“You’re determined to be insufferable today, aren’t you, my dear? I’m almost sorry for you.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She is provoking me, he thought. She would have me believe she is quite happy to be in the slime where I force her to live. She wants me to think she gets pleasure from degrading herself.
Eve kept up her act, even risking a wink at the waiter, who turned as red as a turkey cock.
“Come on, we’re going now. We’ve had quite enough of that. If you are so keen to ‘please me,’ we can go tomorrow for your appointments, or maybe I’ll even ask you to do a little streetwalking…”
Eve smiled and took his hand so as not to lose face; but he knew perfectly well how mortifying all those metered encounters were for her and how much she suffered every time he made her sell herself: sometimes, through the one-way mirror in the studio apartment, he saw her eyes welling with tears and her face contorted as she strove to contain her distress. At such moments he reveled in this suffering, which was his only comfort.
They returned to the house at Le Vésinet. Eve ran across the grounds, undressed swiftly, and dived into the pool with a cry of joy. She splashed about in the water, disappearing beneath the surface for quick breath-holding bursts.
When she climbed out of the pool, Lafargue wrapped her in a large Turkish towel and vigorously rubbed her dry. She let him do it, staring up at the stars. Then he walked her up to her flat, where, as on every other evening, she stretched out on the rush mat. He busied himself with the pipe and the balls of opium, and brought the drug to her.
“Richard,” she murmured, “you really are the biggest bastard I have ever met…”
He made sure that she finished her daily dose. He need not have bothered: she had been missing it sorely for some time already.
After thirst came hunger. To the dryness of your throat, to the feeling that sharp-edged stones were ripping at your mouth, were added deep, diffuse pains in your belly, like hands wrenching at your stomach, filling it with bile and making it cramp horribly.
For days now (and the pain was so bad, it must surely be days), you had been crouching in your hole. But it was more than a hole, in fact, for it seemed to you, though you had no way of being certain, that the place where you were held captive was vast. The echo of your cries off the walls and eyes now accustomed to the dark almost convinced you that you could see the boundaries of your prison.
You raved continually, hour after interminable hour. Slumped on your litter, you no longer sat up. From time to time you raged against your shackles, biting at the metal and producing little growls, like some wild animal.
Once, long ago, you had seen a film, a documentary on hunting, with pitiful images of a fox, its paw in a trap, tearing at its own flesh, ripping it off in shreds, until the trap’s grip was loose enough for the beast to free itself and make off, mutilated.
But you could not bite at your wrists or ankles. They were bloody, nevertheless, from the incessant chafing between skin and metal. The flesh was hot, swollen. Had you still been rational, you would have feared gangrene, infection, the decay that, starting from your extremities, could invade your entire body.
But you dreamed only of water, rushing torrents, pouring rain—anything at all that could be drunk. You urinated with the greatest difficulty, and each time the pain in your back would be more violent. There would be a burning sensation running down through your penis, but only a few drops of hot piss would dribble forth. You sprawled in your own excrement; dried plaques of shit stuck to your skin.
Oddly, your sleep was untroubled. You slept profoundly, felled by fatigue, but your awakenings were atrocious and accompanied by hallucinations. Monstrous creatures lay in wait for you in the dark, ready to pounce and sink their teeth into you. You thought you heard claws scratching at the cement; you thought you saw the yellow eyes of rats in the shadows, watching you.
You called out for Alex, but your cry emerged as a scraping sound in your throat. If only Alex were there, he would have freed you from your chains. Alex would have known what to do. He would have come up with a solution, employed some peasant ruse. Alex! He should have been looking for you since you disappeared. Which was how long ago now? HOW LONG?
And then HE came. One day—or one night, for there was no way of telling. A door—right across from you—was opened: a rectangle of light that blinded you at first.
The door closed once more, but HE had entered. His presence filled your prison.
You held your breath, listened for the merest sound, and crouched motionless against the wall like a terrified cockroach caught in a sudden glare. You might as well have been an insect captured by a bloated spider and kept on hand for an eventual meal, when she would savor you at her leisure, whenever the whim arose to taste your blood. You pictured her furry legs, her great bulbous merciless eyes, her soft belly gorged with meat, throbbing, spongy, and her venomous jaws, her black maw preparing to suck the life out of you.
All at once you were dazzled by a powerful spotlight. There you lay, sole actor in the drama of your imminent death, ready for the last act. You made out a figure, a silhouette seated in an armchair ten or twelve feet in front of you. But you could not discern the monster’s features, lost in the blackness behind the light. He had crossed his legs and clasped his hands under his chin; he was contemplating you motionlessly.
You made a superhuman effort to get up and, on your knees, your hands palm to palm as though in prayer, you pleaded for something to drink. The words became jumbled on their way out of your mouth. Stretching your arms out toward him, you begged.
He did not respond. You stammered your name: Vincent Moreau, monsieur. There’s been a mistake, monsieur. I am Vincent Moreau. You passed out.
When you came around, he was gone. Then the true meaning of despair was borne in upon you. The spotlight was still on you. You saw your body, the pus-filled boils, the streaked dirt, the skin rubbed raw by the shackles, the crusted shit on your thighs, the long fingernails.
The violent white light made you weep. Another good stretch of time passed before he came back. Once again he sat down in the armchair facing you. At his feet he had placed an object that you identified instantly. A pitcher! Water? You were on your knees, on all fours, head bowed. He approached you. He poured the water in the pitcher over your head, all at once. You lapped at the puddle forming on the floor. You stroked your hair with trembling hands to squeeze out the moisture, which you licked from your palms.
He went and refilled the pitcher and handed it to you. Avidly, you drank the contents down in a single draft. Then a searing pain shot through your stomach, and from your nether end spurted a long stream of diarrhea. He watched you. You did not turn to the wall or seek to evade his gaze. Squatting at his feet, you relieved yourself, happy simply to have drunk. You were nothing now—nothing but an animal, thirsty, hungry, and battered. An animal that had once been Vincent Moreau.
He laughed. The little childish laugh you had heard before, in the forest.
He came back often with water. His figure still seemed immense to you behind the spotlight. His enormous menacing shadow filled the room. But you were no longer afraid, for he gave you water, and you read this as a sign that he meant to keep you alive.