The Necrophiliac (2 page)

An actress I knew as a client had just been interred — a woman neither beautiful nor ugly, insignificant enough to seem to never be able to inspire extreme emotions. As soon as I knew she was dead, I wanted her terribly. I arrived at the cemetery in a torrential rain that certainly wasn't going to facilitate my task. I picked the lock on the gardener's tool shed, as I am accustomed to do, in order to procure a spade. I always operate with great speed and it never takes me more than an hour to open the grave, descend into it, raise the coffin lid with a cold chisel, and, weighed down with the body, climb back to the surface using a carefully perfected technique. There remains nothing left to do but transport it to my car, the only consistent difficulty being the hoisting of the body over the wall with the help of a rope.

That night, the horrible rain slowed down my movements; engorged with water, the earth was heavy. What's more, the meteorologists had predicted that the precipitation would last fifteen days and I couldn't wait that long. As I struggled to climb out of the slippery grave with my package, I saw a man who was hiding behind a tombstone to watch me. His dark silhouette, his thick neck detached themselves neatly from the depth of the night. An atrocious fear spread over me. This man was going to follow me, kill me maybe. Or more likely, he was going to denounce me. Without knowing what I was doing, I abandoned the actress and fled 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.

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.

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. . . .

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. . . .

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.

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. There was a neighbour three or four years older than me, a tall brunette girl with green eyes I saw almost every day. Even though I wanted to, it never would have occurred to me to merely touch her hand. I waited; I wanted her death and that death became for me the pole around which all my thoughts gravitated.
Shall I then say that I longed with an earnest and consuming desire for the moment of Morella's decease? I did.
More than once, the mere meeting of that young girl — her name was Gabrielle — threw me into a tremendous excitement that I knew, however, would pass the very instant that I took it upon myself to make the first move. Instead, I spent hours picturing all the dangers and ways of death that could strike down Gabrielle. I loved to represent myself on her deathbed, imagining the exact details of the environment: the flowers, the candles, the funereal odour, the paling lips and the badly shut lids revealing the whites of the eyes. One time, meeting her by chance in the stairs, I noticed that my neighbour had a painful cut at the corner of her mouth. I was young, in love, and romantic, which led me to immediately conclude that she had a secret penchant for suicide. I ran and locked myself in my room, threw myself on the bed, and devoted myself to solitary pleasures. In my mind's eye, I saw Gabrielle delicately balanced, hanged from a ceiling hook. From time to time, the body, dressed in a white lace slip, turned at the end of the rope, offering a look at every possible angle. The face pleased me greatly, even though it was inclined and half-concealed by the hair, sinking that enormous tongue — which was almost black and filled the open mouth like a spray of vomit — into shadow. The arms — a beautiful dull brown — hung from gently dislocated shoulders; the shoeless feet were pointed inward.

I renewed this fantasy without modifying anything every time my desire demanded it, and for a long time it brought me intense pleasure. But Gabrielle left town; not seeing her anymore, I ended up forgetting her, and the image that had caused me so much joy was eventually worn out in its own time.

Henri, dead of scarlet fever at six — though I never catch the slightest sickness — is a brave little man. He has the perfect body for playing with, for enjoying, even though games and pleasures have to take place on the external surfaces. This child is so tight that I have to renounce more profound delights at the risk of hurting both of us. In vain I tried various techniques, some of which I was naive enough to think infallible. But Henri is succulent the way he is. The inside of his thighs, slightly concave, allow for an almost perfect union. As he is, unfortunately, quite advanced already, I don't know if I will be able to keep this child much longer. Besides, I'm hardly saving him, not hesitating to play with him in warm baths despite the fact that I know, unfortunately, they advance his degradation. His flesh softens from hour to hour; his greening stomach sinks in, rumbling with bad flatulence that bursts into enormous bubbles in the bathwater. Even worse: his face frowns and becomes alien to him; I don't recognize my little Henri anymore.

Yesterday evening, I took my leave from Henri whose odour was becoming intolerable. I had prepared a strongly perfumed bath so that I could once more press the deliquescent little body against mine. Henri gave me a surprise, for the dead are full of the unexpected — I think of Marie-Jeanne's breasts; I think of still others. He finally permitted me to really penetrate his flesh, softened as a melting wax: his way of sweetening our farewell. I dried him in a bath towel; I put back the little blue brushed cotton pajamas he was wearing when he arrived; I smoothed out his brown bangs that the bathwater made to seem almost black. In the car, I had seated him next to me, supporting him with one 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.

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 wearing underwear made of a crêpe de Chine of a quality far superior to that of her suit, from which I concluded a dignity, a genuine feminine modesty. Her body showed that she had always respected it with a sort of asceticism, but a likeable, civilized, lenient asceticism.

Suzanne . . . The Lily . . . There is purity each time that a new threshold is crossed. She had crossed that of death.

I sensed from the first moment what Suzanne would be for me. Also, even if very chilly, I lost no time in turning off the heat, establishing those sly drafts that refrigerate the rooms in a moment and last for hours. I prepared some ice. I kept Suzanne away from everything that could harm her. Except me, alas!

I returned to her, impatient as a young spouse. Her delicious odour of bombyx was just as it should be. I carried Suzanne to my bed. With a trembling hand, I removed her bra, her little panties. The wait took away my trembling; the tension of my desire didn't permit me to prolong the moment of possession any further. I threw myself on that charming dead girl, and without even removing her garters or her stockings, I took her with a fury and violence that I don't believe I had ever experienced.