“Come, dear ones, come more quickly. Where you’re going there is even more pain, more torture, more blood flowing and dripping to the ground, more contorted and torn bodies at their last gasp on iron tables, more cut open flesh swaying from the gallows’ rope, more horror and more hell. Come, my loves, come, with lips together and hand in hand. Look among the leaves and the latticework, look at the infernal diorama as it unfolds and at the diabolical festival of death.”
Trembling all over, her teeth grinding, her eyes having once again become fervid and cruel, Clara remained quiet. She was silent as we walked along, listening to the voices of those flowers in which she recognised her own voice, her voice of dreadful days and homicidal nights, a voice of ferocity, sensuality and pain which seemed to be coming at once from the depths of the earth and the depths of death and equally from the deepest and blackest depths of her soul.
A strident noise, like the creaking of a pulley, penetrated the air. Then there was something very soft and very pure, like the echo of a crystal cup into which a moth in flight had crashed in the evening air. We then entered a vast curving avenue bordered on either side by high lattices which cast filtered shadows of small diamond-shaped light over the sand. Clara avidly stared between the lattices and the leaves. And despite myself, despite my sincere resolution to henceforth close my eyes to this accursed spectacle, I too looked among the leaves and the lattices, attracted by the strange attraction exerted by horror and overwhelmed by that invincible vertigo of abominable curiosity.
And this is what we saw:
On the plateau of a spacious and low knoll on which the avenue ended in a continuous and imperceptible ascent, there was a round space, skilfully arranged by expert gardeners like an arboretum. Enormous, thick-set, of matt bronze lugubriously patined red, stood the bell, in the centre of this clearing, suspended by a pulley hook on the top girder of a kind of guillotine in black wood whose uprights were ornamented with gilt inscriptions and terrifying masks. Four men, naked to the waist, muscles tense and skin so distended as to no longer be more than a bundle of bloated swellings, were drawing up the pulley rope and, rhythmically combined, their efforts could barely raise or even move the heavy mass of metal which, at each tremor, exhaled an almost inaudible sound, that sweet, pure and plaintive sound we had heard just a while before and whose vibrations were lost and died away in the flowers. The clapper, a heavy iron pestle, was gently swaying but without touching the bell’s sonorous wall, for it was so tired of having tolled some poor devil’s death knell for so long. Under the bell’s cupola two other men, their thighs bare except for thongs of brown wool and their torsos gleaming with sweat, were bending over something we couldn’t see. And their chests, with ribs sticking out and flanks that were thin, heaved like those of foundered horses.
All this was vaguely discerned in a rather confused and jumbled way in the gaps in the foliage and between the diamond shapes of the lattice, broken up in innumerable interruptions and then re-constituted.
“We must hurry! We must hurry!” exclaimed Clara, closing her parasol and boldly lifting her dress to her thighs in order to walk faster.
The avenue was still winding ahead of us, sometimes in sunlight, other times in shade, and changing appearance at each instant, ever more mingling inexorable horror with floral beauty.
“Look carefully, my darling,” said Clara. “Look everywhere. We’re in the most beautiful and interesting part of the garden. Look! Those flowers, oh, those flowers!”
She pointed out strange plants growing in the ground across which water gushed forth from all sides. I approached. On high stalks, scaly and stained black like snakeskins, were enormous spars, kind of funnel-shaped cornets with the dark violet of putrefaction inside, and the greenish yellow of decomposition outside, like the open thoraxes of dead animals. Long, blood-red spadices, imitating monstrous phalluses, came forth from these cornets. Attracted by the corpse-like odour that these horrible plants exhaled, flies hovered in concentrated swarms, swallowed up at the bottom of the spar, which was adorned from top to bottom with silky contractiles that enlaced the flies and held them prisoner more effectively than any spider’s web. Along the stem, the digitalised leaves were clenched and twisted like the hands of men under torture.
“You see, darling,” declared Clara. “These flowers are not the creation of a sick mind or a delirious genius – they’re of nature … Didn’t I tell you that nature loves death?”
“Nature also creates monsters!”
“Monsters! Monsters! There are no monsters! What you call monsters are superior forms or simply beyond your understanding. Aren’t gods monsters? Isn’t a man of genius a monster, like the tiger, the spider, like all individuals who live beyond social lies in the dazzling and divine immortality of things? Why, by that token, I’m also a monster!”
We had now entered into bamboo palisades along which ran honeysuckle, odorous jasmine, begonia, mauve tree ferns and climbing hibiscus that had not yet blossomed. Moonseed wrapped itself around a stone column with its countless liana. At the top of the column the face of a hideous divinity grimaced, its ears stretched like bats’ wings, its hair ending in fiery horns. Incarvillea, day-lilies, morea and delphinium nudicaul concealed the base with their pink bells, scarlet thyrses, golden calyxes and purple stars. Covered with ulcers, gnawed away by vermin, a mendicant bonze, who seemed to be the guardian of the edifice, was training Tourane mongoose to make perilous leaps and cursed out loud when he saw us:
“Dogs! Dogs! Dogs!”
We had to throw some coins to this maniac whose invective went beyond the most outrageous obscenities conceived by the indignation of the filthiest mind.
“I know him!” said Clara. “He is like priests of every religion. He wants to scare us into giving him money. But he’s not a bad devil!”
Here and there, in the indentations of the palisade, appearing like halls of verdure and flower-beds, were wooden benches equipped with chains and bronze necklaces, iron tables shaped like crosses, blocks and racks, gibbets, automatic quartering machines, beds laden with cutting blades, bristling with steel points, fixed chokers, props and wheels, boilers and basins above extinguished hearths, all the implements of sacrifice and torture covered in blood – in some places dried and darkish, in others sticky and red. Puddles of blood filled the hollows in the ground and long tears of congealed blood hung from the dismantled mechanisms. Around these machines the ground had absorbed the blood. But blood still stained the whiteness of the jasmines and flecked the coral-pink of the honeysuckles and the mauve of the passion flowers. And small fragments of human flesh, caught by whips and leather lashes, had flown here and there onto the tops of petals and leaves. Noticing that I was feeling faint and that I flinched at these puddles whose stains had enlarged and reached the middle of the avenue, Clara, in a gentle voice, encouraged me:
“That’s nothing yet, darling … Let’s go on!”
But it was difficult to continue. The plants, the trees, the atmosphere and the ground were full of flies, intoxicated insects, wild and aggressive beetles and glutted mosquitoes. All the fauna of the corpse was hatching out in swarms all around us in the sun. Disgusting larvae swarmed in the red pools and fell in soft clusters from the branches. The sand seemed to be breathing and walking, sustained by the movement, by the swarming of vermicular life. Deafened and blinded, we were halted at each moment by these humming swarms which multiplied and whose mortal stings I dreaded for Clara’s sake. And at times we had the horrible sensation that our feet were sinking into the soaked earth, as though it had been raining blood!
“That’s nothing yet!” repeated Clara. “Let’s go on.”
And, as though to complete the drama, human faces appeared: gangs of workers who, with an air of nonchalance, were cleaning and restoring the torture instruments as the executions in the garden were over for the day. They looked at us, probably amazed to come upon – in that moment and at that place – two beings still standing upright, two beings still
alive and with heads, legs and arms intact. Further on, squatting on the ground in the posture of a grotesque figurine, we came upon an obese and easy going potter who was glazing freshly cut flowerpots. Nearby, a basket-weaver, with indolent and precise fingers, was weaving supple rushes and rice straws into deft shelters for the plants. A gardener was whetting his grafting-knife on a grindstone and singing popular songs while an old woman, chewing betel leaves and nodding, was placidly scrubbing a sort of iron muzzle whose sharp teeth still retained disgusting human remains on their points. We then came across children killing rats with sticks and filling baskets with them. And along the palisades were starving and ferocious peacocks dragging the imperial splendour of their mantles in the bloody mud, flocks of peacocks pecking their beaks into the blood which had spurted into the hearts of flowers and, with carnivorous cluckings, grasping the fragments of flesh stuck to the foliage.
A sickly smell of the abattoir persisted above all the other odours, dominating them and turning our stomachs, making us overwhelmingly nauseous. Even Clara, the enchantress of charnel-houses and angel of decomposition and decay, perhaps felt her nerves failing her, for she had grown slightly pale. Sweat glistened on her temples. I saw her eyes contort and her legs buckle.
“I’m cold,” she said.
She gazed at me with an expression of real distress. Her nostrils, still swollen like sails in the wind of death, became thinner and I thought she was going to faint.
“Clara!” I begged. “You see very well it’s impossible. There’s a degree of horror which even you can’t go beyond.”
I offered her my arm, but she pushed me away and, stiffening all the indomitable energy of her delicate limbs against the sickness, said:
“Are you mad? Let’s go, my darling … quicker – let’s walk faster.”
Yet she took out her flask and inhaled the salts.
“You’re the one who’s pale all over – and you walk like a drunkard. I’m not sick. I am very well … and I feel like singing:
Her clothes are summer gardens
And some …
But she had over-estimated her strength – her voice abruptly choked in her throat …
I thought the time ripe to lead her away, to rouse her, perhaps terrify her … Vigorously, I tried to draw her towards me.
“Clara, my little Clara! You must not defy your strength or your soul … Let’s go home, please!”
But she protested:
“No, no … Leave me alone … don’t say anything … It’s nothing. I’m happy!”
And she swiftly pulled free from my embrace.
“You see, there isn’t even any blood on my shoes!”
Then, irritated:
“God! How tiresome these flies are! Why are there so many flies? And why don’t you shut up these dreadful peacocks?”
I tried to chase them away. Some of them continued their bloody gleaning. Others flew off clumsily, uttering strident cries, and perched further away, at the top of the palisade and in the trees where their trains fell down like flowing cloth embroidered with dazzling jewels.
“Filthy beasts!” said Clara.
Thanks to the salts whose stimulating effluxes she had inhaled at length, and especially due to her implacable will not to faint, her face had already recovered its pinkish tint and her legs their supple and nervous movements. Then she sang in a firmer voice:
Her clothes are summer gardens
And temples on festival days
Her hard and swelling breasts
Gleam like two golden vases
Replete with intoxicating liquors
And heady perfumes
I have three lovers …
After a moment’s silence she started to sing in a strong voice which drowned out the insects’ buzzing:
The third has plaited hair which is wound around her head
That has never known the sweetness of perfumed oil.
Expressive of lust, her face is hideous.
Her body resembles that of a pig.
She always scolds and moans.
Her breasts and belly smell like fish.
And her bed is more repugnant than a hoopoe nest.
And she’s the one I love.
And I love her because divine decay is more mysteriously attractive than beauty:
The eternal warmth of life resides in decay
In which the eternal renewal of metamorphosis is absorbed.
I have three lovers.
And while she was singing, while her voice was strung out among the horrors of the garden, a cloud appeared, very high up and far away. In the immensity of the sky it was like a little pink boat, a little boat with silken sails expanding as it advanced in a gentle sliding movement.
And when she had finished singing:
“Oh, the little cloud!” exclaimed Clara, again becoming joyful. “Look how pretty it is, completely pink against the azure! Don’t you realise? You’ve never seen it? It’s a mysterious little cloud – and perhaps it isn’t a little cloud at all. Each day it appears at the same time, coming from no one knows where. And it’s always alone, always pink. It slips, slips, slips … becomes thinner, shreds, scatters, dissipates and melts into the firmament … It’s gone! And no one knows where it’s gone any more than they know where it came from. Learned astronomers believe it to be a spirit. Personally I think it’s a wandering soul, a poor little soul like mine that has lost its way.”
And she added, speaking to herself:
“Maybe it’s the soul of poor Annie?”
For some minutes she contemplated the unknown cloud which was already becoming pale and gradually vanishing.
“See! There it is melting away, melting away. It’s gone! No more little cloud! It’s gone!”
She remained silent and bewitched, her gaze lost in the sky.
A light breeze rose up, causing a gentle trembling to run through the trees, and the sun was less harsh, less overwhelming. Its light was turning magnificently copper-coloured in the west and melting in tones of pearly grey – a nacreous tinted glow into infinity – in the east. And the shadows of the pavilions, the great trees and the stone Buddhas spread out more thinly, less well-defined and quite blue across the lawns.
VIII
We were near the bell.
Our view was impeded by the tall trunks of plum trees in blossom that had been planted close together, but we could guess where it was from small shadows between the leaves and flowers – little adorned flowers as white and round as daisies. The peacocks had followed us at a distance, at once brazen and wary, stretching out their necks and trailing their splendid trains of ocellated tails along the red sand. Some were white all over, a velvety white, their breasts speckled with bloody stains and with their cruel heads crowned with large fan-shaped plumes. The tip of each thin, stiff feather was marked with what appeared to be a trembling droplet of pink crystal.
Iron tables, prepared racks and sinister frames multiplied. In the shadow of a massive tamarisk we noticed a sort of rococo armchair. The armrests comprised alternately of a saw and a blade of sharpened steel, and the back and the seat were formed from iron pikes joined together. A fragment of flesh hung on one of these pikes. Clara lightly and skilfully lifted it up with the tip of her parasol and threw it to the voracious peacocks which hurled themselves on it with a beating of wings and whilst striking out with their beaks. For some minutes this caused a dazzling scrum, a clash of precious stones so sparkling that, despite my disgust, I had to stop and admire the marvellous spectacle. Perched in the neighbouring trees, lophophore, sacred pheasants and large Malaysian fighting cocks in armoured damascene watched over the peacocks’ tricks whilst slyly awaiting feeding time.
Abruptly a large breach opened in the wall of the plumtrees, a sort of arch of light and flowers, and there was the bell – enormous and terrifying right in front of us. Its heavy structure, glazed black and decorated with gilt inscriptions and red masks, resembled the outline of a temple and gleamed strangely in the
sun. All around the ground was entirely covered with a layer of sand which muffled sounds, and was hemmed in by the wall of blossoming plum-trees bearing thick flowers which covered their whole trunks with white bouquets. In the midst of this red and white circle it was sinister to behold the bell. In some way it was like a chasm in the air, a hanging abyss which seemed to ascend from the earth to the sky and the bottom of which, where silent shadows gathered, could not be seen.
And at that moment we realised what the two men with gaunt torsos and thighs girded with brown wool – those men we had seen under the dome of the bell as we had entered that part of the garden – were leaning over. They were bending over a corpse and freeing it from the ropes and leather straps with which it had firmly been bound. The corpse was the colour of ochreous clay and was completely naked – its face lying flat against the ground. It was frightfully contracted; its muscles were bulging and the whole skin was covered in violent swellings that were hollow in some parts, while other parts were bloated like tumours. It was apparent that the victim had struggled for a long time, vainly trying to break free of the shackles, and that the desperate and continuous effort had caused the rope and the leather straps to penetrate into his flesh little by little, leaving pads of brown blood, congealed pus and greenish tissue. With one foot on the dead man, backs bulging and both arms as taut as cables, the men were drawing on the shackles which could only be taken off accompanied with fragments of flesh. And from their throats came a rhythmical groaning which soon turned into a raucous wheezing.
Torture Garden Page 17