The Malady of Death by Marguerite Duras
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The disquieting narrator of Marguerite Duras' 1986 novel The Malady of Death hires a woman to sleep with him silently and submissively for an extended period of time to satisfy his need for intimacy and, ultimately, sex because of his inability to love; he hopes "to make his body less lonely." She diagnoses his affliction as the malady of death" (others critics suggest he is homosexual) and she sleeps in his bed. He weeps for himself "as a stranger might." Finally, they appear to consummate their affair. She slips away one night and he hunts for her to no avail.
"You tell yourself that if now, at this hour of the night, she died, it would be easier for you to make her disappear off the face of the earth, to throw her into the black water, it would only take a few minutes to throw a body as light as that into the rising tide, and free the bed of the stench of heliotrope and citron."
The story ends in a haunting vision of white sheets, black sea and instructions for a theatre or film rendition which was later produced on stage.
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