Project for a Revolution in New York

by Alain Robbe-Grillet

  “From what point of view would that be an exaggeration?”

  “From the lexicological point of view.”

  “You regard such things as inexactitudes?”

  “No, not at all!”

  “Material errors?”

  “That is not the question.”

  “Lies, then?”

  “Still less!”

  “In that case, I must say I do not see what it is you mean. I am making my report, that’s all there is to it. The text is correct, nothing is left up to chance, you have to take it as it is given.”

  “No reason to get excited … One other thing: you mention West Greenwich or the Madison subway station—any American would say ‘the West Village’ or ‘Madison Avenue.’”

  “This time I must say you’re the one who’s exaggerating! Especially since no one has ever claimed that the narrative was being made by an American. Don’t forget that it is always foreigners who prepare the revolution. Now where was I?”

  “You had begun two stories at once, interrupted for no reason one after the other. On the one hand, the black mass in which you had sacrificed the twelve communicants, with the employment made that day of crosses, eucharists, candles, as well as huge candlesticks with iron points which serve to impale them. On the other hand, the way in which Sara, the lovely half-caste, had been impregnated by Dr. Morgan with sperm of the white race, extracted by Joan from old Goldstücker. Moreover, there is, in this regard, a contradiction in your narrative: you say in one place that the patient was naked, and in another that she was wearing a red dress.”

  “I see that you have not been following my explanations carefully: that was another day, another doctor, and another victim. The artificial insemination was performed not by Dr. Morgan but by a certain Doctor M. Moreover it is very difficult to distinguish them from each other because they are wearing the same mask, bought from the same manufacturer with the same purpose: to inspire confidence. This M’s real name is something like Mahler or Müller; he runs a psychotherapeutical center in the Forty-second Street subway station. As for the girl in the red dress, that is not Sara, that is Laura; in that instance, the practitioner was not holding a catheter but a syringe for injecting serum—truth serum, of course. I nonetheless insisted on all these details, in their proper time and place. Dr. Morgan had been introduced into the narrator’s house without breaking in, after having had a key made, quite simply, by a neighboring locksmith (and not like the psychotherapeutic family doctor, whom we shall call Müller, for the sake of simplicity, by breaking a windowpane at the top of the fire escape, according to what has been reported on several occasions).

  “The day of the injection was also that of JR’s execution; so Morgan was sure of finding Laura alone in the house (Ben-Saïd had carefully recorded the so-called brother’s departure, and then his arrival at the empty lot). The purpose of the operation, easy enough to understand, was to find out, finally, who the girl is, where she comes from, and why she is hiding there.”

  “One last question before allowing you to continue: You have once or twice employed the word ‘cut’ in the body of the text; what does it mean?”

  “An incision made by razor blade in the satiny, generally convex but sometimes concave surface of pink or white flesh.”

  “No, that’s not it; I am talking about an isolated word, like the term ‘retake’ which we have already discussed, and concerning which you have, moreover, furnished satisfactory explanations.”

  “Then the answer is the same here (or, in any case, of the same order) as the one given on that occasion. It is a matter of indicating a cut in the course of a narrative: a sudden interruption necessitated by some material reason, purely internal or on the contrary external to the narrative; for example, in the present case: your untimely questions, which show the excessive importance you yourself accord to certain passages (even by reproaching me for them subsequently) and the lack of attention you pay to all the rest. But I shall continue, otherwise we shall never be finished. At the moment when N. G. Brown (often known as N, for simplicity’s sake) bursts into the library, Sarah Goldstücker, the banker’s real daughter (begotten long ago by the artificial means just described), is lying entirely naked, defenseless, heavy cords crisscrossing her body, except for her legs which Dr. Morgan has just freed from their fetters, in order to attach them forthwith in another manner, more in accord with his plans: the ankles and knees fastened tight to four rings attached to sixty-pound cast-iron weights, arranged more or less at the four corners of a square, which keeps the thighs wide open, their outer surfaces pressing on the stone floor and the knees bent at an angle of approximately forty-five degrees. The inner surface of the thighs, the anus, the vagina and above all the breasts are a somewhat paler hue than the rest of the flesh, dull and coppery, which reveals the mixture of white, African, and Indian blood, also betrayed by the mixture of indigo-blue eyes, inherited from her father, and the long, smooth, shiny and abundant hair, which is inky black with violet highlights.”

  The alluring face, the delicate and regular features, at least insofar as several strands of hair lying across the nose and cheek make it possible to judge (is the disorder of the hair the result of a struggle, or of careless treatment beforehand?), scattered curls whose spirals partly conceal the countenance, the disturbing effect being further increased by a red silk gag which distorts the mouth by sawing at the corners of the lips, not to mention the tilt of the head which the arms tied together behind her slant backward, the captive thus being unable to look in any direction except to the side, where, close to her left shoulder, her eyes wide with horror stare at the giant poisonous spider of the species called “black widow” which has just escaped from the surgeon, confused in his monstrous experiment, and has come to rest for the moment about six inches from the armpit, at the very edge of the circle of bright light cast on the floor by the powerful lamp with its jointed shaft whose base is screwed to the corner of the metal desk covered with papers, among which one white page as yet bears only brief manuscript notes, in the upper right corner, accompanied by an anatomical drawing of axial symmetry, the outlines precise and complicated, representing the vulva, the clitoris, the inner lips, and the entirety of the external female genitals.

  But Doctor Morgan, who has eyes now only for the intruder whose identity he believes he divines under the mass, though still without being able to be certain, slowly stands up and begins retreating toward the other door. Since his rival hesitates as to what it would now be best to do, the surgeon takes advantage of this moment to regain the vestibule, step by step, his eyes still fixed on the slits in the black mask in which gleam two golden pupils; then, suddenly, he turns around toward the still wide-open door in order to leap down the three steps outside and—now pursued by Brown—escape as fast as he can down the straight street, running toward the subway entrance.

  In the recess formed by the house opposite, Ben-Saïd, who was still holding his little notebook open and his pencil ready to write, notes the exact hour when he saw emerge one after the other, at three seconds’ interval, the doctor with the steel-rimmed glasses who has not even taken time to remove his white coat, so eager does he seem to leave the premises (doubtless summoned by some appointment of extreme urgency), then the man in a tuxedo with the invisible face who has just entered the building with the help of the locksmith.

  The locksmith has cautiously made his way down the corridor, after some delay, to the entrance of the house. And here, circumspectly holding the edge of the heavy door which he remains prepared to close at the first sign of danger, he sees the other two men vanishing on the horizon. It is at this moment that he hears a horrible scream from inside, unmistakably emanating where the captive is still lying. He whirls around and in a few steps again enters the library. In his haste, by an inconsistent reflex of cowardice, he has pushed the street door, which makes a muffled sound as it closes. Having again consulted his watch, the spy in the black raincoat and the soft hat notes the time o
n his memorandum.

  The short bald man, realizing that he is now alone, closes the library door more calmly behind him, while staring, under the double cone of harsh light from the spotlights, at the young brown-skinned woman who is struggling hard in her bonds; and having come closer, he now understands what keeps her from raising her head or the upper part of her body: the cords which tie her torso and arms together, sinking deep into the flesh where it is tenderest and fastening the wrists up under the shoulder blades, are furthermore attached on the left and the right to the heavy cast-iron bases of the two spotlights. The unfortunate Sarah, who cannot beg for mercy or assistance, because of the gag lacerating her mouth, nor release her bruised hands, nor even move her shoulders, any more than she can close her thighs an inch, has seen the hairy animal, with which the doctor was preparing to continue his lunatic experiments, leap upon her, run zigzag over her bare flesh in tiny, rapid jerks broken by sudden halts, from the sweat-beaded armpit to the delicate neck, then toward the exposed belly and down to the hollow of the thighs, then back up the right side of the anus and the hip to the breast crushed by two rough cords which cross just under the nipple, finally over to the other breast, the left one, remaining somewhat freer between two twists of hemp whose proximity to one another nonetheless squeezes the delicate hemisphere, forcing the elastic tissue to bulge into a smooth, tight globe of pain, which seems ready to burst at the least prick. Yet it is this spot that the giant spider seems to have selected, wandering more slowly over these few square centimeters of hypersensitive skin, where its eight hairy legs produce the unendurable sensation of an endless electric discharge.

  The locksmith voyeur, leaning over the scene because of his extreme shortsightedness, cannot tear his eyes away from this batlike body covered with a black fur with violet highlights, waving like tentacles an alarming number of long hooked appendices, if not from the harmonious lines of the victim exposed to its bites, rendered still more interesting by the fetters which bind her, squeeze her flesh, oblige her to remain in a cruel position, expose her utterly to the view of the onlookers. The most recent of these notices, in this regard, a curious detail: the equilateral triangle of fur, clearly outlined and of modest proportions, which embellishes the pubic area, has a splendid jet-black color like that of the animal itself.

  The animal, having doubtless found, at last, the best place to bite its victim, has come to a halt at the edge of the swelling aureole, painted a bright sepia. Here, the chelicerae of the mouthparts, surrounded by continually moving maxillary palps, approach the coppery skin several times, then draw back as if they were licking or savoring in tiny mouthfuls a delicate food, finally attaching themselves to a point of the slightly grainy surface, speckled with lighter papillae, and slowly thrust in, pinching the flesh together, like the iron pliers with their sharp red-hot hooks, which are torturing another blessed virgin with the name of some iridescent stone, in a public square, in Catania.

  The girl is then seized by violent, periodic spasms, producing a kind of shifting, rhythmical contraction which extends from the inner surface of her thighs to the navel, whose precise folds form, in intaglio, a miniature rose just beneath one of the excessively tight strands of the cord, which narrows the waist still more, making a deep curve above the hips and belly. Then the lovely head, the only part of her body she can move at all, flings itself convulsively to the right and the left, once, twice, three times, four, five, and finally falls back lifeless, while the whole body suddenly seems to go slack. Then, the girl remains motionless and slack, like one of those Japanese slave-dolls sold in the souvenir shops of Chinatown, abandoned to every whim, the mouth permanently silent, the eyes fixed.

  The spider has loosened its jaws, withdrawn its venom fangs; its task completed, it climbs down to the floor, wavering slightly, makes another slow, broken line and suddenly, at a speed so great that it seems more like a shadow, leaps toward a corner of the room, climbs from shelf to shelf up the empty bookcases to the top, whence it had come, and where it once again disappears.

  After a moment’s thought, the short bald man extends a timid forefinger toward the coppery temple. The slender artery is no longer throbbing. The girl is certainly dead. Then, with gentle, meticulous gestures, he decides to set his toolbox down on the floor, having shifted it to his left shoulder after working the latch and kept it there since, during his comings and goings in the corridor. Then he kneels between the cast-iron weights, lies down carefully on the amber-colored body, whose still burning vagina he deflowers with a well-aimed thrust of the hips.

  After some time, busy violating the warm and docile corpse, the short man straightens up, restores order to his clothes, runs his hands over his face, as if the upper part of his neck were itching. He scratches a long time on both sides; then, unable to stand it any longer, he pulls off the mask of the bald locksmith which covered his head and face, gradually ripping off the layer of plastic material and gradually revealing in its stead the features of the real Ben-Saïd.

  But suddenly, just as he has completely removed the mask, whose limp skin is now hanging from his right hand, he wonders anxiously who it was that screamed, just now, when he was looking out at the street through the still-open door. It could not have been the dazzling half-caste terrorized by the spider, since the thick gag prevented any sound from passing her lips. Was there another woman in the house? Stricken with an irrational fear, Ben-Saïd opens the door to the vestibule and cocks his ears. Everything seems still in the huge building. He pushes the door farther open. Opposite him he sees his own face in the mirror, above the table. A little too quickly, without taking the requisite pains, he pastes on the conscientious artisan’s mask again, checking his gestures as well as he can in the mirror; but the skin, poorly fitted, produces folds under the jawbone, and a kind of nervous tic twitches across the cheek several times, as though trying to put things back in place, to no avail of course.

  There is no time to lose. At random, although no longer knowing exactly where he is and what he is doing, Ben-Saïd, by sheer force of habit, leaves a calling card between the bruised breasts of the corpse, after having written on it in clumsy capitals with his felt marker, using the marble table top as a desk, these words which seem to him appropriate to the situation: “So die the blue-eyed black girls the night of the Revolution.” Glancing at an unopened letter which is lying there, he is once again seized by a series of tics running from the base of his ear to the corner of his lips.

  Finally, having glanced around the entire scene, to make sure everything is in order, he replaces the leather strap of his tool kit on his shoulder. A last movement of his head toward the mirror, several still undecided steps to the windowpane where the overcomplicated cast-iron pattern makes it difficult to see clearly what is outside, and he makes up his mind to face the street: with quick, abrupt little gestures, he works the inside latch, slides through the opening once it is wide enough, crosses the threshold, walks down the three steps, and walks away along the wall, taking hurried little steps until he is out of sight. It is only then, while the muffled click of the latch and the long vibration of the heavy oak door are still echoing in his ear, having been pulled shut by the doorknob in the shape of a hand, that the short bald man remembers having forgotten on the marble table top, between the brass candlestick and the envelope probably delivered in the morning mail, the skeleton key with which he had worked the latch and opened the door.

  On the opposite sidewalk, in the recess of the wall, the man in the black raincoat and the soft felt hat pulled down over his eyes again pulls out his notebook from his pocket, takes off his leather gloves, glances at his watch, and writes down this event after all the rest.

  Laura, meanwhile, who has heard the door slam shut, and observed through the window at the end of the corridor, at the top of the fire escape, the reassuring presence of her guardian, begins climbing down from floor to floor in order to inspect all the rooms one after the other, opening the doors one after the other, gently turni
ng the ceramic knob, then pushing shut the door … This time she is certain she heard suspicious noises, but coming from the lower floors … It is, in fact, only at the last door, all the way downstairs, that she discovers the lifeless body of the young half-caste with whom she had been playing all afternoon … yesterday afternoon, probably … She approaches, without showing any surprise at the sight of the apparatus of cords, cast-iron weights and spotlights, to which her previous investigations have accustomed her, more astonished at seeing so little blood, even more astonished by the calling card whose text she reads over several times, without managing to grasp its meaning: “So die the blue-eyed black girls …”

  The young girl, as a matter of fact, cannot guess the similar mistake made at the same moment by the false locksmith and a little earlier by Doctor Morgan. The latter, as has already been reported, has managed to make his way into the narrator’s house at a time when he believes him to be detained far away by Joan’s execution, she having been sentenced by the secret tribunal when her triple adherence to the Irish race, the Catholic religion, and the New York police was discovered. To get into the building is easy, thanks to the fire escape: it is enough to break a windowpane, thrust a hand inside, work the latch, etc.

  The surgeon, guided by a kind of muffled moaning which comes from the lower floors, then climbs down the main staircase to the ground floor, where he discovers a young girl bound fast, which scarcely surprises him: this is doubtless the best way of keeping the little imprisoned ward from committing some foolishness or even from running away. As for the coppery color of her skin, entirely exposed, and as for the inky hair, they are also easily explained, although they scarcely correspond to the descriptions provided Frank by the spy on duty, describing N. G. Brown’s secret companion on the contrary as blond, pale pink, and more or less pre-pubescent. This must doubtless be a disguise intended to deceive possible visitors, for Brown is not naïve enough to be unaware that he remains at the mercy of a check instituted, unknown to himself, by the organization. And in that case, isn’t a dark skin the best guarantee of all? A black-girl’s mask, a wig, the plastic film covering the whole of the body, including a few additional charms, is the sort of thing to be found in any store. The subterfuge is obvious, and betrayed immediately, moreover, by the captive’s blue eyes.