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

by Edouard Jourdan

  Shortly after the collapse of M. de Varmand, Mr. Edgar Bansberg lost his young wife. He loved her to the point of having married her without fortune. It was then that he turned his first table, intending to communicate with the dear deceased. It was then also that he asked M. de Varmand to come and live on the second floor of his mansion, where he had a workshop of good proportions built. It is then finally that the painter called "decadent", or better to say "impressionist", specialized in psychic painting.

  He began to make portraits of souls, mental landscapes.

  Once again, it is a question of knowing what part of sincerity there was in it. On the one hand, it is certain that the exercise of this very special art assured the artist a lodging and a covering which his qualities of heart and mind might not have been sufficient to preserve him. But, on the other hand, M. de Varmand always showed such a conviction, he took a look so benign to dispel psyche, that one could not believe, in his presence, his unbelief.

  The studio in the Rue d'Assas, as may be supposed after the foregoing, contained the most extraordinary pictures, as bizarre, my faith, as "demons" and "wonders," if not more.

  They were canvases covered with geometrical or resplendent or foggy figures: arches, parables, ellipses, ovals, spirals and up to sinusoids, puzzles where all the curves and all the breaks were intertwined. polychrome tiles, multicolored stained-glass windows. The lines, bundles of lines of various shades, appeared luminous, and large direct, iridescent rays, issued as if from a prism in which the light of other suns had broken down, crossed these extravagant mosaics in the saltire, among which were found portions of objects, fragments of animals, bits of a woman or man: half a clock, a quarter of a star, a horse's nose, the painted look of a lustful mistress.

  In the midst of all this, which aspired to represent sensations, wills, memories, passions, regrets, anger, a transport of joy, a crisis of neurasthenia, etc., clung to beautiful works warm and alive, which M. de Varmand affected to despise.

  And as this wild beast remained incredibly impressive, all this was guarded by two acrobatic sentries: Honoré, the skeleton, which the movements of the door made frolicking, and Isidore, the articulated mannequin, life size, which gave poses to M. de Varmand and of which he had diabolically retouched the facies.

  Isidore was standing behind the door, dressed in fakir. We only saw him once he entered. And it is him whom Katarina looked with a kind of terror, suffocated with emotion, stopped right at the beginning of her story.

  - So? said M. de Varmand.

  But Katarina was absorbed in her shock.

  "Demonoplasm"!

  The light green eyes, the red hair, the forked brows on the forehead, the conquering little mustache and the bifurcated goatee ... "Demonoplasm"!

  New appearance? Mirage? Point. A very substantial hybrid of demon and ectoplasm! A "Demonoplasm" of cardboard.

  Ah! If she had been less preoccupied that night, she would have remembered, of course, the model of the Marquis!

  But what! it was this old Isidore, and not the "Demonoplasm"! It was a devil's head, quite simply, any Mephisto - and a doll, whose immobility was that of death ... Come on, come on! It was not necessary, all the same, to be child to this point! Moreover, these Hindu tinsel, these wooden hands without amethysts ... Partial and fortuitous resemblance, inspired by the character of Faust! No resemblance to that of the devil of the Opera, to which, after all, everyone has the right to be like, whether he is a corpse or a model! ... No, but! Would the deceased of Saint Maur appear to him in all the photographs of singing basses? ...

  A tenth of a second had not passed since Katarina had stopped. Angry with herself, she sank inwardly, and said to herself, "That's enough, is not it! And without paying any more attention to Honoré or Isidore, she resumed the course of her talk.

  M. de Varmand gave him his full attention. His bald head was almost as bright as Honoré's.

  "I thought," Katarina said as she finished, "that you read the newspaper, my poor Marquis ...

  "I was going to do it," he replied.

  So, saying, he unfolded the sheet where the words of the catastrophe of Saint Maur were spread out in bold type; and he went through the list of victims.

  "Johan's name is not there," he remarked.

  - That's because I took him right away.

  Curiously, Katarina also consulted the list, where she read only very banal names.

  They sat side by side on a deep divan covered with black bear skin. The old painter had taken Katarina's hands. Her good face was quite upset and her mustaches were falling, instead of being tapered into imperial needles, and the Hungarian ointment usually held them.

  - My dear child! he said, not without warmth.

  Suddenly, however, there were distant, dry, measured blows around.

  - What is this? Katarina said.

  "It is Palmyra," replied M. de Varmand from the bottom of his sorrow.

  The blows followed one another with solemnity. It seemed as if on the ground floor a beadle preceded some grave procession, striking the floor with his ad hoc cane.

  Katarina, although Johan's thought bewitched her, cannot help but ask:

  - Palmyra?

  "It's the turntable," the Marquis explained absently. She's called like this right now. She is the one who indicates her name. She changes all the time: Sylvie, Pamela, Chloe, Palmyra, names of her time ...

  - How she types!

  - Yes. No good mood. We disturbed her too soon, of course! Are we questioning the spirits at this hour! The morning is worthless, it's known. But your father-in-law wanted to try, to see. So, she gets angry. She stamps her foot ... She swears! Listen ...

  They listened. Katarina opened her huge eyes, like those we see painted on the sarcophagi of Egypt.

  "The brat is talking about me," he murmured between his teeth.

  The blows followed each other like the sonorous characters of a hieratic - and telegraphic - frieze. For these blows were letters, and these letters formed words. They cut the silence in small equal slices, then stopped, then resumed. It was impressive. The house was shrouded in obsession. The bones of Honore the skeleton was finishing up with a lullaby swing. Isidore, the model, stiffened in a reverence of satanic puppet, averted his fixed eyes, too skillfully rendered. Katarina felt her heart tighten.

  Today, everything seemed formidable to him. Spiritism is made of absurd, with a little mysterious. She saw only the mysterious and, in the mysterious, the disturbing. Dominated by anguish, followed by a ghost, seated between a skeleton puppet and a demon-puppet, stretched out by a follower of the occult, listening to the sounds of the hereafter, the poor child clutched his hands in those of his old friend. His destiny throbbed under the claws of the dark powers. She was apprehensive of a damned future, black as a Sabbath night, where bats are brushing against their flight, while an icy wind screams ominously.

  She made a movement to move aside, to free herself from the horde of larvae that piled upon her.

  - Listen ...

  His forefinger resting on the center of his mustache, Monsieur de Varmand smiled. And that smile wrinkled with ease a face that was most accustomed to it and that had been wrinkled with joy, like a habit that molds itself to the familiar gesture.

  Mentally, he counted the blows, spelling out the words.

  "Palmyra annoys me," he said. She says, "I will only speak in the presence of the Marquis. Let's go fast, my dear friend. Let's go! I do not want to let you go back to the clinic alone and I

  like to see Johan. Let's get out of here. No need to warn the other, downstairs. If I go, he will not let me go.

  He took his Rembrandt hat in a fine Louis XVI wardrobe, and draped himself in a pompous bucket cloak.

  - Come!

  But he stopped, his eyes behind the scenes towards the door that communicated with the interior of the mansion.

  "There is someone behind," whispered the Marquis.

  Immediately, a voice pierced the leaf, sour and unfortunate,
a voice commanded by calumny or slander, and which tinkled like a cancan, even at the utterance of these very benign words:

  - Are you there, Varmand?

  "Charlotte," whispered the Marquis.

  "We're impatient," the voice said hard. Is it that you forget the session? Monsieur sends me to pick you up.

  M. de Varmand said to Katarina:

  - For sure I will not go. He must be like a mastiff.

  Katarina was full of gratitude. Certainly M. de Varmand did not fear Father Bansberg as much as he wished to make him appear; but he wished at all costs to avoid the shame-almost the crime-of preferring to his deadly wounded son a session of spiritism. Knowing the Marquis, Katarina was not mistaken.

  - The lock is put. She will not enter, he says.

  - There is nobody? ... Mr. Varmand, are you not there? ...

  "No, Charlotte, I'm not there," said M. de Varmand. I came out a few minutes ago with Mrs. Johan Bansberg, whose husband is in danger of death.

  - You will be removed! Charlotte yelped.

  But Honore began a jig, determined by the opening of the camera, and M. de Varmand went out with Katarina, leaving the skeleton to calm his entrechats before the ecstasy of the model.

  5 – UNHOLLY SURGERY

  "How gay you are, Marquis! Katarina said, ringing at the Rue Galilée Clinic.

  "Because I have confidence," replied the happy man. Our Johan will get away with it, I tell you. My familiar demon assures me.

  In truth, no Socratic demon spoke in the ear of M. de Varmand, and in the secret of his soul he was as anxious as circumstances required. But he had promised himself to "go back" to Katarina by all means, and, knowing how easily confidence was transmitted, he had found nothing better than to resume the course of his usual jokes.

  He drew his cane with the gesture of a swordsman who drew out, and striking the oak of the leaf as with the pommel of a sword:

  - Open, open! if he cried. This is the unfortunate King of France!

  But Katarina grabbed the doorman, whom so noble a request had forbidden.

  - How is Johan Bansberg doing?

  - I do not know, ma'am. Please contact the office.

  - For lord sake! said the Marquis. You are no longer there, my child!

  At the top of a white marble staircase, the head nurse advanced, marmoreal.

  It was necessary to follow her in a studio where everything was white of what can be it. After a few moments, Katarina saw one of the women she had seen arrive in the night, and whose kind face lit up with a smiling greeting.

  "Dr. Petiot is not displeased," she said. Fractures of the limbs are reduced.

  - No amputation?

  - Any.

  - Even one finger?

  - No amputation, madam.

  - The head?

  - Tomorrow only.

  - Hands?

  The nurse seemed to be sad and answered in a skewed way:

  - We must have hope, Madam ...

  - What did Dr Petiot say about these hands?

  - The master is never talkative ... Moreover, it is the next operation especially that interests him.

  - Will the patient be able to bear it well?

  Katarina was keenly observing this woman's physiognomy, analyzing all her intonations. M. de Varmand understood that under this look, in this atmosphere of inquisition, the nurse would not let anything appear from the depths of her thought.

  "We hope so," she replied.

  Always uncertainty! Always the instability of a life held in balance on the finger of a scientist and that the breath of destiny oscillates like a feather!

  - Can I see my husband?

  Petiot would prefer that the wounded man remain in the most absolute calm. However, if you stick to it ...

  "My dear child," said the Marquis, "if you believe me, you will follow the doctor's prescriptions to the letter. One must not neglect anything that can contribute to the success of his work.

  Katarina's brow darkened. She yielded, however, and asked that she be taken to her room.

  M. de Varmand, following his prayer, followed him there.

  It was a white enamel cell with a window facing the street. Katarina turned to her old friend. A great trouble agitated him.

  - Oh! she says. You who are devoted to the study of the unknown, you who question the spirits, can you tell me what tomorrow will bring? Earlier, you told me to trust. Did you read in the future? ... If you knew how eager I am to know ...

  She had never believed in occultism, but today the reality of such a science would have given her so much relief, that she only asked to admit it.

  "The future is unknowable," replied the Marquis in the jovial movement.

  The soothsayers are all shirkersand you have no idea of​​the blunders that spirits can come out on this chapter. No, occultism is for nothing in my hope. But when a man of Petiot's model does not condemn a patient, it is because this patient is saved. Here!

  - Saved! Katarina said clasping her hands and closing her eyes. But suddenly she grasped the sleeve of M. de Varmand:

  - Saved, alive, yes, maybe! But in what state will I be returned? ... I delivered it to someone terrible! Did I have the right to dispose of him? This physician-major, who has accompanied me so far, clearly disapproved of Petiot's procedures!

  - Hey! what the hell do you want him to do to Johan, Petiot, if not cure him?

  - He can heal him by scary means. He can keep the day at the price of decreases so terrible that in truth ...

  "My little Katarina, do not utter words that you will repent at once! ... Here, has lunch, and invite me. You are hungry, and that exalts you.

  - Possible, said the young woman a little upset. You will not prevent this house from sheltering things ...

  - Almost miraculous! said M. de Varmand. And it is very happy for Johan, whose case seems to me rather serious! Yes: almost miraculous. Things that would have scared the old alchemists and wizards of yesteryear, at the bottom of their cellars full of retorts and bats. Things almost divine and yet very real! ... But this house is that of benevolence, and nothing happens there that is not known today, adopted everywhere. Nothing that has not received the approval of the grateful peoples ... Only, it is here that the man of discoveries stands, the one who first tried what all the others practice his example, the one whose professional dexterity him lets succeed where so many others fail. And that's what gives his clinic such a great prestige!

  - You think?

  - Do not have any remorse. You did what needed to be done. Is not Petiot the best surgeon in the world?

  But Katarina had read books and books. Her over-excited memory filled with terrifying images ... The excess of her imagination made her recover.

  - I am crazy! she says.

  - I do not make you say it! Disclaimed M. de Varmand.

  With his preciously detached fingers, he pinched the pockets of his jacket, and plunged into a reverence of the minuet.

  At this moment a servant pushed a table in the middle of the room. And the old dear fool began to make the orchestra, imitating alternately tenors, baritones and basses (At the table! At the table! Let's drink! Let's drink! At the table!) With such a velocity that it gave the illusion of to be truly several singers. An irresistible comic force emanated from his imperturbable face and pleasant ugliness.

  - Are you young? exclaimed Katarina, who could not help but smile. He approved:

  - Always young! I stayed at the ungrateful age.

  Thereupon, M. de Varmand uttered a small perfectly imitated piston solo, and extolled himself in front of the hors d'oeuvres with Brasseur's rushed voice.

  But it is not our intention to mention all the puns, puns, pranks and antics of which M. de Varmand illustrated the lunch of Katarina Bansberg. He was so brave that he finally stunned the pretty wretch; it is

  There all that matters are that we know. Moreover, the Marquis's spirit was not always of the highest quality; baldness that stripped her skull was too often the expe
nse of her quips, and there are people who found it unbearable.

  Katarina was falling asleep. M. de Varmand congratulated him, and took leave of her, saying that he would return in the evening.

  - Poor Marquis! It is now that you are going to get "kidnapped"!

  "I'm going there," he said, with my own foot.