Torture Garden Read online

  “Cruel bitches!” said Clara, genuinely indignant. “Really – some women have no respect for anything. It’s shameful.”

  I asked: “What crimes have they committed, to deserve such torment?”

  She replied distractedly: “No idea. Perhaps none at all, or probably something trivial. Petty theft, I expect. They’re vagrants from the harbour, vagabonds, paupers! I’m not particularly interested … But there are others. You’ll see my poet in a moment. Yes, I have a favourite here and he really is a poet! Funny, isn’t it? Ah, but he’s a great poet, you know! He wrote a fine satire against a prince who robbed the treasury. And he hates the English. One evening a couple of years ago he was brought to see me … He sang delightfully. But he was especially good at satire … You’ll see him. He’s most handsome. At least, if he’s not already dead. To be sure, with a diet like this nothing would be surprising. What really annoys me is that he doesn’t recognise me any more. I speak to him … I chant his poems to him … And he no longer recognises them. It’s horrible, really, isn’t it? Well, it’s funny as well, in the end.”

  She tried to be gay, but her gaiety didn’t ring true. Her face was grave, her nostrils quivered faster … She leaned on my arm more heavily, and I felt shivers running down her body.

  In the left wall facing each cell, I then noticed that some deep niches had been hollowed out. They contained painted and sculpted wood which, with that awful realism characteristic of Far Eastern art, represented every type of torture used in China: scenes of decapitation, strangulation, flaying and cutting apart of the flesh, demoniacal and mathematical fancies which advanced the science of torture to a refinement unknown to our Western cruelties, for all their inventiveness. It revealed a museum of horror and despair from which no human ferocity had been omitted and which every moment of the day ceaselessly reminded the convicts with exact images of the scientific death to which their executioners intended to consign them.

  “Don’t look at that!” Clara told me with a contemptuous pout. “That’s only painted wood, my love. Look over there where it’s real. See! There’s my poet!”

  She stopped abruptly in front of his cage.

  Pale, emaciated, slashed with a skeletal grin, cheek-bones splitting the gangrenous skin and jaw, which was bare under the his trembling tucked-up lips – a face pressed against the bars which were gripped by two long bony hands, as dry as the claws of a bird. That face, from which all trace of humanity had forever vanished, those bleeding eyes, and those hands and mangy claws, frightened me. I instinctively stepped back to avoid feeling the tainted breath of that mouth on my skin and the scratching of those claws. But Clara sharply led me back in front of the cage. At the back of it, in an awesome shadow, five living beings who had once been men were walking and walking, turning and turning with bare chests and skulls black with bloody lesions. Panting, yelping, howling, they vainly tried to shatter the solid stone of the partition with violent thrusts. Then they again began walking and turning with the suppleness of beasts and uttering the obscenities of monkeys. A broad transverse shutter hid the lower part of their bodies and a suffocating and fatal odour arose from the invisible floor of the cell.

  “Good day, poet!” said Clara addressing the Face. “Aren’t I nice? I’ve come to see you once again, poor dear man! Don’t you recognise me today? No? Why don’t you recognise me? I’m still beautiful, and I once loved you for a whole night!”

  The Face did not move. His eyes remained fixed on the meat basket which the boy was carrying. And a raucous animal sound came from his mouth.

  “Are you hungry?” continued Clara. “I’ll give you something to eat … For you I’ve chosen the best pieces from the market. But before that, would you like me to recite your poem ‘The Three Lovers’? Would you? It will please you to hear it.”

  And she recited:

  I have three lovers.

  The spirit of the first is as fickle as a bamboo leaf.

  Her light mood resembles the feathery culalia flower.

  Her eyes are like the lotus.

  And her breasts are as firm as the citron.

  Her hair, weaved into a single plait, falls across her golden shoulders like black snakes.

  Her voice has the sweetness of mountain honey.

  Her hips are slim and supple.

  Her thighs are as round as the smooth trunk of the banana tree.

  Her gait is like a young and cheerful elephant.

  She loves pleasure, knowing how to initiate it and to vary it! …

  I have three lovers.

  Clara interrupted herself: “Don’t you remember,” she asked. “Don’t you like my voice any more?”

  The Face had not moved. He seemed not to hear. His looks still devoured the horrible basket, and his tongue clicked in his mouth which was wet with saliva.

  “Come on,” said Clara. “Listen some more. And you’ll eat as you are so hungry.”

  And she continued in a slow and rhythmical voice:

  I have three lovers.

  The second has abundant hair which gleams and falls in long silky garlands.

  Her look would disturb the god of love

  And make wagtails blush.

  The body of that gracious woman meanders like a golden liana,

  Her earrings are encrusted with gems

  Like a flower adorned with frost on a cold and sunny morning.

  Her garments are summer gardens

  And temples on festival days.

  And her hard and swelling breasts gleam like a pair of golden vases replete with intoxicating liqueurs and heady perfumes.

  I have three lovers.

  “Ahh! Ahh!” barked the Face, while the five other condemned men in the cage repeated this sinister barking as they continued walking and turning.

  Clara continued:

  I have three lovers.

  The third has plaited hair which is wound around her head

  That has never known the sweetness of perfumed oil.

  Expressive of passion, her face is hideous.

  Her body resembles that of a pig.

  It is said that she is always angry.

  She always scolds and moans.

  Her breasts and belly smell like fish.

  Everything about her is coarse.

  She eats anything and drinks excessively.

  Her leaden eyes are always bleary.

  And her bed is more repugnant than a hoopoe nest.

  And she’s the one I love.

  And I love her because decay is more mysteriously attractive than beauty:

  The eternal warmth of life resides in decay

  In which the eternal renewal of metamorphosis is absorbed.

  I have three lovers.

  The poem was over. Clara was silent.

  With eyes fixed avidly on the basket, the Face had been barking throughout the recitation of the last stanza.

  Clara then spoke sadly to me: “You see … He doesn’t remember anything any more! He’s forgotten his verses as he has my face. And that mouth I once kissed no longer knows mankind’s language! How incredible!”

  She took the best and the largest piece from the meat basket and, with bosom thrust forward prettily, offered it at the end of her fork to the emerald Face whose eyes gleamed like little braziers.

  “Eat, poor poet!” she said. “Eat, go on!”

  With a starved beast’s movements, the poet seized the horrible stinking piece in his claws and bore it to his mouth where I saw it momentarily hanging like a piece of street rubbish between the fangs of a dog. But in the shaking cage there were roars and bounds right away. Bare torsos, mingled together, torn by jaws and claws and contorted faces, tore at the meat! I couldn’t see anything else. I heard the sounds of a struggle on the floor of the cage, panting, wheezing, raucous exhalations and falling bodies, the stamping of flesh and the cracking of bones, dull thuds – butchery … and death rattles! From time to time, a face appeared above the screen, the prey between its teeth, and then it w
ould vanish. The barking continued, further rattles, and then silence … and then – nothing!”

  Clara was clinging to me, trembling.

  “Ah, my darling! My darling!”

  I cried out to her: “Throw them all the meat! You can see they’re killing each other!”

  She held me tightly, enlacing me.

  “Kiss me! Hold me! It’s horrible! … It’s horrible!”

  And, raising her face to my lips, she said, in a fierce kiss: “I can’t hear anything. They’re dead! Do you think they’re all dead?”

  When we again looked towards the cage, a pale fleshless and blood-stained Face was stuck to the bars staring fixedly at us, almost arrogantly. A shred of meat was hanging from his lips amid filaments of purple slaver. His chest panted.

  Clara applauded and her voice was still trembling.

  “He’s the one! My poet! He’s the strongest!”

  She threw him all the meat in the basket and, in a choking voice, said: “I’m suffocating a bit … So are you – you’re quite pale, my love. Let’s go and breathe the fresh air of the Torture Garden.”

  Slight drops of sweat pearled her brow. Wiping them away she turned to the poet and, with a delicate gesture of her ungloved hand, said: “How happy I am that you have been the strongest today! Eat … Eat … I’ll be back to see you … Goodbye.”

  She dismissed the boy, who was no longer needed. We went down the middle of the corridor with hurried steps, despite the surge of the crowd, careful not to look to right or left.

  The bell was still tolling. But its vibrations diminished to the extent of becoming no more than a slight breeze, a tiny child’s moan, stifled behind a curtain.

  “What does this bell signify? Where is it coming from?” I asked.

  “You mean you don’t know? But it’s the Torture Garden bell! Can you imagine? A victim is bound – and placed under the bell. Then the bell is sounded at full peal until the vibrations kill him! And as death approaches, the tolling becomes softer and softer so it doesn’t come too quickly, just like now! Do you hear?”

  I was about to speak but Clara closed my mouth with her unfolded fan.

  “No, don’t say anything at all! And listen, my love! Think about how frightful such a death must be with those vibrations under the bell. And come with me. Don’t say anything – not a word.”

  When we came out of the corridor the bell was no more than an insect’s hum, a barely perceptible flapping of wings in the distance.

  V

  The Torture Garden occupies a vast quadrilateral space in the heart of the prison enclosed by walls whose stone can no longer be seen because of a thick covering of sarmentose bushes and climbing plants. It had been created around the middle of the last century by Li Pei-hang, superintendent of the Imperial Gardens, the greatest of all Chinese botanists. In the collections of the Guimet Museum you can consult several works devoted to his glory and some very odd prints which relate his most illustrious achievements. The admirable Kew Gardens – the only entirely satisfactory ones in Europe – have learned a great deal from him about technical details and floral decoration and landscaping. But they are still far removed from the pure beauty of the Chinese models. According to Clara what is lacking is the aristocratic attraction in which torture is mingled with horticulture and blood with flowers.

  The ground, of sand and pebble like the whole of that sterile plain, had been deeply excavated and relaid with fresh earth brought at great expense from the other side of the river. It is said that more than thirty thousand coolies perished from fever in the massive excavations lasting twenty-two years. This hecatomb was not without its use. Mixed with earth as manure (for they were buried on the spot), the dead fertilised it with their slow decomposition. In any event, nowhere else in the world does an earth richer in natural humus exist – not even in the heart of the most fantastic tropical forest. Its extraordinary vigour of vegetation, far from being exhausted over the years, continues to be activated today by the prisoners’ excrement, by the blood of the tortured and by all the organic debris left each week by the crowd; collected with great care and expertly mingled with corpses each day in special bins, this forms a powerful compost for which the plants are voracious and which makes them vigorous and beautiful. Water, diverted from the river, and expertly distributed throughout the garden provides, according to the needs of cultivation, a permanently humid freshness, while at the same time serving to fill the pools and canals whose water is endlessly renewed and in which almost extinct zoological forms are conserved – for instance the famous six-humped fish celebrated in song by Yu Sin and by our compatriot, the poet Robert de Montesquiou.

  The Chinese are incomparable gardeners, infinitely superior to our clumsy horticulturists whose only thought is to destroy the beauty of plants by disrespectful practices and criminal hybridisation. They are the real criminals and I can’t understand why the most severe penal laws have not been enacted against them in the name of universal life. I would be quite happy to see them guillotined mercilessly in place of those tame murderers whose social ‘selectionism’ may be somewhat praiseworthy and noble since, for the most part, their targets are only ugly old women and the most disgusting of the bourgeoisie who are a permanent outrage to life. In addition to pushing infamy to the point of defaming the moving and pretty grace of simple flowers, our gardeners have dared that debased practical joke in which the names of old generals and dishonoured politicians are given to the fragility of the rose, the stellar radiance of clematis, the heavenly glory of the delphinium, the heraldic mystery of the iris and the modesty of the violet. In our flowerbeds you frequently come across an iris, for instance, baptised: General Archinard! There are narcissi – narcissi! – grotesquely designated: The Triumph of President Félix Faure; hollyhocks that unprotestingly accept the ridiculous appellation of ‘Mourning for Monsieur Thiers’; violets – timid, sensitive and exquisite violets – which have not felt insulted with nicknames like ‘General Skobeleff’ and ‘Admiral Avellan’! Flowers, all beauty, light and joy – all tenderness too – evoking sullen moustaches and heavy soldiers’ tans or politicians’ parliamentary effrontery! Flowers reflecting political opinions and helping to spread election propaganda! To what aberrations and intellectual debility do we owe such blasphemy and outrage against the divinity of things? If a being could possibly be so devoid of soul as to feel hatred for flowers then European gardeners (and in particular French gardeners) have justified this inconceivably sacrilegious paradox.

  Being perfect artists and resourceful poets, the Chinese have piously conserved the love and devoted cult of flowers: one of the rarest and most ancient traditions to have survived their decadence. And, as flowers have to be distinguished from one another, they have used graceful analogies, dream images, pure or pleasurable names which perpetuate and harmonise in our minds the sensations of gentle charm and violent intoxication which they inspire in us. This is how the Chinese honour their favourite flower, the peony, according to its form and colour, with such delightful names that each one is a complete poem or novel in itself: ‘Young Girl Offering Her Breasts’ or ‘The Water Sleeping Under the Moon’, or ‘The Sun in the Forest’, or ‘The First Desire of the Reclining Virgin’, or ‘My Dress is no longer completely white because the Son of Heaven left behind a little of his rosy blood when he tore it’, or how about ‘I Have Swooned with my Lover in the Garden’?

  And Clara, who recounted these charming things to me, cried indignantly as she stamped the ground with her small feet in her little yellow slippers.

  “And they consider these divine poets who call their flowers ‘I Swooned with my Lover in the Garden’ to be apes and savages!”

  The Chinese are right to be proud of their Torture Garden, perhaps the most absolutely beautiful in all China where there are many marvellous gardens. The rarest and the most delicate and robust species of flora are collected from the mountain snow-line and the parched furnace of the plains, as well as those mysterious and wild plan
ts which hide in the most impenetrable forests and which popular superstition considers as being the souls of evil genies. From mangrove to saxatile azalea; from horned and biflorous violet to distillatory nepenthe; from voluble hibiscus to stoloniferous sunflower; from androsace, invisible in its rocky fissure, to the most wildly tangled liana – each species represented by numerous specimens which, gorged upon organic food treated according to the rituals of gardening experts, assume abnormal forms and colourings, the wonderful intensity of which, with our sullen climates and insipid gardens, we are unable to imagine.

  A vast pool crossed by the arch of a wooden bridge, painted bright green, marked the centre of the garden in the hollow of a small valley where a number of sinuous avenues and paths lined with flowers had been designed with flexibility in a harmonious undulation. Water-lilies and nulumbriums enlivened the water with their processional leaves and stray yellow, mauve, white, pink and purple corollas. Clusters of irises soared up on delicate stems with strange symbolic birds seemingly perched on their tops. Streaked boluminous rushes, cyperus plants that resembled flowing hair and giant wood-rushes mingled their discordant foliage in the phalliform and vulvoid inflorescence of the most stupefying arum-lilies. At the edge of the pool, through a brilliant combination of colours, between the gadrooned hart’s tongue, the globe-flowers and the inulae, the skilfully trimmed wisteria bent in a canopy over the water which reflected their blue berries as they hung and swayed. And the cranes with pearly-grey mantles, silky plumes and scarlet caruncles, white herons, white storks with Manchuria blue throats, were strolling amid the tall grass with insolent grace and sacerdotal majesty.