The Torturer's Apprentice: Stories

by John Biguenet

Overview

This brilliant debut collection of stories by O. Henry Award winner John Biguenet is as notable for the rigor of its intellect as for the sweep of its imagination. Whether recounting the predicament of an atheistic stigmatic in "The Vulgar Soul" or a medieval torturer who must employ his terrible skills upon his own apprentice in the title tale, these stories decline to settle for ready sentiments or easy assurances.

Rather than add to the massive canon of the victimized, for example, "My Slave" takes the perspective of the victimizer. In "The Open Curtain," a man achieves intimacy with his family only when he recognizes — watching them dine as he sits in his car at the curb — that he lives in a household of strangers. Menaced by a gang of skinheads in a Jewish cemetery, an American tourist in Germany placates the Neo-Nazis with a formula he continues to repeat even after he is safely back home in "I Am Not a Jew." And as for love, it makes demands in such stories as "Do Me" that shake our very notions of what it means to love.

If these stories engage the world in sometimes shocking ways, they are virtuoso engagements, eloquent in their prose, surprising in their plotting, sly in their humor. Biguenet shifts among voices and narrative strategies and imposes neither a single style nor a repeated structure as he depicts the ecological catastrophe of "A Plague of Toads," the problem posed by a ghost in the nursery in "Fatherhood," and the ghastly discovery a grieving widower defends as "another kind of memory" in "Rose."

Such mastery of craft may come as a surprise in a first-time author, but even more impressive is the object of his art. For whether it seeks to prick or to tickle, each story in The Torturer's Apprentice addresses its subject with an authority unusual in contemporary literature as it entices the reader beyond the boundaries of the expected and the accepted.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060007454
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	02/19/2002
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.44(d)

About the Author

John Biguenet's fiction has appeared in such publications as Esquire, Granta, Playboy, Story, and Zoetrope. The winner of an 0. Henry Award for short fiction, he lives in New Orleans. Ecco published his debut collection of stories, The Torturer's Apprentice, in 2001. Oyster is his first novel.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

The Vulgar Soul

It began as a chafing, a patch of dry skin, in the palm of his left hand. He ignored it at first, though at odd moments he found himself absentmindedly rubbing the chapped flesh.

It persisted. After a week or so, he appealed to the pharmacist in the old-fashioned drugstore and soda fountain near his house. The druggist, a young man whose diploma on the wall behind him was as fresh and white as the medical frock he donned before counseling customers about their minor complaints, asked the man to extend the hand with the rash.

"It's not a rash, exactly," he said, opening his palm over the counter. "It's just sort of scaly."

"Well, Mr. Hogue--"

"Tom," the man interrupted.

"Well, Tom, I think we've got what you need." The pharmacist led him down an aisle of ointments. Reaching for a purple box, the druggist explained that a simple moisturizing lotion would probably suffice. "But," the young man added gravely, "if itching develops, we may have to consider a hydrocortisone cream."

Sitting in his car in front of the drugstore, Hogue unscrewed the top of the bottle and coaxed a dab of the lotion onto his hand. Massaging the raw flesh with the moisturizer, he saw deeper cracks in the skin than he had noticed before. He poured more lotion into his cupped palm.

That night, peeling off his socks as he dressed for bed, he thought his right foot seemed blistered. Damn new shoes, he told himself, though a sly doubt vaguely tormented himas he rubbed moisturizing lotion into his hand. He restrained himself from looking more closely at the blister.

Work preoccupied Hogue for the next few days. The lotion seemed to soothe his chafed hand. The blister, which had engorged itself, burst, and filled again, required some attention, though. He bandaged his foot to prevent infection and waited for his body to heal its own wounds. He smiled at his overblown worries and let them drift away down the broad boulevards of a busy life.

It was with the startled panic of one who suddenly remembers a forgotten obligation that he felt the dampness on the bottom of his sock when he had unlaced his shoe a few evenings later. Slipping the sock off his foot, he was shocked to see the bandage soaked with blood. He hopped into the bathroom and sat on the edge of the tub with his ankle resting on the other leg. Holding his breath, he gingerly peeled back the tape of the dressing. As the bandage came loose, he glanced at the sore and quickly looked away. Taking another breath, he bathed it in peroxide. He was surprised that he could find beneath the cotton ball with which he wiped the blood no open wound, only a deeply chapped bruise the size of a quarter.

By the time Hogue fell asleep hours later, he had convinced himself that there was really nothing all that strange in what had happened. Rushing from meeting to meeting that day, he had done more walking than usual, which must have opened the blister. Tomorrow was Saturday. He would try to keep off his feet over the weekend and give the sore a chance to heal.

Despite two days on the couch with a pillow beneath his foot, by Monday he was hobbled by a tenderness on the bottom of both feet. The blistering had spread to the other foot.

He was embarrassed by the expressions of concern offered by his colleagues as he limped to his office. Though he wore bandages, his gait was deformed by the ache of the two raw bruises on his feet. He tried to stay at his desk all day.

Driving home, he passed the drugstore but thought better of conferring with the young pharmacist when he imagined how ridiculous he would look, tottering on one leg as he laid a bare foot upon the counter. And what if it started to bleed? He often ran into his neighbors at the little store.

Hogue decided to wait. Except for the soreness, he was perfectly healthy. He felt sure nothing was wrong, or so he told himself.

The tenderness eased over the next few days, although there were a few incidents of bleeding. He began to use the moisturizing lotion on his feet. Religiously, he continued to apply the lotion to his hand, but while the dry skin did not worsen, neither did it improve. In fact, it was while rubbing his palms together with a dollop of lotion that he first felt the roughness on his right hand.

He was surprised to find himself almost resigned to his discovery, as if he had been waiting, unknowingly, for this last extremity to exhibit the chafing of the other three.

But there was nothing foreseen in the revelation he received as he undressed one night. Naked before a mirror, he saw a pink circle glowering at him just below his ribs. He watched in the mirror as his fingers inched over his body toward the chapped skin. His hand recoiled as it brushed the intensely painful spot. Suddenly blood began to ooze from it. Hogue lifted his hands to his face; each expressed, drop by drop, thin streams of blood. He did not have to look down to know that his feet were bleeding, too.

It seemed a contradiction to him even as he felt it, but a horror somehow calm and deliberate took hold of him. He held out his hands and watched himself in the mirror quietly bleeding. The terror that rose in him had matured so slowly over the last few weeks, had teased him so often with its acrid taste, that he felt no panic. But he did feel absolutely lost.

The next morning, Hogue convinced the nurse who answered the phone to schedule an immediate appointment with his doctor. He would have to hurry right over, she told...

The Torturer's Apprentice. Copyright © by John Biguenet. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Reading Group Guide

Introduction

Whether recounting the predicament of an atheistic stigmatic in "The Vulgar Soul" or a medieval torturer who must employ his terrible skills upon his own apprentice in the title tale, the stories of John Biguenet's debut collection, The Torturer's Apprentice, decline to settle for ready sentiments or easy assurances.

Rather than add to the massive canon of the victimized, for example, "My Slave" takes the perspective of the victimizer. In "The Open Curtain," a man achieves intimacy with his family only when he watches them dine as he sits in his car at the curb in front of his house. Menaced by a gang of skinheads in a Jewish cemetery, an American tourist in Germany placates the Neo-Nazis with a formula he continues to repeat even after he is safely back home in "I Am Not a Jew." And as for love, it makes demands, in such stories as "Do Me," that shake our very notions of what it means to love.

If these stories engage the world in sometimes shocking ways, though, they are virtuoso engagements, eloquent in their prose, surprising in their plotting, sly in their humor. Shifting among voices and narrative strategies, Biguenet imposes neither a single style nor a repeated structure as he depicts the ecological catastrophe of "A Plague of Toads," the problem posed by a ghost in the nursery in "Fatherhood," and the ghastly discovery a grieving widower defends as "another kind of memory" in "Rose."

Such mastery of craft may come as a surprise in a first-time author, but even more impressive is the object of his art. For whether it seeks to prick or to tickle, each story in The Torturer's Apprentice addresses its subject with anauthority unusual in contemporary literature, as it entices the reader beyond the boundaries of the expected and the accepted.

Questions for Discussion

1. In such stories as "Rose," "Lunch with My Daughter," "Fatherhood," and "The Open Curtain," parenting is examined from a father's perspective. What do these stories add to the literature of family life?
   
   
2. Religion is another theme explored in stories such as "The Vulgar Soul," "I Am Not a Jew," and "The Torturer's Apprentice." What questions do these stories raise about the role of religion in contemporary life?
   
   
3. How do fantastic tales like "Gregory's Fate," "Fatherhood" or "A Battlefield in Moonlight" manage to address the reader just as seriously as the realist stories in The Torturer's Apprentice?
   
   
4. The ghost stories in the collection, "Fatherhood," "And Never Come Up," and "Rose" all involve the ghosts of children. Do these young phantoms differ from the sort of spirits one expects to encounter in a traditional ghost story?
   
   
5. What is the effect of mixing realist and fantastic stories in the same collection? Does it disorient the reader, or does it lead to insights not otherwise available?
   
   
6. The characters depicted in Biguenet's stories pursue a wide range of occupations from slave owner to high school English teacher to medieval torturer to sailor. Do these occupations shape the characters in essential ways?
   
   
7. "A Plague of Toads" and "And Never Come Up" are both, at least in part, about the nature of stories and storytelling. What questions about the experience of reading fiction are raised by these and other stories in the collection?
   
   
8. All of the stories turn on moments of moral crisis. Did you find moral dilemmas in the stories that surprised you?
   
   
9. How is the nature of love defined in such stories as "The Vulgar Soul," "The Work of Art," "Gregory's Fate," and "Do Me"?
   
   
10. What is your favorite story in the book? Why?

About the Author:

John Biguenet, winner of an O. Henry Award for fiction, has published his stories in such journals as Esquire, Granta, Playboy, Story, and Zoetrope, as well as in various award anthologies. He is currently the Robert Hunter Distinguished Professor at Loyola University in New Orleans.

Editorial Reviews

These stories, some of which have appeared in magazines like Granta, Esquire and Story, demonstrate a genuine artistry. Even the lightest one -- "Lunch With My Daughter,'' in which the narrator recounts a casual meal with the girl he secretly fathered -- vibrates with quiet sorrow. ...Biguenet's calm, lucid prose is consistently entrancing.... A set of marvelously eerie folk legends.
—New York Times Book Review

Katherine Wolff