Mygale was there next to you. He was holding you up. The pool of vomit was spreading on the concrete floor. Mygale murmured soft words, my love, my sweet, and fussed over you, wiping your mouth with a handkerchief.
The door to the operating room was open. You made a dash toward the table and grabbed a scalpel. Then you walked slowly toward Mygale with the blade pointed right at him.
3
They faced each other there in the crude fluorescent light of the concrete cellar. She advanced calmly, scalpel in hand. Richard stood motionless. In the next room, Alex began to shout. He had seen Eve fall to her knees, then drag herself out of his field of vision; now he could see her again, through the half-open door, as she moved forward with the blade.
“My gun, sweetheart! Come over here! He left the gun there!”
Eve came back in and picked up Alex’s revolver, which was indeed still lying on the sofa. Richard had not even flinched and still stood rigid in the passage, holding his ground despite the Colt now trained on his midriff. And then he uttered a few incomprehensible words.
“Eve, I beg you, tell me what all this means!”
She stopped dead, staring at him. Was his mystification faked—another of his tricks? Well, the bastard wouldn’t get away with it that easily!
“Don’t worry, Alex,” she shouted. “We’re going to fix this shitbag once and for all!”
It was Alex’s turn to be mystified. How did she know his name? Lafargue had perhaps told her? Of course, it was that simple. Lafargue had been keeping his wife locked up, and she was seizing this chance to get rid of her husband!
“Eve, kill me if you want. But at least tell me what is going on.”
Richard had let himself slip down the wall to the ground, where he now sat.
“You’re shitting me! You’re shitting me! You’re shitting me!” She had begun by murmuring the words, now she was screaming them. The muscles of her neck bulged, her eyes seemed about to spring from their sockets, and she was trembling violently.
“Eve, please, please, explain.”
“Alex! Alex Barny! It’s him. He was with me. He raped Viviane, too. He even fucked her in the ass, and I—and I held her down. You always thought I was on my own. I never told you different. I didn’t want you going looking for him, too. It’s as much his fault as mine if your daughter is insane, you bastard. But it was I who took all the punishment.”
Alex was listening to the woman. What was she saying? It’s the two of them, he thought; they are playing a weird game with me: trying to make me crazy. But then, as he looked closely at Lafargue’s wife, there was something about the mouth, the eyes…
“Aha! You didn’t know there were two of us, did you? But there were: Alex was my pal. Poor guy, he didn’t get laid much. When it came to the girls, I had to, well, sort of scare them up for him. With your girl it was harder than usual. She was strictly not interested! Feeling her up a bit, kissing her—she quite liked all that. But the second I got my hand up her skirt, that was it. So we had to force her a little.”
Richard shook his head in disbelief, beaten down by Eve’s shouting, her shrill voice still at screaming pitch.
“I went first. Alex held her. She put up a struggle. You were in the inn, stuffing your face and dancing, weren’t you? After, I let Alex take over from me. He had a lot of fun, I can tell you that, Richard. She was whimpering. She was hurt. Not as much as me, with everything you’ve done. I’m going to kill you, Mygale, d’you hear me?”
The truth was, Mygale had never known about Alex. You never told him. When he first told you why he had mutilated you—on account of the rape of Viviane and her going mad—you had decided to say nothing. Your only revenge was to keep Alex out of it. Mygale didn’t know there had been two of you.
You were lying there on the operating table when Mygale first spoke to you about that July evening two years earlier. A Saturday. You were hanging out in the village with Alex with strictly nothing to do. The school vacation had only just begun. You were supposed to go to England soon, while Alex stayed on his father’s farm working in the fields.
The two of you had visited every café and played on every table-soccer and pinball machine before both climbing onto your motorcycle. It was mild out. At Dinancourt, a fairly large town some thirty kilometers away, there was a dance and a traveling fair. Alex shot at balloons with an air rifle. As for you, you watched the girls. There were a lot of them. It was late afternoon when you first saw the kid. She was pretty. She was walking around on the arm of an old guy—or at any rate much older than her. It had to be her father. She wore a light blue summer dress. Her hair was curly and blond, and her still childlike face bore no makeup. They were part of a group, and you could easily tell from their attire that they were not country people.
The party sat down at a café terrace, but the girl continued visiting the fair on her own. You approached her, respectful as always. Her name was Viviane. And, yes, the guy with the white hair was indeed her father.
In the evening there was a dance in the village square. You asked Viviane to meet you. She would like to, but her father… They had come here for a wedding and were staying at the inn. The inn was part of an old château, some way away from the rest of the village, and functions and parties were often held there and in the grounds of the place. Viviane was supposed to go to the wedding dinner. You talked her round: all right, she would meet you here, by the frites stand. She was just a kid, a bit dopey, but very cute. As the evening wore on, you wandered over toward the château several times. The rich people had laid on a band: not a bunch of hicks with an accordion, of course, but a real band, guys in white tuxedos playing jazz. The windows of the inn had been closed to make sure the whining strains of the dance band could not waft in.
Viviane came out about ten o’clock. You bought her a drink. She had a Coke, you a scotch. You danced. Alex looked on. You winked at him. During a slow one, you kissed Viviane. You felt her heart pound in her chest. She didn’t know how to kiss: she kept her lips tightly shut. When you showed her how, she started pushing as hard as she could with her tongue! She was a dimwit. She smelled good: a sweetish perfume but discreet—not like the eau de cologne the local girls sloshed all over themselves. Her dress had a plunging neckline, and as you danced you stroked her bare back.
You strolled through the village, and you kissed her again. A bit better this time: she had learned something. You slipped your hand under her dress and ran it up her thigh as far as her panties. She was excited, but pulled away. She said she was afraid of being chewed out by her father if she stayed out too late. You didn’t insist, and you both went back to the village square. The father had left the inn in search of his daughter. He ran into the two of you, but you avoided his gaze and walked on.
You watched their exchange from a distance. At first he seemed angry, but then he laughed and went back to the inn. Viviane came back toward you. Her father had granted her an extension.
You danced. She pressed up against you. In the half-light you fondled her breasts. An hour later she said she wanted to go back. You signaled to Alex, who was leaning against the bar near the dancing area with a can of beer in his hand. You told Viviane that you would walk her to the inn. Hand in hand, you circled the château. Laughing, you pulled her into the bushes at the edge of the place’s grounds; laughing, she protested. She really wanted to stay with you.