I walked for a long time, turning down narrow and deserted streets, hoping to avoid people—because every time I saw another person, I thought it might be my boyfriend. I passed the library, a dry cleaner, a beauty parlor that had gone out of business. A little playground with just a swing and a sandbox. A hedge of Red Robin. A puppy playing in the grass. At some point I lost sight of the clock tower.
When I finally got tired of walking, I stopped in front of an old stone house. A huge oak tree grew in the front yard. There were lace curtains in the windows, and bright red flowers in the planters. An elaborate design had been carved into the paneling on the front door. There was no sign of anyone in the house, only the sound of oak leaves rustling in the breeze.
The rusted sign on the gatepost was hard to read, but I managed to make out the characters for “Museum of Torture.” Just the spot for me right now.
* * *
Bright colors streamed in through a stained-glass window high above the lobby. There was a curved staircase at the back of the room. An umbrella stand with a mirror, two high-backed chairs, a piano that looked like it hadn’t been played in years. A hat rack and a few other carefully arranged pieces of furniture. The rug on the floor was soft and deep. An empty vase had been set on a side table, and a porcelain doll with curly hair sat on one of the chairs. A lace runner with a pattern of swans covered the shoe cupboard. Everything was very elegant.
But the air was stale, as though the room were holding its breath, and the only thing that moved was the light from the windows when the oak leaves fluttered outside.
I looked around for a reception desk, but there was nothing like that—no pamphlets or arrows showing where the tour started, no ticket machine or anything else you might expect to see in a museum. The doors on either side of the lobby were closed.
I screwed up my courage and called out, “Excuse me!” To be honest, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see the Museum of Torture, but for some reason I couldn’t stop myself. After all, torture might have been better than going home to my silent apartment.
“Excuse me!” I called again, but my voice seemed to die away. I thought for a moment, and then chose the door on the left. I always go left when I have to choose. He was left-handed.
* * *
“Welcome,” said an old man in a bow tie. He held out his arm to show the way, as though he had been expecting me. But I was startled and froze for a moment. “Please come in,” he said, running his hand through his white hair. His cologne smelled like a fern. The handkerchief peeking out of his breast pocket matched his tie; his cufflinks were set with pearls.
“I tried calling from the lobby, but no one answered. I apologize for barging in like this.”
“Not at all,” he said. “But tell me, have you come to see the collection? Or are you here to contribute a piece?”
“A piece?” I said.
“An instrument of torture,” the man answered, smiling just a bit. I shook my head. “I see,” he said. “Very well then, I would be happy to give you the tour.”
We were standing in the living room. The furniture included a pair of couches; a claw-foot cabinet; a long, narrow table like something from a church; a rocking chair; and a record cabinet. There was a real wood-burning fireplace at the end of the room.
It was a fancy room for a rich man, the kind of place I’d like to live in myself. But there was one strange thing about it: every bare space was covered with some device for torture.
They were crammed in the cabinet and lined up on the table, stacked in the bay window, on the mantel, under the chairs, behind the curtains. Even hanging on the walls.
“Are all these yours?” I asked.
“No,” he answered, as though the idea seemed ridiculous. “I simply look after the collection. I give tours for our visitors, take care of the items on display, and appraise new acquisitions. We have to guard against fakes and forgeries.”
“Is there a difference between the genuine article and a fake when it comes to things like this?”
“Why, of course there is. We consider an item genuine only if it was actually used to torture someone. If it was simply intended as a decoration, it’s a fake.” Then he turned and pointed at the wall. “Well then, shall we begin here?”
A set of four iron rings, each dangling from a chain, had been mounted a few feet off the floor. It looked like some prop for a magician or a circus act. The metal was rusted and there were brown stains on the wallpaper behind it.
“The rings would have been placed around the victim’s hands and feet, and then horses would pull the chains in different directions. It’s a fairly conventional device, used in France at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In later years, the horses were replaced with winches, so the pain could be inflicted in more carefully calibrated increments, which is the whole point when it comes to torture.”
The old man had pronounced the words “carefully calibrated” with special care.
“Next we have this leather strap and these pliers. The victim’s wrist was attached to a table with the strap, and the pliers were used to extract the fingernails. Note the unusually delicate tips of the pliers.”
It might have been a trick of the light, but the strap looked wet. The pliers seemed almost harmless.
“This house was owned by twin sisters, daughters of a coal baron. They were maiden ladies who lived well into their eighties, and they traveled the world assembling this collection.”
“But what did they want with all this?” I asked. “Rich people usually collect paintings or jewels or things like that.”
“The desires of the human heart know no reason or rules. I suppose I might ask you instead what you hope to discover by coming to see us today?” He coughed and put his hand to his throat, as though about to straighten his bow tie. I caught another whiff of his cologne.
“You said that people bring things to you, to add to the collection?”
“That’s right. From time to time, patrons come to us with items they’ve discovered. I examine them, and if they seem suitable, I purchase them and put them on display.”
“But how can you tell whether they’re genuine or not?”
“First, I test the age of the materials: iron, wood, brass, leather, fabric, tin. An object may look old, but only the proper scientific testing can reveal its true age. Then I have to determine whether the instrument has actually been used or not—but that’s generally far easier than testing the age. You simply have to check for the presence of blood.”
I looked back at the rings and the fingernail pliers and wondered whether the spots on the wall and the moisture on the leather strap had something to do with blood.
“If you’re ready, we can continue,” the old man said.
* * *
No one joined us for the tour. I was alone with the old man for what must have been hours. Every room had been turned into an exhibit space—the kitchen, the library, the living room, the bathroom, the study—and yet it was almost as if they were still in use. There were spotless quilts on the beds, the smell of vanilla in the kitchen, and a book open on the desk in the study. But torture was everywhere.
The old man was good at his job. He could rattle off the history of each object without missing a beat, and it was obvious that these things meant a lot to him.
As I followed him from exhibit to exhibit, the only sound in the house was our footsteps. I caught glimpses of the garden when we passed a window. The sun was beginning to set.
He was tall and his shoulders were broad. His voice was firm and he moved like a much younger man. I thought for a moment that I might have been wrong about his age—but when I looked closer, I could see the spots on his face and the wrinkles on his neck.
What was I doing here? And what was my boyfriend doing now? The shrimp had been in the marinade too long, and the strawberry shortcake would be getting stale. It was too late.
But somehow the sight of all these instruments of torture, all of this pain, seemed to fit right in with thoughts of my boyfriend.
“This was brought to us by a bag maker.” The old man pointed at another object.
“It’s like a corset,” I said, peering into a cabinet he had opened in the living room.
“It is indeed. It’s cowhide stretched over a whalebone frame. The device is fitted over the torso and gradually tightened until the ribs crack and the internal organs are crushed. It was designed specifically for use on women.”
“May I touch it?”
“Yes, of course.”
“It doesn’t look particularly old,” I said.
“You’re quite right, it isn’t. It’s actually something that the bag maker designed himself. But my testing revealed traces of human flesh on the inside of the tube, so I found it worthy of being exhibited.”
I pulled my hand away and wiped my fingers on my skirt, trying to avoid letting him see what I’d done.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “The quantities of tissue were infinitesimal.”
“I was actually afraid I might be destroying precious evidence,” I told him.
I wondered which would be more painful: to have your throat slit, to have your heart gouged out, or to have your chest crushed? I bet it’s the corset, since you probably could last a while even after your organs burst. I wondered, too, about the woman who lived upstairs from my apartment. Had she been arrested yet? I imagined that nice detective using the corset to extract a confession. He could make her talk. He certainly was interested in what I had to say, unlike my boyfriend.
There were bright tiles in the bathroom, a new bar of soap in the dish, and neatly folded towels. A shaving set and jars of makeup were lined up above the sink.
“This item is somewhat rare. It comes from southern Yemen.” The old man seemed to be gaining strength as he went on.
“It’s just a funnel,” I said.
“Yes, but a special one. The victim is immobilized on his back, and the funnel is used to drip cold water on his face, one drop at a time.”
“And that’s torture.”
“It most certainly is—one of the more brutal, in fact.” He picked up the funnel and held it carefully in both hands. It was made of a dull silver metal almost the same color as his hair. “For a torture to be effective, the pain has to be spread out; it has to come at regular intervals, with no end in sight. The water falls, drop after drop after drop, like the second hand of a watch, carving up time. The shock of each individual drop is insignificant, but the sensation is impossible to ignore. At first, one might manage to think about other things, but after five hours, after ten hours, it becomes unendurable. The repeated stimulation excites the nerves to a point where they literally explode, and every sensation in the body is absorbed into that one spot on the forehead—indeed, you come to feel that you are nothing but a forehead, into which a fine needle is being forced millimeter by millimeter. You can’t sleep or even speak, hypnotized by a suffering that is greater than any mere pain. In general, the victim goes mad before a day has passed.”
He returned the funnel to its place in the exhibit.
What did my boyfriend’s forehead look like? It had usually been hidden under his long hair, but I had certainly seen it when he was getting out of the shower, or when he pushed back his bangs with that unconscious swipe of his hand, or when his head bobbed violently over me in bed.
I was sure that beautiful forehead would look lovely under an endless drip of water. Icy drops, cold enough to numb the skin, falling right on his forehead, then running down his face and disappearing into his hair. Like he’s crying. With another tear ready at the mouth of the funnel. His eyes are closed, his lips tensed. His forehead is so cute I have the urge to kiss it. But I can’t touch him, I can’t give him relief from the drops.
“Now this one is absolutely unique,” the old man said. “We are especially proud of it.” He held up what appeared to be just another ordinary pair of tweezers. There were stains where the fingers would have held them.
“The pain inflicted resembles that of the funnel we’ve just seen, but of a coarser variety. These were used to extract the hair from the victim’s head, one strand at a time.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” I said.
“I suppose it does seem a bit strange,” he said, nodding and touching his tie again. “The hairs are extracted one at a time, a procedure requiring infinite patience and perseverance. Until the scalp is completely exposed.
“It’s horrible to lose one’s hair. When the Nazis brought prisoners to a concentration camp, the first thing they did was to shave their heads in order to strip them of their humanity. In reality, it does no physical harm, but we seem convinced that our very existence is somehow bound up in our hair.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m a beautician. I should know.”
“Then you’ll understand the nature of the torture. It is conducted in a room lined with mirrors. Thus, no matter how hard the victim tries to avert his eyes, he is forced to watch himself becoming bald. The process is time-consuming, but it’s important that the hairs be removed one at a time. If you rip out several at once, the effect is lost. The suffering comes from the slow but steady sense of loss—along with the tiny pain the victim experiences each time a hair is plucked. It’s nothing at first, but as it’s repeated a thousand times, ten thousand times, a hundred thousand times, it becomes the most exquisite agony imaginable.”
The rich colors of the sunset were cast down on us through the skylight. The breeze had died and the leaves of the oak tree were still. The evening shadows collected under the old man’s eyes, making his smile seem a bit spooky.
The next time my boyfriend comes over, I’ll give him a haircut on the balcony. I’ll cover him with a plastic cape and put a towel around his neck. And then I’ll tie his arms and legs to the chair. Maybe this old man will lend me some straps. They’ve got plenty to spare. The ones with the fingernail tweezers would do.
And then I’ll pluck out his hair. It probably doesn’t matter where you start—behind the ears, or maybe on the top of the head. They’ll flutter down like insects with long wings. I’ll enjoy that tiny bit of resistance each time I pluck a hair, the feeling of the skin ripping, of fat popping to the surface.