Prequel: Listen Before I Go
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She sat down in front of the orange piano.
“What composition I play, Mr. Bachman?”
Eden waited for an answer. Mr. Bachman doesn’t give a quick response. In the meantime, she looked all around.
It is not hot, not cold. The autumn season was always here since October 2021 and until now. Autumn always wanted to be here. So she dressed up for the occasion. As much for her well-being as to satisfy Mr. Bachman. Ruby had told Eden that Mr. Bachman liked the young woman dressed in a playsuit. Eden had listened to the advice. She chooses an orange playsuit to combine with the one favorite color the autumn season. A good appreciation of Mr.Bachman is plausible. Successfully, the woman combines herself with the entire Bachman’s garden. Their leaves were fallen from the trees in the park, and the piano used to be black; it was of the same color, orange. Instantaneously, it had been orange since she sat in front of the instrument.
The time was long since Eden was asking what composition should be playing with the piano. Mr. Bachman remained silent. He was sitting down on a Voltaire armchair with green and beige stripes. With crossed legs, they proudly showed his shoes in light brown patent leathers. The rest of his outfit was a vivid red—a costume with no tie. Mr. Bachman hasn’t wear any jewels. That’s different. Wearing jewels was specifically important to him. That was a favorite occupation: buying rings, necklaces, and bracelets on gold materials. It was one of his guilty pleasures. Certainly not the viciousness. Just the most fashionable. He repeated that good jewels are a good combination with his black skin.
Eden loved his hat due to leaves begun gold after their fallen on the cap. If she had been his friend or her his sister and him his brother, she would probably have told him that his hat was fantastic in a very familiar language. But even with formal language, Eden did not want to compliment him. The truth that she doesn’t want any conversation with this man. When and where the moment a person wants a talk with the devil? Beginning this one conversation with praise about one detail of his appearance?
Eden didn’t think she was smart enough to understand the good or bad in the mind of Mr. Bartmann. Whenever she heard about this man, he impressed her—true stories and legends, wonderful or frightening. Sometimes horrifying and magnifying simultaneously; legends or true stories seemed as much realistic as the others. Mr. Bartmann has his world, unique in its way.
“Untie the bun of your hair, I beg you.”
He had asked her in a voice that was pleasant to hear, well-controlled. He knew what he wanted. Ruby, his best friend, had told Eden that she had heard that Mr. Bartmann always knew how to ask for anything. In that way, that makes you want to listen to him and do everything he wants. That’s how kings have behaved since the beginning of time, Ruby said as a child.
But Eden had vowed not to respond to any wishes from Mr. Bartmann. It is often as soon as any desire from Mr. Bartmann is the sound of a blow in the head. Then comes what some of the other girls call “synchronized fast-moving mouse noises,” just before the muffled laughter of young men and women. Then some older men and women older than the girls. Before this voice that no one could describe comes begging you to do nothing to satisfy Mr. Bartmann.
In the meantime, Eden tried to be quiet. Her lips that she had made up with purple lipstick; tightened. The blond woman wanted to be strong. Eden could also be confident and find the strength to prove that she could be someone. Not a victim. A fresh victim.
Then, Autumn lifts the leaves. Unleashed upon her. Only on her. Mr. Bachmann stays in his Voltaire armchair. He gave no expression showed in his face; neither satisfaction nor the contrary. He seemed to look unusual spectacle.
In contrast, the truth was quite different. Mr. Bachmann knew from A to Z what would happen, but he had never seen it before. It didn’t mean that it had to be expressive. He presented himself to retain a specific form of modesty that others do not nowadays. And for some time, Automne approves it besides.
Eden fought against everything on his mind. Even the voice that was yet the most soothing she fought hard. If it was that voice of goodness, Eden could resist it with evil lurking. Then came the time she couldn’t do anything to fight for herself. Eden undoes her bun. Her long hair came loose little by little under her hair until it lay down on the ground and grew taller; again and again, on the autumn leaves.
His head was spinning forward and then back. She didn’t stop until Mr. Bachmann finally got up from his chair and sat down next to her in front of the piano. Eden’s heart was beating strongly, instantly. Blades ran down her cheeks. While he witnessed human emotions; fear, sadness, Mr. Bachmann played the first notes of The Devil’s Trill Sonata on piano.
He played the first movement without anything disturbing. Eden’s hair interrupts growing at the first movement of the sonata.
As if this first movement made for the tears of the woman. Human and straightforward emotions for linear structures. In the second movement, the piece becomes more complex, and the long blond hair slowly towards the man, all the way through his body. In the end, the hair has wholly covered Mr. Bachmann. Eden’s hair was separate from the woman’s head. And the young woman has just been stripped of her long hair. Mr. Bachmann continues to play the piano as Autumn rages on; leaves swirl together as the storm announces itself with rustling sounds and animals fleeing to their shelters. It embraces little by little the young woman deprived of the whole of its hairy beauty. She had nothing left but strong emotions towards this man and the person she is no longer way. Mr. Bachman had finish playing, and the sound of silence became the one of Autumn.
Eden remains for a long moment soothed in his arms until crackling sounds in the mummified man’s body. Little by little, loud in sound and slow in motion. It was soothing. That hid the cries of lament that came from elsewhere.
