Though the Earth Do Tremble

Though the Earth Do Tremble&;#8230;.by J.B. Pravda

"No, no&;#8230;.do you not see, he was 'imprisoned' in this America,
enfant terrible of the world, perpetually adolescent venue of so
transcendent a soul" protested Charles Baudelaire, his champion at the
lecture on the occasion of publication of The Raven, the very cover of
which had been drawn by the painterly establishment's own pathfinder,
Eduoard Manet himself.

Le Chambre Publique in Marseilles proved much too small to have
contained the throng that evening of 1868 anxious to audit the nice
divinings of the late purveyor of the macabre Mssr. Poe en
Francais.

A boy of 17, Marcel M'Ordant had heard of this Poe, much adored by the
emerging Symbolists; far less drawn by the movement and its presumed
subtleties than the advertisement for 'free' refreshments for the first
one hundred attendees, Marcel's mouth gaped cavernously still less for
the repast than the brain feast, upon beholding the majestique
Baudelaire and Manet, both in attendance.

Baudelaire's opposition was no other than Poe's very literary executor,
who, known to have derided his charge scandalously, Baudelaire, kindred
soul that he was, castigated this opportunitist, to the delight of
young M'Ordant, Poe's enthralled acolyte, it seemed, at least to him,
of 'old'.

"Sir, you dance as though upon some ignoble grave, that of He who
scaled Parnassus without the sweat upon brow which you display here, in
plain view, in your vain enterprise to denude your former master of his
mind's ambrosial garb!" mused Mssr. Baudelaire, rhetorical chronicler
this day, to raucous applause. "I put it to you, Sir&;#8230;..His
words shall march on through Heaven's Gates, though the Earth do
tremble&;#8230;." So pronounced a mighty voice of letters.

This mere rover of the port's streets, once petit scofflaw, now, not
so, M'Ordant had tasted of Poe's dectective genius, thanks to
Baudelaire his effete coterie. Having been magistrated into a more
disciplined life, young M'Ordant had opted for the Legion rather than
pestilent imprisonment. His new station was a revelation, even to
him.

That departed's partial ouvre had been his prized possessions while
encamped in various exemplars of remotenesses; thanks to Baudelaire,
the translations, often dually set
down----Anglais/Francais----juxtaposed, had shared his humble bedding
for some two years. He longed, somehow to, in a not too distant day
detect the 'impishly perverse' lurking within the breast of humankind.
Opportunity, that door-knocking, throat-seizing caller, appeared on
discharge, honorable, with distinction, on a dank liquid day with which
Poe himself might have fraternized. Murderous mayhem in Paris would
supply the stage for his entrance.

Highly decorated for selfless courage---which he knew but as a private
rage versus cruel Life, itself-- in several desperate engagements with
the Bedouin tribes of Arabia over trivial colonial interests, before
oil's hegemony, the seemingly ambitious M'Ordant had been accepted into
the Ecole Gendarmerie in Paris, in deft timing coincident with a series
of so-called 'touche' slayings in Place Pigalle and Montmarte's street
artiste districts.

"M'Ordant, Marcel&;#8230;..come forward and present!" intoned the
commandant of police affairs. Owing to his borrowed imagination, the
weathered old-young man had vaulted past his classmates, most of them
sons of better, albeit softer, families of France. His family, the
street, had nurtured him well for his new role. Even Dr. Proust's
renowned pronouncements on healthful living (they had fallen on fallow
ground with his hypocondriacal famed scrivener son), later crowned with
the dedication of a clinic in Marseilles, did not speak to that
peculiar manifestation of dysfunction to be found within the inorganic,
ineffable self at the loss of biologic nurturers, both such M'Ordant's
now demised for some years.
Pierre Toutant M'Ordant had met his end in the doomed motley regiments
accompanying the brief reign of Emperor Maximillian of Mexico when the
extant head of France's Second Empire failed to remain true to his
persuasive words of unstinting military support showered upon the late
brother of Franz Josef of Austria and his importuning poseurs on behalf
of the Catholic Church and the autocratic elite.

It was, then, passing strange and otherwise of cruel bemusement to
Marcel when the Church had called upon the Prefect of Paris to 'curb
these unholy excesses' committed upon the very grounds of Notre Dame
herself. The absence of hypocrisy from the endless proscriptions of the
Vatican only added to the numberless sins of the cardinals, it seemed,
and was fittingly inversely proportional to the intensity of her
self-interested outcry. The coup de main accomplished by the Mexican
forces of Benito Juarez in dealing death to his na?ve father had also
obliquely destroyed his mother, afforded a pauper's grave by her
munificent faith. Unaware of his hostile mindset toward these 'pillars'
of established France, M'Ordant had been problematic for these
embodiments of such arrogant malefaction.

Two chaste young nuns had been found in mock crucifixion, their arms
curiously outstretched yet unbound, after the fashion of the form of
the cross, at right angles to their torsos, their necks broken in
seeming simulation of the haggard Lord himself, aureoles of dead
flowers wreated around their frail brows; they had been hung from a
flying buttress of the Cathedral. No wounds, no blood, however slight,
not so much as a bruise upon their cloistered flesh. One apparent clue,
left rather deliberately, was itself a seeming sacrilege: a page from
the Vulgate which spoke gently of the 'touch' of Christ, as healer, had
perversely been torn from the holy book, and pinned to the
undergarments covering the virginal vulvae of the women.

Even the 'protestant' Marcel had been shocked. The crime's daring and
the Biblical irony of the passage in question pointed his intuitive
powers to the Church herself, with its hidden history of perversions.
His audience with the prelate of Paris had been granted,
grudgingly.

"Your excellency, I am your humble servant" Marcel uttered
histrionically as he mock-bowed before the seeming hermaphrodite, whose
overly elaborate costume betrayed such a facile conclusion as to that
confusion which was his makeup.

"Rise, rise, my son; we must to business, without ceremony" was the
cleric's bloodless sacrifice to the most useful instrumentality of his
deception, humility.

"Thank you most kindly; as you instruct, to business. Cardinal, who
found these unfortunates?" he probed, seeking only to learn of the
personnel and their duties at the Cathedral.

"Our Abbott, who lives upon the grounds, I must tell you that he is in
a state of horror as to&;#8230;." Marcel interrrupted,
gracefully:"Cardinal, how could anyone have so managed to transport two
habited nuns of the Order to so public and inaccessible a place as that
where they were found without any knowledge prior to its
accomplishment?"

He seemed to have hesitated, Marcel's intuition counseled. "Inspector,
you are tutored in such matters, not I or my fellow unworldly clerics"
the Cardinal offered.

"But of course; nevertheless, it is a simple matter of physical
limitations having to do with time and space. May I interview these
clerics who may have been performing their duties at the times in
question?" he pressed.

"Yes&;#8230;.of course, but this will take time to arrange, you see,
some are on pilgrimage to Rome" ---he had been evidently
self-conscious, Marcel deduced.

"Ah, certainmonte; may I know their names so as to indicate in my
reportage to my superiors&;#8230;.they are most insistent upon such
details" Marcel meant to subtly entrap.

"They are known only by their Christian names once ordained but, if
that will suffice, you will be furnished them by my secretary, shall we
say in a few days" came the Cardinal's final offering, as he stood
indicating his obvious intent to depart their conference.

"With your indulgence, your eminence, please inform your secretary to
arrange for my meeting with them" Marcel smilingly demanded with the
knowledge that his department had, after all, been invited into this
netherworld of one-named somewhat hidden beings.

Two engirthed corpses, somehow somehow hoisted well into the air,
unnoticed&;#8230;..,unmolested save for a general and slight
inflammation of the labial region---this was the sort of paradox which
characterized that which is covert in Nature Herself. Here, it was the
peculiar nature of the institutions of the Church which piqued the
secularized instincts of M'Ordant by way of naturalistic 'angles' (his
cryptic smile, noticeable only by its author, occasioned by 'their'
wordplay with his playful mind) were divining the ways and means of the
grisly business which preyed upon prayerfulness itself.

"As you may wish" the prelate's snapping jaw's latest issue had brought
him light years back from reverie; "but, beware, Mssr., our people
loathe the world and its ways, they are unaccustomed to
intercourse&;#8230;.with it."
And, he was gone, leaving the precise choice of words echoing in his
auditor's ears, not unlike Poe's bells, tolling, rolling,
resonating.

On returning to his rooms above Rue Danton, his family abed, Michel
began his report this way: 'Having gained the halting cooperation of
Church officialdom, I fear that the well has been, or soon will be,
poisoned, thus rendering any formal direct questioning of the Abbott
and other monastics less than useful. I recommend that a non-local nun
of some standing within the Church be enlisted in our necessarily
surreptitious delvings, she preferably to have relations who may
vouchsafe her sympathy for our secular work irrespective of
loyalties.'

"You have sent for me, sir?"

"Yes, yes, sit down, M'Ordant. I am approving your suggestion, shall we
call it, not, mind you, for its merit but because the press is
relentless! She arrives on the afternoon train from Avignon, her nephew
is Prefect there and tells of her uncompromising integrity; as a young
girl she is said to have seen the Virgin Mary daily, for years. Of
course, it helps that here family is distantly related to the old
French Papacy!" the Commissioner advised, appearing to cling to any
edge his fingers could detect above the abyss of failure.

"Out there, in the naked sun and wind, our derrieres are ready to hang,
along, Lord preserve their souls, those poor innocent creatures. Do it,
M'Ordant, I have faith in you."

Despite the vivid imagery that playful mind had conjured of his
superior's abundant backside somehow nailed and perpendicular to the
wooden axis, he managed to appear the serious fact-finder: "I sense
that this case shall be solved within the fortnight."

"In a fortnight you and I may share a foot patrol" was the cynic's
reply, he being a man of small discernment.

"I know that faith, true and pure, is our ally" M'Ordant was confident
beyond his junior years, indeed, beyond any factual or logical ground,
much less evidence; he was, however, unfazed, by this paradox, the
ultimate instance of the irony of Nature's hidden forces. She never
revealed everything, despite her omnipotence, perhaps because of
it.

"You see my dilemma: your dear sisters, the very espoused of the Lord,
enshroud the mystery by their very status" Marcel put his case.
Sister Angelique was silent for some time after he had made his
impassioned plea for her assistance.

Suddenly, he heard the unspoken pure energy of her thoughts, albeit
encoded by Nature for deciphering by the truly disciplined mind, free
of artifice. "The answer shall be revealed as this act has defied God's
Nature." Her lips could not assist for she was deaf and mute, as well
as poorly sighted.

He had seen this at the Ecole: a man of Australia, an Aboriginal tribal
elder, proved that verbal speech was but a shadow of its parent, the
mind. The elder black man, with eyes that also spoke truth, had told of
how his kinsmen all could so communicate over as many as twenty
leagues, or more!

Now, as they sat in relative comfort and isolation from the church or
its lodgings, she began to weep, silently yet composed. M'Ordant
wondered whether the daguerotypes of the nuns, not more than teenage
girls, truly, had been too much for the frail saint.

"You see" she began again, resolutely, "they had been exposed to
perversity, deep perversion upon holy ground. As they read of
historical accounts, in a book left alone at their breakfast table, of
debauchery and orgiastic excesses unspeakable having taken place inside
the Vatican itself at the instance of an early Pope, they went
frantically to his eminence in abject horror. These accounts, rare in
themselves, were the engraved property of that
self-same&;#8230;.man. To assuage their distress, he counseled them
that they must to manipulate themselves, in his presence&;#8230;."
She paused as much for breath as from bone-crushing sorrow.

"He portrayed is as a rare form of exorcism, so as to rid their now
infested bodies of the dark one. This proved too much for both their
frail minds and bodies."

M'Ordant was stunned oxlike, having audited from the unlikeliest of
sources that which so far exceeded in its depths his already low
opinion of the clergy, that his ears seemed to him worthy of a fate not
unlike that fulfilled by poor Oedipus upon his own betraying
eyes.

"So, Sister, he murdered them to conceal his blasphemy?"

"No" came the reply, without hesitation, or embellishment.

He had exhausted them both, it seemed, now, rising, making ready to
take his leave after comforting her she spoke again to his mind,
clearest of all.

"These sweet children, Mathilde and Marie, sisters in the world before
the church, you see, secretly vowed their mutual course; and after days
of silent prayer for forgiveness for their souls----and his!---they
ascended the buttress at midnight, assisting elaborately and silently
in hanging each other."

Was there no end to the profane, he mused. "What, then, of the Bible
pages?"

"This was the subsequent handiwork of his&;#8230;.eminence" still
using his undeserved title such a one was she.

The headlines announced: 'CATHEDRAL TRIPLE MURDERER ELUDES
DETECTION'

Triple murder, what an error, he thought. Then came the realization
that sealed his fate, and that of certain others.

His eminence was no more, found stabbed to death near the place where
the bodies had been hanging&;#8230;&;#8230;with a knife in his
back.

The Commissioner retired; a month later he was dead of throat cancer,
having never been seriously ill and&;#8230;.never smoked so much as
a pipe. He was 40.

M'Ordant knew the truth, now inadequate shield as well as sword. He was
assigned to Scotland Yard on a pretext of learning the new
fingerprinting technique; he returned to Paris in a casket; he was
29.

Sister Angelique, unmolested she, returned to Avignon, and her vows'
observance. She lived to 120; at the end, there had been rumors of her
ancestor, the French Pope, having partaken of Templar rituals involving
obscure cantations of the Dark One,even sexual deviancy, thus
condemning his progeny to darkness. The killer(s), never identified or
spoken of again.