Torture Garden

by Octave Mirbeau

  “But captain,” I objected. “What about people’s rights? What about that?”

  The officer laughed. And raising his arms to the sky: “People’s rights!” he replied. “But that’s our right: to massacre people, in groups or individually, with shells or bullets – it doesn’t matter just so long as people are duly massacred!”

  One of the Chinese intervened:

  “But we’re not savages!” he said.

  “Not savages! And what are we then, I ask you? We’re worse savages than Australian aborigines since, although aware of our savagery, we persist in it. And since it is through war – in other words theft, pillage and massacre – that we learn to govern, trade, settle our differences and avenge our honour – well! We simply need to accept the drawbacks of this brutal state in which we nevertheless want to remain … We are brutes – so be it! Let’s behave like brutes!”

  Clara then spoke in a gentle and deep voice: “Anyway, it would be sacrilege to fight against death … Death is so beautiful!”

  She rose, completely white and mysterious under the electric light on the deck. The fine, long silk shawl in which she was enveloped shrouded her in pale and changing reflections. “See you tomorrow,” she said.

  We all hurriedly pressed around her. The officer took her hand and kissed it. I detested his masculine face, his supple waist, his nervous and forceful appearance. He apologised:

  “Pardon me,” he said, “for allowing myself to get carried away by such a subject, and to have forgotten that in the presence of a woman like you one should never speak about anything but love.”

  Clara replied: “But captain, whoever speaks about death is also speaking about love!”

  She took my arm and I accompanied her to her cabin where her women were waiting to prepare her for bed.

  The whole night I was haunted by massacres and destruction … My sleep was really disturbed that night – I saw that little blond fairy Dum-Dum laughing and leaping over the red heather in the rays of a blood-stained sun, that little fairy Dum-Dum with the eyes, the mouth and all the unknown and unveiled flesh of Clara.

  6 nib = nothing, in French slang.

  VII

  One time we were leaning side by side against the rail, my companion and I, watching the sea and sky. The day was drawing to a close. In the sky large birds, blue kingfishers, were following the ship, balancing with the exquisite movements of ballerinas. On the sea, shoals of flying fish rose from the water as we approached and, gleaming in the sunlight, landed further on, before setting off again, grazing the water whose blueness shone a vibrant turquoise that day. Then clusters of jellyfish – red, green, purple, pink and mauve jellyfish – floated like scattered flowers on the smooth surface, and so magnificent were their colours that Clara uttered cries of admiration as she pointed them out.

  Suddenly she asked me: “Tell me – what are those marvellous creatures called?”

  I could have invented bizarre names or sought some scientific classification. I didn’t even try. Impelled by an immediate, spontaneous and fierce need for frankness, I replied firmly: “I’ve no idea!”

  I felt I was lost, that I had lost without hope of remission that whole vague and charming dream which had cradled my hopes and calmed my worries … that I was going to fall deeper than ever into the inevitable squalor of my outcast existence. I felt that. And yet there was something within that was stronger than me, and which ordered me to cleanse myself of my impostures, falsehoods and the inevitable abuse of confidence by which, in a cowardly and fraudulent way, I had betrayed the friendship of someone who had faith in my words.

  “No – I really don’t know!” I repeated, giving the simple denial a character of dramatic intensity it hardly merited.

  “How oddly you say that! Are you mad? What’s the matter?” asked Clara, amazed by my tone of voice and my strangely incoherent gestures.

  “I don’t know! I don’t know! I don’t know!”

  And to give a greater force of conviction to this triple, ‘I don’t know!’, I banged the rail violently three times.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? You’re a scientist … a naturalist …”

  “I’m not a scholar, Miss Clara … I’m not a naturalist … I’m nothing,” I cried. “A wretch, yes, I’m a wretch! I lied to you … shamefully so … You should know the sort of man I am … Listen …”

  Breathlessly and confusedly, I recounted my life. Eugène, Madame G …, the imposture of my mission, all the unsavoury things I’ve done, all my dirty deeds … I took an atrocious joy in accusing myself, presenting myself to be more vile, more of an outcast and still blacker than I was … When I had finished this sorrowful tale, I told my companion, in a flood of tears:

  “Now it’s over! You’ll detest me … despise me like everyone else … you’ll turn away from me with disgust. And you’ll be right to do so … I won’t complain … It’s appalling! But I can’t go on like this any longer … I don’t want these lies between us …”

  I cried abundantly, stammering out disjointed words like a child.

  “It’s appalling … appalling! And I who … for after all … it’s true, I swear it to you! I, who … you understand … It was a chain of events, that’s what it was, a chain of events – and I was caught up in it. I didn’t know … And then your soul … ah, your soul … your dear soul, and your looks of purity … and your … your dear, yes, finally, your sweet soul … your charming welcome … that was my salvation, my redemption, my, my … It’s appalling, appalling! … I’ve lost everything! … It’s frightful!”

  While I was speaking and weeping, Miss Clara was looking fixedly at me. Oh, that look! Never, no, never, should I forget the look that adorable woman fixed me with, an extraordinary look in which amazement was mingled with joy, pity and love – yes, love – as well as malice and irony … and everything … a look which pierced me through, penetrating into me and overwhelming me body and soul.

  “Well!” she said simply. “I’m not surprised … I genuinely think that all scholars are like you.”

  Without taking her eyes off me, laughing her clear and pretty laugh, a laugh that resembled a bird’s song: “I used to know one,” she continued. “He was a naturalist … the same sort as you. The English government had sent him to study coffee parasites in the Ceylon plantations … Well, for the whole three months, he never left Colombo … He spent his time playing poker and getting drunk on champagne.”

  Still looking at me, strangely, deeply, and sensuously, she added, after a few moments’ silence, and in a tone of pity in which I seemed to hear all the joy of forgiveness:

  “Oh, what a little rascal!”

  I no longer knew what to say, whether to laugh or cry, or whether to kneel at her feet. Timidly, I stammered: “Then … You don’t despise me? You forgive me?”

  “Silly!” she said … “What a silly little fool!”

  “Clara! Clara! Can it be?” I cried, almost collapsing with happiness.

  As the dinner-bell had long since rung, and no one remained on that part of the deck, I came closer to Clara, so close that I could feel her hips trembling against me and her bosom heaving. Seizing her hands, which she let me hold, my heart rose in tumult within me as I cried: “Clara! Clara! Do you love me? Ah, I beg you! Do you love me?”

  She replied feebly: “I’ll tell you this evening … in my cabin!”

  In her eyes I saw the flicker of a green flame, a terrible flame which frightened me … She withdrew her hands from my grasp and suddenly a hard line crossed her forehead. With her neck bowed, she was silent as she gazed across the sea.

  What was she thinking about? I didn’t know … But as she continued to gaze over the sea, it occurred to me:

  “When I was a respectable man in her eyes, she didn’t love me … or desire me. But the moment she realised who I really was, when she breathed in the veritable and impure odour of my soul, love was born in her. Because she did love me! What do you know! The only thing with real sub
stance is evil!”

  Evening had appeared and, without any twilight, night fell. An inextinguishable sweetness permeated the air. The ship sailed through seething phosphorescent foam. A great brightness grazed the sea … You would have thought that fairies were rising from the depths, scattering long cloaks of fire across the sea, trailing and throwing handfuls of golden pearls into it.

  VIII

  One morning, upon reaching the deck, the transparency of the atmosphere allowed me to make out, and as clearly as though I was treading its earth, the marvellous island of Ceylon, a green and red land, crowned with the bewitching rosy whiteness of Adam’s peak. We had already been alerted to its approach the previous evening by the new perfumes of the sea and by a mysterious invasion of butterflies which, after accompanying the ship for some hours, suddenly vanished. Thinking about nothing else, Clara and I found it exquisite that the island had extended such a welcome to us through the intermediary of these dazzling and poetic messengers. I had now reached such a point of sentimental lyricism that the mere sight of a butterfly made all the harps of tenderness and ecstasy resound within me.

  But that morning the sight of Ceylon itself caused me anguish – no, more than anguish, terror. What I perceived over there beyond the waves, at that moment the colour of forget-me-not, was not a territory, not a port, nor the ardent curiosity of everything that stirs within man when the veil on the unknown is about to be raised. It was a brutal recall back to the wretchedness of my life, a return to my neglected instincts, a bitter and desolate re-awakening to everything that, during the crossing, had lain dormant within me … and that I thought was dead! It was more distressing than I had ever believed it could be and it was impossible for me not merely to understand, but to conceive, of its impossible reality: the end of that marvellous dream established by Clara’s love. For the first time a woman possessed me. I was her slave, I desired only her. Nothing existed any more outside and beyond her. Instead of extinguishing the flames of this love, to partake of it every day revived its flames. Each time I descended further into the blazing gulf of her desire, and each day I strongly felt that my life would be completely exhausted as it sought to touch its depths! How could I envisage having been conquered – body, soul and mind – by this irrevocable, indissoluble and tormenting love, and now leave her? Madness! This love was as much part of me as my own flesh. It had replaced my blood and my essence. It entirely possessed me. It was me! To separate myself from it was to separate me from myself. It was to kill myself. Even worse! It was an absurd nightmare in which my head would be in Ceylon and my feet in China, separated by chasms of the sea, and in which my life would continue to be separated into these two sections which would no longer join together! That, the very next day, I would no longer possess those enraptured eyes, those devouring lips, the miracle – each night more unexpected – of that body in its divine forms, wild embraces and, after long spasms as powerful as crime and as deep as death, those laughs, those artless stammerings, those little groans, little laughs, little tears and weary little songs of children or birds – was it possible? And I would be losing all that was more crucial to my breathing than my lungs, to my thinking than my brain, for filling my veins with warm blood than my heart! Never! I belonged to Clara, as the coal belongs to the fire which devours and consumes it. We both thought it was too inconceivable and too madly chimerical a separation, and so contrary to the laws of nature and life, that we had never spoken about it. The evening before our two mingled souls still dreamt – without even telling one another – of nothing but the eternity of the voyage, as if the ship bearing us would continue forever and ever, and never, never arrive anywhere … For to arrive somewhere … was to die!

  And yet, here I was about to disembark, plunge into that green and red land and vanish into the unknown … more frighteningly alone than ever! And also Clara would soon be no more than a phantom, a barely visible grey speck in space … then nothing … nothing, nothing! Ah, anything but that! Ah, if only the sea would swallow us both up!

  The sea was smooth, calm and radiant … It exhaled the fragrance of a favourite shore, of an orchard in blood, of the lovers’ bed, and it brought tears to my eyes.

  The deck was crowded. Nothing but joyous features and looks bursting with expectation and curiosity.

  “We’re entering the bay … We’re in the bay!”

  “I see the coast.”

  “I see the trees.”

  “I see the lighthouse.”

  “We’ve arrived … We’ve arrived!”

  Each of these exclamations fell heavily on my heart. I wanted to get away from the vision of the still faraway island, so impeccably distinct, which each rotation of the propeller brought closer to me, and, turning away, I gazed into the infinity of the sky where I wanted to lose myself like the birds over there, momentarily passing through the air and merging so gently with it.

  Clara did not delay joining me. Was it due to too much love-making? Because of having wept so much? She had black rings around her eyes which, in their blue surroundings, expressed great sadness. And there was more than sadness there. There really was an ardent pity, at once combative and compassionate. Beneath her heavy golden-brown hair, her brow was crossed with the fold of a shadow, that fold she revealed in both sensuality and in pain … A strange intoxicating perfume wafted from her hair. She said this simple word:

  “Already?”

  “Unfortunately!” I sighed.

  She adjusted her hat, a little sailor’s hat which she fastened by means of a long gold pin. Her raised arms highlighted her breasts and I saw their sculptural lines beneath her white blouse. She continued in a voice which trembled a little.

  “Have you thought about it?”

  “No!”

  Clara bit her lips and blood ran to them: “And then?” she said.

  I didn’t reply … I didn’t have the strength to reply … My head was empty and my heart torn open, I would have liked to slip into the void … she was moved and very pale … except for her mouth, which seemed redder and heavy from kisses. For a long time her eyes questioned me with a significant fixity.

  “The boat puts into port at Colombo for two days. And then it leaves. Did you know?”

  “Yes! Yes!”

  “And then?”

  “And then … it’s over!”

  “Can’t I do something for you?”

  “Nothing, thanks! Since it’s over!”

  And repressing my sobs at the back of my throat, I stammered:

  “You have been everything for me – you have been more than everything! … It’s too painful … too uselessly painful. Don’t say anything else … it’s over now!”

  “Nothing is ever over,” pronounced Clara. “Nothing – not even death!”

  A bell chimed out … Ah, that bell! How it chimed in my heart! It tolled the death-knell of my heart!

  The passengers hastened to the deck, crying out, exclaiming, exchanging comments, pointing field-glasses and binoculars and cameras at the approaching island. The man from Normandy, pointing to the masses of verdure, explained the impenetrable jungles to the hunter … and amid the tumult and jostling the two Chinese, indifferent and reflective, hands crossed under ample sleeves, continued their slow and grave daily walk, like two priests reciting the breviary.

  “We’ve arrived!”

  “Hurrah! Hurrah! We’ve arrived!”

  “I can see the city …”

  “No, it’s a coral reef…”

  “I can make out the wharf…”

  “No, no you can’t…”

  “What is that coming up over there on the sea?”

  Already a small flotilla of barges with pink sails could be seen in the distance coming towards the steamer. The two funnels, discharging torrents of black smoke, covered the sea with mourning-shadow, and the siren wailed endlessly, endlessly …

  No one paid any heed to us. Clara asked me, in an imperiously tender tone: “So! What’s to become of you?”

>   “I don’t know … What does it matter? I was lost … I met you … For a few days you held me back from the brink of an abyss. Now I shall plunge into it. It was fated.”

  “Fated? … You’re a child! And you don’t have enough confidence in me … Do you think you met me by chance?”

  She added, after a pause: “It’s so simple! I have powerful friends in China. They would undoubtedly be able to help you a lot. Would you like me to speak to them? …”

  I didn’t give her a chance to finish:

  “No, no, not that!” I pleaded, justifying myself lamely. “Anything but that! I know what you mean. Don’t say anything more.”

  “You’re a child,” repeated Clara. “You speak as you would in Europe, dear. And you have stupid scruples, just as they have in Europe. In China life is free, happy and boundless, free from conventions and without prejudices and laws. At least for us … Liberty has no other limits than yourself … nor love anything but the triumphant variety of your desires. Europe and its hypocritical barbaric civilisation is a lie. What else do you find there but lies? You lie to yourself and to others – you lie about everything that, in the depths of your soul, you recognise as the truth? You are forced to pretend outward respect for people and institutions which you find ridiculous … You remain cowardly attached to moral or social conventions you despise, condemn and which you know lack all foundation … It’s the permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires on the one hand and all the dead forms and vain phantoms of your civilisation on the other that makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality because every moment the free play of your strength is restrained, impeded and checked. That’s the poisonous and mortal wound of the civilised world. With us, there’s nothing like that … you’ll see! In Canton I own a palace with marvellous gardens where everything is conducive to a free life and to love. What are you afraid of? What are you leaving behind? Who cares about you? When you don’t love me any more, or when you’re too unhappy … you’ll go away!”