Devil's Score: A Tale of decadent omen….

by Edouard Jourdan

  - Bah! Stuff or reality, the evocation of the dead cannot be a hobby funny ... You want to know, I inform you!

  - What a mambo jumbo!

  - And many others!

  - They told you the word of the riddle?

  "This word, my dear child, was not pronounced. And that is exactly what made me feel it.

  - I'm not there.

  - You'll be there tomorrow.

  "Finally, Marquis, what rule have you taken to guide your research?

  - A grammar rule.

  - Which? You must tear everything away!

  - Two negations are worth an affirmation.

  - Here I am well advanced!

  It was, in any case, an admirable session! I confirm it.

  Strange man with a malignant eye, an old conman full of reticence and innuendo, whose thought remained elusive!

  He continued, teasing her to show him that his woes were over:

  - Tomorrow, curious little! Ah! ah! you will drink your chalice to the dregs!

  "Is it certain that Johan is saved! she thought aloud, incredulous and charmed.

  – Ah ! ça, oui, par exemple ! Dans vingt-quatre heures il sera délivré du charme qui l’opprime. Et vous serez heureux !

  A deep look paid him for his trouble. The good man, sensing the emotion, cut short the thanks.

  "You expect the world, what I see," he said.

  - Today is the annual closing of the Purple Concert. I pushed Johan to bring back some comrades. These diversions are excellent to him.

  - We'll make music! "O fortunatos nimium" ...

  - Stay!

  - Hey! can I? It is infinitely preferable that your husband does not know that I came to see you in his absence. Let us plot to the end!

  - Is that why you speak in a low voice?

  "Until tomorrow," he said, "do not tell anyone what I told you.

  He tried to be serious, but, encamped in front of Katarina, a victorious cheerfulness flourished, his eye sparkled like a star and under his mustache with two needles too blond, the corner of his lips moved, solicited by an inner laugh.

  The visit of the Marquis was prolonged. To say that they caused would be false. Katarina was exultant. Renouncing to draw from the painter any explanation of the sinister problem or the manner in which he had solved it, she limited herself to recalling her distresses and to expressing her joy. It was for the Marquis the best of rewards, and he lingered to contemplate a felicity of which he was the author, knowing that such festivals are rare and that their memory embalms the memory of the most precious perfume.

  In the meantime - for he had not eaten dinner - he was picking petits fours from the bowls of the table, and indulging his innocent mania, which was to emit through the mouth and the nose all kinds of music, going as far as melodiously whistling flute tunes that his throat, making the oboe, accompanied by a counter-song. His fingers, pounding the box on everything they met, beat the singing duet to the tambourine. Then everything stopped abruptly, Philomèle disappeared before Triboulet, and the oboe, once again a throat, let out a pun, an almost pitifully pitiful, immediately crowned by a trumpet or a polka for a piston.

  And there, in his boldness, the marquis tried the unthinkable. The Marquis boldly decided to make Madame Bansberg his own.

  It was at first a kiss, languorous though brutal. Monsieur de Varmand seized Katarina's hair and then put his mouth to his, before teasing it with a language whose agility was matched only by the surprising vigor ... And whose somewhat haggard breath, hints of food, evoked in her the shameful dampness of a confrontation with a satyr.

  Katarina, as hypnotized, saw herself caught up in a surprising torment whose life, since the accident at Saint Maur, seemed to be playing out, in order to make her feel that insolent desire. His hand was not long to caress, through his clothes, penis already hard Marquis.

  As in a trance, she took out her object of lust ... This hard, mature sex with ambiguous animality. How long had she felt this guilty pleasure with her rightful husband? His mouth approached. From the tip of her tongue, she traveled the hard penis of the Marquis. Then, greedily, his tongue rushed into frenetic dance on his big glans, which glowed like a ripe plum.

  The Marquis uttered groans of pleasure and that same warm, bestial breath that had flooded the mouth of his fleeting mistress.

  Katarina wanted more. She felt that the only way to extinguish this carnal fire, fueled by her mental distress was to feel in it the aging manhood of Monsieur de Varmand.

  -Marquis ... Tristan ... I beg you ... Take this pot of butter on the table ... Make me, for a moment, your cat ...

  -My dear ... I'm counting on it.

  The Marquis hastened to execute this voluptuous order. He seized the innocent butter, in his delicate porcelain, and plunged his fingers in it, in order to coat his member. Joking like an irreverent child, he made a point of spreading most of the fatty substance on his member, which literally shone yellowish hues under the lights ...

  Katarina lowered her skirts and happy to be so degraded, felt the Marquis returning to her. First in her wet vagina ... Then, in this sudden frenzy, the Marquis broke a taboo ... His turgid and buttered member entered with a rare violence in the rump of Madame Bansberg. And the Marquis became sodomite.

  Regina, who had seen the scene, in a strange feeling of shame, let herself be won over by sensual pleasure ... Her hands were busy under her outfit ... Her fingers echoing Monsieur de Varmand's battering.

  Katarina thus lives Regina, masturbating at the sight of his almost criminal antics.

  -M dear, you will join us!

  And at that moment ... The Marquis uttered a cry, like Regina for that matter. And a flood of fat seed invades the less noble part of Madame Bansberg's anatomy. Who lives in the mirror, its reflection certainly ... undeniably pornographic. But the man who poured his seed into her in a very unworthy way was not the occult Marquis but the "Demonoplasm", although she thought she saw a vile creature, a goat-man, hairy, stinky, and sniggering ...

  So, it was that midnight sounded without them hearing it, and a noise of voices on the staircase announced the return of Johan. In an infernal frenzy, the fabrics again covered the shameful and its greasy hints.

  - Heaven, your husband! My hair stands on my head! said the shameless bald, simulating terror. Death and damnation! Do you have a closet on you? ... Disguised me as a bricklayer; I will not accept any other costume than that of Badinguet!

  "Take the service stairs instead," Katarina advised.

  Regina, at the height of the landing, dragged M. de Varmand down the hall. He had put his felt-tip on the end of his cane, and, shaving the walls with a thousand most cautious precautions, he disappeared into the kitchen as if he were wearing a cheerful theater.

  Johan entered on the other side, preceded by the poet Hortons, the violinists Lantois and Destern, the cellist Maucalhuys and the violist Buffet.

  It was apparent that the last concert of the season had been for the better. Katarina meant not the happy execution of the program, but the absence, for Johan, of any hassle from the scarlet banner. She was extremely satisfied. The denouement was so close that she had only one desire: the tranquility of the persecuted until the following day at noon. Without saying so to the Marquis, caught in this sin, which was as vile as it was unexpected, she had dreaded, for a second, that Johan should not return, and that the misery suspended on their head would be produced at the moment when circumstances would render it impossible.

  The hosts of Katarina looked at her secretly, without suspicion as to her appearance a bit debauched but with a kind of astonishment she noticed.

  "I did not think she was so pretty," thought Lantois.

  "How young she is! Thought the poet.

  "Beautiful teeth! Found Maucalhuys.

  Johan, surprised, tried to explain why his wife gave him the impression of a living memory. No one supposed that the smile of guilty pleasure alone caused this metamorphosis of youth and dilapidation.

&
nbsp; We supped. The gaiety and splendor of Katarina were all charmed, without anyone suspecting the guilty pleasures to which she had devoted herself - Regina did not betray her. Carried away in the amiable movement that sprang from his grace and wit, Johan seemed to forget the pincers of the scarlet banner. He knew, to tell the truth, only a cloud of sadness, it was when Lantois proposed to him to play, with him, the Sonata of Lekeu.

  "No, no," he said, "my hands are not in good shape yet ... In six months I'll be your man.

  - Mr. Hortons, tell us something! Katarina said to break this uneasy situation

  Buffet wanted "The Madonna".

  But Katarina remembered the "Venetian juggler" throwing knives into the bottom of the poem. She saw Johan flinch.

  "No Baudelaire," she said. Something of you! Hortons, docile, began:

  - I was watching the morning

  winter

  With his air

  Young girl amazed

  To be born

  So late

  And an old man ...

  When he had finished, warmly approved, we saw that the hour was coming and that it was high time, considering the locative customs and the animosity of the neighbors, to indulge in the pleasures of the chamber music.

  Hortons, Katarina, and Johan listened to Ravel's quartet.

  We can tell a painting, a statue. But a quartet? The ink does not bite on the sounds, and it does not belong to the writer to describe what must be celebrated by four hierophants able to sing the strings. Let it be known only that nothing was more beautiful than to hear the masterpiece assemble in silence its pathetic voices, its transfigured cries and even those murmurs that become music while remaining noises.

  Nothing is more beautiful, if not, to see, the face of Katarina and that of Johan, the young man finding the oblivion of his sufferings where his wife drew an excess of joy and the fulfillment of his bliss.

  The day was breaking when we parted.

  Katarina watched Johan sleep.

  He was resting peacefully, tired no doubt, but no doubt also calmed by an hour of relaxation and pleasure.

  She, joy kept her awake, with impatience and curiosity.

  She felt very clearly that the end of their ills was not the only cause of that sweet exaltation that made life bubble up like spring made to trees. To fear no more, no longer to tremble for her husband, was immense bliss, but which was undoubtedly reinforced by the deliverance of darkness. Finally, to know the secret of "Demonoplasm" -

  Melchior, jewels, knives, banknotes and the scarlet banner; to know what had happened in the Metz rapid; to learn also how the Marquis had conquered the mystery; all that counted in his multiple happiness. She had been intrigued to the point of pain; today that she was going to know everything, she savored with refinement her last minutes of ignorance and fear. She played with her terror, which she prolonged fictitiously, certain that she was to have nothing more to fear. But already the good sense had taken possession of his thought. She no longer doubted that, the shadow fading, what would be left would be natural, vulgar, positive and without more prestige than a carcass in the sun. That is why not only was his great happiness increased by the pleasure of knowing everything soon, but the pleasure of knowing everything soon became the pleasure of knowing nothing yet.

  A ring of the bell drew her from this delectable dream, and someone knocked violently at the door.

  It was seven o'clock in the morning.

  She heard Regina hastening down the corridor, rattling the double lock promptly, and an unknown voice uttering unintelligible words.

  In all her flesh, she jumped out of bed and, putting on a dressing gown, opened the door.

  Johan woke up all in one piece.

  - Who is here? he said briefly. The man in the hall was saying:

  - I want to talk to him…

  Katarina then recognized the voice of Valentin, the servant of the father Bansberg, but at the same time she observed how this voice was dull and pasty.

  - What is it? she said, showing herself.

  The other began to stammer words without continuation. He was more dead than alive, and his hammered face reflected panic terror. No hat. He had slippers, an indoor vest, and a white apron that was not very clean.

  Regina made him sit on the chest. Johan was coming, almost as pale as him.

  The old valet stretched out a flickering hand.

  "M. de Varmand," he pronounced with difficulty.

  - So?

  - Come ... Come!

  - Mr. de Varmand? Katarina asked in dismay. What?

  The valet's jaw convulsed in a hideous movement.

  - Death! He whispered. Come…

  Regina brought him a glass of rum.

  While he drank it, with a clumsy hand and greedy lips, Johan and Katarina dressed in haste. Febrile, annoyed, they brutalized their clothes, tangled, tore, pulled ... He knew the bad contact of the collar and cuffs on the skin still wet with sleep. She felt the abandonment of the sans-corset and the neglected boots laced quickly, a tongue remaining underfoot. They were silent. Katarina, at first amazed, gradually recovered the use of her brain. Still stained by his guilty pleasures.

  Rude blow! Five minutes before, she believed herself to be mistress of fate, triumphant, free! ... and it was a lure! The enemy was amusing her like the cat of the mouse. He had let it run a little bit over there, and, with a leap, the terrible claws came to seize it again! ... Death! when talking! ...

  Katarina felt that the devil's embrace was crushing the room.

  - Here is my father alone, now! Johan said, looking for his suspenders. For a loss, it's one!

  Valentine appeared in the room, whose shutters were not yet open.

  His mouth struggled, but the sounds came out after a moment.

  - Come! he said one more time.

  - How did he die? asked Johan.

  - I found it ... this morning ... coming to wake him up at half-past six as every day ...

  Regina brought him some coffee. He drank again.

  - I'll go crazy! he went on. Ah! what a story, Mr Johan!

  We were ready. The valet followed Mr. and Mrs. Bansberg.

  And this one:

  - He died suddenly?

  - Do not ask me anything, do not ask me anything! Valentine was making his ears shut. I do not know, I do not know, I do not want to remember that anymore! You will see ... But me, no, no, no! ...

  They walked, eyes fixed, very quickly. Passersby turned in their path.

  5 – GRUESOME MURDER

  From afar they saw a group of four - two officers and two civilians - enter the corridor leading directly to the workshop.

  - Already! mumbled Valentin.

  - So, you warned the police? Johan whispered.

  Katarina searched for relations between this death and the facts that made it so particularly deplorable. The emotion, the unbelievable and boundless disappointment had given him back all the credulities. Had M. de Varmand gone to seek his confirmation in a world which one does not leave at will? Did those who had to give it to him keep it among them? ...

  Some onlookers gathered in front of the door. A placid agent was standing there.

  He opposed them his blunt hands, which were only fists badly loosened.

  Valentin was in parliament. The other, typical and typical, let them pass. One of his colleagues contained in the corridor the tenants of the house of report who poured through the back doors.

  They went up.

  They entered the studio freely.

  There, in the center, it was a hustle and bustle, a battlefield. But interest was concentrated on the couch. Gentlemen surrounded him, of whom only his back was visible. Katarina wanted to stare at the grotesque picture.

  The corpse of the Marquis presented itself to his eyes.

  It was not a death of ivory, lying in wisdom and serenity. But a vision of hell.

  The thing Katarina saw could be a bloody orchid. The murderer probably had some artistic thrust when his fles
h ritual had begun.

  The Marquis' hands had been meticulously crushed with a heavy object. Bloody stumps were hanging from filaments of flesh, bone and even skin. The blows had been given with such force that his hands had turned into dead branches, much like those lianas found in mangroves. The tool of such an act owed only one of those hammers used by blacksmiths, and whose value is known to the overwhelming power of their blows.