Torture Garden Read online

  At this point the host intervened out of politeness for his guests and, in the charitable aim of allowing ourselves and our philosopher a short breather, idly objected:

  “You are talking openly about thugs and peasants who, I’ll concede, continually have murder on their minds … But you can’t possibly apply the same observations to, for example, ‘cultivated minds’, ‘refined natures’ or worldly individuals whose existences are calculated in accordance with triumphs over primitive instinct and the strange persistence of atavism.”

  Our philosopher replied vigorously:

  “Wait a minute! … What are the hobbies and favourite pleasures of those you call, my dear friend, ‘cultivated minds and refined natures’? Fencing, duelling, violent sports, abominable pigeon shooting, bullfights, varied manifestations of patriotism, hunting … In reality all such activity merely represents regression towards a time of ancient barbarism when man’s moral culture – if one may say so – was similar to that of the wild beasts he pursued. In any event we should not complain that the hunt has survived all the poorly transformed trappings of these ancestral customs. It is a powerful derivative by means of which ‘cultivated minds’ and ‘refined natures’ discharge their remaining destructive energy and bloody passions without causing us any great harm. If they were deprived of it, instead of hunting deer, serving up wild boars and slaughtering innocent poultry in the lucerne fields, you can be sure that the ‘cultivated minds’ would set their packs on us, and that we would be the ones the ‘refined natures’ would slaughter joyously, mowing us down with machine guns, something they never fail to do, whenever they can, by one means or another, more determinedly and – let’s recognise it frankly – less hypocritically than thugs … Ah! We should never desire the disappearance of game from our plains and forests! It is our safeguard and, to some extent, our ransom … The day it vanishes we would be in line as replacement, and serve the delicate pleasures of ‘cultivated minds’. We have seen an excellent example of it with the Dreyfus affair, and never, I believe, was the passion of murder and joy in the manhunt so completely and cynically demonstrated … Among the extraordinary incidents and monstrous facts to which, every day for a year, it gave rise, the pursuit of M. Grimaux1 through the streets of Nantes stands out as being most characteristic, and fully represents the honour of those ‘cultivated minds and refined natures’ who ensured that this great scholar – to whom we owe the most brilliant works of chemistry – received insults and death threats. We just need to recall that the mayor of Clisson, ‘a cultivated mind’, in a letter made public, refused M. Grimaux entrance to the town and regretted that modern laws did not allow him to be ‘strung up’ as happened to scholars in the good old days of long ago monarchies. For this, the excellent mayor was highly commended by everyone in France, by those who are considered the very exquisite worldly characters who, our host would have us believe, gain brilliant victories every day over primitive instinct and the wild vestiges of atavism. Recognise also that officers are almost exclusively recruited from the ranks of cultivated minds and refined natures, that’s to say men who may be no more and no less spiteful and stupid than others but who freely choose a profession – a well respected one at that – in which intellectual effort is entirely devoted to performing the most disparate violations on the human person and multiplying the most complete, wide-ranging and surest means of pillage, destruction and death … Have not warships been given the quite honest and accurate names of Devastation, Fury and Terror? And myself? Well consider this … I’m sure I’m not a monster … I think I’m a normal person. I have affections, noble sentiments, a superior culture and the refinements of civilisation and sociability … And yet, how many times have I heard the imperious voice of murder rumbling within me? … How many times have I felt the desire – the bitter, violent and almost invincible desire – to kill rising in a flow of blood from the depths of my being to my brain! Do you suppose that this desire takes shape in a sudden attack of passion, accompanied by sudden and unreflective anger or is connected with an intense concern about money? … Not at all. It is a sudden desire – powerful and with no internal justification – born out of nothing and in relation to nothing. For instance, in the street, as I walk behind an unknown stroller … Yes, there are backs in the streets that call for the knife … Why?”

  With this unexpected confidence the philosopher stopped, glanced at us for a moment in some alarm, before taking up the thread:

  “No, you see, moralists would be right to carp … the need to kill is born in man along with the need to eat, and merges with it … Education develops rather than restrains this instinctive need, which is the driving force of all living organisms. Everything combines to make it the pivot on which our wonderful society revolves. Once man awakens to consciousness, the spirit of murder is imbued in his brain. Murder raised to the level of duty and popularised to the point of heroism accompanies him at every stage of his existence. He is made to adore grotesque gods, mad and furious gods who take pleasure in nothing but cataclysms and, with manic ferocity, gorge themselves on human lives and reap people like fields of wheat. He is made to respect only heroes, disgusting thugs burdened with crimes and red with human blood. The virtues which enable him to raise himself above others, and which bring him glory, fortune and love, are wholly founded in murder. In war he will find the supreme synthesis of the eternal and universal folly of murder – murder regulated, registered and made compulsory as a national occupation. Wherever he goes, whatever he does, he will always see the word immortally inscribed on the fronton above the vast abattoir that is Humanity: murder. Then, how do you expect this man – in whom contempt for human life has been inculcated from childhood and who has been consecrated to legal assassination – to recoil before murder, when it takes the form of a special interest or a hobby? In the name of what law is society able to condemn murderers who in reality merely conform to the homicidal laws it enacts and follow the bloody example it sets? Why, murderers might justifiably say: We are forced to put down whole groups of people against whom we have no hatred, and do not even know. And the more we put them down, the more you deluge us with rewards and honours … And the next day, convinced of your logic, we put down people because they get in our way or we hate them or because we covet their money, their wives, their positions, or simply because we enjoy doing so. All of these are precise, plausible, and human reasons. And yet they lead to the gendarme, the judge and the executioner! This is a sickening injustice which confounds common sense! How could society respond if it had the slightest concern for logic?”

  A young man who had previously said nothing spoke up:

  “Is this really how the singular mania for murder with which you claim we are all originally or wilfully affected is explained? I don’t accept that and don’t want to accept it. I prefer to believe that everything within us is mysterious. This is more agreeable to my laziness of mind which is appalled at resolving social and human problems, which in any case are never resolved, and this fortifies what I believe, for uniquely poetic reasons, which cause me to explain, or rather not to explain, everything I am unable to understand. The disclosure you have just made to us, dear professor, is so terrible and represents feelings which, if they were to take an active form, would take you a long way, as they would me. Because I have often had these feelings, quite recently in fact, in perfectly banal circumstances which … But, allow me first of all to add that I perhaps owe these abnormal states of mind to the environment in which I was raised, and to the day-to-day influences which affected me without my being aware of it … You know my father, Doctor Trépan. You know there is no one more sociable, more charming, than he is. But equally, no one has been made into a more deliberate murderer by his profession. I’ve often been present at those marvellous operations that have made him famous throughout the world … There is something truly stupendous about his disdain for life. He once, in my presence, performed a very difficult laparotomy. As he examined his still anaesthetise
d patient he said: ‘This woman may have an infected pylorus … Suppose I also open up her stomach? There’s time.’ Which he did. Nothing was wrong. My father started to sew up the unnecessary wound, saying: ‘At least we now know for sure.’ He was so sure that the patient died that very evening. Another time, in Italy, where he had been called for an operation, we were visiting a museum … I was enraptured. ‘Ah! Poet! Poet!’ my father cried out, not for a moment interested in the masterpieces that bore me away with enthusiasm … ‘Art! … Art, and beauty … do you know what they are? Well, my boy, beauty is a woman’s belly, opened up, covered in blood and with forceps inside!’ But I won’t philosophise any more, just give you an example. You’ll conclude from this tale, I promise you, all the anthropological consequences it involves, if it really does involve them …”

  This young man was so assured in his manner and his voice was so harsh, that we shivered a little.

  “I was returning from Lyon,” he continued, “and I was alone in a first class compartment. At some station or another a traveller came in. When you are alone, the irritation of being disturbed can induce states of mind of great violence and predispose you to boorish behaviour. I accept that. But that wasn’t what I experienced at all. I was rather bored with being on my own and the chance arrival of this fellow traveller pleased me at first. He settled down opposite, after carefully depositing his hand luggage in the rack … He was a large man, his appearance was coarse, and his greasy and slick ugliness soon aroused my animosity. A few moments later, as I looked at him, I felt an insurmountable disgust. He sprawled heavily across the cushions, his legs apart and each jolt of the train caused his enormous belly to tremble and revolve like a revolting blob of gelatine. He seemed to be hot, taking off his hat and disgustingly wiping his brow, which was low, wrinkled, and eaten away like a leper’s, and with short sparse and sticky hair. His face was just a mass of fat; his triple chin, a slack necktie of soft flesh, bobbed above his chest. To get away from this disagreeable sight, I chose to observe the landscape, striving to completely abstract myself away from this unwelcome companion. An hour passed … And when curiosity became stronger than my will power, and brought my gaze back to him, I saw that he had fallen into a deep and disgusting sleep. He slept, sunk into himself, head hanging and swinging on his shoulders, and his fat swollen hands rested, completely open, on the slope of his thighs. I noticed that his round eyes protruded from beneath folded eyelids in the centre of which, through a fissure, appeared a small corner of bluish pupils, a bit like an ecchymosis on a morsel of flabby veal. What sudden madness crossed my mind? Actually, I don’t know … For though murder had often tempted me, it had remained in an embryonic state of desire and had never yet taken the precise form of a gesture or an action … Can I believe that the ignominious ugliness of this man could have alone determined such a gesture and such an action? No, it had a more profound cause that I remain unaware of … I rose softly and approached the sleeper, hands apart, but also clenched and intense, as though about to perform a strangling …”

  With this word, being a storyteller alert to dramatic effect, he paused. Then, with evident self-satisfaction, continued:

  “In spite of my rather feeble appearance, I am bestowed with uncommon strength, exceptional suppleness of muscle, and an extraordinary grip. And, at that moment, a strange warmth increased the dynamism of my bodily faculties tenfold … My hands, all on their own, made for this man’s neck – all on their own I assure you – ardent and terrible. I felt a lightness within me, an elasticity, a rush of nervous energy, something like the powerful rapture of sexual pleasure … Yes, there’s no better comparison to what I felt than that … At the moment that my hands were about to tighten, in a rigid vice-like grip, upon this greasy neck, the man woke up … He woke with terror on his face, stuttering: ‘What? … What? … What?’ And that was all! I could see he wanted to speak, but was unable to do so. His round eye flickered, like a small gleam of light blown out by the wind. It remained fixed on me, motionless on me, in some dread … Without saying a word, without even venturing an excuse or explanation which might have reassured the man, I sat down again opposite him and, nonchalantly, with an ease of manner which still amazes me, opened up a paper that I didn’t read … With each passing moment, fear increased in the man’s gaze until gradually it became contorted and I saw his face stained red, then blue, and then stiffen. The man’s gaze retained its frightened fixity until we reached Paris. When the train stopped, the man did not get out …”

  The narrator lit a cigarette from the flame of a candle, and his imperturbable voice came from out of a cloud of smoke: “I was amazed! … He was dead! I’d killed him – he had suffered a cerebral haemorrhage.”

  This tale put us all ill-at-ease, and we looked at each other astounded. Was the strange young man telling the truth? Was he playing a practical joke on us? We awaited an explanation, a commentary, or a volte face … But none came. Grave and serious, he resumed smoking and now seemed to be thinking about something else … Thereafter the conversation continued in a disordered and lifeless way, touching listlessly on a thousand vain subjects.

  It was then that a man with a ravaged face, stooped back and dejected eyes, with prematurely grey hair and beard, rose with difficulty and, with trembling voice, said:

  “Until now you have spoken about everything but women, something quite incredible when considering an issue in which they are of central importance.”

  “Okay! … Well, let’s speak about them,” agreed the famous author, plunged into his element, for the literary world considered him one of those fools known as feminist writers. “It’s about time we brought a little joy to wipe away these bloody nightmares … Let’s speak of woman, my friends, since we forget our savage instincts in her and through her and so learn to love, and we are raised to the supreme conception of the ideal and to compassion.”

  The man with the ravaged face laughed with grating irony, like an old door with rusty hinges.

  “Woman, a teacher of compassion!” he exclaimed … “Yes, I know the theme. There’s a genre of literature and courses of parlour philosophy devoted to it. But her whole history – and not only her history, but her role in nature and in life – gives the lie to purely romantic propositions. For why do women race to bloody spectacles with the same frenzy as they seek sexual pleasure? Why do we see them – in the streets, in the theatre, at the assize court, at the guillotine – straining their necks and gazing with avid eyes on scenes of torment in order to experience, to the point of swooning, the frightful joy of death? Why does the name of a great murderer suffice to cause them to quiver, to the depths of their flesh, with a kind of delicious horror? All of them, or just about all of them, have dreamed about Pranzini!2 … Why?”

  “Come on!” exclaimed the famous writer. “Prostitutes …”

  “Not at all,” replied the man with the ravaged face. “Nobility and bourgeoisie, it’s all the same … There are no moral categories among women, only social ones. From ordinary people to the upper and lower middle-classes and right up to the most elevated social strata, women devour the feature stories – hideous morgues and abject black museums – that are recounted in the Petit Journal. Why? Because great murderers have always been awesome lovers. Their genetic power corresponds to their criminal power. They love as they kill! … Murder is born from love and love reaches its maximum intensity in murder – it’s the same physiological exaltation, the same motion of suffocation, the same harshness … and often the same words and identical spasms.”

  He had to make an effort to speak and had an air of suffering. And as he spoke his eyes became more dejected and the folds of his face became still more evident.

  “Woman as dispenser of ideals and compassion!” he continued. “But the most atrocious crimes are almost always the work of woman … She is the one who conceives, schemes, prepares them. She is the driving force behind them. If she does not execute them with her own hands, which are often too weak, you’ll f
ind in them her moral presence, her thought and her sex in all their ferocious character. ‘Watch out for woman!’ said the knowledgeable criminologist …”

  “You’re defaming her!” protested the famous writer, unable to conceal his indignation. “You’re just offering rare exceptions as though they had a general application … Degeneracy, neurosis, neurasthenia … Indeed! Woman is no less refractory in psychic illness than man, although such sicknesses take a charming and touching form where she is concerned, allowing us to better understand the delicacy of her unique sensibility. No, sir, you have made a lamentable, and, I dare say, criminal, error. What we must admire in woman is on the contrary her great judgement and her great love of life which, as I said just a moment ago, finds definitive expression in compassion.”

  “Literature, sir, literature! And of the worst possible sort.”

  “Pessimism, sir! Blasphemy! Stupidity!”

  “I think you’re both mistaken,” interjected the doctor. “Women are rather more discriminating and complex than you think. Incomparable virtuosi and supreme artists of affliction as they are, they prefer the spectacle of suffering to that of death, of tears to that of blood. And it is an admirably ambiguous thing in which each finds whatever he wants, for each will come to quite different conclusions. Woman’s compassion is exalted, or her cruelty cursed, for equally irrefutable reasons, according to whether we are, in a given moment, predisposed to feel gratitude or hatred for her … And then, what do all these sterile discussions amount to? … In the eternal battle of the sexes, we always lose, and we can do nothing about it … And no one, whether misogynist or feminist, has yet found, to delight and extend us, a more perfect instrument of pleasure or another means of reproduction than woman!”