While driving, she constantly peered over at Anna, who was slumped on the seat, staring forward, her two hands clenched between her thighs.
"A shock can cause partial amnesia," she went on. "I treated a soccer player after a collision during a match. He could remember part of his existence, but not all of it. Maybe Ackermann has found a way to do the same thing using drugs, irradiation, or some other technique. A sort of screen that has been pulled across your memory"
"But why?"
"In my opinion, the answer lies in Laurent's work. You must have seen something that you shouldn't have, or else you have some information connected with his activities, or maybe you're just a guinea pig.. Anything is possible. We're in a world of madmen."
At the end of Boulevard Saint-Germain, the Institut du Monde Arabe appeared to their right. Clouds were drifting across its glassy sides.
Mathilde was amazed at how calm she felt. She was driving at over sixty miles an hour, an automatic pistol in her bag, with this death's-head by her side, and she did not feel at all afraid. Instead, she had a sensation of a certain distance, mingled with childlike excitement.
"And can my memory be restored?" Anna spoke awkwardly. Mathilde recognized this tone. She had heard it a thousand times during consultations at the hospital. It was the voice of obsession, of madness. Except that this time, the patient's delusions corresponded to reality.
Mathilde chose her words carefully: "I can't answer that until I know what technique was used. If it was a chemical substance, then maybe there's an antidote. If surgery was used, then… I'd more pessimistic."
The little Mercedes glided past the zoo in the Jardin des Plantes. The sleep of the animals and stillness of the park seemed to unite in the darkness to dig out an abyss of silence.
Mathilde saw that Anna was crying, in the small staccato sobs of a little girl. After a while, she recovered her voice, which was mixed with tears. "But why change my face?"
"That's a mystery. Maybe you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. But that wouldn't mean having to change your appearance. Unless the situation's even crazier, and they've altered your entire identity"
You mean I was someone else before?"
"That's what the plastic surgery could lead us to suppose.”
“I’m. I'm not Laurent Heymes's wife?"
Mathilde did not reply. Anna went further: "But what about my.. feelings? My… intimacy with him?"
Anger gripped Mathilde. In the midst of this horror, Anna was still thinking about love. There was nothing to be done about it. When a woman was shipwrecked, it was always desire and feelings first.
"All my memories of being with him… I can't have just invented them!"
Mathilde shrugged, as though to alleviate the seriousness of what she was about to say "Maybe your memories were implanted. You told me yourself that they're fading away, that they seem unreal… Normally speaking, such a thing is impossible. But someone like Ackermann is capable of anything. And the police must have given him unlimited means."
"The police?"
"Wake up, Anna. The Henri-Becquerel Institute. The soldiers. Laurent's job. Except for the Maison du Chocolat, your universe was entirely made up of policemen and uniforms. They were the ones who did this to you. And now they're looking for you."
They had reached the perimeter of Gare d'Austerlitz, which was being renovated. One of its façades revealed its own inner void, like a movie set. The windows gaping below the sky looked like the leftovers of a bombing. On the left, in the background, the Seine ran on. Dark silt drifting slowly.
After a long pause, Anna said, "There's someone in this story who isn't a policeman."
"Who?"
"The customer in the shop. The one I recognize. My colleague and I call him Mr. Corduroys. I don't know how to explain this, but I sense that he's not part of all this. That he belongs to the part of my life that they've wiped out."
"But why has he crossed your path?"
"Maybe it's a coincidence."
Mathilde shook her head. "Look, one thing I'm sure of is that there aren't any coincidences in this business. You can be certain that he's working with the others. If his face rings a bell, it's probably because you saw him with Laurent."
"Or because he likes Jikolas."
"Sorry?"
"Chocolates with a marzipan filling. It's one of the shop's specialties." She laughed breathlessly then wiped her tears. "In any case, it's logical enough if he doesn't recognize me, given that my face has completely changed." Then she added, in despair, "We must find it. We must uncover something about my past!"
Mathilde refrained from commenting. She was now driving up Boulevard de l'Hopital, under the iron arches of the overhead metro line.
"Where are we going?" Anna cried out.
Mathilde drove across the street diagonally, then parked in the wrong direction beside the campus of La Pitie-Salpetrière Hospital. She switched off the ignition, then turned toward the little Cleopatra.
"The only way we can understand your story is to find out who you were before. To judge by your scars, the surgery was carried out about six months ago. Somehow or other, we're going to have to go back beyond that point." She pressed her finger against her forehead. "You must remember what happened before that date."
Anna glanced up at the signpost of the teaching hospital. "You want… you want to question me under hypnosis?"
"We don't have time for that."
"So what are you going to do?"
Mathilde pushed a black lock of hair back behind Anna's ear. "If your memory can't tell us anything and your face has been obliterated, there's still one thing that remembers who you are."
"What?”
“Your body."
31
The biological research unit of La Pitié-Salpetrière was lodged in the faculty of medicine. A long six-story block, it was dotted with hundreds of windows, giving a dizzying idea of the number of laboratories it must contain. This typically 1960s architecture reminded Mathilde of the universities and hospitals she had studied in. She had a particular feeling for such places, and to her mind, their style was forever associated with knowledge, authority and learning.
They walked toward the gate, their feet clacking on the silvery pavement. Mathilde entered the security code. Inside, cold and darkness welcomed them. They crossed a huge hall to an iron elevator to the left, which looked like a safe.
Its interior smelled of grease. It felt to Mathilde that she was ascending a tower of knowledge, alongside the superstructures of science. Despite her age and experience, she felt crushed by this place, which evoked a temple for her. It was sacred territory.
The elevator continued to rise. Anna lit a cigarette. Mathilde's senses were so acute, it was as though she could hear the crackling of the burning paper.
She had dressed her protegée in some of her daughter's clothes, which had been left in her apartment after a New Year's party. The two women were the same size, and now dressed in the same shade: black. Anna was wearing a slim-fitting velvet coat, with long, narrow sleeves, silk bellbottoms and highly polished shoes. These party clothes made her look like a little girl in mourning.
At last, on the fifth floor, the doors opened. They went up a corridor covered with red tiles, punctuated by doors with frosted glass windows. A soft light was coming from the far end. They approached it.
Mathilde opened the door without knocking. Professor Alain Veynerdi was expecting them, standing beside a white bench.
This small, vigorous sixty-year-old had the dark skin of a Hindu and the dryness of papyrus. Beneath his impeccable white coat, he was clearly wearing even more impeccable evening dress. His hands had been manicured: his nails looked lighter than his skin, like little mother-of-pearl lozenges at the tips of his fingers. His gray hair was carefully combed back, held in place with Brylcreem. He looked like a painted figure straight out of a Tintin comic. His bow tie gleamed like the key of some secret mechanism, waiting to be wound up.
Mathilde took care of the introductions and went through, once more, the main points of the lie she had told the biologist over the phone. Anna had had a car accident, eight months before. Her vehicle had burned, her identity papers were inside and her memory had been obliterated. The injuries to her face had required extensive surgery. And the mystery of her identity remained entire.
The story was barely believable, but Veynerdi did not live in a rational world. All that mattered to him was the scientific challenge that Anna represented.
He pointed at the stainless-steel table. "Shall we start straightaway?”
“Hang on," Anna protested. "Maybe you'd better tell me what you're going to do first."
Mathilde turned to Veynerdi. "Can you explain. Professor?"
lie looked at the young woman. "I'm afraid we'll have to give you a little anatomy lesson…"
"Don't put on your airs and graces with me."
He smiled briefly, as bitterly as a lemon. "The elements that make up the human body regenerate according to specific cycles. The red corpuscles are reproduced every hundred and twenty days. The skin sloughs completely in five days. The lining of the intestines is renewed in just forty-eight hours. However, within this constant reconstruction, the immune system contains cells that conserve traces of contact they have had with foreign bodies for long periods of time. They are called memory cells."
He had a smoker's voice, deep and husky. Which did not fit with his immaculate looks.
"When confronted with a disease, the cells produce molecules for defense or recognition, which carry the mark of the attack. When they are reproduced, they transmit this defensive information. It's a sort of biological record, if you will. The entire principle of vaccination is based on this system. It is enough to put the human body in contact with a pathogen just once for cells to produce protective molecules for years. What applies to illness also applies to any other external element, We always keep traces of our past life, of our countless contacts with the world. It is possible to study these marks and give them a date and origin."
He bowed slightly "This as yet little-known field is my specialty"
Mathilde remembered when she had first met Veynerdi. during a seminar on memory in Majorca in 1997. Most of the guests were neurologists, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts. They had discussed synapses, networks, the subconscious, and had all mentioned the complexity of memory. Then, on the fourth day, a biologist in a bow tie had spoken, and their horizons had completely changed. Behind his reading desk, Main Veynerdi was talking about physical not mental memory.
The specialist presented a study he had conducted on perfumes. The constant impregnation of alcoholized substances in the skin ends up "engraving" certain cells, thus forming an identifiable marker, even after the subject has stopped using the fragrance. He cited the example of a woman who had used Chanel No. 5 for ten years, and whose skin still bore its chemical signature four years later.
That day, the audience left the lecture hall in rapture. Suddenly, memory had become something physical that could be analyzed chemically, under the microscope… Suddenly, that abstract entity which constantly evaded the instruments of modern technology, had turned out to be material, tangible. observable. A human science had become an exact one.
Anna's face was lit up by the low lamp. Despite her weariness, her eyes were sparkling brightly. She was beginning to understand. "In my case, what sort of things can you find out?"
"Trust me," the biologist replied. "In the secret of your cells, your body has kept marks of your past. We are going to reveal traces of the physical environment in which you lived before your accident. The air you breathed. The sort of food you ate. The signature of the perfume you wore. One way or another, I am sure you are the same woman as before."
32
Veynerdi switched on various machines. Their glittering lights and computer screens revealed the true dimensions of the laboratory: a large room, cluttered with analytical equipment, whose walls were divided between bay windows and cork lining. The bench and stainless-steel table reflected each light source, stretching them into green, yellow, pink and red filaments.
The biologist pointed to a door on the left. "Get undressed in the changing room, please."
Anna disappeared. Vetnerdi put on some latex gloves, laid sterile sachets on the tiles of the counter, then stood behind a long line of test tubes. He looked like a musician preparing to play a glass xylophone.
When Anna returned, she was wearing just a pair of black panties. Her body was thin and scrawny. Every time she moved, her bones seemed to be about to tear through her skin.
"Lie down, please."
Anna climbed up onto the table. Whenever she made an effort, she seemed more robust. Her dry muscles swelled her flesh, giving a strange impression of strength and power. This woman was concealing a mystery, a latent energy. Mathilde thought of the shell of an egg, transparently revealing the form of a tyrannosaurus.
Veynerdi removed a needle and a syringe from their sterile packs. "We'll start with a blood test."
He stuck the needle into Anna's left arm, without causing the slightest reaction. He frowned, and asked Mathilde, "Have you given her a sedative?"
"Yes, an intramuscular dose of Tranxene. She was highly agitated this evening, so…"
"How much?"
"Fifty milligrams."
The biologist grimaced. This injection was going to interfere with his tests. He removed the needle, placed a dressing in the crook of Anna's arm, then slipped behind the bench.
Mathilde followed his every move. He mixed the blood he had collected with a hypotonic solution, in order to destroy the red corpuscles and leave only the white ones. He placed the sample in the black cylinder of a centrifuge, which looked like a little oven. Turning at a thousand rotations per second, the machine separated the white corpuscles from the final residue. A few moments later, Veynerdi extracted a translucent deposit from it.
"Your immune cells," he commented for Anna's benefit. "These are the ones that contain the information we're interested in. We'll now take a closer look…"
He diluted the concentrate with some saline solution, then poured it into a flow cytometer -a gray block in which each corpuscle was isolated and subjected to a laser beam. Mathilde knew the procedure: the machine was going to locate the defensive molecules and identify them, thanks to a catalogue of markers that Veynerdi had compiled.
"Nothing very important." he said after a few minutes. "All I've found is contact with quite ordinary illnesses and pathogenic agents. Bacteria, viruses… though fewer than average. You led an extremely healthy existence. madam. Nor have I found traces of any exogenic agents. No perfume. No particular impregnations. A real blank slate."
Anna sat motionless on the table, her arms crossed over her knees. Her diaphanous skin reflected the colors of the security lights: like a piece of glass. it was so white it was nearly blue.
Veynerdi approached. holding a far longer needle. "We're now going to perform a biopsy"
Anna stiffened.
"Don't worry" he murmured. "It's painless. I'm simply going to remove a little lymph from a ganglion in the armpit. Lift your arm, please."
Anna raised her elbow above the table.
He introduced the needle while mumbling in his smoker's voice, "These ganglions are in contact with the pulmonary region. If you have breathed in any particular particles, a gas, pollen, or anything significant, these white globules will remember."
Still drowsy from the tranquilizer, Anna did not jump in the slightest. The biologist went back behind his counter and proceeded to carry out some more procedures.
Several minutes passed, then he said, "I've found nicotine and tar. You used to smoke in your past life."
Mathilde butted in. "She still does."
The biologist nodded in reply but added, "As for the rest, there is no significant trace of any particular atmosphere or surroundings." He picked up a small flask and went over to Anna once more
. "Your globules have not retained the sort of memories I was hoping for, madam. So we shall now try a different sort of analysis. Some parts of the body do not conserve the print of external agents, but their actual traces. We are now going to explore these microstocks."
He brandished a jar. "I'm going to ask you to urinate in this flask." Anna got slowly up and returned to the changing room. A real zombie.
Mathilde observed, "I don't see what you'll find in her urine. We're looking for traces going back over a year and-"
The expert cut her short with a smile. "Urine is produced by the kidneys, which act as filters. And crystals build up inside them. I can detect traces of these concretions. Some date from several years ago and can tell us much about the subject's diet, for example."
Anna returned to the room, holding the bottle. She seemed increasingly absent and alienated from the work being performed on her.
Veynerdi used the centrifuge once again to separate the elements, then turned to a new machine: a mass spectrometer. He deposited the golden liquid inside, then started the process of analysis.
Greenish waves came up on the computer screen. The scientist clicked his tongue in exasperation. "Nothing. This young lady is decidedly difficult to read…"
He changed tack, concentrating even harder, taking more samples, running more tests, plunging within Anna's body.
Mathilde followed each motion and listened to his commentaries. First, he removed some dentine, living tissue inside teeth in which certain products, such as antibiotics, can build up in the blood. Then he looked at the melatonin produced by the brain. According to him. the level of this hormone, which is mostly produced at night, could reveal Anna's old routine of sleeping and waking.
Then he carefully removed a few drops of fluid from her eyes, which could contain minuscule residues of certain foods. Finally, he cut off some hair, which retained the memory of exogenic substances and then secreted them in turn. The phenomenon was well known. The body of a person poisoned with arsenic will continue to exude the substance after death, through the hair roots.
The Empire Of The Wolves Page 15
