The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman

by Angela Carter

‘In a certain brothel in the city of New Orleans, once, I saw you strangle a prostitute solely to augment your own erotic ecstasy, my dear Count. Since that time, I have pursued you diligently across space and time. You excited my curiosity. It seemed I might be able to crown my own atrocities by making my brother in atrocity my victim. That I might, as it were, immolate myself, to see how I should bear it. ‘I wish, you understand, to see how I would suffer. ‘I have a great deal of empirical curiosity. A Jesuit in his black cassock once came to my tribe and lived among us for a year. When he learned my manners, he rebuked me so sternly, in the name of pity, that first I had him crucified – for he professed to admire so much this form of torture – and, while he was still quivering on the tree, I cut out his heart with my own hands, to see if such a professedly compassionate an organ had a different structure from the common kind of heart. But no! it did not. ‘Now I should like to see if we have a heart at all, dear Count. Are we ourselves so much the physical slaves of nature? ‘And I wish to see if I can suffer, like any other man. And then I want to learn the savour of my flesh. I wish to taste myself. For you must know I am a great gourmet. ‘Bind him.’ Two female officers pounced on the Count and tied his wrists together with cords. From the ranks of the chief’s retinue a plump, giggling being wearing only a white chef’s cap and a girdle hung with ladles stepped forward w...