Jean-Christophe Grangé - The Empire Of The Wolves

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…

Then she slid inside the bedroom.

Once beside the bed, she put her camera silently onto the table, then pointed her flashlight toward the floor. She covered it with her hand, so as to turn on its slender beam, which now heated her palm.

Only then did she hold her breath and lean over her husband.

Lit by the flashlight, she could see his motionless profile, and the outline of his body in the vague folds of the covers. Her throat tightened. She almost stopped, decided to drop it, but then she forced herself to continue.

She played the beam over his face. No reaction. She could start.

First, she raised his fringe of hair slightly and looked at his brows. Nothing. There was no trace of the three scars shown in Laferriere's photo.

She moved the beam down to his temples. Nothing again. She played it over the lower part of his face, below his jaws and chin. Not the slightest hint of any anomaly.

She started trembling again. What if all this was just one more sign of her madness? She pulled herself together and continued her investigations.

She turned to his ears, pressing gently on the upper lobe so as to examine its top. No marks. She gingerly raised his eyelids slightly looking for an incision. There was none. She observed his nose and the inside of his nostrils. Nothing.

She was now covered in sweat. She tried once more to control the noise of her respiration, but her breaths were escaping through her lips and nose.

She remembered another possible scar. The stitched S on the scalp. She stood up, gently putting a hand into Laurent's hair, raising each lock of it, aiming her torch at the roots. There was nothing. No marks. No irregularities. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Anna held back her tears. She was now rummaging recklessly around that head that had betrayed her, that had showed that she was mad, that she was -

A hand grabbed her wrist brutally.

"What the hell are you doing?"

Anna leapt back. Her flashlight rolled onto the floor.

Laurent had already sat up. He lit the lamp on the bedside table and repeated, "What the hell are you doing?"

Then he saw the Maglite on the ground and the Polaroid camera on the table.

"What's all this about?" he murmured, his lips tight.

Anna, prostrate against the wall, did not answer. Laurent pulled aside the covers and got up, picking up the flashlight. He examined it in disgust, then brandished it at her face.

"You were observing me, is that it? In the middle of the night? Jesus Christ, what were looking for?"

Not a word.

Laurent wiped his brow and sighed wearily. He was dressed only in boxer shorts. He went into the adjacent room, which served as a boudoir, and grabbed a sweater and a pairs of jeans, which he silently put on. Then he left the bedroom, leaving Anna to her solitude and insanity.

She slid down the wall and curled up on the carpet. She thought of nothing, noticed nothing. Except for the beating inside her breast, which seemed to be getting louder and louder.

Laurent reappeared in the doorway, holding his mobile phone. He was smiling strangely, nodding with compassion, as if in the last few minutes he had calmed down and reasoned with himself. He said softly, pointing at the phone, "Everything will be okay. I've called Eric. take you to the institute tomorrow."

He bent down over her, then slowly drew her toward the bed. She put up no resistance. He sat her down cautiously, as though afraid he might break her-or else liberate some dangerous energy from her.

"You'll be all right now"

She nodded, staring at the flashlight that he had put on the bedside table, next to the camera. She stammered: "Not the biopsy. Not the probe. I don't want surgery"

"To begin with. Eric will just carry out some more tests. He'll do everything he can to avoid taking a sample. I promise you that." He kissed her. "Everything's going to be fine."

He offered her a sleeping pill. She refused.

"Please," he insisted.

She agreed to swallow it. Then he slid her between the sheets and lay down beside her, hugging her tenderly. He said not a word about his own concern. Not a single mention of his own violent response to his wife's utter insanity. What did he really think? Wasn't he relieved to be rid of her?

Soon, she felt his breathing slip into the regularity of sleep. Flow could he just doze off like that at such a moment? But maybe hours had already gone by… Anna had lost all notion of time. Her cheek against her husband's torso, she listened to his heartbeat. The calm pulse of someone who was not mad, who was not afraid.

She felt the effects of the tranquilizer gradually invade her. A flower of sleep started to bloom inside her body…

It now felt as if the bed were rising and leaving solid ground. She was slowly floating in the shadows. There was no point putting up any resistance, no trying to struggle against that current. She just had to let herself drift away along that running wave..

She snuggled up against Laurent, thought of the plane tree glistening in the rain in front of the living-room windows. Its bare boughs waiting to be covered with buds and leaves. A coming spring that she would not see.

She had just lived out her last season among the sane.

"Anna? What are you doing? We're going to be late!"

In the scalding shower, Anna could barely hear Laurent's voice. She just stared at the droplets exploding on her feet, savoring the streams pouring around her neck, occasionally lifting her face up beneath those liquid tresses. Her entire body was limp, drowsy, overtaken by the water's fluidity. As perfectly docile as her mind.

Thanks to the tablet, she had managed to get a few hours' sleep. That morning, she felt relaxed, neutral, indifferent to what might happen to her. Her despair had shifted into a strange calm. A sort of distant peace.

"Anna? Come on, now!"

"Okay I'm coming."

She got out of the shower and jumped onto the floorboards in front of the basin. It was 8:30. Laurent, dressed and perfumed, was pacing up and down in front of the bathroom door. She got dressed quickly, slipping on her underwear, then a black woolen dress by Kenzo. Which evoked a stylized, futuristic mourning.

Quite appropriate.

She grabbed a brush and started to do her hair. Through the steam left by the shower, all she could see in the mirror was a misty reflection. She preferred it that way.

In a few days, maybe a few weeks, her daily reality would be her image in a dark glass. She would recognize nothing, see nothing, become totally alien to everything around her. She would not even bother about her own madness, letting it destroy what little remained of her sanity. “Anna?"

I'm coming!"

She smiled at Laurent's haste. Was he afraid of being late to the office, or in a hurry to off-load his loony wife?

The mist started to fade from the mirror. She saw her face appear, red and puffy from the hot water. Mentally, she said good-bye to Anna Heymes. And also to Clothilde, the Maison du Chocolat, and to Mathilde Wilcrau, the poppy-lipped psychiatrist..