Project for a Revolution in New York

by Alain Robbe-Grillet

  Around the bed are arranged three powerful spotlights, all turned on and aimed, one at the girl’s feet, the other two at the right and left of her head, illuminating the naked body as harshly as for some surgical operation. I have no difficulty identifying this lovely auburn-haired creature as JR herself, who has just been sentenced as a final threat to conquer the fiscal tardiness of her old lover, Emmanuel Goldstücker, which has already been discussed. The polished steel table intended for domestic ironing, which has been used for the beginning of the torture reported previously, occupies, moreover, in the background, about a dozen squares of the chessboard (the granite paving stones are about six inches on a side). Symmetrically in relation to the axis of the bed rises a third kind of torture device: a lumberman’s handsaw, a powerful blade about a foot wide and six feet long which, lying horizontally a yard from the ground between two wooden stakes thrust into the cracks between the stones (and therefore about eight squares apart), points its sharp teeth up toward the sky.

  Most of the other pieces have been mentioned during the preceding. Let us review: the white car without wheels, the iron cage for carrying wild animals in the subway, the voyeur’s bicycle, several archaic agricultural machines including a chaff-cutter, a plow with a single blade and three wooden harrows with cast-iron points, two doors painted bright blue still hung on their frames and turning on their hinges, and finally the iron fire escape standing in a corner of the vacant lot, like an observatory, making it possible to survey both the rectangle circumscribed by the fence and the streets surrounding it. At the top of the staircase has been installed a television antenna, linked to many sets scattered over the paving (of which each occupies some six squares), which thus reproduce a good number of times, the length of the rectangle, the same educational program. One of these sets and the African images it was transmitting figures, as has been seen, in the scenario of the first act. Let us point out in conclusion, strewing the more open places of the stage space, a ten-gallon can full of gasoline, a bunch of chains of the size used to restrain very big dogs, four cast-iron weights each one weighing forty pounds, furnished with a huge ring and an inscription in relief guaranteeing the exactitude of their mass, a pair of pliers, a hammer, blacksmith’s nails, a heavy cylindrical wood-file with very deep notches, a green silk dress showing signs of burns, two syringes for intravenous injections, three blood-spattered nurses’ uniforms, dressmaker’s scissors, a steel T square, a crate containing six bottles of a bright red liquid, a depilatory tweezers, a notebook covered with black imitation leather, a felt-tipped pen, twelve razor blades, a knitting needle, pins, etc.

  Without losing any time, I pass through one of the blue doors wide open on the void, in order to get, thirty squares farther on, four chains about a yard long, each one ending with a snap hook. I return to the bed by the same route; careful not to rouse her too soon from her fainting fit and without altering her posture, I carefully attach (with the help of the chains) the red-haired girl’s wrists and ankles to the four brass columns which constitute the corner posts of the bed; I am going to get the can of gasoline, which obliges me to cover twenty-eight squares diagonally and to open the other blue door, which I close behind me on my way back; I sprinkle gas on the horsehair which substitutes for pubic hair on the chained mannequin, I return the can of gasoline to its position (opening and closing the door) and once again approach the bed; I find in my coat pocket, where I had thrust it when I entered the empty lot, the box of matches already mentioned; I turn off the three spotlights, strike one of the matches, and quickly brush it over the gasoline-soaked genitals, which immediately burst into flame.

  A fine bright-red flame rises into the night, its swirls and spirals with their sudden bursts of color casting shifting reflections over the environing objects which seem thereby shaken with a tremor of their own, brief rotations and sudden starts, affecting in particular the closest bright surfaces, which is to say the open thighs, the hips and the chest of the young mannequin whose body and limbs contract under the effect of pain, but without her being able to make broader movements because of the fetters which pinion her so rigorously. Revived by this cruel method, the victim nonetheless pulls as hard as she can on her chains, producing a silvery clatter of barbaric bracelets, whose periodic spasms mark time to the roaring of the fire.

  When the gasoline and the mossy pubic hair have finally burned up, the flame suddenly vanishes. I turn the spotlights back on. Lovely Joan now seems quite revived. Her eyes are wide open and gleaming, and she still fixes me with the same candid, amazed, unattached, rather childish gaze, and still has that same naively sensual smile on her parted lips, filled with promises, immutable and conventional both. The horsehair has vanished between her thighs, entirely consumed, and has left in its place a whitish, viscous substance which covers the pubic area with irregular trickles which I suppose are the remains of the glue, melted in the heat of the flames; I touch it cautiously with my forefinger which I then bring to the tip of my tongue: it has a pleasant taste, sweet and musky like that of certain tropical fruits. I tear another handful of horsehair out of a rent in the mattress; upon closer inspection it seems to me now that the vicissitudes of weather alone were not enough to have given it this fulvous color, which probably results from a dye, or from a red liquid which trickled out during the slitting of the mattress cover. While making these observations, I carefully arrange a thick and quite regular tuft which I apply, diligently following the shape of the corners, on the triangle of fresh-glued flesh, whose tip runs deep between the legs.

  Then I repeat all of the previous operations: I go and get the can of gasoline and pour about a half-pint on the brand-new pubic hair of the young woman, who is as good as new all over again. I take back the can of gasoline, then I return to the bed where I turn off the three spotlights. I strike a match, taken out of the box which is in my pocket, and I set fire to the red tuft. This time the body with its voluptuous curves moves more, in the reddening explosions of the living torch, its bonds having doubtless grown a little loose, having been tugged in every direction by the girl twisting in a paroxysm of suffering. A kind of rattle emerges from her throat, with gasps and increasingly frequent screams, until the long final harsh moan which still continues after the total extinction of the flames, whose conclusion is marked by a shower of sparks. When I turn the spotlights on again, I discover that the wide-open green eyes are closed once more, and part only gradually now, in order to stare at me more intensely between the crushed-looking eyelids.

  But I begin the ordeal all over again for the third time, as is called for in the text of the sentence provided by Ben-Saïd. And the victim stirs now, during the torture, most agreeably, while she utters words at random, a mixture of supplications and avowals, which come quite late as I take the liberty of reminding her. After the fire torture, I then move on, according to the program, to the torture with the saw and the pliers, which represents the third act.

  Taking advantage of the exhausted state in which her last burns had left her (I had even stuffed a little horsehair inside the vagina in order to prolong the combustion), I detach the prisoner’s chains from the bedposts, her gentle face with its imperturbable smile reflecting the joy of the young martyrs in the hands of their executioners. But without lingering too long over these metaphysical considerations, I tie her wrists together behind her back, tightly enough to keep them in the hollow of her hips and still leave the buttocks free. I take her henceforth docile body in my arms and place it astride the horizontal blade with the long sharp teeth, which is too high up for the patient’s feet to reach the ground. I then chain each of her ankles to one of the forty-pound weights, which are placed symmetrically on either side of the saw, separated by an interval of five squares. The spreading of the long legs, stretched out by the chains, makes the steel points penetrate farther into the tender flesh of the perineum; trickles of blood begin running down the flat of the blade and the inside of the thighs, where the most abundant ones soon reach the knees.


  In order to get on with the tearing-out of the toenails, then of the nipples, according to the regulation scenario recorded in the description, I must now go get the pliers, which raises a more delicate problem of routes than those I have previously had to solve. The torture device does not occupy, in relation to my own position, either one of the diagonal directions (the most favorable, since they permit me to cover a greater distance for the same number of squares), or one of the longitudinal directions, also permitted but less advantageous. I must therefore combine a fragment of longitudinal movement with an oblique (diagonal) fragment, this latter having to represent the greatest part of the route, so that the whole will permit me to cross the smallest number of squares possible. In order to select the best itinerary, I make various mental calculations, glancing over the squares, but I make several mistakes for the light is not adequate in all directions for the counting of the paving stones to be accurate, here in particular where the weeds are highest.

  Finally I decide on a geometric route which seems likely … I realize, unfortunately, as I begin on my trajectory that I must have committed a serious error in my calculations; I correct it at the last moment, opting for a solution which is of course not the best one, but which I can nonetheless hope will solve my problem for me as well as can be expected. After a few squares, covered as usual by tiny strides of six or eight inches, being very careful about the interstices, on which the feet must never be set, I discover with alarm that I am farther than ever from my goal, whose exact situation I have great difficulty making out, moreover, amid the undergrowth, which now seems to me much higher than a moment ago. I advance in the direction which I imagine to be, more or less, the right one, and now all of a sudden I am cut off by the white Buick without wheels, whose low hood had remained hidden from view behind a thicket of brambles.

  It is too late now to pretend to be on this route deliberately, so I must therefore stay at this point the time it takes to count to a thousand, so as not to have to pay the penalty corresponding to such a mistake. I have plenty of occasion, during this enumeration, to observe a very young couple in denim trousers and imitation-leather jackets, recognizable despite the similarity of these costumes, as a boy of fourteen (who has an inverted M on his breast pocket) and a slightly older girl (whose wide-open zipper down the front of her chest and all the way to her belly makes it easy to discern that she is wearing no undergarments whatever), who are kissing each other inside the car, sprawled on the comfortable cushions of the back seat.

  Having discharged my obligation, I make a detour in order to continue on my route—what I imagine my route to be—which leads me on the contrary into a very dim area, where I soon come up against one of the blue doors … At least this is what I think when, hoping this time to get off cheaply, I open the door in order to walk through. The wooden door has already closed behind me, with a muffled click, when I realize my mistake: I am back in the middle of the wide empty street, in the bright bluish light from the street-lamps.

  A few steps to my right is the old bald locksmith who is leaning over the image of my own door, trying to see what is inside through the little hole left by my key. He is doubtless trying to determine the cause of the piercing screams emanating from the interior and whose accents—unaccustomed, even in this neighborhood—have attracted his attention. And the spectacle which meets his eyes is certainly surprising: in the opening of a door painted bright blue located apparently at the end of some corridor, among undergrowth consisting chiefly of brambles and thistles, a young woman who is entirely naked appears in a three-quarters view, astride a sawblade with very sharp teeth, her legs pulled wide apart by chains attached to two rings, which hold her legs about eight inches above the stone-paved ground. The body’s posture on the trestle (hands tied behind the back, hips arched, the auburn hair with golden highlights falling over one shoulder because of the tilt of her lovely doll’s head) accentuates the exceptional beauty the tortured girl enjoys this evening: the slenderness of the neck, the waist, and the limbs, the resplendent plenitude of the flesh, the purity of the lines, the luster of the skin.

  The victim, still shaken by charming contortions although already losing some of her strength, continues bleeding a little at the six points at which she has been tortured: the ends of both feet which seem to have been deliberately mutilated, the breasts whose milky globe is intact but veined by a whole network of red trickles which come from the gradually torn nipple and then flow down to the region of the hips and the navel, finally the genitals where the saw has penetrated deeper and deeper at each of the patient’s convulsive movements, tormenting the flesh and severing the pubic region, smeared with sperm, much higher than the top of its natural orifice. (The girl seems to have been depilated beforehand, or shaved with a razor, or even singed by flame.) Blood has flowed in such abundance from this last wound that it has stained the anus and the belly, spattered the viscous, opaline substance with reddish streaks, with still shimmering layers covering the mound of Venus, covered the skin between the thighs and the knees, finally forming on the granite paving a little oblong pool surrounded by droplets. As for the sixth point mentioned just now, it is located in the rear and is therefore not perceptible from the point where the voyeur-locksmith is standing. This man notices, on the other hand, farther on, toward the far end of the room, a large brass bed with rumpled sheets.

  The little man has set down his tool kit on the top level of the narrow doorstep. He has leaned his bicycle on the wall, to the left. I have already described how, having at last managed to see in some detail what was going on inside, this honest artisan hurried off to find help. Running off to the right, as Ben-Saïd has noted, he soon bumps into a harmless bypasser who is none other than N. G. Brown, the go-between assigned by Frank to watch the man in the black raincoat and the soft black hat with the turned-down brim, who meanwhile keeps watch under my own windows. Brown, who was walking more or less at random after leaving “Old Joe’s,” let himself be guided casually enough by his professional conscience; the latter has naturally drawn his steps toward West Greenwich. Since he had previously been at a masquerade party, for professional reasons of course, he is still wearing his tuxedo and dress shirt, as well as a fitted mask of delicate soot-colored leather, with only five apertures in it: a slit for the mouth, two small round orifices for the nostrils, and two larger oval holes for the eyes.

  Without bothering with these details, which he scarcely notices because of his nearsightedness, reassured in any case by the man’s height and powerful build, the locksmith leads him, while volubly repeating incoherent things, back to the house which he finds without difficulty, since his bicycle and his tool kit have remained in front of it. Here he quickly unlocks the door and opens the heavy imitation-oak panel with its old-fashioned hardware. He is then in the dim vestibule, cautiously hidden behind Brown who is beginning to suspect what the situation is. But the short bald man no longer sees anything, at the end of the corridor, of the disturbing scene he has just observed through the keyhole. It takes him quite a long time to understand that the surgeon in the white coat and the young unconscious patient lying in front of him, under the cone of harsh light, are actually located much farther away than he supposed at the time. His myopia often plays such tricks on him: it was in the mirror that he was watching the scene, which was occurring at the other end of the corridor, at the far end of the library whose door has remained open, as usual.

  But now he is impeded by Brown’s massive figure, for the latter has discovered at once where the action was, and his black, motionless silhouette fills almost the whole of the doorway. The short man is obliged to lean over still farther, in order to peer through the opening left between the jamb and the curving waist of the tuxedo jacket. A stranger to this story, he cannot identify Doctor Morgan, whom Brown on the contrary has recognized at first glance. Moreover the locksmith is more comfortable, given his position, contemplating the stripped body of the victim, her amber skin, her fleshy pubic ar
ea, and the cruel operation she was being made to undergo, which I shall now describe.

  “Is there any need to? Don’t you have a tendency to insist too much, as I have already indicated, on the erotic aspect of the scenes you report?”

  “Everything depends on what you mean by ‘too much.’ On the contrary, I myself consider that, matters being what they are, I have been quite restrained. You will notice for example that I abstained from describing in detail the collective rape of the girl captured in the subway express by means of Ben-Saïd’s complicity, or the complicated tearing-off of the nipples performed upon the Irish girl Joan Robertson, whereas I could readily organize, on each of these capital events (which would doubtless have a considerable importance for what follows) several paragraphs of enormous exactitude. I may add that I have not even said what was done with the young bride, nor described the torture—though extremely interesting, from a sexual point of view, because of the imagination evidenced by the narrator on this occasion—of the twelve pretty communicants kidnaped at the last moment from the real religious ceremony by the fake Spanish priest. I would even have been within my rights, it seems to me, to say at least how they had all been crucified in different ways: the youngest exposed from behind, head down, nailed by the soles of her feet and the palms of her hands to a Y-shaped stake, her charming and still intact buttocks thus offered above the altar, after having had her hairless genitals and her still unformed little breasts …”

  “I must stop you once again. You have several times employed, in your narrative, expressions such as ‘unformed little breasts,’ ‘charming buttocks,’ ‘cruel operation,’ ‘fleshy pubic area,’ ‘splendid red-haired creature,’ ‘luxuriant plenitude,’ and once even ‘voluptuous curves of the hips.’ Don’t you think you’re exaggerating?”