The Necrophiliac Read Free

as fast as my anguish permitted me. I cleared the wall in a single bound, and it wasn’t until I had arrived at home that, little by little, I regained my composure. I was certain I hadn’t been followed. That man had nothing against me.
    The next day, in reading the paper I obtained an abominable surprise. In Montmartre Cemetery, the body of a well-known actress had been discovered, stripped of its clothes, disemboweled and horribly mutilated. The rain had effaced all clues. So the revolting man who had spied on me had taken advantage of the fruit of my efforts. How horrible! I burst into tears of vexation and grief.
December 22, 19...
    I went this morning for a stroll around the Ivry Cemetery, charming under the snow like an ornate centrepiece made of sugar, strangely lost in a plebeian district. Watching a widow decorate the tomb of the deceased with a little Christmas tree, I noticed suddenly how rare they’ve become, those women in full mourning in their floating veils — though often blond — who haunted necropolises twenty years ago. It was, for the most part — usually, not always — professionals who practised their art behind the family monuments with an absolutely depressing absence of brilliance and sincerity. Widows’ meat.
January 1, 19...
    I celebrate the New Year in good company, that of a concierge from rue de Vaugirard, dead of an embolism. (I often learn of this sort of detail during the course of a burial.) This little old woman is certainly no beauty, but she is extremely pleasant, light to carry, silent and supple, agreeable despite her eyes that have fallen back into her head like those of a doll. Her dentures have been removed, which causes her cheeks to sink in, but when I strip off her awful nylon blouse, she surprises me with the breasts of a young woman: firm, silky, absolutely intact — her New Year’s gift.
    With her, love is imprinted with a certain calm. She doesn’t inflame my flesh; she refreshes it. Normally so miserly with the time I spend with the dead — time that runs away very quickly — trying to take advantage of each second in their company, I lay next to her last night to sleep a few hours like a husband next to his spouse, an arm slipped under the thin neck, a hand resting on the belly where I had found a certain joy.
    The little concierge’s name is Marie-Jeanne Chaulard, a name that the Goncourt brothers would certainly have appreciated.
    The breasts are truly remarkable. In pushing them together, a tight passage is obtained, plump, infinitely soft.
    I lightly caress the hair — thin, grey, pulled back — the neck and shoulders where a silver slime, like that left by snails, is drying now. . . .
January 11, 19...
    My tailor — a tailor who maintains the devoted manners of a bygone era and who speaks to me in the third person — finally couldn’t prevent himself from suggesting a less morose wardrobe for me. “For however elegant, black is sad.” And so it’s the colour that suits me, for I am also sad. I am sad that today I must separate from those I love. The tailor smiles at me in the mirror. This man believes he understands my body because he knows how I dress the manhood in my pants and because he discovered with surprise that the muscles of my arms are abnormally developed for a man of my profession. If he knew what purpose these fine muscles could also serve. . . . If he knew what use I have for this manhood, which he once noted in his book that I wear to the left. . . .
February 2, 19...
    A client this morning had a few nice words for an eighteenth century Portuguese mariners’ chest. “How beautiful it is! You’d think it was a coffin!” What’s more, she bought it.
May 12, 19...
    I can’t see a pretty woman or a handsome man without immediately wishing he or she were dead. Once, back in the days of my adolescence, I actually wished it with passion and fury.