"Red."
Anna Heymes was feeling increasingly ill at ease. The experiment was danger free, but the idea that someone could read her mind at that very moment deeply disturbed her.
"Blue."
She was lying on a stainless-steel table, in the middle of a shadowy room, her head inside the central opening of a white circular machine. Just above her face was a mirror, fixed at an angle, with small squares being projected onto it. All she had to do was announce what color they were.
"Yellow."
A drip was slowly pouring into her left arm. Dr. Eric Ackermann had briefly explained to her that it was labeled water, allowing blood flow to be located in her brain.
Other colors appeared. Green. Orange. Pink… then the mirror went dark.
Anna remained still, her arms by her sides. as though in a coffin. A few yards to her left, she could make out the vague, aquatic glassiness of the cabin where Eric Ackermann was sitting beside her husband, Laurent. She pictured the two men staring at the observation screens, observing the activity of her neurons. She felt spied on, pillaged, as though defiled in her closest intimacy.
Ackermann's voice echoed in the transmitter fitted in her ear: "That's fine, Anna. Now the squares are going to start shifting around. You just have to describe the movements. Just use one word at a time: right, left, up, down. ."
The geometric shapes immediately started moving, forming a brightly colored mosaic, as vibrant and fluid as a school of tiny fish. Into the mike attached to her transmitter she said, "Right."
Then the squares rose to the top of the frame.
"Up."
The exercise went on for a few minutes. She spoke slowly, monotonously, feeling more and more drowsy, the heat from the mirror adding to her torpor. She was about to drift off to sleep.
"Perfect," Ackermann said. "This time, I'm going to present you with a story told in a variety of different ways. Listen to each one carefully.”
“And what am I supposed to say?"
"Nothing. Just listen."
A few seconds later, a female voice echoed in her receiver. It was speaking in a foreign language, with an Asian tonality.
A short silence followed. Then the story started again in French. But the syntax was all wrong. The verbs were all in the infinitive, the articles did not agree, the liaisons were incorrect…
Anna tried to decipher this pidgin, but then another version started up. This time, nonsense words cropped up in the tale… What did it all mean? Suddenly, silence filled her ears, making the cylinder feel even darker.
After a time, the doctor said: "Next test. When you hear the name of a country, give me its capital."
Anna was about to agree, but the first name was already ringing in her ears: " Sweden." Without thinking, she replied: " Stockholm.”
“ Venezuela."
" Caracas."
" New Zealand."
" Auckland -no, Wellington."
" Senegal."
" Dakar."
The capitals came to mind easily. Her answers were automatic, and she was pleased with the result. So her memory had not been completely lost. What could Ackermann and Laurent see on the screens? Which zones were being activated in her brain?
"Last test," the neurologist announced. "Some faces are going to appear. You must name them as quickly as you can."
She had read somewhere that a simple sign-a word, a gesture, a visual detail-could trigger a phobia. It was what psychiatrists called an anxiety signal. Signal was the right word. In her case, the very word face was enough to make her uneasy. She immediately felt she was suffocating. Her stomach became heavy, her limbs stiffened, and a burning lump filled her throat…
A black-and-white portrait of a woman appeared in the mirror. Blond curls, sultry lips, beauty spot above her mouth. Easy.
"Marilyn Monroe."
An engraving replaced the photograph. Dark look, square jaws, wavy hair.
"Beethoven."
A round face, as smooth as cellophane, with two slanting eyes. "Mao Tsetung."
Anna was surprised that she could recognize them so easily. Others followed: Michael Jackson, the Mona Lisa, Albert Einstein… It felt as though she were looking at the bright projections of a magic lantern. She replied unhesitatingly. Her uneasiness was receding.
Then suddenly, a portrait brought her to a halt. A man aged about forty, but with still-youthful looks and prominent eyes. His fair hair and eyebrows added to his look of an indecisive teenager.
A sensation of fear went through her, like an electric shock. Pain pressed down on her chest. The face looked familiar, but she could put no name to it. It evoked no precise memories. Her head was a dark tunnel. Where had she seen this man before? Was he an actor? A singer? An old acquaintance? The picture was replaced by a long face, topped with round glasses. Her mouth dry, she answered, "John Lennon."
Che Guevara then appeared, but Anna said, "Eric, wait…"
The show went on. A self-portrait of Van Gogh glittered with its sharp colors. Anna gripped the microphone. "Eric, please!"
The image froze. Anna felt the colors and heat refract on to her skin. After a pause, Ackermann asked, "What?"
"Who was the person I didn't recognize?"
No reply. The differently colored eyes of David Bowie glimmered on the angled glass. She sat up and spoke more loudly. "Eric. I asked you a question. Who was it?"
The mirror went black. In a second, her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. She saw her livid, bony reflection in the titled rectangle. A death's-head.
The doctor finally replied. "It was Laurent, Anna. Laurent Heymes. Your husband."
"So how long have you been having these lapses of memory?"
Anna did not reply. It was almost noon. She had been having tests all morning: X-rays, scans, the MRI and, finally, those tests in the circular machine… She felt empty, worn out, lost. And this office made her feel no better. It was a narrow, windowless room, too brightly lit, with stacks of files everywhere, in the metal cabinets, on the floor. The pictures on the wall depicted open brains, shaved scalps with dotted lines, as though ready to be cut up. That was all she needed…
Eric Ackermann repeated: "How long, Anna?"
"For over a month."
"Be more precise. You can remember the first time, I suppose?" Of course she could remember. How could she ever forget?
"It was on February fourth. In the morning. I was coming out of the bathroom and I bumped into Laurent in the corridor. He was on his way out to the office. He smiled at me. I jumped. I didn't know who he was.”
“Not at all?"
"Not at that moment. Then everything came back together again in my mind."
"Can you describe exactly what you felt at that moment?"
She shrugged in hesitation under her black-and-bronze shawl. "It was a weird, fleeting sensation. Like something I had already experienced. But it only lasted a moment." She clicked her fingers. "Then everything went back to normal."
"What did you think at the time?"
"I put it down to tiredness."
Ackermann jotted down something on the pad in front of him. "Did you tell Laurent about it that morning?"
"No. I didn't think it was serious."
"When did the second lapse happen?"
"The following week. It happened again several times."
"Always with Laurent?"
"Yes, always with him."
"But every time, you ended up recognizing him?"
"That's right. But as time went by, it seemed to take longer for the penny to drop…"
"Did you tell him about it then?"
"No. I didn't."
"Why not?"
She crossed her legs and laid her slender hands on her dark silk skirt, like a brace of pale birds.
"I thought talking about it would make the problem worse, and then…"
The neurologist looked up. His red hair reflected in the rings of his glasses. "Then what?"
"Well, it isn't something that's easy to admit to your husband. He…" She felt Laurent's presence. He was standing behind her, leaning on the metal cabinets.
"Laurent was becoming a stranger to me."
The doctor seemed to sense her uneasiness. He changed tack. "Have you had the same difficulty recognizing other faces?"
She hesitated. "Sometimes. But it's extremely rare."
"Who with, for example?"
"In the neighborhood shops. At work, too. I don't recognize some of the customers, even though they're regulars."
"What about your friends?"
Anna gestured vaguely. "I don't have any friends."
"And your family?"
"My parents are dead. I just have some uncles and aunts in the southwest. But I never see them."
Ackermann continued writing. His face gave nothing away. It looked as though it were set in resin.
Anna hated this acquaintance of Laurent's. He sometimes came to have dinner with them, but he always remained as cold as ice. Unless, of course, the conversation turned to his field of research-the brain, cerebral geography, the human cognitive system. Then there was a transformation: he became animated, enthusiastic, beating the air with his long brown arms.
He resumed questioning. "So it's Laurent's face that poses the biggest problem for you?"
"Yes. But then he's also the closest to me. The person I see most.”
“Do you have any other memory problems?"
Anna bit her lip. Once again, she hesitated. "No."
"Problems of orientation?"
"No."
"Of speech?"
"No."
"Do you have difficulties making certain movements?"
She did not answer. Then she smiled weakly "You think I have Alzheimer's disease, don't you?"
"I'm checking, that's all."
It was the first explanation that had occurred to Anna. She had gathered information on the subject and consulted medical dictionaries. Failure to recognize faces was a symptom of Alzheimer's.
As though talking to a child, Ackermann added: "You're not nearly old enough. And anyway, I would have noticed at once during the tests. A brain afflicted with a degenerative disease has quite a specific morphology. These are just questions I have to ask you if I'm going to make a full diagnosis. Do you understand?" Without waiting for a reply, he went on. "So do you or do you not have difficulties making certain movements?"
"No"
"Any trouble sleeping?"
"No."
“Any inexplicable weariness?"
"No."
"Do you get migraines?"
"Never."
The doctor closed his notepad and stood up. This movement always created the same surprise. He stood at almost seven feet but weighed just one hundred forty pounds. A beanpole in a white coat that looked as if it had been slung there to dry.
He was a real, flaming redhead. His wiry unkempt locks were the color of burning honey. Ochre freckles covered his skin, even his eyelids. His face was angular, decked with metal glasses as thin as blades.
His physiognomy seemed to have removed him from time. He was older than Laurent, about fifty but he still looked like a young man. Wrinkles had formed on his face, but without attacking the essential: his eagle-like features, sharp and inscrutable. Only acne scars marked his cheeks, giving him real flesh and a past.
He paced up and down in his tiny office for a moment in silence. The seconds ticked by. Anna could take no more. She asked: "For God's sake, what's wrong with me?"
The neurologist fiddled with a metallic object in his pocket. Presumably his keys. But it was the sound that seemed to set him talking at last. "Let me start by explaining the experiment we've just conducted."
"It's about time."
"The machine we used is a positron camera. What specialists call a PET scan. It uses positron emission tomography, or PET for short. It allows us to observe zones of mental activity in real time by localizing concentrations of blood in the brain. I wanted to conduct a sort of general checkup on you, by looking at several large areas of the brain that have been positively localized, such as vision, language and memory"
Anna thought back over the various tests: the squares of color, the story told in various ways, the names of capital cities. It was easy to see how each exercise fit into the context.
But Ackermann was off: "Take language, for instance. Everything happens in the frontal lobe, in a region that is itself subdivided into subsystems devoted to aural comprehension, vocabulary, syntax, meaning, prosody…”He pointed at his skull. "It is the association of these zones that allows us to understand and use language. Thanks to the various versions of my little tale, I stimulated each of these subdivisions in your brain."
He continued to pace up and down his tiny room. The pictures on the wall appeared and disappeared as he moved. Anna noticed a strange engraving of a colored monkey with a large mouth and huge hands. Despite the heat of the strip light, her spine was frozen.
"And so?" she murmured.
He opened his hands in what was meant to be a reassuring manner. "So, everything's fine. Language, vision and memory. Each region was activated normally"
"Except when I was shown the portrait of Laurent."
Ackermann bent down over his desk and turned his computer screen around. Anna discovered the digital image of a brain. A luminous green, transverse section. The inside was totally dark.
"This is your brain when you were looking at the picture of Laurent. No reaction. No connections. An empty image."
"What does it mean?"
The neurologist stood up and put his hands back into his pockets. He stuck out his chest in a dramatic manner. The moment had come for the verdict. "I think you have a lesion."
"A lesion?"
"Which is specifically affecting the zone dealing with the recognition of faces."
Anna was stupefied. "There's a zone… for faces?"
"That's right. There's a specialized neuronal system for that purpose, in the right hemisphere, at the back of the brain in the ventral temporal cortex. It was discovered in the 1950s. People who had suffered from a vascular incident in that region could no longer recognize faces. Since then, thanks to PET scanning, we have localized it even more precisely. For example, we know that the region is particularly highly developed in people who watch the entrances of nightclubs and casinos."
She broke in. "But I recognize most people's faces. During the tests, I identified all of the portraits…"
"All except the one of your husband. And that's a vital indication." Ackermann placed his two index fingers on his lips in a sign of deep thought. When he was not icy cold, he was expansive.
"We have two sorts of memory. There are the things we learn at school, and the things we learn in our daily lives. And they don't use the same path in the brain. I think you're suffering from a faulty connection between the instant analysis of faces and their comparison with personal memories. A lesion must be blocking the route to this mechanism. That's why you can recognize Einstein but not Laurent, who belongs to your personal archives."
"And, is there a cure?"
"Indeed there is. We can move the function to another healthy part of your brain. Adaptability is one of the mind's strong points. To achieve this, we'll have to conduct some therapy. A sort of mental training, with regular exercises backed up by the right medication."
The neurologist's grave tones undermined the good news.
"So what's the problem?" Anna asked.
"Where the lesion came from. There I have to admit that I've drawn a blank. There's no sign of any tumor or neurological anomaly. You haven't have any head injuries or suffered from a stroke, which could have stopped irrigation of that part of the brain." He clicked his tongue. "We'll have to carry out some further, more detailed tests in order to diagnose the origin."
"What sort of tests?"
The doctor sat down behind his desk. His glassy stare fell on her. "A biopsy. A tiny sample of cortical tissue."
It took Anna a few seconds to understand, then a wave of terror crossed her face. She turned toward Laurent but saw that he was already looking in agreement at Ackermann. Her fear was replaced by anger. They were in it together. Her fate had been decided. Probably that very morning.
Words trembled out from her lips. "No way"
For the first time, the neurologist smiled. The smile was meant to be reassuring but looked totally false. "There's nothing to worry about. We'll perform a stereotaxic biopsy. It's just a little probe that -"
"No one's touching my brain." Anna got to her feet and wrapped herself up in her shawl, wings of a raven lined with gold.
Laurent broke his silence. "Don't take it like that. Eric has assured me that -"
"So you're on his side, are you?"
"We're all on your side, Anna," Ackermann purred.
She pulled back to get a better look at this pair of hypocrites. "No one's touching my brain," she repeated in a stronger voice. "I'd rather lose my memory completely or die from the disease. I'm never setting foot here again." Suddenly in the grip of panic, she yelled, "Never, do you hear me?"
She ran along the deserted corridor, leapt down the stairs, then came to a halt in the doorway of the building. She felt the cold wind calling to her lifeblood. Sunlight flooded the courtyard. It made Anna think of the clearness of summer, without heat or leaves on the trees, which had been frozen for better conservation.
On the far side of the courtyard, Nicolas the chauffeur noticed her and jumped out of the saloon car to open the door for her. Anna shook her head at him. With a trembling hand, she rummaged through her bag looking for her cigarettes, lit one, then savored the acrid smoke that filled her throat.
The Henri-Becquerel Institute was made up of several four-story buildings surrounding a patio dotted with trees and dense shrubs. The dull gray or pink façades were decked with warning signs:
NO UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY, MEDICAL STAFF ONLY, DANGER.
In this damned hospital, the slightest detail seemed hostile to her.
She breathed in another throatful of smoke. The taste of the burning tobacco calmed her, as if she had cast her anger into the embers of the cigarette. She closed her eyes, abandoning herself to its heady odor.
Footfalls sounded behind her.
Laurent walked past her without looking around, crossed the courtyard, then opened the rear door of the car. He waited for her, tapping the concrete with his brightly polished moccasins, his features tense. Anna threw away her Marlboro and went over to him. She slid onto the leather seat. Laurent walked around the car and got in beside her. After this little silent routine, the chauffeur pulled the car off then drove down the slope of the garage with all the majestic slowness of spaceship.
Several soldiers were on guard duty in front of the white-and-red barrier at the gate.
"I'll go and get back my passport," Laurent said.
Anna looked at her hands. They were still trembling. She took a compact from her bag and observed her face in its oval mirror. She was almost expecting to see marks on her skin, as though her internal upheaval had been like a violent punch. But there was nothing. She still had the same bright, regular features, the same snowy whiteness, framed with Cleopatra-style hair; the same dark blue eyes rising up toward her temples, their eyelids lowered slightly with the languidness of a cat.
She saw that Laurent was coming back. He was leaning over in the wind, lifting up the collar of his black coat. She suddenly felt a warm wave of desire. She observed him: his fair curls, his prominent eyes, that torment creasing his brows… He pulled his coat closer to his body with the uncertain movement of a cautious, timid child, which sat strangely with his power as a top-ranking police officer. It was like when he ordered a cocktail and described with little pinches how he wanted its ingredients proportioned. Or when he slid his hands between his thighs and raised his shoulders to show he was cold or else embarrassed. It was this fragility that had appealed to her, the weaknesses and failings that contrasted with his real power. But what remained of her love for him? What could she remember of it?
Laurent sat back down by her side. The barrier rose. As they passed, he directed a firm salute at the armed men. This gesture of respect irritated Anna once more. Her desire faded. She asked coldly: "Why all these policemen?"
"Soldiers," Laurent corrected her. "They're soldiers."
The car slipped into the traffic stream. Place du Général-Leclerc in Orsay was tiny and immaculately groomed. A church, a town hall, a florist's shop: each element clearly stood out.
"Why these soldiers?" she pressed him.
Laurent replied absently "It's because of the Oxygen-15."
"The what?"
He did not look at her; his fingers were tapping the window "Oxygen-15. The labeled water that was injected into your blood for the experiment. It's radioactive."
"How nice."
Laurent turned toward her. He was trying to look reassuring, but his eyes revealed how annoyed he was. "It's not at all dangerous."
"Which explains why there are all these guards, I suppose?"
"Don't be stupid. In France, any activity using nuclear materials is supervised by the Atomic Energy Commission. And this implies the presence of soldiers, that's all. Eric has no choice but to work with the army."
Anna could not help sneering.
Laurent stiffened. "What's the matter?"
"Nothing. You just had to find the only hospital in the Paris region that has more khaki uniforms than white coats."
He shrugged and stared at the countryside. The car had already turned on to the motorway and was heading into the Bièvre valley. Dark brown and red forests rose and fell away into the distance.
The clouds were back. Far away. A pale light was struggling to make its way through the low wisps in the sky. Yet it still felt as if the heat of the sun was about to take command and inflame the countryside.
They had been driving for over a quarter of an hour before Laurent opened his mouth again. "You should trust Eric."
"No one is going to touch my brain."
"Eric knows what he's doing. He's one of the best neurologists in Europe "
"And a childhood friend. As you keep telling me."
"You're lucky he's treating you. You-"
"I'm not going to be his guinea pig."
"His guinea pig?" Laurent clearly articulated each syllable. "His guinea pig? Whatever do you mean?"
"Ackermann was observing me. My condition interests him, that's all. He's a researcher, not a doctor."
Laurent sighed. "You're being paranoid. Really, you are…"
"So, I'm mad, am I?" Her mirthless laughter fell like an iron curtain. "That's hardly news, is it?"
This outbreak of lugubrious merriment made her husband even angrier. "And so? Are you just going to sit there and wait while the disease gets worse?" He was writhing on his seat.
"You're right. I'm sorry. I've been talking nonsense."
Silence once more filled the car.
The countryside looked increasingly like a blaze of damp grasses, reddish, sullen, mingled with gray mists. The woods continued as far as the eye could see, at first indistinct, then as they neared, in the shape of crimson claws, fine chasings, dark arabesques..
From time to time, a village appeared, with a rural church steeple jutting up. Then a spotlessly white water tower trembled in the hazy light. It seemed unbelievable that they were just a few miles from Paris.
Laurent launched his last distress flare. "Just promise me you'll agree to have more tests done. And I don't mean a biopsy. It will only take a few days."
"We'll see."
"I'll go with you. I'll devote all the time we need. We're with you-you do understand that?"
Anna did not much like the word we. Laurent was in full association with Ackermann. She was already more of a patient than a wife.
Suddenly, from the top of the hills of Meudon, Paris appeared in a flash of light. The entire city lay there, with its endless white roofs, glittering like a lake of ice, stuck with crystals, peaks of frost and clumps of snow, while the skyscrapers of La Défense stood like icebergs. Gleaming with clarity, the city was burning in the sunlight.
This dazzling sight cast them into a dumb stupor. They crossed the Sèvres bridge then drove through Boulogne-Billancourt without exchanging a word.
When they were approaching Porte de Saint-Cloud, Laurent asked: "Shall I drop you off at home?"
"No, at work."
"You told me you were taking the day off" His voice was tinged with reproach.
"I thought I'd be more tired than this," Anna lied. “I don't want to leave Clothilde on her own. On Saturdays, the shop's taken by storm."
"Clothide and the shop.." he said sarcastically.
"What about it?"
"This job. I mean… It's beneath you."
"Beneath you, you mean."
Laurent did not reply. Maybe he had not even heard her last comment. He leaned forward to see what was happening in front of them. The traffic had ground to a halt on the bypass. Impatiently, he asked the driver to get them out of there.
Nicolas got the message. From the glove compartment, he produced a magnetic flashing light, which he placed on the roof of the car. With its siren blaring, the Peugeot 607 pulled out from the traffic jam and sped away again. Nicolas kept his foot down.
His fingers gripping the back of the seat, Laurent followed each turn, every twist of the wheel. He looked like a little boy concentrating on a video game. Anna was always amazed to see that, despite all his qualifications and his job as director of the Ministry of the Interior's Centre des Etudes et Bilans, Laurent had never forgotten the excitement of the beat, the call of the street. Lousy cop, she thought.
At Porte Maillot, they turned off the bypass and into Avenue des Ternes, where the driver at last switched off the siren. Anna was back in her universe. Rue Saint-Honoré and its precious window displays, the Salle Pleyel with its high bay windows through which, on the first floor, slender dancers could be seen moving around; the mahogany arcades of Mariage Freres, where she bought her special teas.
Before opening the door, she picked up the conversation where the siren had interrupted it.
"It's not just a job, you know. It's my way of staying in contact with the outside world. Of not going completely nuts in that flat."
She got out of the car, then bent down toward him. "It's that or the lunatic asylum, you understand?"
They exchanged a final look and, in a twinkling of an eye, were allies once more. Never would she have used the word love to describe their relationship. It was based on complicity and sharing, which lay beyond desire. Passion, or the fluctuations caused by days and moods. They were calm, underground waters mixing deeply. They could then understand each other, reading between their words, between their lips…
Suddenly, she felt hopeful once more. Laurent would help her, love her, support her. The shadow had now lightened. He asked: "Shall I pick you up this evening?"
She nodded, blew him a kiss, then headed toward the Maison du Chocolat.
The bell on the door rang as though she were an ordinary customer. Its simple, familiar notes reassured her. She had applied for this job a month before, after seeing it advertised in the shop window. At the time, she had just been looking for something to take her mind off her obsessions. But she had in fact found far more -a refuge.
A magic circle protecting her from her anxieties.
At two in the afternoon, the shop was empty. Clothilde must have taken advantage of this quiet moment to go to the stockroom.
Anna crossed the floor. The entire shop looked like a chocolate box, wavering between brown and gold. In the middle, the main counter rose up like an orchestra, with its black or cream classics in squares, circles and domes. To the left, on the marble slab of the till, were the "extras," the small delights customers picked up at the last moment while paying. To the right were the miscellaneous: fruit jellies, sweets, nougats, like a series of variations on a theme. Above, the shelves contained more gleaming delicacies, wrapped in glassine, whose bright glints were even more appetizing.
Anna noticed that Clothilde had finished the Easter window display. Woven baskets contained eggs and hens of every size; chocolate houses with caramel roofs were being watched over by marzipan piglets; chicks were playing on a swing, in a sky of paper daffodils.
"Is that you? Great! The assortments have just arrived." Clothilde appeared on the goods lift at the back of the shop, which was worked by an old-fashioned hoisting winch, and allowed them to bring goods up directly from the garage on Square du Roule. She leapt off the platform, strode over the piles of boxes and stood radiant and breathless in front of Anna.
In just a few weeks, Clothilde had become one of her reassuring landmarks. She was twenty-eight, with a small pink nose, and light brown hair that fluttered in front of her eyes. She had two children, a husband "in the bank," a mortgage and a destiny that had been traced out with a T square. She lived in a world of certain happiness that amazed Anna. Being with her was both comforting and irritating. She just could not believe this faultless scenario devoid of any surprise. There was a kind of obstinacy or underlying falsehood in such a credo. In any case, it was an inaccessible mirage for her. At the age of thirty-one, Anna was childless and had always lived in an atmosphere of malaise, uncertainty and fear of the future.
"It's been a hell of a day. I haven't stopped." Clothilde picked up a box and headed toward the storeroom at the back of the shop. Anna slipped her shawl over her shoulder and did likewise. Saturday was such a busy day that they had to make the most of the slightest lull to prepare new trays.
They went into the windowless room. Which measured ten square yards. Piles of cardboard and layers of bubble packs were already cluttering the floor.
Clothilde put down her box, pushed her hair back and pouted. "I forgot to ask you. How did it go?"
"They made me take tests all morning. The doctor said something about a lesion."
"A lesion?"
"A dead area in the brain. The region that recognizes faces.”
“That's crazy. Is there a cure?"
Anna put down her box and repeated, parrot-fashion, what Ackermann had told her. "Yes, there's going to be treatment. With memory exercises and medication to shift that function to another healthy part of my brain."
"That's marvelous!" Clothilde was smiling broadly, as though she had just learned that Anna had completely recovered. Her reactions rarely fitted the situation and revealed a profound indifference. In reality Clothilde was oblivious to other people's misfortunes. Grief, anxiety and doubt slid off her like drops of water on an oilskin. Yet, at that moment, she seemed to sense her mistake.
She was saved by the bell.
"I'll go," she said, spinning on her heel. "Make yourself comfortable. I'll be back."
Anna pushed aside some boxes and sat down on a stool. She started laying out some Romeos on a tray-squares of fresh coffee mousse. The room was already full of the heady odors of chocolate. At the end of the day. Their clothes and even their sweat smelled of it, and their saliva was saturated with sugar. It is said that bartenders get drunk from breathing in alcohol vapors. Do chocolate sellers get fat from being around such delicacies?
Anna had not put on an ounce. In fact, she never put on any weight. She ate like pig, but the very food seemed to avoid her. The glucose, lipids and fibers went through her without touching the sides.
While she was arranging the chocolates, Ackermann's words came back to her. A lesion. An illness. A biopsy. No. She would never let them slice her up. And especially not him, with his cold gestures and insect eyes.
In any case, she did not believe in his diagnosis.
She just could not believe it.
For the simple reason that she had not told him a tenth of the truth.
Since the month of February the lapses had become far more frequent than she had admitted. These moments of emptiness now came on her at any time, anywhere. A dinner party with friends, a visit to the hairdresser's, when buying a magazine. Anna now often found herself surrounded by strangers, with nameless faces, in the very heart of her daily life.
Even the nature of the attacks had changed.
It was no longer just a question of names slipping her mind and memory lapses. She also had terrifying hallucinations. Faces went hazy trembled, then altered before her very eyes. Expressions and looks began to waver and float as though seen through water.
Sometimes, they looked like faces made of burning wax, which melted and folded into themselves, creating demonic grimaces. On other occasions, features vibrated and shook, until a series of different expressions became simultaneously juxtaposed. A cry Laughter. A kiss. They all merged together in a single physiognomy. A nightmare.
Anna lowered her eyes when walking in the street. At parties, she never looked at the person she was speaking with. She was becoming nervous, timorous and scared. The "others" now just reflected back the image of her own madness. A mirror of terror.
Nor had she really described the sensations she experienced concerning Laurent. In fact, her uneasiness never went away, never completely disappeared after a lapse. There was always a trace left, a hint of fear. As though she no longer really recognized her husband. As if there was a voice whispering to her. "It's him, but it isn't him."
Deep down, she sensed that Laurent's appearance had changed, that it had been altered by plastic surgery. Ridiculous.
This craziness had an even more absurd aspect. While her husband was becoming ever more a stranger to her, one of the shop's regular customers was starting to feel strikingly familiar. She was sure that she had already seen him somewhere… It was impossible for her to say where or when, but her memory lit up in his presence. With an electrostatic tingle. And yet, this spark never led to a precise memory.
The man came once or twice a week and always bought the same Jikola chocolates squares filled with marzipan, rather like oriental delicacies. He in fact spoke with a slight, perhaps Arabic accent. He was about forty, always dressed in the same way, in jeans with a threadbare corduroy jacket buttoned up to his neck, like an eternal student. Anna and Clothilde had nicknamed him "Mr. Corduroys."
Every day they watched for him. It was a game of suspense for them, an enigma, a pleasant way to pass the time. They often elaborated hypotheses. He was a childhood friend of Anna's, or an old boyfriend, or instead a furtive pickup merchant and she had caught his eye at some cocktail party.
Anna now knew that the truth was far simpler. This reminiscence was just another sort of hallucination set off by the lesion. She should not focus on what she could see or what she felt about anybody's face, because she no longer had a reliable system of references.
The door of the shop opened. Anna jumped-she realized that the chocolates were melting in her clenched hands.
Clothilde appeared in the doorway. She whispered between her curls: "It's him."
Mr. Corduroys was standing beside the Jikolas.
"Good afternoon," Anna said at once. "Can I help you?"
"Two hundred grams as usual, please."
She slipped behind the main counter, picked up the tongs and a glassine bag, then started to fill it with the pieces of chocolate. At the same time, she looked around at the man, her eyes veiled by her eyelashes. First she saw his large leather shoes, his overlong jeans crinkling up like an accordion, and then his saffron yellow corduroy jacket. Worn down in places into a threadbare lustrous orange.
Finally, she dared a glance at his face. It was uncouth, square, framed with disheveled brown hair. More the face of a peasant than of a refined student. He was frowning in an expression of annoyance or else concealed anger.
Yet Anna had already noticed that when he opened his eyelids, they revealed long feminine eyelashes and violet irises, ringed with gilded black: the back of a bumblebee flying over a field of dark violets. Where had she seen that look before?
She placed the packet on the scales. "Eleven Euros, please."
The man paid, picked up the chocolates and spun around. A second later, he was outside.
Despite herself, Anna followed him to the door. Clothilde joined her. They watched the figure crossing Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honors, then diving into a black limousine with frosted windows and foreign license plates.
They stayed there, on the doorstep, like two crickets in the sunlight. "So?" Clothilde finally asked. "Who is he? Don't you know yet?"
The car vanished into the traffic. In answer, Anna said, "Got a cigarette?"
Clothilde removed a crumpled pack of Marlboro Lights from her trouser pocket. Anna inhaled the first drag, finding the same soothing sensation as she had experienced that morning in the hospital courtyard. Clothilde said, skeptically "There's something wrong about your story"
Anna turned around, elbow raised, cigarette pointed like a weapon. "What?"
"Let's suppose that you once knew this person, and he's since changed."
"Well?"
Clothilde puckered up her lips, making the sound of a beer bottle being opened. "Well, why doesn't he recognize you?"
Anna watched the cars driving beneath the dull sky, splashes of light crisscrossing their bodywork. Farther on, she could see the wooden façade of Mariage Frères, the icy windows of La Margie Restaurant and its doorman, who was staring at her placidly.
Her words vanished into the blue-tinted smoke: "Crazy. I'm going crazy"
Once a week Laurent met up with the same "pals" for dinner. It was an unchanging ritual, a sort of ceremony. They were not childhood friends or members of any particular circle. They had no shared passion. They were simply part of the same corporation: policemen. They had met at various stages of their careers, and today each of them had reached the top of his particular specialty.
Like the other wives. Anna was excluded from these get-togethers, and when the dinner was held in their apartment on Avenue Hoche she was asked to go to the movies.
Then, three weeks before, Laurent had asked her to join them at their next meeting. First she refused, especially as her husband had then added, in his male nurse tones, "You'll see. It'll take your mind off things." Then she changed her mind. She was in fact rather curious to meet Laurent's colleagues and to be able to see at first hand other examples of top-ranking policemen. After all, he was so far the only model she knew.
She had not regretted her decision. During the party, she got to know men who were hard yet passionate, who talked to one another without fear or reserve. She felt like the queen of the group, the only woman on board, in front of whom the police officers competed with one another to find the best stories, feats and revelations.
Since that first evening, she now attended all their dinners, and had gotten to know them better. She had spotted their tics and strong points -and also their obsessions. These parties provided her with a real image of the universe of the police force. A black-and-white world of violence and certainty, both clichéd and fascinating.
The guests were always the same, barring the occasional exception. Generally it was Alain Lacroux who led the conversation. The thin, tall, upright fifty-year-old punctuated the end of each of his sentences with a stab from his fork or the wag of his head. Even the lilt of his southern accent added to this art of finishing, of chiseled expression. Everything about him sang, rippled, smiled-no one would ever have suspected his real responsibilities. He was second in command of Paris 's Affaires Criminelles.
Pierre Caracilli was his opposite. Small, squat and dark, he was constantly grumbling in a slow, almost hypnotic voice. It was this voice that had put to sleep many a criminal's defenses and extracted confessions from the hardiest of them. Caracilli was Corsican. He held an important position in the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (or DST).
Jean-François Gaudemer was neither upright nor laid-back: he was a compact, solid, stubborn rock. Beneath his high, balding forehead, his eyes glistened with a darkness that seemed to announce an approaching storm. Anna pricked up her ears whenever he spoke. What he said was cynical. His stories were terrifying, but you experienced a sort of gratitude in his presence-the ambiguous feeling that a veil had been lifted on the hidden workings of the world. He was the head of OCRTIS, or the Office Central de Repression du Traffic lllicite des Stupéfiants. France 's Mr. Dope Trade.
But Anna's favorite was Philippe Charlier. This six-foot-four colossus was squeezed into his expensive suits. Nicknamed the "Jolly Green Giant" by his colleagues, he had the head of a boxer, which was as dense as a stone and edged by a gray-flecked mustache and mop of hair. He spoke too loudly, laughed like an ignition engine and forced his listeners into sharing his funny stories by taking them by the shoulder.
To understand him, you needed a sexual glossary. He called an erection a "bone in the pants," described wiry hair as "bollock fur," and when he spoke about his holidays in Bangkok, summed them up as follows: "Taking your wife to Thailand is like taking beer to Munich."
Anna found him vulgar, off-putting, but irresistible. He gave off an animalistic power that was extremely "police." You could not imagine him anywhere other than in an office, dragging confessions out of suspects. Or else in the field, commanding men armed with assault rifles.
Laurent had told her that Charlier had cold-bloodedly killed at least five men during his career. His field was terrorism. He had fought the same war in a number of different units, such as the DST, the DGSE (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure) and the DNAT (Division Nationale Antiterroriste). Twenty-five years of undercover operations and raids. When Anna asked for more details, Laurent waved her questions away:”It would only be the tip of the iceberg."
That evening, the party was being held at his apartment on Avenue de Breteuil. It was a huge old Parisian apartment full of colonial knickknacks and with varnished parquet floors. Anna's curiosity had pushed her into exploring those rooms that were accessible. There was not the slightest trace of a female presence. Charlier was a confirmed bachelor.
It was 11:00 PM. The guests were slumped in nonchalant postprandial positions, encircled by the smoke of their cigars.
In this month of March 2002, just a few weeks before the presidential elections, they were rivaling one another with their predictions and forecasts, imagining the changes that would take place in the Ministry of the Interior depending on which candidate won. They all seemed ready for a great battle but unsure whether they would participate.
Philippe Charlier, who was sitting next to Anna, whispered to her, "Aren't you as pissed off as I am with their pig shoptalk? Do you know the one about the Swiss man?"
Anna smiled. You told me it last Saturday"
"What about the hillbilly at the train station?"
"No."
Charlier leaned his elbows on the table. "There's this hillbilly about to take the train for the first time. So he stands right on the platform edge waiting for it. An inspector sees him and goes. 'Watch out-if the express comes along, it'll suck you off'. And hillbilly goes. 'Come along, train!' "
She took a second to get it, then burst out laughing. Policemen's jokes never got higher than the belt, but at least she had not heard most of them before. She was still laughing when Charlier's face started to distort. Suddenly, his features became unclear. They were quite literally undulating across his face.
Anna looked around at the other guests. Their features also seemed dislocated, forming a wave of monstrous, contradictory expressions, mingling flesh, grins and screams…
A spasm gripped her. She started breathing through her mouth. "Are you okay?" Charlier asked.
"I'm… I'm hot. I'm going to freshen up."
"Shall I show you the way?"
She laid her hand on his shoulder and stood up. "It's okay. I'll find it."
She edged along the wall, leaned on the corner of the mantelpiece. Then bumped into an occasional table, setting off a chorus of tinkling.
When she reached the door, she glanced around. The sea of faces was still rising in a dance of cries and mingling wrinkles, distorted flesh reaching out to follow her. Holding back a scream, she left the room.
The hall was unlit. The hanging coats formed disturbing shapes; the half-open doors revealed rays of darkness. Anna stopped in front of a mirror framed with old gold. She stared at her reflection: a pallid parchment, a ghostly gleam. Beneath her black woolen sweater, she seized her trembling shoulders.
Suddenly, a man appeared behind her in the mirror.
She did not recognize him. He had not been there at the dinner. She turned around to face him. Who was he? Where had he sprung from? He looked threatening. Something twisted and disfigured hovered about his features. His hands gleamed in the shadows like a pair of steel weapons.
Anna pulled back, sinking into the hanging coats. The man stepped forward. She could hear the others talking in the next room. She wanted to cry out, but her throat was lined with burning cotton. The face was now just a few inches from her. A reflection from the looking glass glittered in her eyes, dazzling her pupils with a golden flash…
"Do you want to go home now?"
Anna stifled a groan. It was Laurent's voice. His face immediately recovered its usual appearance. She felt two hands holding her up and realized that she must have fainted.
"Jesus." Laurent said. "What's the matter with you?"
"My coat. Give me my coat," she demanded, freeing herself from his arms.
The malaise did not diminish. She did not completely recognize her husband. Once again she felt sure that his features had changed. That his face was different, that a secret lurked there, a zone of darkness…
Laurent handed her her duffel coat. He was trembling. He was clearly scared for her, but also for himself. He was worried that his friends would see what was happening. One of the top people in the Ministry of the Interior had a wife who was loony.
She slid on her coat, savoring the feel of the lining. If only she could wrap herself up completely in it and vanish…
Bursts of laughter could be heard from the lounge.
"I'll go and say good-bye for both of us."
She heard tones of reproach, then more laughter. Anna looked one more time in the mirror. One day soon, when faced with these features, she would ask. "Who is this?"
Laurent came back. She murmured, "Take me home. I want to sleep."
But the fit pursued her in her sleep.
Since the beginning of her attacks, Anna had had the same dream. Black-and-white images paraded before her at various speeds, like in a silent movie.
The scene was also identical. Hungry-looking peasants were waiting at night on the platform of a station. A goods train arrived in a cloud of steam. A sliding door opened. A man wearing a cap appeared and leaned down to take a flag that was being handed to him. The standard bore a strange device: four moons arranged in a star pattern.
The man then stood up, raising his extremely dark eyebrows. He harangued the crowd, waiving the banner in the air, but his words were inaudible. Instead, a sort of blanket of noise was raised: an awful murmur, made of sighs and children sobbing.
Anna's whispering then mingled with that terrible chant. She spoke to the young voices: "Where are you? Why are you crying?"
In reply, the wind rose on the platform. The four moons on the banner started to glow as if they were fluorescent. The scene descended into pure nightmare. The man's coat opened, revealing a bare chest that was sliced in two and emptied. Then a gust shattered his face. His flesh fell away like ash, starting from below his ears, revealing dark bulging muscles…
Anna woke up with a start.
Eyes wide open in the darkness, she recognized nothing. Not the bedroom. Nor the bed. Nor the body sleeping beside her. It took her several seconds to familiarize herself with these strange forms. She leaned back on the wall and wiped the sweat from her face.
Why did this dream keep recurring? What did it have to do with her illness? She felt sure that it was another aspect of what was wrong with her: a mysterious echo, an inexplicable counterpoint to her mental decay. In the darkness, she called out: "Laurent?"
His back turned, her husband did not move. Anna grabbed his shoulder.
"Laurent, are you asleep?"
There was a slight movement, a rustling of the sheets. Then she saw his profile stand out in the shadows. She repeated softly: Are you asleep?”
“Not anymore."
"Can I, can I ask you something?"
He half sat up, and leaned his head on the pillows. "Go on."
Anna spoke even more softly -the sobbing from her dream was still echoing in her mind. "Why…" She hesitated. "Why don't we have any children?"
For a second, everything was still. Then Laurent pulled aside the sheets and sat on the side of the bed, turning his back to her. The silence suddenly seemed full of tension and hostility. He rubbed his face, then announced: "We're going back to see Ackermann."
"What?"
"I'll call him. We'll make an appointment at the hospital."
"Why are you saying this?"
He said over his shoulder, "You lied. You said you didn't have any other memory problems. That there was only the problem of faces."
Anna realized that she had made a mistake. Her question revealed a fresh gulf in her head. All she could see was the nape of Laurent's neck, his vague curls, his straight back. But she could guess how low he felt, and also how angry.
"What did I just say?" she hazarded.
Laurent turned a few degrees toward her. "You never wanted a child. It was a condition when we married." He raised his voice and lifted his left hand. "Even on our wedding night you made me promise that I'd never ask you for that. You're losing your mind. Anna. We have to do something. We have to have those tests done. To understand what's happening. For Christ's sake, we have to stop it!"
Anna curled up on the far end of the bed. "Just give me a few more days. There must be another possibility"
"What possibility?"
"I don't know. Just a few days. Please."
He lay down again and hid his head in the sheets. "I'll call Dr. Ackermann next Wednesday"
There was no point thanking him. Anna did not even know why she had asked for this reprieve. Why deny the obvious? Her illness was gaining ground, neuron by neuron, in each region of her brain.
She slid beneath the covers, a good distance from Laurent, and thought over this mystery about having children. Why had she demanded such a promise? What had motivated her at the time? She had no answers. Her own personality was turning into a stranger.
She thought back to her wedding. Eight years ago. She was then just twenty-three. What could she really remember about it?
A country manor in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, palm trees, broad lawns yellowed by the sun, the laughter of children. She closed her eyes and tried to recover those sensations. A circle of Chinese shadows lengthening across the grass. She could also see bunches of flowers and white hands…
Suddenly, a tulle scarf floated into her memory. The material danced before her eyes, disturbing the circle, reducing the greenness of the grass, picking up the light with its fantastic movements.
The material came nearer, until she could feel its weave on her face. Then around her lips. Anna opened her mouth in laughter, but the cloth pressed into her throat. She was panting, as it now stuck to the roof of her mouth. And it was not tulle, it was gauze.
Surgical gauze that was suffocating her.
She screamed into the night. Her cry produced no sound. She opened her eyes. She had fallen asleep, her mouth pressed into the pillow.
When would it all end? She sat up and felt the sweat on her skin once more. It was this sticky veil that had set off that suffocating feeling.
She got up and went to the bathroom, next to the bedroom. On tiptoes, she found the way inside and closed the door before turning on the light. She pressed the switch, then turned toward the mirror over the basin.
Her face was covered with blood.
Red streams covered her forehead. There were scabs beneath her eyes, by her nose, around her lips. Her first thought was that she had hurt herself. Rut when she took a closer look she saw that she just had a nosebleed. By wiping her face in the darkness, she had covered herself with her own blood. Her sweatshirt was soaked in it.
She turned on the cold tap and put out her hands, flooding the basin with a pink whirlpool. She was sure of one thing: this blood symbolized a truth that was trying to wrench itself free from her flesh. A secret that her consciousness refused to recognize or formulate but that was escaping in an organic flood from her body.
She dipped her head beneath the cool flow, mixing her sobs with the translucent water. As it flowed, she continued to whisper to it: "What's the matter with me? What's the matter with me?"