Clothilde turned around on her stool. " Ala, there you are! Can you give me an hour? I have to go to the supermarket."
It was fair enough. Anna had vanished all morning, so she could keep shop now during lunchtime. They exchanged roles without exchanging any more words-just a smile. Anna picked up the duster and took over the task at once, dusting, rubbing and polishing with all the vigor of her newly recovered good mood.
Then suddenly, her energy faded, leaving a black hole in the middle of her breast. In a few seconds, she measured how false her joy was. What had been so positive about her consultation that morning? Whether it was a lesion or a trauma, what did that change about her state, her anxieties? What more could Mathilde Wilcrau do to cure her? How did that make her any the less mad?
She slumped down behind the main counter. The psychiatrist's idea was perhaps even worse than Ackermann's. The idea that an event, a psychological shock, had sparked her amnesia heightened her terror. What could be hiding behind such a zone of darkness?
Sentences echoed constantly in her mind, and above all the answer: Faces, and also your husband. How could Laurent be linked with all this?
"Good afternoon." The voice sounded above the tinkle of the bell. She did not need to look up to know who it was.
The man in the threadbare jacket advanced with his usual slow steps. At that moment, she was absolutely certain that she knew him. It lasted only for a fraction of a second, but the impression was as powerful and piercing as an arrow. And yet her memory refused to give her the slightest clue.
Mr. Corduroys continued to advance. He did not look at all embarrassed and paid no particular attention to. Anna. His casual mauve, gilded gaze strayed over the rows of chocolates. Why did he not recognize her? Was he playacting? A crazy idea stung her mind: What if he was a friend of Laurent's, an accomplice whose job it was to spy on her and test her out? But why?
He smiled at her silence, and said offhandedly, "The usual, please."
"Right away, sir." Anna headed for the counter, feeling her hands trembling against her body. She had to make several attempts before she managed to pick up a bag and slip the chocolates inside. Finally, she laid the Jikolas on the scales.
"Two hundred grams. That will be ten euros fifty, please."
She glanced at him again. Already she was not so sure… but the echo of the anxiety, the malaise, remained. The vague impression that this man, like Laurent, had altered his face using plastic surgery. It was the face in her memory, but it was not him…
The man smiled again, turning his mauve eyes to her. He paid. then left, uttering a barely audible "good-bye."
Anna remained still for some time, petrified, in a stupor. Never before had an attack been so violent. It was as if it had eradicated all of that morning's hope. As if, after believing she would be cured, she had fallen even lower. Like prisoners who try to escape and, once they are caught, find themselves in a cell several feet underground.
The bell rang once more.
"Hi." Clothilde crossed the shop, soaked to the skin, her arms full of carrier bags. She disappeared for a moment into the stockroom, then returned with an aura of freshness.
"What's up with you? You look like you've just seen a ghost."
Anna did not reply. The desire to vomit and the desire to cry were fighting for possession of her throat.
Is something the matter?" Clothilde asked again.
Devastated, Anna looked at her. Then she got to her feet and said, "I’am going for a walk."
16
Outside, it was raining even harder than when Clothilde had returned. Anna dived into the deluge. She let herself drift in the humid gusts of wind, in the twists of rain. With her dazed eyes, she looked at Paris as it swam and sank beneath the gray skies. Clouds were pushing in waves above the rooftops, the façades of the buildings were streaming, the sculpted heads on the balconies and windows looked like blue or green drowning faces, engulfed by the floods of heaven.
She went back up Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, then Avenue Hoche to her left, as far as Parc Monceau. There, she passed by the black-and-gold railings of the gardens and took Rue Murillo.
The traffic was heavy. Cars were splashing water and light. Hooded bikers were snaking away like little rubber Zorros. The pedestrians were struggling against the gusts, molded and fashioned by the wind that wrapped their clothes like damp drapings around unfinished statues.
Everything was a dance of brown and black, with glimmers of dark oil mingled with silver and sickly light.
Anna went along Avenue de Messine, between the bright buildings and huge trees. She did not know where her feet were taking her, nor did she care. She was wandering both physically and mentally. Then she saw it.
On the opposite pavement, a shop window was exhibiting a color portrait. Anna crossed the road. It was a reproduction of a painting. A troubled, twisted, tormented face of violent colors. She approached, as though hypnotized. It reminded her exactly of her hallucinations.
She looked for the name of the painter. Francis Bacon. A self-portrait dating from 1956. An exhibition of the artist's work was being held on the first floor of the gallery. She found the entrance, a few doors to her right in Rue de Téhéran. then went upstairs.
Red hangings separated the white rooms and gave the exhibition a solemn, almost religious atmosphere. A crowd was bustling around the paintings-but in total silence. A sort of icy respect, imposed by the images themselves, was filling the space.
In the first room, Anna found some canvases measuring six feet, all depicting the same subject: a holy man sitting on a throne. Dressed in purple robes, he was screaming as though on an electric chair. He was painted in red, then black, and then again in violet. But the same details recurred: the hands gripping the armrests, already burning, as though stuck to carbonized wood; the mouth screaming, opening to reveal a woundlike hole, while purplish blue flames were rising all around…
Anna went through the first curtain.
In the next room, naked crouching men were trapped in pools of color or primitive cages. Their bodies were twisted, deformed, like wild beasts. Or zoomorphic creatures, midway between several species. Their faces were mere scarlet splashes, bleeding maws, truncated features. Behind these monsters, the panels of paint were like the tiles of a butcher's shop or a slaughterhouse. A place of sacrifice, where bodies were reduced to carcasses, flayed masses, living carrion. Each time, the lines trembled, shifted, like a documentary filmed with a handheld camera, shaking with urgency. Anna felt her malaise mount, but she had not yet found what she was looking for: faces of suffering.
They were waiting for her in the last room.
A dozen smaller canvases were protected by red velvet cordons. Savage, broken, fractured portraits: a chaos of lips, noses, bone, where eyes desperately searched for a direction.
These paintings came in groups of three. The first, entitled Three Studies of the Human Head, was dated 1953. Livid, blue, cadaverous faces bore traces of their first wounds. The second triptych seemed like a natural continuation, breaking through into a higher level of violence. Study for Three Heads, 1962. White faces shifted away from the viewer, the better to return and display their scars beneath a clown's makeup. Strangely, these wounds seemed to be trying to raise a laugh, like the children who were disfigured in the Middle Ages in order to turn them forever into clowns and buffoons.