The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman

by Angela Carter

Albertina was as concerned as I with the texture of the life of our hosts but not from any simple, childish curiosity such as mine. She had become engrossed in the problem of the reality status of the centaurs and the more she talked of it, the more I admired her ruthless empiricism for she was convinced that even though every male in the village had obtained carnal knowledge of her, the beasts were still only emanations of her own desires, dredged up and objectively reified from the dark abysses of the unconscious. And she told me that, according to her father’s theory, all the subjects and objects we had encountered in the loose grammar of Nebulous Time were derived from a similar source – my desires; or hers; or the Count’s. At first, especially, the Count’s, for he had lived on closer terms with his own unconscious than we. But now our desires, perhaps, had achieved their day of independence. I remembered the words of another German savant and quoted to her: ‘ “In the unconscious, nothing can be treated or destroyed.”* Yet we saw the Count destroyed; and I myself destroyed the Cannibal Chief.’ ‘Destruction is only another aspect of being,’ she said categorically and with that I had to be content.