Fear of De Sade

dinary thing about that marriage. They married in a chapel on top of a hill, as simple as simple can be, in the south of France, in the town where he’d been born and where at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, so it seems, a baron laid on orgies inspired by the Marquis de Sade. A libertine writer whose central philosophy was treachery. Six months after they were
married, they found out she couldn’t have children. They realised that love doesn’t outlast time, love ends, and they made an explicit pact which, usually, in the general run of
marriages, destroys them by remaining unsaid. They decided the best thing was to establish a relationship based on treachery and horror. Horror instead of love. A marriage based on a game of
horrors, because, as he keeps saying during his attacks, horror doesn’t die, unlike love. Only horror can keep a marriage alive, on the principle of treachery, according to the philosophy of
this libertine baron. Each of the spouses plays a joke on the other, successively and in turn. It’s what they learned to call, in a game restricted to the two of them, the ‘fear of
Sade’. A reference to the famous marquis, of course; it seems plain that it was under Sade’s influence that the baron created his own peculiar philosophy. You know. The one who’s
more afraid loses. That was the game. Whoever got afraid, lost. ‘Fear of Sade’. And when he ordered his wife to be killed, paradoxically, he lost. They went on playing tricks on one
another, each one more horrible than the last, and that way they intended to stay together until death, as they’d promised in the eyes of the Church. They went on playing tricks on each other
to keep, as far as possible, the oath they’d taken in the little chapel on the top of the hill, in the south of France, as simple as simple can be. Only the business didn’t last long.
Even treachery has its rules, and he cheated. He wanted to put the cart before the horse. He tried to bring death forward, to kill his wife before she killed him. He got scared. And in this game
whoever gets scared, loses. It might seem paradoxical to you, and to me too, but when she died, she won. When she died, she terrified him. You can get an idea from his screams. Between one joke and
another, she ended up saying something she shouldn’t have. She didn’t exactly say that she’d found out the crime he was planning. It was he who interpreted her that way. She was
more ambiguous and enigmatic. It’s most likely she only wanted to provoke him, to exacerbate what she thought was an attack of jealousy. Maybe she was just trying him on. She only put into
words what was already in his head. Or perhaps not even that. Maybe she didn’t know anything. But that was the way he understood it. He thought she’d discovered the crime he was
planning. Not the crime against herself, of course – that came later, and because of what she said – but against the client. After those words, it was his turn to play a trick on her.
And she knew she couldn’t escape when she agreed to the journey he proposed to her, just like that, with the lame excuse that they needed some peace, some holiday, just the two of them. She
might not have known, but at least she suspected, if it was only because of his behaviour. That’s why she planned everything before she died. She planned to play a trick on her husband with
her own death, since it was inevitable, a trick even more horrible than death itself. She would leave as her inheritance another motive for horror, and this time he would be inconsolable. She
didn’t want to die without getting her own back. She didn’t want to take the ‘fear of Sade’ to the grave with her. She left her vengeance ready. And there’s no way of
knowing at what point she realised and took the decision, to what degree she’d got everything set from the day she said those words to him, when he thought she’d found out what he was
planning, and preferred to have her killed to having to live with the suspicion, however remote the chances of her really having found anything out. They deserved one another. It’s no
accident they were married. They met in a firm in the north of France. She worked as an accountant and he was a legal consultant. They were a perfect pair. She was a wizard at numbers, which was
just what he was no good at; he studied law because he couldn’t do anything else. She’d always done sums since she was little. And it would be a euphemism to say he’d never been
any good at maths. He just hadn’t the gift for it. It’s not that he was stupid, but since childhood his capacity for abstraction had never been anything to write home about. He only
understood the four basic algebraic operations on the day he translated them into everyday language and realised that multiplying two by two, for instance, simply meant twice two, a duplication of
two. He understood algebra through semantics, which in its turn was not the woman’s strong point, so much so that she signed her own death warrant when she said those words without measuring
the consequences. As long as it lasted, they were complementary. Numbers and meaning. They pulled off a hoax on the firm, a first-class swindle, a hoax based on confidence so they couldn’t be
caught, and went to live in the south of France, where he’d been born. They were married right there, in a little country chapel, with the ruins of the libertine baron’s château
in the background. A discreet ceremony, only for those closest to them, hardly anyone, and his family. She preferred not to invite her own family. Only her sister. She hadn’t been speaking to
her parents for years. The idea of substituting horror for love wasn’t alien to her. She might well have been inspired by her own childhood, and her own family. It was putting hunger and the
urge to eat together when he introduced her to the collected works of the baron. Because he was a fan of the libertine literature of the end of the eighteenth century. It was through him she
discovered the baron and his philosophy of treachery. In one of his books, a moralising novel in dialogue form, the baron recounted how he had avenged himself on the wife who was betraying him: he
deflowered the illegitimate daughter she’d had by his cousin. Because, according to the baron’s philosophy, only treachery liberates. Treachery is repaid with treachery. Nothing could
be more appropriate, then, than betraying the conventions of a morality which attempts in its turn to be false to nature. And the baron could think of nothing more treacherous than depraving the
illegitimate daughter of his own adulterous wife to avenge himself on her and her demure maternal hypocrisy. He’s a writer who proposes a world in which virtues and values are turned upside
down, inside out, where evil is good, and treachery is honour. A world of anti-virtues, as the only way of escaping from the hypocrisy of religion and the limitations of human conventions in the
name of the truth of the instincts. A world of anti-virtues for a philosophy. An anti-humanism at the beginning of the nineteenth century. And it’s no accident that she was delighted when her
husband showed her the collected works of the baron and said to her: ‘We are here to prove God doesn’t exist. No effort should be spared, no means excluded in this undertaking. Our
lives will prove God doesn’t exist, or we wouldn’t be what we are.’ They also came across a world of anti-virtues after they went up the hill on foot to the little chapel. The
simplest thing in the world. The marriage was a way of sealing the alliance they made when they pulled off the first hoax, which left the boss with his hands tied when he wanted to give the police
their names, since they were only able to act thanks to his complete confidence in them. They came out clean and with money in their pockets. The boss was completely to blame, for he had delegated
all power to them, and any naming of them, as well as being useless from the criminal point of view – for there was no way of pinning the blame on them – would only be a complete,
shameful revelation of the fraud and of his own naiveté. They were careful with the money from the hoax. They didn’t want to attract attention. They intended to pull off others, if
only to prove God doesn’t exist. The world needs proof. They were a perfect pair of swindlers. They had their lives in front of them. She was a wizard with numbers. Straight after they were
married, he opened an office in the small town. Six months before discovering she couldn’t have children, which was the sign, and also the beginning of the game and their downfall. They
realised straight away only horror could keep them together. They realised they would only have a chance by indulging in horror. They ended up linking this horror to the libertine baron’s
philosophy of treachery. Before horror and treachery could become established and control the relationship in spite of them – as happens in the general run of marriages, according to the
baron – she proposed the game to him, inspired by the baron’s philosophy and by her own childhood. At the start it was fun. He let her go out in the car in the early morning after
he’d emptied the brake fluid in the middle of the night, which she only noticed when she put her foot down on the pedal, and, avoiding a cart, lost control on a twisty but fortunately flat
and near-empty road which went through a maize field, where she ended up in total chaos, though without any serious injury. She crashed against a tree and when they came to her assistance they
found her laughing out loud to herself when she realised what had happened. She, in her turn, hired two lads, members of the party of the extreme right whose meeting the couple used to attend, to
mug him when he came home alone one stifling night, after work, while she was in the supermarket. Two months later, he abandoned her in a small yacht they’d rented, out at sea, pretending
he’d been drowned, while she, who could hardly swim or sail, adrift in the boat, was desperately trying to get help on a radio which had been purposely broken. Until another boat came to save
her. She forged a summons from the Ministry of Finance, which he got in the mail, accusing him of tax evasion. And he went as far as to appear at the appointed day and time, terrified, after a good
deal of hesitation, for fear that if they’d discovered the tip of the iceberg, they might find the submerged part; he only realised he’d been tricked when the receptionist told him she
didn’t know of any employee with the name of the person who had signed the summons. And there, on the spot, in front of the Ministry of Finance receptionist, he laughed out loud as she had
done after the accident in the middle of the maize field. They knew how to enjoy themselves. The game was a school of fear. A never-ending test. And, in their own way, you could even say they were
happy. Until she said those words and he broke the rules and brought her death forward. Not that they might not die, as a result of a trick with a greater risk of violence, for example, or by some
mistake in the plans, that was part of it, but chance had always been a fundamental element. It wouldn’t have been right to get rid of chance. He had planned every detail of her death, so she
couldn’t escape. It was the only way of being able to carry out the rest of his plan, so he thought, still completely unconsciously, without realising that all he had to do was eliminate her
to ruin everything. In this game between them, she might create problems at any moment, and he didn’t want to risk anything, at least not this time. He couldn’t. He wanted to kill a
client and didn’t need accomplices. He didn’t want to leave witnesses. The only thing he didn’t know was how she’d found out. If she really had found out, as those words
made him think she had. Also, he couldn’t imagine what she might leave to be said only at the moment of death; she might avenge herself when she was murdered, and he’d be caught
completely unprepared. One night, when he returned home after an untimely, unexplained crisis which to those who didn’t know them might even look like jealousy and maybe the wife had
interpreted that way, she was waiting for him in the living-room, as usual. It was a stone house on top of a hill, like the little chapel, with a view over the valley and the ruins of the
baron’s castle, a house they’d bought with the money from the first swindle, when they realised they were made for one another. A house she decorated ‘in the American
style’, as she liked to say to please her husband, whose dream was to move one day to Chicago, the land of gangsters and limitless opportunity, at least that was what he proclaimed in the
first months of the marriage; he was always consorting with the worst people in the town, before they discovered she couldn’t have children. It was when he realised that he’d stopped
finding it funny, and it wasn’t just from what she said. He even slapped her in the house at the mere mention of the phrase ‘in the American style’ about the decoration, in the
presence of a couple of guests they’d recently got to know at the meetings of the party of the extreme right, who left in a hurry, out of sheer embarrassment. And before the horror took over,
she decided to take the initiative and propose to her husband this game, which to you and me might seem insane, inspired by what she had gone through in childhood, but also under the influence of
the libertine baron, at first sight with the single aim of saving their marriage. If she was going to be hit, then it might as well be with her own consent, in a game. That way they would take
turns in the roles of victim and torturer. If it would save the marriage. They even laughed at the pretext. But not for long. Only till the night when she was waiting for him in the living-room,
after he’d had a crazy attack of jealousy, which made no sense at all at that stage of the proceedings, when he came home without saying a word. She said she had something to say to him. And
she spoke in the same way she referred to the décor of the house in front of the guests: ‘in the American style’. She said just what he didn’t want to hear at that moment.
Her eyes shining, and with a glass of whisky in her hand, she said: ‘For you, the best thing would be if he didn’t exist, he’s your weak point’. She didn’t say
anyone’s name, as if she read her husband’s thoughts, and at that moment he could only imagine she’d found out. Though he couldn’t understand how. His whole brain was taken
up with the plan to get rid of the client. He knew she might just be trying it on, to put him to the test and terrify him. She might be talking about something else. But he couldn’t live with
the suspicion, now that everything was real. He couldn’t let her find out and get in the way of his plans. He couldn’t allow himself to get into her power, to be threatened by her. And
what if, in any future reversal of the game, she decided to inform on him to the police to terrify him even more? That was the only thing the wife said, her eyes shining, and with a glass of whisky
in her hand: ‘For you, the best thing would be if he didn’t exist, he’s your weak point’. And it was enough. It was only of secondary importance, whether she knew or not. It
hardly mattered whether she knew about her husband’s plans to kill his client or not. He couldn’t go ahead, with that on his mind. With a single sentence, she’d brought about her
own death. What he couldn’t suspect was that, in a certain sense, this was a form of suicide. He couldn’t know that perhaps there was nothing involuntary or unconscious about what his
wife did. It’s possible she was tired, or that she had to put him in check, and check-mate him only with her own death. Perhaps she had no strength or imagination left in her. Because it was
a game of the imagination. Perhaps she’d simply felt the moment of the final trick arrive; what’s certain is that she played like an actress in a gangster movie she saw on television
while she was doing accounts, always doing accounts, ‘in the American style’: sitting on the living-room sofa with her eyes shining and a glass of whisky in her hand. He pretended he
hadn’t heard and changed the subject. He didn’t ask ‘who d’you mean, he?’ He didn’t change expression. He changed the subject. He was imperturbable. S