He looked at us maliciously from the corner of his half-closed eyelids, so as to judge the effect his words were having on us.
“And then?” said Clara simply.
“Then, milady, you introduce into the little hole of the pot … guess what?”
“How should I know?”
The fine fellow rubbed his hands, smiled in a frightful way, and continued:
“You introduce an iron rod reddened in the fire of a forge – a portable one like that one over there. And, when the iron rod is introduced, what happens …? Ah ha! Imagine what happens, milady!”
“Oh, come on, you old chatterbox,” Clara demanded as she angrily stamped her small feet on the sandy path.
“There, there!” said the prolix executioner calmly. “A little patience, milady … We will proceed methodically, if you please. So, an iron rod reddened in the fire of a forge is introduced into the hole in the pot. The rat tries to flee the burning rod and its spattering light. It goes mad, capers about, leaps and bounds, turns on the sides of the pot, creeps or races over the man’s buttocks, first tickling and then tearing with its claws and biting with its sharp teeth, seeking an exit through the ravaged and bleeding flesh. But there is no exit. At least the rat can find none in the first moment of panic. But the iron rod, skilfully and slowly manoeuvred, all the time draws nearer the rat, threatening it, singeing its fur. What about that for a start?”
He caught his breath, before unhurriedly and authoritatively describing: “Its great merit is that you need to know how to prolong the initial process for as long as possible, as the laws of physiology teach us that nothing is more horrible than combining tickling and biting on human flesh. It may even cause the victim to go mad. He yells and struggles – though his body remains as free as the iron necklaces allow and he throbs, rebels, twists and is shaken with a painful trembling. But the limbs are firmly held by chains – as is the pot by the straps. And the condemned man’s movements only add to the rat’s rage to which the intoxication of blood is soon added. It’s sublime, milady!”
“And what happens in the end?” Clara’s voice was halting and shaken, and she had turned slightly pale.
The executioner clicked his tongue as he went on:
“In the end – I can see you are in a hurry to know the climax of this wonderfully jovial tale – in the end, threatened by the reddened rod and due to excitement caused by opportune scorching, the rat finally finds an exit, milady, a natural, but quite revolting exit … Ah ha!”
“That’s disgusting,” exclaimed Clara.
“Ah, you see … I’ve got you to say it! I’m proud of the interest you have taken in my torture … The rat penetrates, of course, into the man’s body, widening the hole with its claws and teeth – Ah, ha! – hollowing it out frenetically as it does in the earth. It dies exhausted simultaneously with the victim who, after half an hour of unspeakable and incomparable torment, finally succumbs to a haemorrhage – if not from excess of suffering, then from a stroke induced by unbearable dementia … Whatever the case, milady, you can be sure it’s extremely beautiful!”
Satisfied and with an air of triumphant pride, he concluded:
“It’s extremely beautiful, is it not, milady? It’s a truly marvellous invention, an admirable masterpiece, classical in its way, whose equivalent you would seek in vain in the past. I don’t want to appear vain, but you’ll admit, milady, that the demons which once haunted the Yunnan forests never imagined such a wonder. Anyway, the judges wanted nothing to do with it. You’ll appreciate that I brought them something extremely glorious, something unique in its way and capable of firing the imagination of our greatest artists. And they wanted nothing to do with it … nothing at all! A return to the classical tradition terrifies them. Not to mention all the moral involvements that are distressing to relate – intrigues, extortion, rivalries in corruption, scorn for what is just, horror for what is beautiful, and what on earth else? I’m sure you’ll agree that such a service should have caused them to elevate me to the rank of mandarin. At least! Nothing of the sort, milady, nothing. A characteristic symptom of our decline … We are finished – we have become a dead people! Should the Japanese come we would be incapable of resistance … Goodbye China!”
He fell silent.
The sun was setting in the West and the shadow of the gallows moved with the sun and lay stretched out over the grass. The lawns became a more vibrant green, and a sort of pink and gold mist was rising from the watered flower-beds as the flowers radiated luminously like small multicoloured stars in a firmament of greenery. A bird, yellow all over and bearing a long cotton twig in its beak, flew to repair its nest deep within the foliage which covered the shaft of the torture column at whose foot the executioner was sitting.
Now he was dreaming and his face had become more placid, the grimaces had quietened and melancholy had replaced cruelty.
“It’s like the flowers!” he murmured after a silence.
A black cat emerged from the flower-beds, its spine arched and its tail wagging, and rubbed itself against him, purring. He caressed it gently. Then, having noticed a scarab beetle, the cat stretched out behind a tuft of grass and, with alert ears and eager eyes, started to follow the insect’s capricious flight into the air. The executioner, having been interrupted in his patriotic lamentation, shook his head and continued:
“It’s like the flowers. We have lost our feeling for flowers, because everything is linked. We no longer know what flowers are. Would you believe that we are being sent some from Europe – we who possess the most extraordinary and most varied flora on earth. What don’t they send us these days? Caps, bicycles, furniture, coffee-mills, wine and flowers! And if you knew the cheerless nonsense, the sentimental wretchedness, the decadent follies our poets declaim about flowers! It’s frightening! Some say they’re perverse! Perverse – flowers! I don’t know what they’ll think up next! Have you ever heard such ridiculous nonsense, milady? Flowers are violent, cruel, terrible and splendid … like love!”
He gathered a nearby buttercup whose golden capitulum shook indolently above the grass and, slowly and lovingly, turned it between his large red fingers with extreme delicacy. In places dried blood flaked off his fingers:
“Isn’t it adorable,” he repeated as he contemplated the flower. “So small and fragile – a microcosm of nature, with all the beauty of its strength. It contains the world. Ah, frail and relentless organism heading for its realisation! Flowers have no time for sentiment, milady. They make love, nothing but love … And they do it all the time and in every way they can. It’s all they think about. And they’re right. Perverse? Because they obey life’s only need, which is love? But consider this! The flower is nothing but a sexual organ, milady. Is anything healthier, stronger and more beautiful than a sexual organ? These marvellous petals, these silks, these velvets, these soft, supple and caressing fabrics – they are the curtains of the alcove, the draperies of the nuptial chamber, the perfumed bed where sexes are united, where they pass their fleeting and immortal life enraptured with love. What an admirable example they set us!”
He separated the petals, counted the stamens which were laden with pollen and spoke again, his eyes drowned in ludicrous ecstasy:
“See, milady! One. Two. Five. Ten. Twenty. You see how they tremble! See! Sometimes twenty males are required to satisfy a single female! Ah ha! Sometimes it’s the opposite!”
He tore off the petals of the flower one by one:
“And when they’re gorged with love, that’s when the curtains are torn down from the bed and the draperies of the room break up and fall. And the flowers die – because they know quite well there is nothing left for them to do. They die, to be reborn later, and again to love!”
Throwing the stripped stalk far away from him, he exclaimed: “Make love, milady! Make love like flowers!”
Then, suddenly, he took up his instrument-case and, his pony-tail askew, rose, and, with a salutation to us, was away across the lawns, treading w
ith heavy and swaying body across the grass that blossomed all over with scilla, doronicum and narcissus.
Clara followed him with her glance for a while and, as we started to walk towards the bell, said:
“Isn’t he funny – what a fatty! So good-natured.”
I cried out stupidly: “How can you say such a thing, Clara, my dear? He’s a monster! It’s appalling to even think that such a monster exists among men! I feel that I’ll forever have that face in front of me as a nightmare – and the horror of his words! You have upset me considerably, I assure you.”
Clara stiffly replied: “Well, you also upset me. Why call fatty a monster? You don’t understand anything! He loves his art, that’s all! As a sculptor loves sculpture or a musician music. And he speaks about it so marvellously! Is it too much to ask that you accept that we are in China and not – thank God – in Hyde Park or the Bodinière1, among the filthy bourgeoisie that you so adore. You consider that customs have to be the same everywhere. And what customs! A fine idea! Don’t you realise that would mean to die of monotony and would put an end to travel, dear?”
And immediately, in an intensified tone of reproach:
“Ah! You’re really not nice! Your egotism never leaves you for a moment, even when I ask a little pleasure of you. It’s impossible to have fun with you. You’re never happy with anything. You oppose me in everything I love. Not to mention the fact that, thanks to you, we have perhaps missed the most beautiful part!”
She sighed sadly: “Another day lost! I have no luck!”
I tried to justify myself and calm her down.
“No, no,” insisted Clara. “It’s very bad. You’re not a man! Even when Annie was here it was the same thing. You spoiled all our pleasure the way you fainted like a little boarding-school girl or pregnant woman. People like you should stay at home. Isn’t it stupid, really? We go out to be gay and happy and for some pleasant amusement, to see sublime things and exalt in extraordinary sensations, and then suddenly you become depressed – and it’s over! No! No! It’s stupid, stupid!”
She hung more heavily on my arm and pouted – angry and tender – so exquisitely that I felt a thrill of desire running through my veins.
“… Especially when I’m the one who does everything you want, like a poor dog!” she groaned.
Then: “I’m sure you think I’m spiteful because I enjoy things that make you go pale and tremble. You believe I’m spiteful and heartless, don’t you?”
Without awaiting my reply, she asserted: “But I go pale as well. I tremble as well. Otherwise there would be no fun. You do think I’m spiteful and heartless, don’t you?”
“No, dear Clara, you’re not spiteful … You’re …”
She swiftly interrupted me, presenting her lips:
“I’m not spiteful. I don’t want you to think I’m spiteful … I am a nice little woman who is curious – like all women. As for you – you’re just an old hen! I don’t like you any more. Go and tuck up your mother, darling, tuck her up good and tight! … No, I don’t like you any more, you little good-for-nothing. Yes, that’s it, you’re just a sweet little insignificant good-for-nothing.”
Gay and serious, smiling, her face barred with the shadowy folds that appeared when she was angry or sexually aroused, she added:
“Tell me I’m just a woman, a perfectly small woman, a woman as fragile as a flower, as delicate and frail as a bamboo shoot, and that, of the two of us, I’m the man … and I’m worth ten men like you!”
And the desire her flesh provoked in me was complicated with an immense pity for her distracted and crazy soul.
She then spoke, with a light contemptuous whistle, words which frequently came to her lips:
“Men! They don’t know what love is, nor what death is, which is still more beautiful than love. They know nothing – they’re always depressed and weeping, or fainting for no reason, for mere nothings! Huh! Huh! Huh!”
Changing the subject, like a scarab beetle jumping from one flower to another, she suddenly asked:
“Is what old fatty just said true?”
“What’s that, dear Clara? What do you care about fatty?”
“Just now he said that a single female flower sometimes requires twenty males to satisfy her. Is that true?”
“Certainly!”
“Really true? Really, really true?”
“Of course it is.”
“So old fatty wasn’t mocking us? You’re sure?”
“How odd you are! Why do you ask? Why look at me with such strange eyes? Of course it’s true!”
“Ah!”
She remained thoughtful, her eyelids closed for a second. Her breath magnified, her throat almost panting. And, very low, she murmured as she rested her head against my chest:
“I’d like to be a flower. I’d like, I’d like to be … everything!”
“Clara!” I pleaded. “My little Clara …”
I held her tightly, rocking her in my arms:
“Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you want that? You’d prefer to spend the rest of your life as a soft little good-for-nothing. Huh – it’s shameful!”
After a short pause, during which we distinctly heard the red sand of the avenue crunch beneath our heavy steps, she continued in a sing-song voice:
“And I’d also like – when I’m dead, I’d like very strong perfumes, and thalictus flowers to be put in my coffin, together with images of sin – beautiful images, ardent and naked, like those which adorn the mats in my room. Or else I’d like to be buried without clothes or shroud, in the crypts of the Elephanta temple among those strange stone bacchantes who caress and tear each other in such furious lusts. Ah, my dear, I’d like, I’d like to be dead already!”
And abruptly:
“When you’re dead, do your feet touch the wood of the coffin?”
“Clara!” I begged. “Why do you always speak about death? And you say I’m depressed! Please don’t drive me completely mad. Abandon these unpleasant ideas which torment me – and let’s go home. For pity’s sake, Clara, let’s go.”
She wasn’t listening to my entreaty and continued in a monotonous chant in which I didn’t know, no, I really didn’t know, if it was emotion or irony, excitable tears or affected laughter.
“If you’re with me when I die, dear heart … Listen carefully! Place – that’s it … Place a pretty yellow silk cushion between my poor feet and the wood of the coffin. And then … kill my lovely Laotian dog. Place him, still bleeding, next to me, in the posture he is accustomed to, you know, with one paw on my thigh and the other on my breast … And then, for a long time, a long time, kiss me, dear love, for a very long time, on my teeth, on my hair … And tell me things, such pretty things … soothing and consuming things, as when you make love with me. You will do it, won’t you? Promise? Come on, don’t make a funereal face. Dying is not sad – it’s living when you’re not happy that’s sad. Swear it! Swear! Promise me!”
“Clara! Clara! I beg you, stop it!”
I was probably at the end of my tether. A flood of tears gushed from my eyes. I would have been unable to say why. These were not tears of distress but of relief and relaxation. And Clara deluded herself in attributing them to her. I wasn’t crying for her, nor for her sin, nor for the pity her poor soul inspired in me, nor for her evocation of her death. I was weeping for myself, for my presence in this garden and for this accursed love which I felt violated everything within me – every generous surge, proud desire and noble ambition – in the impure kisses of which I felt ashamed and for which I was athirst! Well, no … Why lie to myself? The tears were entirely physical: tears of exhaustion or tiredness and fever, tears of irritation before scenes too onerous for my depressed sensibility, and odours too strong for my sense of smell, before continual shifts from the powerlessness to the intensification of my carnal desires – they were women’s tears, tears for nothing!”
Certain that it was the thought of her dead and stretched out in the coffin that caused me to cry
, and content with her power over me, Clara became delightfully coaxing.
“Poor little pet!” she sighed. “You’re crying! Well, then, now say that fatty was good natured. Say it to please me. Then I’ll be quiet – and never again speak of death … never again. Come on! Come right out and say it, little puppy!”
Cowardly, but also to have done once and for all with these macabre ideas, I did as she asked.
With unrestrained joy, she leapt at my neck, kissed my lips and, wiping my eyes, exclaimed:
“Oh, you are nice! A nice baby, a darling baby, dear heart! And I’m a horrid woman, a nasty little woman … who torments you all the time, and makes you cry. And, yes, old fatty is a monster. I detest him. And I don’t want you to kill my handsome Laotian dog. And I don’t want to die … All that was just to make you laugh, you understand. Don’t cry any more, ah, don’t cry any more! Smile … smile with your kind eyes and your mouth which says the tenderest things. Your mouth, your mouth … And walk faster. I really love walking very quickly at your side!”
Above our heads as we walked cheek-to-cheek her parasol flickered lightly, brilliant and wildly, like a giant butterfly.
1 A playhouse in Paris.
VII
We were getting closer to the bell.
On both sides were immense red flowers and purple flowers, peonies the colour of blood, and – in the shadows under enormous parasol-shaped leaves of petasites – anthurium that was like bleeding pleura seemed to greet us as we passed whilst revealing the torture route. There were other flowers, flowers of butchery and massacre, tigridia opening up from mutilated throats, diclytra with their garlands of little red hearts, and also wild labiates with firm, fleshy pulp and veritable human lips – Clara’s lips – that were screaming from the tops of their tender stems:
Torture Garden Page 16
