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impure_tale) wrote2012-12-16 01:47 pm
impure_tale) wrote2012-12-16 01:47 pm
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213 - Le Barge, Chapter 5
Some of you might recall I have been quietly working on a book of my experiences before and upon the Barge. It has been an age, at least, since I published another chapter. Today I will delight you with the conclusion of my life before this ship, and with hope further chapters will be imminent.
For those who wish to read backward, I direct you to the previous chapters:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Without further ado, Chapter Five:
I say that I meant to die on my own terms, knowing this to be an inevitability. It was not long that I could think on this, however, before an angel's face appeared in the window of my door. Madeleine, pained at the sight of me. There was no way that she could have known the horrors inflicted upon me in the previous hours, but she could likely see their aftermath, I cowering in a corner, exhausted beyond reason.
I teased her, still, asking what troubled her. "Have you never seen a man naked before?"
The Abbe intended to send her away, possibly as soon as the next day. I cannot recall whether she told me this, herself, or if I merely assumed. It felt immediate, moreso when came her request: tell her one last story. Just one. And there were so many that I would gladly tell, but how would it be recorded? It seemed -- imperative, that whatever I gave not be lost. Not forgotten.
The echoes carrying down the hall, of other Inmates in cells alongside mine as they chattered and mumbled.
An idea began to form.
Madeleine positioned herself in the laundry room with a quill, ink and parchment. The cells between my own and that chamber were connected in one long line -- all with members of my theater troupe, not surprisingly. The story would be told thusly: I would whisper each line to the Inmate in the cell next to my own, through a hole in the wall. He would pass the tale along to the next, and so forth.
Soon the whole asylum seemed to be buzzing with the hushed whispers of poorly-filtered prose, whole gossamer odes reduced to their most simplistic forms by the time they reached the lass awaiting each syllable to record. I did not allow myself to be disheartened. Who knew: perhaps the lunatics would improve it for him. We spun the tale of a surgeon who sought out a prostitute, and their encounter took a turn for the ugly when he saw fit to fashion new orifices from her flesh. It was meant to be the worst I had written at least in years, something that, if published, would be perhaps the final nail in my coffin. Royer-Collard might be seen as inept for failing to stop my antics so many times.
There were two things that I did not know, in beginning this:
The first is that I did not know one of the Inmates would leave a candle near the hole in his wall, wherein our resident pyromanic, Dauphin, resided.
The second is that I did not know that the cell nearest the laundry, that shared a single wall with it, in fact, was none other than that of Bouchon.
It was not impossible to determine something had gone wrong, as soon smoke and screaming filled the passageways. The other Inmates were released from their cells to get them out of the hospital before the flames caught them. Some idiot of an orderly left his torch within reach, and Dauphin escaped into the halls with it in hand, likely to set still more fragile things aflame.
The fact that I was not released did not surprise me, as my door had been heavily chained. But I had not long to think on that, especially not when, quite clearly, I could hear when Madeleine began to scream.
Doctor Royer-Collard appeared on the scene soon enough to investigate the carnage, his toady not far behind, as usual, and I knew I was not mad when he stopped at the door to the laundry, hearing the same screams that I could hear. He opened the door and peered inside.
I am certain that he spared a look at me, even at that distance, before he closed and locked the door again.
Madeleine's cries were unabated, and the Doctor, declaring with faux heroism that they must save Charenton, charged away with more of the orderlies.
The shouts of the men throwing water on the fires were far away, and Madeleine had gone silent for some minutes, no answers when I called out to her, when finally the Abbe appeared. He stopped by my cell, and for all my anger I knew he was just as afraid as I, that I had not seen him as yet because he had been looking for her.
He found her dead, as I understand, carved with sewing scissors and dumped in one of the laundry vats.
I was chained like a dog and thrown in a hole in the ground in the dungeon cellar, the remnants of the story she had begun writing deemed as evidence enough that I was to be blamed. It was not long before the Abbe found voice enough to come and inflict his rage upon me. "Murderer," he called me, descending into my new cell to make somehow more clear to me the role I had played in the death of my only friend.
"Your words drove Bouchon to kill her."
I somehow still had the strength to argue. If Bouchon had read his Bible and attempted to walk on water, Christ would hardly have been held responsible for his actions. I wanted him gone. Think me a monster but leave me be. I wanted to write, but moreso I wanted not to think at all.
"An innocent child is dead."
"So many authors are denied a concrete response to their work. I am blessed, am I not?"
The Abbe bodily lifted me and threw me against the wall, holding the chains about my neck with such force it was a wonder he did not strangle me. He asked me why I never took Madeleine by force. I had the chance. Devil knew she let herself into my cell often enough.
"Was it impotence?"
"Never," I protested.
"Then it must have been love."
I told the most evil lie I could think of. Though I am no stranger to lurid text, though I have written many of the most vile combinations of words imaginable, I hated myself almost more than I hated him at that moment. I wanted to hurt him, knowing he had some quiet affections for the girl, himself, and she for him. Even as I spoke the words, insisted that I had fucked her, countless times, some small part of me wanted to object. But it was a story, like all the others, terrible in its own way but hiding a more terrible truth.
The Abbe closed that book when he informed me that the body (so detatched, so very much not her), and that Madeleine had died a virgin.
Though I could put to words all of the things that this truly meant right now, reader, and there is so much that this entails, I could not then comprehend all of it, though it was all there. It was the first time that I had allowed myself to shed tears over her death, to admit to myself that it had, in fact, happened, and I collapsed at the Abbe's feet, for some minutes our feud forgotten.
Before it could be remembered I bade him have her buried in a churchyard, to not allow her sweet body to be interred amongst the beasts of this horrible place. At my expense, always.
What brought me back to the ire, what interrupted my mourning full-stop, was that he uttered his surprise, that part of me was "human after all."
How dare he?
Soon my punishment came. I was bound on a table, arms and legs, neck, and the surgeons called to handle me seemed confused when the Abbe stated there would be no medicines to numb the pain of what was to come. "The nature of this operation is punitive," he said.
An orderly pried my mouth open, and I can recall still, with sick horror, the sound of one of them crooning "There's a good boy."
Like a child, or a dog.
My tongue was cut entirely from my mouth.
The Abbe did not remain to watch, and I, returned to my cell, remember only the aftermath of what was to follow afterward. When the Abbe came to me once again, I felt...hot. Unbelievably hot, even naked, even in the dank recesses of that dungeon, it was unbearable. The walls were covered in words, words I had no doubt written in a mixture of blood and excrament. I wondered what sort of story it was, fleetingly, and the Abbe took me in his arms.
He spoke not to me but began to pray. My last rites, apparently.
He spoke to a God that was not there, that I be forgiven and accepted into his kingdom.
When he presented the cross on his rosary to my lips, to kiss, I swallowed it whole. Its sharper edges punctured the walls of my throat, and within moments I had surely expired.
I would only learn what took place in the aftermath of my death much later, but that is a tale for a later chapter.
What I next knew was my cell -- not the one I had died in, but the one I knew for so many years, as it had been before Doctor Royer-Collard had come, with some additions. The bookshelves were stuffed with manuscripts, all of those I had ever sent to be published, even, I found, those that had been lost in the Bastille. These I found first, and I wept over their pages, thinking not of where I had been before, but only that I must have dreamt. Perhaps I was still dreaming, or, perhaps, my wife had been more resourceful than I had taken her for, and these had been placed on my shelves while I slept.
And then there sat a bound book on my desk. A journal. I did not examine it at first.
I also never thought of venturing toward the door. It would be locked, and Madeleine would surely come soon with my breakfast and an explanation.
All was as it should have been.
But better.
For those who wish to read backward, I direct you to the previous chapters:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Without further ado, Chapter Five:
I say that I meant to die on my own terms, knowing this to be an inevitability. It was not long that I could think on this, however, before an angel's face appeared in the window of my door. Madeleine, pained at the sight of me. There was no way that she could have known the horrors inflicted upon me in the previous hours, but she could likely see their aftermath, I cowering in a corner, exhausted beyond reason.
I teased her, still, asking what troubled her. "Have you never seen a man naked before?"
The Abbe intended to send her away, possibly as soon as the next day. I cannot recall whether she told me this, herself, or if I merely assumed. It felt immediate, moreso when came her request: tell her one last story. Just one. And there were so many that I would gladly tell, but how would it be recorded? It seemed -- imperative, that whatever I gave not be lost. Not forgotten.
The echoes carrying down the hall, of other Inmates in cells alongside mine as they chattered and mumbled.
An idea began to form.
Madeleine positioned herself in the laundry room with a quill, ink and parchment. The cells between my own and that chamber were connected in one long line -- all with members of my theater troupe, not surprisingly. The story would be told thusly: I would whisper each line to the Inmate in the cell next to my own, through a hole in the wall. He would pass the tale along to the next, and so forth.
Soon the whole asylum seemed to be buzzing with the hushed whispers of poorly-filtered prose, whole gossamer odes reduced to their most simplistic forms by the time they reached the lass awaiting each syllable to record. I did not allow myself to be disheartened. Who knew: perhaps the lunatics would improve it for him. We spun the tale of a surgeon who sought out a prostitute, and their encounter took a turn for the ugly when he saw fit to fashion new orifices from her flesh. It was meant to be the worst I had written at least in years, something that, if published, would be perhaps the final nail in my coffin. Royer-Collard might be seen as inept for failing to stop my antics so many times.
There were two things that I did not know, in beginning this:
The first is that I did not know one of the Inmates would leave a candle near the hole in his wall, wherein our resident pyromanic, Dauphin, resided.
The second is that I did not know that the cell nearest the laundry, that shared a single wall with it, in fact, was none other than that of Bouchon.
It was not impossible to determine something had gone wrong, as soon smoke and screaming filled the passageways. The other Inmates were released from their cells to get them out of the hospital before the flames caught them. Some idiot of an orderly left his torch within reach, and Dauphin escaped into the halls with it in hand, likely to set still more fragile things aflame.
The fact that I was not released did not surprise me, as my door had been heavily chained. But I had not long to think on that, especially not when, quite clearly, I could hear when Madeleine began to scream.
Doctor Royer-Collard appeared on the scene soon enough to investigate the carnage, his toady not far behind, as usual, and I knew I was not mad when he stopped at the door to the laundry, hearing the same screams that I could hear. He opened the door and peered inside.
I am certain that he spared a look at me, even at that distance, before he closed and locked the door again.
Madeleine's cries were unabated, and the Doctor, declaring with faux heroism that they must save Charenton, charged away with more of the orderlies.
The shouts of the men throwing water on the fires were far away, and Madeleine had gone silent for some minutes, no answers when I called out to her, when finally the Abbe appeared. He stopped by my cell, and for all my anger I knew he was just as afraid as I, that I had not seen him as yet because he had been looking for her.
He found her dead, as I understand, carved with sewing scissors and dumped in one of the laundry vats.
I was chained like a dog and thrown in a hole in the ground in the dungeon cellar, the remnants of the story she had begun writing deemed as evidence enough that I was to be blamed. It was not long before the Abbe found voice enough to come and inflict his rage upon me. "Murderer," he called me, descending into my new cell to make somehow more clear to me the role I had played in the death of my only friend.
"Your words drove Bouchon to kill her."
I somehow still had the strength to argue. If Bouchon had read his Bible and attempted to walk on water, Christ would hardly have been held responsible for his actions. I wanted him gone. Think me a monster but leave me be. I wanted to write, but moreso I wanted not to think at all.
"An innocent child is dead."
"So many authors are denied a concrete response to their work. I am blessed, am I not?"
The Abbe bodily lifted me and threw me against the wall, holding the chains about my neck with such force it was a wonder he did not strangle me. He asked me why I never took Madeleine by force. I had the chance. Devil knew she let herself into my cell often enough.
"Was it impotence?"
"Never," I protested.
"Then it must have been love."
I told the most evil lie I could think of. Though I am no stranger to lurid text, though I have written many of the most vile combinations of words imaginable, I hated myself almost more than I hated him at that moment. I wanted to hurt him, knowing he had some quiet affections for the girl, himself, and she for him. Even as I spoke the words, insisted that I had fucked her, countless times, some small part of me wanted to object. But it was a story, like all the others, terrible in its own way but hiding a more terrible truth.
The Abbe closed that book when he informed me that the body (so detatched, so very much not her), and that Madeleine had died a virgin.
Though I could put to words all of the things that this truly meant right now, reader, and there is so much that this entails, I could not then comprehend all of it, though it was all there. It was the first time that I had allowed myself to shed tears over her death, to admit to myself that it had, in fact, happened, and I collapsed at the Abbe's feet, for some minutes our feud forgotten.
Before it could be remembered I bade him have her buried in a churchyard, to not allow her sweet body to be interred amongst the beasts of this horrible place. At my expense, always.
What brought me back to the ire, what interrupted my mourning full-stop, was that he uttered his surprise, that part of me was "human after all."
How dare he?
Soon my punishment came. I was bound on a table, arms and legs, neck, and the surgeons called to handle me seemed confused when the Abbe stated there would be no medicines to numb the pain of what was to come. "The nature of this operation is punitive," he said.
An orderly pried my mouth open, and I can recall still, with sick horror, the sound of one of them crooning "There's a good boy."
Like a child, or a dog.
My tongue was cut entirely from my mouth.
The Abbe did not remain to watch, and I, returned to my cell, remember only the aftermath of what was to follow afterward. When the Abbe came to me once again, I felt...hot. Unbelievably hot, even naked, even in the dank recesses of that dungeon, it was unbearable. The walls were covered in words, words I had no doubt written in a mixture of blood and excrament. I wondered what sort of story it was, fleetingly, and the Abbe took me in his arms.
He spoke not to me but began to pray. My last rites, apparently.
He spoke to a God that was not there, that I be forgiven and accepted into his kingdom.
When he presented the cross on his rosary to my lips, to kiss, I swallowed it whole. Its sharper edges punctured the walls of my throat, and within moments I had surely expired.
I would only learn what took place in the aftermath of my death much later, but that is a tale for a later chapter.
What I next knew was my cell -- not the one I had died in, but the one I knew for so many years, as it had been before Doctor Royer-Collard had come, with some additions. The bookshelves were stuffed with manuscripts, all of those I had ever sent to be published, even, I found, those that had been lost in the Bastille. These I found first, and I wept over their pages, thinking not of where I had been before, but only that I must have dreamt. Perhaps I was still dreaming, or, perhaps, my wife had been more resourceful than I had taken her for, and these had been placed on my shelves while I slept.
And then there sat a bound book on my desk. A journal. I did not examine it at first.
I also never thought of venturing toward the door. It would be locked, and Madeleine would surely come soon with my breakfast and an explanation.
All was as it should have been.
But better.