The Empire Of The Wolves Read online

  "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 pe
rhaps 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."