Tarantula

on the street. She had made enough connections at the time to supply the twice-monthly sessions that he now demanded of her: those who still called the studio apartment gave Richard quite enough choice to assuage his need to debase the young woman.

“Try to rise to the occasion,” he sneered. Then he disappeared, slamming the door behind him. She knew that he would be spying on her from the other side of the one-way mirror.

The treatment she got at the hands of Varneroy made it impossible to take him on too frequently. So Eve would call him only after one of Viviane’s crises. Varneroy was perfectly willing to accept Eve’s hesitancy; and, after urgent appeals from him had been rejected on several occasions, he had resigned himself to leaving a telephone number with Eve where she could reach him whenever she was prepared to submit to his whims.

Varneroy arrived pleased as Punch. He was a pink little man, paunchy, well turned out, and amiable. He took off his hat, laid his jacket down carefully, and kissed Eve on either cheek before opening his bag and producing his whip.

Richard observed these preliminaries with satisfaction, his hands tightly clasped around the armrests of the rocking-chair and his face rife with tics.

Under Varneroy’s direction Eve executed a grotesque dance step. The whip cracked. Richard clapped his hands. He laughed uproariously. But then, suddenly overcome by nausea, he could no longer abide the spectacle. The suffering of Eve, who was his, whose destiny he had shaped, whose life he had fashioned, filled him with a mixture of disgust and pity. Varneroy’s leering countenance so revolted him that he leaped to his feet and charged into the adjoining apartment.

Stunned by this apparition, Varneroy froze, his jaw slack, his arm aloft. Lafargue snatched the whip from his grasp, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and ejected him into the hallway. Wide-eyed, mystified, and at a complete loss for words, the weirdo bounded down the stairs without a backward glance.

Richard and Eve were alone. She had fallen to her knees. Richard helped her up, then helped her wash. She got back into the sweatshirt and jeans she had been wearing when she was taken aback by his voice booming through the intercom.

Without a word, he drove her back to the house, undressed her, and laid her on her bed. Considerately, tenderly, he applied ointment to her wounds and made her very hot tea.

He held her to him, bringing the cup to her mouth and letting her take tiny sips. Then he drew the sheet up over her chest and stroked her hair. He had dissolved a sleeping tablet in her tea, and she quickly fell asleep.

Richard left Eve’s room, went out into the garden, and made for the pond. The two swans slept side by side, heads beneath their wings, the female, so graceful, nuzzled against the more imposing body of the male.

He admired their serenity, longing for the soothing power of such calm. He wept bitter tears. He had snatched Eve from the hands of Varneroy, and he knew full well that this pity—for that is what he called it—had abruptly destroyed the hate, the limitless, unrestrained hate that was his only reason for living.

Mygale often played chess with you. He would think for a long time before risking a move that you never anticipated. Sometimes he improvised attacks without regard for his own defenses; he was impulsive, yet invincible.

The day came when he did away with your shackles and replaced your mat with a sofa. On this you slept and lolled all day long amid silky cushions. Meanwhile, the heavy door to the cellar remained firmly padlocked.

Mygale gave you candy and Virginia cigarettes. He inquired about your tastes in music. Your conversations took on a playful cast bordering on small talk. He had provided a videocassette player and brought movies for the two of you to watch together. He made tea, plied you with herbal decoctions, and, if you seemed depressed, he would uncork a bottle of champagne. No sooner were your glasses empty than he would refill them.

You were no longer naked: Mygale had given you an embroidered shawl, a gorgeous piece of fabric beautifully wrapped. With your delicate fingers you had pulled off the paper to reveal the shawl; this gift gave you the greatest pleasure.

Swathed in the shawl, you would snuggle among the cushions, smoking the imported cigarettes or sucking on sugary bonbons, and await your daily visit from Mygale, who would never arrive empty- handed.

His generosity toward you was seemingly boundless. One day the door to the cellar opened and he entered, pushing an enormous object on wheels before him, not without difficulty. He smiled as he contemplated the tissue paper that enveloped it, the pink ribbon, the bouquet of flowers on the top…

As you stared in amazement, he reminded you of the date: the twenty-second of July. Yes, you had been a captive for ten months, and today you were twenty-one. You hammed it up then, prancing around the giant package, clapping your hands and laughing. Mygale helped you untie the ribbon. You already knew from the shape that it was a piano—but not that it was a Steinway!

Seated on your old stool, once you had loosened up your unwilling fingers, you played. The performance was hardly brilliant, but you shed tears of joy.

And you—you, Vincent Moreau, this monster’s pet, his lapdog, his monkey or parrot, whom he had so thoroughly broken—yes, you, had then kissed his hand, giggling with glee.

That was when he slapped you for the second time.

Alex was fretting in his hideout. Surfeited with sleep, his eyes puffy, he spent most of his waking hours in front of the tube. He chose not to think about his future and strove to occupy himself as best he could. In contrast to his custom at the farmhouse, he cleaned house and washed dishes with extreme fastidiousness. Everything was sparkling clean, and he would pass hours at a time polishing the floor or scouring pots and pans.

His thigh no longer hurt much. The forming scar tissue itched a little, but the wound was not painful. A simple compress had replaced the heavy-duty bandage.

One evening some ten days after Alex had set up house, he had a brilliant idea, or at least he convinced himself that it was a brilliant idea. He was watching a soccer match on the box. Sports had never held much interest for him, except for karate. The only periodicals he read in the normal way were martial arts magazines. Still, his eye idly followed the zigzagging of the round ball as it was systematically knocked around by the players. He sipped the last of a glass of wine and began to nod off, not getting up to turn off the set when the game ended. The next show was a “medical special” on plastic surgery.

A commentator presented a report on lifts and other facial reconstruction. Then came an interview with the head of a hospital clinic in Paris, Professor Lafargue. Alex was awake now, and riveted.

“The second stage,” Lafargue was saying, using a sketch as a visual aid, “consists in the scraping of the periosteum with what is called a raspatory. This is a very important phase. As you see here, the purpose is to let the periosteum adhere to the deepest layer of the skin so as to cushion it…”

On the screen appeared a series of photographs of faces transformed, remodeled, sculpted, beautified. The patients shown earlier were unrecognizable. Alex had followed the explanation attentively, irritated that he did not understand some of the terms used. When the end credits rolled, he took down the name of the doctor, Lafargue, and the name of the clinic where he worked.

Alex thought about the photograph on his identity card, about the mercenary hospitality of his friend the legionnaire, about the money hidden in the attic of his new abode… Slowly but surely, everything was coming together!

The guy on the tube had claimed that a nose job was a perfectly benign operation, just like the excision of fatty tissues on certain parts of the face. A wrinkle? No problem: the scalpel could wipe it away like an eraser.

Alex rushed to the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. He fingered his face, the lump on his nose, the cheeks that were too chubby, the double chin…

It was a cinch! The doctor had said two weeks—just two weeks to redesign a face! You simply wipe away