Everything was going better, but still he said nothing. You told your life story. He listened with the greatest interest. His silence was intolerable to you. You had to talk, to tell and retell your stories, to recount your childhood, to stupefy yourself with words, merely to prove to him that you were not an animal!
Later still, your diet was suddenly improved once more. Now you were entitled to wine, to refined dishes that he must have had delivered by a caterer. The tableware was luxurious. Chained to your wall, naked as ever, you stuffed yourself with caviar, salmon, sorbets, and fancy pastries.
He sat beside you, serving you the food. He brought in a cassette player, and you listened to Chopin and Liszt.
As for the humiliating issue of the calls of nature, there too he became more humane, providing a conveniently placed waste bucket.
A time came at last when he allowed you to leave the wall at certain times. He released you from your fetters and led you around the cellar on a leash. You wandered slowly in a circle, round and round the spotlight.
To make the time pass more quickly, your master brought books. Classics: Balzac, Stendhal…In high school you had hated such works, but now, alone in your hole, sitting cross-legged on your patch of oilcloth or leaning your elbows on the folding table, you devoured them.
Little by little, your leisure took on substance. Your master took care to vary its pleasures. A stereo system appeared, complete with records; even an electronic chess set. Soon the time began to fly by. He had adjusted the brightness of the spotlight so that it no longer dazzled you, hanging a rag over the bulb to subdue the glare. The cellar filled with shadows, including your own, multiplied.
By virtue of all these changes, the absence of any brutality from your master, and the increasing luxury that gradually offset your solitude, you began to forget or at least to repress your fear. Your nakedness and the chains that still held you became an incongruity.
The walks around on the leash continued. You were a cultivated, intelligent beast. You suffered from memory lapses; at times you became acutely aware of the unreality, even the absurdity of your predicament. Of course, you had a burning desire for answers from your master, but he discouraged all questions, concerning himself exclusively with your material comfort. What would you like for supper? Did you enjoy the recording? And so on.
What about your village? Your mother? Weren’t people searching for you? The faces of your friends were fading from your memory, melding into a thick fog. You could no longer recall Alex’s features or the color of his hair. You talked to yourself a lot; you would catch yourself humming children’s songs. Your distant past returned in violent and chaotic waves; images from your long-forgotten childhood would reemerge unannounced in startling clarity, only to dissipate in their turn into a vague mist. Time itself expanded and contracted alarmingly. A minute, two hours, ten years?—you no longer knew the difference.
Your master noticed how this troubled you and gave you an alarm clock. You began to count the hours, avidly watching the progress of the hands on the clock. Time itself was a fiction: what did it matter if it was ten in the morning or ten at night? No, the important thing was that now you could once again regulate your life: at noon I am hungry, at midnight I am tired. A rhythm: something to hang on to.
Several more weeks had gone by. Among your master’s gifts, you had found a pad of paper, pencils, and an eraser. You had begun to draw, clumsily at first, until your old facility returned. You sketched faceless portraits, mouths, confused landscapes, the ocean, immense cliffs, a giant hand creating waves. You scotch-taped these drawings to the wall; they helped you forget the bare concrete beneath.
In your head you had given your master a name. You dared not pronounce it in his presence, needless to say. You called him “Mygale,” in memory of your past terrors. “Mygale”—a feminine-sounding name, the name of a repulsive animal that corresponded neither to his sex nor to the great refinement he displayed when choosing gifts for you.
But “Mygale,” nevertheless, because he was just like a spider, slow and secretive, cruel and ferocious, obsessed yet impenetrable in his designs, hidden somewhere in this dwelling where he had held you captive for months: this luxury web, this gilded cage where he was the jailer and you the prisoner.
You had given up weeping and complaining. There was no pain in your new life in the material sense. At this time of year—February? March?—you would normally have been in high school, in your final year; instead, here you were, a captive in this concrete cubicle. You were habituated to your nudity. Shame was long gone. Only your chains were still intolerable.
It was probably some time in May, according to your reckoning, but possibly it was earlier, when a strange event occurred.
Your alarm said it was two-thirty in the afternoon. Mygale came down to visit you. He sat down in the armchair, as was his wont, to observe you. You were drawing. He got up and came over to you. You got to your feet and faced him standing up.
Your two faces were almost touching. You looked into his blue eyes, the only thing moving in his fixed and inscrutable countenance. Mygale raised his hand and placed it on your shoulder. Thence, with trembling fingers, he traced a path all the way up your neck. He felt your cheeks, your nose, gently pinching the skin.
Your heart was beating wildly. His hand, which felt hot, wandered back down over your chest, became soft and agile as it slid across your ribs, your belly. He fondled your muscles and stroked your smooth, hairless skin. Mistaking the meaning of these motions, you gauchely attempted a caress of your own, touching his face. Mygale slapped you violently, teeth clenched. He ordered you to turn around, then methodically continued his examination for several more minutes.
When it was over, you sat down, rubbing your cheek, which still smarted from his blow. He shook his head and laughed, running his fingers through your hair. You smiled.
Mygale left. You did not know what to make of this new kind of contact—a revolution, really, in your relationship. But the effort to think about it filled you with anxiety and called for a mental energy that had long been unavailable to you.
You resumed your drawing and stopped thinking about anything.
2
Alex had abandoned his jigsaw. He had gone out into the garden and was carving a piece of wood, an olive-tree root. As his knife hewed at the dry mass, as shaving after shaving fell to the ground, a crude but unmistakable form slowly emerged, that of a woman’s body. Alex wore a broad straw hat to protect him from the sun. With a beer close to hand, he forgot his injury and lost himself in his painstaking task. For the first time in a very long while, he felt relaxed.
The telephone ringing made him start violently. He almost cut himself with the point of his Opinel knife, dropped the olive root and listened, transfixed. Hardly believing his ears, he ran into the farmhouse and planted himself before the phone, his arms dangling. Who could possibly know that he was here?
He grabbed his revolver—the Colt that he had taken from the cop’s dead body. The weapon was more sophisticated than his own. Trembling, he picked up the receiver. Perhaps it was a local merchant or the post office, something stupid like that—even a wrong number!