The Empire Of The Wolves Read online

  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 o
f 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.