Translated and adapted by Catherine Cowan. Illustrated by Mark Buehner. HIS is an earnest attempt, obviously done with deep affection, to revise a dark, erotic tale by the Mexican poet Octavio Paz into a story for children. I had not read My Life With the Wave before reading Catherine Cowan s adaptation, but I felt its strong current, its encoded hysteria and desire, moving under the new story line. The original is about a man from the start we understand he is, specifically, a sensual man who leaves a strip of shore and is pursued by a wave, which, despite his protests, insists on going home with him.
Difficulties arise straightaway.
To hide her the man empties a drinking fountain, pours the wave in, and is consequently accused by his fellow passengers of trying to poison the water. Like a character in Kafka, he is led off to prison. When at last, a year later, he returns home, he finds to his dismay that the wave has installed herself in his apartment. But like so many difficult, doomed relationships, the man s affair with the wave has its exquisite rewards. She fills his dark corridors with sun.