as if I’m living in a boat that the wind is pushing toward an island. I abandon myself, languorously. Sometimes drifting is salutary.
The next day I walked to the heart of the village, bought Spanish newspapers, T-shirts of every colour featuring Almuñecar, the rocks, the castle, the sailboats on the water, the fishing boats on shore, I bought jeans, a warm sweater, and an inexpensive cassette tape. In a secondhand bookstore, I found a battered French-English dictionary. I also bought good lined notebooks made of entirely recycled paper, their pretty covers decorated with musical staffs, extra-fine-tipped blue pens. Coming home, I moved some of the furniture around, took down the watercolours and stored them in the cupboard. The seascape is live before my eyes.
And now I am here, completely naked, hidden by the rocks. Completely naked and alone.
Sometimes very powerful odours emanate from the sea. Dead fish, decomposing algae, shells. Forceful odours. They seem to come from the very belly of the sea. They trouble and keel the brain. That’s how Leonard Ming spoke. Leonard Ming, the Man from Hong Kong, the killer. The ocean that soothes me fed his furor. The odour of death reminded him of that which stagnates around ports in the morning, when the fishing boats come in.
He is dead now. The killer is no more, killed in turn, but in the electric chair, following an interminable, widely publicized trial. His autobiography was a sensation. He wrote in his cell, condemned to die, leaving out no detail. I came away on this trip to translate this man’s story. I gave up on the Love Collection, the lies of romance. I decided to enter death and its truth. I wanted to do it all alone, near the sea and consoled by her. Naked on the rocks, I breathe in the salty air to infinity, as if iodine could heal the heart.
Chapter 3
I know everything, without having been at the scene of the crime.
Nijinsky, Diary
Right now my head is spinning. Two sleepless nights, interspersed with afternoons on the rocks. On the table, the remains of a meal: crumbs, pits, peelings, a glass of water. Also on the table, the book with the glossy black cover. Its bloody lettering assaults the eyes. Its title, Wolfman, in blood red. The author, Leonard Ming, the decade’s most notorious killer.
I, who by and large feel affection for both men and wolves, intend to suggest Thanatos as the title for the French version. But I know the publishers will find my title too interpretive, intellectual, not saleable. I know they’ll prefer L’Homme-loup, a literal translation.
I’ve read it through. I spent two nights straining my eyes, underlining difficult words, obscure passages. In a frame of mind close to detachment. Exhaustion and detachment. In this case, it’s a cause and effect relationship. Sometimes exhaustion leads to vulnerability, hyper emotionalism. Nothing like that now. I’m a little dizzy, but with fatigue. I haven’t entered death, not yet. I stayed at the surface of the words, translating from one language to the other. I haven’t yet penetrated their meaning.
Now I know everything, I know the facts. Birth of Leonard Ming in Hong Kong into a wealthy family. Father a Chinese businessman, British mother. Five children – he was the third. Elementary school in Hong Kong, secondary school in Yorkshire. Return to Hong Kong at the age of sixteen. Facts, dates. The itinerary of a human being. He in fact speaks very little of his childhood, except to say that very young he developed a taste for cruelty. He always had a taste for blood; even as a child he tortured cats and birds. Flesh-eater, carnivore, cannibal: he was all that. Erect in the middle of a mass grave, dressed in black, triumphant, that was how he saw himself. Holding a bird in his hand and slowly poking out its eyes with a needle, feeling the bird flutter wildly, he knew sensuality. He enjoyed loitering outside slaughterhouses. There was a smell there that drove him wild. A racket too: howling, bellowing, protesting, crying. All senses awakened. Pleasures of the senses. He was very young; this was the sensuality of his childhood. Afterwards, he sought out these sensations and looked for variations. “No kill, no thrill” was one of his favourite expressions. He had written these words in jest, with a trace of humour. I underlined the expression. I would have to find an equivalent in French. “Quand on ne tue pas, on ne jouit pas,” perhaps. “When you don’t kill, you don’t come,” maybe? No, too long. And in English the sounds crack like a whip. “Tuer, c’est le pied”? “Killing for Kicks”? I don’t like that either. But do I like “No kill, no thrill”? Other similar expressions crop up in the text. “No gun, no fun.” “Mommy cries, Daddy dies, Baby cries.” I underlined them as well. I’ll come up with a translation later. For now, the sun has been up a long time, my eyes are burning, but I’m not sleepy.
I closed the book. I am empty. Impervious to emotion. Too tired. I’m going to leave my lair, walk along the Paseo, brush past those walking by, the women on their way to market, the morning joggers.
But before, when I take my shower, I’ll let the hot water run over me for a long time.
I put on my long écru cotton dress. I must be the only woman in this city dressed like this. The others wear pale blouses, straight dresses above the knee. Or jeans and sweaters. I found this dress in Montreal in a used clothing store, and seeing it awoke in me a desire to travel. Suspended from a hanger in the dead of winter, it seemed to yearn for faraway lands.
In a large bag I put a beach towel and yesterday’s newspaper which I won’t read.
My path is lined with shut down hotels, practically empty buildings, quasi-deserted restaurants. Off-season. A little farther on beats the heart of the city: banks, a post office, all kinds of stores, a school filled with the screeching of children, the market. Before reaching it, I spot palmettos, cleverly aligned at the foot of the rocky wall; I pass gardeners, line fishermen, men with hearty complexions repairing fishing nets, repainting small crafts red or orange. Here and there birds in their cages sing at the top of their lungs; perhaps they are calling for help. That’s what I would do if I were a bird shut up in a cage. Or else I’d bury my head under my wings, a small ball of feathers curled up, and no one would hear from me again. Suddenly an image crops up, violent and raw: Leonard Ming, as a child in Hong Kong, jabbing a needle into the eyes of a bird.
On the flower-laden balconies I see the bare shoulders of women sunbathing.
Old people pass, taking small steps, walking their dogs. All kinds of dogs. Elegant hounds, Great Danes with their almost-frightening bodies, obscene, crazy poodles, their eyes like shiny marbles, black beneath their tousled hair, despondent-looking spaniels, but mostly stubby, plump mongrels on four legs, shorthaired, black and white. Well-behaved for the most part, they never bark or pull on their leashes. Stray dogs sometimes latch onto passers-by. Scrawny cats loiter around the few clients seated on restaurant terraces. People throw mouthfuls of fish, bread, gristle from chicken. Cats sidle up to them, ears down, devouring the mouthful as if fearing it would be snatched from them, as if it were the first or last of their lives. I smile at the sight. I like all cats, even the mangy-looking ones who beg on the restaurant terraces. Their role of beggar does not diminish their arrogance.
Parked trailers gleam, their bodywork shining, curtains closed. Their licence plates are Belgian, German. Pregnant women wear dark glasses, others push children in strollers or invalids in wheelchairs. Settled in front of the sea, the disabled meditate. A simpleton throws food wrappings in the waves and laughs alone, a crazy woman stamps her foot and wails, but no one pays any attention.
I settle down at a restaurant terrace on the beach. I order café con leche.I light a cigarette, open my journal at random. I have my dark glasses, nobody can see I’m not reading. My eyes are tired.
Suddenly I hear: “May I keep you company?” A voice is speaking to me, the hint of a lilting accent.
A man is standing in front of me, a man smiling broadly, one hand resting on the back of the white chair across from me. He is tall, with dark hair, tanned. My type, in fact, tall, dark, tanned. Mediterranean. I wonder why he is speaking to me in French. He is waiting for me to accept his company.
“Sit down, if you like,” I say without smiling.
“We were on the same plane” he informs