The Necrophiliac Read Free Page B

hand, driving with the other. I drove slowly; I was not in a hurry to arrive. As always in such cases, I had a heavy heart. “No, not yet,” I repeated. I crossed the Seine at Saint-Cloud, but it was only at Maisons-Laffitte that I had the necessary courage. I returned to Paris in a long procession of trucks and tractors, the smell of crushed grass, the blasts from car horns, the gleam of headlights. Suddenly, I saw my face in the rearview mirror inundated with tears.
November 20, 19...
    I won’t go out tonight. I don’t want to see anyone and I would like to have the store completely closed by the afternoon. Four years ago to the day, I had to take leave of Suzanne.
    At that time, I wasn’t yet keeping a journal, but, now, I want to write to relive the story of my meeting with Suzanne.
    It all started in a dramatic, dangerous fashion, and right from the start we were threatened together, the one by the other, the one for the other. It was an autumn evening, very warm, a bit foggy, the sidewalks glistening with wet leaves. November always brings me something unexpected even if it has always been prepared. I went to look for Suzanne in the Montparnasse Cemetery. Waiting. Anticipated happiness, like every time. I only knew her name, that she was thirty-six, that she was married, without a career. Very strange to know her. Everything went normally and I had no trouble hoisting her over the wall; she was little and thin. I guessed I had no more than a dozen steps along boulevard Edgar-Quinet before I reached rue Huyghens, where I had left my car, but the fog had probably misled me, for I very quickly found myself out of the cemetery and well short of the place I had envisioned. I hurried as best I could, glad that Suzanne was so light, when I suddenly thought my heart was going to stop. Two cops on patrol were coming to meet me. They weren’t hurrying, but they blocked the only possible retreat; already I could distinctly hear the atrocious squeal of tires. Holding Suzanne firmly in my arms, I threw her against the cemetery wall. Happily, she wasn’t dressed in one of those horrible funeral gowns but wore an ordinary jersey suit and street shoes. Out of the terrifying squeal of tires, a headlight beam touched our legs: those belonging to a kissing couple. Behind me, the hostile world, cops, stupidity, hatred. In front of me, this unknown woman, her face tilted in the shadow of my own, this woman who was called Suzanne and for the love of whom I was risking my own destruction. I thought the moment would never end, until a voice already en route towards Raspail barked, “Oh shit, nice lovers’ spot . . .”
    It took me I don’t know how many centuries to overcome the paralysis into which the terror rooted me — immobilized as in a nightmare — and start walking again to my car. Even though I wasn’t stupid enough to measure the value of things by the difficulties involved in conquering them, I already knew that this trial was the counterpart of unspeakable bliss.
    Suzanne . . . A petty bourgeois with finely coiffed blond hair, a polka-dot blouse under a classic suit. Her wedding ring had been removed. At this hour, her husband wore it, broken down with grief — or maybe not — between the green plants, the sideboard, and the television set, somewhere in the apartment on the rue de Sèvres.
    Rue de Sèvres . . . The Sèvres bridge . . .
    She wasn’t pretty, probably never even was, just nice with her turned-up nose, her eyebrows raised in great surprise. Now death must have surprised her, maybe between the items purchased from the supermarket and the apple tart confection, mowed down in one swift blow, by a heart attack or something like that. There was no sign of a fight or even an appeasement, nothing. Nothing of the surprise of being dead. Suzanne had soft skin, almond-shaped nails. In lifting her blouse, I noticed the carefully shaved armpits. She was