Jean-Christophe Grangé - The Empire Of The Wolves

She felt nothing. Not the blows from her hand, nor the beating in her rib cage.

She knocked again. There was already a thundering of feet above her, approaching at high speed, and it seemed that she could also hear others coming up toward her. She pummeled on the door once more, using her fists like hammers, screaming for help.

At last, it opened.

A little woman in a pink pinafore appeared in the entrance. Anna shouldered her aside, then closed the reinforced door. She turned the key twice in the lock, then pocketed it.

She spun around to discover a huge, immaculately white kitchen. The stupefied cleaning lady was clinging to her broom. Anna yelled into her face: "Don't open it again, got me?" She grabbed the woman's shoulders and repeated: "Don't open it. okay?"

There were already knocks from the other side. "Police! Open up!"

Anna ran across the apartment. She went down a corridor, past several bedrooms. It took a moment for her to realize that it was laid out in the same way as hers. She turned right to go into the living room. Large paintings, furniture of redwood, oriental rugs, settees broader than mattresses. She now had to turn left to find the vestibule.

She rushed onward, tripping over a large placid dog, then bumped into a woman in a dressing gown, with a towel over her hair.

"Who… who are you?" the woman yelled, holding her turban as though it were a precious jar.

Anna nearly burst out laughing. That was not the right question to ask her today. She pushed her aside, reached the hall and opened the door. She was about to leave when she saw some keys and a remote control on a mahogany sideboard: the garage. These buildings all led down to the same one. She grabbed the beeper and dived down the purple carpeted staircase.

She could make it she just knew she could.

She went straight down to the basement. Her chest was burning. She was breathing in short gasps. But her plan was coming together in her mind. The police trap was going to close in on the ground floor. Mean while, she would sneak out via the slope of the garage, which led to the other side of the building, on Rue Daru. There was a good chance that they had not thought of that exit yet…

When she reached the garage, she ran across the concrete floor, without turning on the light, toward the swing door. She was just aiming the remote control when the door opened. Four armed men were running down the slope. She had underestimated the enemy. She just had time to hide behind a car, her two hands on the ground.

She saw them pass by feeling the vibrations from their boots in her chest, and nearly burst into tears. They were now peering in between the cars, playing their flashlights across the floor.

She leaned back against the wall and noticed that her arm was sticky with blood. The tourniquet had unraveled. She tightened it up again, pulling at the material with her teeth, while her mind raced in search of inspiration.

Her pursuers were slowly drawing away, searching, examining and combing every square inch of the basement. But they would also eventually retrace their steps and find her. She glanced around once more and, a few yards to her right, noticed a gray door. If her memory was right, this exit led to another building that also opened onto Rue Daru.

Without another thought, she slid between the wall and the bumpers, reached the door and opened it just enough to be able slip through it. A few seconds later, she burst into a bright, modern hallway. Nobody. She jumped down the stairs and leapt out.

She was running along the road, savoring the feel of the rain, when a screech of brakes brought her to a halt. A car had just come to a stop a few inches away from her, brushing against her kimono.

Scared and broken, she stepped back. The driver wound down his window and shouted: "You ought to look where you're going, darling!"

Anna paid no attention to him. She was peering left and right in search of police officers. It seemed to her that the air was charged with electricity and tension, as though a storm was brewing.

And the storm was her.

The driver slowly passed her. "You should get your head examined, lady!”

“Piss off"

The man braked. "What did you say?"

Anna threatened him with her bloodied finger. "I told you to piss off!"

He hesitated, his lips trembling slightly. Then he seemed to understand that something was wrong, that this was not just any street shouting match. He shrugged and drove of.

Another idea. She dashed toward Paris 's Orthodox church, a few numbers up the road. She went past the grating, across a gravel courtyard, then up the steps that led to the old varnished wooden door. She pushed it open and threw herself into the shadows.

The nave seemed to her to be plunged in utter darkness, but in reality it was the beating in her temples that was blinding her. Little by little, she made out the brown tints of gold, the reddish icons, the coppery backs of chairs, like so many dampened flames.

She walked on cautiously noticing other discreetly mild glimmers. Each object here was fighting for the few drops of light that were distilled by the stained-glass windows and the candles on their cast-iron chandeliers. Even the characters in the frescoes looked as if they wanted to extract themselves from their shadows to drink a little brightness. The entire space had an aura of a silvery glow-a gleaming play of shadows, containing a silent battle between light and dark.

Anna got her breath back. Her chest was burning up. Her skin and clothes were soaked in sweat. She stopped, leaned against a pillar and savored the stone's coolness. Before long, her heartbeat started to slow down. Everything about the place seemed to have calming virtues: the candles swaying on their chandeliers, the long melting faces of Christ like bars of wax, the gleaming lamps hanging like lunar fruit.

"Is something the matter?"

She turned around to see Boris Godunov in person-a huge priest, dressed in black vestments, with a long white beard covering his chest. She could not help wondering which picture he had walked out of.

In his deep voice, he asked, "Are you all right?"

She glanced around at the doorway, then asked, "Do you have a crypt?"

"I beg your pardon?"

She forced herself to articulate each syllable. "A crypt. A place where funerals are held."

The priest thought he knew what she wanted. He adopted an appropriate expression and buried his hands in his sleeves. "Who are you burying, my daughter?"

"Myself"

When she got to emergency admissions at Saint-Antoine Hospital, she realized that she was in for another ordeal. A struggle against her madness and disease.

The strip lights in the waiting room reflected off the white tiles, wiping out any light from outside. It could as easily have been 8:00 in the morning as 11:00 at night. The heat increased this stifling feeling. A suffocating, inert energy weighed down on her body like a lead casing drenched in antiseptic smells. Here, you entered the transit zone between life and death, which lay outside the succession of hours or days.

On the seats screwed to the walls sat a surrealistic sample of the dregs of humanity. A man with a shaved head, who was constantly scratching his forearm, leaving a deposit of yellow dust on the floor: his neighbor, a tramp strapped into a wheelchair, who was swearing at the nurses in a throaty voice while begging them to put his guts back into place; just beside them, an old woman was standing dressed in just a paper coat, which she kept taking off, while mumbling unintelligibly, to reveal a gray body, with elephant wrinkles and a baby's diaper. Only one person looked normal. She could see him in profile sitting by the window. But when he turned around, the other half of his face was encrusted with shards of glass and scabs.