Beasts of the Bastille
Part 4
For Part 1 of this serial, read HERE
For the previous part read HERE
The Story So Far - orphaned grown-up twins Joseph-Marie and Marie-Joseph are held in separate prisons and contrive a way to write to each other, which involves familiars requiring blood payment.
After they were separated in childhood, Joseph was drafted into the army where he meets the grotesque all-consuming glutton Tarrare.
Marie is abused by nobles whom she serves as maid, but soon encounters revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat.
Joseph continues…
My sweet sister my little Marie
Until this time I’ve had no real sense of your torments, for though I feel them from afar I did not understand them in full until I read your latest letter. The itchings and unease that I feel beneath my skin and know come from you have been a constant throughout my life and I’ve grown used to them almost without once considering what they mean. I am a vain and purblind fool! Forgive me my stupidity, which is so much greater than my native dullness, for it is cultivated from a lifetime’s habit of survival and indifference.
I’ll await the messenger with eagerness, and of course will pay a tribute to them – whatever they are – in blood. Meanwhile the jailer here has become tired of me, and I have found another arrangement to get this letter mailed to you. I may not speak of it now.
I was telling you of Tarrare the monstrous glutton from my regiment, and how the army officers found a use for him. What they did was this: along with another man, they would send him as a spy to watch the enemy positions, both men disguised as simple peasants. The other spy would sketch a plan of the defenses, observe the comings and goings of the detachments, and list all the intelligence on a paper.
Then that paper would be sealed up in a leather cylinder and swallowed by Tarrare. If searched by enemy patrols, nothing would be found; in addition it was believed that the stench he emanated would be enough to dissuade the enemy soldiers from prying too deeply into his affairs.
Well, I was sent as the observer and sketcher, the real spy. Tarrare came along not as scout or explorer but merely as a container. They do say that the message is really in essence the medium of that message; if so, then the message I would send the King’s force would in essence be a suet-like towering globule of pus.
We started out well enough on the first day, making our way carefully through the no-man’s-land between the encamped armies. Soon we took a break under the hot sun. We took refuge beneath a grove of lemon trees. Tarrare gobbled his way through the lemons on the trees, grimacing sourly at the tartness of them and not enjoying himself by any means, but rather driven by that unstoppable appetite.
It is a selfish act to survive, my sister. Nobody asks us to live on. It would be easier for all concerned if we just laid down and died, but some compulsion in us does not allow this simple conclusion to be carried out as fact.
As I was dozing beneath the stripped lemon trees, with my shirt draped around my head as sunshade, there was a disturbance in the air around me, the reek that was Tarrare’s aura shifted suddenly. I roused myself; he was standing over me with a look on his grotesque face, all bloated lips and tiny piggy eyes, that spoke of hunger... hunger for my flesh.
I knew that if I hesitated for an instant I would become a mid-day snack for this ogriforous beast, a light luncheon and no more than a brief pause in the raging appetite that drove him to greater and greater monstrosities.
For an instant I considered yielding, just to find out what it is like to slip into the python jaws of a man like this, to ease into his gullet and into the soft refuge of his belly...
But then I kicked him in the balls, he grunted and collapsed, and I ran free.
I was free of Tarrare and his savage gluttony, but also, and more importantly, I was free of the army, cast out between two opposing forces in the heart of Europe. Of no side and accepted by nobody, the absolute reject of men.
And I was forever free of fear also, never again to be passive victim to its chill clutches. Something about imagining myself sliding down the esophagus of a reeking fleshy giant and then awaking to the fact that I could simply knee him in the gonads had freed me in the most complete sense of the word.
I would remain free from that moment on, no matter how much they tried to enslave me with terror or even throw me in their prisons. “Man is born free, and yet everywhere is in chains” says Jean-Jacques. The name of those chains is fear, and I have none of it left.
Adieu, ma brave!
I await your messengers
Your most loving brother
Joseph
Darling Joseph,
I must first apologize, I may ramble. My Tormentor is refusing me sleep again. I am also covered in leeches that I may not touch. I am guarded by a large young man from the village here. He fancies himself quite the menace. When he was first set in front of my cell he called me horrible things and beat his cudgel upon the bars. Now he has three of my leeches hidden under his shirt. I’ll make him eat the rest.
I’m sorry you feel my beast. Or maybe I’m not. I don’t consider it a torment as I took it on willingly, but I do wonder if you sharing the twitchings and shiftings from within means you also share the beast. If even to a small extent my beast has a twin in you, that would be very interesting. I wonder if you’ve ever felt it trying to break free, if you could transform the way I do. Perhaps we’ll meet again someday and I can guide you through it. It really is wonderful to run through a dark forest, hunting your quarry with only your nose and your instinct to guide you. You’ll never feel more free.
I will admit the account of your escape from that foul Tarrare lent a bit of levity to this grey cell. I laughed perhaps too heartily at the thought of him collapsing, for a brief moment relived of his insatiable hunger by the deft hand (or foot) of pain. And wanting to be devoured, that too, makes me think of the wolf. But perhaps you are more free than I, tied to my wolf, tied to my demon, tied to you.
My friend has returned to me and reported on your conditions. Squalor, as to be expected. I’ll send them regularly with money so that you can grease the wheels of favor. The money is useless to me. My tormentor would gladly take it, but only after I’m dead, in order to keep his conscience clear of course. He’s been more determined as of late to break me. Why I let him try is perhaps a matter I should discuss. I could tear him apart. I could hex him. But I let him beat me instead.
But first I must tell you of the beast, and of Marat. I was with him one night, he railed against a nobleman, Édouard Pierre. A cruel landowner withholding food and wages from his peasants. Marat was a writer, not a fighter. He could only continue to rail against the excesses of the aristocracy in general and fight for change en masse. Noble causes, and much more important than petty vengeance. But I am a killer. I like petty vengeance. I sought then and there, as well, to prove to Marat that his precious science couldn’t explain everything.
We lay in bed, candles guttering in the breeze from the open windows. I told him I must show him something. And that when I had done, he must open the door for me. I asked him to help me remove the rugs and then stood naked in the room.
“Don’t be scared,” I told him, “I would never hurt you. Just remember to open the door at the end.” It’s difficult to describe, I’ve tried many times. I’ve never seen myself change, I’ve only felt it. I’ll try for you. It starts at my spine, widening, lengthening, I feel it stretch and grind, the vertebrae pop and separate as new bones grow in between. It’s painful, but not in the way you’d imagine. I know, as my limbs lengthen and claws split from fingertips, that I’m losing the more complex part of me. If only for a while, I’ll become a monster, unthinking, uncaring, desirous of none but ruin. It hurts to lose one’s humanity, no matter how little you think of it.
I could, here and there, see Marat as I writhed, his cigarette dangling from his lips, eyes wide. I could see his mind trying to find the trick. That was the thing with him, always looking for the sleight of hand, be it of nature or of man. How are you tricking us now? I loved him for that. He wasn’t afraid, he was intrigued. Once my muzzle has burst through my mouth I shake off the remaining bits of gore and eat myself up. I need to be inside the wolf if I’m to come back out again. It’s a curious ouroboros of fur and flesh. And yes, I’ll eat it, too, when I’ve transformed back to human.
Marat opened the door for me and I killed Édouard Pierre. I burned his archives as well, so no one would know what his peasants owed. I am a very clever wolf.
I came back to Marat in human form, he seemed relieved. No one likes to watch a tiny woman devour an entire wolf, bones, fur, and all. Then again, it might’ve turned Tarrare on.
My apologies, what an unpleasant thought to leave you with.
Adieu, mon frère,
Marie-Joseph
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