The Fan-Maker’s Inquisition
A Novel of the Marquis de Sade
Rikki Ducornet
In memory of my father,
who trusted me with Justine;
I was sixteen.
To Virgil, in friendship;
to Jonathan, to plaisance.
Sections of this novel were first published in Conjunctions. The author wishes to extend her thanks to Bradford Morrow, Tracy Brown, Sandra Dijkstra; to Guy, for the de Gouges library; to tireless, gentle Cath.
Part I
THE FAN-MAKER’S INQUISITION
There is no explosion except a book.
—Mallarmé
One
—A fan is like the thighs of a woman: It opens and closes. A good fan opens with a flick of the wrist. It produces its own weather—a breeze not so strong as to muss the hair.
There is a vocabulary attendant upon fan-making. Like a person, the fan has three principal parts: Les brins, or ribs, are most often of wood; les panaches, or, as courtesans call them, the legs, are also made of wood, or ivory, or mother-of-pearl (and these may also be jade: green—the color of the eye; rose—the color of the flesh; and white—the color of the teeth); the mount—and this is also a sexual term—which is sometimes called la feuille, or the leaf (another sexual term, dating, it is said, from the time of Adam)—the mount is made of paper, or silk, or swanskin—
—Swanskin?
—A fine parchment made from the skin of an unborn lamb, limed, scraped very thin, and smoothed down with pumice and chalk. The mount may be made of taffeta, or lace, or even feathers—but these are cumbersome. A fan trimmed with down has a tendency to catch to the lips if they are moist or rouged. A paper fan can be a treasure, especially if it is from Japan. The Japanese make the finest paper fans, and the most obscene. These are sturdier than one might think. Such a fan is useful when one is bored, forced to sup with an ailing relative whose ivory dentures stink. It is said that the pleated fan is an invention of the Japanese and that the Chinese collapsed in laughter when it was first introduced to China. The prostitutes, however, took to it at once.
—Why is that?
—Because it can be folded and tucked up a sleeve when, having lifted one’s skirts and legs, one goes about one’s business. Soon the gentlemen were sticking theirs down their boots—a gesture of evident sexual significance. Once I saw a fan from India: The panaches were carved to look like hooded cobras about to strike the naked beauty who, stretched out across the mount, lay sleeping. That was a beautiful fan.
—Earlier you referred to the three parts of the person. Name these.
—The head, the trunk, and the limbs.
—Exactly so. Please continue.
—Little mirrors may be glued to the fan so that one may admire oneself and dazzle others. It may be pierced with windows of mica or studded with gems. A telescopic lens may be attached to the summit of a panache; such a fan is useful at the theater. The Comtesse Gimblette owns a fan made of a solid piece of silver cut in the form of a heart and engraved with poetry:
Everything
Is to your taste.
You snap up the world
With haste!
A red fan is a symbol of love; a black one, of death, of course.
—When the fan in question—the one found in the locked chamber at La Coste—was ordered, what did Sade say, exactly?
—He came into the atelier looking very dapper, and he said: “I want to order a pornographic ventilabrum!” And he burst out laughing. I said: “I understand ‘pornographic,’ monsieur, but ‘ventilabrum’?” “Aflabellum!” he cried, laughing even more. “With a scene of flagellation.” “I can paint it on a fan,” I said, somewhat out of patience with him, although I have to admit I found him perfectly charming, “on velvet or on velum, and I can do you a vernis Martin—” This caused him to double over with hilarity. “Do me!” he cried. “Do me, you seductive, adorable fan-maker, a vernis Martin as best you can and as quickly as you can, and I will be your eternal servant.” “You do me too much honor,” I replied. Then I took down his order and asked for an advance to buy the ivory. (Because of the guild regulations, I purchase the skeletons from another craftsman.) Sade wanted a swanskin mount set to ivory—which he wanted very fine.
—Meaning?
—The ivory of domesticated elephants is brittle because the animals eat too much salt. Wild ivory is denser, far more beautiful and more expensive, too. For pierced work it cannot be surpassed. Then the mount needed thin slices of ivory cut into ovals for the faces, les fesses, the breasts…
—This request was unusual?
—I have received stranger requests, citizen.
—Continue.
—The slivers of ivory, no bigger than a fingernail, give beauty and interest to swanskin and velum—as does mother-of-pearl. I am sometimes able to procure these decorative elements for a fair price from a maker of buttons and belt buckles because I have an arrangement with him.
—Describe this arrangement.
—I paint his buttons.
—Continue.
—The making of buckles and buttons is not wasteful; nonetheless, there is always something left over, no matter the industry. I also use scraps to embellish the panaches—not where the fingers hold the fan, because over time the skin’s heat causes even the best paste to soften. But farther up, the pieces hold so fast no one has ever complained.
—And this is the paste that was used to fix the six wafers to the upper section of the…mount?
—The same. Although I diluted it, as the wafers were so fragile.
—The entire fan is fragile.
—So I told Sade. He said it did not matter. The fan was an amusement. A gift for a whore.
—Some would call it blasphemy. Painting licentious acts, including sodomy, on the body of Christ.
—We are no more living beneath the boot of the Catholic Church, citizen. I never was a practicing Catholic. Like the paste that holds them to the fan, the wafers are made of flour and water. They are of human manufacture, and nothing can convince me of their sacredness.
—Your association with a notorious libertine and public enemy is under question today. Personally, I don’t give a fig for blasphemy, although I believe there is no place in the Revolution for sodomites. But now, before we waste any more time, will you describe for the Comité the scenes painted on the fan. [The fan, in possession of the Comité de Surveillance de la Commune de Paris, is handed to her.] Is this the fan you made for Sade?
—Of course it is. [She examines the fan, briefly.] It is a convention to paint figures and scenes within cartouches placed against a plain background or, perhaps, a background decorated with a discreet pattern of stars, or hearts, or even eyes—as I have done here. In this case there are two sets of cartouches: the six painted wafers, well varnished, at the top, and the three large, isolated scenes beneath—three being the classic number.
—And now describe for the Comité the scenes.
—There is a spaniel.
—The girl is naked.
—All the girls are naked, as are all the gentlemen. Except for the Peeping Tom hiding just outside the window.
—And the spaniel.
—He is dressed in a little vest, and he carries a whip in his teeth.
—His master’s whip?
—His master’s whip.
—And the…master is in the picture, too?
—Yes! Smack in the middle. It is a portrait of Sade with an enormous erection!
—As specified in the agreement?
—Exactly. “Have it point to the tight!” he said. “Because if I could fuck God right in the eye, I would.” And he laughed. “Point it righ
t for Hell,” he said. So I did.
—The Comité is curious to know about your continued service to the Marquis de Sade.
—I paint pictures for him, and I—
—What is the nature of these pictures? Why is he wanting pictures?
—Because he is in prison! He has nothing before his eyes but the guillotine! All day he has nothing to occupy his mind but executions, and all night nothing but his own thoughts.
—Explosive thoughts.
—Yes. Those are his words: “explosive thoughts.” He has told me that the pictures serve not only to amuse and occupy his mind. They also enable him to follow the itinerary of his madness—for he believes he is going mad and has little else to do but be the observer of his own destruction. “My head,” he told me, “will be rolling soon.” He was not referring to the guillotine. “If I didn’t have your pictures,” he said not long ago, “my skull would explode under the pressure of my imagination, and this tower splattered with blood and brains.”
—Do you believe such a thing possible?
—Of course not. The walls splattered with blood and brains is a description of how he feels. He also says his head is an oven, an oven so hot it burns everything that goes into it. He says, “My daydreams are all char and smoke. The stench of my own thoughts makes it impossible to breathe.”
—At this point, I would ask you to read aloud this letter—the first of many—taken from your rooms on the night of the eleventh.
—[Taking up the letter:] Ah! The one I call “A Cup of Chocolate.”
Little wolf, my prize wench. The things you sent have at last arrived this morning, pawed over by the contemptible Scrutinizer, a wretch who cannot keep his hands to himself; but nothing is broken and it seems that everything is in place: the ink, candles, linens, sugar, chocolate—the chocolate! Untouched! And what chocolate! So that I may start the day just as the Maya kings, with a foaming cup.
Like a good fuck, a good cup of chocolate starts with a vigorous whipping, and here I am, my little anis de Flavigny, breathing the Yucatán as I write this letter. There are fops who swear by ambergris and would put that in their chocolate, but I’m particular to the classic cup—unadulterated—perhaps the one instance when I can say I prefer a thing unadulterated!
A cup of chocolate, ma douce amie, and my mood—and it couldn’t have been worse—has lifted; why, I am so buoyant that did God exist I’d be in Paradise with my nose up his arse! But this is a godless universe—you know it as well as I—and therefore nothing in the world—or, for that matter, in any of the myriad other worlds, planets, and moons—smells better than a good cup of hot chocolate! Or tastes better. Hold on for a moment, will you, as I take another sip…. As I was saying: Nothing! Not even those sanctified turds no bigger than coriander seeds which falling from the sky into the wilderness fed the famished Jews. A pretty story…And here’s another (although I warn you, it’s not near as nice):
Yesterday, as the clouds rolled into the city from the west, obscuring the sky, and just before it began to rain, I saw a young fellow, fuckable beyond one’s wildest dreams, kneel before the guillotine. Now, I know that all I imagine in my worst rages is only a mirror of the world. All day, over and over again, although the rain fell in torrents and the wind sent a bloody water surging into the crowd, Hell materialized beneath my window. At times it seemed a staged tableau, a diabolic theater as redundant as the bloodthirsty entertainments I have, poisoned by ennui, catalogued time and time again. To tell the truth, all day I wondered if thoughts are somehow contagious, if my own rage has not infected the world. I thought: Because I dared to dream unfettered dreams, I have brought a plague upon the city.
This idea persisted; I could not let it be but worried it like a dog worries the corpse of a cat. Such redundancy is exemplary: A machine has been invented that lops off a head in a trice, and suddenly the world is not what it was. And I who have dreamed of fucking machines, of flogging machines—I am outdone! The plague I have unleashed is not only highly contagious, it is mutable: See how it gathers strength and cunning!
And now—a death machine, là! Là! Just beneath my window! Have I engendered it? It seems that I have. Even the clouds pissing rain, the air filled with mortal shrieks, with sobs, the laughter of sows, seems to pour out of me. I imagine that every orifice of my body oozes crime. A lover of empiricism (and this is a tendency that, on occasion, plunges me into a fit—for I would count the whiskers on the face of a rat and weigh the dust motes of air if I thought it would lead me somewhere…), it occurs to me that I might find a way to measure or track this seminal poison and direct it. For the gore that accumulates like the dead apples of autumn beneath my window sickens me, yes! It is one thing to dream of massacres; it is another to witness one.
Is this violence the bastard child of one man’s rage? If so, all is irreparable, for I have imagined so much. Worse: I have put it to paper!
I recall the story of a notorious slut, Madame Poulaillon, who attempted to destroy the husband she despised by soaking all his shirts in arsenic. Arsenic she had in plenty, as rats plagued her home. (But what marriage is not haunted by the midnight chatterings and scrabblings of vermin?) It is a venerable tradition: the poison garment. There is another story of a pagan queen, a Hindoo, a real piece, who, made to marry the one who had taken her kingdom by force, offered him a robe so deadly it caused his flesh to fall away.
My mind is like these: Its poison is invisible but deadly. Far from the world, locked in ignoble towers, fed slop, forced to scribble away my precious days and years with a quill no bigger than a frog’s prick—my venom soaks the city like a fog. What would things be like, I wonder, if I really put my mind to it? Could they be worse?
Ah! But another taste of chocolate, and all this dissolves. And I recall a fan you once made for the actress known as La Soubise: a fan of peacock feathers, a fan made of eyes/ When she used it, it seemed that an exotic moth, a moth from the Americas, had settled on her hand. You called the fan Andrealphus in honor of the demon who was said to transform men into birds. And thanks to your instruction in the languages of fans, when La Soubise glanced my way and, taking her fan with her right hand and, holding it before her face, left the room, I knew she might as well have spoken the words: Follow me. Crowing like a cock, I flew after her at once and spent a happy hour in her barnyard. (Now, there was a courageous soul who was not afraid of my reputation!)
Remember when I asked for a flabellum? How later, together, we laughed at the joke? A fan that represents chastity! That protects the host from Satan in the form of flies! Just what is supposed to happen, I would like to know, to a believer who swallows a contaminated wafer?
—Have you ever been fucked by Sade?
—Never.
—You have painted scenes of unnatural acts punishable by death.
—I have painted such scenes. And I have also painted the body in dissolution. This does not make me a murderess! For exactitude, I have visited the medical school and the morgue.
—A distasteful practice for a woman! Does nothing disgust you?
—My curiosity overcomes my disgust, citizen. This has always been so. It explains, I believe, Sade’s interest in me. Our lasting friendship.
—How did you come to the attention of the Marquis de Sade?
—The Comtesse Cafaggiolo sent him to the atelier. I had painted erotic pictures for her on an Italian cabinet, very finely made. I painted scenes of amorous dalliance on the drawers, the doors, and also the sides and top: sixty-nine scenes in all, some of them very small. The comtesse treasured it and kept it in her most intimate chamber. How citizen Sade came to see it is for you to imagine.
—Describe this chamber.
—It no longer exists, citizen; it has been sacked and burned. But I knew it well, for the painting was done there, under the supervision of the comtesse. It was papered in yellow silk and trimmed in the most tender green. Three large windows opened out onto the gardens, and the walls were decorated with copper en
gravings by Marcantonio Raimondi, based on the drawings of Giulio Romano. The series was unique.
—These names are not familiar to me.
—Both men were once notorious, persecuted by the Catholic Church for the very pictures once hanging in the yellow room.
From the windows of the bedchamber one could see a fountain. It was the twin of one Giulio Romano had designed for Federigo di Gonzaga. As we speak, and as heads fall beneath Sade’s own window, the fountain plays even now in the Gonzaga gardens. My first real conversation with Sade took place beside it, soon after I had completed the fan. I had become the comtesse ’s confidante, and so it should not be surprising that we met again, as we did, beside the large ucello carved at the fountain’s base.
—Ucello? Ucello?
—A winged phallus, citizen. Seeing it, Sade exclaimed: “Fuckgod! I like this fountain!”
—Describe your conversation with the Marquis de Sade.
—Citizen Sade called our hostess “a purple brunette,” as she had very white skin with a violet hue. Unlike another woman of his acquaintance—I’ve mentioned her, La Soubise, whom he called “une dorée”—“a gold brunette,” and unlike myself, who, because of my olive complexion, he called “une verte.” Then he shared with me some of his curious theories. For example, he spoke at great length about an invention of his: “the metaphysical eye.” He likened the eye to a vortex that sinks directly to the soul, a vortex of fire that, paradoxically, is also a whirlpool in which one may drown.
He said that tears are potencies formed by the presence of light within the eye in concert with the heating action of the passions. He told me how the Maya of the Yucatán hurt little children to make them weep and so cause it to rain. The notion that pain could precipitate weather is a fascination of his because it suggests that the functions of the eye are simultaneously pertinent, acute, active, and mysterious, too.
Later, Sade described a machine of his imagination that could measure the distillation of light within the eye and the subsequent production of tears. A similar engine could measure the salinity of the bodily secretions: tears, saliva, sperm, blood, urine, sweat, and so on. According to him, the body is a machine lubricated by these fluids; salt is the fuel. He wondered about the manner in which the spoken word, producing vapor in the air, might influence the humors of others: their moods, dreams, and fantasies, the quality of their vision, sense of taste and touch, sexual desire—and also the weather.
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