Wake Of Liberty: 21 – Spectacular Justice
Torture Circus by Gavin Denman
Smyth opens his eyes to find himself immersed in a great commotion
‘Rot in hell, you filthy scum!’
‘You like to kill? Let me show you what happens to killers.’
‘Take that, pig!’
I am in a crowded square filled with hostile individuals. They have gathered in great numbers, angry at something I can’t quite grasp. The air is reeking of excrement, rottenness, and death, like an abattoir, yet no one seems to mind the filth. What is bothering them seems to be situated in the center of the square.
Dizzy and sore from the split, my eyesight not yet one hundred per cent, I move with the jostling crowd, trying to make out what is happening. I see a small platform ahead, erected at eye level. In the middle of it a man has been clamped in a stock, around which a crowd is gathering, shouting and laughing at him. The taunting is mostly verbal, limited to jeers and threats, but it soon escalates, turning physical. People start throwing rotten vegetables and dirt at him, poking him with long sticks and spitting at him. Some climb up on to the platform and kick him in the backside.
Source: www.clker.com
I glance around, looking for some sort of police. A bunch of armed men are scattered round the square, at the fringes, watching impassively. They seem totally unfazed by what is going on.
“They are not going to protect him, if that is what you are wondering.”
Cooley is standing next to me, gazing at the spectacle. He is pointing at the guards with raised eyebrows. I realize that he is right; none of them seem to be disturbed by what is going on. Some are even laughing. How can this be happening?
“It is not their job to protect him.”
Then whose is it? Who’s going to stop that mob from torturing that man?
“No one. It is called pillory justice.”
Pillory justice? What the hell are you talking about?
“A pillory, Mr. Smyth, is something like a stock, as you can see. It locks your head and wrists inside a frame, leaving you incapacitated and vulnerable. It is similar to a common stock, the only difference being that the pillory detains you in a standing position, like so, while the stock keeps you captive in a crouched or sitting position.”
Go on.
“It is an agonizing and ingenious form of punishment. It combines prolonged pain with public humiliation, as you can see. Supposedly reserved for petty criminals whose punishment is to be ridiculed and scorned in public, it often gets out of hand. Convicts tend not to be unlocked in time, and bad things happen to them.”
You mean…?
I dare not say the words. Suddenly the prospect of what the pillory is designed for is too much for me to contemplate.
Pillory justice was a way of punishing criminals and satisfying public anger at the same time. Source: wikipedia
Cooley looks at me and smiles with amusement. He pulls me closer to the platform, where I have a better view. My eyesight has been restored and I can see clearly now. He throws his left arm around my neck and squeezes me tight, pointing with his right at what is going on.
“The purpose of this punishment, Mr. Smyth, is not to inconvenience you to death. The aim is far more sinister than that. See, by having a person stand up, the pillory exposes more of the body for punishment and torture. The convicted criminal is now at the full mercy of the mob. Observe.”
The crowd has turned wild by now. They are prodding the convict with long canes and sticks, and are throwing rocks at him, aiming at his legs and torso. One man climbs up the platform, picks up one of the larger rocks, squares up to the man and smashes his fingers with it. The crowd cheers. The attacker instantly swells up and, inspired by mass approval, smashes the other hand with a series of vicious blows. He steps off the platform triumphant.
It causes a violent chain reaction. The people begin to salivate with savagery. Somebody climbs up the platform, runs up to the convict and kicks him as hard as he can in the spine, then in the rib cage. Someone else delivers him a series of blows across the face. Blood is spattering on the wooden planks and the convict is groaning and yelling. The crowd is getting into a deadly groove. I watch in awe as the violence escalates.
For a while the beating is relentless. It is carried out in a sick game of tag, whereby people take turns to pummel and scorn the poor man.
Then a switch in gear. Somebody pulls down his pants and squats. Cooley drags me back fast, away from the platform. Just in time. The man defecates, then grabs his own feces with both hands and starts plastering the convict with it. Another man urinates on the convict, and a third one steps up to him and shoves a stick up his behind.
I turn round and vomit.
When I turn up, having hurled and hurled again, Cooley is nowhere to be seen. I walk round the square and find him sitting on a wooden fence, smoking a long, thin pipe. He points at the pillory, where the convict is now hanging limp as a wet rag, bleeding to death.
“The vibrations are getting increasingly menacing and a murder party is brewing up. My guess is that they will take turns to beat him, then whip him, cut him, gouge his eyes out, rape him, feed him to himself, you name it, they are allowed to do it, and they will. It may take him hours to die the way things are. But it will probably be much quicker than that, if he is lucky. As the night sets in, the crowd will get progressively worse and kill him faster. ”
I shake my head in awe. Cooley pokes me on the shoulder. His face is grim and dead serious.
The wheel was one of the classic and enduring methods of torture. Source: http://www.yousaytoo.com
“Don’t do that, Mr. Smyth. Don’t feel bad about this man, he doesn’t deserve your pity. He is a monstrous murderer, who would kill a person as easily as he would step on a snail. He has a long history of violence, most of it deadly, but, as fate had it, he was never caught, until now, and not a moment too soon. His latest victims were a carpenter and his family, whom he robbed, raped, and murdered in cold blood. He was on his way to murdering another family when he was luckily caught for stealing salt from the local innkeeper.”
I look to the ground, unconvinced. Whatever this man’s history, his treatment is unacceptable. It’s ridiculous, all of it, almost make-believe, as if we’re in a Jigsaw movie, watching a producer’s sick fantasy come to life. I would have figured everything as fake, if not for the gruesome stench.
Where are we, Cooley?
“In medieval Europe, Mr. Smyth. Despotic France. Smack in the middle of Paris, by the river Seine, sometime around the 1300′s.”
Excellent. How could I have missed it? The crucible of gourmet cuisine and fine manners. I should have known by the fabulous ambiance.
Cooley smacks me on the back. He must consider my shock hilarious because he is doubled up laughing. I see nothing funny about the whole thing. How can someone be so callous in the wake of such cruelty?
“Welcome to the coordinates of the Age of the Spectacle, Mr. Smyth. Here justice is upheld through brute force; and deterrence is guaranteed through fear and terror. Despots enforce order and obedience through severe and shocking punishment, performed in public for all to see and heed.”
He snaps his fingers and the square morphs. The platform changes shape, and the pilloried man is replaced by dangling corpses on a scaffold.
“Behold the gallows, dear sir, where precious necks are snapped like twigs. It is a merciful, swift death, though many times the corpses are left to dangle here for days, and the smell is not so good.” Another snap of his fingers and the square morphs again. “Here we have the plank, where heads are chopped off with a sword or axe. A blessing in disguise, I assure you. Relatives of the convicted pay the executioner for a sharp blade, making sure their loved one’s head is cut off in one chop, giving them a swift and clean exit. See, it sometimes takes two or three blows to sever a head, and it isn’t pleasant being hacked and pummeled at the same time. The option to go out fast, with a clean blow, is heaven-sent and happily paid for.”
Snap.
“Now look over here. This is the wheel, where people are stretched wide, exposed fully, and beaten to a pulp with large metal hammers. A fascinating contraption this is, a sadistic masterpiece that is both painful and voyeuristic. The only absolution its captives can expect is a coup de grâce: a merciful blow to the torso to end the torture. Money can buy you a quick death, otherwise you are left alive until every bone in your body is broken.”
Snap.
“And over here is where dismemberment takes place.”
Enough, Cooley. I don’t want to know.
“Come, come, don’t be delicate. Look. Here is where they bring unrepentant, rotten-to-the-bone convicts, tie them up with harnesses attached to horses, and slowly rip them apart.”
The rack would stretch people out over metal knuckles until their joints broke and their spine dislocated. Source: wikipedia
Excellent! Now will you stop please?
“Don’t you want to know what is happening here, how justice was being served for hundreds of years? Don’t you have anything to ask?”
He is being serious. But I cannot take him seriously. I cannot entertain these gruesome acts in my head. The only way to handle the situation is by ridiculing it.
Ok, Cooley. Here’s what I’m wondering. The dismemberment – does it take place while the convicts are still alive or after they have been pummeled to a pulp by sadistic freaks?
My voice is shaking, trembling, but Cooley does not seem to mind my abhorrence. He continues unfazed.
“Of course while they are alive, Mr. Smyth. What use would it be to dismember people after they have died? Desecration may be a deterrent, but the spectacle needs more than that. It needs anguish and screaming. It needs horror and suffering in order to tap the instincts and activate aversion through the display of excruciating pain. Stop being so squeamish and get with the tour, will you? We can’t stay long here. Understand?”
I nod approvingly. The sooner we get out of here the better.
He points to an area to the side, behind the crowd. It is enclosed and guarded by heavily armed soldiers.
“See those seats? It is the VIP area, where the nobility sit back and watch the criminals being dismembered. The mob looks on from everywhere else. What do you think? Nice touch, isn’t it?”
Glorious! The cultural landscape is getting more charming by the second.
Cooley laughs again. My horror seems to be coming across as entertaining sarcasm. He actually seems to be enjoying this.
I turn away from him. I can’t look at him anymore. He is too sanguine and nonchalant about the whole thing. I need to jolt him into seeing the cruelty of the situation.
A flash of inspiration suddenly hits me.
Tell me, Cooley, how many nobles have been sentenced to the pillory?
“None that I know of.”
Why is that? Are nobles saints that commit no wrong? Or do they just have friends in the right places, intervening on their behalf?
Water torture was a practical way to soften up the victim before moving to other, more messy methods of punishment. Source: wikipedia.
“My dear Mr. Smyth, very few humans are saints, I assure you, and their nobility is of a different kind than the one in play here.”
Answer my question, Cooley. Do nobles suffer this kind of justice? Or do they soar above the law, laughing at the plight of these poor people while having the time of their lives?
Cooley sniggers.
“They soar above the pillory and the wheel, and above all infernal contraptions, but not above the law, not completely anyway. They do have friends in high places and can get away with murder, true, but they occasionally have to pay their dues too. They are subject to the blade, the cleanest death available.”
I see. A noble death reserved for noble bloodlines. Meanwhile the dirty people are shredded, crushed and pulverized into submission.
“Mr. Smyth, why are you getting so righteous all of a sudden? Death is death. Why get so riled up about it?”
Because we have crossed the line. This is disgusting. Horrifying.
“Really? I find it rather revealing. This is life at its basest, yet, most sincere; destruction without guilt or disguise. Just pure, unadulterated termination, maintaining law and order.”
Unadulterated evil, you mean! Keeping order like this is nothing short of diabolical. Look – they are pouring molten metal into that man’s wounds!
I point to the newest convict in the square, who is now screaming in ways I never thought a human being could scream. Cooley lights up.
“Yes, one of the most illuminating ways to die. They say that people see God when they are terminated like that.”
You find this funny?
“Yes, terribly terribly. Especially when in the presence of humans. Their sense of awe and shock amuses me. Their ignorance of their own violent tendencies is unique.”
Cooley, you’re a monster.
He cackles.
“You are the ones crushing each other to pieces, yet, I am the monster? Don’t make me laugh, Mr. Smyth. I am just a participant observer, trying to get you to look inside the mirror. It’s my job.”
You seem to be as callous about things as the nobles you so deride throughout the tour.
Dismemberment was reserved for violent offenders, serving as public spectacle and feast. Source: wikipedia
“And you believe you are somehow above and beyond all this, fit to condemn and reject it, all on account of the horror you are experiencing at witnessing your ancestors’ legacy.”
I see no other way to deal with this than reject it outright. What is happening here is absolutely inhuman.
“It is indeed. Strangely enough, though, the inhuman deed is perpetrated by none other than humans. Funny, isn’t it?”
Cooley taps his pipe on the fence a few times to empty it, then fills it up once more and lights up. He offers it to me.
I push it away and turn toward the center of the square. The convict has fallen silent. I am surprised he lasted this long.
“Smokescreens.”
What?
“I said he is not dead. He has just fainted, overcome by the pain. So they will take a break and give him a chance to come to his senses, then go for another round. It’s the way it goes in this day and age, Mr. Smyth. Think of it like purgatory society, an operation where digression is not tolerated and disobedience is made an example of – without mercy.”
Sounds like death’s playing grounds. Once caught and convicted here, you don’t try to stay alive. You try to die as fast as you can.
“Precisely.”
Cooley is smoking his pipe languidly, gazing into the square. He seems to have all the time in the world. I wish he would just snap his fingers and get us out of here.
What’s this place called, Cooley?
“Place de Grève, later to be known as Place de l’Hôtel de Ville, or City Hall Plaza.”
So the City Hall Plaza of Paris used to be a torture circus!
Cooley chuckles and taps me on the head with his pipe. He points a didactic finger at me.
“The Killing Fields, Mr. Smyth. They are not just in Cambodia. They are everywhere.” He jumps off the fence and beckons me to follow him. I run along after him, splattering through the filthy slush. ”Look around you, Mr. Smyth. You are smack in the middle of Europe, witnessing systematic slaughter, in places you habitually deemed sterile historical locations or tourist attractions. Appearances can be deceiving and history misleading. Smoke and mirrors are at work everywhere, obscuring the ghastly and putrid elements of reality.”
Being hung, drawn and quartered was the law's way to obliterate regicides and other public enemies number one. Source: wikipedia
He glances at me, then continues.
“Some truths have been buried deep, and to get to them you need to dig hard. But not too hard, if you know where to look and what to look for.
“Take Paris, for example. It is an incredible amusement park that makes the horror movies that are so popular in your culture come across like puppet theater. This city’s stories are so compelling they can engage even the most phlegmatic audience. To uncover its dark secrets and understand the underbelly of this society, you need to hear them. The easiest and most enjoyable way to do this is to get hold of a good guide book, a tour bus, and a tour guide with a penchant for the grotesque as well as the truth. You will be amazed at the history of a place as innocent as a park or a public square, where you can now enjoy a coffee and a carefree stroll. There is violence in every corner here.”
Great. I’ll never look at this place and smile, ever again.
“The price for knowledge is distress, Mr. Smyth. Comfort is always the first thing to go, taking beauty with it. It sounds horrible, but it is worth it. Unless, of course, you prefer a life of blissful ignorance.”
Right now a little ignorance wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Some things you just don’t want to know.
Cooley sighs, then snaps his fingers. The square changes again. There are no executions or torture taking place, just people dragging themselves through muddy streets. The stench is a little weaker now, but it lingers on, like the waft of a corpse buried under a thin layer of earth.
“Ignorance is never bliss, Mr. Smyth. It is rottenness, only hidden away, festering under your nose. You can deny it all you want, but it is there, putrid and growing, toxic and deadly.”
He marches on in great strides. I’m struggling to keep up with him.
“In this case, the rottenness eating its way through society is violence. And you, blissful as you are to be alive and kicking in a modern, glitzy, civil world, are incredibly ignorant of how and why the aggression and hatred so prevalent in your affairs, in all human affairs, keep getting recycled into society. That is why we are here, doing this part of the tour. You have to see how violence starts, what it feeds on. Knowing where its roots are, or at least where it is coming from, will make you a little less prone to it should you enter a crisis of your own. It helps contain the beasts within and deal with life more reasonably.”
We turn a corner and a stocky man bumps into me. His clothes are filthy and his skin looks like an endless field of growths you’d expect to find at the bottom of swamps. His stench is unbearable and his clothes soggy and oily. I scream and push him away, wiping my hands on my clothes in disgust.
Cooley is laughing again.
“I appreciate your sense of civility, Mr. Smyth. You seem to have such a great way with the Parisian folk. Bravo – way to show those callous nobles how to be civil!”
Source: wikipedia
He taps me on the head with his pipe again. He is mocking me, but I don’t care. I’m having a hard time focusing. I’m never going to look at Paris the same way again. The poverty and ugliness – the squalor and pain and endless suffering – they will haunt me forever. How could this city have ever been as miserable as this?
“It’s not just Paris, Mr. Smyth. It’s London, Rome, Vienna, Moscow, Madrid. Spectacular justice was happening everywhere. Which is a good thing for your day and age, when looking back, because, with a little imagination and a strong stomach, you could put it to good use.”
He turns around and starts walking backwards, facing me. His arms are wide open, as if he is selling the greatest show on earth. He is moving incredibly fast and I have to run to keep up with him. I have a feeling that I’m not going to like what comes next. I can see it in his eyes.
I chase after him, ready for anything.
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