Nora tried to take control of the situation, to avoid making a mistake or a misstep. A few moments before, she’d been terrified of seeing her knife in Tiphaine’s hand, and now that Tiphaine said she wanted to give it back to her, it seemed that picking it up was the last thing she ought to do. What was Tiphaine planning? Why would she give her rival a weapon that could injure her?
Bright blue lights from out on the street blinked through the transom above the front door. Nora wouldn’t have paid any attention if Tiphaine hadn’t shot a glance in their direction. Her eyes suddenly lit up with a gleam of alarm. She looked fiercely at Nora, then back to the knife. Something unusual was going on. The situation was becoming absurd. Tiphaine was trying to get Nora to pick up the knife, but it was this very persistence that kept her from doing so.
The lights in the street were growing brighter. The two women heard car doors slamming, voices coming closer. Tiphaine was growing nervous and agitated, as if her body had suddenly received an electric charge of unpleasant emotions.
Aggressive.
“Are you going to take it or not, yes or no?”
Suddenly Nora understood. Tiphaine was planning to get rid of her by claiming legitimate self-defense. She was trying to get her to pick up the knife so she could prove that. It would appear Nora was threatening her. It all made sense now. Here she was in Tiphaine’s kitchen, which was proof that she had instigated the meeting, not the other way around. It was her knife, so it would seem as if she had brought it with her. Here was Tiphaine in pajamas, a clear sign she wasn’t expecting a visitor. She was the intruder, the danger, the threat. Nora had walked straight into the lion’s den. Done precisely what Tiphaine had wanted her to.
Except she hadn’t picked up the knife.
Nora took a step back, which seemed to trigger a swift change of mood in Tiphaine. Everything happened very fast after that. She barely had time to take it in.
The doorbell rang, shattering the silence, like a signal to escape.
Tiphaine glared at her for a split second.
There was a fleeting moment when everything began to spin out of control. The next moment, Tiphaine moved to the table, grabbed the knife by the handle, and ran toward Nora, the weapon pointing straight at her heart. Nora held her arms in front of her chest in an instinct for survival.
Voices called out from behind the front door. Instructions. Orders. Then loud, repeated knocks.
Nora anticipated the pain of the blade sinking savagely into her flesh. She held back a cry of panic, wanted to move, to get away, but found both her body and her mind paralyzed by terror. There stood Tiphaine, knife in hand, the blade a few centimeters away from her chest...
There were noises, policemen’s voices on the other side of the door, so close, but they couldn’t intervene to save her. There was the light turning, blue, bright, cold...a blinking light giving rhythm to the impulses of an obsessive delirium.
Nora saw herself lost, felt her body being emptied of its lifeblood, about to suffer, to die.
“Police, open up!”
And then...
And then nothing. No pain. No terrifying sensations except those provoked by a mind ravaged by fear. Nothing unpleasant, except Tiphaine’s cold fingers gripping her wrists, forcing her to open her hands...What was she doing? Why didn’t she just kill her?
Outside, cops were banging on the door, as if they were hammering her thoughts with stupid questions. Tiphaine was so close now that Nora could feel her breath on her cheeks.
“Open the door or we’re going to break it down!”
Now Nora could feel the touch of the knife. But instead of the icy shock of the blade on her skin, it was the handle that she felt slipping into her hand, and Tiphaine forcing her to close her fingers around it. She couldn’t react, paralyzed by the noises, the knocking, the flashing lights, her rival’s face, Tiphaine’s eyes staring into hers, holding her attention for as long as she could. As though trying to divert her mind from her hand. From the knife that was now pointing at Tiphaine’s heart.
The front door rattled and there was a loud crash, at the same moment that Nora, standing there with the knife in her hand, realized that Tiphaine was about to throw herself at her. She felt a resistance, like an awkward obstacle between their two bodies, then her neighbor coming at her and throwing herself at her with all her weight. Something hot and slightly sticky was spreading over her hands.
A second crash, more violent still, made the foundations of the house tremble.
Tiphaine was leaning against Nora and moaning. Her eyes were rolled back yet somehow she still held Nora’s terrified, uncomprehending gaze. She gave her a beatific smile, and as she parted her lips, blood trickled out.
The front door burst open with a resounding crash.
Nora turned to the source of the noise and saw two policemen rushing into the house; she looked back at Tiphaine, who was slowly slipping to the ground, held upright only by the knife, whose handle Nora was clutching in her hands, planted deep into her chest. It had gone right through her rib cage. As life leached out of her in ragged gasps, Tiphaine clung to Nora’s gaze, drawing from her neighbor’s horror the strength to smile, despite the blood and the almost unbearable pain.
“At last,” she murmured with a smile twisted by a sort of appalling ecstasy.
“Put your hands in the air,” yelled a policeman, pointing his gun at Nora.
Horrified, she dropped the knife and obeyed.
Tiphaine collapsed to the ground at her feet.
