Yoko Ogawa - Revenge

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.