The sun had almost entirely disappeared behind the buildings—but, perfectionist that it was, it still touched the stones with a last salmon-pink tinge. Between dog and wolf, as the saying went. The superintendent adored this interlude before moonrise, this magic moment when you could sink silently into yourself amid the noise of others, the vast rumble walking along the sidewalks of the world, their torments filed away in the drawers of the earth, their ambitions put off until tomorrow. Sometime after six o’clock a man would go back home, contemplating his life and lingering on thoughts of soup, while God and the Devil crossed paths, keeping pointless hatred for themselves.
Amédée Mallock spent ten minutes searching for a parking spot before he remembered that his garage was waiting for him. He circled one more time, taking the Rue des Mauvais-Garçons and then the Rue du Roi-de-Sicile to reach the private parking structure. Had he paid too much for it? Without a doubt. But when you’re in love, you don’t do the math. He had been especially fed up with losing half an hour every evening scouring the neighborhood looking for a space, and finding one had been more of a miracle every day.
It was at this moment of intense satisfaction that he realized his mistake.
“Don’t forget to come get the key card on Monday morning. Otherwise you won’t be able to get back in,” the seller had warned him.
Fortunately Amélie, his pretty physiotherapist, was coming today. There was no better way to keep the big bear from clawing. He avenged himself by parking in a spot marked “deliveries only” in front of the horrible little superette on the corner. The old Jaguar’s blue, white, and red police sticker would protect it from the motorcycle cops.
Back at home, he smartened himself up a bit. For Amélie. The nurse and physiotherapist had been recommended to him by the blue-eyed pharmacist in the little square, her grey hair in a chignon, who had said:
“She’s been giving my son his shots for years.”
Coming from this charming woman, that seemed like the best reason in the world to trust her. If she, who was almost a doctor, had entrusted this young person with the fruit of her loins, there could be no doubt about her skill! Mallock, obligingly, had followed her recommendation.
He was still congratulating himself for it.
His first time seeing her through the peephole of his front door had been a shock. Love at first sight—with a whole quiverful of Cupid’s arrows for good measure, which had lodged in his head as well as his heart. Not to mention other places.
To Mallock she was, quite simply, perfect. More than perfect. Even her flaws were adorable. She was a bit of a scatterbrain, her gaze always slightly unfocused, as if she were constantly thinking about what she might have forgotten. She was sweetly chaotic. The giant holdall she had once spilled on the living room floor had contained, besides her pharmacy kit and an assortment of makeup, half a dozen novels. Imagine—a woman who loves One Hundred Years of Solitude, Red Dragon, and Book of My Mother! She was everything a person could dream of in a partner—at least, for a misanthrope like Mallock. For this woman, he could break his solitude. But would she want him?
When Amélie arrived, he took off his shirt for the cortisone injection. And, as she plunged the needle into his back, Mallock, happy to receive this pain from her still-cold little hands, grinned like a fool.
Today, once again, they kept to the formalities.
“I didn’t hurt you too much, did I?”
“I didn’t feel a thing.”
“Do you have time for a cup of tea?” he asked, buttoning his shirt.
“I’d love one, if it’s not too much trouble.”
Amédée babbled a polite denial and made for the kitchen. Three minutes later they sat silently across from each other at the table. As usual, they talked about the rain, the nice weather, the respective characters of people they knew—but there was a bit more, too. Amélie was incredibly kind; serious and harebrained at the same time; yet cultivated when the conversation required it. Always intelligent.
“I must admit, all my clients are adorable,” she said.
“Naturally. You’re adorable too,” Mallock ventured, carefully setting his teacup down. The cup looked tiny; at least half the size of the one Amélie was drinking from. Odd. He knew they were identical.
“I’m sorry,” she said; “I’ve got to go.”
“Next Wednesday?”
“Next Wednesday. No injections next time; we’re going to work on extension. Take a muscle relaxant the night before, and a painkiller when you wake up.”
“And Friday? Shall we say morning or evening?”
For the sake of simplicity, and to keep Mallock from forgetting the time, she always came at either eight o’clock in the morning or eight o’clock at night.
“Morning, otherwise I can’t come. Friday’s the thirty-first—New Year’s Eve. By five o’clock that evening I’ll be slaving over a hot stove.”
Amédée walked her out, imagining her adorable nose dusted with flour. At the door he shook her hand, holding it a few seconds longer for the sheer pleasure of it. He felt incredibly awkward and unfashionable around her. Awkward and clumsy, while she was pure femininity. Petite, dark-haired and green-eyed, with a swanlike neck and a mouth that was as sublime as her teeth, and the way she moved.
He stared out the window when Amélie had gone. How much longer was he going to wait before he asked her out to dinner? As enjoyable as it was, the game was beginning to go on a bit long. What if she got tired of it? The problem was that he no longer felt anything. Before, he had known when he had a chance. When his athletic body and clear green eyes were making sparks fly. Here, nothing. Flatline. He had been watching her expressions carefully, but could read nothing.
To get away from his thoughts, Mallock called his office one last time.
“Where are we, Francis?”
“We’ll have the stuff by ten o’clock tomorrow morning. What should I do in the meantime?”
Mallock hesitated for a second. The little devil inside him thought of giving his colleague another job to do, but it was the big angel that won out:
“Go home. We’ve got a hell of a battle in front of us. You’ll need your strength.”
At around ten o’clock that night, Mallock finally made his way to the kitchen for something to eat. It was only when he was standing in front of his open refrigerator that he realized he wasn’t really hungry. He finally reheated some broth from the previous day’s chicken, using kitchen shears to snip some bits of white meat and leek into it and adding three diced turnips. Tabasco sauce; capful of port; salt and pepper.
Back in the living room, he put on a concerto for flute and harp. Mozart took him directly into the heart of his most intimate, most essential thoughts. Sipping the piping-hot soup, he gazed into the cold fireplace. Two embers had miraculously survived the fire of the previous evening; now they were staring at him like two eyes. Mallock was tempted to speak to them. But whose gaze was this? His son’s? Amélie’s? Or maybe the killer’s?
As he came nearer, he realized that there were others. Smaller embers, nearly extinguished. Stupidly, as if they were the first stars of the evening, he began to count them. Two by two. One, two, three . . . ten, eleven, and twelve. Thirteen! A great shudder ran through him. The twelve apostles were looking back at him, and at their head the dark Christ, the fallen angel. He cursed his mediumistic abilities, and also what his mother had made religion into—a tool of domination, submission, and terror.
Behind his back he felt another kind of heat; creeping, moving, interspersed with sharp, freezing gusts of wind. It was the Devil in person, come to confront him in his own living room. There could be no doubt; he felt him, heard him, urinating powerfully in every corner and behind the sofa. Howling with laughter over the noise of his own pissing on the glass screen, the devil was now soaking the television set. Completely paralyzed, petrified with fear, Amédée couldn’t move. Just before leaving, the apparition squatted on the low table to defecate some kind of blue worm, before coming very close to Amédée, and licking his ears. The odor was unspeakable.
Waking from his doze with a jolt, the former choirboy remained prostrate for a good fifteen minutes, aghast. In front of the fireplace, he waited for the embers to go out. Then, seeking some reassurance, he looked out the window. The first stars had appeared in the sky. He spoke to them about Amélie and Thomas, and then went to bed feeling almost calm.
It was that night, around 3 A.M., that the ringing of the telephone dragged him out of bed and sent him to Saint-Mandé, to look at the woman and her little daughter who had been massacred by the Makeup Artist.