Jim Shepard - You Think That's Bad

He agreed to read my account as I set it down. Having done so to this juncture, he remarked that he found it impossible to assert which was the more astonishing, the author’s memoir or his crimes. When I questioned his response he wondered with some irritation if I’d been struck by the oddity of the author’s having felt so acutely for the raptors, and not their quarry.

“I’ve felt remorse for all of those children,” I told him.

“You wrote that he had this or that person’s throat cut,” he answered. “But you neglected to indicate who sometimes did the cutting.”

At the hour of terce on Saturday, 8 October, the lord de Rais refused to take the oath on the Sacred Scripture and, having declined to respond to the articles of indictment, was excommunicated in writing. On 15 October he consented to recognize the court’s jurisdiction and admitted to many of his crimes and misdeeds. On 20 October, in order that the truth might be more fully elucidated, it was proposed that the question of torture be put to the defendant. On 21 October he petitioned that the application of torture be deferred, and on 22 October offered his full and public confession.

He spoke for four full hours. He offered the assembly a diptych of Paradise and Hell with himself as the central figure in both panels, in the former a paragon of the highest ideals of Christian knighthood, and in the latter evil’s conscienceless servant. He said he believed his acts to have been halted by the hand of God, and that by the same hand he expected to be granted salvation. He freely related all of his crimes in luxurious detail and admitted he had offended our Savior because of the bad guidance he had received in his childhood, and he implored with great emotion all parents present to raise their children with good teachings and virtuous examples. He requested that his confession be published in French for the benefit of the common people. He exhorted everyone in the court, especially the churchmen, to always revere Holy Mother Church, and added that without his own love for her he would never have been able to evade the Devil’s grasp. At the end he fell to his knees and tearfully asked for mercy and remission from his Creator and for the support of the prayers of all those, present or absent, who believed in Christ and adored Him.

The civil court found him guilty of homicide, but the canonical court condemned him for heresy and sodomy alone, the latter being known as the cause of earthquakes, plagues, and famine. On 25 October he received pronouncement of sentence: he would be hanged, and then burned. His two accomplices, Henriet and myself, would be burned and then hanged. Afterward the Inquisitor asked if he wished to be reincorporated into the Church and restored to participation in the Sacraments. He answered in the affirmative. He requested of the court that since he and his servants together had committed the crimes for which they were condemned, they might be permitted to suffer punishment at the same hour, so that he, the chief cause of their perfidy, could console and admonish them and provide an example of how to die well, and perhaps thereby be a partial cause of their salvation. This request was granted. He further asked for a general procession, that the public might view their contrition, and, when this was agreed, that on the sides of the wagon transporting them would be hung paintings he’d commissioned of late, depicting classical scenes of farewell. And the court, in concluding its proceedings, was pleased to grant this final request.

We ask all who read this to judge us with the charity we might not otherwise deserve. We were brushed by our lord’s divine impatience and, like driven horses, risked in his wagers. Now our share is only the lash. Tomorrow’s morning has been chosen for the consummation of our sentences, the site a meadow close above the main bridge over the Loire, where the trees are often adorned with the hanged.

Where is the region of that law beyond the law? No one makes his way there with impunity. I’ve filled sheet after sheet in a box at my feet. I conclude a final page by candlelight while Henriet weeps and will not speak and refuses my consoling touch. He rubs his back as my mother did. He will not read any further pages I put before him.

But I write this for him. And my eyes will be on only him as our arms are lashed around the heavy stakes to our back, and his gaze remains on lord de Rais. He will hang his head and close his eyes as he does when the greatest extremity is upon him. And lord de Rais’s final moments will manifest themselves before us. He will die first, and in view of his contrition the court has decreed that his body be taken from the flames before it bursts and buried in the church he has chosen. In his last moments he will be a model of piety, exhorting us to keep faith throughout what follows. Barely burned, his body will be laid out on the finest linen by four noble ladies, two of whom watched us through that peephole so many months ago, and carried in solemn procession to his interment. We will watch the procession go. We will be isolated in our agonies as the bundles are lit below us. We will be burned to cinders and our ashes scattered.

And God will come to know our secrets. At our immolation He’ll appear to us and pour His gold out at our feet. And His grace that we kicked away will become like a tower on which we might stand. And His grace will raise us to such a height that we might glimpse the men we aspired to be. And His grace like the heat of the sun will burn away the men we have become.

We haven’t spoken in three days and haven’t stretched out in two, and that’s forty-four hours we’ve been braced back to back, holding our tent poles, one hand low and the other high, to keep them from snapping in the wind. They’re supposed to be titanium but at Camp 3 they went off like rifle shots in the night and these are jerry-rigged spares. The winds are topping 130 kilometers an hour. The temperature has dropped to 49 below. We’re wearing three layers of fleece, one of Gore-Tex, down bodysuits, insulated climbing shells, and even our overgaiters, with gloves inside gloves inside mittens, and headcaps inside balaclavas inside hoods. I’ve been unable to interrupt the clatter of my teeth. Jacek’s breathing sounds like someone blowing bubbles through a straw. Bieniek has long since given himself over to a kind of stupefaction. We store the radio batteries in our underwear and load them only when we need to call Base Camp. Once we’re finished, getting them back through all the layers takes ten minutes. Then we just grip one another and hold on until our testicles warm the battery casings. The casings conduct the cold with exceptional efficiency.

We’re at Camp 4 and only 1,000 meters below the summit, but the summit’s 8,126 meters high and in the winter at this altitude everything is sandblasted by the jet stream and the cold.

Because of that, the peak is called Nanga Parbat: Sanskrit for “Naked Mountain.” When the sky is not storming, it sounds like a giant’s flapping bed sheets as hard as he can. When it is, the turbine sound of the howl makes even shouting pointless. During those periods we’re reduced to hand signals with mittens.

We’ve been on the mountain for twenty-seven days. Our sponsors have shelled out big money not for attempts but for results. Our team members, strung out along the various camps below, are spent. Our wives back home are miserable. Our children are frightened. Poland is watching.

If we descend we won’t have the physical reserves to return. If we continue upward we’ll be ascending without being able to make out our hands at arm’s length. If we decide to wait out the storm, they’ll find us once it’s over, like everything else in the tent, from our sunscreen to our cameras: frozen solid and cascaded with frost.