Adelina Poerio as the anonymous dwarf in Don't Look Now (1973)
and Jean-Yves Tual as Lucien in Le nain rouge (1998)
I.
One of the most terrifying figures in cinematic history is the homocidal dwarf played by Adelina Poerio in Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now (1973); a brilliant film adaptation of a short story by Daphne du Maurier published two years earlier.
In the tale, du Maurier describes the final scene when the doomed protagonist, John, finally confronts his fate:
"The child struggled to her feet and stood before him, the pixie-hood falling from her head on to the floor. He stared at her, incredulity turning to horror, to fear. It was not a child at all but a thick-set woman dwarf, about three feet high, with a great square adult head too big for her body, grey locks hanging shoulder-length, and she wasn't sobbing any more, she was grinning at him, nodding her head up and down.
[...] The creature fumbled in her sleeve, drawing a knife, and she threw it at him with hideous strength, piercing his throat, he stumbled and fell, the sticky mess covering his protecting hands." [a]
II.
Lucien Gagnero, the small-bodied protagonist of Michel Tournier's short story Le nain rouge (1978) [b], also has a penchant for wearing red and committing vile deeds, including murder, and it's his tale I'd like to share with you here ...
Despite being a successful divorce lawyer who "applied himself with avenging ardour to the task of destroying the marriages of other people" [61], Lucien didn't find it easy being of reduced stature; it was something he had resentfully resigned himself to:
"When [he] reached the age of twenty-five he had to give up, with a broken heart, all hope of ever becoming any taller than the four feet one he had already reached eight years before. All he could do now was resort to special shoes whose platform soles gave him the extra four inches that elevated him from dwarf status to that of small man. As the years went by, his vanishing adolescence and youth left him exposed as a stunted adult who inspired mockery and scorn in the worst moments, pity in the less bad ones, but never respect or fear [...]" [61]
When a wealthy former opera singer named Edith Watson comes to see him to discuss dissolving her marriage to Bob, a young, good-looking lifeguard from Nice, Lucien is keen to take the case; scenting as he does "secrets and humiliations that more than interested him" [61].
One day, Lucien goes to visit his new client in her luxurious apartment. He is rather taken aback to find her on the terrace lying "practically naked on a chaise longue, surrounded by refreshments" [62]. The radiance of her big, golden body, "with its violent odour of woman and suntan lotion, intoxicated Lucien" and it was not merely the stifling heat of the day that made him sweat profusely.
Needing to urinate, Lucien asks to use the bathroom: all black marble, spotlights, and mirrors, with a sunken tub and a shower which sprayed water from all angles (not only from above, but from behind and below as well). For some reason, this shower fascinates Lucien and he cannot resist removing his clothes and trying it, making liberal use of the toiletries at hand: "He was enjoying himself. For the first time he saw his body as something other than a shameful, repulsive object." [63]
When Lucien leaves the shower, however, he sees himself reflected in the labyrinth of mirrors. Although he discerns an impressive nobility in his facial features, he can't find much to admire in his disproportionately long neck, round torso, and short, bandy legs. Even his enormous penis, which hangs down to his knees, seems more comical than anything else.
It's at this point that something miraculous happens: rather than putting on his own clothes, Lucien notices a huge crimson bathrobe hanging from a chrome peg:
"He took it down, draped it around him until he was completely hidden within its folds [...] He wondered whether he would put his shoes on. This was a crucial question, for if he relinquished the four inches of his platform soles he would be confessing, and even proclaiming, to Edith Watson that he was a dwarf and not merely a small man. The discovery of an elegant pair of Turkish slippers under a stool decided him. When he made his entrance on to the terrace, the long train formed by the outsize bathrobe gave him an imperial air.
[...] The notary's clerk had disappeared and given place to a comical, disquieting creature of overwhelming, bewitching ugliness - to a fabulous monster, whose comic aspect added a negative, acid, destructive component." [63]
By affirming his achondroplasia, Lucien has become who he is. Just like the hunchback understands that in his deformity lies his very essence, so Lucien has had to realise that his grandeur lies within his dwarfism and is not reliant upon a pair of built-up shoes. Such a revelation is transformative and has instant results; for not only does Lucien become who he is, he also finds love. Edith was "enchanted to discover that such a small, misshapen body should be so fantastically equipped, and so delightfully efficacious" [64].
The narrator continues:
"This was the beginning of a liaison whose passion was entirely physical and to which Lucien's infirmity added a slightly shameful, sophisticated piquancy, for her, and a pathetic tension mixed with anguish for him. [...]
From then on, Lucien led a double life. Outwardly he was still a small man, dressed in dark clothes and built-up shoes [...] but at certain irregular, capricious hours [...] he [...] metamorphosed into an imperial dwarf, wilful, swaggering, desirous and desired [...]" [64]
He fucks Edith, subjecting the large-bodied blonde to the law of pleasure and sending her into ecstasies that always culminated in obscene abuse for her human plaything and living dildo. Lucien didn't care what she thought of him, only he was terrified of losing her ... And when he discovers she has secretly reconciled with Bob he was "overwhelmed with murderous hatred" [65].
And so he kills her. Hiding in her splendid bathroom, he leaps on Edith when she enters and strangles her: "While she was in her death throes Lucien possessed her for the last time." [66] Then he sets about framing poor Bob, the young colossus with a sweet, naive face, for the rape and murder.
At first Lucien returns to his old life, taking up his disguise as a little person whom people mocked or pitied. But the memory of the superhuman monster that he now knew himself to be haunted him day and night:
"Because he had finally had the courage of his own monstrosity, he had seduced a woman [...] killed her, and his rival, the husband [...] was everywhere being hunted by the police! His life was a masterpiece, and there were moments when he was overwhelmed with breathtaking joy at the thought that he only had to take his shoes off to become immediately what he really was, a man apart, superior to the gigantic riffraff, an irresistible seducer and infallible killer! All the misery of the past years was due to his having refused the fearsome choice that was his destiny. In cowardly fashion he had shrunk from crossing the Rubicon into dwarfism [...] But he had finally dared to take the step. The slight quantitative difference that he had accepted in deciding to reject his platform shoes [...] had brought about a radical qualitative metamorphosis. The horrible quality of dwarfism had infiltrated him and turned him into a fabulous monster. In the greyness of the lawyer's office where he spent his days he was haunted by dreams of despotism [...] and on several occasions the typists were surprised to hear him let out a roar." [66-7]
III.
I think if I'd been the author of this tale I would have ended it here. Readers should note, however, that Tournier continues the story of Lucien Gagnero, taking it in a surprising
direction ...
First, Lucien becomes notorious in the bars and nightclubs of Paris that he parades around, whilst wearing a dark red leotard that shows off his muscles and genitals. Men soon learned to fear him and women "submitted to the obscure fascination" [68] that he exerted. Lucien then finds fame as a circus performer; his giant hand act proving to be a sensation.
"But Lucien was still not completely satisfied by his fame" [69]: he wants - and takes - further cruel revenge upon Bob, who, still on the run for a crime he didn't commit, comes to him for help one day when the circus pitched its tents in Nice.
Incorporating Bob into his act, Lucien publicly humiliates him over and over again, whilst, in private, he makes him into his bitch: "it happened one night, then every night, that he climbed into the side-berth in which his former rival slept, and possessed him like a female" [72].
Lucien's real love, however, is neither for rich women nor beautiful young men: it is, rather for those of his own size; i.e. children under the age of twelve. For he had noticed that whilst the adulation of the adults in the audience did nothing to soften the "ball of hatred that weighed hard and heavy in his breast" [72], the innocent love and laughter of children "cleansed him of his bitterness" [74] at last.
I suppose we might call this the redeeming power of paedophilia ...
Notes
[a] Daphne du Maurier, 'Don't Look Now', in Don't Look Now and Other Stories, (Penguin Books, 2006), p. 55.
[b] Michel Tournier, 'The Red Dwarf', in The Fetishist, trans. Barbara Wright, (Minerva, 1992). All page numbers following in the post refer to this edition.
For a follow up post to this one - on achondroplasiaphobia - please click here.
