Richard left the apartment and entered its twin next door, where a one-way mirror let him secretly observe whatever went on in the room where Eve was waiting.
Her first client, a wheezy storekeeper around sixty with a bright red face, arrived just over half an hour later. The second came only at nine-thirty—a provincial pharmacist who visited Eve regularly and wanted merely to see her strolling naked about in the room’s confined space. The third—whom Eve was obliged to keep waiting after he had begged her over the phone to let him come over—was the scion of a good family, a repressed homosexual who became excited as he walked up and down using insulting language and masturbating. Eve’s role was to walk beside him, holding his hand.
Behind his mirror, Richard exulted at the spectacle, laughing silently, pitching back and forth in a rocking-chair, and applauding whenever the young woman evinced a sign of disgust.
When it was all over, he rejoined her. She tossed her leather gear aside and donned a severely cut suit.
“That was perfect! You are always perfect! Marvelous—so patient! Come on, let’s go.”
Richard took Eve’s arm and took her off to supper at a Slavic restaurant. He kept the Gypsy musicians clustered around their table well supplied with bills—the very same bills that Eve’s clients had left earlier on the bedside table in settlement for services rendered.
Think back. It was a summer evening, horribly hot—and unbearably humid. A storm that wouldn’t break. You took your motorcycle, intent on racing through the darkness. The night air, you thought, would feel good.
You went fast. The wind filled your shirt, whose tails flapped noisily. Insects smashed onto your glasses, onto your face, but at least you were no longer hot.
It took quite a while for you to become concerned about the two white headlights piercing the blackness in your wake. Two electric eyes focused on you, never leaving you for an instant. When you did feel anxiety, you gunned the engine of your 125 to the limit, but the car behind was powerful and had no difficulty keeping up.
As your initial anxiety turned to panic under the relentless scrutiny of those lights, you began zigzagging through the forest. You could see, in your rearview mirror, that the driver of the car was alone. He seemed to have no wish to close on you.
The storm finally arrived. Drizzle quickly gave way to driving rain. After every curve the car would reappear. Streaming with water, you were soon shivering. Your bike’s gas gauge had started to flash ominously. You had fuel enough for a very few more kilometers. By this time you had changed course so many times that you were lost in the forest. You no longer had the slightest idea which way to go to get to the nearest village.
The road surface was slippery, and you slowed down. The car leaped toward you, overtaking you and almost forcing you to skid out onto the shoulder.
But you braked, and the bike spun around. As you started up again to leave the way you had come, you heard your pursuer’s brakes squeal as he too turned and began trailing you once again. It was darkest night, and sheets of rain made it impossible to see the road ahead.
In desperation you tried to mount the embankment at the edge of the road, hoping you might escape through the trees, but you skidded in the mud, and the 125 fell on its side, and the engine cut out. You managed to right the machine, though it was not easy.
Back in the saddle, you kicked the starter pedal, but the fuel tank was empty. The beam of a powerful flashlight was roving across the underbrush. To your dismay, it fastened on you as you raced for the cover of a fallen tree. You fingered the blade in the shank of your boot—a Wehrmacht knife that you always carried…
Sure enough, the car had pulled up sharply on the road. You felt your stomach knot at the sight of a massive silhouette getting a gun into firing position. The barrel was pointing in your direction. The report melded with the thunder claps. The flashlight had been laid down on the car roof. It went out. You ran then and were soon out of breath. You ripped your hands as you tore your way through the brushwood. From time to time the flashlight would come on again behind you, illuminating your flight. You could no longer hear anything; your heart throbbed crazily; mud clung to your boots and slowed you down. The knife was clasped tightly in your fist.
How long did the chase go on? Gasping for breath, you leaped over fallen trees in the blackness. A trunk lying flat on the ground tripped you, and you went sprawling on the soaking earth.
Laid out in the mud, you heard that cry, which was more like a growl. He stamped on your wrist, crushing your hand under the heel of his boot. You released the knife, and he fell upon you, pushing your shoulders down with his hands. Then one hand moved to your mouth, the other was clamped about your throat, and a knee was driven into your flank. You tried to bite the palm of his hand, but your teeth closed on nothing but a clod of earth.
He continued to hold you tightly against him. The two of you remained like this, welded together, in the darkness … The rain stopped…
3
Alex Barny rested on a camp bed in an attic room. He had nothing to do, except wait. The chatter of the cicadas in the garrigue was an unrelenting racket. Through the window Alex could see the crooked silhouettes of olive trees in the night, forms fixed in bizarre poses. With his shirtsleeve, he mopped his brow, where pearls of acidic sweat had gathered.
A naked bulb dangling from a wire attracted clouds of mosquitoes; every fifteen minutes or so, Alex would get furious and bombard them with Fly-Tox. On the concrete floor, a large dark circle of squashed mosquitoes continued to grow, shot through with specks of red.
Alex struggled to his feet and, relying on a cane, hobbled out of his bedroom and down to the kitchen of the farmhouse, which was somewhere in the depths of the countryside between Cagnes and Grasse.
The fridge was well stocked with a variety of provisions. Alex took out a can of beer, pulled off the tab, and drank it down. Belching loudly, he opened another can and went outside. In the distance, beyond the olive-covered hillsides, the sea shone in the moonlight, sparkling beneath a cloudless sky.
Alex took a few cautious steps. His thigh subjected him to brief bouts of searing pain. The dressing dug into his flesh. For two days now there had been no pus, but the wound was reluctant to heal. The bullet had traversed the muscular mass, happily missing the femoral artery and the bone.
He leaned with one hand against the trunk of an olive-tree and urinated, spraying a column of ants engaged in the transport of an immense pile of twigs.
He began drinking once more, sucking on the can of beer, swilling the foam around his mouth, spitting it out. He sat down on a bench on the porch, puffing and blowing, belching once more. He fished a pack of Gauloises from his shorts pocket. The beer had splashed onto his T-shirt, already filthy with grease and dust. Through the cotton material, he pinched his stomach, taking a fold of flesh between thumb and forefinger. He was getting fat. Over the last three weeks of forced idleness, of nothing but sleeping and eating, he had been getting fat.
Alex ground his foot into a two-week-old newspaper on the floor. The heel of his hiking boots covered a face staring out from the front page: his own. Alongside the image was a column of large print in which a name stood out, in even larger characters. It was his name: Alex Barny.