The Shadow of the Torturer: Chapters XI-XIV

The Feast, The Traitor, The Lictor of Thrax, and Terminus Est

If I hate my last friend, what would be left?

These words echo in my skull.

Holy Katherine may be based upon Catherine of Alexandria, a saint and martyr from the 4th century, who was tortured and imprisoned but healed by angels, fed by a visiting dove. She remained unbroken by the emperor’s torture through supernatural assistance and force of will and belief.

Eventually, the emperor became so frustrated that he ordered her to be broken on a wheel, which broke when she touched it. She was then beheaded, and a milky substance poured from her neck rather than blood.

That emperor was named Maxentius.

Why would the torturers venerate her as their patron saint?

This is where ol Gene’s Catholicism comes in most clearly, I think.

If you’re not sure what the concept of a patron saint is, it just means that these saints will intercede for your prayers in specific circumstances. And Catherine of Alexandria, like many centuries gone saints, has had her patronage expand over time. She’s now the patron of scholars, children, the dying and on and on.

You could draw a line between Catherine’s patronage of the dying with the torturer’s view of their clients. There is a love espoused by Severian for those who are brought to be tortured.

And so their patron saint may be on behalf of those who must suffer beneath them.

Or, perhaps, the most important aspect of this is that they execute their own patron to celebrate her feast and they do it on behalf of the emperor.

Such puzzles.

But does this puzzle matter?

I’d argue that it doesn’t. Not really. This is texture. It’s thick and messy and goops all over your skin so you can’t wash it off, but the texture is the most important part of this scene.

It’s also important, I think, in the sequence of the novel.

In Chapter X, Severian chooses to become a torturer. Here, he’s elevated to journeyman. In Chapter XII, he betrays the guild and confesses.

Perhaps that is love. Fear.

Severian tells us that he feared the freedom of being a man alone in the world, without the backing or connection to a guild. He could have left the guild, but instead embraces it and feasts and celebrates with them.

His affection for the guild is genuine and I believe this not only because he tells us but because he tells all of us. His audience grew up in this world where the torturer’s guild is hated, despised, or even thought of as a legend or nightmarish folktale. In his telling, in the book you hold, the book held by his audience within the world he lives in, comes to know the torturers.

Because Severian could have lied and said that he was another man, that he grew up another way, and yet he tells us instead that he grew up this way. With the torturers.

Also, a moment to help you visualize what a torturer looks like in this world:

A black leather mask, a cloak darker than black, and no shirt. Incidentally, this is the cover of the edition I have.

But this is what Severian looks like right now!

Imagine walking down the street and seeing this big freak?

The scene in which Thecla is tortured is worth talking about. Master Gurloes makes Severian take part and I think this is significant. He understands the affection Severian has for her and so he chooses him as one of the torturers to assist him in breaking Thecla.

Such cruelty. But also a way to bind him to the guild.

You may love her as a man but we are torturers first.

I also just find it very funny that he leads her through the Matachin Tower explaining what everything is to distract her while he leads her to her own torture. And what a devious form of torture.

The revolutionary.

“Do you know what it was like? It was a long time before I could think of it.”

Her right hand was creeping upward, toward her eyes. I caught it and forced it back.

“I thought I saw my worst enemy, a kind of demon. And it was me.”

Her scalp was bleeding. I put clean lint there and taped it down, though I knew it would soon be gone. Curling, dark hairs were entangled in her fingers.

“Since then, I can’t control my hands…I can if I think about it, if I know what they’re doing. But it is so hard, and I’m getting tired. She rolled her head away and spat blood. “I bite myself. Bite the lining of my cheeks, and my tongue and lips. Once my hands tried to strangle me, and I thought oh good, I will die now. But I only lost consciousness, and they must have lost their strength, because I woke. It’s like that machine, isn’t it?”

I said, “Allowin’s necklace.”

“But worse. My hands are trying to blind me now, to tear my eyelids away. Will I be blind?”

“Yes,” I said.

“How long before I die?”

“A month, perhaps. The thing in you that hates you will weaken as you weaken. The revolutionary brought it to life, but its energy is your energy, and in the end you will die together.”

What a terror and what a brilliant little name for it. The revolutionary. Some sort of injection that causes yourself to rise against yourself and seek your own death.

A horrifying loss of control. A dissolution of self.

Severian chooses to give her a choice, which is really no choice.

Die in a month or kill yourself now.

He could not bear to do it himself, however.

And then he confesses his crime and the funniest thing happens.

They refuse to punish him because it would make them all look bad. And so they hide the guilt and shame by hiring out his services to Thrax, a city beyond the Citadel, which, as we discover, is sort of a legendary place in its own right.

Imagine living your whole life in one place and the moment you go to the next city over, they tell you that where you’re from is some mysterious place.

A world dissolving. Dying.

We know the sun is dying from Severian’s description.

I walked toward it down the aisle, and as I did so I was struck by how much lighter it was than the true sky, whose blue is nearly back even on the brightest day.

There’s a reason why this is called the Book of the New Sun, though we’re miles from really understanding that. But Severian gives us a big hint there. Pay attention to any time he describes the sun or the sky.

After Severian is told of his banishment, he goes to his womb, that old mausoleum where he stored the Vodalus coin. Seeking something. Comfort, perhaps. He returns to his origin point, surrounded by the necropolis. This tomb where he took his sigil.

And then, curiously, Master Palaemon, gives him a sword. Terminus Est. I’ll let the Latin scholars among you make sense of those two words, for they may be important. And it’s slightly different than what Severian says its meaning is.

But it’s a fitting name for the sword of a torturer.

It’s a curious blade on its own. A sort of liquid within it allows for the building of unnatural momentum. Though Severian has betrayed the torturer’s guild, he will work as a torturer and is given a rather special gift before leaving.

And I can imagine this. Masters Palaemon and Gurloes are, in a way, the parents of all these lost, abandoned boys. They, too, grew up in such a circumstance. Loveless, they carry out their terrible duty. Despised, they are bound together.

They understand the betrayal, which is why so many spoke for Severian, why so few wanted execution.

For they love their clients and how many other brothers of the guild have fallen in love with their clients? How many dreamt of doing exactly what Severian did?

Should they punish him for his bravery, for his willingness to give into that love?

Consider.

Master Gurloes, as soon as Severian begins his companionable arrangement with Thecla, is sent to a brothel. He tells her, quite matter of factly, to not get her pregnant, which is something Severian was very far from considering.

And so how many brothers faced a similar circumstance? How many fell in love with the tortured and how many of those being tortured believed sex could buy their freedom?

The clues are there, though never laid out directly, that, perhaps, the only crime Severian committed was carrying through on his heart’s desire.

And now Severian stands in a strange space. Part of the guild but also sort of banished. He’s grabbed from the street and told, essentially, that he’s freaking people out and to chill.

Remember, he looks like this:

What he hell!

And so on this precipice of where we’ve been and where we’re now going lands in our lap. We’ve spent a lot of time in the Citadel and with the torturers, but now we enter the wider world with Severian, who no longer has a solid foundation.

He’s exactly where he feared he would be a few chapters ago.

Let’s see how he handles it.

I think we’ll slow down for a week and only read Chapter XV. Allow ourselves to find our feet a bit.

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