The Empire Of The Wolves Read online

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.”

  “Go on."

  Anna describ
ed 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 co
unter. 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.