He strolled up cours Mirabeau passing the fashionable cafés, savoring the rare mildness of this late December day. He went slowly, as though inspecting the rows of wicker chairs with their flowery cushions, and the low tables placed like cornucopias between the leafless plane trees.
The afternoon brightness lingered. The unseasonable temperature had undressed the women: miniskirts, black, tan or sheer stockings—his favorite.
In a few days it would be Christmas. The shortest days of the year.
It had been months since the last time.
Freakish weather like this put him in strange moods. For the past couple of days he had not been able to make up his mind how to dress, and this really annoyed him. The pullover he was wearing was too hot, and he felt drops of sweat collecting in the small of his back after their slow descent down his spinal cord.
He took a seat on the terrace of Les Deux Garçons, a respectable, somewhat snobbish bar at the top of cours Mirabeau, a few paces away from the burbling fountain with its haughty statue of King René.
It was 3:00 p.m. All he had to do was wait. He ordered a beer and stared at the passers-by.
As he often did.
It would soon be the agreed time. If all went to plan, she would quite simply sit down at a table and show him his next prey.
At 3:30, the goddess appeared. She walked in front of him without even a glance in his direction and sat down at the next table. Five minutes later, a woman of about forty arrived. They kissed each other in the most ordinary way possible.
Once again, he appreciated how the goddess could quite naturally seduce all kinds of different people.
He listened.
The new arrival was apparently one of those idle, upper-middle-class women who spend their time in the chic boutiques of Aix’s old quartier. She was blond, of average height, with a sporty physique, jutting breasts and perfectly tapered legs. Most of all he noticed her protruding chin, which hardened her long face despite her small brown eyes and soft, almost naïve smile. She spoke like all Aix women of her type, without an accent, looking skywards every time she uttered a sonorous superlative about some meaningless piece of nonsense.
He learned that they had met the previous evening, at an “utterly stunning” show in a “super bijou” gallery in the town center. He failed to understand why his goddess was interested in all these bourgeois clichés. But there was no disputing her desires.
She got the other woman talking, to the point that they exchanged addresses and telephone numbers.
That is how he found out her name: Hélène Weill. He registered it mentally, like a snapshot.
Beside the picture of her name, he placed her phone number and then, a little further on, her address. Methodically.
He then learned that Hélène Weill had for the past few years been consulting an “utterly brilliant” psychiatrist, an “extra-ordinary” man on place d’Aix called François Caillol, whose “absolutely dazzling” mansion was on route de Puyricard.
He swallowed the rest of his beer and went for a stroll through the streets of Aix. The sun was beginning to set, cold shadows flittered into the narrow streets of the historic center. He looked at his watch: 4:00 p.m. He decided to go back to Marseille. He had to make plans while he waited for the moon.
He followed Hélène Weill for two days.
She would leave her home in the center of Aix at about 11:00 a.m. to do a little food shopping, then go back home around 3:00 p.m. Then she reemerged to spend the rest of the afternoon going in and out of boutiques.
In those two days, all she bought was a few feminine items: fine silk lingerie, some costume jewelry, two pairs of shoes, a few fashion accessories … And none of it was ever gift-wrapped.
He phoned the number of Dr. Caillol’s practice. He was told that the psychiatrist was taking no new appointments until January 3, and that he was fully booked until December 24, but could still be contacted in an emergency. He surmised that Caillot would be staying in Aix over the festive period.
He made a decision. It was now or never. On December 23, he went to Puyricard, parked his motorbike in the village and walked to the doctor’s house.
It consisted of a farmhouse, a mansion with a swimming pool and tennis court, as well as a few outhouses. The mansion stood about fifty meters from the farm; the buildings were surrounded by a dozen hectares of vines, which must have produced an unpretentious little Côteaux d’Aix-en-Provence.
After a few days’ surveillance, he knew that the doctor never came home before 9:00 p.m.; that his tenant farmer invariably went to the vineyard at about 4:00 p.m. and stayed there until at least 7:00 p.m.; and that the farmer’s wife, who ran the Puyricard playschool, never came home before 6:00 p.m.
Which meant that between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m., he had plenty of time.
He decided that this would be the best time to break into François Caillol’s house. If he could, he would take the Mercedes, which was always parked in the garage, and bring it back before 9:00. If the worst came to the worst, the farmer would just see his landlord’s car drive by.
On December 23, at exactly 4:30 p.m., he observed the premises from the clump of pines and brambles beside the tennis court, and waited for the farmer to vanish, followed by his mongrel, into the vines. He slipped on a pair of latex gloves, leaped up the twelve steps, opened the heavy door without any difficulty and closed it quickly behind him.
Inside, it was dark; only a glimmer of daylight filtered through the shutters. He did not turn on the light and stood for some time in the corridor, until his eyes had become used to the gloom.
The house oozed comfort and smelled of dust, wax and wood-smoke. Beams on the ceiling gave it that old fragrance of rustic charm.
Walking up the corridor to the salon door, he filled his lungs with this scent which reminded him of his childhood.
The mistral rising in the mighty branches of the plane trees carries the children’s cries far away. All day, the sun beats down. The night is heavy and dense.
In the salon, Papa reads his paper, as he does every evening; he goes to sit next to him on the leather sofa and gently lays his cheek on his lap. In front of him is the small leather easy chair, reserved for his mother, and the Persian rug with its geometric patterns and complex arabesques—he imagines high-speed circuits for his toy cars. But he is not allowed to play in the salon.
He looks up, glances at the knickknacks on the sideboard before lingering over the painting he likes best: a landscape of the port of Marseille in the ’30s. He imagines being a naval officer like his grandfather and his great-grandfather, like most of the men in his father’s family.
A naval officer with a spotless uniform and beautiful, gold-stitched stripes.
Sometimes, his grandfather takes him on cargo ships. Shyly he looks at the old sailors and shakes their gnarled hands, scared by their little laughing eyes, by the huge wrinkles surrounding them—indelible marks of long watches spent on the decks of ships, with only the dazzling gleam of the sea for scenery.
He would have liked to have known the port of Marseille in the ’30s. To have seen the steam from the ships on their way to Indochina, the Sainte-Marie strait with its massive, black, fat-bellied tugs, strenuously pulling along the mail ships from Asia, the Far East or America; the dark coal-smoke which swathed La Major cathedral; the sailors’ sons coming to wave home a father who had been away all these long months. Marseille back then must have smelled of camphor, cinnamon and precious wood, of coke and the heavy fruits of Black Africa.
He screamed, closed his eyes and let his thoughts drift back into place. Methodically. As always. A few minutes later, he opened his eyes: his childhood had disappeared. He was calm, but his body was now completely drained of energy.
It was time for the hunt. After the long hours, the bird was coming. It was there, a few meters away, behind the tall grasses. It had come to drink from the only pool on the entire, vast plain. The lance with its flint tip had been placed in its stick of hooks. The bird approached. He looked up.
A good hunter must not miss his first shot.
The bird was a few paces away, dipping its beak in the water, then stretching its neck. Once, twice.
In a flash, he launched the lance. The bird took wing…
A great hunter must not miss his first shot.
Beside the front door, the answering machine was flashing in the half-light. It showed the number eleven, in red batons. Eleven messages. All from patients canceling their appointments between Christmas and the New Year. The eleventh was a woman’s voice:
“Excuse me, Doctor, this is Hélène Weill speaking. I’m sorry to disturb you at home, but you never answer your mobile. Anyway, I’d like to cancel my appointment on Thursday 28. And I was wondering if you were available today.”
The night augured well.
He picked up the telephone and dialed. Hélène told him that she really needed him. Christmas was making her feel terribly anxious. She could come now, or any time he wanted, even late that evening. But she simply had to see him, at any price. He suggested taking her to a restaurant, a lovely little place which he knew well. It would be nicer than the psychiatrist’s couch.
“I’ll pick you up from your house before 8:00. We’ll go to Cadenet. I have a friend there who’s just opened a little bistro. You’ll see, it’s a bit of a drive, but it’s just perfect.”
It was 6:00 p.m. He glanced at the cast-iron hooks above the telephone: the keys to the doctor’s Mercedes were there.
But first of all he had to perform the ritual.
He went up to the first floor, to the psychiatrist’s vast study, placed his rucksack on a Chippendale chair, and took out a small bottle of mineral water and a plastic box containing some red powder.
He pulled on a pair of surgical gloves, opened the box, poured a little of the powder into the palm of his right hand, lifted it to his mouth and started to chew carefully before taking a mouthful of water. He placed his hand on a sheet of white paper, bending his little and ring fingers. He then spat out the liquid over his hand, again and again, until it was covered in red. When he lifted it up, a negative image of his hand had been left on the white paper.
He waited for it to dry, looked at the result of his labors and said aloud:
“Spirit of the hunt
Goddess of life
Here is the hunter’s sign
Take her life to fortify mine
May her death be swift
May I not make her suffer
May your spirit guide me in the shadows
May the force of her blood enter into my blood
May her flesh fortify the first man.”
Carefully he slipped the sheet of paper into a green plastic folder and left the mansion.
Hélène Weill lived alone in a flat on rue Boulegon, right in the center of Aix. At 7:30 p.m., he called her from a phone box to say that he was late, and that it was impossible to park in her narrow street, so could she wait on the ringroad, just by the Ford garage.
“Hélène, I’m a bit late,” he said. “I’ll send along a friend of mine. Another patient … He’ll pick you up in my car. You’ll see, he’s a wonderful guy. Just won-der-ful! He’ll recognize you, don’t worry, he’s already seen you around in my consulting room. Then you can come and have a drink at my house. How about that?”
Hélène had chosen a rather strict suit. When she got into the Mercedes, he noticed that she had raised her skirt high enough so that he could see between her thighs. He paid no apparent attention and pulled away.
It took them fifteen minutes to get out of Aix. The streets were jammed in a late rush-hour of people who had being doing last-minute Christmas shopping. He managed to win her trust by inventing a few problems for himself and an imaginary therapy. Hélène told him of her hallucinations, dwelling on an image that had recurred constantly in her nightmares since her last visit to the psychiatrist: being raped by three scouts. And the nights she spent smoking joints and masturbating. He listened to her without a word, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.
They left Aix. Hélène talked about herself non-stop, into a vacuum. He was not listening any more.
When they had passed the village of Puyricard, he slowed and turned down a forest track. He drove on for a good hundred meters, then stopped the car.
“Get out,” he ordered firmly.
Hélène smiled limply, her chest rose, her thighs drew apart.
“Get out,” he ordered even more forcefully. “And wait for me there, in front of the car. I won’t be long.”
She obeyed at once, got out of the car and took a few steps in the white light of the headlamps. He opened the boot of the Mercedes without listening to the romantic chat the woman was serving him up. He put on his latex gloves and picked up a strange object shaped like a tomahawk: a rudimentary ax, with a wooden handle measuring about fifty centimeters and, at the tip, a huge piece of biface flint, perfectly sharpened and held in place with dried gut.
Slowly, he approached Hélène, his eyes on fire. She heard him recite out loud, in a calm voice:
“I am the hunter
Give me your blood
May the spirits of the dead guide you through the night
May your flesh fortify the first man …”
Hélène gasped.
“But, what do you …?”
She stepped back, falling over a tree trunk on the ground, her legs spread.
He grabbed her arm, yanking her upward while repeating through gritted teeth:
“May your flesh fortify the first man.”
The flint ax lodged itself deep in the skull of his prey. He hit her again coolly, like a butcher. Small shards of bone and scraps of gray brain flew into the air. Then there was silence.
He examined the prostrate body: Hélène, her face crushed, looked like a crazed puppet. Her muscles were still twitching. He dipped his finger in the blood which was foaming out of her mouth and tasted it.
“May your flesh fortify the first man.”
He pulled up her skirt and tore off her stockings. The nylon soughed, and an acrid smell rose up. He stood back to get a good look at the slaughtered flesh still quivering at his feet.
It was at that moment that he started to howl like a beast, and bit into the still-warm flesh of her thigh.
Once. Twice.
Then he went back to the car to fetch a long, narrow piece of flint, as sharp as a kitchen knife, kneeled down between Hélène’s thighs and began to slice her up. When he reached the femur, he struck it with the ax with one swift movement, as precise as a horse butcher.
Five minutes later, he was holding Hélène’s left leg at arm’s length, swinging it to and fro in a broad arc to empty it of what was left of its blood. He then paused for breath before wrapping the mass of wobbly flesh in several bin-liners and putting it in the boot of the Mercedes.
He returned to the body, placed the sheet of paper with its negative hand under Hélène’s right arm, then disappeared into the night.
He was in no hurry.