The Fan-Maker's Inquisition

by Rikki Ducornet

  “And his response?”

  “‘Cosmic order,’” Olympe lisps, her hands raised foppishly, little fingers curled,” ‘depends upon the void that fills the heads of pretty women.’ I told him that only knowledge can assure the world’s happiness. Ignorance, I am convinced of it, engenders Monstrosity.”

  “A good answer!”

  “Yes. I was spirited even then. And, since a first brief marriage forced upon me, I have lived unfettered by the laws of husband, father, or priest. Spirit is my strength, but if I dictate my pamphlets and plays with passion, still they swarm with errors. I cannot check on the orthography of those I pay to take dictation (and I cannot pay very much!). My enemies seize upon such errors as the proof of my poor judgment. Ah! But we are forgetting Eugénie, and I am eager to know what happens to her.”

  “The girl’s education is in no way hindered by the gibberish of priests. She is a perfect little atheist, a freethinker and a free spirit—”

  “Admirable!”

  “Oui. Mais…Eugénie is also denied access to her mother whom she is instructed to despise. Although it is true that the mother is a simpering fool, nevertheless, she is made to suffer needlessly and horribly.”

  “But why?”

  “Because Franval wants the girl to worship him, to live for him and no one else, to be, in fact, as corrupt as he is himself and as selfish in her pleasures.”

  “This ‘education’ is a knife that cuts both ways. She is made into her father’s thing!”

  “Exactly. The perfect companion for his aesthetic, intellectual, criminal, and sexual delight. Free of moral constraints, ‘the pupil of his seductions,’ she is totally infatuated with a father she calls ‘brother’ or ‘friend.’ Jamais papa!”

  “Clever bastard.”

  “There is more. He tells her she is the moving force behind his existence, and this is so. She is the primary project of his life, the mirror of his will. Once he has fucked her, he cannot get enough.”

  “How hideous this all is! And to what purpose?”

  “When he was first sent to prison, Sade wrote an encyclopedic novel of debauchery, which was lost when the Bastille was taken.” (It’s true. Hélas! My beloved 120 Days…!) “But I got to see a few chapters, and if I responded at first with outrage, I then considered that all the excesses Sade described were no more nor less than an illustration of the idea of slavery taken to its logical conclusion.”

  “I would agree. Slavery is the primary cause of debauchery. Yet what is his object here?”

  “To demonstrate that Nature knows no Moral Order. Nature doesn’t give a fig for social conventions or ethical questions. And God cannot respond to or repair evil, because He is not there to witness it. But, as I said, the tale roils with complexities. Just as a child can be ruined by the stupidities and abject cruelties of religious training, which blunts the body, the spirit, and the mind, so may the child be corrupted by a ‘cruel, base, and self-serving father’—which is exactly how Sade describes Franval.”

  “How does the monster take his daughter?” Olympe asks. “Does he rape her?”

  “There is no need! Simply: He seduces her brilliantly, with great delicacy and false talk of real choices. Then, in a room gorged with flowers and upon a throne of fragrant roses, fucks her.”

  “Clever, clever bastard! And a coward, too!”

  “And because she is the perfect mirror of his own passions and convictions, he falls madly and—as it turns out—fatally in love.”

  “I see: Franval is like Narcissus! But why has the mother allowed it?”

  “She, too, is a figment, the product of our age: passive, self-punishing, her mind rotten with ecclesiastical idiocies, her blood watered down with sentimentality. Sade calls her a ‘tender soul,’ but with irony. She is in truth a passionless, pitiful soul, who, rather than fight for her daughter, wallows in self-pity.”

  “I don’t know which of the two I hate more!”

  “Nor I. Together they have produced a monster.”

  “This Sade of yours is ruled by rage: a Cathar’s rage!”

  “Exactly so! And here’s the proof: When Franval decides Eugénie will not marry and expresses his hatred of marriage to his wife, she asks: ‘Then you think the human race should be allowed to die out?’ And he replies: ‘Why not? A planet whose only product is poison cannot perish too quickly’”

  “These ideas are fascinating and stimulating. It is clear that Franval has, by reducing the child to a thing, poisoned both his world and hers. It follows that he could only long for annihilation.”

  “That is so! Franval, like his wife, is self-punishing. Sade writes: ‘Such was his nature that when he was disturbed, deeply troubled, and wanting to regain peace of mind at any cost, he would obtain it by those means most likely to make him lose it again.’”

  “A brilliant study of character!”

  “One last thing. Sade demonstrates how Franval has reduced his daughter to an object of his will in this way: His friend Valmont insists on sharing his pleasures. Franval refuses but offers to exhibit Eugénie on a pedestal. He dresses her like a ‘savage’ and surrounds her with a moat. Her pose is salacious; she stands very still. Valmont is provided with a silk cord. When pulled, it causes her to turn, thus revealing her charms.”

  “Dear creature,” Olympe says, taking both Gabrielle’s hands and standing, “let us prove Sade wrong. If the world is plagued with poison, it is also replete with tenderness. I must admit Sade’s philosophical tale has warmed me.”

  About the neck, between her breasts, Olympe wears a little silver amulet the size of a child’s thumb and in the shape of a cunt. When Gabrielle sees it, she takes it up in her fingers and laughs.

  Olympe says: “Such things were worn during the Renaissance to attract the Evil Eye. Like a venomous snake that strikes with mortal consequence but once within the hour, so the Eye strikes this amulet and thereafter can do no harm. But that is not why I wear it.”

  “And why do you wear it?” Gabrielle asks, tracing an itinerary across her friend’s breasts to tease her desire.

  “To proclaim my infatuation with pleasure! And to honor that great dreamer Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, who imagined that the moon was inhabited by naked giants wearing bronze phalli at their belts—their only article of dress—instead of daggers! ‘Luckless is that country in which the symbols of procreation are held in horror!’ he wrote, ‘while the agents of destruction are revered!’”

  “Ah!” Gabrielle sighs, “where is Savinien now that we so desperately need him? For I fear that the Unique Event in which we are actors shall be rent asunder by the blade.”

  “A revolution that would sever the brain from the body is one that fears the imagination. Nevertheless, my own imagination is in this instant much aroused.” Olympe eases the combs from Gabrielle’s hair, and the blouse from her shoulders.…

  If for a moment I cease writing my letter to you [Gabrielle writes], I hear…it is as though I hear the passage of time, mon ami; it is a melancholy singing. And yet—and how strange it is—harmonious. I cannot tell you how sweet it is to recall for you tonight that delightful evening—and how sad!

  Olympe’s raven hair. Her amulet. So vivid that I can, eyes closed, reach out now and seize her wrist, touch the fine veins branching there delicately, like the veins of some strange leaf. The leaf of a rose from some other world.

  That night, Paris was blanketed with snow. We fell into bed, and it seemed to me in her embrace that the night fanned out in all directions, that we traveled to Otahiti and returned, that we bought a universe with glass beads and brass amulets, and gave it back again.

  “What causes it to snow?” Olympe murmured sometime in the middle of the night.

  “It is formed of vapors freezing.”

  “Every sort of meteor appeals to me,” she whispered. “But snow most of all.”

  “I wish to review your dictations,” I told her. “I am one of those rare creatures of the Third Estate who was edu
cated by her father. And we shall read the great minds of our age together, and copy down the phrases that appeal to you the most. You shall put them to memory, learn to punctuate and to spell. In six months you shall be schooled—or so is my intention—and the ink with which you write shall be none other than your own.”

  “Starlight is the ink I wish,” she said, taking my hand in the dark. “The vivacity and clarity of moonlight.”

  “And what color is this cosmic ink?” I asked her.

  “The color of humanity,” replied Olympe de Gouges.

  * Megalomania: a marvelous word, and surely of her invention.

  * Although a famous wit, de Gouges was unschooled and could barely read and write when this incident took place. She dictated everything!

  Three

  A fan-maker, Restif wrote in a pamphlet he made certain got into the hands of the Comité, continues not only to ply her frivolous trade, to pander to fops, and to grow plump on the purses and affections of traitors, but, what is worse, to comply with the demands of that beached whale the Marquis de S.…whose deliriums cannot be contained by towers, nor by the threat of death, but which, just as certain pernicious growths flourish in the damp of bogs far from the sun and air, fill the atmosphere of Paris with a stubborn stench.…

  And so on. And so forth. Thus we are described: you a fraternizer and I a toad with colors—part whale, part poison mushroom, and, like Abraxas, lethal and ridiculous all in the same breath. So monstrous, in fact, that to do as you did, dear vanished friend, to send me books, to write me letters, to, on occasion, visit me with a basket of strawberries or a boxed cake, was enough to seal your fate. Ah! Gabrielle! How could we have known the profundity of Restif’s envy, the toxicité of his venom?

  Now that both you and Olympe are gone: Is he content? Has his spirit calmed? Does he inhale the evening air with greater satisfaction? Does he ease himself upon the piss pot with an unequaled groan of volupté? Does he, this hour, as I honor your passing with ink and tears, sit by the window of the Café de Chartres (you know the one: the pretty little café at the corner of Rue de Montpensier—I wonder if it is still there!) and gaze out at the faces of the world’s prettiest and most intriguing creatures, rosy with the cold of winter? Does he, as he sips his chocolate—lucky bastard!—plot the murder of a député—Camille, perhaps—having been so successful with heads of lesser value? (Yes! Yes! I know: He doesn’t like to watch. Yet, as do all the rest, he believes in, venerates, the machine!)

  Does he—for it is dinnertime—take out his knife, just as I have taken up my pen, to slice into the roast he shares with a member of the Comité de Surveillance? Or does he, as is his habit, indulge in the dark melancholy his murderous zeal does little to alleviate and much to aggravate? Surrounded by the familiar buzz and hum of Paris, chewing his chop, Restif, sipping his bourgogne, stuffing his face with pie, is glum. Why? Because Sade remains. Sade remains!

  Are towers to keep assassins safe? Are we waiting for a bigger, a better blade to sever a head so engorged with candy and fever dreams it will take a bullock and a hay cart to carry it away? A risky business, Restif rages: As long as Sade’s head sits steady on the bloated neck, its astronomical wheels will keep on spinning, bombarding the world with lies, insane seductions, books the Devil himself would be hard-pressed to read.…

  “I, for one, will not sleep,” says Restif, sucking on a particularly succulent bone, “until Sade is entertaining the flies and their maggots.”

  His friend agrees: “Sodomites are to France what the pox is to the maid.”

  “Ah!” Restif smiles companionably. The crackling on his piece of pork is as brown as it is thick, and he is gnawing on it thoughtfully, as grease collects on his chin. “Ah! Sade’s time will come!”

  “For the moment we have, uh…misplaced him,” Restif’s companion admits (and could it be that maniac Hébert, Robespierre’s henchman? The light is dim…I can’t quite make him out). “But—”

  “Misplaced Sade? How is this possible? A man the size of a house? With piles so fulgurant that night turns to day when he drops his drawers? Sade? Misplaced?” Hébert, if it is he, pales with shame. Restif is outraged…and it is true! They’ve lost track of me!

  Hébert stabs a roasted potato with his fork and, as he salts it, says: “Do not forget, citizen: The jails are full! A third of Paris is behind bars, or is about to be. It is impossible to keep track of everyone! Just this week, a most fuckable tart named Rose Martin was beheaded by mistake—”

  “By mistake!”

  “She was mistaken for a dreadful scold named Rose-Marie Martinet!” He roars with laughter. “It happens all the time. But not to worry. When, last week, we rounded up twelve peasants all named Teston and didn’t know which of them had made the scene in the street—cursing Sanson and Robespierre so loudly an entire quarter complained of the noise—we cut them down, one and all. As it turned out, our man was dead already! His liver had abandoned him on Rue St-Denis. But so what? In France, hayseeds grow thick as weeds.”

  “It is true—”

  “Perhaps the next crop will be less stupid.”

  “That’s doubtful!”

  “Well, then! We agree! These small abuses are inevitable. What matters is this: blood. The gears of the Revolution must

  be well oiled with it!”

  “You can’t make a civet de lièvre without killing a hare—”

  “You can’t make a pâté de foie gras without killing a goose—”

  “You can’t make wine without bleeding the grapes!”

  “And you can’t fuck a whore without unbuttoning your pants!”

  It is true that I am envious of Restif’s idle conversations, his suppers with friends, his nightly roaming, the fact that he can, at whim, ogle the merry youths roaring their joy in life like lions, the pretty candle-sellers dressed like fairies in grass green, the valets staggering under the weight of turkeys as they speed to some great table, the rouged bosoms of countesses true and false (Ah! but they are a thing of the past; I am forgetting…). I envy him because he is at liberty to lap up the displays of rarities in St-Germain, admire the delicious figures of wax that gaze upon the living with such affecting mystery one is drawn to them as to a breathing soul.

  Once I fell madly in love with one of these: a serene blonde with pale green eyes of glass and hands as small as moths. She was standing among precious articles: Venetian mirrors, rare porcelains…she made me forget that my rooms were already cluttered and could not hold one more thing. I entered the shop and, leaning into the window, touched her hair. It was real! Some milliner or laundress had sold her hair to buy bread, and now it tumbled to the shoulders of a counterfeit girl who so aroused my hunger for beauty that my soul was dazzled!

  Gabrielle…How I long to touch something beautiful tonight, if only for a moment. Your face, a new pair of kid gloves the color of fresh snow, a silk fan shot with gold! Now that you are gone, who will bring me the first rose of summer, the little cakes I love? With whom shall I share my dreams? Whose letters perfumed with a maddening mix of varnish, rosewater, and rabbit-skin glue will enable me to overcome my nightly terrors? I fear our book will suffer without your lively touch. I fear that without your sweetness to temper my bile, the book will become too dark, too overwrought, too cruel!

  My fire is going out, and before I can continue, I must get it going, else freeze. The stove is difficult to manage, as the authorities fear I might brain a guard with a shovel, or shove a poker down his throat. It is fortunate that I have always kept a warming pan for my bed and my stoneware hot-water bottle. These, too, could be used to brain a public servant. To the fire, then, and I’ll roast an onion. In prison, the plate is never changed after the soup! (And the soup is execrable, although there is nothing simpler than the making of a good soup!) The potato isn’t French but one of those curious vegetables from the New World. Is this why they persist in boiling up weeviled barley? A potato! Something green! A plate of peas with a little pepper, some Normand
y butter, a garnish of chopped parsley—and I would be in Paradise, if mal vêtu and too ill-equipped to entertain. (I fear they’ll outlaw the potato and finish off Parmentier, just as they did Lavoisier; they’ll outlaw the oyster for being obscene! Haven’t they beheaded the oyster-sellers? And hatters, moralists, actresses, bishops, watch-makers, professors, ice-cream sellers—they will outlaw ice cream! They say du Barry flailed about like a fish—just one of the Revolution’s many miracles: the multiplication of fish.)

  Sometimes, when I am not at my best, but frankly madder than sane, I do a little jig I call “the Saint Guillotine”; my jig is of the sort hens do in all the barnyards of France come Easter. To be authentic, I’d have to do it headless; however, thus far I appreciate my jig’s inauthenticity.

  I’ve had my supper, such as it was. Things could be worse: I can still pay for kindling, an onion, an apple (although the apple was as wrinkled and bruised as the clitoris of an old whore). What I would do for the cutlet I doubt I could digest, some chicken soup well-seasoned with saffron! For the truth of the matter follows: If I have alienated the entire universe by imagining fictive banquets during which little girls, roasted to a turn, are brought steaming to table, I am in point of fact no cannibal. Nor am I, nor have I ever been, a coprophage. Unlike, I must add, certain saints beloved of the Church whose appetites—for shit, for vomit, for pus and menstrues—have inspired my most feared and hated works. The one thing I once had (for these days, to tell the truth, I dream only of tenderness) in common with the saints was a healthy taste for the whip.