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."
6
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?"
PART II
7
A little golden sword.
That is how he saw it in his mind's eye. In reality he knew that it was just a copper paper knife, with a Spanish-style carved pommel. At the age of eight, Paul had stolen it from his father's workshop and hidden in his bedroom. He could perfectly remember the atmosphere at the time. The closed shutters. The stifling heat. The calm of the nap.
A summer afternoon like any other.
Except that these few hours would alter the course of his life forever. "What are you hiding in your hand?"
Paul tightened his fist. His mother was standing at his bedroom door. "Show me what you're holding."
Her voice was calm, with just a hint of curiosity. Paul tightened his grip. She advanced into the half-light, the sunbeams filtered through the slats of the shutters, then she sat down on the edge of the bed and slowly opened his hand.
"Why did you take the paper knife?"
He could not see her face in the shadows. "To defend you.”