Tarantula

1

This is horrible! It is all starting again. You don’t understand it—or, rather, you are afraid you understand it all too well. This time, Mygale is going to kill you!

For three days he didn’t say a word to you. He brought your meals up to your room, but wouldn’t even look at you. When he had burst into the studio apartment and put an end to the whipping from the crazed Varneroy, you had been dumbfounded. He was cracking, obviously: never before had he let pity show. Back at Le Vésinet, he had been tender, attentive to your pain. He had put ointment on your wounds, and in amazement you had seen his eyes brimming with tears.

This morning you had heard him leave for the hospital. Then he had come back, leaped at you, and knocked you down. And here you are, a prisoner once more, back in the cellar chained up in the dark.

Hell is about to return, just like four years ago, after he caught you in the forest.

He is going to kill you. Mygale has gone mad, far madder than before. Viviane has had another crisis. He has been to see her in Normandy, and he can’t stand it. Pimping you no longer works. What will he think up?

He had changed so much over these last few months. He was far less mean. True, he would still scream into his damned intercom to shake you up, but…

Just as well to die, anyway. You never had the courage to kill yourself. He has eradicated every vestige of revolt in you. Vincent has become his creature. Eve has become his creature. You are nothing, nothing at all.

You used to dream often of escape. But where would you go, the state you were in? Back to your mother, your friends? Alex? Who would even recognize you? Mygale has succeeded: he has bound you to him forever.

You hope that the end will be quick. Let him finish you off, but stop toying with you!

Mygale has tied the rope solidly, and you can’t move. The thing irritates your breasts and binds them tight. They hurt.

Your breasts…

Yes, your breasts. He had worked so hard getting them to sprout. It was not long after the first injections that they had begun to grow. You paid no attention at first, attributing the appearance of masses of fatty tissue to the indolent life you were leading. But at each of his visits Mygale would palpate your chest and nod. The implication was unavoidable. Horrified, you watched your chest swelling, your breasts taking form. Day after day you gauged the growth of your mammaries and clutched your despairingly flaccid penis. You wept over this often. Mygale would reassure you. Everything was going fine. Did you need anything? What could he get you that you did not already have? He was just so nice, so considerate.

After a time, you stopped weeping. To forget, you painted or spent long hours at the piano. Nothing changed. Mygale visited you more and more frequently. It was ridiculous. You had known each other for two years; he had destroyed all shame in you: at the beginning of your imprisonment, you used to relieve yourself in front of him. But now, you would hide your breasts from him. You were continually pulling your dressing gown closed in front. Mygale had had you try on a bra. It served no good purpose, because your tits were hard and firm. But you felt better with it: in bra and blouse you were far more at ease.

As earlier with the chains, the cellar, or the injections, you gradually got used to your new body; in the end, it felt perfectly familiar. And, after all, what good did thinking do?

There was your hair, too. In the early days, Mygale used to cut it. Then he let it grow. Whether or not because of the shots, the capsules, and the vials, it became fluffier. Mygale gave you shampoos, even a blow-dryer. You took pleasure in taking care of it. You tried various styles, a chignon, a ponytail, then you adopted curls and stuck with them.

He is going to kill you. It is hot in the cellar; the old thirst is coming back. Not long ago, he hosed you down with icy water, but you weren’t allowed to drink.

You are waiting for death. Nothing matters anymore. You remember high school, the village, the girls—yes, the girls. And your pal Alex. You will never see any of them again; you will never see anything again. You had grown used to solitude; your only company was Mygale. At times you felt waves of nostalgia, attacks of depression. He gave you tranquilizers, swamped you with presents…The bastard! All that, and you end up like this!

What is he waiting for? Is he devising refinements of cruelty, planning the mise-en-scène of your demise? Will he kill you with his own hands or hand you over to some Varneroy?

No! The fact is he can no longer stand anyone else touching you, even approaching you. You could see that by the way he struck that nutty Varneroy. He had really been hurting you with his whip.

Could it be your own fault? You had been mocking him recently. No sooner did he enter your room, if you were at the piano, than you would play him “The Man I Love,” a tune you knew he loathed. Or else—and this was more perverse—you would be outrageously provocative. He has lived alone for many years. Did he once have a mistress? No—he is incapable of love.

You noticed how uncomfortable he was when he saw you naked. You were certain he wanted you, but was repelled by the idea of touching you—which was, of course, understandable enough. Still, he desired you. You were always walking around naked in your room. Once, you pivoted round to face him on your piano stool, spread your thighs, and opened your vulva in front of him. You saw his Adam’s apple shift; you saw him redden. That was what made him even more furious: to want you, after everything he had done to you; to want you, despite what you were!

How long is he going to let you rot in this cellar? The first time, after the chase in the forest, he had left you for eight days there in the darkness. Eight days! He had admitted it to you later.

If only you had not toyed with his desires, perhaps he would not be taking his revenge on you like this now?

And yet, it is silly to think about it like that: the problem is Viviane—Viviane, crazy as a cuckoo for the last four years. The more the time goes by, the more obvious it is that she is incurable. And he just can’t accept that. He just can’t admit that that wreck is his own daughter. How old is she now? She was sixteen, so now she’s twenty. And you? You were twenty, and now you’re twenty-four…

It’s not fair, to die at twenty-four. Die? You’ve been dead for two years already! Vincent died two years ago. What does it matter about the ghost he left behind?

Just a ghost—but a ghost that can still feel pain, infinite pain. True, you don’t want him to go on pawing you, and pawing is the word—you have had a bellyful of his tricks, his sick manipulations. But now you are going to suffer more—God knows what he is capable of thinking up. He is an expert when it comes to torture; he has already proved that to you.

You are trembling. You want to smoke. You miss the opium: yesterday he gave you some, and you took it. That moment, always in the evening, when he comes to see you and fills the pipe for you, is one of your greatest delights. The first time, you were nauseated, you threw up. But he persisted. It was the day you could no longer deny the evidence of your eyes: your breasts were getting larger! He caught you by surprise in your cellar, weeping. To console you, he offered you a new record. But you showed him your breasts: your throat was tight; you could not utter a word. He left and came back a few minutes later with the necessaries: the pipe and the greasy little balls. A poisoned gift. Mygale is a spider with more poisons than one. You let yourself be talked into it, and thereafter it was you who asked for the drug if he ever forgot the daily ritual. The disgust for opium you felt in the first days is long gone. One day, after smoking, you fell asleep in his arms. You exhaled the last puffs from the pipe; he sat close up against you on the sofa. Mechanically, he caressed your cheek, stroking the smooth skin. Unwittingly, you had helped him transform you, for your beard had never developed. As kids, you and Alex had watched eagerly for the first whiskers to appear, the first down on the upper lip. It was not long before Alex had grown a moustache, sparse at first but soon quite thick. As for you, not a hair manifested itself. For Mygale, this was simply one less thing to worry about. Of course—and he told you this himself—it wouldn’t have made any difference: the estrogen injections would have made you smooth-cheeked, anyway. Still, you hated yourself for corresponding so well to his intent, with your beautiful girlish face, as Alex used to say once upon a time…

As for your delicate, finely jointed body, it had driven Mygale wild. He had asked you, one evening, if you were homosexual too. You did not understand this “too.” No, you were not queer. The temptation might have entered your mind now and then, but no, there had never really been anything like that. And Mygale was not that way, as you had suspected at first. You thought of the time he had approached you, to feel you. You had mistaken his examination for a caress. You were still chained up, remember, it was right at the beginning. Timidly, you had reached out to touch him. And he had struck you!

You had been shattered. Why was he holding you captive if not to put you to use as a sexual plaything? That was the only explanation you had been able to find for the treatment he had meted out to you. He had to be a vile homosexual maniac in need of a tame boy-toy. This thought filled you with rage at first, but then you told yourself: to hell with it, I’ll play the game, let him do what he wants to me. But one day I’ll get away, and I’ll come back with Alex, and we’ll blow his head off!

But it was a different game you ended up playing, drawn in gradually, unknowingly. A board game whose rules were set by Mygale: a game of snakes and ladders you were bound to lose. One square for torture, another for a gift; one square for injections, another for the piano. One square for Vincent—another for Eve!

Lafargue had had an exhausting afternoon, operating for hours on a child with a badly burned face. The skin of the neck had retracted, obliging him to perform a laborious series of small grafts.

He dismissed Roger upon leaving the hospital and returned alone to Le Vésinet, stopping on the way at a florist and having him put together a magnificent bouquet.

When he saw the door to Eve’s upstairs rooms unbolted and wide open, he dropped his flowers and flew up the stairs in great alarm. The piano stool had been knocked over and a vase broken. A dress and underclothes were strewn across the floor. The bedspread was nowhere to be seen. A pair of high-heeled shoes, one half-mangled, lay forlornly by the bed.

Richard recalled his mild surprise at discovering the gate to the property open, though Roger had closed it behind them that morning. Could a delivery person have left it like that? Lise would certainly have placed some orders before leaving on her vacation. But what of Eve’s disappearance? Had she run off? Had she talked some delivery man, when he found himself in an empty house, into unbolting her door?

Richard cast about vainly for answers, his panic mounting. Why had she never put on the clothes she had obviously laid out in readiness on the bed? Why was the bedspread missing? No, the delivery-man hypothesis was clearly nonsense. Admittedly, something of the sort had happened a year earlier—and it had happened, indeed, while Lise was off. By chance, Richard had got home just in time to overhear Eve, from behind her barred door, begging a delivery man to open it for her. He had been able to reassure the man that everything was as it should be, that his wife was severely depressed, hence the bolts on the door.

Whatever doubts Roger and Lise might have formed had likewise been dispelled by the invoking of Eve’s supposed “mental illness.” Besides, Richard was affectionate toward the young woman, and over the last year had allowed her out more and more often. On occasion, she even took dinner downstairs. The madwoman spent her days playing the piano and painting, and Lise did the housework in her rooms without thinking twice about it. In fact, everything seemed normal. Eve was continually showered with gifts. One day, Lise had lifted the white cloth covering Eve’s easel, and the sight of Richard portrayed as a transvestite sitting at the bar of a night club merely strengthened her belief that all was decidedly not quite right with her mistress’s head. Monsieur Lafargue was more than decent to put up with her the way he did. Most people would have had her put away. Of course, it wouldn’t look so good, would it, for a big noise like Professor Lafargue to have a wife in the loony bin. Especially when his daughter was already there…

Richard let himself fall back onto the bed. Clutching Eve’s dress, he shook his head in desperation.

The telephone rang. He dashed downstairs and grabbed the receiver.

“Lafargue?” The voice was unfamiliar. “I’ve got your wife.”

“How much do you want? Tell me right now. I’ll pay it.” Lafargue was shouting, but his voice cracked.

“Take it easy. That’s not it. I don’t give a shit about money. At least, we’ll see if you can give me some money, too.”

“For God’s sake, tell me! Is she alive?”

“Of course she is.”

“Don’t you hurt her!”

“Don’t worry. I won’t mess her up.”

“Well, then?”

“I have to see you. Have a little chat.”

Alex told Lafargue to meet him at ten o’clock that night in front of the Opéra Drugstore.

“How will I recognize you?”

“Forget about it. Believe me, I know you. Come on your own. No funny business, either, or she’ll know about it, I guarantee you that.”

Richard agreed. His caller had already hung up.

His reaction echoed Alex’s just a few hours before: he reached for a bottle of scotch and took a long slug straight from it. Then Richard went to the cellar to make sure that nothing had been disturbed down there. The doors were all locked, so all was well from that angle.

Who was this guy? A criminal, obviously. But he wasn’t interested in a ransom, or not for now, anyway. He wanted something else, but what could it be?

The man had said nothing about Eve. In the early days of Vincent’s captivity, Richard had been at pains to conceal every trace of his presence. He had even laid off the predecessors of Lise and Roger, these two having been taken on only once the situation with Eve was somewhat “normalized.” At first, he had been afraid lest the police pick up his trail. That Vincent’s parents had not given up hope in the investigation he knew from the local papers. True, everything had gone smoothly: he had cornered Vincent in the middle of the night and in the middle of nowhere, and he had studiously covered his tracks. But one could never be quite sure. He had, after all, lodged a complaint concerning the attack on Viviane, and the possibility of a connection being made through some fortuitous circumstance could not be dismissed.

But then time had passed: six months, a year, soon two years—and now it was four years. The matter was surely dead and buried.

Besides, had this fellow known who Eve was, he would not have talked as he had, not have said “your wife.” He thought he and Eve were married. On those occasions when Lafargue went out in public with Eve, people tended to assume that he had taken a young lover. For the last four years he had had no contact at all with his old friends, who attributed this sudden withdrawal to Viviane’s collapse into insanity. Poor Richard, they thought, this second blow was too much: first his wife dies in that plane crash ten years ago, then his daughter ends up in the mental hospital.

The only people Lafargue allowed to see Eve were acquaintances or colleagues from work who saw nothing odd about his appearing now and again at a social function with a woman on his arm. The admiring murmurs elicited on these rare occasions by his “mistress” nevertheless filled Lafargue with a certain, as it were, professional pride.

So this thug could know nothing at all about Vincent. That much was obvious. But then what did he want?

Lafargue was early for the rendezvous with Alex. He paced up and down the sidewalk, jostled by the customers going in and out of the drugstore. He glanced at his watch every twenty seconds or so. At last, Alex came up to him, having first made sure that the surgeon was really on his own.

Richard appraised Alex’s face: it was square and brutish.

“Did you come in your car?”

Richard pointed to the Mercedes, which was parked nearby.

“Let’s go.”

Alex signaled Richard to get behind the wheel and start the engine. He had taken his Colt from his pocket and placed it in his lap. Richard looked at the guy out of the corner of his eye, hoping to detect some weak spot from his demeanor. To begin with, Alex said nothing but “Straight ahead,” “Turn left,” and “Turn right.” The Mercedes left the Opéra district behind and took a meandering route through Paris, from Place de la Concorde to the Seine embankment and then from Place de la Bastille to Place Gambetta. Alex’s eyes were fastened on the rearview mirror, and he didn’t engage Richard in conversation until he was absolutely certain that Lafargue had not alerted the cops.

“You’re a surgeon, right?”

“Yes, I run the reconstructive surgery department at—”

“I know that. You have a clinic in Boulogne as well. Your daughter is in the crazy house in Normandy. You see, I know a lot about you. And your wife. She’s not in bad shape right now—she’s chained to a radiator in a cellar. You’d better listen good, or you’ll never see her again. I saw you the other day on the tube.”

“I gave an interview a month ago.”

“You were going on about how you fix people’s noses, how you can make old women’s wrinkled faces all smooth again, stuff like that.”

Richard understood now. He sighed. This jerk had no interest in Eve; all he was interested in was himself.

“I’m wanted by the police. I did a cop. I’m screwed, unless I get my mug changed. And you are going to change it for me. On the box, you said it didn’t take long. I’m on my own: there’s nobody in this thing with me. I’ve got nothing to lose. If you try and tell the cops, your wife is going to starve to death in that cellar. Don’t try to pull anything—I tell you I’ve got nothing to lose. I’ll take it out of her hide. If you get me busted, I’ll never tell the cops where I’ve put her, and she’ll die of hunger. Not a nice death, either.”

“All right. I agree.”

“Are you sure that—”

“Naturally, you must promise not to harm her.”

“You love her, don’t you?”

Richard’s voice was toneless. He heard himself answer “yes.”

“How do we do it? You take me into your hospital—no, I figure your private clinic would be the best.”

Richard’s hands were clamped to the steering wheel. Somehow he had to talk the guy into going to Le Vésinet. Plainly, he was no mental giant. The naïveté of his plan was proof enough of that. The idea that once under anesthesia he would be utterly at Richard’s mercy had not even crossed his mind! He was an imbecile who really thought that he could pull his scheme off simply because he was holding Eve captive. It was ridiculous! All the same, he had to agree to going to Le Vésinet. At the clinic, Lafargue’s hands would be tied, and the guy’s stupid plan might just succeed, because Richard would never, ever go to the police.

“Listen. We’ll need to save time. Any operation has to be planned way in advance. You have to be examined, as I’m sure you realize.”

“Don’t take me for a fool.”

“No, no, but if you come to the clinic you’ll be asked questions. Surgery has to be scheduled, there’s a procedure that has to be followed…”

“You mean you’re not the big boss?” Alex was taken aback.

“Of course I am. But, I mean, if you are wanted, you surely want to be seen by as few people as possible?”

“Yeah. So?”

“So let’s go to my home. I’ll show you what I can do, design a new nose for you. You also have a double chin, which we can eliminate—all that sort of thing.”

Alex was suspicious, but he went along. He told himself everything was going just fine. The doctor was obviously scared shitless about his woman.

Back at Le Vésinet, Lafargue motioned Alex to a comfortable chair. They were in his study. Richard went through one file of photographs after another until he found pictures of a man not unlike Alex in appearance. With a white marker he carefully erased the nose, then limned a new one in black. Alex watched fascinated. Lafargue moved on to the double chin. Then he rapidly produced a freehand sketch of Alex as he was now, full face and in profile, and another of the Alex that was to be.

“Great! Make me look like that and you won’t have to worry about your wife.”

Then Alex grabbed the first sketch and tore it up.

“You’d better not make an Identi-Kit portrait of me after the operation,” he said anxiously, “and give it to the cops.”

“Don’t be silly. The only thing I care about is getting Eve back.”

“That’s her name, Eve? Anyway, don’t get the idea I don’t have every angle covered.”

Lafargue had no illusions. This joker surely meant to kill him if ever the operation was performed. As for Eve…

“We have no time to lose, you understand. I must examine you before the operation can be done. Down in the cellar I have a small laboratory set up, so we can get started right away.”

Alex frowned.

“You mean here?”

“Well, yes.” Richard smiled. “I frequently work away from the hospital.”

They both stood up, and Richard led the way. The cellar was very large, and there were several doors. Lafargue opened one, switched on the light, and went in. Alex followed, his eyes widening at the sight of the long, fully equipped bench and the glass-fronted cabinet stuffed with surgical instruments. Colt in hand, he went slowly round the mini-operating room that Richard had set up. He stood in front of the table, examined the immense spotlight that presided over it, picked up an anesthesiologist’s mask, touched the carboys.

“What is all this?” he asked in astonishment.

“It’s my laboratory, of course.”

“You don’t operate on people down here, do you?” Alex gestured toward the bench and spotlight. He recognized much of the equipment from the medical television show.

“No, no. But, you know, we have to perform experiments. On animals and so on.”

Richard felt the sweat gathering at his brow, his heart beginning to pound, but strove to betray nothing of the fear that gripped him.

Alex nodded in bemusement. Of course, he told himself, everyone knew that doctors were always experimenting on monkeys and stuff like that.

“But then, what I think is, I won’t have to go to the clinic. You could just operate on me here, couldn’t you? You’ve got everything you need right here, don’t you?”

Lafargue’s hands were trembling. He thrust them into his pockets.

“Come on! You got a problem with that?”

“No, not really. I may require a few items.”

“How long will I have to stay in bed after the op?”

“Oh, not long at all. You are young and strong—and we are not talking about a particularly traumatizing procedure.”

“Can the bandages come off quickly?”

“Oh, no. They’ll have to stay on for about a week.”

Alex paced around the room, thinking it over, fingering the equipment.

“If you do it here, is it dangerous?”

Lafargue spread his arms: no, there was, as a matter of fact, no danger at all.

“You’ll be all on your own? No nurse?”

“Oh, there’s no need for that. I can handle everything. I just have to take my time.”

Alex burst out laughing and clapped the doctor heartily on the back.

“You know what we’ll do then? I’ll move in here, and you’ll do the job as soon as you can. What about tomorrow?”

“Yes, all right, tomorrow if you wish. But, while you are, um, convalescing, who will take care of Eve?”

“Don’t get hot and bothered. She’s in good hands.”

“But I thought you were alone?”

“Well, no, not exactly. Don’t bother about it—nobody is going to hurt her. You do the op tomorrow. We both stay here for a week. You can call your chauffeur and tell him not to come. We’ll go together and get the stuff you need. You’ll have to take time off from the hospital. Come on, let’s go.”

They went up to the ground floor. Alex got Richard to call Roger at his house. When Lafargue got off the phone, Alex pointed the way upstairs and steered him into Eve’s flat.

“She’s not right, your wife, is she? Why do you lock her up?”

“She… Well, she has odd attitudes.”

“Like your daughter?”

“In a way, sometimes.”

Alex drew the three bolts and bade Lafargue goodnight. After inspecting the other bedroom, he took a stroll round the grounds. This “Eve” must be beginning to find the time long out there in Livry-Gargan. But everything was going great. In ten days, once his bandages were off, he would kill Lafargue, and goodnight one and all. Wouldn’t Eve be dead in ten days’ time? But who cared?

The next morning, Alex woke Richard early. He found him lying fully clothed on the bed. Alex made breakfast, and they ate together.

“We’re going to your clinic to get the things you need. Can you operate on me this afternoon?”

“No, you have to be examined, have a blood test.”

“Oh, yeah. Urine test and all that.”

“When I have the results, we can proceed. Tomorrow morning, all being well.”

Alex was satisfied. The doc seemed straight. It was Alex who took the wheel of the Mercedes for the trip to Boulogne. He let Lafargue off outside the clinic.

“Don’t be long. I’ve got my eye on you.”

“Never fear. I’ll just be a minute.”

Richard went into his office. His secretary was surprised to see him so early. He asked her to let the hospital know that he would not be there for morning consultations. He delved in a drawer and chose two bottles of medicine at random. Then, after a moment’s reflection, he went and got a box of scalpels, which he thought would impress Alex and strengthen his belief that he was genuinely part of the process.

Sure enough, once Lafargue was back in the car, Alex studied the labels on the bottles, opened the case containing the blades, and then put everything away carefully in the glove compartment. On arriving at Le Vésinet, they went straight down to the laboratory. Lafargue drew blood from the felon, crouched over a microscope, vaguely examined the slide using any old reagents, and then took Alex’s medical history.

“Good. We won’t have to wait until tomorrow. You are in excellent health. You’ll rest all day. No food at lunchtime. And then, this evening, I’ll operate on you.”

He went over to Alex and felt his nose, then his neck. From his pocket, Alex produced the sketch of his new face and unfolded it.

“Just like this?”

“Yes, just like that.”

On Lafargue’s bed, with Lafargue safely locked in the wife’s rooms, Alex lounged for several hours. He would have liked a drink, but that was not allowed. About six o’clock, he went to get the surgeon. He was tense: the idea of being on an operating table had always frightened him. Richard reassured him and got him to undress. Reluctantly, Alex parted with his Colt.

“Don’t forget your wife, Doc,” muttered Alex as he lay down.

Richard turned the large spotlight on. Its white light was dazzling. Alex blinked. After a moment, Lafargue appeared at his side in white coat and surgical mask. Alex smiled with relief.

“Are we ready?” asked Lafargue.

“Ready. And no tricks—or you’ll never see your wife again.”

Richard went and closed the door of the operating room, took a syringe, and came back over to Alex.

“This injection will make you relax. Then, in about fifteen minutes, I’m going to put you to sleep.”

“Yeah. But no tricks!”

The tip of the needle slid delicately into a vein. Alex saw the surgeon above him, smiling.

“I said no tricks, okay?”

Suddenly, he was asleep. In his last second of consciousness, Alex sensed that something was not quite right.

Richard tore off the mask, extinguished the spotlight, and hoisted the inert Alex onto his shoulder. Opening the door to the operating room, he went out into the passage and staggered under the weight to another cellar door.

After turning the key in the lock, he carried Alex over to the moss-covered wall. The sofa and armchairs were still in place, along with various belongings of Vincent’s. He chained Alex to the wall, tightening the shackles by a few links. He went back to the operating room for a needle and catheter, which he attached to a vein in Alex’s forearm; he knew that once Alex woke up he would still be able, chained as he was, to wriggle enough to prevent him from administering another shot. Lafargue was quite sure that this guy, desperate and wanted by the police, would find the strength to resist “classic” forms of torture, at least for a time. And time was something Richard did not have. For now, he waited.

Tossing his scrubs on the floor, he went upstairs for a bottle of scotch and a glass. Then he came back down and settled into an armchair facing Alex. He had administered a low dose of the anesthetic, and his prisoner was bound to awake before long.

2

Alex was slow to come around. Lafargue waited, watching his reactions. He got up and slapped him hard to hasten the return of consciousness.

Alex saw his chains, the cellar cluttered with furniture, the weird trompe-l’oeil windows, sea, and mountains. He sniggered. It was all over. He wouldn’t ever say where that bitch was. Not even if he was tortured. Death didn’t matter to him now.

The doctor watched him from the armchair, sipping from a glass. It was whisky—the bottle was by him on the floor. The bastard! He had made a complete fool of him; he’d been laughing at him all along. But you had to say it—he was quite a guy, he had never lost his cool—a real con artist. And, yes, Alex had to admit it, he himself was truly pathetic.

“So that’s it, is it? Eve is in a cellar, chained to a radiator. Alone.”

“She’s going to croak. You’ll never find out where she is.” Alex was jabbering.

“Did you brutalize her?”

“No. I wanted to jump her bones, but I decided to put it off till later. I guess I should have done it, huh? Mind you, nobody will ever fuck her now. Never. Where she is, no one will show up for at least two weeks. She’s bound to die of hunger and thirst. And it’s your fault. Maybe one day you’ll see her skeleton. Was she a good lay, at least?”

“Be quiet,” said Lafargue softly, through clenched teeth. “You’re going to tell me where she is.”

“No way, asshole. Cut me up into little pieces if you want. I won’t tell you a thing. I’m for it, I know that. If you don’t kill me, the cops will get me. I’ve had it, and I don’t give a shit.”

“How wrong you are, you poor fool. You’ll talk, I promise you.”

Richard went over to Alex, who spat in his face. The surgeon had fastened Alex’s arm to the wall, palm facing outward; the wrist was chained, and long strips of extra-strong packing tape stuck to the concrete prevented the slightest movement of the limb.

“Look here,” said Richard.

He pointed to the catheter already inserted into Alex’s vein. Alex began to sweat and to sob. The bastard was going to get the better of him after all. By using a drug.

Richard showed him a syringe, which he attached to the catheter. Gently, he pressed the plunger. Alex screamed, and tugged vainly on his chains.

The fluid was inside him, flowing through his veins. A wave of nausea washed over him, then his mind grew more and more fuzzy. He stopped shouting and wriggling. As his eyes glazed over, he could still see Lafargue’s smiling face and mean expression.

“What’s your name?”

Alex’s head had subsided onto his chest, but Richard grabbed his matted hair and wrenched it upright again.

“Barny. Alex Barny.”

“Do you remember my wife?”

“Yes.”

A very few minutes later, Alex gave up the address of the house in Livry-Gargan.

A breath of air is making its way across the floor. You twist, and turn on your side, and press your cheek to the ground so as to relish this trace of coolness. Your throat is painful, dry. The adhesive tape across your lips tugs at the skin.

The door opens. The light goes on. It is Mygale. He rushes to you. Why does he seem so stricken? He takes you in his arms, gently pulls the tape from your mouth, covers your face with kisses. He calls you “my baby” and sets to work on the cord, untying it. Your swollen limbs hurt, but your circulation is quickly restored once the restraints are gone.

Mygale holds you tight, pressing himself against you. He runs his fingers through your hair, strokes your head, the nape of your neck. He picks you up from the floor and bears you out of the room.

You are not at Le Vésinet but in some other house. What does it all mean? Mygale kicks a door open. You are in a kitchen now. Without putting you down, he takes a glass, fills it with water and has you drink it slowly, in tiny sips.

You feel as though you have swallowed kilos of dust, and nothing has ever given you such a delightful sensation as this water in your mouth.

Mygale carries you into a crudely furnished living room. He sets you down in an armchair, kneels in front of you, places his head against your belly and his arms about your waist.

You follow all this with detachment, like the spectator of some meaningless game. Mygale disappears, only to return with the bedspread, which has been left behind. He wraps you in it and carries you outside. It is night.

The Mercedes is waiting in the street. Mygale puts you in the passenger seat and gets behind the wheel.

He talks to you. He is telling a crazy, completely unbelievable tale. You hardly listen. A criminal is supposed to have kidnapped you so as to have a hold over Mygale. Poor Mygale: he has gone mad; he can no longer tell reality from his fantasy world. As for the tenderness he is showing you, you are certain that he will make you pay for it in suffering. At a stop light he turns to you, smiles, strokes your hair once more.

At Le Vésinet, he carries you into the drawing room and sits you on a sofa. He runs up to your room and fetches a robe. He helps you into it, then vanishes again. This time he reappears with a tray laden with food and drink. He hands you a few pills; you don’t know what they are, and you don’t care.

He gets you to eat, coaxing you into swallowing yogurt and fruit.

Once you finish eating, your eyes close all by themselves: you are all in. He carries you upstairs, lays you in your bed; before falling asleep, you notice that he has sat down next to you and taken your hand.

You wake up. There is a pale radiance: it must be early morning. Mygale is there, close to you, asleep in an armchair, and your bedroom door is wide open.

Your legs are still sore: the cord was tied very tight. You turn onto your side to see Mygale better. You think back to the preposterous story he told you in the car. Something about a gangster? Yes, a criminal on the lam who wanted Mygale to alter his face. And you were the hostage!

You are not sure about it anymore. Sleep is returning. A sleep punctuated by nightmares. Always the same images: Mygale is cackling; you are laid out on a long table beneath a blinding spotlight. Mygale wears a white surgeon’s smock and hat, and he laughs wildly.

In your perception his laugh is amplified, and it hurts your ears; you wish you could sleep longer, but no, the anesthesia has worn off. You are coming back from elsewhere, the dream images are still vivid, and Mygale is laughing. You turn your head, and see that your arm—no, both arms, are restrained. A needle is sticking in the crook of one arm, attached to a tube through which liquid falls drop by drop from a flask of serum waving gently way up above your head. You feel dizzy, and then, little by little, you are assailed by violent shooting pains from farther down, from your lower belly. And Mygale laughs.

Your thighs are parted, and you are hurting. Your knees are clamped into supports of tubular steel, as though you were on one of those tables used by gynecologists to examine…God, it hurts! The pain spreads from your genitals into your abdomen; you try to lift your head, to see what is happening to you—and Mygale is still laughing.

“Hold on, little Vincent. Let me help you.”

Mygale has picked up a mirror and, grasping you by the nape of the neck, he holds it between your legs. All you can see in the glass is a mass of bloody dressings, and two tubes hooked up to bottles.

“Soon, very soon, you’ll see everything better.” Mygale is apoplectic with laughter.

But you understand what he has done to you. First the injections, the developing breasts—and now this.

When all trace of the anesthetic’s effect was gone and you were fully conscious, you screamed and screamed for a very long while. He had left you there in his operating room, flat on your back, bound to the bench.

He came back at last. Leaned over you, still laughing. Would he ever stop laughing?

He had brought a cake, a little cake with a candle on it. Just one.

“My dear Vincent, we are going to celebrate the first birthday of someone you are going to know very well: Eve.”

He gestured toward your belly.

“There’s nothing there anymore. I’ll explain everything. But you are not Vincent anymore. You are Eve.”

He cut the cake, took a slice, and mashed it into your face. You hadn’t the strength even to cry out. Grinning, Mygale ate his own piece. Then he uncorked a bottle of champagne, filled two flutes, drank his, and flung the contents of the other over your head.

“So, my little Eve, have you nothing else to say for yourself?”

You asked him what he had done to you. It was very simple, he told you. He proceeded to push the examining table into the other cellar room, the room where you had been imprisoned for so long.

“My dear girl, I’m afraid I was not able to take photographs of the surgery I have just performed on you. But since it is a very common procedure, I can explain it to you by means of a short film.”

He started a projector, and on a screen hung on one wall an operating room soon appeared. An off-screen voice, not Mygale’s, delivered a commentary.

“Following a hormonal treatment lasting two years, we are able to perform a vaginoplasty on Monsieur X, with whom we have had numerous preparatory consultations.

“We begin, after anesthesia, by cutting away a flap of the glans penis 1.2 centimeters in length, then we detach the entirety of the skin of the shaft of the penis down to the root. Next we dissect the pedicle, likewise to the root. We proceed in an identical manner with respect to the dorsal vasculo-nervous pedicle of the penis. The aim is to bring the anterior layer of the corpora cavernosa down over the root of the penis.”

You could not take your eyes off the spectacle of these men in surgical gloves with their scalpels and forceps, cutting into flesh as Mygale had cut into your flesh.

“A second intervention calls for a scroto-perineal incision 3 centimeters in front of the anus, the exteriorization of the penis through this incision, and the continued dissection of the skin and the flap of the glans penis.

“Here we continue to isolate the urethra and separate the corpora cavernosa along the median line.”

Mygale laughed and laughed. He got up from time to time to adjust the focus and pat you on the cheek.

“A third stage involves the construction of a neovagina 4 centimeters wide and 12–16 centimeters in depth. Here we see the closing of the anterior extremity of the sheath of the penis and the invagination of the skin of the penis into the neovagina.

“The glans flap is exteriorized so as to form a neoclitoris. The skin of the scrotum, which has been kept very thin, is itself resected and will serve to create the labia majora.

“Here we see the same patient several months later. The outcome is very satisfactory: the vagina is a good size and completely functional; the clitoris is perfectly active and sensitive; and the urethral orifice is well positioned and attended by no urinary complications.”

The film was over. You had an itching sensation amid the pain in your lower belly. You wanted to urinate. He had introduced a drain, and it was by way of the resulting strange sensation that you arrived at a new perception of your sexual parts. You cried out once more.

It was awful; you could not get to sleep. Mygale shot you up with tranquilizers. Later on, he undid your restraints to get you on your feet. Taking tiny steps, you walked round in circles. The drain dangled between your legs along with the two tubes, each leading to a vacuum bottle that was supposed to suck up your secretions. Mygale held one bottle, and the other was thrust into the pocket of your robe. You had no strength at all. Mygale soon took you out of the cellar and set you up in a small flat. There was a dressing room, a bedroom…The light blinded you, for this was the first time you had left your prison in two years. The sunshine bathed your face deliciously.

Your “convalescence” lasted a very long time. The drain disappeared, the two bottles also. All that was left was that hole, down there between your legs. Mygale obliged you to have a plug in your vagina all the time; otherwise, he said, the skin would close up. You kept it inside you for months and months. There was a very sensitive place there, too, just above: your clitoris.

The door to your bedroom was always locked. Through the slats of the closed shutters, you could see grounds, a little pond, some swans. Mygale came to see you every day, spending long hours with you. Speaking to you about your new life. About the person—the woman—you had become.

You took up the piano again, and painting. Since you now had breasts and that hole down between your thighs, you had no choice but to go along. What good would running away do? Going back home after such a long time? Could the place Vincent had once known even be called home? What would the people who had known him say? No, you had no real choice. All the makeup, the dressing, the perfume…And then, to top it off, Mygale took you one day to the Bois de Boulogne. After that, you were beyond hope.

Today, the man is sleeping near you. He must be uncomfortable crammed into that armchair. When he found you in the cellar, he kissed you, he took you in his arms. The bedroom door is open. What does he want now?

Richard opened his eyes. His back ached. He had a strange sensation: he had spent the whole night watching over Eve, but now a rustle of fabric—the sheet, perhaps—suggested that Eve was awake, watching him in the first light of day. There she was, in the bed, her eyes wide open. Richard smiled, got to his feet, stretched, and went to sit on the edge of the bed. When he spoke, he fell back absurdly into the polite form of address, a habit that he had instituted and which he abandoned only during his hate-filled obscene tirades.

“Are you feeling better? It’s all over. I mean, it’s finished—you can leave. I’ll take care of the paperwork, your new identity. That’s the usual thing. You understand? You’ll go to the police, tell them everything…”

Richard was admitting defeat and couldn’t stop. He was pitiful. His defeat was total, humiliating—but it came too late to punish a hatred that was already extinct.

Eve got up, took a bath, and dressed. She went down to the drawing room. Richard found her by the pond. He had come with crumbled bread, which he threw to the swans. She crouched by the waterside and whistled to the birds. They cruised over and bowed their necks to take the morsels of bread from her hand.

The day was splendid. The two of them made for the house together and sat side by side in the swing by the swimming pool. They stayed there a good while, close together, without a word.

“Richard?” said Eve at last, “I want to see the sea.”

He turned toward her, looked at her with immense sadness, and nodded. They went back inside. Eve went off to find a bag and stuff a few things in it. Richard waited for her in the car.

They set off. She lowered her window and played at resisting the wind, extending her hand outside the car. He suggested she stop, for fear that insects or flying gravel might hurt her.

Richard drove fast, devouring the curves in a kind of frenzy. She asked him to slow down. Before long, the seaside cliffs came into view.

The pebble beach of Etretat was black with people. Vacationers jammed the water’s edge. It was low tide. The two walked along the beachfront and followed the foot of the cliffs through the tunnel that leads to another beach where the Hollow Needle stands.

Eve asked Richard whether he had read a novel by Maurice Leblanc, a wild tale of bandits holed up in a cavern carved out of the inside of a cliff. No, he had not read it. He laughed as he answered her, with a nuance of bitterness, as much as to say that his profession left him precious little leisure time. But Eve did not give up: how could anyone not know Arsène Lupin?

Retracing their steps, they headed back to the town. Eve was hungry. They took a table on the terrace of a seafood restaurant. She set about a plateful of oysters and whelks. Richard toyed with a spider-crab claw, then let her finish eating on her own.

“Richard, what’s all this about a gangster, anyway?”

He told her all over again: his return to Le Vésinet, her empty bedroom, the bolts drawn, his alarm at her disappearance. And how he had found her.

“What about this thug? Did you let him go?” Eve was still skeptical and wary.

“No, he’s chained up in the cellar.”

His response was delivered in a low, expressionless voice. For a moment Eve could hardly breathe.

“Richard! You’ve got to go down there. You can’t just leave him there to die!”

“He hurt you. That’s exactly what he deserves.”

She pounded her fist on the table to bring him back to reality. The white wine in her glass, the half-eaten crab on the table, and this inappropriate talk about a guy rotting in the cellar at Le Vésinet—all conspired to give her the impression of being in some surreal play. As for Richard, he was gazing vacantly into the distance. She felt sure that if she had asked him to throw himself from the top of those cliffs, he would have complied without thinking twice about it.

It was already late when they got back to Le Vésinet and went into the house. He led the way down the stairs to the cellar. He opened the door and turned the light on. The guy was there, sure enough, on his knees, his arms stretched wide by the chains she knew so well. When Alex lifted his head, Eve gave out a long cry like the wail of a wounded animal unable to grasp what is happening to it.

Doubled over, barely breathing, she pointed a finger at the prisoner. Then she rushed out into the passage, fell to her knees, and vomited. Richard, who had followed her out, supported her and pressed his hand to her brow.

So this was it. This was the last act. Mygale had dreamed up this whole gangster story, this entire grotesque tale, simply to calm your suspicions. He had tamed you with tenderness, giving in to your whimsical desire to see the sea, only to plunge you back into endless horror!

And this trick of having you discover Alex as a prisoner, just like you four years ago, had the sole purpose of breaking you even further, of driving you even closer (as if that were possible) to the brink of madness.

Yes, that was his plan. Not to humiliate you by forcing you into prostitution, after first castrating you, hacking you up, mutilating you—after destroying your body and fabricating another one, turning you into a toy of flesh and blood. All that was just playing about, just the lead-up to his real goal, which was to drive you mad, as mad as his daughter. Since you had survived every ordeal, he had had to raise the stakes.

Step by step he had brought you low, plunging your head into the darkest waters, then yanking it up by the hair just before you drowned. And now came the coup de grace: Alex!

Mygale was not mad: he was a genius. Who else could have designed such a subtle escalation? The bastard! He had to be killed!

As for Alex, Mygale would have little use for him, as he must know. He surely had no intention of subjecting him to the same torments as you. Alex was a big oaf, a brute; he had amused you at one time: you could do whatever you wanted with him; he would have followed you anywhere, like a dog.

Mygale could do nothing with Alex: the refinements of suffering you had experienced would not be his. Perhaps Mygale intended to make you…Yes, that was it! You only had to look at Alex in his chains, naked as a worm, to see what Mygale had in mind.

One victim was not enough for him: he needed both of them at his mercy. Four years! It had taken Mygale four years to catch up with Alex. What had become of Alex in the meantime? But, above all, how had Mygale managed to find him? You knew you had never breathed a word.

Mygale was there next to you. He was holding you up. The pool of vomit was spreading on the concrete floor. Mygale murmured soft words, my love, my sweet, and fussed over you, wiping your mouth with a handkerchief.

The door to the operating room was open. You made a dash toward the table and grabbed a scalpel. Then you walked slowly toward Mygale with the blade pointed right at him.

3

They faced each other there in the crude fluorescent light of the concrete cellar. She advanced calmly, scalpel in hand. Richard stood motionless. In the next room, Alex began to shout. He had seen Eve fall to her knees, then drag herself out of his field of vision; now he could see her again, through the half-open door, as she moved forward with the blade.

“My gun, sweetheart! Come over here! He left the gun there!”

Eve came back in and picked up Alex’s revolver, which was indeed still lying on the sofa. Richard had not even flinched and still stood rigid in the passage, holding his ground despite the Colt now trained on his midriff. And then he uttered a few incomprehensible words.

“Eve, I beg you, tell me what all this means!”

She stopped dead, staring at him. Was his mystification faked—another of his tricks? Well, the bastard wouldn’t get away with it that easily!

“Don’t worry, Alex,” she shouted. “We’re going to fix this shitbag once and for all!”

It was Alex’s turn to be mystified. How did she know his name? Lafargue had perhaps told her? Of course, it was that simple. Lafargue had been keeping his wife locked up, and she was seizing this chance to get rid of her husband!

“Eve, kill me if you want. But at least tell me what is going on.”

Richard had let himself slip down the wall to the ground, where he now sat.

“You’re shitting me! You’re shitting me! You’re shitting me!” She had begun by murmuring the words, now she was screaming them. The muscles of her neck bulged, her eyes seemed about to spring from their sockets, and she was trembling violently.

“Eve, please, please, explain.”

“Alex! Alex Barny! It’s him. He was with me. He raped Viviane, too. He even fucked her in the ass, and I—and I held her down. You always thought I was on my own. I never told you different. I didn’t want you going looking for him, too. It’s as much his fault as mine if your daughter is insane, you bastard. But it was I who took all the punishment.”

Alex was listening to the woman. What was she saying? It’s the two of them, he thought; they are playing a weird game with me: trying to make me crazy. But then, as he looked closely at Lafargue’s wife, there was something about the mouth, the eyes…

“Aha! You didn’t know there were two of us, did you? But there were: Alex was my pal. Poor guy, he didn’t get laid much. When it came to the girls, I had to, well, sort of scare them up for him. With your girl it was harder than usual. She was strictly not interested! Feeling her up a bit, kissing her—she quite liked all that. But the second I got my hand up her skirt, that was it. So we had to force her a little.”

Richard shook his head in disbelief, beaten down by Eve’s shouting, her shrill voice still at screaming pitch.

“I went first. Alex held her. She put up a struggle. You were in the inn, stuffing your face and dancing, weren’t you? After, I let Alex take over from me. He had a lot of fun, I can tell you that, Richard. She was whimpering. She was hurt. Not as much as me, with everything you’ve done. I’m going to kill you, Mygale, d’you hear me?”

The truth was, Mygale had never known about Alex. You never told him. When he first told you why he had mutilated you—on account of the rape of Viviane and her going mad—you had decided to say nothing. Your only revenge was to keep Alex out of it. Mygale didn’t know there had been two of you.

You were lying there on the operating table when Mygale first spoke to you about that July evening two years earlier. A Saturday. You were hanging out in the village with Alex with strictly nothing to do. The school vacation had only just begun. You were supposed to go to England soon, while Alex stayed on his father’s farm working in the fields.

The two of you had visited every café and played on every table-soccer and pinball machine before both climbing onto your motorcycle. It was mild out. At Dinancourt, a fairly large town some thirty kilometers away, there was a dance and a traveling fair. Alex shot at balloons with an air rifle. As for you, you watched the girls. There were a lot of them. It was late afternoon when you first saw the kid. She was pretty. She was walking around on the arm of an old guy—or at any rate much older than her. It had to be her father. She wore a light blue summer dress. Her hair was curly and blond, and her still childlike face bore no makeup. They were part of a group, and you could easily tell from their attire that they were not country people.

The party sat down at a café terrace, but the girl continued visiting the fair on her own. You approached her, respectful as always. Her name was Viviane. And, yes, the guy with the white hair was indeed her father.

In the evening there was a dance in the village square. You asked Viviane to meet you. She would like to, but her father… They had come here for a wedding and were staying at the inn. The inn was part of an old château, some way away from the rest of the village, and functions and parties were often held there and in the grounds of the place. Viviane was supposed to go to the wedding dinner. You talked her round: all right, she would meet you here, by the frites stand. She was just a kid, a bit dopey, but very cute. As the evening wore on, you wandered over toward the château several times. The rich people had laid on a band: not a bunch of hicks with an accordion, of course, but a real band, guys in white tuxedos playing jazz. The windows of the inn had been closed to make sure the whining strains of the dance band could not waft in.

Viviane came out about ten o’clock. You bought her a drink. She had a Coke, you a scotch. You danced. Alex looked on. You winked at him. During a slow one, you kissed Viviane. You felt her heart pound in her chest. She didn’t know how to kiss: she kept her lips tightly shut. When you showed her how, she started pushing as hard as she could with her tongue! She was a dimwit. She smelled good: a sweetish perfume but discreet—not like the eau de cologne the local girls sloshed all over themselves. Her dress had a plunging neckline, and as you danced you stroked her bare back.

You strolled through the village, and you kissed her again. A bit better this time: she had learned something. You slipped your hand under her dress and ran it up her thigh as far as her panties. She was excited, but pulled away. She said she was afraid of being chewed out by her father if she stayed out too late. You didn’t insist, and you both went back to the village square. The father had left the inn in search of his daughter. He ran into the two of you, but you avoided his gaze and walked on.

You watched their exchange from a distance. At first he seemed angry, but then he laughed and went back to the inn. Viviane came back toward you. Her father had granted her an extension.

You danced. She pressed up against you. In the half-light you fondled her breasts. An hour later she said she wanted to go back. You signaled to Alex, who was leaning against the bar near the dancing area with a can of beer in his hand. You told Viviane that you would walk her to the inn. Hand in hand, you circled the château. Laughing, you pulled her into the bushes at the edge of the place’s grounds; laughing, she protested. She really wanted to stay with you.

You leaned against a tree. She was kissing just fine now. She let you pull her dress up, a little. Without warning, you grabbed her panties and ripped at them, clamping your other hand over her mouth so she could not cry out. Alex was close by. He grabbed her hands, stuffing her arms beneath her body as he forced her onto her back. He held her firmly while you knelt between her legs. Alex watched what you did.

Then it was your turn to hold Viviane in place, on all fours, as Alex positioned himself behind her. For Alex it was not enough to do to her what you had done: he wanted more. In entering her he hurt her too much: she began to struggle with strength of desperation and succeeded in breaking free. She was screaming. You went after her, grabbing her by the foot. You managed to immobilize her. You tried to slap her, but your hand balled up as you delivered the blow, and she got your fist full in the face. The back of her neck slammed into the tree trunk. She passed out, but her body continued to thrash about.

As Mygale told you afterward, when he heard Viviane’s screams the band was playing “The Man I Love.” He ran out into the grounds of the château. He saw you, on your knees in the grass, clutching at Viviane’s ankle in your attempt to catch her and stop her screaming.

As for Alex, he had taken off without hesitation and vanished into the shrubbery. Viviane was still thrashing wildly. You had to get out of there fast. You raced straight ahead. The guy was hard on your heels. But he had just eaten a heavy meal, and you had no trouble losing him. Alex was waiting for you with the bike at the other end of the village.

For the next few days you were very nervous. The guy had seen you, first near the frites stand and then in the field behind the inn, in the split second it took you to decide which way to run. But you were not from the village, which was a good way away from your home, and little by little your fears evaporated. You left for England the next week and returned only in late August. And, after all, it wasn’t the first time you had run into trouble with Alex.

Mygale had searched for a long time. He knew your approximate age. He had a rough idea of your face. He never told the police: he wanted you for himself. He combed the whole region in widening circles, covering every village. He spent hours at factory gates and outside high schools, watching.

Three months later, he spotted you in a café opposite the high school in Meaux. He followed you, spied on you, studied your habits. Until that late September evening when he fell upon you in the forest.

He knew nothing of Alex’s existence; he couldn’t have. That is why he is here in front of you now, exhausted, at your mercy…

Richard was stunned. Kneeling, Eve held the Colt with both hands and aimed it at him. Her arms were straight, and her index finger whitened as she pressed on the trigger.

“I am going to kill you.” She chanted the words in a monotone.

“Eve, I didn’t know! It’s not fair!”

Nonplussed by this incongruous remorse, she let her guard down for a moment. Richard was watching, and he saw it. His foot crashed into the young woman’s outstretched forearms. She dropped the weapon and cried in pain. He leaped up, snatched the Colt, and charged into the room where Alex was chained up. He fired twice. Alex collapsed, hit in the neck and in the heart.

Richard went back to the passage, leaned over and helped Eve back to her kneeling position, then he knelt down himself and held the Colt out to her.

Eve struggled to her feet, took a deep breath, set her feet wide apart and carefully brought the tip of the Colt’s barrel to Lafargue’s temple.

He stared at her, and his gaze betrayed no feeling at all. It was as though he wanted to project an indifference that would allow Eve to put aside all pity; as though he wanted, with his cold and impenetrable eyes, to be Mygale once more.

Eve saw Richard reduced, destroyed. She dropped the Colt.

She went up to the ground floor and ran out into the grounds, pulling up short, out of breath, at the front gate. It was a fine day, and reflected light danced on the blue water of the swimming pool.

Eve retraced her steps, went into the house, climbed the stairs. In her room, she sat down on the bed. The easel was there, covered with a piece of cloth. She tore it aside, and for a long time contemplated the vile portrait of Richard as a transvestite, the wine-ravaged face, the wrinkled skin: Richard as a ruined whore.

Very slowly, she walked back down to the cellar. Alex’s body still hung from the chains. A large pool of blood had formed on the concrete. She raised Alex’s head, and for a moment held the gaze of his dead eyes. Then she left the prison.

Richard still sat in the passage, his arms dangling by his sides, his legs rigid. A slight tic animated his upper lip. She sat next to him and took his hand. She let her head fall onto his shoulder.

Her voice was barely audible.

“Come on. We can’t leave the body here like this.”