Piano Sonata no. 3 in G Minor, Op.36 “Infernale”

[Ataraxis]

Que de gémonies sur les sentes des Géhennes;
Des Ombres altières mugissent dans l’orée,
Et l’obole octroyée au profane nocher,
J’ouïs les geignements des limogés et fredaines.

Noir ichor ruisselant de ma sombre carène,
Je mis pied sur la traîtrise de Ptolémée.
Que de gémonies sur les sentes des Géhennes,
Souffrances de félons, désespoirs débités!

Ô Lumière macabre, porteuse malsaine,
Tes ailes soufflent froidure, pire que Borée!
Ange du Cocyte, chantant dans ta marée,
Un chœur gémis sous le fardeau de ton haleine.

Que de gémonies sur les sentes des Géhennes!

Orphéon Infernal, Anonymous

[Ataraxis]

In the countryside of Auvernon, Cardamona was the last hamlet to survive the blights of a ruthless era known as Winter’s Spite – Le Dépit de l’Hiver, to the historians of Kebiras. Prior to its advent, hundreds of villages had lasted the decades in a mainly autarchic seclusion, living on vast crops of wheat and barley, gathered and stockpiled yearlong. Herds of hares and caribou were abundant in the surrounding woodlands; the hunters always returned backs laden with skinned quarry. The occasional trades with the metropolis of Lionelle fattened their coffers, for they bartered their supplies of the coveted cardamom seed, clover honey and saffron spices. The folk of North Auvernon were proud of their resourcefulness, their self-sufficiency; by themselves, they formed a collective power that could rival with the eminent capital. Sadly, this hubris was among the three factors that led to their shared downfall, seven years past.

The second was an absence of infrastructures. The last, a dire lack of foresight.

With the collapse of North Auvernon, farmers and hunters had no choice but to commute between their villages and the capital on a weekly basis. They no longer procured for their families but became dignified slaves to the metropolis, all in exchange for but a few paltry coins. Youths began to loathe the countryside’s rustic lifestyle and its unfulfilling nature, its dead-end finitude; thus, they chose a complete relocation to the city, where they believed the future would truly begin, where dreams could be made flesh – where life promised to be promising. Though unfortunate, it was no surprise that few had met their expectations, and most had but moved from one cul-de-sac to another.

And so, young flesh was scorched in the furnaces of Lionelle, leaving only old bones and withered skin to till the earth of the country. With the years, fewer and fewer worked the fields; the mills fell into disrepair, silos emptied by famine and the proliferation of bucktoothed rodents; carts broke, wheels cracked and spokes snapped as beasts of burden fell dead and breathless to the wayside. Death was indeed the only currency to still flow aplenty, and for some time the rural pastures did grow lush and green, flooded by a sea of daisies and tombstones.

As irony would have it, there was not even livestock left to grow fat on their cattlemen’s corpses. With no wheat to glean and no meat to cull, nothing was left for the folk of North Auvernon, save for the inhabitants of Cardamona. If pride had been the end of all other villages, greed had been their momentary savior: before the fall, they hid countless stashes of cardamom and poppy seeds, in hopes that they could be replanted as early as the spring’s thaw. These high-priced spices had gone ways to extend their survival, but none held the illusion that it was anything more than postponing the inevitable.

But today, cardamom was the new coinage and poppy had fallen from culinary spice to narcotic opiate. More smoke seeped from animal-skin dens than from chimneys and forge fires. Broken men and women sat on splintered benches, near a well so rarely used that it might as well have been dry. There, they sat empty-eyed, staring at one another, listless as they drank hydromel brewed from cardamom and honey. Listless, as they drank the alleged nectar of the gods.

Of fallen gods, Lillian added to her dark musings, quietly making her way along the broken shacks that once were humble abodes. Even swaddled in the warm felt of her cloak, she could still feel the dank cold of the scenery seep into her chest. Here, the mighty have fallen, but only from grace. Dethroned kings, it seems, never have the heart to fall from their habits.

Eerie blue eyes darted to the sullen grey skies, the girl watching the bloated clouds rumble as they floated adrift, their bellies crackling with smothered light. Rain and thunder were soon to come. She would need to hurry, to find shelter.

The one thing these people still hope to find. Before roaming deeper into the ruins of Cardamona, she chanced a last look at the dilapidated village and its denizens, inadvertently catching a glint of life in a hunched crone’s dull, autumn-leaf eyes. With a stymied gasp, Lillian turned away, hastily averting her gaze. She had surprised the old woman crying.

Lightning cut across the skies, and from their unseen wound bled chilling rain. Head weighed down by water and shame, she walked away, feeling weak and powerless.

The one thing they never will.

[Ataraxis]

Hugging her legs in the shade of a beech tree, Lillian waited for the rain to pass; yet, even there she could not keep dry, for water poured freely through the thinning canopy while the fatter drops cleverly bounced from leaf to leaf. Jolts of cold splashed onto her neck, chilling as they drizzled down her skin, numbing all they touched. Feeling the onset of a headache, the girl threw up her hood and pulled it over her eyes. Moreover, the girl was tired of seeing Cardamona, or rather, of seeing its weathered husk.

How long had it been since she lost any sort of direction, since she began traveling with no aim other than having no aim? Perhaps she felt that she was seeking something, like all people must at some point in their lives. Maybe, a place to call home. Maybe, just maybe, someone to come home to. Whatever it was, it was a purpose, and that was all anyone ever needed to leave the deadening comfort of idleness, of settling down. After all, having a purpose was everyone’s excuse to the things they did without rhyme or reason. Their way of saying: ‘I am not a madman’. It was all so contradictory, yet somehow it made sense – or, at least, she wanted to believe it did.

And oh, belief. Is that another door I want to open?

Tired but restless. Leaving homes to look for homes. Wanting closeness by never letting anyone near. Purpose, ha. Purpose was a pretence, a joke. A sham that people feel uneasy without, and so they wear it like an ornamental sash for all to see, wear it so that when they look down, they won't see themselves naked. Hence why Lillian saw herself as fully dressed and prudishly so, trapped under layers and layers of fabric and lies, her stark and purposeless nudity cloaked from the world’s prying eyes. It was better that way: half the excitement came from guessing what could possibly lie underneath. Why expose life’s masquerade? Let them keep guessing.

Her mind slipped from her broodings, drawn by the gritty sound of wood stabbing soil. Nearby, she saw two men make an awful ruckus as they set up a leather tent, an impressive feat when the thunder was still roaring, when there was still that deafening pitter-patter all around. They toiled hard under the rain, not even shivering as their bare backs were pelted by the frigid downpour. They seemed so passionate in their work, so eager to see its completion – and see it they did. The rawhide leather had been thrown over the conic skeleton of wood like a stitched tarp, and they crawled through the open flap with victorious smiles. It almost made Lillian vicariously share in their glee.

Then she saw drafts of smoke breathe through the drawn-back rainfly, followed by an euphoria of laughter. This, she had no qualms in copying: how could she not be amused? An opium den. All that hard work so that they could numb their souls under the autumn rain. Almost sounds romantic.

Here's another rain-born musing, she thought to herself, pulling the cloak tighter around her little body. The man who knew only hard work doesn’t know how to stop. He can lose it all, he can hit rock-bottom, but he’ll just take out his shovel and start digging deeper. Irrational, just like those two, and everyone in this village is like them: not just busy planning their own epitaphs, but building their own mausoleums. Crude tepee temples to the Opium God. And the irony? They can’t stop, because labor is their strongest opiate.

Lillian was still laughing. She was more cynical than she had ever known herself to be, and that she blamed on the dreariness of this locale, on its airborne disease of misery, so viral and infectious. Listening in on their lethargic chortles, she pinched her nose all the while, knowing full well the ramifications of an accidental whiff of these narcotic fumes. You’re too young to become one of them, Lily.

The rain and thunder still raged, but had abated enough for the girl to eavesdrop on their discourse, and amidst that mindless sniggering of fools, something caught her attention. “Do you hear music, Estragon?” one said to the other in that peculiarly emphatic Auvernon accent, but there was no answer save an uncontrolled snicker. “Well I do. I even hear it now. The strum of sitars from the desert people.”

“I feel my foot swelling,” said the one called Estragon, almost musing.

“But do you know when and where I hear it most?” He inhaled the briskness of the air, no doubt finding untold pleasures in that cutting-cold current of life.

“At night, mon ami, I hear music at the cemetery.”

[Ataraxis]

“In the meadows you mean, where everyone is buried?” Estragon was perplexed, his bafflement made emphatic by the thickening haze in his mind. “So the ghosts play in the meadows. But, how do they without a piano? Oh, wait, you hear sitars.”

“No, not quite sure, yes – or rather, no.” After a pause to disentangle his thoughts, the other resumed. “Not the meadows, no, but the abandoned mansion. Do you remember? The one that belonged to the wandering noble.”

“I think I may have seen him in passing. He said he wanted to bask in Cardamona’s bucolic richness and culture, or some like humbug.”

“Yes, that one. With no space left for tombs in the pastures, we annexed his front lawn to the graveyard.” He stopped, as if suddenly struck by a complex wonderment. “Perhaps ghosts have ghost pianos.”

“Bound to this world by their piano misdeeds,” Estragon murmured, his voice grave and solemn. “But Vladimir, you said you hear desert ghosts.”

“No, desert people. Though to play ghostly sitars, they might just need to be ghosts, but this is not the point, that is, I think.” Meshes of mists, threads of thoughts, all ensnarled in his mind like a particularly pleasant megrim. “You guessed right. I did hear a piano wailing that night.”

“Grand-papa Pozzo, he used to tell me stories about this,” Estragon began with wondrous terror in his tone. That or he was subject to a particularly bizarre hallucination. “He taught me that musicians have legends of their own. One of them mentioned a composition for the piano, a sonata by an anonymous composer.”

“But my grandfather... he told me it was the devil.” He was breathing low and audibly; it was the sound of a man entranced. “Trapped in a lake of tar frozen by the frantic thrash of his night-bird wings, the beast scored the music to his madness upon that mere of solid pitch, with the bones and blood of the treacherous on which his three maws will chew for all eternity.”

“Oh, I can barely tolerate your poetry on the week’s end, Estragon.” The one named Vladimir sighed, then drew in a raspy mouthful of the dizzying smoke, chuckling once more as he basked in swirls of color born from the grey. “But as you say, the fiend cannot leave his eternal prison. How could anyone have possibly heard of this partition?”

“Oh,” the other said dimly, audibly stumped. “An astute observation. Asstute, astoot, how very abstute.” After a dozen heartbeats of inarticulate reiteration, the dazed man finally lost interest in the word. “Then… a visitor, maybe. Or, a lover! Yes, a conjugal visit, and whoever it was must have swindled the accursed thing from the bastard and brought into the world of the living!”

“Ha! And what kind of a madman – or madwoman – would visit the devil?” his friend asked derisively, right before loudly inhaling another murky lungful.

The only kind there is, Lillian thought glumly. Somehow, the answer brought a pang of pain to her chest.

Stumped again by his comrade, finding himself unable to keep a façade of insight and intellectualism, Estragon merely breathed more of the mind-fog, shrugging. At least, that was Lillian’s guess: their makeshift tepee was rather opaque. “Touché… tou-chééé… Mhm. Vladimir, we come face to face with another tale no one should have lived to tell!”

And, pray tell, what of the one who did the silencing? Lillian asked rhetorically, quirking an eyebrow as she shrugged and listened on.

“But Vladimir, awful things befall those who hear it. Death... death happens,” he said with a certain finitude, as if in admonition to his friend. “As for those who play it…”

“Que des balivernes!” the other said dismissively, making popping noises with his mouth. A succession of hazy grey hoops then escaped from the fold in the tent. “My heart beats strong: am I not alive enough to blow these smoke rings in your face? The old man and his effeminate 'usbands’ tales, they rot your brain faster than our opium.”

“Ah, help me take off my boot,” Estragon said with a defeated grumble. A squelching noise later and he sighed an almost inappropriate relief. “Speaking of which, we require more poppies.” The man teetered out of the den, no longer shielded by the small, leather pavilion. Fading clouds of that nerve-deadening smoke followed him as he vanished into the village center, hopping on his one booted foot.

For a moment, nothing but the whispers of the rainfall reached her ears. Then, she heard those of Vladimir. “Even if the devil exists, no demon could have written that melody.” The music, he continued, was too beautiful, too pure. “Too… angelic.”

With a wistful smile, the girl laid back her head against the beech trunk, harsh and damp. She wondered if he was aware of the devil’s origins – wondered if he knew what the devil once was.

Unmindful to all else, a cloud of smoke climbed from the temple's roof, on the way to join its brothers in the sky.

[Ataraxis]

The gates were bent and twisted like undead guardians, overrun by veins of rust and an infestation of pockmarked ivies. Beyond was a tranquil field of mists, of wayward clouds that wandered earthbound. Amorphous wraiths, they moved as if independent from the currents of wind and rain, answering solely to the unseen wave of dead hands that fanned beneath, slow and lethargic. Crests of chipped stone would sometimes pierce the haze, showing hints of engravings scratched on with blunt knives and pitchfork prongs. Most could not be read, dulled as they were by the sands of time.

Rainwater was a whisper, a sound of hush and the only thing that brought her any measure of comfort on this nightly jaunt to the graveyard. Up ahead in the distance, Lillian saw the dark shape of the manor rising from the fog, not a single shimmer of light cast from its grimy windows. The undertaker’s story had lured her to this place, instilling in her a yearning to hear this haunting melody, but at the same time she feared it was naught but a siren’s song. Could a call be anything but deceptive, if it led to such places of nightmare? In venues like these, death could be but skin-deep; a single step inside might rouse hundreds from the good sleep and so incur their revenant wrath. The more she weighed the risks against the gains, the more she realized how urgently she needed to leave.

The sudden sound of music cut through the night’s veil, each note as the echo of a raindrop in the ocean; she felt her mind carried away like pebbles in the lap of the sea. A refreshing shock ran down her spine as the melody washed over her, cool and pleasant. Vladimir did not lie: she had seldom heard anything so pure and mellifluous. Yet, she could sometimes sense a transient blur of shadow in the air, akin to a drop of ink suffused in a rushing river of light. There were lone, tortured tones in that canvas of jubilation, moments of inattention as if the pianist’s mind wandered elsewhere, as if it flickered to darker domains.

Against all reason, she stepped beyond the rusted iron bars, following the gentle tune. Lillian held her breath, almost expecting them to wail and clang shut behind. With unsure tiptoes, she forded through the cemetery fog, feeling strange eddies cling to her legs. The pale mist twisted and turned with each wading stride, at times kissing her ankles, at times caressing her thighs. Doing her best to ignore these oddities, she glanced at the epitaphs in passing, read the names and dates crudely chiselled into the stone slabs.

Benjamin Desmarais, ••23-••98 – Died asleep, died happy.

Anne-Marie Follet, ••87-••99 – Loved the taste of fireflies.

Marion Fortescue, ••75-••97 – Once a woman of wealth and taste.

The worth of so many lives, summed to but a few words in death. In this manner, Lillian thought sadly, a cemetery was very much like a library. Walking down their aisles, you but skim the titles, bothering to open no book other than the one you came looking for. So many lives, so many stories, lost behind the book spines, beneath the stone slabs.

Oddly, one had managed to give her pause. No name carved, no date inscribed, only a clear-cut line, notched deep and steady. “Ci-gît mon père,” Lillian read, kneeling close enough to touch the clean grooves. “Here lies… my… father.” Present tense. Not a memory, but a fact, yet it told more of the engraver than of the interred. She wondered, in that moment, if it would be sacrilege to unearth this mournful story.

Then came the sudden crunch of grass, followed by the yawn, the creak of wicker. From behind that very gravestone appeared a small, hooded figure, sat on its haunches. Raggedy old clothes of dyed maroon draped its frame, frayed ends wafting in the dank breeze. Clumsily drawing to a stand, it approached Lillian, arms laden with half a dozen wicker baskets, the contents of which she could not make out.

It spoke. A child’s voice, but hoary, as if from inhaling dust. “Please,” it said. “Please,” it repeated.

Lillian panicked. The terror, it overwhelmed her, robbing her of sense. She fell on her rump when she tried backing away. Spinning backwards, scrambling on all fours, the girl rose to her feet, knees scratched and grave dirt under her nails. Lillian nearly tripped again as her frenzied steps carried her away. She bit her lower lip, drawing bitter blood as she forbade herself from screaming. The child’s voice again. An echo in her pursuit, sounding more desperate with each plea, coughing and hacking and coughing again as it tailed her, its gait awkward as if running on stubby pegs.

And yet the creature navigated through the mists and graves without effort, quick and nimble despite its square stagger. It lives here, Lillian thought, her mind storming wild. Or did it? Did it live? Lillian stumbled, aligning misstep after misstep with every look she threw behind. Her shin drove into the upper edge of a low headstone; she was sent toppling to the other side. Lillian cried out as she felt a tug in her stomach, that knot of pain and fear that twisted harder and harder with every foot of her dive into the unfathomable dark.

And dive she did, six-feet under.

Onto her bruised legs sifted cold and clammy dirt, raining down from the pit’s edge. Wild-eyed, fighting against the squall of pain that raged in her every bone, Lillian looked up to find the cloaked figure standing small and still, casting long shadows over her frail and dirt-smeared form. A sample, she thought, of the darkness that would come. It inched forward, feet kicking more soil down the hole. “No,” she whispered out of breath, feeling the walls of earth close in. “P-please, d-don’t.” The creature leaned forward.

Grave dirt was its only answer. “No! Help! HELP!” Lillian screamed and screamed as claustrophobia took hold, screamed as she watched her worst fear come true.

Help… she pleaded in vain, as it prepared to bury her alive.

[Ataraxis]

The music came to end, broken by a chaos of discordant notes. Weathered wood creaked in the distance like the hoary cackle of a witch, before slamming shut with a dry finality. Lillian had crawled across the open grave, finding shelter in the corner farthest from the grave dweller. The walls were too slicked with mud, and there was no hope of climbing up with her feeble strength. Feeling helpless, she could only watch apprehensively as the figure approached above; on its knees, it lurched forward, a small hand reaching down into the deathly pit.

It could belong to a child of at least ten, yet it was made coarse by constant wear, the palm and fingertips marred by hundreds of minute scars. Old dirt was lodged under its scuffed fingernails, as if it spent its nights digging in the dark. Lillian breathed heavily, gasping angrily between snivels as she tried to regain control. She unlatched the dirk from her rope-belt, fingers curling white around the grooved hilt. “Come near”, she taunted with a loud sniff, wiping the tears from her eyes. The blade flashed blue as it was brought to bear, milled about in a bluster of bravado. “Come near, and I’ll cut off your hand.”

Out of the fog, something leapt and came down on the crouched figure, too fast for the girl to make out. Whatever it was, its own hand reached out to grab the wrist of that horribly scarred hand, but the brusqueness of it all made Lillian lunge; she slashed away. Slashed through the curtain of rain. Then, slashed through flesh and bone. The glass blade rang grimly; falling raindrops mingled with a mist of vivid red. A thump to the ground, shuffling as something rolled into a patch of grass.

The second being held its left hand high, watching with disbelief the bloody stump that was once a finger.

The film of terror in her eyes had faded. She could see clearly, now. Down on his knees was a boy not much older than herself, dirty blond hair flattened by the downpour. Eyes of lavender blue stared absently at that stub, that meek little stub that cried a fountain of blood. The smaller figure was at his side, prodding his back with alarm. Its hood was down, and Lillian was baffled to see the face of a young girl. She was the boy’s spitting image, save for her wavy locks and hydrangea eyes.

“Adam! Adam, I’m so sorry! Oh, Adam…” she wailed hoarsely, coughing. “Your finger… it’s all my fault,” she blubbered on, cheeks wet with rain and tears. “Help! Help! My brother needs help!’ He had crumpled further the ground, one hand clamped onto that bleeding stump. He was in suffering, and though the physical pain was no doubt unbearable, Lillian knew it was nothing compared to what his mind was undergoing. She knew, because she was certain this boy was the pianist from before.

She knew, because she had just severed the finger of a musician.

Before she knew it, Lillian was on her feet, already on a mad dash for the grave’s opposite wall. One hop and she kicked the muddy rise, propelling her body backwards, yet high enough to reach the ledge. Still airborne, she threw her arms back and brought them down with a cry, ferociously punching her dirk into the adjacent wall. There she hung, feet dangling inches above the pit’s bottom, grunting as she pulled herself up over the ledge with a frenzied surge of strength unsuspected in a body so petite.

The air was palpably fresher up in the cemetery, but the girl had no time to bask in this new breath of life. Within seconds, Lillian was upon the boy, one hand searching the grasses for a severed finger, the other for the matching stump. The child was weeping at her brother’s side, confused but helpless to do anything, which spurred her lamentations. Lillian lightly scrubbed the raw ends in the rain, washing away the dirt and grit to prevent infection. A second look showed that they were already darkening, soon to turn a cyanotic blue. Hastily, she joined the extremities, eliciting a holler of agony from the young man. “What are you doing to me… it won’t work… please, stop…”

Dismissing his supplications, she merely shut her eyes, almost straining them to a pop as she focused her mind. Black smoke began swirling about the wound, thinning into hundreds of dark crosshatches, resembling a network of shadows – a web. They knit themselves into the skin and muscle with astonishing celerity, fusing into the flesh. Finally, with a loud gasp, Lillian let go.

Bewildered, Adam meekly lifted his hand, his eyes a lavender curiosity as he watched the thing twitch faintly. “It… it’s not falling off. It’s numb but… but I can feel it.” It was impossible. It was marvellous. To the boy, it was a miracle. Thin mouth agape, he looked up to the girl straddled over him, for the first time noticing her wide and anxious eyes. Wide and clear like the northern skies, a sight so strange in this land of rain and gloom. The boy smiled, as if waking from a gentle dream. “The angel behind the footsteps…”

“W-what?” Lillian blurted sheepishly, her back straightening as stiff as a spear shaft.

“Huh?” That lackadaisical glow in his eyes sharpened back to focus. “I, uh…” Now that the waves of pain were receding, that the shock had passed, the boy’s awareness came back running full bore and as keen as a knife. Bestriding him was pale nymph soaked by the soft rain, her long dark hair dripping coolly over his face, the worry in her eyes burning holes into his like the gentlest of fires, her dainty white dress clinging almost suggestively to pleasant, budding shapes… his mind was both blank and ablaze. “Thank you,” he muttered at last, though what he was thankful for was still a subject of debate between manhood’s triumvirate – in other words the mind, the heart and the loins.

“Thank you? You must be daft! Let’s not get ahead of ourselves and forget who sliced your finger off in the first place…” She spoke as lightly as she could, though her answer had been as tense as her nervous smile. “And for that, I am so very sorry. I was… this place, it played tricks on my mind, and I thought she was trying to bury– ”

A soft rasp on her shoulder made Lillian turn back. The boy’s sister was standing silent in the mists, those unusual eyes riveted dead on hers. It seemed she had stopped her crying for some time, what with the stone-cold composure she was presently boasting. Lillian feared she was containing her emotions, either of gladness for her brother, or hatred for the one who did him wrong. After an unbearable silence, she lifted both arms as well as the wicker bushels they carried.

“You cut my brother’s finger,” she said, pausing. “Buy my baskets.”

Lillian blinked. Only the light rain’s pit-a-pat broke the moment’s hush. Then, she fished for her coin pouch.

Hard to argue with that logic.