The Shadow of the Torturer: Chapters VIII-X

The Conversationalist, The House Azure, and The Last Year

Her voice was rich with the pleasure the question gave her. “In that contradiction will reside the appeal of this new belief. One can’t found a novel theology on Nothing, and nothing is so secure a foundation as a contradiction. Look at the great success of the past—they say their deities are the masters of all the universes, and yet that they require grandmothers to defend them, as if they were children frightened by poultry. Or that the authority that punishes no one while there exists a chance for reformation will punish everyone when there is no possibility anyone will become the better for it.”

“Weak people believe what is forced on them. Strong people what they wish to believe, forcing that to be real. What is the Autarch but a man who believes himself Autarch and makes others believe by the strength of it?”

“You are not the Chatelaine Thecla,” I told her.

“But don’t you see, neither is she. The Chatelaine Thecla, whom I doubt you’ve ever laid eyes on—No, I see I’m wrong. Have you been to the House Absolute?”

Her hands, small and warm, were on my own right hand, pressing. I shook my head.

“Sometimes clients say they have. I always find pleasure in hearing them.”

“Have they been? Really?”

She shrugged. “I was saying that the Chatelaine Thecla is not the Chatelain Thecla. Not the Chatelaine Thecla of your mind, which is the only Chatelaine Thecla you care about. Neither am I. What, then, is the difference between us?”

These two idea are presented a chapter apart and both by a version of Chatelaine Thecla. The first from the Chatelaine herself and the second from a prostitute made up to look and present herself as the Chatelaine for any clients.

In the first, Thecla is talking idly of starting a new religion once she escapes the torturers. In the second, the prostitute is trying to keep Severian from beating the shit out of her and possibly killing her.

I’ll leave them as presented for you to puzzle over.

Rather than try to capture and explain each of these chapters in turn, I’ll instead ask you why these three chapters exist as they do. In the first, called The Conversationalist, we have a very brief conversation with Thecla followed by a journey to a brothel called The House Azure. The second is inside the brothel where Severian is presented different “Chatelaines” and he picks Thecla, of course, only to threaten her once he begins to notice the differences between this girl and the true Thecla. In the third, we cover an entire year that Severian spends with Thecla, giving her gifts of flowers and so on, but also avoids the brothel where he met her mimic.

Thankfully, there is an answer as to why these chapters exist this way, though it will take us time to get there.

Patience and memory are powerful tools in reading this book.

Four of the first ten chapters of this book deal with Thecla specifically. The other six with Severian growing up in the Citadel with the torturers. The next promises to be the end of Severian’s childhood, as he becomes a journeyman in the guild of torturers.

And so Wolfe has presented us two halves of Severian. The one who belongs to the torturers and the one who belongs to Thecla.

Along the way, and in these three chapters, we get a lot more worldbuilding. More unknown words and words known used in unknown ways are presented to us. We find that Father Inire looked like a monkey and was the oldest man in the world. We find that the Autarch is described in so many ways that they all bleed meaninglessly together.

More interesting were the descriptions of the Autarch, who would have had to be a kind of monster to fit them all: he was said to be tall when standing, of common size seated, aged, young, a woman dressed as a man, and so on.

The city, too, keeps changing and is difficult to hold in one’s head. It keeps moving upriver and the Citadel itself was once somewhere else in the city. The House Absolute cannot be found unless you know where it is or unless those living there want you to find it.

How can such a place exist?

What does it even mean?

This is a world in flux where people know very little. Severian trusts the opinions of Thecla and Rotte. Her, because of love. Him, because of friendship. And so he doesn’t question what they tell him, only passes it on to us, whereas he casts doubt on the words of many others.

You could say that these opening ten chapters are really about perspective. About Severian’s, absolutely. But also about many others. Severian’s conversations that he records are often about perspective, rather than about events or even other ideas.

Wolfe and, by extension Severian, play most with this concept of perspective.

Severian feels a sense of freedom in the guild, in that the future is a somewhat known quantity. Whereas the freedom to leave the guild and choose what life he’ll have feels terrifying.

Which is to say he’d rather be despised as a torturer than accepted as a man without backing or friends.

And who amongst us really does differently?

There is a cost and a terror in freedom, and there is a different kind of freedom in confinement. Most of us work 9-5 jobs that we have no strong attachment to—we may even hate our job!—yet better that than the alternative of striking out on our own. Because though 40 hours of our weeks must be spent in this trap, we have the freedom to shape the rest of the hours however we like (within legality and reason, I suppose).

Even Thecla, trapped in her tiny room where she can’t even fully stand, attempts to define a kind of freedom. She is given books, hopes to be given new or different clothes. She talks with Severian, teasing him, flirting with him, dreaming of all she’ll do when she’s set free.

You may ask yourself, why didn’t she do any of this when she was free? Well, that bit’s been answered previously. She’s the Autarch’s hostage, giving him leverage over the noble families of exultants (is Severian an exultant as the madame at the brothel suggests?). This is exactly why she’s at the Matachin Tower.

But you may ask yourself, in turn, why you have never done any of the things you’ve dreamt of doing?

Have you started writing that book you’ve always wanted to write? Have you been to Europe or Africa or any of the places you told yourself you’d like to go? Have you even planted a garden or crocheted a hat? Did you even leave your house today?

Your instagram and pinterest algorithms think you have.

Remember always that Severian is telling this story to us, his audience, with an eye towards that audience and his future where he has backed into a throne.

What does it mean that he went to a brothel, almost beat the prostitute he chose, but did sleep with her, finally, only to never return again? That he brought Thecla flowers, that he loved her?

Perhaps we can consider the gender of it all, and the gender roles happening.

Once more, I’ll leave such puzzling to you.

Next week we’ll read Chapters XI through XIV. This is the biggest chunk of the novel we’ll go through yet, but we’ll be slowing down again, briefly, the week after.

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