The Dutch tourist family at full complement had packed themselves into a Land Rover, the kids clutching buckets and spades. A day at the seaside in prospect. The young mother wore a bikini, and her heavy breasts strained at the thin material of the swimsuit. Alex was suffering from a morning erection. How long was it since he had been with a woman? Six weeks or more? Yes, the last time had been a farm girl. A distant memory now.

Her name was Annie, a friend from childhood. He could see her still, her red hair in braids, playing in the schoolyard. In another life, almost forgotten: the life of Alex the klutz, Alex the hayseed. Just before the bank hold-up, he had paid a visit to his parents. No doubt about their still being hicks!

He had driven into their farmyard one rainy afternoon in his car, a Ford with a roaring engine. His father stood waiting for him on the front steps. Alex felt proud of his clothes, his shoes, his new-man appearance with every last whiff of the soil gone.

He made a bit of a face at first, the father. Playing the village bullyboy as a nightclub bouncer did not seem to him like much of a trade. Still, it must pay well—you only had to look at the kid’s outfit! Alex’s manicured hands and fingernails were not lost on the older man, either, and he broke into a smile of welcome.

The two of them had sat facing each other in the main room. The father had brought out the customary bread, the salami, the pâté, and the liter of red and started eating. Alex merely lit a cigarette, ignoring the mustard glass of wine that had been poured for him. The mother contemplated them in silence without taking a seat. Louis and René, the farm boys, were there, too. What could they talk about? The weather they were having? The weather they were about to have? Before long, Alex got up, gave his father an affectionate punch on the shoulder, and went out onto the village’s main street. Window curtains were discreetly pulled aside as the locals took a furtive look at the Barnys’ boy, the bad one, as he went by.

Alex went into the Café des Sports and, just showing off, bought everyone a round. A few old men were playing cards, thumping loudly on the table as they laid out their hands, and two or three youngsters pushed and shoved one another at a pinball machine. Alex was delighted with the impression he made. He shook hands with everyone and drank to the health of one and all.

Back in the street, he passed Madame Moreau, Vincent’s mother. She was a good-looking woman, tall, graceful, and well turned out. Or rather, she had been—for right after her son’s disappearance she had fallen apart, withered, and taken to dressing sloppily at all times. She slouched and dragged her feet as she made her way to the minimarket to do her shopping.

Every week, as regular as clockwork, Madame Moreau paid a ritual visit to the police station in Meaux in search of news of her missing son. All hope of finding him had been abandoned four years ago now. She had placed notices in all the papers, with Vincent’s photo, to no avail. The police had told her that there were thousands of disappearances in France every year, and most of the time no trace of the missing person was ever found. Vincent’s bike was in the garage; the police had returned it to her after a thorough examination. The fingerprints on it were Vincent’s. The machine had been found lying on an embankment with its front wheel buckled and no gas in the tank. A search of the forest around had turned up nothing.

Alex spent that night in the village. It was Saturday, and there was a dance. Annie was there, her hair as red as ever, her limbs a little thicker. She worked at the bean cannery in the next village over. Alex danced a slow number with her, then took her walking in the woods nearby. They made love in his car, lying uncomfortably on its reclining seats.

The next day, after kissing his folks goodbye, Alex left. Eight days later, he held up the Crédit Agricole branch and killed the cop. Everyone in the village must have clipped the front page of the paper with Alex’s picture on it, along with the picture of the cop and his family.

Alex unrolled his bandage: his wound was inflamed, its edges bright red. He sprinkled his thigh with the powder his friend had given him, then bound himself up again, pulling the bandage good and tight over the fresh dressing.

His hard-on was still there, almost painful itself. He masturbated furiously, thinking about Annie. He had never had a lot of girls. He usually had to pay them. It had been much better when Vincent was around. Vincent had chicks falling all over him in droves. They often went to dances, the two of them. Vincent would dance; he would get every cool girl from miles around to dance with him. Alex used to sit at the bar and drink beer. Watching Vincent doing his number. Vincent smiled at the girls with his great smile. It had them eating out of his hand. There was a motion of the head he had, cute, a sort of come-on, and then his hands would be roving up and down his partner’s back, from her thighs to her shoulders, caressing her. He would bring girls over to the bar and introduce them to Alex.

If things worked out, Alex would go with the girl after Vincent, but things didn’t always work out. Some of them simply couldn’t help putting on airs and graces. And they didn’t always like Alex, who was muscular, hairy as an ape, and very solidly built. No, they would rather have Vincent—puny, hairless, delicate Vincent with his oh-so-pretty face!

Lost in thoughts of an earlier time, Alex jerked off. Laboriously mobilizing his shaky memory, he tried to pass all the girls he had shared with Vincent in rapid review. And to think that Vincent had abandoned him! The bastard! He was probably in America by now, getting laid by starlets!

A naked calendar girl adorned the whitewashed wall next to Alex’s bed. He closed his eyes as warm creamy sperm flowed into his hand. He wiped himself off with a spare dressing and went down to the kitchen to make coffee. He made it very strong. As the water was heating, he thrust his head under the tap, pushing aside the piles of dirty dishes that cluttered the sink.

He sipped from his steaming bowl of coffee and chewed on the remains of a sandwich. Outside, it was already stifling, the sun now high in the sky. Alex turned the radio on and listened to a quiz show on Radio Luxembourg called The Suitcase. He didn’t give a shit about the show, but he enjoyed hearing the losers getting the answers wrong and failing to collect the money they wanted so much.

He didn’t give a shit because he had not lost the money. In his suitcase—which wasn’t so much a suitcase, more a bag—were four million francs. A fortune. He had counted the wads of bills, over and over. New, crackling bills. He had looked in the dictionary to see who these people were whose likenesses were printed on the notes: Voltaire, Pascal, Berlioz. How weird, to have your photo on a banknote—rather like being turned into a bit of money yourself.

He stretched out on the couch and returned to his pastime, a jigsaw with more than two thousand pieces. A château in the Valley of the Loire: Langeais. He was close to getting it done. In the attic, the first day, he had come across several Heller model kits, complete with glue, paint, and decals. So he had built Stukas and Spitfires, as well as a car—a 1935 Hispano-Suiza. They all stood on the floor now, mounted on their plastic bases and carefully painted. When he ran out of kits, Alex built a model of his parents’ farm: the two main buildings, the outbuildings, the fences. By gluing matches together he achieved a clumsy, naive, touching replica. All that was missing was the tractor, so he cut one out of a piece of cardboard. Later, on a return visit to the attic, he turned up the jigsaw puzzle…

The farmhouse where he was hiding out belonged to a friend of his, a guy he had met working as a nightclub bouncer. You could spend a few weeks there without fear of unannounced visits from curious neighbors. The friend had also supplied him with a phony identity card, but Alex’s now notorious face was liable to be displayed in every police station in France, and in the “most wanted” section, to boot. The cops hate it when one of their own gets killed.

The pieces of the puzzle obstinately refused to fit together. Alex was working on part of the sky. It was all blue, very hard to do. The château’s turrets, the drawbridge—all that had been easy, but the sky was another matter. Cloudless and empty, it was very tricky. Alex got irritated, which made him try even more unlikely joins; he was continually assembling patches of sky only to pull them apart again.

On the floor, just near the board on which he had laid out the jigsaw, crawled a spider. A squat and repulsive spider. She picked a corner of the wall and set about spinning a web. The thread flowed continually from her rounded abdomen. She came and went carefully and laboriously. With a match, Alex set fire to the just-completed portion of her web. The spider panicked, checking her surroundings, looking out for the advent of some enemy; but since the concept of matches was not inscribed in her genes, she soon went back to work.

She spun tirelessly, joining up her thread, anchoring it to rough spots on the wall, making use of every splinter of wood in the floor. Alex found a dead mosquito and tossed it into the newly constructed web. The spider rushed over, circled this carrion, but disdained it. Alex divined the reason for her lack of interest: the mosquito was already dead. Hobbling, he went out to the front steps, delicately gathered up a moth hiding under a tile, and placed it in the web.

The moth struggled to escape the viscous toils. The spider promptly reappeared, turning the prey this way and that before weaving a cocoon for it and storing the insect in a crack in the wall, safe for a future feast.

Eve was sitting at her dressing table, examining her face in the mirror. A childish face, with great sad almond-shaped eyes. Touching her index finger softly to the skin of her jaw, she felt the hardness of the bone, the sharpness of the chin, the relief of the teeth through the fleshy mass of the lips. Her cheekbones were prominent and her nose turned up; it was a delicately shaped, perfectly rounded nose.

She turned her head slightly, tipped the mirror, and was herself surprised by the strange expression that her reflection had elicited. There was almost too much perfection, and such radiant charm created a sort of malaise in her. She had never known a man who could resist her attraction or remain indifferent to her glance. No man could pierce her aura of mystery or pin down the quality that invested her every gesture with an enrapturing ambiguity. She drew them all to her, piquing their interest, arousing their desire, playing on the tension they felt once in her presence.

The outward signs of this seductiveness filled her with an ambivalent calm: she would have liked to repel them, put them to flight, free herself of them, provoke repugnance in them; and yet the fascination she exercised without wanting it was her only revenge, paltry in its very infallibility.

She made herself up, then took the easel from its case and spread out the paints and brushes and resumed work on a canvas that she had in hand. It was a portrait of Richard, vulgar and crudely executed. She showed him seated on a bar stool with legs apart, cross-dressed as a woman, a cigarette-holder in his mouth, wearing a pink dress and black stockings held up by a garter-belt; his feet were crammed into high-heeled shoes.

He was smiling beatifically, even idiotically. Grotesque falsies made of old rags hung pathetically over his flaccid belly. Painted with obsessive precision, the face was covered with red blotches. No viewer of the picture could have failed to supply a voice for this pathetic, monstrous caricature: the rasping croak of a broken-down fishwife.

No, your master had not killed you. Later, you came to regret it. For the moment, he was treating you better. He would come and give you showers, spraying you with tepid water from a garden hose, even letting you have a piece of soap.

The spotlight stayed on all the time. The darkness had given way to its blinding light, artificial, cold, and incessant.

For hours at a time your master would stay with you, sitting in an armchair opposite you, scrutinizing your slightest movement.

At the start of these “observation” sessions, you dared say nothing, for fear of arousing his ire, for fear that at night thirst and hunger would return to punish you for this crime whose nature was still a mystery to you but which you were apparently doomed to expiate.

But then you got your courage up. Timidly, you asked him what the date was, to find out how long you had been locked up here. He replied immediately, smiling: the twenty-third of October. So, he had been holding you captive for over two months. Two months of being hungry and thirsty—and how long eating from his hand, licking that tin plate, lying prostrate at his feet, being washed with a hose?

You wept then, asked why he was doing all this to you. This time he said nothing. You could see his face, which was impenetrable, crowned by white hair: a face with a certain nobility about it—a face that, possibly, you had seen somewhere before.

He kept coming into your prison and staying there, sitting before you, impassive. He would disappear only to return a little later. The nightmares of your early days of incarceration were gone. Could he be slipping tranquilizers into your rations? True, your anxiety was still there, but its object had changed. You were sure of staying alive, for otherwise, you reasoned, he would have killed you already. His intent was not to let you slowly agonize, shrivel up, and die. It was, therefore, something else…

A little later, your meal routine was changed. Your master set up a folding table and a stool for you. He gave you a plastic knife and fork like the ones they give you on airplanes. A plate replaced the tin bowl. And real meals soon followed: fruit, vegetables, cheese. You took enormous pleasure in eating as you mulled over your memories of the first days.

You were still chained up, but your master cared for the abrasions on your wrists caused by the shackles. You would spread cream on the sores, and he would wind an elastic bandage round your wrist beneath the steel cuffs.

Everything was going better, but still he said nothing. You told your life story. He listened with the greatest interest. His silence was intolerable to you. You had to talk, to tell and retell your stories, to recount your childhood, to stupefy yourself with words, merely to prove to him that you were not an animal!

Later still, your diet was suddenly improved once more. Now you were entitled to wine, to refined dishes that he must have had delivered by a caterer. The tableware was luxurious. Chained to your wall, naked as ever, you stuffed yourself with caviar, salmon, sorbets, and fancy pastries.

He sat beside you, serving you the food. He brought in a cassette player, and you listened to Chopin and Liszt.

As for the humiliating issue of the calls of nature, there too he became more humane, providing a conveniently placed waste bucket.

A time came at last when he allowed you to leave the wall at certain times. He released you from your fetters and led you around the cellar on a leash. You wandered slowly in a circle, round and round the spotlight.

To make the time pass more quickly, your master brought books. Classics: Balzac, Stendhal…In high school you had hated such works, but now, alone in your hole, sitting cross-legged on your patch of oilcloth or leaning your elbows on the folding table, you devoured them.

Little by little, your leisure took on substance. Your master took care to vary its pleasures. A stereo system appeared, complete with records; even an electronic chess set. Soon the time began to fly by. He had adjusted the brightness of the spotlight so that it no longer dazzled you, hanging a rag over the bulb to subdue the glare. The cellar filled with shadows, including your own, multiplied.

By virtue of all these changes, the absence of any brutality from your master, and the increasing luxury that gradually offset your solitude, you began to forget or at least to repress your fear. Your nakedness and the chains that still held you became an incongruity.

The walks around on the leash continued. You were a cultivated, intelligent beast. You suffered from memory lapses; at times you became acutely aware of the unreality, even the absurdity of your predicament. Of course, you had a burning desire for answers from your master, but he discouraged all questions, concerning himself exclusively with your material comfort. What would you like for supper? Did you enjoy the recording? And so on.

What about your village? Your mother? Weren’t people searching for you? The faces of your friends were fading from your memory, melding into a thick fog. You could no longer recall Alex’s features or the color of his hair. You talked to yourself a lot; you would catch yourself humming children’s songs. Your distant past returned in violent and chaotic waves; images from your long-forgotten childhood would reemerge unannounced in startling clarity, only to dissipate in their turn into a vague mist. Time itself expanded and contracted alarmingly. A minute, two hours, ten years?—you no longer knew the difference.

Your master noticed how this troubled you and gave you an alarm clock. You began to count the hours, avidly watching the progress of the hands on the clock. Time itself was a fiction: what did it matter if it was ten in the morning or ten at night? No, the important thing was that now you could once again regulate your life: at noon I am hungry, at midnight I am tired. A rhythm: something to hang on to.

Several more weeks had gone by. Among your master’s gifts, you had found a pad of paper, pencils, and an eraser. You had begun to draw, clumsily at first, until your old facility returned. You sketched faceless portraits, mouths, confused landscapes, the ocean, immense cliffs, a giant hand creating waves. You scotch-taped these drawings to the wall; they helped you forget the bare concrete beneath.

In your head you had given your master a name. You dared not pronounce it in his presence, needless to say. You called him “Mygale,” in memory of your past terrors. “Mygale”—a feminine-sounding name, the name of a repulsive animal that corresponded neither to his sex nor to the great refinement he displayed when choosing gifts for you.

But “Mygale,” nevertheless, because he was just like a spider, slow and secretive, cruel and ferocious, obsessed yet impenetrable in his designs, hidden somewhere in this dwelling where he had held you captive for months: this luxury web, this gilded cage where he was the jailer and you the prisoner.

You had given up weeping and complaining. There was no pain in your new life in the material sense. At this time of year—February? March?—you would normally have been in high school, in your final year; instead, here you were, a captive in this concrete cubicle. You were habituated to your nudity. Shame was long gone. Only your chains were still intolerable.

It was probably some time in May, according to your reckoning, but possibly it was earlier, when a strange event occurred.

Your alarm said it was two-thirty in the afternoon. Mygale came down to visit you. He sat down in the armchair, as was his wont, to observe you. You were drawing. He got up and came over to you. You got to your feet and faced him standing up.

Your two faces were almost touching. You looked into his blue eyes, the only thing moving in his fixed and inscrutable countenance. Mygale raised his hand and placed it on your shoulder. Thence, with trembling fingers, he traced a path all the way up your neck. He felt your cheeks, your nose, gently pinching the skin.

Your heart was beating wildly. His hand, which felt hot, wandered back down over your chest, became soft and agile as it slid across your ribs, your belly. He fondled your muscles and stroked your smooth, hairless skin. Mistaking the meaning of these motions, you gauchely attempted a caress of your own, touching his face. Mygale slapped you violently, teeth clenched. He ordered you to turn around, then methodically continued his examination for several more minutes.

When it was over, you sat down, rubbing your cheek, which still smarted from his blow. He shook his head and laughed, running his fingers through your hair. You smiled.

Mygale left. You did not know what to make of this new kind of contact—a revolution, really, in your relationship. But the effort to think about it filled you with anxiety and called for a mental energy that had long been unavailable to you.

You resumed your drawing and stopped thinking about anything.

2

Alex had abandoned his jigsaw. He had gone out into the garden and was carving a piece of wood, an olive-tree root. As his knife hewed at the dry mass, as shaving after shaving fell to the ground, a crude but unmistakable form slowly emerged, that of a woman’s body. Alex wore a broad straw hat to protect him from the sun. With a beer close to hand, he forgot his injury and lost himself in his painstaking task. For the first time in a very long while, he felt relaxed.

The telephone ringing made him start violently. He almost cut himself with the point of his Opinel knife, dropped the olive root and listened, transfixed. Hardly believing his ears, he ran into the farmhouse and planted himself before the phone, his arms dangling. Who could possibly know that he was here?

He grabbed his revolver—the Colt that he had taken from the cop’s dead body. The weapon was more sophisticated than his own. Trembling, he picked up the receiver. Perhaps it was a local merchant or the post office, something stupid like that—even a wrong number!

He knew the voice. It was the former legionnaire at whose house he had found refuge after the robbery at the Crédit Agricole. Against a tidy consideration, the guy had contrived to treat Alex himself. There had been no need to extract the bullet, because it had exited from his thigh after passing through the quadriceps. He had given Alex antibiotics and dressed his wound after sewing it up in makeshift fashion. It hurt a lot, but the legionnaire swore up and down that he knew enough to do without a doctor. In any event, Alex had no choice: he was wanted by the police and would never get away otherwise. The normal course, outpatient treatment from a hospital, was out of the question.

The phone conversation was brief and staccato. The owner of the farmhouse was implicated in a sordid business connected with prostitution. The police were liable to show up at the door in the next few hours armed with a search warrant. Alex must clear out immediately…

He agreed, stammering out his thanks. The caller hung up. Alex paced up and down with the Colt still in his hand. He wept with rage. It was all about to start again: flight, pursuit, terror of being caught, tingling of the spine at the merest glimpse of a policeman’s kepi.

He packed up quickly, transferring the money to a suitcase. He dressed in a cotton suit that he had found in a wardrobe. It was a little baggy, but what did that matter? The bandage around his thigh made a lump under the material. Freshly shaved, he tossed a bag into the trunk of the car: a change of clothes, toilet articles, not much else. There was no reason why the car should show up on police files: it was a Citroën CX, rented for a couple more months, and according to the legionnaire all its papers were in order.

Stowing the Colt in the glove compartment, Alex started the car. He left the iron gates to the property wide open behind him. On the road, he passed the Dutch family on their way back from the beach.

The major roads were swarming with vacationers in their cars and police setting speed traps wherever they could find the slightest cover.

Alex was sweating profusely. His false papers would not withstand anything like serious scrutiny, for the simple reason that his picture was on file with the police.

He had to get up to Paris as quickly as possible. Once there, it would be easier for him to find a new bolt-hole until the police got over their fury and his wound was completely healed up. Then he would need to figure out how best to get out of the country without getting himself picked up at the border. But where would he go? Alex had no idea. He recalled whispered conversations among his “friends.” Latin America was supposed to be a safe place. But one couldn’t trust anybody. The money, he realized, would attract all kinds of people. Weakened by his injury, panic-stricken, and caught up in an adventure that it was beyond his capacities to confront, Alex sensed obscurely that the future would be no bed of roses.

He was terrified by the mere thought of prison. That time when Vincent had got him to go to the Paris Hall of Justice to attend the superior court had left him with a most agonizing memory that he simply could not shake off: the accused rearing up in the dock after the guilty verdict and letting out a long howl when he heard the sentence. In his nightmares Alex still saw the man’s face, horribly contorted by incredulity and pain. He resolved to save a bullet for himself if ever he was caught.

He returned to Paris by back roads; the major arteries and highways were bound to be patrolled by the national security police at this, the height of the vacation season.

He had only one place to go: the house of the exlegionnaire who had already helped him in his desperate flight from the fiasco at the bank. The man now ran a private surveillance company. Alex had no illusions about his savior’s motives: he obviously had his eye on the money but was in no great hurry to make a move. If things smoothed out for Alex, if the bills were negotiable, then everything became possible … Meanwhile, the legionnaire knew that Alex was entirely dependent on him, not only to get over his injury but also to get out of the country. Alex, all at sea in his new life, was not about to throw himself blindly into the waiting arms of Interpol.

Alex had no foreign contacts offering him a guarantee of security abroad. He could easily foresee the moment when his protector would state his price for arranging a clean disappearance, complete with a credible passport and a quiet, discreet hideaway. And that price would certainly be a very high percentage of the proceeds of the hold-up…

Alex dwelt on his abiding hatred for men at ease in well-cut clothes, casually elegant, who knew how to talk to women. He himself was still a peasant, a rube that anybody could manipulate at will.

He wound up in a small suburban detached house at Livry-Gargan, one of the residential zones of Seine-Saint-Denis. After setting Alex up there, the legionnaire ordered him not to go out, and, much as at the farmhouse, he found a freezer stuffed to bursting, a bed, and a television set.

Alex made himself as comfortable as he could, using just one room. The neighboring houses were either unoccupied, in the process of being rented, or inhabited by bank employees with well-regulated lives who rose very early and returned only in the early evening. Moreover, the summer season meant that the Paris suburbs had been depopulated since the beginning of August. Alex took his ease, somewhat calmed by the emptiness that surrounded him. The legionnaire insisted absolutely on his remaining inside. Alex would not see his protector again until he returned to town in September, so Alex was to take things quietly until then. All he had to do was watch television, prepare frozen meals, take naps, and play solitaire…

3

Richard Lafargue was being visited by the sales representative of a Japanese pharmaceutical firm that had developed a new variety of the silicone commonly used in plastic surgery for breast augmentation. He listened attentively as the petty bureaucrat pitched his product, which according to him was easier to inject, easier to handle, and so forth. Medical records filled Lafargue’s office, and the walls were “decorated” with photographs showing the results of successful plastic surgery. The Japanese man was waving his arms about as he spoke.

The telephone rang. As Richard listened, a deep frown came over his face, and when he answered his voice was hollow and tremulous. He thanked the caller, then turned to the salesman and explained that he would have to terminate their meeting. They set up another time for the next day.

Lafargue doffed his lab coat and ran all the way to his car. Roger was waiting at the wheel, but he sent him home, preferring to drive himself.

He drove rapidly to the Paris ring road, then took the Normandy turnpike. He kept his foot down and leaned furiously on the horn whenever a driver did not get over into the slow lane quickly enough when he wanted to pass. In under three hours, he reached the psychiatric institution where Viviane was confined.

Once at the château, he leaped from the Mercedes and bounded up the front steps to the reception window. The receptionist went to find the psychiatrist who was treating Viviane.

Richard followed the doctor into the elevator. When they reached Viviane’s door, the psychiatrist nodded toward the plexiglass observation window, and Richard looked in.

Viviane was in crisis. She had ripped her smock, and she was stamping her feet and screaming, tearing at her body, which was already covered with bloody weals.

“How long?” Richard asked in a whisper,

“Since this morning. We’ve given her injections, tranquilizers. They should take effect soon.”

“She can’t be left like that! Double the dose. Poor kid…”

His hands were shaking uncontrollably. He braced himself on the door to Viviane’s room, pressing his forehead against it and biting his upper lip.

“Viviane, my baby! Viviane! Open the door—I’m going in.”

“That’s not a very good idea,” said the psychiatrist dubiously. “The presence of other people makes her even more agitated.”

Exhausted, heaving, crouched in a corner of the room, Viviane was raking her face with her fingernails, and, short as they were, she was drawing blood. Richard came in, sat down on the bed and, his voice no more than a murmur, called her by name. She began screaming again, but she stayed still. She was breathless, and her mad eyes rolled in every direction; she drew back her lips and whistled through her teeth. Little by little, still quite conscious, she settled down. Her breathing was more regular now, less labored. Lafargue was able to take her in his arms and get her into bed. Sitting next to her, he held her hand, stroked her brow, kissed her cheek. The psychiatrist had remained in the doorway, his hands in the pockets of his white coat; he came over to Richard, taking his arm.

“Come on, she should be left alone now.”

They went back to the ground floor and took a little walk together outside in the grounds.

“It’s just awful,” Lafargue mumbled.

“I know. You shouldn’t come so often. It doesn’t do any good, so why put yourself through it?”

“No! I must! I just have to come!”

The psychiatrist shrugged, mystified by Lafargue’s pressing need to witness such a pitiful spectacle.

“Yes, I really must come every time this happens. Promise you’ll let me know, all right?”

His voice broke; he was weeping. He shook the doctor’s hand and made his way to his car.

Richard drove faster than ever on the return journey to the house in Le Vésinet. The image of Viviane obsessed him. The vision of her battered and sullied body was a waking nightmare that tormented him always. Viviane! It had all started with a long-drawn-out scream audible above the music of the band, then Viviane had appeared with her clothes torn, her thighs streaming with blood, her eyes blank…

Lise had the day off. He could hear the piano up on the second floor. He burst out laughing, ran and pressed his mouth to the intercom and shouted as loud as he could.

“Good evening! Get dressed! You are going to entertain me tonight!”

The speakers in the dressing-room walls started to vibrate. Lafargue had turned the volume up as far as it would go. The racket was intolerable. Eve gasped. This damned sound system was the one perversion of Lafargue’s that she had not been able to cope with.

He found her slumped over the piano, her hands clamped to ears still hurting from the onslaught. He had stopped in the doorway, a smile playing about his lips and a glass of scotch in his hand.

She turned and looked at him in horror. She knew the meaning of the crises that made him erupt like this: in the last year Viviane had had three episodes of high agitation and self-mutilation. It was like salt rubbed in Richard’s wound, and he could not put up with the pain. His suffering had to be appeased, and Eve existed solely for this purpose.

“Let’s go, you piece of trash!”

He held out a glass of scotch, and when she hesitated to take it he grabbed the young woman by the hair and twisted her head back. He forced her to empty the glass in one gulp. Then he seized her wrist, dragged her all the way downstairs, and threw her bodily into the car.

It was eight o’clock when they entered the studio apartment in Rue Godot-de-Mauroy. Lafargue propelled Eve onto the bed by kicking her in the back.

“Get undressed! Fast!”

Eve stripped. He already had the closet open and was pulling out clothes, tossing them pell-mell onto the carpet. She stood facing him, crying softly. He held out the leather skirt, the boots, a white blouse. She put them on. He pointed to the telephone.

“Call Varneroy!”

Eve shuddered, gagging with disgust, but Richard’s expression was terrible, almost demonic. She was obliged to pick up the receiver and dial the number.

After a moment, Varneroy came on the line. He immediately recognized Eve’s voice. Richard stood behind her, ready to strike.

“My dear Eve,” burbled the caller in a nasal voice, “have you recovered from our last meeting? And you need money? How sweet of you to think of poor old Varneroy!”

Eve made the appointment. Thrilled, Varneroy would be there in half an hour. He was a crank that Eve had “recruited” one night on Boulevard des Capucines at the time when Richard was still forcing her to find customers on the street. She had made enough connections at the time to supply the twice-monthly sessions that he now demanded of her: those who still called the studio apartment gave Richard quite enough choice to assuage his need to debase the young woman.

“Try to rise to the occasion,” he sneered. Then he disappeared, slamming the door behind him. She knew that he would be spying on her from the other side of the one-way mirror.

The treatment she got at the hands of Varneroy made it impossible to take him on too frequently. So Eve would call him only after one of Viviane’s crises. Varneroy was perfectly willing to accept Eve’s hesitancy; and, after urgent appeals from him had been rejected on several occasions, he had resigned himself to leaving a telephone number with Eve where she could reach him whenever she was prepared to submit to his whims.

Varneroy arrived pleased as Punch. He was a pink little man, paunchy, well turned out, and amiable. He took off his hat, laid his jacket down carefully, and kissed Eve on either cheek before opening his bag and producing his whip.

Richard observed these preliminaries with satisfaction, his hands tightly clasped around the armrests of the rocking-chair and his face rife with tics.

Under Varneroy’s direction Eve executed a grotesque dance step. The whip cracked. Richard clapped his hands. He laughed uproariously. But then, suddenly overcome by nausea, he could no longer abide the spectacle. The suffering of Eve, who was his, whose destiny he had shaped, whose life he had fashioned, filled him with a mixture of disgust and pity. Varneroy’s leering countenance so revolted him that he leaped to his feet and charged into the adjoining apartment.

Stunned by this apparition, Varneroy froze, his jaw slack, his arm aloft. Lafargue snatched the whip from his grasp, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and ejected him into the hallway. Wide-eyed, mystified, and at a complete loss for words, the weirdo bounded down the stairs without a backward glance.

Richard and Eve were alone. She had fallen to her knees. Richard helped her up, then helped her wash. She got back into the sweatshirt and jeans she had been wearing when she was taken aback by his voice booming through the intercom.

Without a word, he drove her back to the house, undressed her, and laid her on her bed. Considerately, tenderly, he applied ointment to her wounds and made her very hot tea.

He held her to him, bringing the cup to her mouth and letting her take tiny sips. Then he drew the sheet up over her chest and stroked her hair. He had dissolved a sleeping tablet in her tea, and she quickly fell asleep.

Richard left Eve’s room, went out into the garden, and made for the pond. The two swans slept side by side, heads beneath their wings, the female, so graceful, nuzzled against the more imposing body of the male.

He admired their serenity, longing for the soothing power of such calm. He wept bitter tears. He had snatched Eve from the hands of Varneroy, and he knew full well that this pity—for that is what he called it—had abruptly destroyed the hate, the limitless, unrestrained hate that was his only reason for living.

Mygale often played chess with you. He would think for a long time before risking a move that you never anticipated. Sometimes he improvised attacks without regard for his own defenses; he was impulsive, yet invincible.

The day came when he did away with your shackles and replaced your mat with a sofa. On this you slept and lolled all day long amid silky cushions. Meanwhile, the heavy door to the cellar remained firmly padlocked.

Mygale gave you candy and Virginia cigarettes. He inquired about your tastes in music. Your conversations took on a playful cast bordering on small talk. He had provided a videocassette player and brought movies for the two of you to watch together. He made tea, plied you with herbal decoctions, and, if you seemed depressed, he would uncork a bottle of champagne. No sooner were your glasses empty than he would refill them.

You were no longer naked: Mygale had given you an embroidered shawl, a gorgeous piece of fabric beautifully wrapped. With your delicate fingers you had pulled off the paper to reveal the shawl; this gift gave you the greatest pleasure.

Swathed in the shawl, you would snuggle among the cushions, smoking the imported cigarettes or sucking on sugary bonbons, and await your daily visit from Mygale, who would never arrive empty-handed.

His generosity toward you was seemingly boundless. One day the door to the cellar opened and he entered, pushing an enormous object on wheels before him, not without difficulty. He smiled as he contemplated the tissue paper that enveloped it, the pink ribbon, the bouquet of flowers on the top…

As you stared in amazement, he reminded you of the date: the twenty-second of July. Yes, you had been a captive for ten months, and today you were twenty-one. You hammed it up then, prancing around the giant package, clapping your hands and laughing. Mygale helped you untie the ribbon. You already knew from the shape that it was a piano—but not that it was a Steinway!

Seated on your old stool, once you had loosened up your unwilling fingers, you played. The performance was hardly brilliant, but you shed tears of joy.

And you—you, Vincent Moreau, this monster’s pet, his lapdog, his monkey or parrot, whom he had so thoroughly broken—yes, you, had then kissed his hand, giggling with glee.

That was when he slapped you for the second time.

Alex was fretting in his hideout. Surfeited with sleep, his eyes puffy, he spent most of his waking hours in front of the tube. He chose not to think about his future and strove to occupy himself as best he could. In contrast to his custom at the farmhouse, he cleaned house and washed dishes with extreme fastidiousness. Everything was sparkling clean, and he would pass hours at a time polishing the floor or scouring pots and pans.

His thigh no longer hurt much. The forming scar tissue itched a little, but the wound was not painful. A simple compress had replaced the heavy-duty bandage.

One evening some ten days after Alex had set up house, he had a brilliant idea, or at least he convinced himself that it was a brilliant idea. He was watching a soccer match on the box. Sports had never held much interest for him, except for karate. The only periodicals he read in the normal way were martial arts magazines. Still, his eye idly followed the zigzagging of the round ball as it was systematically knocked around by the players. He sipped the last of a glass of wine and began to nod off, not getting up to turn off the set when the game ended. The next show was a “medical special” on plastic surgery.

A commentator presented a report on lifts and other facial reconstruction. Then came an interview with the head of a hospital clinic in Paris, Professor Lafargue. Alex was awake now, and riveted.

“The second stage,” Lafargue was saying, using a sketch as a visual aid, “consists in the scraping of the periosteum with what is called a raspatory. This is a very important phase. As you see here, the purpose is to let the periosteum adhere to the deepest layer of the skin so as to cushion it…”

On the screen appeared a series of photographs of faces transformed, remodeled, sculpted, beautified. The patients shown earlier were unrecognizable. Alex had followed the explanation attentively, irritated that he did not understand some of the terms used. When the end credits rolled, he took down the name of the doctor, Lafargue, and the name of the clinic where he worked.

Alex thought about the photograph on his identity card, about the mercenary hospitality of his friend the legionnaire, about the money hidden in the attic of his new abode… Slowly but surely, everything was coming together!

The guy on the tube had claimed that a nose job was a perfectly benign operation, just like the excision of fatty tissues on certain parts of the face. A wrinkle? No problem: the scalpel could wipe it away like an eraser.

Alex rushed to the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. He fingered his face, the lump on his nose, the cheeks that were too chubby, the double chin…

It was a cinch! The doctor had said two weeks—just two weeks to redesign a face! You simply wipe away the old one and replace it with a new. But no, nothing was ever that simple. He would have to convince the surgeon to work on him—and Alex was a criminal wanted by the police. How could he find a lever powerful enough to make the man keep quiet—to make him carry through the operation successfully and then let him go without tipping off the authorities? Did this Lafargue perhaps have kids or a wife?

Alex read and re-read what he had written down on a piece of paper: the name of the doctor and the particulars of the hospital where he worked. The more he thought about his idea, the more brilliant it seemed. His dependence on the legionnaire would significantly diminish once his appearance was altered, for the police would then be looking for a phantom, an Alex Barny that didn’t exist, and getting out of the country would be far easier to arrange.

He did not sleep a wink that night. The next day he got up at the crack of dawn, washed rapidly, trimmed his own hair, and meticulously ironed the suit and shirt that he had brought from the farmhouse. The Citroën was waiting in the garage…

Mygale was a delight. His visits grew longer. He brought you the newspapers, and he often took his meals with you. The cellar was insufferably hot—it was August—but he had installed a refrigerator, which he restocked every day with fruit juice. In addition to the shawl, your wardrobe now included a light dressing gown and a pair of mules.

In the fall, Mygale began giving you the injections. He came down to see you, syringe in hand. At his direction, you lay down on the sofa and bared your buttocks. The needle popped promptly into your flesh. You had seen the translucent pink-tinged liquid in the barrel of the syringe, and now it was inside you.

Mygale was very gentle and tried hard not to hurt you, but the liquid itself caused you pain once it was injected. Then, as it dispersed in your body, the pain wore off.

You did not question Mygale about this treatment. You were completely taken up by your drawing and your piano; the intense creative activity sated you. What did it matter about the shots? Mygale was so sweet.

You were making rapid strides with your music. Mygale rummaged devotedly for hours in music shops for scores. Manuals on painting and art books showing exemplary works were piling up in the cellar.

One day you let slip the sinister nickname you had given him. It was at the end of a meal eaten together. The champagne had gone to your head. Blushing, stuttering, you had admitted your error—uttering the words “my fault”—and he had smiled indulgently.

The injections continued, regular as clockwork, But they were no more than a mildly disagreeable interruption in your life of leisure.

For your twenty-second birthday Mygale moved more furniture into the cellar. The spotlight was replaced by soft-light lamps with shades. The sofa was joined by armchairs, a low table, and poufs. A thick carpet was laid across the floor.

Quite some time earlier, Mygale had set up a folding shower stall in a corner of the cellar. A field washstand completed these arrangements, along with a commode. Mygale even thought to curtain off this toilet area out of consideration for your modesty. You tried on the bathrobe and pulled a face at the color of the bath towels. These Mygale then changed.

Cooped up in the confines of the cellar, you dreamed of space, of wind. You painted trompe-l’oeil windows on the walls. On one side a mountain landscape had appeared, flooded with sunlight and the sparkling white of eternal snows. A halogen lamp directed at the peaks shed a blinding clarity over this artificial outlet onto the outside world. On the other side of your cell, you had covered the cement with a blue rough-cast representation of foaming waves. Deep in the background were the orange-red hues of a magnificent flaming sunset that was your pride and joy.

In addition to the shots, Mygale had you swallow a host of other drugs: multicolored capsules, tasteless lozenges, vials of liquid to be diluted in water…The labels had always been removed from the packaging. Mygale wanted to know whether this worried you. You shrugged and replied that you trusted him. Mygale stroked your cheek. At this you grasped his hand and placed a kiss in the middle of his palm. Mygale flinched, and just for a moment you thought he was going to hit you again, but then his expression softened, and he left his hand in yours. You turned away so that he would not see the tears of joy welling at the corners of your eyes.

You had grown pale from living so long out of the daylight. But then Mygale brought in a bench and a sunlamp, and you began sunbathing. You were delighted to see your body getting so beautifully brown, and you soon showed off a spectacular allover tan to your friend; how happy you were when he intimated that he shared your satisfaction with this transformation!

Days, weeks, months went by, seemingly monotonous, yet actually enriched for you by many and intense pleasures; the joy you felt at the piano or the easel was profoundly fulfilling.

You had lost every trace of sexual desire. With considerable embarrassment you had asked Mygale about this. He acknowledged that your food contained substances intended to have this effect. It was simply, said Mygale, so that you would not be tormented, considering that you never saw anyone but him. You said yes, you quite understood. And he promised you that soon, when you started going out, and when the additives were removed from your diet, you would once again feel desire.

In the night, alone in your cellar, you would sometimes vainly rub your limp penis; but the bitterness you felt dissipated at the thought that you were soon going to “go out.” Mygale had promised you, so you didn’t have to worry…

4

Alex drove cautiously to Paris, taking great care not to break any traffic rules. He had even thought of taking the bus and the metro, but he had rejected this idea for one good reason: Lafargue would surely have a car, and he would not be able to tail him.

He parked opposite the hospital entrance. It was very early. Alex was well aware that the doctor was unlikely to report to his office at the break of dawn, but he needed to inspect the area ahead of time, to get a feel for the place. On a wall alongside the gates was a large board listing the specialized services offered by the hospital and naming the physicians in charge of each. Sure enough, Lafargue’s name was clearly displayed.

Alex strolled up and down the street, holding tightly onto the butt of the dead cop’s Colt in his jacket pocket. After a while he went and sat at a café terrace with a good view of the hospital’s staff entrance.

Finally, about ten o’clock, a car stopped at the traffic light a few yards from where Alex was stationed: a red Mercedes driven by a chauffeur. Alex immediately recognized Lafargue, who was sitting in the back reading a newspaper.

The Mercedes waited for the light to change, then took the drive that led to the hospital’s parking lot. Alex saw Lafargue get out. The chauffeur stayed in the car for a while, but it was a very hot day, and before long he made his way over to the café and, like Alex, sat on the terrace.

Roger ordered a draft beer. His boss had an important operation scheduled, but would be leaving right after for a meeting at his private clinic in Boulogne.

The license plate of Lafargue’s car bore the number 78, designating the department of Yvelines. Alex knew the number of every French department by heart; during his lonely sojourn in the farmhouse he had broken the monotony by memorizing them, reciting the list in numerical order, and setting himself posers: if he read in the newspaper that an eighty-year-old man had remarried, he would say to himself, “Eighty? That’s the department of the Somme.”

The chauffeur did not seem to be in any hurry. With his elbows on the café table, he was doing a crossword, his attention completely focused on the grid of the puzzle. Alex paid his check and went into a post office next door to the hospital. He could no longer keep an eye on the hospital gate, but it would be strikingly bad luck, he thought, if the doc were to up and leave in the next fifteen minutes or so.

He thumbed through a phone book in search of Lafargues. Lafargue is a common name, and there were pages of them. But not so many without an “s” on the end and with just one “f.” And Lafargues who were doctors were, of course, even rarer. In department 78 there were just three. One lived in Saint-Germain, another at Plaisir, and the third in Le Vésinet. The right Dr. Lafargue had to be one of them. Alex noted down all three addresses.

Back at the café, he made sure that the chauffeur was still there. When noon approached, the waiter started setting up the tables for lunch. He appeared to know the chauffeur well, because he asked him if he would be eating lunch today.

Roger replied in the negative: the boss had to get to Boulogne as soon as possible, and they would leave the moment he got out of the operating room.

Sure enough, the surgeon soon appeared. He got into the Mercedes, and the chauffeur slid behind the wheel. Alex followed their car. They left the center of Paris and made for Boulogne. Tailing them was not difficult, for Alex knew where they were headed.

Roger parked in front of a private clinic and was soon back to his crossword. Mistrustful of his memory, Alex wrote down the name of the street on a piece of paper. It was a long wait. He paced up and down at a nearby intersection, trying not to draw attention to himself. Then he sat down in a little park and went on waiting without ever taking his eye off the Mercedes. He had left his own car door unlocked so he could start up as quickly as possible should the doctor suddenly appear.

The surgery planning meeting lasted just over an hour. Richard barely unclenched his teeth the whole time. He was sickly pale and hollow-cheeked. Since Eve’s session with Varneroy, he had been on automatic pilot.

Alex had gone into a café for a fresh supply of cigarettes when Roger, spotting Lafargue in the clinic lobby, got out and opened the rear door of the Mercedes. Alex returned to the Citroën CX and followed once more, hanging back a good distance. Once he perceived that they were clearly headed for Le Vésinet, he peeled off. There was no point in risking being spotted when he had Lafargue’s address in his pocket.

He went over there later on. Lafargue’s place was impressive, though the bounding wall hindered any clear view of its façade. Alex inspected the neighboring houses. The street was deserted. It was not a good idea to stay too long. He noticed how many windows were shuttered. Le Vésinet had been abandoned for August. It was four o’clock, and Alex hesitated. He intended to investigate the surgeon’s house that same night, but didn’t know what to do in the meantime. For lack of a better plan, he decided to talk a walk in the forest of Saint-Germain, which was very close.

He returned to Le Vésinet around nine and parked the CX a good way away from Lafargue’s street. Night was beginning to fall, but you could still see. He climbed a wall surrounding a nearby house to get a look into Lafargue’s grounds. Sitting astride the top of the wall, he was pretty well camouflaged by the dense foliage of an abundantly spreading chestnut tree. From far off he was invisible, and if anyone should happen to come walking down the street he could retreat even farther in among the branches.

He took in the lawn, the pond, the trees, the swimming pool. Lafargue was dining al fresco, in company with a woman. Alex smiled. This was a good beginning. Were there perhaps children? Not likely, for they would be eating with their parents. They could be away on vacation, of course. Or they might be toddlers and already in bed. But Lafargue was about fifty, so his children, if he had any, should at least be adolescents. There was no chance of them being in bed at ten o’clock on a summer evening. What was more, no lights could be seen in the house, either on the ground floor or upstairs. A garden lamp gave off a rather feeble light in the vicinity of the table at which the couple were sitting.

Satisfied, Alex got off his perch and dropped to the sidewalk. He grimaced, for his still tender thigh could not yet take such shocks. He returned to the CX to wait for full darkness. He was nervous, and he began chain-smoking. At ten-thirty, he made his way back to the Lafargue place. The street was as empty as before. A car horn hooted in the distance.

He followed the bounding wall along till, at the end of the property, he came upon a large wooden crate containing spades, rakes, and other tools belonging to the municipal roadworkers. He climbed up on it, hauled himself onto the top of the wall, got his balance, and, judging the distance, jumped down into the grounds. Crouching in a clump of trees, he waited; if there was a dog, it wouldn’t take long to make its presence felt. No bark came. Alex appraised the shrubs near him, then proceeded along the wall. He was looking for reliable footholds susceptible of helping him back up over the wall on his way out. Near the pond was a mock grotto made of concrete that served as nighttime shelter for the swans. It was built up against the wall and was three or four feet tall. Alex smiled and checked it out: it would be child’s play to go this way over the wall back into the street outside. Reassured, he went farther into the grounds, passing the swimming pool. Lafargue and his companion had gone inside, and the immediate surroundings of the house were deserted. Strips of light filtered through closed shutters on the second floor.

Soft music came from the windows. A piano. It was not a recording, because the playing kept stopping and going back. On the other end of the house were more lighted windows. Alex melted into the wall, seeking to disappear in the ivy that covered the front of the building. Lafargue was leaning on one of the balustrades on the second floor, looking at the sky. Alex held his breath. Several minutes passed like this, until the doctor at last closed the window.

Alex dithered for a long time: should he chance entering the house or not? Yes, he decided, because he needed to reconnoiter, at least a little, so as to know where he was treading when he came back to kidnap the surgeon’s wife.

The house was large, and light was coming from every upstairs window. Lafargue must sleep in a separate room from his wife. That did not surprise Alex: everyone knew that bourgeois married couples don’t always sleep in the same bed!

Clutching the Colt, he climbed the steps and turned the front-door knob. There was no resistance; very gently, he pushed the door inward.

He took one step. There was a large room to his left and another to his right; before him was a staircase. The woman’s bedroom was upstairs to the right.

A bourgeois woman like her didn’t get up early. The bitch would lie in bed every morning. All Alex would have to do was watch for Lafargue to leave and then run up and take her by surprise while she was still asleep.

He closed the door silently behind him, darted just as silently across the grass, scrambled up onto the grotto, and tumbled over the wall. It was perfect. But no! There was a hitch. Okay, the lackey of a chauffeur would leave with his boss. But what if there was a maid? It would be a disaster if he ran into some old biddy there to do the housework!

Alex reached the Paris ring road, still taking care to obey all the rules of the road. It was midnight by the time he got back to his little house in Livry-Gargan.

Early the next morning, he returned to Le Vésinet. On tenterhooks, he watched Lafargue’s house, quite convinced an extra domestic would soon arrive. He had to snatch Lafargue’s wife without witnesses. The surgeon would then surely capitulate when confronted by the choice: give me a new face or I’ll kill your wife. But if someone happened to see the abduction, a domestic of one sort or another, a gardener, anybody at all, they would immediately call the cops, and Alex’s great scheme would be a dead letter.

Alex was lucky. Lafargue did employ a maid. But Lise had gone on vacation two days earlier. Of the five weeks the doctor allowed her in the year, she took three in the summer, when she went to her sister’s in the Morvan, and the rest during the winter.

So the whole morning went by, and still no one had shown up at the Lafargue place. Somewhat reassured, Alex raced back to Paris. It occurred to him that perhaps Lafargue did not go to work every day. If he took a day off during the week, Alex needed to know it right away. He decided he could ask the people in Lafargue’s office at the hospital about this; it would be easy to make up some rigmarole.

The chauffeur was waiting for his boss, as he did every day, on the café terrace across the street from the hospital. Alex, who was dying of thirst, had ordered a draft beer at the bar. As he brought it eagerly to his lips, he saw Roger leap to his feet. Lafargue was standing in the parking lot hailing his driver. The two men conferred briefly, then Roger gave the car keys to the surgeon and walked off muttering to himself in the direction of the nearby metro station. Alex was already at the wheel of his Citroën CX.

Lafargue drove like a man possessed. He did not head toward Boulogne. Alex, in great alarm, saw him veer off toward the ring road and the highway.

The prospect of a long-distance tail did not thrill Alex in the least. Without taking his eyes off Lafargue’s car, he mulled things over…Lafargue has kids, he thought. That was it: they must be on vacation, and he has just received some kind of bad news. Maybe one of them has been taken ill, and he has to go and see them? Otherwise, why should he have left work earlier than usual and sent his flunky home? Could the bastard have a mistress? Yes, more than likely. But would he just suddenly go off and see her in the middle of the day? This was crazy!

Lafargue continued at top speed, weaving between the other cars. Alex kept up with him, sweating with fear at the thought of a spot check by the national security police at a toll booth. But before long the Mercedes was off the turnpike and barreling along a winding country road without significantly slowing down. Alex was almost ready to give up the chase, feeling sure he was about to be spotted. But Lafargue did not so much as glance in his rearview mirror. Viviane was having another of her crises, and, true to his word, the psychiatrist had telephoned. Richard was fully aware of how this visit to his daughter—the second in a single week—was going to affect him. He also knew that this evening, back at Le Vésinet, he would not ask Eve to call Varneroy. After what had happened the last time, that was now impossible. But how, then, was he going to find consolation?

The Mercedes pulled up at the entrance to a château. A discreet sign indicated that it was a mental home. Alex scratched his head in perplexity.

Richard went straight up to Viviane’s room without waiting for the doctor. There the same sight as before awaited him: his daughter in a state of wild agitation, stamping her feet, trying to injure herself. He did not enter the room, but remained with his face pressed against the observation window, sobbing quietly. The psychiatrist, who had been informed of his arrival, came up to find him, then helped him back down to the ground floor, where the two men went into an office for privacy.

“I’ll not come back here again. It’s too hard. I just can’t bear it, you understand.”

“I understand perfectly.”

“Does she need anything? Bedclothes? Anything at all?”

“What could she possibly need? You must pull yourself together, Dr. Lafargue. Your daughter is never going to get out of this. Please don’t think me insensitive. You have to face facts. She is going to remain in a vegetative state, interrupted from time to time by crises of the type you have just witnessed. We can give her tranquilizers, knock her out with neuroleptics. But basically we have no serious options, as you well know. Psychiatry is not like surgery. We can’t change appearances. We don’t have the precision ‘therapeutic’ tools that you people have.”

Richard was calming down, recovering his poise little by little and reassuming a distant attitude.

“Yes, yes, I’m sure you’re right.”

“I would like—I want to get your agreement—please give me permission not to telephone you every time Viviane—”

“I agree. Don’t call anymore.”

Richard rose, took his leave of the psychiatrist, and returned to his car. Alex watched him emerge from the château. But this time he didn’t start his own car. The odds were overwhelming that Lafargue was on his way back to his house in Le Vésinet, or to Boulogne, or to the hospital.

Alex went to get lunch in the village. The square was clogged—a traveling fair was setting up its rides. He wondered who it could be living in that rathole with all the crazy people. If it was a kid of Lafargue’s, he must love him a lot to quit work like that and race off to see him.

Filled with a sudden resolve, Alex pushed away a plate still half-covered with greasy fries and asked for his check. He went and bought a large bouquet of flowers and a box of candy, and headed back to the nuthouse.

The receptionist greeted him in the entrance hall.

“Are you here to visit a patient?”

“Hmm, yes.”

“What name, please?”

“Lafargue.”

“Lafargue!”

The receptionist seemed so amazed that Alex felt sure he had blundered. He began to think that Lafargue must have a psychiatric nurse for a lover.

“But…you have never been here before to see Viviane, have you?”

“No, it’s the first time. I’m her cousin.”

The receptionist studied Alex in surprise for a moment, hesitating.

“You won’t be able to see Viviane today. She isn’t well. Didn’t Dr. Lafargue tell you?”

“No. I was supposed to—my visit was planned a while ago, you see…”

“I really don’t understand this. Viviane’s father was here less than an hour ago.”

“He had no way of reaching me: I’ve been on the road since this morning.”

The receptionist nodded and shrugged her shoulders. She took the flowers and candy and put them on her desk.

“I’ll give her all these later. Today there’s really no point. Follow me, please.”

They took the elevator. Alex padded behind the woman, his arms dangling. At the door to Viviane’s room, the receptionist motioned Alex to look through the observation window. He started at the sight of Viviane crumpled in one corner of the room, staring maliciously at the door.

“I can’t let you go in today. I hope you understand.”

Alex understood. His palms were moist, and he felt nauseous. He kept on looking at the madwoman: he had the feeling he had seen her somewhere before. But that was obviously impossible.

He left the asylum as quickly as he could. Even if Lafargue simply adored this madwoman, Alex could never kidnap her. He might just as well turn himself in to the cops right away! In any case, how could he pull it off? He would have to take the château by siege! How would he even get into her cell? No, it was Lafargue’s wife who would have to be the hostage.

He drove carefully back to the Paris area, and it was already late by the time he reached his hideaway at Livry-Gargan.

The next morning, he resumed his vigil outside the Lafargue place. He was tense, anxious—but not really afraid. All night long he had mulled over his plan, imagining the results of the transformation of his face.

Roger arrived at eight o’clock, alone, on foot, his sports paper tucked under his arm. Alex was parked some fifty yards from the front gate. He knew he would have to wait some more; Lafargue usually aimed to get to the hospital by ten.

About nine-thirty, the Mercedes pulled up to the gate. Roger got out to open it, drove through, then stopped once more to slam it shut. Alex sighed with relief to see Lafargue leaving.

The ideal thing would be to take the bitch by surprise while she was still asleep. There was no time to lose. Alex had seen no other household help over the last few days, but you could never be sure. He started the car and drew up just opposite the Lafargue place. Turning the handle of the gate, he strode through as naturally as you please and set off across the grounds.

He approached the house with one hand in his pocket clasping the butt of the Colt. The shutters of the upstairs rooms on the right were closed, and Alex was surprised to notice for the first time that they were fastened from the outside, as though the windows had been closed up permanently. He was sure, all the same, that he had seen lights on and heard a piano playing behind those shutters.

Alex shrugged and continued reconnoitering. Before long, he had circled the whole place and found himself at the foot of the front steps. He drew a deep breath before opening the front door. The ground floor was just as he had glimpsed it the night before: the large drawing room, the library-office and, between them, the staircase to the next floor. He climbed the stairs, his breath bated and the Colt now out of his pocket.

Someone was humming on the far side of a bolted door—bolted, indeed, three times over. Incredulous, Alex’s first thought was that the surgeon must be mad: why would he lock his wife up like this? But then perhaps she really was a piece of work. Perhaps he was right not to trust her. Ever so carefully, Alex slid back the top bolt. The woman was still humming to herself. The second bolt. Then the third. What if the door was locked with a key, too? His heart beat faster as he turned the knob of the last bolt. But the door slowly opened, with no squeaking of hinges.

The bitch was sitting at a dressing table making herself up. Alex pressed himself against the wall so as not to appear in her mirror. Her back was to him; she was absorbed in her makeup. She was beautiful, her waist was narrow, her buttocks—squashed onto the stool—were muscular. Alex leaned down and laid his Colt on the carpet, then he was upon her, his fist coming down sharply on the exposed nape of her neck.

The blow was an expert one, carefully gauged. In Meaux, at the nightclub where he had worked as a bouncer, mayhem had been frequent. He had learned how to deal swiftly with troublemakers—how to deliver such a sharp blow to the skull that layabouts needed only dragging out and dumping on the sidewalk.

The woman lay inert on the carpet. Alex was trembling. He felt her pulse and got an urge to caress her, but it was hardly the moment for that. He went back downstairs. At the bar he found scotch, grabbed the bottle, and took a long swig.

Leaving the house, he opened the front gates wide and, restraining an impulse to run, went to the Citroën CX and started it up. He drove into the grounds and pulled up at the house, just at the foot of the front steps. Then he ran up to the bedroom. She was still motionless. He bound her carefully with cord brought from the trunk of the CX and gagged her with adhesive tape. Then he wrapped her in a bedspread.

Taking her in his arms, he carried her downstairs and closed her in the trunk. Once more he drank from the whisky bottle, emptying it and tossing it onto the ground. He climbed into the driver’s seat and started the car. Out on the road, an elderly couple were walking a dog, but they paid no attention to Alex.

He made for Paris, crossing the city from west to east on his way back to Livry-Gargan. He stared into the rearview mirror, but no one was following.

Back at his house, he opened the trunk and carried Madame Lafargue, still wrapped in the bedspread, down to the cellar. To be doubly sure, he tied the cord to a motorcycle antitheft device, a thick chain covered in plastic. This he padlocked to a radiator pipe.

He put out the light and left the cellar, returning a little later with a saucepan full of cold water, which he threw over the young woman’s head. She began to wriggle, but her movements were restricted by the cord. She moaned, being unable to cry out. Alex grinned in the darkness. She had never seen his face and would not be able to describe him when he let her go. If he ever let her go…The surgeon, though, would see him, see his face. He might even make an Identi-Kit picture of him once the operation was done. Lafargue would be able to describe Alex’s new face. The face of the self-same Alex who had killed a cop—and kidnapped Lafargue’s own wife! Never mind, thought Alex, the main thing for now is to get this guy to operate on me.

The rest could wait till later. Later, he would certainly have to kill Lafargue and his wife.

He went back up to his bedroom, delighted with the success of the first part of his plan. He would wait till evening, for Lafargue’s return to Le Vésinet, and his shock at finding the bitch gone; then he would pay a call on the surgeon and tell him what the deal was. This was hardball! They were all going to see, all those shits, just what sort of stuff Alex was made of!

He poured himself a glass of wine, smacking his lips after drinking. As for that bitch, he was going to do her in more ways than one. Why not? Business should be mixed with pleasure.

But take it slow. First, take care of Lafargue. He could see about the sex stuff later.