3:31 P.M.
Rodin’s thing is taming the waves.
Using only his eyes.
And, contrary to what the drunks in the port at Saint-Gilles think, it is far from easy. It takes time. Patience. Cunning. It requires focus, a refusal to be distracted—by the sound of that car door slamming behind him, for example. Never look at the ground, always at the horizon.
The ocean is a crazy thing. Once, when he was young, Rodin went to a museum. Well, a sort of museum. In the north of France, near Paris, the house of some old guy who spent most of his day watching the reflection of the sun on the surface of a pond. Not even with waves, just water lilies. And this in a country where it’s always cold, where the sky is so low you can almost touch it. It was the only time he ever left the island. It didn’t make him want to do it again. In the museum next to the house there were some paintings—landscapes, sunsets, grey skies, a few of the sea. The most impressive ones were a good two meters wide and three meters tall. There was a crowd of people there, women mostly, old women, who seemed able to stand in front of a canvas for hours.
Strange.
The sound of another car door behind him. Using only his ears, he measures the direction and the distance; the car park by the port, thirty meters from the end of the pier where he sits on his rock. Probably a tourist who thinks he can capture the waves with his camera, like a fisherman who hopes to catch a fish just by standing in the water for a second. Idiots . . .
He thinks again about that bearded maniac. When it comes down to it, those painters are just like him really, trying to capture the light, waves, movement. But why burden yourself with canvases and paintbrushes? All you have to do is sit here, by the sea, and look. He is aware that some people on the island think he’s mad to spend the whole day just staring at the horizon. But he’s no madder than those old women standing in front of their paintings. In fact, he’s less mad because he doesn’t have to pay for the privilege. This view is free, a gift from the brilliant and generous painter who lives up there.
A muffled cry disturbs the silence behind him. A sort of groan. The tourist must be feeling ill . . .
Rodin does not turn around. To understand the sea, to fathom its rhythm, you must remain immobile. Barely even breathing. The waves are like nervous squirrels: one false move and they’ll run away . . . The girl at the unemployment office asked him what kind of work he was looking for, his aptitudes, his plans, his skills. He told her he knew how to talk to the waves, to recognize and tame them, so to speak. He then asked the girl, quite seriously, what kind of job he could do with that. Something in research, perhaps? Something cultural? People are interested in bizarre things, after all. She had stared at him, wide-eyed, as if she thought he was making fun of her. She was pretty cute; he would have liked to bring her here to the pier and introduce her to the waves. He often does that with his great-nephews. They understand. Well, a bit.
Less and less, though.
The scream explodes behind him. It is not just a groan this time. It’s clearly a cry for help.
Rodin turns around. The spell has been broken anyway; it would take him hours to enter into communion again.
His face turns pale.
He glimpses a car, a black 4x4. And a shadow too, stocky, almost wider than he is tall, dressed in a kurta, the person’s face concealed by a strange khaki cap. A Malbar,2 undoubtedly.
Rodin stutters. When he spends too much time with the waves, he has trouble finding his words. It takes him a moment to speak again.
“Excuse m . . . I wan . . .”
He cannot look away from the knife in the Malbar’s hand, the red blade. He makes no move to defend himself. And really, the only thing he would have liked is to have had the time to turn back to the sea and say goodbye to the waves, the light, the horizon. He doesn’t care about anything else. But the Malbar doesn’t even give him the chance to do that.
Rodin sees the 4x4’s open trunk. An arm, half-covered in a sheet, dangling from it. A . . .
Everything goes blurred.
One hand grips his shoulder while another stabs the knife into his heart.
2 A non-Muslim inhabitant of Réunion, of Indian origin.