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Study 126 - The Swords (Patreon)

Published:
2025-04-03 18:37:56
Imported:
2025-04
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Listen in as we discuss Robert Aickman's strange short story of sexual trauma, The Swords.

Special thanks to our reader Greig Johnson!

Next up: The Cicerones

Comments

Karl Haikara

One of my favorite Aickman stories, it really gives you such a strange feeling to read that sticks with you, Aickman giving you the ick at his best.

Steve

Creepy weird at its creepy best.

Cole Caron

Interesting that you didn’t comment on the Seaman’s career as a pun. I get that it’s low hanging fruit, but I think it also rings true when you consider that he prods the reluctant narrator to action almost as if he’s the voice of libido itself.

Steve

When I was 15 I lived in France. We didn't have a TV, hadn't had one for 5 years, so we'd quite often go to the little local cinema to see a film. My 14 year old brother and I fancied 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea so our mum drove us one evening to the cinema. There was no public transport, still isn't, in rural France. We bought our tickets, the cinema was pretty empty except for a few men dotted here and there, and bunch of older lads from our village sitting down the front, which was weird. Jules Verne didn't seem their kind of thing. And then the film came on. I don't remember what it was called. There was a scantily clad woman on a set which looked a bit like a kitchen, except instead of walls there were curtains hanging round to enclose the area, and some domestic appliances. And then some guy turned up and they had sex. Mum had told us not to leave the cinema so we just stayed and watched it. I don't remember it being at all arousing.

Mooncubus

Poor zombie girl 😔

Gregg X

"After Hours" is one of my favorite Scorsese movies. The weird story aspect of it has always been the thing I like best about it -- every time I recommend it to anyone, I tell them that you feel like if the camera was pointed a few inches to the left or right, you would see something that would make everything clear, but as it is you get the feeling that everything does make sense in a way that you don't understand. It's one of the neatest tricks Scorsese ever pulled. Also, it contains one of my favorite lines ever: "What does a guy have to do to get his face pummeled?"

Zak

Absolutely love it when you guys cover Aickman. This is one of my all time favourite short stories. There's also a story by Flannery O'Connor called "Good Country People" that is a great weird short story through the woman's perspective of the first initiations of sex. It's a really great companion peice to Aickmans "The Swords". Would be really interested to hear this covered some day. Thanks for another great episode.

Allison Albright

Aickman month!!!!! Yessssss!!!! At last!!!! Anyway, I think you guys are right on the money about the protagonist confusing sex with intimacy. I think there also may be something to him taking her hand (like in marriage) which ends up being upsetting for them both. It's something she wasn't prepared or willing to do, even as doll-like and placid as she was. You can buy sex, but intimacy can only be earned.

Alan Ricks

Aickman’s back baby! To your aside in the beginning about gay man meeting up and using a coded language to communicate, I’ve always found the language Polari fascinating. Its a secret language in the UK that was used by criminals, Romani people, assorted outcasts, but most particularly by homosexual men. There is a short film on ytube called Putting On The Dish (2015) that is filmed just in Polari. Its uploaded under the title: “How gay men used to speak – A short film in Polari”. See if you can understand what the two men are talking about without subtitles.

Richard Upton Sinclair Lewis Pickman

I see that a lot of what occurs can pretty much be explained away by stage magic, but not quite, really…? It never really seems to come down on one side, I mean, it’s very heavily implied he thinks she’s able to see in the dark, and the first experience is in a staged setting, in the bedroom he *accidentally pulled off part of her arm* while she wailed, and he’d already had her completely naked… explanations? It gives me serious “Girl with the Blue Ribbon” thoughts, from In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Stories. Maybe a little Shambleau. Or even, more recently, Wet Season. All circumstances where a man experiences an attraction that seems somewhat more compelled than natural, ultimately, and that realization comes when the initial reaction abruptly turns as the illusion is shattered by the physical reality. (Thematic problems abounds, but take it for what it is, I suppose. 😐)

Andi Watson

I thought the hand business was a sort of Freudian symbol for castration or the narrator's 'inability to perform'. Telling that men often use phrases like 'perform' and 'rise to the occasion'. Madonna performs to an audience and at least simulates pleasure. In an intimate setting, with just the two of them, she appears to disassociate. It's a messy knot of exhibitionism, voyeurism, lust, disappointment and shame. Sits uneasily in our porn saturated world. One other minor detail. A character is called Bantock and the story is set in Wolverhampton. Bantock House is a museum and park in the city (I had a studio space there for a short while in the early 00s) and Wolverhampton has a canal running between it and Birmingham (the Venice of the north). Aickman might have visited while on Inland Waterways business. Three Miles Up by Elizabeth Jane Howard, Aickman collaborator early in their careers, is the best canal based strange story you will find.

Fulgencio Martinez

It's always an event when there's any mention of sex in any strange fiction, but I hate playing the necessary game of "is this a thinly veiled fetish or a thematic device?". Maybe both? Either way, the stench of patriarchy is just around the corner

Rob_Hellfire_Graves (Cult organ donor, wrestler, poet & Satanic Reverend)

My Aicking for Aickman has at last been satisfied! I think you guys hit the nail on the head with this one. The imaginary doesn't seem as complex and impenetrable as some of his other stories. Swords are a pretty obvious phallic symbol, not to hard to decode some theme and meaning from there, unlike say appearing and disappearing houses or a woman wearing a 1000s dress to mock a postman (see 'The Next Glade' & 'Letters to the Postman'). The Swords episode of The Hunger is one of the better episodes, which isn't saying much to be honest. I watch all of The Hunger TV series a few years back and was not impress in general. The mad intros from Stamp and Bowie really are the best bits, if just for comedy factor as they're total nonsense.

Richard Horsman

Just to add one more layer: you can read this story as being about people who see the entire world as transactional, with the seaman and the narrator being in two different stages of living life that way. The narrator is forced into sales. He's forced to live in sketchy places where he's confronted by the worst aspects of sexual transactions, because of ANOTHER layer of shadowy transactions that he barely understands. He goes into the performance because he doesn't know how to walk away from the transaction at the tent flap. In the cafe scene he buys a pie he doesn't really want. He gets the money to purchase a night with Madonna by entering into a transaction that he's not really comfortable with, but yet again doesn't know how to walk away from. The seaman, on the other hand, is bored of it all. He doesn't watch the proceedings during the sword performance. He's at the right cafe before the narrator even gets there. After Madonna rushes out he shows up, not to threaten the narrator like a classic pimp, but just to calmly settle the transaction. But there's two moments in the story where something else comes through: 1) The narrator tries to take part of Madonna. This isn't part of the transaction (even the sword show leaves her whole), and leads to chaos, as well as the only moment Madonna is portrayed as a real person with understandable, personal, reactions. 2) The seaman really looks at (and sees) the narrator after they've concluded business. The seaman is confirming that the narrator has learned his lesson about how the world works for people like everyone in this story (this is also why he doesn't try to squeeze more money out of the narrator). The narrator didn't perform his role perfectly, but he did well enough to pass the initiation. "We'll meet again" is true, but the narrator doesn't realize because he's inside that world from here on out, perhaps unknowingly blowing his last chance to escape seeing life that way. And maybe "unknowingly" is being too kind: he doesn't do anything about that horrible scream that punctuates the scene after all, just like the seaman. He's made an irrevocable choice, fully informed. Maybe it was just Greig’s terrific performance, but there's something in the tone of the adult narrator recounting all these transactional events that makes me think he's fine with it all. That's just the way the world works, but he didn't understand when he was a callow youth. He's never had an experience that he thinks is quite like it again, because his relationship to the world has shifted permanently. But I imagine he's been the source of experiences like this for others as his life has gone on. Finally, he's probably relating all this to another traveling salesman. I doubt he talks much to anybody outside of that world.

Matthew Henry

I am always struck by how much Greig Johnson sounds like Michael Palin. I see it as missed opportunity that he's not part a Monty Python cover comedy troupe (...or is he?).

King Dinosaur

I have three Aickman collections and I've always struggled with his work. Sometimes I love it, sometimes I'm frustrated by it. This story is great. Unsettling and weird. I really appreciate your analysis.

King Dinosaur

After Hours is such an underrated movie! Nice shout-out!

Jim Cannon

This is the most David Lynch dang thing I've ever heard of that didn't directly involve David Lynch. To put it another way: Robert Aickman: Short stories:: David Lynch: Movies

Mark Simmons

Yeah, this is very different from the "Hunger" version! Somehow it also makes me think of Olympia the living doll from ETA Hoffman's "The Sandman," which I think you covered 3-4 years ago.

It's a Ghost.

Great story! I think Madonna is some kind of creature of the sea who has special powers, and the seaman captured and enslaved her so he can use her powers to make money. The seaman is her pimp, and he offers her up to all these guys who use her. And she kind of likes it. With each subsequent sword thrust through her, she seemed to get happier. On the flip side, she doesn’t seem to know or want romantic love. When the main character seeks romantic, passionate love from her, she literally falls apart and runs away.

Jamie Allinson

Thank you! Like all the other Aickmaniacs - that’s what us Aickman superfans are called - I’m delighted you’re doing this month. I think the opening quotation might be a reference to ‘Our Lady of Sorrows’ or ‘Mater Dolorosa’ which is a traditional Catholic image of veneration of the Virgin Mary (i.e. the Madonna) pierced by Seven Swords.

Thomas Paynter

Love this story. I realize these episodes can't cover everything but I wish Chad and Chris had touched on the watchman's weird remarks about snakes. I've always felt that Madonna was zombie-adjacent, somehow only half-alive--partly suggested by her greenish coloring, although that's said to be makeup. She doesn't just become happier when the swords are thrust through her; she becomes energized, less listless, more alive. Maybe in her half-alive state, she needs an intense stimulus like that to feel anything. Her being half-dead and perhaps partly decayed at some level also jibes with her body feeling flabby and unpleasant and with her hand coming off. I'm not saying any of this fully hangs together or explains things. There's no suggestion she smells decayed, for instance. Nor does it explain the watchman's remarks about snakes, why the fellow who introduces her is reminiscent of a seaman and almost unnaturally heavily/strongly built, etc. It's just my headcanon explanation.

Thunk

That story about leaving the strip club, then two members of the party going back again. It makes me wonder how you know? Either one of them admitted it, or ...

Iain Hood

This was great and made me go back and listen to all the other Aickman stories that were covered. I have also been reading a lot of Bob Leeman so I probably just have that on the brain, but I am totally convinced that the weird father from The School Friend is a worm creature like the one from The Time of the Worm and Sally is just under its control. Probably doesn't line up exactly but fun for a thought exercise. If you do anymore Leeman I think that Olida and Feesters in the Lake are the most up your guys alley though. Thanks for another great Aickman episode.

Aaron La Vene

Well that was disturbing and sounds traumatic even with the weird stuff taken out and I assume this happened often … boy. THIS TRAUMATIZING THOUGHT TRAIN BROUGHT TO YOU BY STRANGE STUDIES OF STRANGE STORIES. Play the music

James Duffy

At the start, you discussed how starting a new job always involves dealing with new and strange things, that carry on being strange but you get used to them. I worked for 10 years in a police control room, taking non-emergency and emergency calls, and that absolutely applies. You deal with everything from the utterly mundane, to just bizarre, to the most harrowing. Over time you do find yourself adapting to dealing with it all. And that can lead to conversations where you casually mention something to a friend, family, or partner, and they just look at you and you can see their expression of "whhhhhhaaaattt??", but for you it was just another day in the office. It can be very hard for those who haven't worked in similar fields to relate and understand the dark humour or that you don't mean to appear insensitive or to be making light of those situations. And it doesn't mean you don't care about the job or those you deal with, but you just have to learn to deal with it all. Those who can't adapt and come to terms with it, you often see unable to cope, and I've seen people break and just walk out mid-shift or just become more and more stressed and miserable over time. So that comment definitely resonated with me, and I'm sure it will with many others who deal directly with the deep oddities of human behaviour as part of their work.

Derek Scott

This was one of those stories where even though I was acquainted with Aickman, I was still caught unawares by the singular scene in the seedy motel. It’s a testament to Aickman’s masterful handle on his own tales that he continues to surprise and unsettle and terrify me.

Fraser Burnett

Incredible episode of an incredible story. So glad that you are returning to Aickman. Also, the Leman tales, thank you!

Amillionbears

Maybe it's because I'm from New England, but when he compared the fairground terrain to a rocky beach I couldn't help but imagine those shores not fit for easy human traversal, of 3ft boulders at a 45 degree angle down to the water. Silly in retrospect but would that scenario be totally out of place in an Aickman story? It would certainly make his flight from the carousel girl's gaze far more awkward. This is actually the first story I've read along with before listening the episode and am so glad I did, looking forward to the rest of Aickril!

Thylacine

Coming from this as someone who's done sex work, it is super weird hearing guys talk about things from a customer's perspective.