"But what exactly happens during the operation?"
The doctor shifted about in his white jacket, which was standing in for his surgical coat. "After we have made the zone more supple – “
“How? By breaking the cartilage-is that it?"
The smile was still there, but the eyes were becoming inquisitive. Laferrière was trying to work out Anna's intentions. "We do indeed have to go through such a… radical step. But the whole thing is carried out under anesthetic."
"Then what do you do?"
"Then we position the bones and cartilage according to the required line. I repeat. We can now offer you tailor-made work."
Anna pursued this direction. "But that sort of operation must surely leave behind traces?"
"None. The instruments are introduced through the nostrils. We don't even touch the skin."
"And what about face-lifts?" she went on. "What technique do you use?"
"Endoscopy again. We pull the skin and muscles using minute tweezers.”
“So no scars either?"
"Not a single one. We pass via the upper lobe of the ear. It's absolutely undetectable." He waved a hand. "Forget about scars; they're things of the past."
"And liposuction?"
Laferrière frowned. "We were speaking about the face."
"But there's liposuction for the throat, isn't there?"
"True. It's even one of the easiest operations to perform."
"Does that leave scars?"
This was one question too many. The surgeon replied hostilely, "I don't understand. What are you interested in, improvements or scars?"
Anna lost her composure. In a flash, she felt the panic she had experienced in the gallery come back. Heat was rising under her skin, from her throat up to her forehead. Her face was now presumably scarlet.
She murmured, hardly able to articulate: "Sorry. I'm very nervous. I'd. I'd like… In fact, before deciding, I'd like to see some photographs of operations."
Laferrière's voice softened, a touch of honey in dark tea. "That's out of the question. Such pictures are extremely off-putting. All that we need concern ourselves about are the results. Follow me? As for the rest, that's my business."
Anna gripped the armrests of her chair. One way or another, she had to drag the truth out of this doctor. "I'll never let you operate on me unless I see, with my own eyes, what you're going to do."
The doctor stood up, making an apologetic gesture. "I'm sorry, but I don't think you're ready psychologically for such an operation."
Anna did not move. "What have you got to hide?"
Laferrière froze. "I beg your pardon?"
"I ask you about scars. You say they don't exist. I ask to see pictures of an operation. You refuse. So what have you got to hide?"
The surgeon leaned both of his fists on the desk. "I carry out over twenty operations a day, young lady. I teach plastic surgery at Salpetrière Hospital. I know my job. It consists in bringing people happiness by improving the way they look. Not in traumatizing them by talking about scars and showing them pictures of broken bones. I don't know what you're looking for, but you won't find it here."
Anna returned his stare. "You're an impostor."
He stood up, breaking into an incredulous laugh. "What?"
"You refuse to show your work. You lie about the results. You try to pass yourself off as a magician, but you're nothing but a fraud. Just like all those other quacks."
The word quack produced the desired result. Laferriere's face started to go white until it was gleaming in the darkness. He swiveled around and opened a flexible slatted filing cabinet. From it, he removed a file of plastic-covered sheets and dumped it down on the desk in front of her. "Is that what you want to see?"
He opened the file to reveal the first photograph. A face turned inside out like a glove, the skin stretched apart using hemostatic clamps. "Or this?"
He showed a second picture: lips turned up, surgical scissors stuck in bleeding gums. "How about this one?"
Third sheet: a hammer nailing a probe into a nostril. Her heart in her throat, Anna forced herself to look.
In the next photo, a lancet was slicing an eyelid, just above a bulging eye.
She raised her head. She had succeeded in fooling the doctor; all she had to do was continue. "It's impossible that such operations never leave scars," she said.
Laferrière sighed. He rummaged through his cupboard again, then laid a second folder on the desk. With a weary voice, he commented on the first image: "Grinding of the forehead. By endoscopy. Four months after the operation."
Anna looked attentively at the transformed face. Three vertical lines, each measuring about five inches, crossed the forehead, along the roots of the hair. The surgeon turned the page.
"Removal of a piece of parietal bone for a graft. Two months after the operation."
The photograph showed a skull topped by spiky hair, under which could clearly be seen a pinkish S-shaped scar.
"The hair will soon cover the mark, which will in turn disappear," he added. He flicked over the page, and continued. "A triple face-lift, by endoscopy. The stitches are intradermic and are absorbed. A month later, you see almost nothing."
Two shots of an ear, face-on and in profile, shared the page. On the upper crest of the lobe, Anna noticed a slight zigzag.
"Liposuction of the throat," Laferrière went on, revealing a further image. "The line you can see there will disappear. It's the operation that leaves the least trace."
He turned another page and emphasized, in an almost sadistic voice, "And if you want the lot, here's a scan of a face that has undergone a graft of the cheekbones. Beneath the skin, the traces of the operation remain forever."
It was the most impressive picture. A bluish death's-head, whose bone structure was covered with screws and fissures.
Anna closed the folder.
"Thank you, Doctor. It was something I just had to see."
The doctor walked around his desk and stared at her intently, as though still trying to detect beneath her features the real reason for this consultation. But…sorry, I don't understand. What are you after?"
She stood up and put on her smooth black coat. For the first time, she smiled. "I'm going to have to see for myself first."
19
It was two in the morning.
It was still raining: a drum roll. a cadence, a slight hammering, with its different accents, beats and resonances on the windows, balconies, stone parapets.
Anna was standing in front of the living-room windows. In her sweatshirt and tracksuit bottom, she was shivering with cold.
In the darkness, she stared through the windows at the form of the ancient plane tree. It was like a skeleton of bark, floating in the air. With charred bones, marked with scraps of lichen, looking almost silvery under the streetlights. Bare claws awaiting their covering of flesh-spring leaves.
She looked down. On the table in front of her lay the objects she had bought that afternoon, after her visit to the surgeon: a Maglite flashlight and a special Polaroid camera for night shots.
For the last hour. Laurent had been asleep in the bedroom. She had stayed by his side, waiting for the moment. She had watched out for the slightest twitch as his body started to slumber. Then she had listened to his breathing as it became regular and unconscious.
First sleep. The deepest.
She picked up her equipment. Mentally, she said farewell to the view outside, the large room with its glistening parquet and white settees. And to her routine now associated with this apartment. If she was right. if what she had imagined was true, then she was going to have to flee. And then try to understand.
She walked up the corridor. She advanced so cautiously that she could hear the breathing of the building the cracking of the parquet, the humming of the water heater, the rustling of the windows as the rain hit them…