“Well, what we have here, on forehead and cheeks, are large keloid plaques, the result of burns from the explosion of volatile chemicals. The nasal pyramid is virtually nonexistent, the eyelids have been destroyed. You are looking at perfect indications for treatment by means of tubular skin flaps. We shall be drawing for this purpose upon both the arm and the abdomen.”
With the help of a scalpel, Lafargue was already cutting large rectangles of skin from the patient’s stomach. Above him, the spectators’ faces pressed against the glass. An hour later he was able to show a first result: skin flaps sown into tubes had left the subject’s arm and abdomen and been grafted to his burn-ravaged face. Doubly anchored, they would serve to rebuild the completely ruinous facial integument.
The patient was wheeled out. Lafargue removed his surgical mask and finished his commentary.
“In this case, the plan of action was determined by what needed the most urgent attention. It goes without saying that this sort of intervention will have to be repeated a number of times before a fully satisfactory outcome can be achieved.”
He thanked his audience for their attention and left the operating room. It was past noon. Lafargue set off for a nearby restaurant. On the way, he happened to pass a perfumery. He went in and bought a bottle of scent, intending to present it to Eve that evening.
After lunch, Roger drove him to Boulogne. His visiting hours began at two. Lafargue hurried his patients along: a young mother and her son and his harelip, and a whole raft of noses—Monday was the day for noses: broken noses, overlarge noses, deviated noses … Lafargue palpated faces to left and right of the septum and showed before-and-after photographs. Most of his patients were women, but he saw a few men, too.
When the consultations were over, he worked on his own, catching up on the latest American journals. Roger came for him at six.
Once back at Le Vésinet, he knocked on Eve’s door and slid back the bolts. She was seated at the piano naked, playing a sonata, and she seemed not to register Richard’s presence. At the piano stool, she kept her back to him. Locks of her curly black hair bounced on her shoulders, her head bobbing as her fingers struck the keyboard. He admired the flesh and the muscles of her back, the dimples at its base, her buttocks … Without warning, she abandoned the light, fluid sonata and launched into the tune Richard so hated. She hummed along in a throaty voice, stressing the low notes: “Some day, he’ll come along, the man I love…” Then she deliberately hit a wrong note, stopped playing, and span the stool around with a twist of her hips. She sat facing Richard, her thighs apart, her fists on her knees, in an attitude of obscene defiance.
For a few moments he was unable to take his eyes off the dark fleece that covered her pubis. She frowned, and then with deliberation spread her legs even wider and slid a finger into the fissure of her sex, separating the labia and moaning.
“Stop it!” Richard shouted.
Gauchely, he proffered the bottle of perfume he had bought that morning. She looked him over sardonically. He placed the gift on the piano and tossed her a robe, demanding that she cover herself.
Batting it aside, she leaped to her feet and ran to him all smiles, pressing herself against him. She wrapped her arms around Richard’s neck and rubbed her breasts against his torso. He was forced to twist her wrists to get free.
“Get ready!” he ordered her. “It’s been a magnificent day. We’re going out.”
“Should I dress like a whore?”
He went for her, taking her by the throat with one hand and holding her away from him. He repeated his order. But she was in pain and suffocating, and he had to release her immediately.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “But please, please, get dressed.”
He went back down to the ground floor, anxious. To calm himself, he decided to look at his mail. He hated having to deal with the material details of household management, but after Eve’s arrival he had been obliged to discharge the person he had previously relied on to handle the minor paperwork.
He worked on the overtime due Roger and on Lise’s upcoming paid days off, but he got the hourly wage wrong and had to start over again. He was still poring over his papers when Eve appeared in the drawing room.
She was stunning in a low-necked black lamé dress, a string of pearls about her throat. When she leaned over him, her pallid skin was redolent with the perfume he had just given her.
She smiled at him and took his arm. He got behind the wheel of the Mercedes, and a few minutes later they were walking side by side in the forest of Saint-Germain, which was full of strollers attracted by the mildness of the evening.
She had her head on his shoulder. They didn’t speak for a time, and then he told her about his operation of that morning.
“You’re boring the shit out of me!” She spoke in a singsong voice.
He fell silent, a little vexed. She had taken his hand and was watching him in apparent amusement. She made for a bench.
“Richard?”
He seemed distracted. She had to call his name again. He came and sat next to her.
“I’d like to see the sea. It’s been such a long time. I used to love swimming, you know. A day—just one. Let’s go and see the sea. I’ll do whatever you want, after…”
He shrugged, explaining that that wasn’t the problem.
“I promise you I won’t run off.”
“Your promises are worthless! Anyway, you already do whatever I want.”
With a gesture of irritation, he asked her to be quiet. They walked a little more, as far as the water’s edge. Young people were windsurfing on the Seine.
“I’m hungry!” she announced, and waited for Richard’s response. He offered to take her to supper at a restaurant not far away.
They chose a table on a leafy terrace. A waiter came and took their order. Eve ate heartily; Richard barely touched his food. She had the greatest difficulty getting a spiny lobster tail out of its shell and in frustration produced a little-girl tantrum. He could not help laughing at her. She joined in, and Richard’s features froze. My God, he thought, there are moments when she seems almost happy! It’s incredible—and unfair!
Perceiving the change in Lafargue’s attitude, she decided to put the situation to good use. She gestured for him to lean over to her, then whispered in his ear.
“Richard, listen. That waiter, over there, he hasn’t been able to take his eyes off me since the beginning of the meal. I could arrange things for later…”
“Shut up!”
“But I’m serious. I can go to the toilet, make a rendezvous with him, and have him screw me later, in the bushes.”
He had drawn away from her, but she went on whispering, more loudly now, and laughing derisively.
“So you don’t want to? If you hide, you can watch everything. I’ll make sure to get us close to you. Look at him—he’s positively drooling!”
He blew cigarette smoke full into her face. But she didn’t stop.
“No? Really? Not like that, the quick in-and-out. I’d just lift up my dress … You used to like that, though, at the beginning, didn’t you?”
And it was true: “at the beginning,” Richard would take Eve into the park, the Bois de Vincennes or the Bois de Boulogne, and make her offer herself to men on the prowl. Then he would observe her humiliation from the cover of a hedge. But later, for fear of getting caught in a police sweep, which would have been catastrophic, he had rented the studio apartment in Rue Godot-de-Mauroy. There he prostituted Eve on a regular basis two or three times a month. This sufficed to assuage his loathing.