|
3opge
Gost
|
 |
« poslato: 13.08.2002. 06:28:47 » |
|
The Secret Room
by Alain Robbe-Grillet
To Gustave Moreau
The first thing to be seen is a red stain, of a deep, dark, sniny red, with almost black shadows. It is in the form of an irregular rosette, sharply outlined, extending in several directions in wide outflows of unequal length, dividing and dwindling afterward into single sinuous streaks. The whole stands out against a smooth, pale surface, round in shape, at once dull and pearly, a hemisphere joined by gentle curves to an expanse of the same pale color--white darkened by the shadowy quality of the place: a dungeon, a sunken room, or a cathedral--glowing with a diffused brilliance in the semidarkness.
Farther back, the space is filled with the cylindrical trunks of columns, repeated with progressive vagueness in their retreat toward the beginning of a vast stone stairway, turning slightly as it rises, growing narrower as it approaches the high vaults where it disappears.
The whole setting is empty, stairway and colonnades. Alone, in the foreground, the stretched-out body gleams feebly, marked with the red stain--a white body whoe full, supple flesh can be sensed, fragile, no doubt, and vulnerable. Alongside the bloody hemisphere another identical round form, this one intct, is seen at almost the same angle of view; but the haloed point at its summit, of darker tint, is in this case quiet recognizable, whereas the other one is entirely destroyed, or at least covered by the wound.
In the background, near the top of the stairway, a black silhoette is seen fleeing, a man wrapped in a long, gloating cape, ascending the last steps without turning around, his deed acoomplished. A thin smoke rises in twisting scrolls from a sort of incense burner placed on a hight stand of ironwork with a siilvery glint. Nearby lies the milkwhite body, with wide streaks of blood running from the left breast, along the flank an on the hip.
It is a fully rounded woman's body, but not heavy, co mpletely nude, lying on its back, the bust raised up somewhat by thick cushions thrown down on the floor, which is covered with Oriental rugs. The waist is very narrow, the neck long and thin, curved to one side, the head thrown back into a darker area where even so, the facial features may be discerned, the partly opened mouth the wide-staring eyes, shining with a fixed brilliance, and the mass of long hair spread out in a complicated wavy disorder over a heavily folded cloth, of velvet perhaps, on which also rest the arm and shoulder.
It is a uniformly colored velvet of dark purple, or which seems so in this lighting. But purple, brown, blue also seem to dominate in the colors of the cushions--only a small portion of which is hidden beneath the velvet cloth, and which protrude noticeably, lower down, beneath the bust and waist--as well as in the Oriental pattersn of the rugs on the floor. Father on, these same colors are picked up again in the stone of the paving and the columns, and vaulted archways, the stairs, and the less discernible surfaces that disappear into the fathest reaches of the room.
The dimensions of this room are difficult to determine exactly; the body of the young sacrificial victim seems at first glance to occupy a substantial portion of it, but the vast size of the stairway leading down to it would imply rather that this is not the whole room, whose considerable space must in reality extend all around, right and left, as it does toward the faraway browns and blues among the columns standing in line, in every direction, perhaps toward other sofas, thick carpets, piles of cushions and fabrics, other tortured bodies, other incense burners.
It is also difficult to say where the light comes from. No clue, on the columns or on the floor, suggests the direction of the rays. Nor is any window or torch visible. The milkwhite body itself seems to light the scene, with its full breasts, the curve of its thighs, the rounded belly, the full buttocks, the stretched-out legs, widely spread, and the black tuft of the exposed sex, provocative, proffered, useless now.
The man has already moved several steps back. He is now on the first steps of the stairs, ready to go up. The bottom steps are wide and deep, like the steps leading up to some great building, a temple or theater; they grow smaller as the ascend, and at the same time describe a wide, helical curve, so gradually that the stairway has not yet made a half-turn by the time it disappears near the top of the vaults, reduced them to to a steep, narrow flight of steps without handrail, vaguely outlined, moreover, in the thickening darkness beyond.
But the man does not look in this direction, where his movement nonetheless carries him; his left foot on the second step and his right foot already touching the third, with his knee bent, he has turned aorun to look at the sepctalbe for one last time. The long, floating cape thrwon hastily over his shoulders, clasped in one hand at his waist, has beem whirled around by the rapid circular motion that has just caused his head and chest to turn in the sopposite direction, and a corner of the cloth remains suspended in the air as if blown by a gust of wind; this corner, twisting around upon itself in the form of a loose S, reveals the red silk lining with its gold embroidery.
The man's features are impassive, but tense, as if in expectation--or perhaps fear--of some sudden event, or surveying with one last glance the total immobility of the scene. Though he is looking backward, his whole body is turned slightly forward, as if he were continuing up the stairs. His right arm--not the one holding the edge of the cape--is bent sharply toward the left, toward a point in space where the balustrade should be, if this stairway had one, an i nterrupted gesture, almost incomprehensible, unless it arose from an instinctive movement to grasp the absent support.
As to the direction of his glance, it is certainly aimed at the body of the victim lying on the cushions, its extended members stretched out in the form of a cross, its bust raised up, its head thrown back. but the face is perhaps hidden from the man's eyes by one of the comumns, standing at the foot of the stairs. The young woman's right hand touches the floor just at the foor of this column. The fragile waist is encircled by an iron bracelet.
At the top of the arm a rounded shoulder, raised up by the cushions, also stands out well lighted, as well as the neck, the throat, and the other shoulder, the armpit with its soft hair, the left arm likewise pulled back with its wrist bound in the same manner to the base of another column, in the extreme foreground; here the iron bracelet and the chain are fully displayed, represented with perfect clarity down to the slightest details.
The same is true, still in the foreground but at the other side, for a similar chain, but not quite as thick, wound directly around the andkle, running tiwce arnd the column and terminating in a heavy iron embedded in the floor. About a yard farther back or perhaps slightly father, the right foot is identically chained. But it is the left foot, and its chain, that are the most minutely depicted.
The foot is small, delicate, finely modeled. In several places the chain has broken the skin, causing noticeable if not extensive depressions in the flesh. The chain links are oval, thick, the size of an eye. The ring in the floor resembles those used to attach horses; it lies almost touching the stone pavememnt to which it is riveted by a massive iron peg. A few inches away is the edge of a rug; it is grossly wrinkled at this point, doubtless as a resut of the convulvisve, but necessarily very restricted, movememnts of the victim attempting to struggle.
The man is still standing about a yard away, half leaning over her. He looks at her face, seen upside down, her dark eyes made larger by their surrounding eyeshadow, her mouth wide open as if screaming. The man's posture allows his face to be seen only in a vague profile, but one sneses in it a violent exhaltation, despite the rigid attitude, the silence the immobility. His back is slightly arched. His left hand, the only one visible, hold up at some distance from the body a piece of cloth, some dark-colored piece of clothing, whihc drags on the carpet, and which must be the long cape with its gold-embroidered lining.
This immense silhouette hides most of the bare flesh over which the red stain, spreaing from the glove of the breast, runs in long rivulets that branch out, growing narrower, upon the pale background of the bust and the flank. One thread has reached the armpit and runs in an almost straight, thin line along the arm; others have run down toward the waist and traced out, along one side of the belly, the hip, the top of the thigh, a more random network already starting to congeal. Three or four tiny veins have reached the hollow between the legs, meeting in a sinuous line, touching the point of the V formed by the outspread legs, and disappearing into the black tuft.
Look, now the flesh is still intact: the black tuft and the white belly, the soft curve of the hips, the narrow waist, and, higher up, the pearly breasts rising and falling in time with the rapid breathing, whose rhythm grows more accelerated. The man, close to her, one knee on the floor, leans father over. The head, with its long, curly hair, which alone is free to move somewhat, turns from side to side, struggling; finally the woman's mouth twists open, while the flesh is torn open, the blood spurts out over the tender skin, stretched tight, the carefully shadowed eyes grow abnormally large, the mouth opens wider, the head twists violently, one last time, from right to left, then more gently, to fall back finally and become still, amid the mass of black hair spread out on the velvet.
Afterward, the whole setting is empty, the enormous room with its purple shadows and its stone columns proliferating in all directions, the monumental staircase with no handrail that twists upward, growing narrower and vaguer as it rises into the darkness, toward the top of the vaults where it disappears.
Near the body, whose wound has stiffened, whose brilliance is already glowing dim, the thin smoke from the incense burner traces complicated scrolls in the still air: first a coil turned horizontally to the left, which then straightens out and rises slightly, then returns to the axis of its point of origin, which it crosses as it moves to the right, then turns back in the first direction, only to wind back again, thus forming an irregular sinusoidal curve, more and more flattened out, and rising, vertically, toward the top of the canvas.
|
