The Fan-Maker's Inquisition

by Rikki Ducornet

  But now having supped, having survived another day, what am I to do to make it through the night? Fortunately, I’ve managed over the years to hold on to the dildo of palissandre. I call him La Jeunesse, for like a trusted servant I once had, he is always green. (You see how I am reduced to a curé’s piteous pleasures.) The other dildos: La Merluche and La Terreur were lost the last time my room was searched for “pornography.” (They have stolen more than two dozen manuscripts, including those lost when I was so precipitously removed from the Bastille on the fourteenth of July, 1789; all those my wife destroyed because she feared they would “come into the wrong hands and compromise me” [!]; all those I have not been able to hide—for although I keep on my toes, in a manner of speaking, the devils descend like the wind at a moment’s notice to sweep up everything in their path. If anything survives, it will be miraculous.)

  So, yes, I have La Jeunesse. Ah! Mais—it’s not that simple. Physical needs are one thing, the needs of the spirit, another. (Note that I did not say “soul” but “spirit.”) The spirit must be fed, else it shrivels up too. Well, here is what I do: I reconstruct the city of Paris in my mind. My city opens before me like the buttered ass of an eager hussy, and I am free and I am king. “King?” you say. “King?” Mais oui! For here’s the thing: In the mind’s revolution, each man is king. Who in his right mind would choose to imagine himself a vegetable-peeler?

  Four

  The first thing I do is to give Paris back her ornaments—that is to say, her signs, which were outlawed thirty years ago by that prick Sartines. He resented their size, unbridled paganism, ribaldry, and subversive humor (for there were caricatures of the clergy—wonderfully cruel—and pictures of kings being buggered by bankers). “Paris,” said Sartines, “chokes on obscenity.” It is true that the signs had proliferated to a dizzying degree, and they had succumbed to gigantism; it seemed the domestic articles of Brobdingnag were hanging everywhere. This proliferation was extreme, and yet in those riotous streets I remember so well, streets in which one needed to duck one’s head constantly else be brained by brass roosters, one walked turn by turn entranced, instructed, and amused: intoxicated!

  In those days, one read Paris like a book. Imagine Diderot’s Encyclopedia thus: Universally Intelligible! An entire education was there or, closer to the truth, potentially so. In other words, I like to imagine my Paris hung not only with pork hocks and wheels of cheese but—and why not?—with the lost phallus of Osiris! The sacred cats of Egypt! Apis and the gemmed bees of Childeric! Here: Perseus holds the Medusa by her hissing hair! There: Diana, buttocks alert, stands beside the plumed Serpent of the Mexicas! Above: Saint Frances’s tongue, and, farther down the street: the Holy Mother’s Immaculate Cunt!

  Speaking of Isis: I give Paris back to her. By hanging her image not only above every corset shop and dairy, but at the place where Gabrielle spent her infancy. In the shadow of St-Germain-des-Prés, I build her a temple, just as it was a few centuries ago, and as it had been since the Devil knows when. Black Isis, Queen of Egypt—I give Paris back to you!

  But wait! I am not quite finished hanging signs. If my city is to be instructive, it needs minerals and maps, examples of geological turbulences, body parts, botanical models, bestiaries, and more: throughout the city, accumulations of disparate things wired together and designating the public wonder rooms where a multiplicity of possible orderings of Nature would teach Rational Thought and, thus, Skepticism.

  Having imagined the signs, the inns (Le Con d’Or, La Bite d’Argent, Le Cul Royal, La Mandragore), the gardens (the Garden of Helpless Love, of Jealous Love, of Illicit Love, of Impossible Pleasures, of Memory, of Ideal Encounters, of Pandemonium, and of Promise), the whores (Séminale, Boulimia, Pomona, Féline, Sucette…), I next imagine a calendar of days:

  A day devoted to memory; an entire month devoted to the study of dreams; a festival in honor of the prostate, of seminal fluid, of the orgasm; the opening of an academy devoted to the erogenous zones; a day to honor the Dog Star, the equinoxes and solstices; a month to honor astronomy and all the planetary and stellar phenomena; a surgeon’s day; a day to honor pastry chefs (with prizes given to those most adept in the manufacture of puff pastry); a day devoted to the public mourning of Life’s Errors; an entire year given over to the study of Primary Causes; a day devoted to International Forums on Masturbation; a day taken up with the fabrication of grimoires of chocolate; a month to honor Architecture, vanilla, and the coffee bean; a day in which everyone will wear a Persian bonnet and make beer; a day to honor mollusks and polenta; an entire year devoted to roses, another to lilies, another to irises, another to the phallus, the cunt, and gingerbread; an entire century to celebrate the Death of God; an entire century to condemn Bad Faith, the notion of God’s Grace, the Guillotine, the Pillory, the hangman’s noose, and English cookery; a decade devoted to perfume.

  Saturdays: turned over to the painting and repair of all buildings public and private—everyone in work clothes, damsels with brooms, lots of fucking in municipal rooms; and in the evening: bonfires, pig roasts, carnival comedies.

  Sundays: a public scrubbing—all assholes good as new; free dental work and lessons in the morality of Amorous Strategy, the precepts of an Enlightened Atheism, the Erotic Arts, and Philosophical Inquiry. Free theater, bouquets of seasonal flowers, and novels offered all around; cannons melted down into goblets, water pipes, and cowbells; midnight balls and—in the Maya manner—barbecues.

  Monday through Friday: days officiated by a Papa Fatuatum—a Pope of Fools—to be elected each week. (All this as just another way of spitting in the eye of Saint-Just, who would have everyone a farmer, a soldier, or a worker—no fancies, no delights, no women! No fucking, no buggery, no sauces, candy, theater, books: just dull-witted eunuchs all dressed in canvas and horse hair and all made to sleep like cattle on the floor!)

  In my Paris, everyone has a bed, a big beautiful bed with curtains of calico (summer) and velvet (winter) and sheets as white as cream! These beds to be the sanctuaries of erotic experiment, clarity, and amorous confusion.

  In my Paris, drôles and drôlesses are so disguised as to have abandoned their particular humanity for a unique transparency of being. In other words: They are so visible in their disguises that they can no longer be seen. They bounce off the eye as a rubber ball bounces off the playing field. Wherever they walk, the city is a stage—a constant parade of true inventions! Fashion as the epitome of chaos! On stilts, in slippers of green glass, in pewter suits, in wigs of lilies…I dress my Paris in the hues not of convention, but of my own invention: fresh pea-porridge green, a deep violet called “Neptune’s balls,” rose the color of the palms of a Nigerian princess, a brassy gold called “Giulio Romano.” There are two rules only, and here they are:

  1. All ecclesiastical categories must be resolutely pagan or satirical.

  2. NOTHING WILL EVER RECUR.

  High Priests of Astonishment, Masters and Mistresses of Masturbatory Madness, the Hierophants of the Sexual Heart, the Earls of Ejaculation—all roll into town on Thursdays in shoes fitted out with wheels. They are dressed in the manner of Mozabites; they wear masks of silk and silk veils; only their sex—always prodigious—is visible. Their task is to animate and imagine the Public Peep Shows wherein one may see a naked Perseus sporting a stony phallus and approaching the Gorgon with horror and admiration, or simply watch a maiden sweetly sleeping, a flight of geese (now, there’s a thing of such sumptuous banality it makes me weep just to think of it!), a cat licking her paws, a fishwife fucking an eel, a child eating a waffle, a field of wild lilies, a forest stream, a meadow brook, the sky, the sea…

  This is what dreaming my Paris has taught me: that an infinite number of cities are possible; that our Revolution could have moved bloodlessly, with imagination and grace; that instead of burning, my Paris might have blossomed.

  Last night I dreamed of my enemy Restif. Because of my girth, I was sleeping on my back, although it is said that this is unhealth
y. I had pulled the bed curtains as close as I could to my body because of the intense cold, and the blankets—so threadbare they will have to be replaced sometime soon, but when?…the blankets I had pulled up to my nose.

  In my dream, Restif and I were walking toward the Maubée fountain among trollops tricked out in the feathers of pheasants and swans. Each one wore a red ribbon tied to her neck “to keep our heads where they belong!” (This shouted from the street by a strapping redhead who saw how we both stared.) Then all the whores laughed bitterly and cautiously together.

  We continued on. In the back of my mind I knew that Restif, although he was being companionable, was taking “the long way” to my execution. In the Faubourg-St-Martin, men moved like ghosts in the deserted streets, pushing wheelbarrows filled with human heads shorn of hair—a detail that struck me as particularly ominous as well as queer.…We found ourselves next crossing Rue St-Honoré by way of Les Poulies, where the blood of the slain had puddled. Someone had set down a makeshift bridge of planks, and we stepped across it gingerly. “Some stew of tripe!” Restif exclaimed. “Bah!” (He had soiled his shoes.)

  Then we were in St-Germain, and there came upon a throng of masons, carpenters, and the wives of executioners trafficking in the clothes of corpses and other nasty things; and also grooms, gold-beaters, doctors with their needle boxes and medicine bottles hanging from their headless necks; knife-sellers and salt-sellers. All were walking toward the Luxembourg gardens and holding their heads in their hands. In the cafés, the servers stood by looking dazed as their clients streamed past—clients who, had they wanted a glass of wine, could not have ordered it, nor drunk it down. “Business could be better,” a girl sighed as we passed, adjusting the ribbon at her neck with trembling fingers. “I’ve not poured a drink all morning!”

  The gardens had been torn apart to make room for the graves; everywhere the earth heaved with the dead or was deeply pitted with holes. The stench was untenable…and the noise! For the place swarmed with criers carrying shovels and shouting out the names of those sentenced:

  “Bernadette Fossour!”

  “Thomas Clipped”

  “Reine Latour!”

  “Martin Gueux!”

  One by one the dead leapt into the waiting graves, holding their heads and, as though they were playing a game, shouting:

  “Et hop!” And “Hop-là! Hop! Hop! Hop!”

  “You hear that?” I said, turning to Restif. “They’ve not called my name.”

  “But they shall!” he beamed. “Without a doubt!”

  Then all was submerged by a tide of bleating sheep, driven by shepherds who, above the tumult, shouted:

  “The dead, too, must eat!”

  “Since when are the needs of the dead of interest to the living?” Restif snorted disdainfully.

  The scene changed. We were in an open field. Exhausted, we spied a haystack and thought it a fine place to sleep. Drawing closer, I saw it was made not of hay but of hair; in any case, I did not want to spend the night in such close quarters with Restif. Leaving him there, I continued on alone until I came to a field of blue lupines. Stretching out among them, I awoke from my dream, having torn both blankets and ripped the curtains from their hooks!

  I awoke to a terrific hubbub: the sound of hammering and shouting. For one joyous instant I thought: They are taking down the guillotine at last!

  “It is the Festival of Reason!” the dullard who brings me my water each day informed me—having, as usual, spilled most of it before unlocking the door. “They say there’s people screwing on the altar in Notre-Dame! A regular orgy in the sacristy! A cobbler named Clootz pissed into the face of Jesus Christ!”

  “And down there?” I asked, peering out the window and into the courtyard, where the guillotine still loomed but where a platform was under construction. A crowd had gathered to watch men in britches the color of dung carry a crude statue as ugly as sin: “What the fuck is going on down there?”

  “Reason Herself!” the wine-sop sputtered with excitement. He put down the pitcher with such ill-advised force that it cracked. “She’s to stand beside the chopper—” Indeed, as he spoke the thing was hoisted up and set to stand beside the block.

  “The view,” I sighed, “is not much improved.” This bon mot caused the scoundrel to kick over my pitcher in a fit of temper. It shattered, and as he refused to bring me another I am forced to spend the day without water. To freshen my face I rubbed it with a little brandy I keep for head colds, but the nitwit left the chamber pot and I am forced to breathe that essence of man as I sit here, attempting to gather the shreds of myself about me, and this despite the racket.

  Ten will be executed today in Reason’s name: a most unreasonable number.

  So! The day dawns under the sign of the Broken Pitcher and the Full Chamber Pot. It is likely that the afternoon will unfold under the sign of Shadow. Already darkness, palpable, thick as treacle, enters into my body’s every orifice. Shadow is the primary sign and lesson of the times and the place; malgré moi I am a student of Applied Darkness.

  There are those born under the sign of Revolt; others under the sign I call the Maze; others, born under Charybdis, are designated by a vortex of gravel and ice. Good days—those animated by the sun, the ocelot, the water lily—when the mind heats up like a meteor and I, dizzy with the speed of the fall, cling to my pen (the one thing that grounds me)—I write. I write a storm of such power it annihilates everything else. Restif is right: My tower cannot contain it, and already it rages through the world. It sets the world on edge; it tips the balance of things. This storm is called Juliette, when it is not called Justine.

  Five

  Sade—you once said to me: “Living in a cell is like suckling a sword.” So it is for me tonight. If I lift my eyes from this letter for an instant only, I taste blood. But looking down, dipping my quill in this precious ink, the past resurges and I am far from this unforgiving place.…

  Thus Gabrielle continued her letter to me that last night. And, a thing marvelous in itself, as I read her letter I, too, travel back in time and space and am far, far away. The next morning, after their first amorous encounter, Gabrielle returned alone to the atelier in time to meet a party of Turks,

  all wanting some very sumptuous fans “depicting those delicious pleasures that decency keeps us from naming and that you”—each man prettily inclined his turbaned head—“execute with such delicacy.…” I showed them all we had. Their eyes were so hot I feared the fans would catch fire! But in the end, they requested new scenes from me. My female figures were not fat or pink enough! These swarthy men with raven beards were after blondes in the Flemish mode, rollicking in “exotic” interiors—that is to say, French gazebos and boudoirs well provided with bolsters and hassocks. In accordance with their taste, La Fentine, particularly fetching in striped cotton, made for us all coffee well flavored with cardamom, in the Turkish manner. We nibbled beignets from across the way—the ones you love (and who will get them to you now?)—dusted with sugar and flavored with orange-blossom water. The beignets, the coffee, the liberty with which Frenchwomen disport themselves, all conspired to prompt the handsomest of the group to invent these lines in our honor:

  O keeper of delight,

  May these ladies’ nights,

  Transpire beneath starry skies:

  Pleasure them, Allah,

  Until they die.

  These lines were supposedly intended for the three of us, yet were clearly inspired by La Fentine. Indeed, later in the day a gown of framboise and gold brocart arrived for her along with a card signed simply: “A Meanderer.” “This,” I told her, “means he comes from the Meander River valley. I remember my father once pointed to it on an old and brightly colored map.” La Fentine wanted to see the map but hélas, it had been lost when Father’s shop was burned. That a man might in his life take a winding course, as does a river, evoked something deep within her. All day La Fentine was silent—a thing wondrous in itself! When a small, beautifull
y wrought box of brass arrived the next day containing a solitary gem—a black pearl the size of an eye—I knew La Fentine would be leaving soon and did my best to prepare my heart against her absence. Four thousand fan-makers in Paris—but none as gifted as she. (As it turned out, business was slow and I did not replace her. I did not do badly—so many were out of work: the gauze- and lace-makers especially. The Revolution despises frivolity, as you know; more than one lace-maker is forced to fuck if she would eat!)

  The pearl had been set in silver. That afternoon, I put aside my paints and brushes to make for her a choker of braided ribbon the colors of silver old and new, with one solitary framboise thread running through. When La Fentine’s Meanderer reappeared with an invitation to dinner, she was ready. Tall and dark, slender as a reed, her breasts no bigger than plums, there was nothing “Flemish” about her! And yet…Her suitor had seen that she was a treasure house of tender pleasures. The night he came for her, La Fentine shimmered!

  Not long after, they married in Neuilly—in Monsieur de Saint-James’s eccentric garden. It was November. Well bundled up against the cold, the party drank to the couple’s health under trees hung with balls of yellow glass. We supped in an artificial grotto made into a fanciful arbor with the bones of fish, and heated with brass braziers as in Roman times. Monsieur de Saint-James, a collector of everything from fountains to the skins of snakes, was a feverish soul, harmless yet clearly mad. He pointed out the various species offish whose skeletons had provided the canopy: the ribs of whales, the spines of eels…the entire ceiling was constellated with starfish. (I have heard that these marvels were destroyed last summer, rather than saved for everyone’s delight. Yet it is foolish to mourn the passing of a fancy—no matter how charming—in times such as these.)