Tarantula

by Thierry Jonquet

  He admired their serenity, longing for the soothing power of such calm. He wept bitter tears. He had snatched Eve from the hands of Varneroy, and he knew full well that this pity—for that is what he called it—had abruptly destroyed the hate, the limitless, unrestrained hate that was his only reason for living.

  Mygale often played chess with you. He would think for a long time before risking a move that you never anticipated. Sometimes he improvised attacks without regard for his own defenses; he was impulsive, yet invincible.

  The day came when he did away with your shackles and replaced your mat with a sofa. On this you slept and lolled all day long amid silky cushions. Meanwhile, the heavy door to the cellar remained firmly padlocked.

  Mygale gave you candy and Virginia cigarettes. He inquired about your tastes in music. Your conversations took on a playful cast bordering on small talk. He had provided a videocassette player and brought movies for the two of you to watch together. He made tea, plied you with herbal decoctions, and, if you seemed depressed, he would uncork a bottle of champagne. No sooner were your glasses empty than he would refill them.

  You were no longer naked: Mygale had given you an embroidered shawl, a gorgeous piece of fabric beautifully wrapped. With your delicate fingers you had pulled off the paper to reveal the shawl; this gift gave you the greatest pleasure.

  Swathed in the shawl, you would snuggle among the cushions, smoking the imported cigarettes or sucking on sugary bonbons, and await your daily visit from Mygale, who would never arrive empty-handed.

  His generosity toward you was seemingly boundless. One day the door to the cellar opened and he entered, pushing an enormous object on wheels before him, not without difficulty. He smiled as he contemplated the tissue paper that enveloped it, the pink ribbon, the bouquet of flowers on the top…

  As you stared in amazement, he reminded you of the date: the twenty-second of July. Yes, you had been a captive for ten months, and today you were twenty-one. You hammed it up then, prancing around the giant package, clapping your hands and laughing. Mygale helped you untie the ribbon. You already knew from the shape that it was a piano—but not that it was a Steinway!

  Seated on your old stool, once you had loosened up your unwilling fingers, you played. The performance was hardly brilliant, but you shed tears of joy.

  And you—you, Vincent Moreau, this monster’s pet, his lapdog, his monkey or parrot, whom he had so thoroughly broken—yes, you, had then kissed his hand, giggling with glee.

  That was when he slapped you for the second time.

  Alex was fretting in his hideout. Surfeited with sleep, his eyes puffy, he spent most of his waking hours in front of the tube. He chose not to think about his future and strove to occupy himself as best he could. In contrast to his custom at the farmhouse, he cleaned house and washed dishes with extreme fastidiousness. Everything was sparkling clean, and he would pass hours at a time polishing the floor or scouring pots and pans.

  His thigh no longer hurt much. The forming scar tissue itched a little, but the wound was not painful. A simple compress had replaced the heavy-duty bandage.

  One evening some ten days after Alex had set up house, he had a brilliant idea, or at least he convinced himself that it was a brilliant idea. He was watching a soccer match on the box. Sports had never held much interest for him, except for karate. The only periodicals he read in the normal way were martial arts magazines. Still, his eye idly followed the zigzagging of the round ball as it was systematically knocked around by the players. He sipped the last of a glass of wine and began to nod off, not getting up to turn off the set when the game ended. The next show was a “medical special” on plastic surgery.

  A commentator presented a report on lifts and other facial reconstruction. Then came an interview with the head of a hospital clinic in Paris, Professor Lafargue. Alex was awake now, and riveted.

  “The second stage,” Lafargue was saying, using a sketch as a visual aid, “consists in the scraping of the periosteum with what is called a raspatory. This is a very important phase. As you see here, the purpose is to let the periosteum adhere to the deepest layer of the skin so as to cushion it…”

  On the screen appeared a series of photographs of faces transformed, remodeled, sculpted, beautified. The patients shown earlier were unrecognizable. Alex had followed the explanation attentively, irritated that he did not understand some of the terms used. When the end credits rolled, he took down the name of the doctor, Lafargue, and the name of the clinic where he worked.

  Alex thought about the photograph on his identity card, about the mercenary hospitality of his friend the legionnaire, about the money hidden in the attic of his new abode… Slowly but surely, everything was coming together!

  The guy on the tube had claimed that a nose job was a perfectly benign operation, just like the excision of fatty tissues on certain parts of the face. A wrinkle? No problem: the scalpel could wipe it away like an eraser.

  Alex rushed to the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. He fingered his face, the lump on his nose, the cheeks that were too chubby, the double chin…

  It was a cinch! The doctor had said two weeks—just two weeks to redesign a face! You simply wipe away the old one and replace it with a new. But no, nothing was ever that simple. He would have to convince the surgeon to work on him—and Alex was a criminal wanted by the police. How could he find a lever powerful enough to make the man keep quiet—to make him carry through the operation successfully and then let him go without tipping off the authorities? Did this Lafargue perhaps have kids or a wife?

  Alex read and re-read what he had written down on a piece of paper: the name of the doctor and the particulars of the hospital where he worked. The more he thought about his idea, the more brilliant it seemed. His dependence on the legionnaire would significantly diminish once his appearance was altered, for the police would then be looking for a phantom, an Alex Barny that didn’t exist, and getting out of the country would be far easier to arrange.

  He did not sleep a wink that night. The next day he got up at the crack of dawn, washed rapidly, trimmed his own hair, and meticulously ironed the suit and shirt that he had brought from the farmhouse. The Citroën was waiting in the garage…

  Mygale was a delight. His visits grew longer. He brought you the newspapers, and he often took his meals with you. The cellar was insufferably hot—it was August—but he had installed a refrigerator, which he restocked every day with fruit juice. In addition to the shawl, your wardrobe now included a light dressing gown and a pair of mules.

  In the fall, Mygale began giving you the injections. He came down to see you, syringe in hand. At his direction, you lay down on the sofa and bared your buttocks. The needle popped promptly into your flesh. You had seen the translucent pink-tinged liquid in the barrel of the syringe, and now it was inside you.

  Mygale was very gentle and tried hard not to hurt you, but the liquid itself caused you pain once it was injected. Then, as it dispersed in your body, the pain wore off.

  You did not question Mygale about this treatment. You were completely taken up by your drawing and your piano; the intense creative activity sated you. What did it matter about the shots? Mygale was so sweet.

  You were making rapid strides with your music. Mygale rummaged devotedly for hours in music shops for scores. Manuals on painting and art books showing exemplary works were piling up in the cellar.

  One day you let slip the sinister nickname you had given him. It was at the end of a meal eaten together. The champagne had gone to your head. Blushing, stuttering, you had admitted your error—uttering the words “my fault”—and he had smiled indulgently.

  The injections continued, regular as clockwork, But they were no more than a mildly disagreeable interruption in your life of leisure.

  For your twenty-second birthday Mygale moved more furniture into the cellar. The spotlight was replaced by soft-light lamps with shades. The sofa was joined by armchairs, a low table, and poufs. A thic
k carpet was laid across the floor.

  Quite some time earlier, Mygale had set up a folding shower stall in a corner of the cellar. A field washstand completed these arrangements, along with a commode. Mygale even thought to curtain off this toilet area out of consideration for your modesty. You tried on the bathrobe and pulled a face at the color of the bath towels. These Mygale then changed.

  Cooped up in the confines of the cellar, you dreamed of space, of wind. You painted trompe-l’oeil windows on the walls. On one side a mountain landscape had appeared, flooded with sunlight and the sparkling white of eternal snows. A halogen lamp directed at the peaks shed a blinding clarity over this artificial outlet onto the outside world. On the other side of your cell, you had covered the cement with a blue rough-cast representation of foaming waves. Deep in the background were the orange-red hues of a magnificent flaming sunset that was your pride and joy.

  In addition to the shots, Mygale had you swallow a host of other drugs: multicolored capsules, tasteless lozenges, vials of liquid to be diluted in water…The labels had always been removed from the packaging. Mygale wanted to know whether this worried you. You shrugged and replied that you trusted him. Mygale stroked your cheek. At this you grasped his hand and placed a kiss in the middle of his palm. Mygale flinched, and just for a moment you thought he was going to hit you again, but then his expression softened, and he left his hand in yours. You turned away so that he would not see the tears of joy welling at the corners of your eyes.

  You had grown pale from living so long out of the daylight. But then Mygale brought in a bench and a sunlamp, and you began sunbathing. You were delighted to see your body getting so beautifully brown, and you soon showed off a spectacular allover tan to your friend; how happy you were when he intimated that he shared your satisfaction with this transformation!

  Days, weeks, months went by, seemingly monotonous, yet actually enriched for you by many and intense pleasures; the joy you felt at the piano or the easel was profoundly fulfilling.

  You had lost every trace of sexual desire. With considerable embarrassment you had asked Mygale about this. He acknowledged that your food contained substances intended to have this effect. It was simply, said Mygale, so that you would not be tormented, considering that you never saw anyone but him. You said yes, you quite understood. And he promised you that soon, when you started going out, and when the additives were removed from your diet, you would once again feel desire.

  In the night, alone in your cellar, you would sometimes vainly rub your limp penis; but the bitterness you felt dissipated at the thought that you were soon going to “go out.” Mygale had promised you, so you didn’t have to worry…

  4

  Alex drove cautiously to Paris, taking great care not to break any traffic rules. He had even thought of taking the bus and the metro, but he had rejected this idea for one good reason: Lafargue would surely have a car, and he would not be able to tail him.

  He parked opposite the hospital entrance. It was very early. Alex was well aware that the doctor was unlikely to report to his office at the break of dawn, but he needed to inspect the area ahead of time, to get a feel for the place. On a wall alongside the gates was a large board listing the specialized services offered by the hospital and naming the physicians in charge of each. Sure enough, Lafargue’s name was clearly displayed.

  Alex strolled up and down the street, holding tightly onto the butt of the dead cop’s Colt in his jacket pocket. After a while he went and sat at a café terrace with a good view of the hospital’s staff entrance.

  Finally, about ten o’clock, a car stopped at the traffic light a few yards from where Alex was stationed: a red Mercedes driven by a chauffeur. Alex immediately recognized Lafargue, who was sitting in the back reading a newspaper.

  The Mercedes waited for the light to change, then took the drive that led to the hospital’s parking lot. Alex saw Lafargue get out. The chauffeur stayed in the car for a while, but it was a very hot day, and before long he made his way over to the café and, like Alex, sat on the terrace.

  Roger ordered a draft beer. His boss had an important operation scheduled, but would be leaving right after for a meeting at his private clinic in Boulogne.

  The license plate of Lafargue’s car bore the number 78, designating the department of Yvelines. Alex knew the number of every French department by heart; during his lonely sojourn in the farmhouse he had broken the monotony by memorizing them, reciting the list in numerical order, and setting himself posers: if he read in the newspaper that an eighty-year-old man had remarried, he would say to himself, “Eighty? That’s the department of the Somme.”

  The chauffeur did not seem to be in any hurry. With his elbows on the café table, he was doing a crossword, his attention completely focused on the grid of the puzzle. Alex paid his check and went into a post office next door to the hospital. He could no longer keep an eye on the hospital gate, but it would be strikingly bad luck, he thought, if the doc were to up and leave in the next fifteen minutes or so.

  He thumbed through a phone book in search of Lafargues. Lafargue is a common name, and there were pages of them. But not so many without an “s” on the end and with just one “f.” And Lafargues who were doctors were, of course, even rarer. In department 78 there were just three. One lived in Saint-Germain, another at Plaisir, and the third in Le Vésinet. The right Dr. Lafargue had to be one of them. Alex noted down all three addresses.

  Back at the café, he made sure that the chauffeur was still there. When noon approached, the waiter started setting up the tables for lunch. He appeared to know the chauffeur well, because he asked him if he would be eating lunch today.

  Roger replied in the negative: the boss had to get to Boulogne as soon as possible, and they would leave the moment he got out of the operating room.

  Sure enough, the surgeon soon appeared. He got into the Mercedes, and the chauffeur slid behind the wheel. Alex followed their car. They left the center of Paris and made for Boulogne. Tailing them was not difficult, for Alex knew where they were headed.

  Roger parked in front of a private clinic and was soon back to his crossword. Mistrustful of his memory, Alex wrote down the name of the street on a piece of paper. It was a long wait. He paced up and down at a nearby intersection, trying not to draw attention to himself. Then he sat down in a little park and went on waiting without ever taking his eye off the Mercedes. He had left his own car door unlocked so he could start up as quickly as possible should the doctor suddenly appear.

  The surgery planning meeting lasted just over an hour. Richard barely unclenched his teeth the whole time. He was sickly pale and hollow-cheeked. Since Eve’s session with Varneroy, he had been on automatic pilot.

  Alex had gone into a café for a fresh supply of cigarettes when Roger, spotting Lafargue in the clinic lobby, got out and opened the rear door of the Mercedes. Alex returned to the Citroën CX and followed once more, hanging back a good distance. Once he perceived that they were clearly headed for Le Vésinet, he peeled off. There was no point in risking being spotted when he had Lafargue’s address in his pocket.

  He went over there later on. Lafargue’s place was impressive, though the bounding wall hindered any clear view of its façade. Alex inspected the neighboring houses. The street was deserted. It was not a good idea to stay too long. He noticed how many windows were shuttered. Le Vésinet had been abandoned for August. It was four o’clock, and Alex hesitated. He intended to investigate the surgeon’s house that same night, but didn’t know what to do in the meantime. For lack of a better plan, he decided to talk a walk in the forest of Saint-Germain, which was very close.

  He returned to Le Vésinet around nine and parked the CX a good way away from Lafargue’s street. Night was beginning to fall, but you could still see. He climbed a wall surrounding a nearby house to get a look into Lafargue’s grounds. Sitting astride the top of the wall, he was pretty well camouflaged by the dense foliage of an abundantly spreading chestnut tree. From far
off he was invisible, and if anyone should happen to come walking down the street he could retreat even farther in among the branches.

  He took in the lawn, the pond, the trees, the swimming pool. Lafargue was dining al fresco, in company with a woman. Alex smiled. This was a good beginning. Were there perhaps children? Not likely, for they would be eating with their parents. They could be away on vacation, of course. Or they might be toddlers and already in bed. But Lafargue was about fifty, so his children, if he had any, should at least be adolescents. There was no chance of them being in bed at ten o’clock on a summer evening. What was more, no lights could be seen in the house, either on the ground floor or upstairs. A garden lamp gave off a rather feeble light in the vicinity of the table at which the couple were sitting.

  Satisfied, Alex got off his perch and dropped to the sidewalk. He grimaced, for his still tender thigh could not yet take such shocks. He returned to the CX to wait for full darkness. He was nervous, and he began chain-smoking. At ten-thirty, he made his way back to the Lafargue place. The street was as empty as before. A car horn hooted in the distance.

  He followed the bounding wall along till, at the end of the property, he came upon a large wooden crate containing spades, rakes, and other tools belonging to the municipal roadworkers. He climbed up on it, hauled himself onto the top of the wall, got his balance, and, judging the distance, jumped down into the grounds. Crouching in a clump of trees, he waited; if there was a dog, it wouldn’t take long to make its presence felt. No bark came. Alex appraised the shrubs near him, then proceeded along the wall. He was looking for reliable footholds susceptible of helping him back up over the wall on his way out. Near the pond was a mock grotto made of concrete that served as nighttime shelter for the swans. It was built up against the wall and was three or four feet tall. Alex smiled and checked it out: it would be child’s play to go this way over the wall back into the street outside. Reassured, he went farther into the grounds, passing the swimming pool. Lafargue and his companion had gone inside, and the immediate surroundings of the house were deserted. Strips of light filtered through closed shutters on the second floor.