IN PRAISE OF TORTURE.
Torture is one of the demarcation points between an organized banana republic and a chaotic, or in other words disorganized, banana republic. Lucien was not unaware of this. Hence his fear at finding himself in the police chief’s ramshackle office. The former country, which now exists only on paper, was an organized banana republic. The torturers officiated in very good conditions. They had several implements of torture to hand, including racks and wheelbarrows. They were sent on training courses and work experience placements outside the country. These monsters viewed the detainee’s body as a thing, a doodad, an apparatus, even a work of art. They mastered every recess of the human anatomy and applied their torture with genius and finesse. Over time, a certain rapport developed, a mutual respect or grim trust between the jailer and their victim. The latter even became superior to their wrongdoer once they realized that their torturer was at their service, was not torturing at random, and had been hired for this nasty job, often from among the intellectual cream of society.
The City-State possessed all the characteristics of a disorganized banana republic. The guys who tortured in the various jails were all minor upstarts, plucked from here and there in the course of the many wars of liberation. They were, for the most part, university-less students, self-trained journalists, diggers, former child-soldiers, desperados, and lazy mercenaries. They owned no torture instruments, no rack, no cable worthy of the name. They were ignorant of the basic techniques, with the exception of water-boarding, which they applied in approximate fashion.
Often they restricted themselves to hitting detainees with sticks and stools. Yet torture is above all an art, an artistic discipline just like literature, cinema, or contemporary dance. All the detainees in the City-State ghettos bitterly missed the torturers of yesteryear, those monsters who worked with the precision of a Swiss watchmaker. Lucien, who in times past had joined every single protest march, could not bear the idea, even in his most fleeting dreams, of ending up behind bars, whatever the torturers.
If it wasn’t for Émilienne, he would have remained in his dingy cell till kingdom come.