26) “The Hand” by Guy de Maupassant
Plot:
Clean-shaven M. Bermutier, a judge, talks to a group of people gathered in Paris discussing the Saint-Cloud mystery. The judge notes that the women, shaking and trembling, move closer to him; they are “moved by fear and curiosity, and by the eager and insatiable desire for the horrible, which haunts the soul of every woman.”
Hmm…
Despite rumors to the contrary, the Saint-Cloud mystery involves nothing supernatural, even if it defies explanation. M. Bermutier offers an example of something that he came across some years earlier, when he was a judge at Ajaccio,* “a little white city on the edge of a bay which is surrounded by high mountains.”
An Englishman came to town and kept pretty much to himself, making everyone curious about him. “In my judicial position I thought it necessary to get some information about this man,” the judge says.
Nevertheless, he found it impossible to learn much of anything other than that he called himself Sir John Rowell. M. Bermutier finally made an excuse to make the newcomer’s acquaintance, and the two struck up a friendship. Sir John was a big man, with red hair and beard, very tall and very broad. M. Bermutier calls him “a kind of calm and polite Hercules.”
In discussing all the places and animals he’s hunted, Sir John makes the startling claim, “I have also been man-hunting.”
One day, M. Bermutier saw a mummified hand hanging on the wall: “dried black hand, with yellow nails, the muscles exposed and traces of blood on the bones, which were cut off as clean as though it had been chopped off with an axe, near the middle of the forearm. “
And: “Around the wrist, an enormous iron chain, riveted and soldered to this unclean member, fastened it to the wall by a ring, strong enough to hold an elephant in leash.”
Sir John told him, “That is my best enemy”
Some time later, his maid found Rowell strangled to death.
Thoughts:
This brief tale is unsettling and creepy. The judge tells it as entertainment, dismissing the thought of the supernatural, though the supernatural seems to be the best explanation. Rowell’s death is never resolved. Or is Bermutier just so thick-headed he can’t see the obvious?
Ambiguity runs deeply through the tale; Bermutier shows his audience one thing and tells them another. That frustrates his listeners. Should it frustrate the reader as well?
Or is it a practical joke on the reader? Is de Maupassant tweaking the reader’s nose—for they, like “the women,” can’t help but be horrified and enthralled by the macabre? He tells a tale that delivers on the horrors but refuses a satisfying ending. All is not right with the world after all.
On the other hand (so to speak…) Rowell seems to enjoy killing an awful lot, as if he had nothing better to do with his time than to snuff out the life of various game animals. It’s hard to feel much sympathy for him. Yet did he deserve the violent death? His (French) servant weeps for him, perhaps shocked by the degree of mayhem it took to end his master’s life.
I found this story intriguing, if a bit ghoulish, rather than enjoyable per se.
* The capital of Corsica, a French island in the Mediterranean Sea, and the birthplace of Napoleon.
This story can be read here:
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Bio: Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) studied law and served as a private during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), an experience that inspired the short story, “Boule de suif” (“Ball of Fat”) (1880), which people who know such things regard as his best.
Other well-known stories of Maupassant’s include “The Horla” (1886/1887) and “The Necklace” (1884).
In his twenties, Maupassant realized he’d contracted syphilis and spent the rest of his life privately agonizing over his health. His later stories deal with madness. He attempted suicide by slitting his throat in 1892 in the wake of his disabled brother’s death. As a result, he was committed to an asylum, where he died, a month shy of his forty-third birthday.
Title: “The Hand”
Author: Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
First published: in French in 1883 in Le Gaulois, a rework of an earlier story. “La main d’écorché” (“The Flayed Hand”) published in L’Almanach. First published in English under the title “The Englishman” in a 1903 collection of de Maupassant’s works.
Length: short story
