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.