It was, truth be told, her complete and maddening inability to understand him. To understand his little thefts, for example. His little transgressions. His little faux pas. To comprehend, for instance, that it wasn't the things he took that excited him, but the actual act of taking them. To understand that there was something positively, dare he say it-godlike-about his astounding ability to rearrange the physical world. For example, to rearrange Madame Rouel's diamond necklace from her bedside jewelry box right into his armoir. Something godlike about his ability to get away with it too. And yet she seemed completely unable to grasp that.
She'd begun making vague noises about exposing him, to issue veiled threats about restitution, to talk about his having to own up or else. This was a major mistake on her part. It had, he was sad to say, doomed her. Too bad too. It wasn't like he wasn't just a little fond of her. Still, there was one Godlike act he hadn't yet attempted. One he'd been musing about, pondering, even planning. The one reserved solely for God.
And on a warm summer night when the cicadas were in full chorus, the time came to try it.
They were lying naked in bed. Not exactly in post- coital bliss either. More like postcoital tension, regret, and recrimination. So he whispered some soothing words in her ear. Words like love and marriage and children. In no time at all they were fast approaching bliss again. She relaxed and dug herself into the crook of his arm.
She'd been complaining all day about her woman's pains. He'd been promising all day to give her just the thing to cure them. It was time to keep that promise.
He reached into his black bag, where the syringe lay primed and waiting. Roll over, he told Lousette, roll over so you won't see the shot and become scared. Dutifully, she rolled onto her side, her small body tense and barely trembling; for a moment, for just a moment, Marcel had second thoughts. She was, after all, pretty-and not too bad a cook either. But then it was as if he was back in his aunt's garden, with Max the dog staring stupidly up at him. He eased the needle into her hip.
The syringe was filled with water and air, the two basic elements of life, the irony of which wasn't lost on him for a second. In fact, he kind of relished the irony-saw an almost beautiful symmetry at work here. The water, of course, was for show-it was the air that would carry the day. And God breathed life into Adam. But what God gives, God can take back.
He withdrew the needle from her trembling body, leaving the tiniest bubble of blood, which he wiped away with an alcohol-soaked cotton ball. You have a soft touch, Lousette told him, I wish… But she didn't complete her sentence, not because of the air bubble he'd injected into her body-that would take a while-but because she wished for so many things, and couldn't, at least for the moment, decide on one. She fell asleep.
Marcel cradled her from behind, cradled her for an hour, then two, and then into the third, when suddenly, it started. She began to twist and shake; her eyes popped open, her mouth contorted. He'd expected convulsions, absolutely, but not like this. He watched, completely bug- eyed fascinated. She fell off the bed, but like a maimed insect, she couldn't stay still. Her elbows and knees beat a weird tattoo against the floor while she writhed about like an earthworm on a hook. She saw him now-help… she mouthed the word as best she could, though even with him straining to hear her, not very loudly. He stood up to get a better look as her hands reached for his ankles, reached and almost touched them. But three quarters there they suffered one last spasm and froze, resembling, he thought, unearthed roots-so crooked and hungry were they.
Death didn't become her.
Now the hard part. The murder hadn't taken long- cleaning it up would. The white enamel bathtub was waiting for her body; he'd have to slice it in sections and drain the blood from it. Not exactly a walk in the park. Then everything into the stove-nicely stoked for her faithful heart and pretty little head. Preparation was his strong suit, he thought. And given the relative ease with which he'd managed so far, he was beginning to feel the satisfaction of a job well done. And beginning to feel something else, of course, too. The power and burdens of God.
Once upon a time, Marcel moved to Paris.
He had a thriving practice.
He had a wife.
He had two sons.
But what he didn't have on the night of May 12, 1939, was an excuse.
He was in the house of Aime Hausee's mother. And Aime Hausee-the daughter-was dead. He'd overshot her with morphine, a clumsy mistake. Of course, he'd been a wee bit preoccupied at the time. Mainly with staring down at her teeny breasts as he got ready to pull her wisdom tooth. The fact is, she should have gone to a dental surgeon-impacted teeth weren't exactly his specialty.
An hour after he left, the mother, the hysterical bitch, had called him up screaming. Her daughter wasn't re- sponding-not to her name, not to long and repeated prodding, not to anything. Caught in the middle of his favorite dinner, veau a la creme with scalloped potatoes and a good Cabernet, he'd had to leave it half eaten and rush out into the night. Once he'd arrived, still hungry, still irritated, he'd told the weeping mother to wait downstairs.
Aime-his wife's dressmaker, and not at all a bad one- was not dead yet. She was in the more remote stages of coma, remote enough so that there was nothing he could do for her, nothing that is except loosen her nightgown, which he'd already done-loosened it enough so that her little breasts were now more or less exposed.
This would be his fourth. Imagine that.
And this one more or less an accident. Not like Madame Debaure for instance-who'd run a dairy cooperative, who'd entertained Marcel in her bed, but who, in the end, had refused to go along with his plans concerning her money. Not like poor Frascot either, who'd had the unfortunate luck to know about Madame Debaure, and worse yet, the dumb effrontery to try and profit from it. And of course, this one was nothing at all like Lousette. Four now. He had four, and the truth was, it was getting easier all the time.
He grasped the bottom of her powder blue nightgown and lifted it slowly up, up, up… underneath she wasn't wearing a thing. Look at that. He was struck dumb by the smoothness of her skin, by the color as well, pale as skimmed milk, except, of course, in her cleft where the color was rosy pink. He wondered how long the grief- stricken mother would wait downstairs before she'd be back up knocking at the door, yakking at him, blaming him too no doubt.
Ah well. He separated her legs, separated them in a wide welcoming V as he moved his mouth to her nipples warm as sand.
Then he literally fucked her to death.
Once upon a time in the city of Paris, the good Dr. Petoit went house hunting.
He found himself staring at 21 Rue la Soeur.
Then he found 21 Rue la Soeur staring back. He was quite sure of this, absolutely positive. The house was looking back at him. And it was talking too. It was telling tales out of school. Hidden, beastly, dark little tales. He didn't know exactly what they were yet, not the details, but he knew they were filled with blood and fury. Which is what most of Paris was filled with those days.
It was July 1941, and Paris was occupied. Paris was occupied and so was Marcel. He was occupied with this house. Twenty-one Rue la Soeur. It had housed nobility, no question, princesses and dukes and regents and chancellors. It was four and one half stories high; it had twelve gaunt windows. It was yakking away at him.
He stood across the street in its shadow, and though it was the hottest part of July, in the shadow of the house it was frigid as winter. This was a clue, he thought, a hint. He began to understand things standing there across the street from the house. Remarkable things. Things brutal and fierce and captivating. He understood that the tales weren't finished for instance. They weren't finished. The house needed him to finish them. That's why it was talking to him. That was what it was trying to tell him.