Amédée woke with a start. For an agnostic, he’d had a lot to do with religion lately. He identified the source of his dream immediately: a Brazilian poem a friend had recited to him. But did it also have another meaning, a coded message related to the investigation? He put it to one side of his mind, to think about later. This morning he needed to focus on the torture, and the different theories and rituals surrounding it. After what he’d seen yesterday, he wanted to do some research on stakes, partly by consulting two books by Léon Bloy, which he’d already been thinking about for a a few days.
Looking through them, he stumbled on a rare example of a weekly magazine called—it was almost too perfect—The Stake. The cover of this issue, the third one edited by Bloy, showed four men impaled on a single rod. Examining their positions carefully, Amédée saw that the man closest to the ground was curled in the fetal position, staring at the ground. The man above him was beginning to look at the clouds, and the third man’s gaze was turned toward the sky. The fourth man was extending his arms toward God. It was a perfect illustration of reversibility, the link between individual torture and collective salvation. The Makeup Artist was undoubtedly an insane mystic modeled on Bloy—only he had shifted from words to action.
It was almost eight o’clock. If he was going to get any further in his research he needed to see one person: Léon. Not the writer; the other one, his friend with the bookshop. He hesitated for a few moments. He really wanted to show Léon the photos taken at the different murder scenes, to get his opinion on them. But hadn’t his friend lived through enough horror?
The best thing to do, he finally decided, was ask Léon.
Key. Door. Run. Cross the little square.
Léon was already outside. Having already shoveled the snow from the sidewalk in front of his shop, he was now scattering handfuls of coarse salt.
“Your timing is perfect, Superintendent! Mind giving me a hand? A lady with a walker and no teeth fell down yesterday, right where you’re standing.” Without waiting for a response, Léon handed him a plastic bag filled with grayish grains. Mallock was in a rush, but courtesy won out. It took them five minutes to complete the task.
“You came to see me?” asked Léon as they went into the shop.
“No, I just had an urge to scatter some salt on the Parisian asphalt.”
“Okay, okay. New question: would the superintendent care for a little coffee?”
“A big one, actually, please. And a favor.”
Mallock asked Léon if he felt able to look at the Makeup Artist’s horrors, to discuss his tortures. The answer that came back was clear and concise and brooked no argument.
“Don’t be an idiot.”
So as not to influence him, Mallock displayed the various photos, including the one of the baby, without making any comment. Time slowed down. Mallock sat down in a deep armchair, suddenly patient. Léon picked up the snapshots one by one. He studied them calmly, sometimes with a magnifying glass. The proceedings took around fifteen minutes. Amédée, sipping his coffee, never took his eyes off Léon’s face.
“So?” he asked, when the bookseller had set down the last picture.
“So . . . so. It’s not clear.” Léon rubbed the corners of his eyes.
“Is that all? You’ve studied this subject for a long time. It’s that culture of suffering, inflicted voluntarily by one person on another, that I need your help with. I know it’s not clear, as you say. If it were I wouldn’t be here.”
Léon clasped his hands behind his neck. Took a deep breath. Held it. Looked at the ceiling with a perplexed frown. Released the air in his lungs with a sigh. “You want me to give you a lesson ex cathedra, is that it?”
“I don’t care. Talk to me. Tell me everything that’s going through your head. Do you think there are multiple types of torture happening here? Do you think it’s the same person? Do you see different reasons for going to such extremes?”
“Ah, that; yes, there are many reasons for torturing a fellow human being. And believe me, mankind has a hell of an imagination for constantly coming up with new ones. Even morality can be twisted for this purpose.”
“Meaning?”
“Let’s say you capture a guy who’s planted a bomb on the metro. Do you talk to him nicely or do you burn his balls to make him talk before women and children are blown to bits all over the tiles? What does the good cop do in this case, eh?”
“Look, this isn’t what I need from you right now. No philosophy lessons.”
“I just wanted to make you understand that nothing is simple, even when you’re talking about torture. There’s more than one way to look at the subject. The number one reason to torture someone, if I can say it, is to get information. The army, the police, and intelligence organizations use it for that. You’ll find all kinds of books about it—I’ve even got some here—but I don’t think they’d apply to your raging madman. The second reason is to obtain confessions and religious conversions, like during the inquisitions, with all the lovely methods introduced in the twelfth century by everyone’s favorite funnyman, Pope Innocent III. Right here in the shop I’ve got the Malleus Maleficarum, Le Marteau des sorcières—reprinted in paperback, not expensive; Le Manuel des Inquisiteurs, and the Histoire de l’Inquisition au Moyen Âge. I’ll put them aside for you.”
“And the third reason?”
“The third? Ah yes . . . thirdly, we have the kind of pure, unadulterated torture that is practiced for the simple pleasure of making others suffer: sadism and bondage. I’ve got books on that too, of course. A great set of volumes on basic sadomasochism and onanism. I’ve got S&M for Dummies on order,” Léon joked, before turning serious again. “It’s quite possible that your Makeup Artist falls into this category. I can’t really see him doing what he does unless he finds it exciting.”
“Me neither,” murmured Mallock.
“And to these three,” resumed Léon, “we can add a fourth reason, a really crazy one. The aesthetics of torture. I have books on the work of Soutine and Goya here. You should definitely have a look at Saturn Devouring his Son, which is really something, and of course Bosch. Your Makeup Artist is absolutely staging scenes here, which we can imagine are motivated by some kind of artistic desire. There is a certain aesthetic appeal, if not beauty, in what you’ve shown me.”
Amédée looked at Léon, feeling something almost like relief. He felt some emotion at seeing these horrifying perversions too, then. Now he could ask the question that had been burning in him since he woke up. “I think there’s another intention at work here . . . something more mystical about what he’s doing. Don’t you see a theological aspect to these sacrifices? The sanctifying value of pain?”
“The sacrality of the torturer, eh? His redemptive function? Regenerative bloodshed? The splendor of ‘the Massacre of the innocents, the rain of rosy blood that kills only the tenderest of bodies’? I know the whole thing by heart: ‘They will go nearby, preparing for the killing on the next horizon, where millions of soldiers crouch, drawn by their metal affinity toward the masses of throat-slitters. It will be the Pentecost of slaughter and extermination, the cleansing of excessive and crumbling societies by fire . . . ’ I’ve read and reread Léon Bloy a thousand times. You see, Amédée, I was even named after him. My father was one of that great insane mystic’s few admirers. You’re right; I should have thought of that. There is definitely some Bloy in these images of . . . piety turned upside down . . . it’s the dogma of reversibility. In his madness, your Makeup Artist must really be convinced that he’s participating in the salvation of the world. He undoubtedly believes in the Mystical Body. The only thing he hasn’t done yet is impale one of his victims!”
Mallock stared openmouthed at his friend. “Why do you say that?”
“For Bloy, that’s the ultimate torture. Perfection. You also find it with Bosch, and the precision he uses to inflict on the eye of the spectator—who might also be a penitent himself—the inexhaustible variety of sins, and of the sinners who have these punishments to look forward to if they don’t repent. All these characters being boiled alive, drowned in barrels, dismembered. And for the most deserving: ‘The indisputable beauty of the stake surpasses all in its symbolism. From the perspective of the aesthetic torturer, besides the incandescence of the tool, its verticality is vital. The man must be upright, and he must die from the bottom up.’ I can’t guarantee that my memory is one hundred percent accurate, but at any rate that’s not far off the original text. Against the tautological and spiraling circularity of a society that has become a howling pile of shit, soulless and helpless in a rising tide of mediocrity, the stake’s verticality is, for Bloy, the sanctifying stopping point, the new axis around which society is called to change direction. It’s the exclamation point that comes after the screamed-out word ‘Stop.’ But why does it surprise you that I mentioned the stake?”
“The most recent victim, who I haven’t had a chance to tell you about yet, was impaled.”
Now it was Léon’s turn to stand openmouthed. “Impaled vertically?”
“Exactly. But I have to go now; I need to see the murder site near La Chapelle again, and finish my observations.”
“Good God,” murmured Léon, still in the grip of emotion.
There were two problems to solve: how had the Makeup Artist impaled the young woman, and how had he managed to erase his footprints on the floor?
For the first question, the technicians were theorizing that the impalement had been done horizontally, on the floor, and then the whole thing raised upright. This clearly suggested a group of killers. Two, or most likely three, the experts had estimated. But then there was Mallock’s vision. He had seen her dropped violently from the air to be impaled on a pike that was already set in the floor. True, it had only been in his dream, but he was beginning to trust those experiences more and more.
He tried to combine the two puzzles in his mind; the mysterious method of impalement, and the miraculously disappearing footprints. It often happened like this; two “impossibles” could somehow be put together to create a “possible,” like the technique where magicians force their audience to resolve one question while at the same time discouraging them by moving on rapidly to a different question.
Deductive reasoning led him to the spot on the floor where the Makeup Artist’s footprints suddenly disappeared. As it turned out, he only needed to look up to find the answer. There, high overhead, was the start of the network of chains, motors, pulleys, and hoists that ran along the factory ceiling to be used for moving towers and the heaviest machine parts from one place to another. In all likelihood, it was this vertical and horizontal hydraulic lift that the Makeup Artist—Mallock was beginning to lean toward the singular—had used to mystify the police yet again. To further muddy the waters, before the machinery set him down he had programmed it to conceal itself at the farthest end of the factory. Even now, you could only see the horizontal rails above the footprints and the site of the sacrifice.
Amédée bent over the last two footprints. One right foot, one left foot. They were blurred. So his dream had pointed him in the right direction—unless it was the power of his conscious thoughts that had supplied the material for the dream. The chicken or the egg? Whatever the case, it had led him to the solution once again.
The Makeup Artist had arrived at the . . . takeoff site, for lack of a better word . . . carrying his victim. Then he had come back to the same spot and left the room walking backward. Mallock recreated the rest of the process in his mind. Vibration of the electric motor. Nathalie Grandet—that had been the victim’s name—had felt her arms rising. Her body, attached to the freight hoist, had been lifted four meters above the floor and carried through the icy air of the factory. When she had finally realized what the monster had in mind, it was too late. Her brain fuddled with terror, she had heard the motor stop; she was suspended above the steel pike. Then the monster had released her and she had plunged downward with a scream of horror.
I’m so sorry, little Nathalie. Forgive me!
Disgusted and ashamed, Mallock prayed for the young woman as he dragged a box to the center of the factory and sat down on it, lit a cigar, drained the flask of whiskey he had brought, and tried to put himself in the killer’s place.
What had the bastard done next?
If he really wanted to have a chance at understanding, Amédée would have to lose all sense of morals or moderation and become nothing but impulse. Walk up to his darkest thoughts and then keep going forward, again and always, to where the earth was flesh, the ocean blood, and the skies made of shit. Where chaos and ignorance played together, laughing in all directions. He would have to go to this mutual there, this collective junk pile, this hard-packed noxious magma, if he ever wanted to find the killer.
He got back to Paris at around seven o’clock. Amélie was waiting for him, sitting in the same place as yesterday evening, on the terrace of the same café. Amélie again. Amélie for always? Mallock asked himself.
Love. Tongues flicking everywhere, mindlessly, all over. Butterflies. Lips and kisses, like an army of little fish. Vibrations and shivers. The skin speaking, the mind going silent. The body taking over, moving as it liked. No mooring lines, no compass but the cock, stretching and thrusting straight ahead . . . and the waves, and the wind!
At two o’clock in the morning, like on the previous night, with Mallock not daring to ask her why, Amélie left quickly. The day had been emotionally draining, and he fell immediately back into a deep sleep. He began to dream. His son came back home. He was taller, and his hair had grown. With tears in his eyes, he ran into his father’s arms.
“I’m sorry, Papa, I didn’t mean to make you sad!”
Then he began telling Mallock everything he had done while he was away.
“I thought you were dead,” babbled Amédée in his sleep.
“But I am dead, Papa.”
To prove his point, Tom began to tear off big pieces of his own skin, ripping out chunks of the rotting flesh that covered his face with astonishing ease. His skull and the bones of his jaw were luminous white. Clean and pure. He only had a small spot of orange pus left on his right cheekbone. Mallocked wiped it away delicately using a handkerchief corner moistened with saliva.
“Thank you, Papa,” said Thomas.
Then he had begun sticking pieces of a mask made of flesh back onto his skull, a mask modeled to look like his face from before. When he was finished, he asked: “Where is the bathroom? I need to wash up, freshen up a little.”
He was holding Amélie’s big makeup kit. A pool of fat beige worms squirmed at his feet.
Mallock woke at four o’clock in the morning, covered in cold sweat. How did Amélie’s makeup kit figure into this whole thing? Did it symbolize the petite nurse, his new love? He decided to stick with that explanation. Still upset, he went into the bathroom, using the same square of toilet paper, folded in half, to wipe away his tears and blot a drop of urine that splashed on the seat.
He went back to sleep with the feeling that he would wake up smack in the middle of a battlefield, with bullets flying in every direction, and one of them would lodge right in his head with a noise like a seagull’s shriek.
Which was exactly what happened.