Читать книгу Reading Nijinsky - Hélène Rioux - Страница 10

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 me.

The waiter approaches and the man orders black coffee.

“My name is Lukas,” he continues. “It’s not an Italian name, but I was born in Naples.”

He emigrated to Canada at the age of three. We were travelling on the same plane because he had been visiting his parents in Toronto. He lives in Rome.

I listen to this without too much surprise.

“Don’t you want to know what I’m doing here?”

“I’m not curious, but if you insist, I’ll certainly ask you.”

“You’re not helping me very much.”

“No.”

“Would you like another cup of coffee?” he suggests. “Would you like something else? A drink, perhaps?” “A curaçao.”

He motions to the waiter.

“And now,” he says, “may I ask you?”

“What?”

“What brings you to Almuñecar?”

“It’s a pretty city.”

They bring the curaçao.

“You don’t look as if you’re… on vacation.”

“I’m not. And you?”

“Finally you’re showing a bit of interest in me. To tell you the truth, I’m not on vacation either. I’ve had a house built here, in Cotobro. I’ve come to keep an eye on things during the final stages.”

“Cotobro?”

“Up on the hill.”

“There’s a song like that.”

“Yes?”

I hum: “Up on the hill, people never stare…”

“You’re funny.”

“Not always. Rarely, in fact.”

“I was sitting right in front of you in the airplane. I heard a bit of your conversation.” “Was it funny?”

“Not always. But I didn’t hear everything.” “No?”

“I didn’t want to pry. I didn’t know you. I found your conversation more interesting than the film.”

“You heard that I’d come to translate a book?” “Yes.”

“Yet you just asked me what I’m doing here.”

“To break the ice. I was surprised to see you again. It was completely unexpected.”

“Does that change anything?”

“I’m delighted. At the same time, seeing you again intimidates me. You are, in a way, not exactly a stranger. To be frank, I was hoping to see you again.”

“You were hoping to?”

“Hoping without hope. A little daydream rather than an obsession. I like to hear women speak,” he continued. “Hear them without their knowing. I am something of a voyeur, but I use my ears. An eavesdropper, if you will. At one point you used an expression that intrigued me, that I liked. You said there are other fish in the sea. I liked that, a kind of offhand way of presenting things. It was direct and nice.”

“I am not a nice woman. Nor offhand. The opposite is true.”

“I think that you are. Nice, I mean. Offhand, too, in a way. I thought of you often.” “Thought of me?”

“You kept returning to my thoughts. I was sitting in front of you in the plane. I heard your voice, but couldn’t see you. My curiosity was aroused and I went to get something to drink so I could see your face on the way back. You were next to the window and it was dark, but I got an idea. Afterwards, listening to you took on another dimension. At one point, you went to get soda and ice cubes with your friend. I got up and was able to see your body. Quickly, fleetingly. But I saw how you walked, how you moved in the confined space of the aisle.”

“Why are you telling me this?” “To explain that I was thinking of you. I was hoping you’d say where you were going in Spain, but you didn’t know. You spoke of Andalusia. It was vague, but gave me a little hope. I knew you wouldn’t go to Marbella. That relieved me – that place revolts me. I understood that you were here to translate a book, a romance novel.” “Yes.”

I don’t disillusion him. I don’t tell him about the autobiography of the killer. I act as if I spend my life in sugar-coated stories.

“Would you like another curaçao?” he inquires. “Would you like to eat something? To go for a walk? I have my car. Do you know the area?”

“Not really.”

“There is a small town about twenty kilometres from here called Maro. We could go there. The beach is very pretty.”

“I have work,” I say.

“Of course.”

“But I’ll do it tonight. I always work at night.”

In Maro, standing up at the counter of a deserted bar, we have another cup of coffee, then take the steep, dusty trail leading to the beach. We remove our shoes and walk along the rough, greyish sand strewn with pebbles and rusty beer and Coca-Cola cans.

I watch him as he walks alongside me. I let my mind drift. I think his body must be warm, smooth, comfortable, that his voice is reassuring as well as his silence. A man’s voice, a man’s body. Full of life, like a tree. Hard as a tree, and fragrant. Well-rooted, planted firmly on the ground. Heavy, I imagine the weight of his body on mine, heavy and light at the same time. Sweaty during love, emitting a slightly salty smell. I imagine his firm thighs locking mine, feel their hardness. The sight of his broad shoulders beneath his shirt excites me. We stop walking for a moment. I look into his eyes and imagine his sex. The thought comes to me and lingers a while.

I do not speak to him about a killer and his victims: babies, little children, teenagers, women, men shut up in a bunker somewhere in a northern California settlement, I don’t ask him what he thinks of it, but I think about it endlessly. I’m afraid to mention this to him, that he’ll answer me the way Philippe did, telling me I’m obsessed with morbidity.

For two nights I read, thinking myself detached, but now the images rain down upon me and I shiver and suddenly various parts of my body ache. In my left breast most of all, because of the passage in which Leonard Ming describes how, with a carving knife, he cut off the left nipple of a girl. Faces contorted, howling, begging, distorted by pain, spin round me while the body of this man standing before me makes me shudder. Confused impressions, cold sweat, then heat. Contradictory sensations. What is making me dizzy? The body of a man standing before me is making me dizzy. Somewhere else in the world, a woman’s nipple is being sliced off. But that’s what’s making me dizzy: the simultaneity of pleasure and pain.

“You don’t look well,” he says.

“Probably because I’m tired. I haven’t slept yet. And I drank too much coffee.”

“Would you prefer to go back and rest?”

“Yes.”

We take the path in the opposite direction, bare feet in the wet sand, and as we walk, our footsteps, like those of separated lovers, are obliterated by the sea. We climb back up the steep, dusty trail and he slides a hand under my arm. I remain silent. Ever since I read Leonard Ming, since I agreed to translate his story, I feel an excess of guilt, have the impression I’m carrying a secret I can’t reveal. I have the impression that if I speak, I’ll betray myself, a certain look, a quavering voice, will betray me. He’ll realize I know something he doesn’t.