The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman by Angela Carter

Author:Angela Carter
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: British Literature, 20th Century, Retail, Britain, Amazon.com
ISBN: 9780141399652
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 1972-01-01T15:00:00+00:00

5 The Erotic Traveller

At first I thought the landslide must have been the Doctor’s work, but no logic of any kind, no matter how circuitous, could have justified that disaster. He could have gained no tactical advantages by destroying that forgotten place. Besides, his set of samples had perished completely and the peep-show was the greatest single weapon in his armoury; he would never have destroyed it. So the landslide could only be a simple assertion of the dominance of nature herself who, in the service only of the meaningless, reintegrated the city with chaos and then, her business done, casually abandoned it. It was an event of too massive arbitrariness for me to comprehend but, as the rain-washed light fell more and more wistfully on the gigantic tip of sandstone that killed my bearded lady, my reptilian friend, my shooting star and my blind philosopher, I became most deeply aware of mortality. Even the acrobats of desire could not put themselves together again after this dissolution. No phantom dared float above the desolation, though the water roared with as violent a display of energy as I have ever seen. A stranger would never have guessed that, at this same hour, the previous evening, the peak had been crowned with prim streets full of freaks and puritans. Light died on the rocks. I turned my back on a whole sub-universe that had been wiped out as if with a huge eraser and on the corpse of yet another of my selves, that of the peep-show proprietor’s nephew. I stumbled away over the rough fields, vanquished again, now beyond tears.

I was in altogether unknown country. After a while, I found a rough farmstead built of great blocks of windowless sandstone but they set a pack of lean, snarling dogs on me so I could not even beg a crust of bread there. Then a fat, white moon rose and I wandered down a rugged pathway with only my bleached shadow for company, two pale ghosts against a backdrop of mountains as sharply pointed and unnatural looking as those outlined by the brusque crayon of a child. I thought that if I wandered far enough, I would certainly reach Hoffman’s castle. I was sure I only had to put one foot before the other, indefatigably in the wrong direction, as the old man had told me, and my instinct would guide me there, although I did not know what I would do when I arrived except to look for Albertina. So I lurched on drearily, until I came to a defile through which ran a narrow road.

At the roadside grew a withered tree and a night-bird perched on one bare branch emitting a hoarse, rasping rattle, the antithesis of song. I looked along the road in both directions and all at once hope deserted me entirely for I did not know which was north and which was south. Suddenly I grew very, very weary. I heard, from far away, the shriek of a mountain lion and wondered indifferently if I might not be eaten during the night.

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