The Empire Of The Wolves

14

On Monday morning, Anna Heymes discreetly left her flat and took a cab to the Left Bank. As far as she recalled, there were several medical bookshops grouped together around the Odéon crossroads.

In one of them, she browsed through various studies of psychology and neurosurgery in search of information about biopsies performed on the brain. The expression Ackermann had used still echoed in her mind: stereotaxic biopsy. She soon found some photographs and a description of the technique.

She saw the patients' heads, shaved, inserted in a square casing. A sort of metal cube that was screwed onto their temples. The frame was topped by a trepan-like a drill.

She followed the illustrations of each step of the operation: the bit piercing the bone, the scalpel entering the opening and in turn penetrating the dura mater that encircled the brain, the hollow-headed needle going inside the cerebrum. In one of the photographs, the pinkish color of the organ could even be seen while the surgeon was extracting the probe.

Anything but that.

Anna had made a resolution. She had to get a second opinion, find another specialist, and quickly, who would suggest a different treatment.

She rushed into a café on Boulevard Saint-Germain, ran downstairs to the phone and thumbed through the directory. After several fruitless requests to absent or overbooked doctors, she finally came across a certain Mathilde Wilcrau, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, who was apparently available.

The woman's voice was deep, but her tone was light, almost mischievous. Anna briefly mentioned her memory problems and insisted on how urgent the situation was. The psychiatrist agreed to see her at once. Near the Panthéon, just five minutes away from Odéon.

Anna was now sitting alone in a small waiting room full of old, carved and varnished furniture that seemed to come straight from the Chateau de Versailles. She looked at the photographs on the walls. They depicted images of sporting exploits in the most extreme conditions.

In one of them, someone was taking wing from the side of a mountain, suspended on a hang glider. In the next, a hooded climber was ascending a wall of ice. In another, a sharpshooter dressed in a ski suit and watch cap was taking aim at an unseen target.

"My exploits of yesteryear."

Anna turned around toward the voice.

Mathilde Wilcrau was a large broad-shouldered woman with a radiant smile. Her arms burst out from her suit brutally and almost incongruously. Her long, slender legs were curvaceously muscular. Between forty and fifty, thought Anna as she noticed her wrinkled eyelids and crow's-feet. But this woman was to be evaluated in terms of energy, not age. It was more a question of mega wattage than years.

The psychiatrist moved aside. "Step this way."

The consulting room matched the antechamber: wood, marble and gold. Anna sensed that this woman's true nature lay more in the photographs of her exploits than in these rather precious furnishings.

They sat on either side of the flame-colored desk. The doctor picked up a fountain pen and jotted down the usual information on a ruled notepad: name, age, address… Anna was tempted to give a false identity, but she had sworn to herself to be completely open.

While answering, she observed the woman in front of her. She was struck by her brilliant, ostentatious, almost American manner. Her brown hair glistened on her shoulders. Her broad, regular features scintillated around her extremely red, sensual mouth, which drew one's eyes. She thought of crystallized fruit, full of sugar and energy. This woman inspired immediate trust.

"So what's the problem?" she asked merrily.

Anna tried to be brief. "I have memory gaps."

"What sort of gaps?"

"I don't recognize familiar faces."

"None of them?"

"Especially my husband."

"Be more precise. You don't recognize him at all? Never?"

"No. They come in short fits. Suddenly, his face means nothing to me. A complete stranger. Until recently, these attacks only lasted a second. But they seem to be getting longer."

Mathilde tapped the page with the nib of her pen: a black lacquered Montblanc. Anna noticed that she had discreetly taken off her shoes.

"Is that all?"

She hesitated. "The opposite also sometimes happens "

"The opposite?"

"I think I recognize strangers' faces."

"For example?"

“In particular, with one person. I've been working in the Maison du Chocolat, on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, for the last month. There's a regular customer. A man in his forties. Every time he comes into the shop, I get the feeling I know him. But I've never managed to locate a precise memory"

"And what does he say?"

"Nothing. Apparently he's never seen me anywhere but behind my counter."

Beneath the desk, the psychiatrist was wriggling her toes in her black tights. There was something wickedly sparkling about her entire being.

"So to sum up, you don't recognize the people you should recognize, but you do recognize the people you shouldn't, is that it?" She lengthened the final syllables in a strange way, like the vibrato of a cello.

"Well, yes, you could put it like that."

"Have you tried a good pair of glasses?"

Anna suddenly felt furious. A burning sensation rose up her face. How could she make fun of her illness? She got to her feet and grabbed her bag.

Mathilde Wilcrau grabbed her arm. "Sorry-I was only joking. It was silly of me. Please, do stay"

Anna froze. That red smile was enveloping her like a benevolent halo. Her resistance faded. She allowed herself to drop down onto the chair.

The psychiatrist went back to her place and her modulated tone returned. "So, shall we proceed? Do you sometimes feel uneasy in front of other faces? I mean, the ones you pass every day. in the street, in public places?"

"Yes. But that's a different sensation. I suffer from… some kind of hallucinations. On the bus, at a dinner party, anywhere. The faces mingle together, mixing and forming hideous masks. I no longer dare look at anyone. Soon I won't be able to go outdoors…"

"How old are you?"

"Thirty-one."

"And how long have you been suffering from these symptoms?”

“For about six weeks."

"Are they accompanied by a physical malaise?"

"No… Well, yes. Signs of anxiety, mostly Trembling. My body becomes heavy. My limbs freeze. Sometimes it feels as though I'm suffocating. Recently I got a nosebleed."

"But otherwise you're in good health?"

"Fine. Nothing wrong at all."

The psychiatrist paused. She was writing on her notepad. "Do you suffer from any other memory blocks? About your past life, for instance?"

Anna nodded rapidly and replied: "Yes. Some of my memories are losing their consistency. They seem to be drifting away, fading…”

“Which? Ones about your husband?"

She stiffened against the wooden back of the chair. "Why are you asking me that?"

"Apparently, it's mostly his face that sparks off the attacks. Your past life with him may be posing the problem."

Anna sighed. This woman was talking to her as if her state might have been provoked by her feelings or subconscious. As if she was willing away certain parts of her memory. This idea was totally different from how Ackermann saw the problem. But wasn't it just this that she had come to hear?

"That's true," she conceded. "My memories of being with Laurent are breaking up and vanishing." She paused for a moment, then continued more firmly: "But in a way, that's logical."

"Why?"

"Laurent's the center of my life and of my memory. Most of what I can remember involves him. Before the Maison du Chocolat, I was just a housewife. Our married life was my sole preoccupation."

"You've never worked?"

Anna adopted a bitter, self-disparaging tone. "I've got a law degree, but I've never set foot in a lawyer's office. I have no children. Laurent is my 'one and all,' if you like, my sole horizon…"

"How long have you been married?"

"Eight years."

"Do you have normal sexual relations?"

"What do you call 'normal'?"

"Dull. Tedious."

Anna did not understand.

The smile grew broader. "Another joke. All I want to know is if you have sex regularly"

"Everything's fine in that department. On the contrary, I… I feel a great desire for him. Increasingly so, in fact. It's strange."

"Perhaps not as strange as all that."

"What do you mean?"

Silence was all she got in reply.

"What's your husband's job?"

"He's a policeman."

"Sorry?"

"At the Ministry of the Interior. Laurent directs the Centre des Etudes et de Bilans. He oversees thousands of reports and statistics about criminality in France. I've never really understood what he does exactly, but it sounds important. He's very close to the minister."

Mathilde then asked, as if the question followed logically: "Why don't you have any children? Is there a problem?"

"Not a physical one, at least."

"So-why not?"

Anna hesitated. Saturday night came back to her: the nightmare. Laurent's revelations, the blood on her face…

"I don't know, actually. Two days ago, I asked my husband. And he told me that I'd never wanted any. That I even made him swear not to ask. But I can't remember that." Her voice went up a tone, detaching each syllable. "How can I have forgotten that? I just can't remember!"

The doctor jotted something down, then asked, "What about your childhood memories-are they fading, too?"

"No, they seem more distant but still present."

"And your memories of your parents?"

"None. I lost my family very young. In a car crash. I was brought up in a boarding school, near Bordeaux, with my uncle as my guardian. I don't see him anymore. I've never seen much of him, in fact."

"So what can you remember?"

"The countryside. The huge beaches of the southwest. Pine forests. Images like that are still intact in my mind. Right now, they're even getting clearer. Those landscapes seem more real to me than the rest."

Mathilde continued to write. Anna noticed that in fact, she was doodling. Without looking up, the specialist went on: "How's your sleep? Do you suffer from insomnia?"

"The opposite, more like. I sleep all the time."

"When you make an effort to remember, does it make you feel sleepy?”

“Yes, I get a feeling of torpor."

"Tell me about your dreams."

"Since the beginning of my illness, I've been having a strange dream.”

“G_o on."

Anna described her recurring nightmare. The station and the peasants. The man in the black coat. The flag decked with four moons. The sobbing children. Then the terrible gust of wind, the hollowed torso, the face in ribbons…

The psychiatrist whistled in admiration. Anna was not sure if she appreciated the woman's familiar manner, but she felt comforted by her presence. Suddenly, Mathilde froze her heart: "You've consulted someone else, I suppose?"

Anna trembled.

"A neurologist?"

“… what makes you think that?"

"Your symptoms are rather clinical. Those memory blocks and hallucinations bring to mind a neurodegenerative disease. In such cases, patients generally consult a neurologist. A doctor who directly pinpoints the cause and treats it with medication."

Anna gave in. "He's called Ackermann. A childhood friend of my husband."

"Eric Ackermann?"

"You know him?"

"We were at university together."

Anna asked anxiously "And what do you think of him?"

"He's brilliant. What was his diagnosis?"

"He just made me do tests. Scanners. X-rays. an MRI."

"Didn't he do a PET scan?"

"Yes. We did the tests last Saturday. In a hospital full of soldiers.”

“Val-de-Grace?"

"No, at the Henri-Becquerel Institute in Orsay."

Mathilde jotted down the name on a corner of her paper. "And what were the results?"

"Nothing very clear. Ackermann thinks I'm suffering from a lesion in the right hemisphere, in the ventral temporal cortex "

"The region that recognizes faces."

"That's right. He reckons it must be a tiny necrosis. But the machine failed to localize it."

"And according to him, what caused the lesion?"

Anna spoke quickly, feeling good that she was making a clean breast of it. "That's the problem. He doesn't know. So he wants to carry out more tests" Her voice broke. "A biopsy to analyze that part of my brain. He wants to study the nerve cells, or something. I.." She paused for breath. "He says that he needs to do that in order to treat me."

The psychiatrist laid down her pen and crossed her arms. For the first time, she seemed to be looking at Anna with neither irony nor cheekiness. "Did you tell him about your other problems? Your memories fading away? Faces mixing together?"

"No."

"Why, don't you trust him?"

Anna did not answer.

Mathilde pressed the point. "Why did you come to see me? Why tell me all this?"

Anna gestured vaguely, then, her eyes lowered, she said, "I refuse to have the biopsy. They want to enter inside my mind."

"Who do you mean?"

"My husband and Ackermann. I came here in the hope that you'd have a different idea. I don't want them to make a hole in my head!”

“Calm down."

She looked up, on the verge of tears. "Can I… can I smoke?" The psychiatrist nodded.

Anna lit up at once. When the smoke cleared, the smile had returned to the face in front of her.

Inexplicably, a childhood memory came to mind. Long walks on the moors with her class, then back to the boarding school, her arms full of poppies. They were then told they should burn the stalks of the flowers to make their colors last longer…

Mathilde Wilcrau's smile reminded her of that strange alliance between fire and life in the petals. Something had burned inside that woman and was keeping her lips red.

The psychiatrist paused once more, then asked calmly "Did Ackermann tell you that amnesia can be set off by a psychological shock, and not necessarily by a physical lesion?"

Anna exhaled abruptly "You mean… my problems could have been caused by a traumatic experience?"

"That is possible. Violent emotions can lead to memory loss."

A wave of relief invaded her. She knew that she had come there to hear those words. She had chosen a psychoanalyst in order to return to the purely mental side of her illness. She could barely contain her excitement. "But this shock," she said between puffs, "I'd remember it, wouldn't I?"

"Not necessarily. Amnesia generally wipes out its own source. The founding moment."

"And this trauma might have something to do with faces?”

“That's likely. Faces, and also your husband."

Anna leapt to her feet. "What do you mean, my husband?"

"To judge by the signs you mentioned, they seem to be the two main blocks."

"You think Laurent caused an emotional shock?"

"That's not what I said. But in my opinion, everything is connected. The shock you had, if there was one, has brought about an association between your amnesia and your husband. That's all I can say for now."

Anna was silent. She stared at the glowing tip of her cigarette. "Can you gain some time?" Mathilde asked.

"Gain time?"

"Before the biopsy"

"You.. you'd agree to treat me?"

Mathilde picked up her pen and pointed it at Anna. "Can you put off the biopsy, yes or no?"

"I think so. For a few weeks. But if the attacks-“

"Do you agree to plunge into your memory using language?”

“Of course."

"Do you agree to come here on an intensive basis?"

"Yes."

"To use techniques of suggestion, such as hypnosis, for example?”

“Yes."

"And injections of a sedative?"

"Yes, yes, yes."

Mathilde dropped her pen. The white star of the Montblanc was glittering. "Trust me. We'll decipher your memory"

15

Her heart was aflame.

She had not felt so happy for a long time. The simple idea that her symptoms might be caused by a psychological trauma, and not by physical deterioration, gave her new hope. After all, it might mean that her brain had not been altered or attacked by a necrosis that was spreading through her nervous system.

In the cab back, she congratulated herself once more for having taken this initiative. She had turned her back on lesions, machines and biopsies and had opened her arms to understanding, language and Mathilde Wilcrau's smooth voice… She already missed her strange intonation.

When she reached Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore at about 1:00 in the afternoon, everything seemed clearer, more precise. She savored every detail of her neighborhood. They were like isles, an archipelago of specialties threading down the street.

At the junction of Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré and Avenue Hoche, music was king: the dark lacquer of Hamm pianos answered to the dancers of the Salle Pleyel just opposite. Then it was Russia that dominated between Rue de la Neva and Rue Daru. with Muscovite restaurants and an Orthodox church. Finally, they reached the world of delicacies: the teas of Mariage Freres and the sweetness of the Maison du Chocolat: two brown mahogany facades, two varnished mirrors, like frames in a museum of delights.

Anna found Clothilde cleaning the shelves. She was busying herself with the ceramic vases, the wooden basins and the porcelain plates, which shared nothing with the chocolate apart from their familiar brownish tones, a copper gleam, or just an idea of happiness and wellbeing. A life of comfort that chinks and is drunk warm…

Clothilde turned around on her stool. " Ala, there you are! Can you give me an hour? I have to go to the supermarket."

It was fair enough. Anna had vanished all morning, so she could keep shop now during lunchtime. They exchanged roles without exchanging any more words-just a smile. Anna picked up the duster and took over the task at once, dusting, rubbing and polishing with all the vigor of her newly recovered good mood.

Then suddenly, her energy faded, leaving a black hole in the middle of her breast. In a few seconds, she measured how false her joy was. What had been so positive about her consultation that morning? Whether it was a lesion or a trauma, what did that change about her state, her anxieties? What more could Mathilde Wilcrau do to cure her? How did that make her any the less mad?

She slumped down behind the main counter. The psychiatrist's idea was perhaps even worse than Ackermann's. The idea that an event, a psychological shock, had sparked her amnesia heightened her terror. What could be hiding behind such a zone of darkness?

Sentences echoed constantly in her mind, and above all the answer: Faces, and also your husband. How could Laurent be linked with all this?

"Good afternoon." The voice sounded above the tinkle of the bell. She did not need to look up to know who it was.

The man in the threadbare jacket advanced with his usual slow steps. At that moment, she was absolutely certain that she knew him. It lasted only for a fraction of a second, but the impression was as powerful and piercing as an arrow. And yet her memory refused to give her the slightest clue.

Mr. Corduroys continued to advance. He did not look at all embarrassed and paid no particular attention to. Anna. His casual mauve, gilded gaze strayed over the rows of chocolates. Why did he not recognize her? Was he playacting? A crazy idea stung her mind: What if he was a friend of Laurent's, an accomplice whose job it was to spy on her and test her out? But why?

He smiled at her silence, and said offhandedly, "The usual, please."

"Right away, sir." Anna headed for the counter, feeling her hands trembling against her body. She had to make several attempts before she managed to pick up a bag and slip the chocolates inside. Finally, she laid the Jikolas on the scales.

"Two hundred grams. That will be ten euros fifty, please."

She glanced at him again. Already she was not so sure… but the echo of the anxiety, the malaise, remained. The vague impression that this man, like Laurent, had altered his face using plastic surgery. It was the face in her memory, but it was not him…

The man smiled again, turning his mauve eyes to her. He paid. then left, uttering a barely audible "good-bye."

Anna remained still for some time, petrified, in a stupor. Never before had an attack been so violent. It was as if it had eradicated all of that morning's hope. As if, after believing she would be cured, she had fallen even lower. Like prisoners who try to escape and, once they are caught, find themselves in a cell several feet underground.

The bell rang once more.

"Hi." Clothilde crossed the shop, soaked to the skin, her arms full of carrier bags. She disappeared for a moment into the stockroom, then returned with an aura of freshness.

"What's up with you? You look like you've just seen a ghost."

Anna did not reply. The desire to vomit and the desire to cry were fighting for possession of her throat.

Is something the matter?" Clothilde asked again.

Devastated, Anna looked at her. Then she got to her feet and said, "I’am going for a walk."

16

Outside, it was raining even harder than when Clothilde had returned. Anna dived into the deluge. She let herself drift in the humid gusts of wind, in the twists of rain. With her dazed eyes, she looked at Paris as it swam and sank beneath the gray skies. Clouds were pushing in waves above the rooftops, the façades of the buildings were streaming, the sculpted heads on the balconies and windows looked like blue or green drowning faces, engulfed by the floods of heaven.

She went back up Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, then Avenue Hoche to her left, as far as Parc Monceau. There, she passed by the black-and-gold railings of the gardens and took Rue Murillo.

The traffic was heavy. Cars were splashing water and light. Hooded bikers were snaking away like little rubber Zorros. The pedestrians were struggling against the gusts, molded and fashioned by the wind that wrapped their clothes like damp drapings around unfinished statues.

Everything was a dance of brown and black, with glimmers of dark oil mingled with silver and sickly light.

Anna went along Avenue de Messine, between the bright buildings and huge trees. She did not know where her feet were taking her, nor did she care. She was wandering both physically and mentally. Then she saw it.

On the opposite pavement, a shop window was exhibiting a color portrait. Anna crossed the road. It was a reproduction of a painting. A troubled, twisted, tormented face of violent colors. She approached, as though hypnotized. It reminded her exactly of her hallucinations.

She looked for the name of the painter. Francis Bacon. A self-portrait dating from 1956. An exhibition of the artist's work was being held on the first floor of the gallery. She found the entrance, a few doors to her right in Rue de Téhéran. then went upstairs.

Red hangings separated the white rooms and gave the exhibition a solemn, almost religious atmosphere. A crowd was bustling around the paintings-but in total silence. A sort of icy respect, imposed by the images themselves, was filling the space.

In the first room, Anna found some canvases measuring six feet, all depicting the same subject: a holy man sitting on a throne. Dressed in purple robes, he was screaming as though on an electric chair. He was painted in red, then black, and then again in violet. But the same details recurred: the hands gripping the armrests, already burning, as though stuck to carbonized wood; the mouth screaming, opening to reveal a woundlike hole, while purplish blue flames were rising all around…

Anna went through the first curtain.

In the next room, naked crouching men were trapped in pools of color or primitive cages. Their bodies were twisted, deformed, like wild beasts. Or zoomorphic creatures, midway between several species. Their faces were mere scarlet splashes, bleeding maws, truncated features. Behind these monsters, the panels of paint were like the tiles of a butcher's shop or a slaughterhouse. A place of sacrifice, where bodies were reduced to carcasses, flayed masses, living carrion. Each time, the lines trembled, shifted, like a documentary filmed with a handheld camera, shaking with urgency. Anna felt her malaise mount, but she had not yet found what she was looking for: faces of suffering.

They were waiting for her in the last room.

A dozen smaller canvases were protected by red velvet cordons. Savage, broken, fractured portraits: a chaos of lips, noses, bone, where eyes desperately searched for a direction.

These paintings came in groups of three. The first, entitled Three Studies of the Human Head, was dated 1953. Livid, blue, cadaverous faces bore traces of their first wounds. The second triptych seemed like a natural continuation, breaking through into a higher level of violence. Study for Three Heads, 1962. White faces shifted away from the viewer, the better to return and display their scars beneath a clown's makeup. Strangely, these wounds seemed to be trying to raise a laugh, like the children who were disfigured in the Middle Ages in order to turn them forever into clowns and buffoons.

Anna moved on. She did not recognize her hallucinations. She was simply surrounded by masks of horror. Their mouths, cheekbones and stares spun around, twisting their deformities into unbearable spirals. The painter had clearly been relentless with these faces. He had attacked them, sliced them up with the sharpest weapons. Brushes, spatulas, knives… he had opened their wounds, flaying their skins, ripping into their cheeks…

Anna's head sank into her shoulders as she walked, doubled up with fear. She now only glanced at the portraits from beneath shivering eyelids. A series of studies, devoted to a certain Isabel Rawsthorne, was an apotheosis of cruelty. The woman's features had been quite literally shattered. Anna retreated, desperately looking for a human expression in this swirl of flesh. But all she found were scattered fragments, tortured mouths, bulging eyes with circles like cuts.

Suddenly, she gave in to the panic, turned on her heels and rushed to the exit. She was crossing the gallery's entrance hall when she noticed a copy of the exhibition's catalogue, lying on a white counter. She stopped.

She had to see… to see his own face.

She feverishly flicked through the book, past photos of his workshop, reproductions of works, before finally coming across a portrait of Francis Bacon himself A black-and-white photo, in which the artist's stare gleamed more brightly than the glossy paper.

Anna placed both her hands on the page in order to look him straight in the eye.

His eyes were blazing, avid, in a broad, almost moonlike face, supported by powerful jaws. A short nose, scruffy hair and cliff like brows completed the portrait of this man who seemed quite capable of standing up to the flayed masks of his paintings each morning.

Then a detail caught Anna's attention.

One of the painter's eyebrows was higher than the other. The hawkish, staring, astonished eye seemed to be fixed on some distant point. Anna grasped the unbelievable truth: Francis Bacon physically looked like his portraits. His appearance shared their madness and distortion. Had this asymmetric eye inspired the artist's deformed visions, or had his paintings finally disfigured their creator? In either case, the works merged with the artist's features…

This simple realization produced a revelation.

If the deformities of Bacon's canvases had a real source, why shouldn't her own hallucinations have an underlying truth? Who could say that her own delusions did not arise from a sign, some detail that really existed?

Another suspicion froze her. What if, beneath her madness, she was fundamentally right? What if Laurent and Mr. Corduroys had really changed their appearances?

She leaned on the wall and closed her eyes. Everything fit together. Laurent, for some unknown reason, had taken advantage of her fits of amnesia to change his features. He had gone to see a plastic surgeon, to hide inside his own face. Mr. Corduroys had done the same thing.

The two were accomplices. Together, they had committed some terrible crime and for that reason had altered the way they looked. That was why she had a malaise when she looked at them.

With a shudder, she rejected how impossible or ridiculous such reasoning might seem. She quite simply sensed that she was getting near the truth, no matter how crazy it might sound.

It was her brain against the others.

Against all the others.

She ran to the door. On the landing, she noticed a painting she had not seen before, just above the banister.

A mass of scars was trying to smile at her.

17

At the bottom of Avenue de Messine, Anna spotted a café. She ordered a Perrier at the bar, then went straight downstairs in search of a phone book. She had already lived out the same scene, that very morning, when she had looked for the number of a psychiatrist on Boulevard Saint-Germain. It was perhaps a ritual, an act to be repeated, like crossing the circles of initiation, recurring ordeals, before reaching the truth…

Flicking through the dog-eared pages, she looked for Plastic Surgery. She looked not at the names but the addresses. She had to find a doctor in the immediate neighborhood. Her finger stopped on the line that read "Didier Laferrière, 12 Rue Boissy-d'Anglas." So far as she recalled, this street was just by La Madeleine, about five hundred yards away.

Six rings, then a man's voice. She asked: "Dr. Laferriére?"

"Speaking."

Luck was on her side. She did not have to pass the obstacle of a receptionist.

"I'd like to make an appointment, please."

"My secretary's not here today. Hang on…"

She heard the sound of a computer keyboard.

"When would suit you?" The voice was strange, silky lacking in tone. She answered, "At once. It's an emergency"

"An emergency?"

"If you let me see you, I'll explain."

There was a pause, a second's hesitation, as though he was full of mistrust. Then the cotton-wool voice asked, "How long will it take you to get here?"

"Half an hour."

Anna heard a slight smile in the voice that answered. In the end, this urgency seemed to amuse him. "I'll be expecting you."

18

"I don't understand. What sort of operation are you interested in, exactly?"

Didier Laferriére was a small man, with a neutral face and gray frizzy hair, which precisely matched his toneless voice. A discreet character, with furtive, imperceptible gestures. He spoke as though through a screen of rice paper. Anna realized that she would have to penetrate this veil if she was going to obtain the information she wanted.

"I haven't really decided yet," she replied. "To start with, I'd like to know more about how operations can change a person's face.^-

"Change it in what way?"

"Completely."

The surgeon adopted a professorial tone. "In order to effect profound improvements, it is necessary to attack the bone structure. There are two main techniques: grinding operations. Which aim at reducing prominent features, and bone grafts. Which instead build up certain regions."

"How does it work, exactly?"

He took a deep breath and paused for thought. His office was plunged into shadows. The windows were covered by shutters. A weak light caressed the Asian-style furniture. There was a confession-box atmosphere about the place.

"When it comes to grinding." he went on. "We reduce the height of the bones by passing beneath the skin. For grafts, we first remove the fragments, generally from the parietal bone, at the top of the skull, then we introduce them into the regions concerned. We sometimes also use prostheses."

He opened his hands, and his voice softened. "Anything is possible. All that counts is your satisfaction."

"Such operations must leave traces, mustn't they?"

He smiled briefly. "Not at all. We work using an endoscope. We slide optic tubes and micro instruments beneath the tissue. Then we operate on the screen. The resulting incisions are minute."

"Can I see some photos of the scars?"

"Of course. But let's begin at the beginning. I want us to define together the sort of operation you are interested in."

Anna realized that he would at best show her toned-down pictures, with no visible marks. She tried a different approach: "What about the nose? What can be done here?"

He furrowed his brow skeptically. Anna's nose was straight, narrow, slight. Nothing to be changed. "It's a region you want to modify?"

"I'm looking at all the possibilities. What can you do with the nose?"

"A lot of progress has been made in this field. We can, quite literally, sculpt the nose of your dreams. We could draw the line together, if you like. I have some software that allows us to-"

"But what exactly happens during the operation?"

The doctor shifted about in his white jacket, which was standing in for his surgical coat. "After we have made the zone more supple – “

“How? By breaking the cartilage-is that it?"

The smile was still there, but the eyes were becoming inquisitive. Laferrière was trying to work out Anna's intentions. "We do indeed have to go through such a… radical step. But the whole thing is carried out under anesthetic."

"Then what do you do?"

"Then we position the bones and cartilage according to the required line. I repeat. We can now offer you tailor-made work."

Anna pursued this direction. "But that sort of operation must surely leave behind traces?"

"None. The instruments are introduced through the nostrils. We don't even touch the skin."

"And what about face-lifts?" she went on. "What technique do you use?"

"Endoscopy again. We pull the skin and muscles using minute tweezers.”

“So no scars either?"

"Not a single one. We pass via the upper lobe of the ear. It's absolutely undetectable." He waved a hand. "Forget about scars; they're things of the past."

"And liposuction?"

Laferrière frowned. "We were speaking about the face."

"But there's liposuction for the throat, isn't there?"

"True. It's even one of the easiest operations to perform."

"Does that leave scars?"

This was one question too many. The surgeon replied hostilely, "I don't understand. What are you interested in, improvements or scars?"

Anna lost her composure. In a flash, she felt the panic she had experienced in the gallery come back. Heat was rising under her skin, from her throat up to her forehead. Her face was now presumably scarlet.

She murmured, hardly able to articulate: "Sorry. I'm very nervous. I'd. I'd like… In fact, before deciding, I'd like to see some photographs of operations."

Laferrière's voice softened, a touch of honey in dark tea. "That's out of the question. Such pictures are extremely off-putting. All that we need concern ourselves about are the results. Follow me? As for the rest, that's my business."

Anna gripped the armrests of her chair. One way or another, she had to drag the truth out of this doctor. "I'll never let you operate on me unless I see, with my own eyes, what you're going to do."

The doctor stood up, making an apologetic gesture. "I'm sorry, but I don't think you're ready psychologically for such an operation."

Anna did not move. "What have you got to hide?"

Laferrière froze. "I beg your pardon?"

"I ask you about scars. You say they don't exist. I ask to see pictures of an operation. You refuse. So what have you got to hide?"

The surgeon leaned both of his fists on the desk. "I carry out over twenty operations a day, young lady. I teach plastic surgery at Salpetrière Hospital. I know my job. It consists in bringing people happiness by improving the way they look. Not in traumatizing them by talking about scars and showing them pictures of broken bones. I don't know what you're looking for, but you won't find it here."

Anna returned his stare. "You're an impostor."

He stood up, breaking into an incredulous laugh. "What?"

"You refuse to show your work. You lie about the results. You try to pass yourself off as a magician, but you're nothing but a fraud. Just like all those other quacks."

The word quack produced the desired result. Laferriere's face started to go white until it was gleaming in the darkness. He swiveled around and opened a flexible slatted filing cabinet. From it, he removed a file of plastic-covered sheets and dumped it down on the desk in front of her. "Is that what you want to see?"

He opened the file to reveal the first photograph. A face turned inside out like a glove, the skin stretched apart using hemostatic clamps. "Or this?"

He showed a second picture: lips turned up, surgical scissors stuck in bleeding gums. "How about this one?"

Third sheet: a hammer nailing a probe into a nostril. Her heart in her throat, Anna forced herself to look.

In the next photo, a lancet was slicing an eyelid, just above a bulging eye.

She raised her head. She had succeeded in fooling the doctor; all she had to do was continue. "It's impossible that such operations never leave scars," she said.

Laferrière sighed. He rummaged through his cupboard again, then laid a second folder on the desk. With a weary voice, he commented on the first image: "Grinding of the forehead. By endoscopy. Four months after the operation."

Anna looked attentively at the transformed face. Three vertical lines, each measuring about five inches, crossed the forehead, along the roots of the hair. The surgeon turned the page.

"Removal of a piece of parietal bone for a graft. Two months after the operation."

The photograph showed a skull topped by spiky hair, under which could clearly be seen a pinkish S-shaped scar.

"The hair will soon cover the mark, which will in turn disappear," he added. He flicked over the page, and continued. "A triple face-lift, by endoscopy. The stitches are intradermic and are absorbed. A month later, you see almost nothing."

Two shots of an ear, face-on and in profile, shared the page. On the upper crest of the lobe, Anna noticed a slight zigzag.

"Liposuction of the throat," Laferrière went on, revealing a further image. "The line you can see there will disappear. It's the operation that leaves the least trace."

He turned another page and emphasized, in an almost sadistic voice, "And if you want the lot, here's a scan of a face that has undergone a graft of the cheekbones. Beneath the skin, the traces of the operation remain forever."

It was the most impressive picture. A bluish death's-head, whose bone structure was covered with screws and fissures.

Anna closed the folder.

"Thank you, Doctor. It was something I just had to see."

The doctor walked around his desk and stared at her intently, as though still trying to detect beneath her features the real reason for this consultation. But…sorry, I don't understand. What are you after?"

She stood up and put on her smooth black coat. For the first time, she smiled. "I'm going to have to see for myself first."

19

It was two in the morning.

It was still raining: a drum roll. a cadence, a slight hammering, with its different accents, beats and resonances on the windows, balconies, stone parapets.

Anna was standing in front of the living-room windows. In her sweatshirt and tracksuit bottom, she was shivering with cold.

In the darkness, she stared through the windows at the form of the ancient plane tree. It was like a skeleton of bark, floating in the air. With charred bones, marked with scraps of lichen, looking almost silvery under the streetlights. Bare claws awaiting their covering of flesh-spring leaves.

She looked down. On the table in front of her lay the objects she had bought that afternoon, after her visit to the surgeon: a Maglite flashlight and a special Polaroid camera for night shots.

For the last hour. Laurent had been asleep in the bedroom. She had stayed by his side, waiting for the moment. She had watched out for the slightest twitch as his body started to slumber. Then she had listened to his breathing as it became regular and unconscious.

First sleep. The deepest.

She picked up her equipment. Mentally, she said farewell to the view outside, the large room with its glistening parquet and white settees. And to her routine now associated with this apartment. If she was right. if what she had imagined was true, then she was going to have to flee. And then try to understand.

She walked up the corridor. She advanced so cautiously that she could hear the breathing of the building the cracking of the parquet, the humming of the water heater, the rustling of the windows as the rain hit them…

Then she slid inside the bedroom.

Once beside the bed, she put her camera silently onto the table, then pointed her flashlight toward the floor. She covered it with her hand, so as to turn on its slender beam, which now heated her palm.

Only then did she hold her breath and lean over her husband.

Lit by the flashlight, she could see his motionless profile, and the outline of his body in the vague folds of the covers. Her throat tightened. She almost stopped, decided to drop it, but then she forced herself to continue.

She played the beam over his face. No reaction. She could start.

First, she raised his fringe of hair slightly and looked at his brows. Nothing. There was no trace of the three scars shown in Laferriere's photo.

She moved the beam down to his temples. Nothing again. She played it over the lower part of his face, below his jaws and chin. Not the slightest hint of any anomaly.

She started trembling again. What if all this was just one more sign of her madness? She pulled herself together and continued her investigations.

She turned to his ears, pressing gently on the upper lobe so as to examine its top. No marks. She gingerly raised his eyelids slightly looking for an incision. There was none. She observed his nose and the inside of his nostrils. Nothing.

She was now covered in sweat. She tried once more to control the noise of her respiration, but her breaths were escaping through her lips and nose.

She remembered another possible scar. The stitched S on the scalp. She stood up, gently putting a hand into Laurent's hair, raising each lock of it, aiming her torch at the roots. There was nothing. No marks. No irregularities. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Anna held back her tears. She was now rummaging recklessly around that head that had betrayed her, that had showed that she was mad, that she was -

A hand grabbed her wrist brutally.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Anna leapt back. Her flashlight rolled onto the floor.

Laurent had already sat up. He lit the lamp on the bedside table and repeated, "What the hell are you doing?"

Then he saw the Maglite on the ground and the Polaroid camera on the table.

"What's all this about?" he murmured, his lips tight.

Anna, prostrate against the wall, did not answer. Laurent pulled aside the covers and got up, picking up the flashlight. He examined it in disgust, then brandished it at her face.

"You were observing me, is that it? In the middle of the night? Jesus Christ, what were looking for?"

Not a word.

Laurent wiped his brow and sighed wearily. He was dressed only in boxer shorts. He went into the adjacent room, which served as a boudoir, and grabbed a sweater and a pairs of jeans, which he silently put on. Then he left the bedroom, leaving Anna to her solitude and insanity.

She slid down the wall and curled up on the carpet. She thought of nothing, noticed nothing. Except for the beating inside her breast, which seemed to be getting louder and louder.

Laurent reappeared in the doorway, holding his mobile phone. He was smiling strangely, nodding with compassion, as if in the last few minutes he had calmed down and reasoned with himself. He said softly, pointing at the phone, "Everything will be okay. I've called Eric. take you to the institute tomorrow."

He bent down over her, then slowly drew her toward the bed. She put up no resistance. He sat her down cautiously, as though afraid he might break her-or else liberate some dangerous energy from her.

"You'll be all right now"

She nodded, staring at the flashlight that he had put on the bedside table, next to the camera. She stammered: "Not the biopsy. Not the probe. I don't want surgery"

"To begin with. Eric will just carry out some more tests. He'll do everything he can to avoid taking a sample. I promise you that." He kissed her. "Everything's going to be fine."

He offered her a sleeping pill. She refused.

"Please," he insisted.

She agreed to swallow it. Then he slid her between the sheets and lay down beside her, hugging her tenderly. He said not a word about his own concern. Not a single mention of his own violent response to his wife's utter insanity. What did he really think? Wasn't he relieved to be rid of her?

Soon, she felt his breathing slip into the regularity of sleep. Flow could he just doze off like that at such a moment? But maybe hours had already gone by… Anna had lost all notion of time. Her cheek against her husband's torso, she listened to his heartbeat. The calm pulse of someone who was not mad, who was not afraid.

She felt the effects of the tranquilizer gradually invade her. A flower of sleep started to bloom inside her body…

It now felt as if the bed were rising and leaving solid ground. She was slowly floating in the shadows. There was no point putting up any resistance, no trying to struggle against that current. She just had to let herself drift away along that running wave..

She snuggled up against Laurent, thought of the plane tree glistening in the rain in front of the living-room windows. Its bare boughs waiting to be covered with buds and leaves. A coming spring that she would not see.

She had just lived out her last season among the sane.

20

"Anna? What are you doing? We're going to be late!"

In the scalding shower, Anna could barely hear Laurent's voice. She just stared at the droplets exploding on her feet, savoring the streams pouring around her neck, occasionally lifting her face up beneath those liquid tresses. Her entire body was limp, drowsy, overtaken by the water's fluidity. As perfectly docile as her mind.

Thanks to the tablet, she had managed to get a few hours' sleep. That morning, she felt relaxed, neutral, indifferent to what might happen to her. Her despair had shifted into a strange calm. A sort of distant peace.

"Anna? Come on, now!"

"Okay I'm coming."

She got out of the shower and jumped onto the floorboards in front of the basin. It was 8:30. Laurent, dressed and perfumed, was pacing up and down in front of the bathroom door. She got dressed quickly, slipping on her underwear, then a black woolen dress by Kenzo. Which evoked a stylized, futuristic mourning.

Quite appropriate.

She grabbed a brush and started to do her hair. Through the steam left by the shower, all she could see in the mirror was a misty reflection. She preferred it that way.

In a few days, maybe a few weeks, her daily reality would be her image in a dark glass. She would recognize nothing, see nothing, become totally alien to everything around her. She would not even bother about her own madness, letting it destroy what little remained of her sanity. “Anna?"

I'm coming!"

She smiled at Laurent's haste. Was he afraid of being late to the office, or in a hurry to off-load his loony wife?

The mist started to fade from the mirror. She saw her face appear, red and puffy from the hot water. Mentally, she said good-bye to Anna Heymes. And also to Clothilde, the Maison du Chocolat, and to Mathilde Wilcrau, the poppy-lipped psychiatrist..

She imagined she was already at the Henri-Becquerel Institute. A locked, white room, without any contact with reality. That was what she needed. She was almost impatient to surrender herself to strange hands, to give herself up to the nurses.

She even started to come to terms with the idea of a biopsy, of a probe that would slowly descend into her brain and might locate the source of her illness. In fact, she could not care less about recovering. All she wanted to do was disappear, vanish, be of no more trouble to other people..

Anna was still brushing her hair when everything came to a halt. In the mirror, beneath her bangs, she noticed three vertical scars. She could not believe it. With her left hand, she wiped away the last traces of steam and breathlessly took a closer look. The marks were tiny, but definitely there, crossing her forehead.

Scars from plastic surgery. The ones she had been looking for last night-on Laurent.

She bit her fist to stop herself from screaming and doubled up, feeling her guts wrench up in spray of lava.

"Anna! What the hell are you doing?" Laurent's cries seemed to be coming from another planet.

Trembling all over, Anna stood up and looked at her reflection once more. She turned her head and with a finger bent down her right ear. She found a white mark across the peak of the lobe. Then an identical one behind the other ear.

She drew back, trying to control her shaking body both hands gripping the basin. Then she raised her chin, looking for further clues, the slight trace left by liposuction. She had no difficulty locating it.

An abyss was opening in front of her, a free fall into the pit of her stomach.

She lowered her head, separating her hair in search of the final sign: an S-shaped scar, showing that some bone had been removed. Sure enough, that pink serpent was there waiting for her on her scalp, like a familiar revolting reptile.

She held on tighter to avoid collapsing as the truth exploded into her mind. She stared at herself, head down, hair flowing, measuring the depth of the pit into which she had fallen.

The only face that had changed was hers.

21

"Anna! For heaven's sake, answer!"

Laurent's voice echoed in the bathroom, drifting through the last of the steam, joining the damp air outside through the open dormer window. His cries filled the courtyard of the building, pursuing Anna as far as the cornice she had now reached.

"Anna! Let me in!"

She was edging along sideways, back to the wall, balanced on the parapet. The cold stone stuck to her shoulder blades; the rain poured down her face as the wind blew her soaked hair into her eyes.

She avoided looking down at the courtyard, some sixty feet below, and stared straight ahead at the wall of the building opposite.

`Let me in!"

She heard the bathroom door crack. A second later, Laurent could be seen in the window frame she had just escaped through-his features ravaged, his eyes red.

At the very moment, she reached the balustrade at the end of the balcony. She grabbed the stone rim and pulled herself over it, falling onto her knees and hearing the black kimono she had pulled over her dress rip open.

"Anna! Come back!"

Through the columns, she could see her husband looking around for her. She got to her feet, ran along the terrace, scrambled over the farther balustrade and flattened herself against the wall in order to start along the next cornice.

At that instant, all hell broke loose.

A radio transmitter appeared in Laurent's hands. In a panicked voice, he yelled: "Calling all units! She's escaped. I repeat: she's running away!"

Seconds later, two men ran into the courtyard. They were dressed in civilian clothes but wore the red armbands of policemen. They aimed their rifles at her.

Almost at once, a window opened on the third floor of the building opposite. A man appeared, holding a chrome-plated revolver in both hands. He glanced around until he found her, a perfect target.

More running could be heard on the ground. Three more men had joined the first two. One of them was their driver, Nicolas. They were all carrying the same automatic rifles with curved magazines.

She closed her eyes and put out her arms to balance. A profound silence inhabited her, wiping out any thoughts and bringing her a strange serenity.

She walked on, eyes tight shut, arms stretched.

She heard Laurent shout once more: "Don't shoot! For Christ's sake, we need her alive!"

She opened her eyes again. From an incomprehensible distance, she contemplated the perfect symmetry of the ballet. To her right, impeccably groomed Laurent was yelling into his radio and pointing at her. Opposite, the motionless sniper was gripping his gun-she could now see the mike close to his lips. Downstairs, five men in firing position were crouching, their faces raised.

And there she was, right in the middle of this army. A chalk white shape dressed in black, posed like Christ.

She felt the curve of the gutter. She gathered herself, slid one hand over to the far side and crossed over the obstacle. A few feet farther on, a window stopped her. She remembered the layout of the building: this window led to the back staircase.

She raised her arm and elbowed it violently. The glass resisted. She tried again, swinging her arm with all her strength. The window shattered. She pressed down on her feet and leapt backward.

The frame gave way.

Laurent's cry accompanied her as she fell: "Don't shoot!'

There was an endless moment, then she hit a hard surface. A black flame crossed her body. The shocks were multiple and violent. Her back, arms, heels crashed down on the sharp shards, while pain exploded in a thousand echoes through her limbs. Her legs shot up over her head. Her chin pressed down into her rib cage, taking her breath away.

Then darkness.

First the taste of dust. Then of blood. Anna came to. She was lying, curled up in the fetal position, at the bottom of the stairs. Looking up, she saw a gray ceiling and a globe of yellow light. She was where she had wanted to be: on the back staircase.

She grabbed the banister and pulled herself to her feet. Apparently, nothing was broken. All she found was a cut along her right arm a shard of the window had torn her dress and stuck into her shoulder. Her gums had also been injured. Her mouth was full of blood, but her teeth seemed to be still in place.

She slowly pulled out the piece of glass and then rapidly tore off a piece of her kimono to make an improvised tourniquet-cum-bandage.

She tried to assemble her thoughts. She had slid down one story on her back, so this was the second floor. Her pursuers would soon appear on the ground floor. She leapt up the stairs four at a time, passing her own story then the fourth and the fifth.

Laurent's voice suddenly burst into the stairwell: "Hurry up! She's trying to get to the newt building via the top floor!"

She speeded up and reached the seventh floor, mentally thanking Laurent for the tip.

She rushed down the corridor of what had been the servants' quarters, passing doors, a glass roof, basins, and then at last reached another staircase. She ran down it, passing several landings, then suddenly caught on-she was running into a trap. Her pursuers were communicating by radio. Some of them would be waiting for her at the bottom of this building, while the others were chasing her from behind.

At that moment, she heard the noise of an elevator to her left. She did not know which floor she was on, but that did not matter. This door must open onto an apartment, which would in turn lead to another staircase.

She banged on it as hard as she could.

She felt nothing. Not the blows from her hand, nor the beating in her rib cage.

She knocked again. There was already a thundering of feet above her, approaching at high speed, and it seemed that she could also hear others coming up toward her. She pummeled on the door once more, using her fists like hammers, screaming for help.

At last, it opened.

A little woman in a pink pinafore appeared in the entrance. Anna shouldered her aside, then closed the reinforced door. She turned the key twice in the lock, then pocketed it.

She spun around to discover a huge, immaculately white kitchen. The stupefied cleaning lady was clinging to her broom. Anna yelled into her face: "Don't open it again, got me?" She grabbed the woman's shoulders and repeated: "Don't open it. okay?"

There were already knocks from the other side. "Police! Open up!"

Anna ran across the apartment. She went down a corridor, past several bedrooms. It took a moment for her to realize that it was laid out in the same way as hers. She turned right to go into the living room. Large paintings, furniture of redwood, oriental rugs, settees broader than mattresses. She now had to turn left to find the vestibule.

She rushed onward, tripping over a large placid dog, then bumped into a woman in a dressing gown, with a towel over her hair.

"Who… who are you?" the woman yelled, holding her turban as though it were a precious jar.

Anna nearly burst out laughing. That was not the right question to ask her today. She pushed her aside, reached the hall and opened the door. She was about to leave when she saw some keys and a remote control on a mahogany sideboard: the garage. These buildings all led down to the same one. She grabbed the beeper and dived down the purple carpeted staircase.

She could make it she just knew she could.

She went straight down to the basement. Her chest was burning. She was breathing in short gasps. But her plan was coming together in her mind. The police trap was going to close in on the ground floor. Mean while, she would sneak out via the slope of the garage, which led to the other side of the building, on Rue Daru. There was a good chance that they had not thought of that exit yet…

When she reached the garage, she ran across the concrete floor, without turning on the light, toward the swing door. She was just aiming the remote control when the door opened. Four armed men were running down the slope. She had underestimated the enemy. She just had time to hide behind a car, her two hands on the ground.

She saw them pass by feeling the vibrations from their boots in her chest, and nearly burst into tears. They were now peering in between the cars, playing their flashlights across the floor.

She leaned back against the wall and noticed that her arm was sticky with blood. The tourniquet had unraveled. She tightened it up again, pulling at the material with her teeth, while her mind raced in search of inspiration.

Her pursuers were slowly drawing away, searching, examining and combing every square inch of the basement. But they would also eventually retrace their steps and find her. She glanced around once more and, a few yards to her right, noticed a gray door. If her memory was right, this exit led to another building that also opened onto Rue Daru.

Without another thought, she slid between the wall and the bumpers, reached the door and opened it just enough to be able slip through it. A few seconds later, she burst into a bright, modern hallway. Nobody. She jumped down the stairs and leapt out.

She was running along the road, savoring the feel of the rain, when a screech of brakes brought her to a halt. A car had just come to a stop a few inches away from her, brushing against her kimono.

Scared and broken, she stepped back. The driver wound down his window and shouted: "You ought to look where you're going, darling!"

Anna paid no attention to him. She was peering left and right in search of police officers. It seemed to her that the air was charged with electricity and tension, as though a storm was brewing.

And the storm was her.

The driver slowly passed her. "You should get your head examined, lady!”

“Piss off"

The man braked. "What did you say?"

Anna threatened him with her bloodied finger. "I told you to piss off!"

He hesitated, his lips trembling slightly. Then he seemed to understand that something was wrong, that this was not just any street shouting match. He shrugged and drove of.

Another idea. She dashed toward Paris 's Orthodox church, a few numbers up the road. She went past the grating, across a gravel courtyard, then up the steps that led to the old varnished wooden door. She pushed it open and threw herself into the shadows.

The nave seemed to her to be plunged in utter darkness, but in reality it was the beating in her temples that was blinding her. Little by little, she made out the brown tints of gold, the reddish icons, the coppery backs of chairs, like so many dampened flames.

She walked on cautiously noticing other discreetly mild glimmers. Each object here was fighting for the few drops of light that were distilled by the stained-glass windows and the candles on their cast-iron chandeliers. Even the characters in the frescoes looked as if they wanted to extract themselves from their shadows to drink a little brightness. The entire space had an aura of a silvery glow-a gleaming play of shadows, containing a silent battle between light and dark.

Anna got her breath back. Her chest was burning up. Her skin and clothes were soaked in sweat. She stopped, leaned against a pillar and savored the stone's coolness. Before long, her heartbeat started to slow down. Everything about the place seemed to have calming virtues: the candles swaying on their chandeliers, the long melting faces of Christ like bars of wax, the gleaming lamps hanging like lunar fruit.

"Is something the matter?"

She turned around to see Boris Godunov in person-a huge priest, dressed in black vestments, with a long white beard covering his chest. She could not help wondering which picture he had walked out of.

In his deep voice, he asked, "Are you all right?"

She glanced around at the doorway, then asked, "Do you have a crypt?"

"I beg your pardon?"

She forced herself to articulate each syllable. "A crypt. A place where funerals are held."

The priest thought he knew what she wanted. He adopted an appropriate expression and buried his hands in his sleeves. "Who are you burying, my daughter?"

"Myself"

22

When she got to emergency admissions at Saint-Antoine Hospital, she realized that she was in for another ordeal. A struggle against her madness and disease.

The strip lights in the waiting room reflected off the white tiles, wiping out any light from outside. It could as easily have been 8:00 in the morning as 11:00 at night. The heat increased this stifling feeling. A suffocating, inert energy weighed down on her body like a lead casing drenched in antiseptic smells. Here, you entered the transit zone between life and death, which lay outside the succession of hours or days.

On the seats screwed to the walls sat a surrealistic sample of the dregs of humanity. A man with a shaved head, who was constantly scratching his forearm, leaving a deposit of yellow dust on the floor: his neighbor, a tramp strapped into a wheelchair, who was swearing at the nurses in a throaty voice while begging them to put his guts back into place; just beside them, an old woman was standing dressed in just a paper coat, which she kept taking off, while mumbling unintelligibly, to reveal a gray body, with elephant wrinkles and a baby's diaper. Only one person looked normal. She could see him in profile sitting by the window. But when he turned around, the other half of his face was encrusted with shards of glass and scabs.

Anna was neither astonished nor scared by this chamber of horrors. On the contrary, it seemed like an excellent place to remain unnoticed.

Four hours before, she had dragged the priest down into the crypt. She had convinced him that she had Russian origins, was a fervent believer, had a terminal illness and wanted to be buried in holy ground. He had looked skeptical, but had still listened to her for half an hour. Thus he had unwittingly sheltered her while the men with red armbands had been combing the neighborhood.

When she had resurfaced, the coast was clear. The blood from her wound had clotted. She could walk the streets, with her arm in her kimono, without attracting too much attention. As she rushed on, she blessed the name of Kenzo and the extravagances of fashion, which meant that you could walk the streets in a dressing gown while looking quite simply trendy.

For over two hours, she wandered aimlessly in the rain, mingling in among the crowds on the Champs-Elysées. She forced herself not to think, not to near the gulches surrounding her consciousness.

She was free. Alive.

And that was already a lot.

At noon, she was in Place de la Concorde, where she took the metro. Line number one, direction Chateau de Vincennes. Sitting at the rear of the compartment, she decided that she wanted confirmation, before even thinking about running away. She had mentally run through the hospitals on this line and had picked Saint-Antoine, just by the Bastille.

She had been waiting for twenty minutes when a doctor appeared carrying a large envelope of X-rays. He put it down on an empty counter, then bent down to rummage through one of the drawers. She rushed over to him.

"I have to see you at once."

"Wait your turn," he said over his shoulder, without even looking at her. "The nurse will call you."

Anna grabbed his arm. "Please. I must have an X-ray"

The man turned around angrily, but his expression changed when he saw her. "Have you checked in at reception?"

"No."

"Have you any health coverage?"

"None."

The doctor looked her up and down. He was large, dark-haired and hearty, in a white robe and cork-heeled clogs. With his tanned skin, coat open in a V to reveal a hairy chest and gold medallion, he looked like a parody of a ladies' man. He stared at her blatantly, a connoisseur's smile across his lips. Pointing at the ripped kimono and dried blood, he asked: "Is it for your arm?"

"No. My… my face hurts. I need an X-ray"

He frowned slightly, scratching his body hair-the harsh mane of a stallion. "Was it a fall?"

"No, I've just got facial pain. I don't know."

"Or just sinusitis." He winked. "There's a lot of it going around."

He looked around at the room and its occupants: the junkie, the wino, the grandma… the usual suspects. He sighed, then suddenly seemed more inclined to take some time out with Anna. He treated her to a broad Mediterranean grin, then whispered warmly, "I'll give you a good scanning, young lady. A full frontal."

He grabbed her arm. "But first of all, let's strap you up."

An hour later, Anna was standing in the stone gallery that ran along the borders of the hospital garden. The doctor had showed her there while she was waiting for the results of the tests.

The weather had changed. Darts of sunshine were melting into the downpour, transforming it into a silver mist of unreal clarity. Anna attentively observed the leaps and bounds of the rain on the leaves of the trees, the glinting puddles and the narrow streams sketched out between the gravel and roots of the thickets. This minor occupation allowed her to keep her mind empty and her latent panic at bay. Above all, no questions. Not yet.

The footfalls of clogs sounded to her right. The doctor was coming back, beneath the arcades of the gallery, holding the images. His smile had completely disappeared. "You should have told me about your accident."

Anna jumped. "What accident?"

"What happened to you? Was it a car crash?"

She stepped back in fear.

He was shaking his head in disbelief.

"It's amazing what they can do now with plastic surgery. To look at you, I'd never have guessed…"

Anna seized the printout from his hands.

It showed a skull that had been fractured, stitched and then totally stuck back together again. Black lines revealed grafts that had been performed on her brows and cheekbones. Marks around her nose showed that it had been completely resculpted. Screws in her jawbones and temples were keeping prostheses in place.

Anna broke into a nervous laughter, a laughing sob, before fleeing beneath the arcades, the printout waving in her hand like a blue flame.