Telephone. He’ll be there tomorrow.
Bornand carefully puts away his notes in one of the two cupboards. Amid the ornate arabesques and carved acanthus leaves are records of everything that has been said in this office, accumulated over four years, a real treasure trove. He locks the cupboard then pours himself one last whisky, which he knocks back standing by the window gazing out over the rooftops.
Fernandez finds himself back in the street. It’s still snowing. Gone, the warmth of the office, the whisky and Bornand. He’s exhausted. He has no desire to go back home and be alone with his dead. He enters the nearest café, orders a Calvados, goes into the toilet and does a line of coke. Good feeling. To be honest, if you think about it, the situation is rather funny. Finish the night off at Mado’s, Katryn’s boss. Brilliant idea. What class.
On the ground floor of Mado’s building is a vast bar with English-style decor and a hushed, sophisticated atmosphere. Fernandez, Bornand’s right-hand man, has free access to the whole place. The barman greets him and pours him a brandy, which he downs in one, then he goes downstairs to the basement. Swingers’ club. Among a certain bourgeois clientele it’s the new fad; sounds better than going to a prostitute, but it’s no different, except there are a few non-professionals. Mado’s real clientele to whom she owes her fame and fortune, the ones who have a great deal of money and a great deal of power, prefer the call-girl network and orgies in the first-floor lounges.
In the half-dark, there’s a musty smell of sweat and sex, claustrophobia and dust, and the music has an insistent, deafening beat. Fernandez relaxes. Two women rigged out in various items of spiky armour are dancing in a corner. Elsewhere, scantily clad men and women grind rhythmically against each other. On the fringes, couples are entangled on sofas in the alcoves. Girls everywhere, within arm’s reach, available, accessible. Fernandez is suddenly fascinated by a girl who’s dancing naked in the spotlight, with exaggerated movements. A smooth, round arse, engaging but not aggressive, two huge white breasts jiggling and, above them, her head covered with a helmet of black hair, cut over the ears. She has no face. No face. It touches a raw nerve. Flashback: Katryn’s head in the darkness of the garage, thrust against the wall, screaming, the back of her neck exploding. Against a background of hypnotic music.
He walks over to the girl and grabs her arm, drags her to an alcove and tries to part her hair. No face, just a mouth that opens, a silent chasm. A punch to shut that mouth, two, three, a scuffle, Fernandez crumples, stunned by two beefy bouncers amid the general confusion.
Mado, summoned urgently, has him taken to one of the first-floor bedrooms. The victim has a split lip and a nasty cut over her eye. A doctor is called to tend to her immediately. Really bad luck, the girl was one of the few non-professionals there that night. She groans, threatening to report Fernandez.
‘This guy’s a nutter,’ says Mado, very motherly, and surreptitiously mentions damages.
‘A nutter for sure. He was screaming “Catherine, Catherine”. My name’s not Catherine, he couldn’t hear a thing. He started hitting me.’ Her body quivers with sobs. ‘Scared the life out of me.’
‘Katryn,’ says Mado, suddenly pensive, tidying the young woman’s black hair matted with blood and sweat with her fingertips.
Katryn, a model of professionalism, who’d let her down this evening, for the first time since she’d been working for her.
Bornand, in a black dinner jacket, is reclining on a chaise longue in his mistress’s bedroom, which is done out in green and white with blonde wood Louis-Philippe-style furniture. On his left are two high windows with the curtains open, overlooking the Champ-de-Mars. Through the lattice of snow-covered trees, he can see the Eiffel Tower illuminated, a tangle of girders glinting copper in the light, emphasised by the white snow, the familiar presence of the technological dream shrouded in nostalgia. A wave of tiredness. Shooting pains in the palm of his right hand, and each time the fleeting image of a pool of blood spreading uncontrollably. A tough day. The President dreaming of the Académie Française, Bestégui stuffing himself, Fernandez a petty housebreaker. And earlier, the reception at the Embassy. He feels ground down. He’s come here to recover, in the calm surroundings of her boudoir. Put a greater distance between himself and all the stress. From his pocket he takes out a gold and black lacquered case, carefully selects a cigarette, a mix of angel dust and marijuana, lights it and takes a long drag. An almost instant sense of well-being. He contemplates his mistress, sitting naked on a low stool at the dressing table, carrying out the ritual she performs for him. He can see three-quarters of her back and her full frontal reflection in the big mirror. A Degas painting. He takes a second drag, holds the smoke in for a long time, and slowly exhales. The image of the young woman shimmers and dissolves. Another face fleetingly appears, that of a very young girl. He creases his eyes to capture it. Too late, it disperses with a metallic sound. He stubs out his cigarette.
Her blonde hair is piled up in a sophisticated chignon, showing off the nape of her neck and the outline of her shoulders. He is utterly absorbed in watching each of her slow, accomplished movements. First of all, she applies foundation, almost lazily, like a sort of slow preliminary, then the tension increases, a few dabs to touch up under the eyes, around the cheekbones. She surveys the overall effect, and her gaze is drawn towards the mirror, intense, her torso slightly inclined, her arms raised, her breasts swell, lolling forward too, her back elongates, her hips spread. She outlines her eyes with precise strokes, paints her mouth (he loves the way she pinches her lips together), highlights her cheekbones, hollows out her cheeks, makes a correction here and there. A refined, artificial world that exists only for him. He gently caresses his half-erection.
The application of the mask is complete.
‘We’re going to be late,’ she says without turning round, glancing at the reflection of the man in black in the corner of the mirror.
‘It doesn’t matter. Take your time.’
‘I don’t feel like going out this evening.’
He looks away. She sighs, rises, slips on ivory silk stockings, a magic moment when her living flesh is transformed into a smooth, perfect shimmering shape. He closes his eyes. Good, very good. Then the long dress, crimson like her lips, fluid over her body, flared at the hem, long sleeves covering her shoulders and a V-neck that plunges to her waist, her breasts unfettered beneath the fabric. Matching high-heeled shoes, the superb arch of her feet, sophisticated balance. She leans over her dressing table, takes a pair of gold earrings from the drawer and puts them on, then a necklace. ‘No need,’ he says and she turns around. He gets up and from his pocket produces a velvet box. He opens it and takes out a round object made of gold. Françoise accepts it, running her finger over the chasing: a geometric design depicting a curled-up panther in unpolished beaten gold. There’s something strange and savage about it.
‘Exquisite. Where does it come from?’
‘From the wilds of the steppes, from the depths of time. The minute I saw it, I wanted it for you. I had it mounted.’ He goes over to her and fastens the necklace around her neck. ‘I could picture you wearing it just like this, with this dress.’
He kisses her hair, moves his lips down to her ear which he brushes with his moustache, takes the earring between his teeth, tastes the coolness of the metal, and pulls gently. She moves away, smiles at him and winks: ‘Very fragile, this work of art, don’t touch,’ then urges: