Ru

‰ЫПOur boat was completely destroyed by the waves created by an ordinary rain that fell immediately after we disembarked. More than two hundred of us watched in silence, eyes misty from rain and astonishment. The wooden planks skipped one at a time on the crest of the wave, like a synchronized swimming routine. I‰ЫЄm positive that for one brief moment the sight made believers of us all. Except one man. He‰ЫЄd retraced his steps to fetch the gold taels he‰ЫЄd hidden in the boat‰ЫЄs fuel tank. He never came back. Perhaps the taels made him sink, perhaps they were too heavy to carry. Or else the current swallowed him as punishment for looking back, or to remind us that we must never regret what we‰ЫЄve left behind.

‰ЫПThat memory definitely explains why I never leave a place with more than one suitcase. I take only books. Nothing else can become truly mine. I sleep just as well in a hotel room, a guest room or a stranger‰ЫЄs bed as in my own. In fact, I‰ЫЄm always glad to move; it gives me a chance to lighten my belongings, to leave objects behind so that my memory can become truly selective, can remember only images that stay luminous behind my closed eyelids. I prefer to remember the flutters in my stomach, my light-headedness, my upheavals, my hesitations, my lapses ‰Ы_ I prefer them because I can shape them according to the colour of time, whereas an object remains inflexible, frozen, unwieldy.‰Ыќ