Chapter Forty-Three
The Mask, aka Auguste Monjoin, was une gueule cassée, one of the soldiers whose faces were maimed in such a way that plastic surgery hadn’t yielded results, after which the surgeons had opted for a face-mask made of galvanized copper. The mask, as thin as a business card, had been painted by artists to match the patient’s skin colour as closely as possible. The Mask – as everyone in Bron called Monjoin – had been found by two orderlies in the stables. When he started to vomit blood, they transported him to one of the empty treatment rooms, a grey plastered concrete cell where ‘overwrought’ patients could find ‘rest’. Ferrand knelt beside the body, which squirmed on the floor. The Mask’s rib cage heaved itself up, his legs were spread, his calves pushed down on the floo
