I followed her down impeccable, silent, empty corridors, lit only by artificial overhead strip-lights, yellow, muted. There was no sound. The doors were all shut. The floor was expensive soft white lino and smelt strongly of bleach. There was one painting, a banal green landscape hung high up, out of easy reach. She opened a door marked Dr Pascale Vaury and indicated that I should enter before her.
Her office was terrifyingly clean, but had posters, a black leather couch shunted into a corner, a huge barred, vault-shaped window looking out on to a geometrical courtyard with long avenues of neatly pruned limes and impeccable white gravel paths. Through the thick lace curtains I saw passing strangers, some in religious habit, upright, marching briskly, others shuffling and bent, as if they were tortured, badly trimmed trees. The sun did not enter her office, but stopped short on the window sill, so that, outside, there was a glaze of bright light, inside, it was sober, muted, austere. The office was completely soundproofed. I could hear nothing but her movements and mine. She sat down on the other side of the desk and offered to speak English.
[Hallucinating Foucault, Duncker, P.]
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