Tarantula

The door to your bedroom was always locked. Through the slats of the closed shutters, you could see grounds, a little pond, some swans. Mygale came to see you every day, spending long hours with you. Speaking to you about your new life. About the person—the woman—you had become.

You took up the piano again, and painting. Since you now had breasts and that hole down between your thighs, you had no choice but to go along. What good would running away do? Going back home after such a long time? Could the place Vincent had once known even be called home? What would the people who had known him say? No, you had no real choice. All the makeup, the dressing, the perfume… And then, to top it off, Mygale took you one day to the Bois de Boulogne. After that, you were beyond hope.

Today, the man is sleeping near you. He must be uncomfortable crammed into that armchair. When he found you in the cellar, he kissed you, he took you in his arms. The bedroom door is open. What does he want now?

Richard opened his eyes. His back ached. He had a strange sensation: he had spent the whole night watching over Eve, but now a rustle of fabric—the sheet, perhaps—suggested that Eve was awake, watching him in the first light of day. There she was, in the bed, her eyes wide open. Richard smiled, got to his feet, stretched, and went to sit on the edge of the bed. When he spoke, he fell back absurdly into the polite form of address, a habit that he had instituted and which he abandoned only during his hate-filled obscene tirades.

“Are you feeling better? It’s all over. I mean, it’s finished—you can leave. I’ll take care of the paperwork, your new identity. That’s the usual thing. You understand? You’ll go to the police, tell them everything…”

Richard was admitting defeat and couldn’t stop. He was pitiful. His defeat was total, humiliating—but it came too late to punish a hatred that was already extinct.

Eve got up, took a bath, and dressed. She went down to the drawing room. Richard found her by the pond. He had come with crumbled bread, which he threw to the swans. She crouched by the waterside and whistled to the birds. They cruised over and bowed their necks to take the morsels of bread from her hand.

The day was splendid. The two of them made for the house together and sat side by side in the swing by the swimming pool. They stayed there a good while, close together, without a word.

“Richard?” said Eve at last, “I want to see the sea.”

He turned toward her, looked at her with immense sadness, and nodded. They went back inside. Eve went off to find a bag and stuff a few things in it. Richard waited for her in the car.

They set off. She lowered her window and played at resisting the wind, extending her hand outside the car. He suggested she stop, for fear that insects or flying gravel might hurt her.

Richard drove fast, devouring the curves in a kind of frenzy. She asked him to slow down. Before long, the seaside cliffs came into view.

The pebble beach of Etretat was black with people. Vacationers jammed the water’s edge. It was low tide. The two walked along the beachfront and followed the foot of the cliffs through the tunnel that leads to another beach where the Hollow Needle stands.

Eve asked Richard whether he had read a novel by Maurice Leblanc, a wild tale of bandits holed up in a cavern carved out of the inside of a cliff. No, he had not read it. He laughed as he answered her, with a nuance of bitterness, as much as to say that his profession left him precious little leisure time. But Eve did not give up: how could anyone not know Arsene Lupin?

Retracing their steps, they headed back to the town. Eve was hungry. They took a table on the terrace of a seafood restaurant. She set about a plateful of oysters and whelks. Richard toyed with a spider-crab claw, then let her finish eating on her own.

“Richard, what’s all this about a gangster, anyway?”

He told her all over again: his return to Le Vesinet, her empty bedroom, the bolts drawn, his alarm at her disappearance. And how he had found her.

“What about this thug? Did you let him go?” Eve was still skeptical and wary.

“No, he’s chained up in the cellar.”

His response was delivered in a low, expressionless voice. For a moment Eve could hardly breathe.

“Richard! You’ve got to go down there. You can’t just leave him there to die!”

“He hurt you. That’s exactly what he deserves.”

She pounded her fist on the table to bring him back to reality. The white wine in her glass, the half-eaten crab on the table, and this inappropriate talk about a guy rotting in the cellar at Le Vesinet—all conspired to give her the impression of being in some surreal play. As for Richard, he was gazing vacantly into the distance. She felt sure that if she had asked him to throw himself from the top of those cliffs, he would have complied without thinking twice about it.

It was already late when they got back to Le Vesinet and went into the house. He led the way down the stairs to the cellar. He opened the door and turned the light on. The guy was there, sure enough, on his knees, his arms stretched wide by the chains she knew so well. When Alex lifted his head, Eve gave out a long cry like the wail of a wounded animal unable to grasp what is happening to it.

Doubled over, barely breathing, she pointed a finger at the prisoner. Then she rushed out into the passage, fell to her knees, and vomited. Richard, who had followed her out, supported her and pressed his hand to her brow.

So this was it. This was the last act. Mygale had dreamed up this whole gangster story, this entire grotesque tale, simply to calm your suspicions. He had tamed you with tenderness, giving in to your whimsical desire to see the sea, only to plunge you back into endless horror!

And this trick of having you discover Alex as a prisoner, just like you four years ago, had the sole purpose of breaking you even further, of driving you even closer (as if that were possible) to the brink of madness.

Yes, that was his plan. Not to humiliate you by forcing you into prostitution, after first castrating you, hacking you up, mutilating you—after destroying your body and fabricating another one, turning you into a toy of flesh and blood. All that was just playing about, just the lead-up to his real goal, which was to drive you mad, as mad as his daughter. Since you had survived every ordeal, he had had to raise the stakes.

Step by step he had brought you low, plunging your head into the darkest waters, then yanking it up by the hair just before you drowned. And now came the coup de grace: Alex!

Mygale was not mad: he was a genius. Who else could have designed such a subtle escalation? The bastard! He had to be killed!

As for Alex, Mygale would have little use for him, as he must know. He surely had no intention of subjecting him to the same torments as you. Alex was a big oaf, a brute; he had amused you at one time: you could do whatever you wanted with him; he would have followed you anywhere, like a dog.

Mygale could do nothing with Alex: the refinements of suffering you had experienced would not be his. Perhaps Mygale intended to make you…Yes, that was it! You only had to look at Alex in his chains, naked as a worm, to see what Mygale had in mind.

One victim was not enough for him: he needed both of them at his mercy. Four years! It had taken Mygale four years to catch up with Alex. What had become of Alex in the meantime? But, above all, how had Mygale managed to find him? You knew you had never breathed a word.

Mygale was there next to you. He was holding you up. The pool of vomit was spreading on the concrete floor. Mygale murmured soft words, my love, my sweet, and fussed over you, wiping your mouth with a handkerchief.

The door to the operating room was open. You made a dash toward the table and grabbed a scalpel. Then you walked slowly toward Mygale with the blade pointed right at him.