The writing on the wall

When I was small, I went to Madame Tussaud's eager for the Chamber of Horrors. I rushed past the rather dull waxworks of unknown famous murderers. I wanted to see something horrid and scary, and to stroll on unafraid. It was something to do with testing courage, I think.

Children still love dungeons and horrors. They read the Horrible History books and learn details of torture. They haven't quite grasped - as I hadn't - that torture hurt people like us. Turning torture into a tourist thrill with wax victims, fake blood and feigned screams suggests that it's not quite real and, if it did happen, it was a long time ago to people wearing fancy costumes who talked rather differently from us.

We tend to ignore other people's pain, unless we're revelling in it. I'm startled when I see a teenage girl got up for a party with a gold cross - even a gold crucifix - worn on a chain. The twisted body of a man tortured to death is so familiar that it's lost its power to shock. We don't attend public executions but I've watched footage from real wars while eating supper in front of the TV. True crime sells well even if misery memoirs have waned in popularity.

We're protecting ourselves, I suppose. If I think about killing, torture and suffering today - really think about it and try to feel what it means - the thought becomes unbearable. The degree of suffering threatens to paralyse me but I should take action and protest.

Every so often the bleakness and pain of prisoners' lives reaches me. Wandering round the Chateau de Vincennes, I read notices which explained how the king's rooms had become cells where prisoners had sometimes been held for years. Usually prisoners find a means of scrawling or carving their names into the walls. There was less carving than usual at Vincennes. Instead the prisoners, who were often wealthy, had obtained paint and decorated their cells. This was no prison for paupers, whose lives were less important. The prison paintings of Vincennes are careful and accurate renditions of swagged curtains and lit candles on candelabras.

The plaster had begun to flake away before restoration was begun and I had to peer carefully to make out these creations of nostalgia and longing. There were words too but I couldn't make more than a fragmentary meaning:

"... ns la nuit de la tombe un jour desen...
..................................re nos noms ................
....la ..............................monde .....................
.... mais .....................rite profonde .............
P0urquoi ......................................................."

[......?.. the night of the tomb one day..?.....
...................................?..our names ...............
...the............?.....................world ....................
...but.................................?...deep..................
Why ..............................................................]

And after that, there's a word which might be "larmes" [tears] - but the more I look the less sure I am. I can understand nothing.