Nadia’s voice turns out to be one of three perspectives we will follow throughout the story as she is confronted with the reality we’ve already seen: Tahiti is no paradise, and the history of ontological colonisation that has coded it thusly in imaginations elsewhere in the world is a driving force in the violence that far more accurately represents reality on the island. This contrast is echoed in the contrasting texture of the third piece that makes up the tīfaifai of this story: the voice of the man who has brutally murdered both Nadia and Mathieu in the present – a present represented by the first voice of the story, which we come to find is that of the police investigating the grisly double homicide. Next, we see the first instance of the eventual murderer’s voice.
I can’t believe I did it that I managed to dial the number to not hang up when she answered to ask her to meet up I should see her in three days after work the wait trembles my body mix of fear excitement longing as if this meeting writes my future the agitation upends my thoughts haze of illusions pipe dreams vows as if this encounter erases my yesterdays these past weeks are completely corrupted corroded eroded by the urge to call her and the fear of failure my own failure to be added to all the ones before these failures I’ve stopped counting that make me who I am no words no spirit no resolve bowed among all those who crawl in the streets in town in life lost in the twists and turns of my own lack in the lack of those like me boogeymen who scare those who stubborn in the rigidity of their convictions carry their excess their power their ego like a banner today I enter into the circle of those who dare who act who live by the power I get from my sole purpose my whole being revels in this new self that I feel emerging from me and suddenly my being swells with glory
The shift between Nadia’s voice and that of her killer is particularly subtle in the original French. The two sections fit neatly across two pages, so the line break that separates them is masked, and both contrast with the objective perspective that begins the story in their use of ‘I.’ However, the texture of the language used offers a contrast that the story itself does not articulate. Where Nadia’s perspective presents a hopeful view full of picturesque description, the killer’s perspective projects long-held frustration and dissatisfaction with life. In situating these voices next to each other, Spitz requires her readers to read these contrasting textures as central to understanding the story she tells. This storytelling through contrast echoes the contrasting blocks of colour in the tīfaifai’s patchwork and finds further elaboration in the next two sections.
the apartment overlooks an inner courtyard to the left of the entryway a bathroom then a white kitchenette a hallway lined with mirrors leading to a living room above the kitchenette a lofted bedroom the two decaying corpses steep in mouldering bile him in the bathroom walls splattered with blood dismembered body pooling at the foot of the sink where his face was smashed in her in the loft face covered by a pillow and as if to keep her from escaping her death a power cord binding her neck to the foot of the bed embedded in her blackened swollen weeping flesh lifeless body eaten away by rot repugnant depths cankerous stenches sludgy horrors that bathe the space with toxic reek final communion grotesque and tragic united by putrefaction degradation defecations in a lethal brutality
