Then he went walking in the grounds. The solid beds of flowers were bright swathes of color across the freshly mown grass. Richard made his way toward the seventy-five-foot swimming pool that had been constructed at the far end of the garden. The street and even the neighboring houses were screened from view by the wall that completely enclosed the property.
He lit a Virginia cigarette and inhaled deeply. He indulged in a long mocking laugh before heading back to the house. In the servants’ quarters Roger had set Eve’s breakfast tray down on the table. In the drawing room, Richard pressed the button on the intercom and roared into it: “BREAKFAST! TIME TO GET UP!”
Then he went upstairs.
He unlocked the door and advanced into the bedroom, where Eve was still sleeping in the great four-poster bed. The sheets covered all but a small part of her face, and her thick curly brown hair was a dark patch on the mauve satin.
Lafargue sat down on the edge of the bed, placing the tray next to Eve. She moistened the tip of her lips with the orange juice and nibbled dolefully at a honey-spread zwieback.
“It’s the twenty-seventh,” said Richard. “The last Sunday of the month. Had you perhaps forgotten?”
Eve shook her head weakly, without looking at Richard. Her eyes were blank.
“All right. We leave here in three-quarters of an hour.”
He left the flat. Back in the drawing room, he went across to the intercom.
“I said three-quarters of an hour! D’you hear me?”
Upstairs, Eve went rigid as she suffered through Richard’s amplified tirade.
The Mercedes had been traveling for three hours when it left the highway and took a winding local road. The Norman countryside lay prostrate in the torpor of the summer sun. Richard opened a bottle of cold soda and offered some to Eve, who was dozing, her eyes half-closed. She declined, and he closed the door of the little refrigerator.
Roger drove fast but professionally. Before long, he pulled the car up outside a country mansion on the fringe of a small village. A patch of dense woodland surrounded the property, some of whose outbuildings, protected by iron railings, were not far at all from the hamlet’s last houses. On the château’s forecourt sat knots of people out enjoying the sunshine. Women in white blouses moved among them bearing trays laden with multicolored plastic glasses.
Richard and Eve ascended the broad flight of steps leading to the main entrance, went inside, and addressed themselves to a formidable lady receptionist at a hatch. She smiled at Lafargue, shook Eve’s hand, and beckoned to a male nurse. The visitors followed the man into an elevator, which took them to the third floor. Before them stretched a long straight corridor punctuated by set-back doorways, each equipped with a rectangular observation panel of transparent plastic. Without a word, the nurse opened the seventh door on the left, then stepped back as the couple entered.
A woman sat on the bed—a very young woman, though her youth was belied by her wrinkles and hunched posture. She offered a pitiful image of premature aging. Deep crevices ravaged her otherwise still childlike face. Her hair was unkempt—thickly matted, with spikes here and there. Her bulging eyes rolled this way and that. Her skin was blotched with darkish crusty patches. Her lower lip trembled spasmodically, and her trunk rocked slowly back and forth with metronomic regularity. She wore only a blue cotton smock without pockets. Her bare feet slithered about in overlarge bedroom slippers adorned with pom-poms.
She seemed not to have noticed the entrance of her visitors. Richard sat down next to her and took her chin in his hand and turned her face toward him. The young woman was compliant, yet nothing in her expression or gestures betrayed the slightest feeling or emotion.
Richard put his arm around her shoulders and drew her to him. The rocking ceased. Eve, standing near the bed, was contemplating the countryside through the reinforced-glass window.
“Viviane,” Richard murmured. “Viviane, my darling.”
He rose suddenly, grasping Eve’s arm and obliging her to look at Viviane, who had started her rocking again, wild-eyed.
“Give it to her,” said Richard sotto voce.
Eve opened her handbag, produced a box of soft-centered chocolates and held it out to the woman, to Viviane.
Clumsily Viviane seized the box, tore off the top, and set about greedily eating one chocolate after another. She ate every one. Richard watched her in stupefaction.
“Come on,” sighed Eve, “that’s enough.” And she pushed Richard gently out of the room. The male nurse was waiting in the corridor; he closed the door as Eve and Richard made their way back to the elevator. They returned to the reception window and exchanged a few pleasantries with the receptionist, then Eve signaled the chauffeur, who was leaning against the Mercedes, reading a sports paper. Richard and Eve took their places in the back, and the car set off along the local road to the highway, returned to the Paris area, and thence proceeded to the house in Le Vésinet.
Richard had locked Eve into her upstairs quarters and given the help the remainder of the day off. Now he was relaxing in the drawing room, picking at cold dishes Lise had prepared before she left. It was nearly five o’clock by the time he got into the driver’s seat of the Mercedes and sped off toward Paris.
He parked near Place de la Concorde and went into a building on Rue Godot-de-Mauroy. Keys in hand, he climbed briskly to the fourth floor and let himself into a spacious studio apartment. The center of the room was taken up by a great circular bed with mauve satin covers, and the walls were adorned by a few erotic prints.
On the bedside table was a combined telephone and answering machine. Richard set the tape in motion and listened to the messages: throaty, breathless voices of men trying to reach Eve. He noted the times they proposed for appointments. Leaving the apartment, he went quickly down the stairs and returned to the car. Back at Le Vésinet, he went straight to the intercom and called Eve.
“Eve, listen! Three! For this evening!”
Richard went upstairs.
She was in her dressing room, intently painting a watercolor. A peaceful, pleasant landscape: a clearing flooded with light, with at the center of the picture, drawn in black pencil, the face of Viviane. Bellowing with laughter, Richard seized a bottle of red nail varnish from the dressing table and dashed the contents over the watercolor.
“You’re never going to change, are you?” he murmured.
Eve had stood up and was now methodically putting away the brushes, paints, and easel. Richard pulled her to him, till her face almost touched his.
“I have to thank you from the bottom of my heart,” he told her softly, “for the humility that allows you to yield to my desires as you do.”
Eve’s features froze; from her throat rose a long, hollow, plaintive moan. Then a gleam of anger flashed in her eyes.
“Leave me alone, you pimp bastard!”
“Ha! Very funny! No, really, I can’t tell you how charming you are when you rebel.”
She had detached herself from his embrace. She patted her hair back into place and straightened her clothes.
“All right, then. This evening? Is that what you really want? When do we leave?”
“Right away, of course.”
They said nothing to each other on the way. They were inside the studio apartment on Rue Godot-de-Mauroy before a word was uttered.
“Get yourself ready,” ordered Lafargue. “They won’t be long now.”
Eve opened a closet and undressed. First putting her own clothes away, she proceeded to dress in long black thigh boots, black leather skirt, and fishnet stockings. She made herself up, using white face powder and bright red lipstick, then sat down on the bed.