Fear of De Sade

BARON: The count told me she was demanding. It was thanks to him we got to know one another in what was left of his property, and we married seven months later, when I was already crazy, wanting to see her again, imploring her to come back from exile. She was very cunning. She was one of those women who know how to hook a man. She knew I was a libertine, and that I would steer clear of the prison of marriage until the last moment, and she knew how to conquer me. It was the perfect tactic. After insinuating herself and seducing me, with her little breasts tightly held in a silver corset, proposing that we should prove that God doesn’t exist, she disappeared for seven months, saying she had emigrated. A shabby excuse. She can’t have gone anywhere, because, if she really had emigrated, coming back would have demanded from her the very courage whose lack had pushed her to go. It’s obvious. I’m not stupid. She accounted for it by her passion for me. She said she would come back clandestinely. A shabby excuse. But a wonderful ploy for seduction. I admire that. I admire women who know how to use words and reach their objectives with patience. If she really had left the country, how would she not have problems in coming back seven months later? Not even with the count’s help, and his contacts, would she have been able to remain undetected. And all the letters she sent me? How did she manage that? She drove me crazy, begging her to come back immediately in secret letters which my cousin, the Count of Suz, managed to get to her, across frontiers and battle fronts, heaven knows how, and bringing me back her replies, minx!, spurring on my desire with the memory of her little breasts pressed into the silver corset I could no longer touch.

VOICE: Why did the count serve as intermediary?

BARON: Because he had contacts. He always had contacts. He’s a man of the moment. First, in the National Assembly. Then under the Terror and the Consulate. And now in the Empire. That was how he managed to save what was left of his lands, and the ruins of my château. He knows how to tack with the winds. Hither and thither, hither and thither. The truth is, he was her accomplice. He wanted to see us married. And he knew me! And gave me his advice. He wanted to help me.

VOICE: Why didn’t you go and see her where she was, if your desire was so great?

BARON: I couldn’t. I would be taken for an emigrant, a traitor, can’t you see? I would lose the château, the ruins left to me out of all my possessions. The guillotine would be waiting for me on my return. All the efforts I made to serve the Revolution, always under the guidance of the count, to save my skin and my château – the only thing I didn’t give to the Revolution of my own will – everything would have gone down the tubes. They were difficult times, you know. Maybe I could have seen her in her hiding-place, if I’d known where that was. But she didn’t tell me. Neither did the count. He said he couldn’t, for his own safety and that of the baroness. And mine! He said it was for my own good; he was protecting me from my own passions. So that I didn’t end up losing my head. It was part of her seduction tactics, no doubt about that. She wanted to be shrouded in mystery, minx! She couldn’t leave France and then come back again without suffering the consequences. What a scheme! And there’s nothing I admire more than someone who can cultivate someone else’s desires. She knew how to make me lose my head. The letters were our only contact. And the things she said to me! How she described the heat of her body awaiting mine, which never came, never came, of course, because she escaped, she was my will-o’-the-wisp, my insatiable desire. That was how she conquered me. After seven months were up, when I could no longer bear it, when she was already pure fantasy, she wrote that she could only meet me again if we were to be married, out of fear of what I might do, of what I could do with her after so many months of pent-up desire. She said she might come back to France, minx!, putting her life at risk, if it was to marry me. And I gave in, for love. The second time I saw her was at the altar.

Again, the baron interrupts himself; he rubs his eyes.

BARON: Forgive me, sir, but I’ve just had that vision again. I thought I saw you. Are you sure . . . ?

VOICE: I’ve already said they’re hallucinations. It’s not surprising when there’s not a chink of light anywhere. Go on with your story.