She looked at him astonished.
“What’s gotten into you? Do I really look like I’m at death’s door?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Dr. Valois examined me recently.”
“What was the matter?” he asked with real anxiety.
“Oh, I wasn’t feeling well, that’s all. Happens to everybody, doesn’t it?”
“And Dr. Valois was sure there’s nothing wrong with you?”
“Nothing physical. It’s all these worries, these awful worries eating away at me.”
He looked at her and realized she was lying They were two steps away from each other and he could see her nostrils quivering. She closed her eyes and he tenderly put a hand on her shoulder.
“We have to remain hopeful, Laura. We have to.”
“All I know how to do is lie to myself.”
“Without hope, what will become of us?”
“Yes,” she said, “what will become of us?”
She shook herself free and went down to the dining room. Rose was still in bed and they had breakfast without her. Louis Normil caught Paul’s insistent gaze, full of contempt and insolence, and it made him shudder.
“How many parcels of land have you already sold for the Gorilla at a handsome profit?” the young man burst out, the words hissing in his teeth like insults.
“Son, let’s hope I will be able to sell them,” he answered, trying to sound natural, “since at least then I’ll make some money out of it. I just told your mother that only hope can help us. There’s a horde of vultures circling these properties. I am simply trying not to lose everything, that’s all.”
“And in the meantime, you’re making deals with them too,” Paul continued. “One way or another, they’ll manage to buy off each and every one of us.”
He laughed so horribly that the invalid looked at him with open-mouthed curiosity.
“You just laughed like a demon when he catches a condemned soul in his claws,” the grandfather added softly in a voice so gentle it didn’t seem like his own.
“My father has become friends with our persecutor,” Paul cried.
Louis Normil turned pale and his shoulders sagged with utter exhaustion. The grandfather dropped his fork, his beard trembled.
“If this is true, my son, leave my house, don’t impose your presence upon me, I’m not dead yet,” he said.
The father lowered his head in guilt.
“Paul!” the mother called out in painful reproach, and shut her eyes.
“Paul misunderstood me,” the father articulated in a soft and measured voice. “He is very young and he misunderstood.”
At that moment, Rose bounded down the stairs and sat down in her chair. Pushing out his chair, Paul got up from the table, his brows glowering over hardened eyes.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
He watched the Gorilla for two days, walking the streets with the cold blade of his knife caressing his skin through his shirt. He walked a formidable distance in vain, watching cars, searching buildings and public places. He went home seething with rage, refused to sit at the dining room table and told his mother to get out of his room. In the evening, he got up, waited for the father to leave, and asked his mother for money. He rented a car and parked it along a dark section of the driveway to the house. As soon as he saw Rose leaving, he threw on a jacket, carefully brushed his hair and went into the street. Standing at the gate, he watched her walk away then, once she was far enough, he got in the car and started it. He had followed her from a distance for five minutes when she suddenly stopped. He braked and waited. Five more minutes went by, then ten. Suddenly he recognized the Gorilla at the wheel of his car. The door opened and closed behind Rose. For half an hour, the two cars drove a short distance through town, then along a deserted road where the houses, sunk deep at the end of long driveways, became more and more rare. The place was so dark he could barely see what was in front of him. He carefully drove down the driveway and arrived in front of the house. A bright light was shining through the window of one of the rooms framed by a wrought-iron balcony where he could make out two silhouettes in profile. The dogs began to bark furiously, breaking the silence, and the light suddenly became brighter as if another, more powerful bulb had been turned on. The two shadows vanished as if suddenly snatched by some unseen force, and shortly thereafter he saw the Gorilla at the window. Paul touched his knife through his shirt. “Blast it all,” he heard himself whisper, “if I only had a gun!” He hunched down and crept to the garden, right across from the window. He crouched and poked his head up. In the middle of the room there was a bed where Rose lay naked. Two bulbs hung bright as daylight above her. He saw her with her legs spread open, arms out in a cross, head turned to the side, motionless as a corpse, and he nearly screamed. He felt the knife, unbuttoned his shirt and held the blade between three fingers. He got up slowly, his left hand breaking a small tree branch that was in his way. He saw the man’s body slowly sit up and then start to retreat. He threw the knife, gleaming quick as lightning. He heard it hit something hard and fall below the window with a metallic sound.
“Shit! I missed him,” he said out loud.
The Gorilla had thrown himself on the ground. He saw the man crawling to the balcony and immediately bullets flew past his ears, followed by the furious barking of dogs. He fled the bushes, listening to the gunfire as it faded. Around him, nothing moved. He saw all the lights dim one by one, got back in the car and returned home, where he locked himself up in his room.
Two hours later, he heard Rose groping her way upstairs, not daring to turn on the lights.
At dawn, he left his room and cautiously went downstairs, avoiding Rose and the others. He filled up the tank, drove like mad to Carrefour and stopped in front of Anna Valois’ house.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Monsieur,
You are about to be duped. Meet me at the office of Notary X at eight o’clock tomorrow morning, at which time twelve bills of sale will be drafted to the benefit of your boss. I’ve noticed your strong face and build. I am certain you will know how to defend yourself and demand the reward that should by all rights be yours.
Sitting at his desk, Louis Normil sealed the letter, telling himself:
At lunch, he hid behind a door when M. Zura came by, and left the office alone to go to a meeting he had set up with the men in black.
“Until tomorrow, then, see you at the notary’s,” he said, clinking glasses with them.
The next day, at exactly eight o’clock, a remarkably distinguished-looking mulatto received them in an air- conditioned room, furnished with clear but subtle taste. Distracted, he played with a huge signet ring on his left ring finger. Louis Normil had been sitting across from him for ten minutes and hadn’t once been able to make eye
