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The Via Crucis of
Camille - Crux 1 - Page 18
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I saw in Camille the introspection of pain.
She was making it real, letting it take over her mind as it
should. It was certainly to her credit that the
camera was capturing what she was transmitting with her eyes,
her movements. One rule for an actor
is that the audience has to see inside the eyes what the
character is going through. As I moved the lens closer
to Camille's face I could see what she was feeling.
I was getting what I wanted to get. Finally
that moment was now an image I could replay and replay for
as long as I wished.
There was extreme sadness as well as pain, there
was a sense of total loneliness, of despair.
Camille was truly grandiose in her suffering and
I was one happy director. |
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The soldier checked the nail firmly
set on the wood. Leticia's blood was flowing slowly out of
the wounded hand and to the dirt a few inches below. She was
no longer moving since any move now that the hammer was no
longer striking, would bring renewed pain. She was only moving
her head slowly to the sides, her legs were bent and her body
was flat against the ground. The
soldier stood up his job partly done. He took a cloth he
had hanging from his waist and cleaned his face off the
blood that sprayed on him. He didn't wipe his hands, only
his face, he could not stand the feeling his sweat mixed
with her blood was giving him.
He walked the few steps to the
other side of the woman to continue his task. There was
an eery silence only broken by the soft whistling of the
wind and the soft moans of Leticia who now gathered her
strength to resist what was to come. |
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The servant saw the soldier walk
the short distance to the other side of the log, hammer in
hand. Another soldier brought the second nail. They exchange
some words, always in hush tones, aware that they were making
the moment as solemn as they felt it should be.
It was not a conscious effort,
they were just responding to their education and training.
They were not teasing their victim like they did with the
slave.
After drinking her drops of water,
the slave let her body slide down again to her hanging position,
submitting herself to her pain with the bit of relief she
received for that brief and treasured moment.
But that was just a short recess
in her torment, since short after they would start testing
her, either with a lance piercing her body, or the lash.
They would bet whether she would
faint and at what number of lashes. When she fainted it
would only last for a short time, she was soon woken up
with the heat of a burning stick placed against her breasts
or her vagina. |
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I was moving the camera around Camille's body, to
capture the image of the nail sticking out of her bleeding
hand. She was moving her fingers slowly, as if they
were moving on their own, responding to the foreign metal
invading her flesh.
Perhaps she was becoming numb to the pain. But I was not
sure that would be the case. When I was on the stretcher,
and the rescue team was transporting me to the ambulance
I was aware of the intense pain shooting from my leg to
my head in waves.
The short distance from the spot where I fell to the ambulance
felt like miles. I was thinking of a friend of mine who
was in a truck accident in a mountainous road. The truck
fell a few feet down a precipice, many died, my friend broke
her back. She survived for a few days, but I was thinking
of her and what she must have felt when she was taken up
to the road above and then the hours of riding in a jeep
to the city on a dirt road.
There was no relief to the pain, only the
wish that it would finally go away.
That is what I wanted to see in Camille's face.
The intensity of the pain and the wish. |
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Leticia felt the tip of the nail
on the center of her palm again. She was still felling the
waves of pain rushing from her nailed hand through her arm
to her shoulders, to her head, to her brain. And yet, she
did not anticipated what came when the hammer struck the second
nail. Her reaction
was to jerk up, her legs bending, her arms pulling up. The
pain of the nail breaking through her hand was accompanied
by the pain of her nailed hand pulling the wood to the side.
The soldier had to struggle to keep the hand he was nailing
from twisting away from his grasp.
Leticia was again screaming,
now a loud, piercing scream that brought tears to the eyes
of the onlookers.
The blood from the opening wound
splattered to the sides and up, again showering the soldier's
face.
He hammered on. |
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