NYU Black Renaissance Noire NYU Black Renaissance Noire Volume 16.2: Fall 2016 | Page 20

“ You shitty bugger of a sheepherder !” the man shrieked in high-pitched but surprisingly cultivated German , “— How dare you block the Imperial Highway ! How !!! Dare !!! You ?!!!”
Then as enraged spittle sprayed the young musician ’ s face and as the full moon soared from behind a cloud , he suddenly recognized his assailant as a certain Baron von Gugelstein , a notorious young man-about-town whose signature caricature ( usually the head and face of a foppishly-dressed dandy on the body of a pig with a tiny weenie ) appeared almost daily in the satirical broadsheets of the day , usually in connection with some largely fictitious amatory exploit , which nevertheless had earned him the satirical accolade , “ The Boudoir Prince ” —
“ You were trying to rob me , weren ’ t you , you shitty bugger ?! Who are you ? You look to me like a Jew !”
And as the stinging blows of the whip continued to rain over his face , the humiliation and rage the young musician was beginning to feel slowly became directed , not at the handsome pampered face shouting obscenities at him ( so close he could smell the baron ’ s expensive cologne and garlicky breath ) but at himself for being so desperately poor , so irrevocably uncouth and unpresentable , while this monster of a baron no doubt had just finished dining on oysters and snails in one of the plush private parlors of the Café Royale , while frolicking obscenely on a velvet divan between the cunning perfumed thighs of a royal whore —
“ Well , let this be a lesson to you , you flea bag of a dog ! How dare you ! how dare you !!” “ The Boudoir Prince ” continued to shriek , while at the same time lashing his victim with his whip —
It was then , suddenly , and to the great surprise of the victim himself , that the young violinist abruptly stopped ducking and cringing and instead rose to his full height , paused dramatically to catch his breath , and then threw his arms around the baron ( almost as if greeting a long lost brother ) and began fiercely to squeeze him tight —
“ Ho , what ’ s this ?” the baron exclaimed , wrenching his face out of the way , as if afraid his victim was about to give him a kiss —
Instead the musician kicked the baron violently in the groin . And when the young nobleman doubled over and coughed with pain , the musician struck him yet another even more violent blow , this one on the back of the neck and with his doubled fist —
Now , suddenly buoyed with a great wave of unexpected joy and furious energy , and as both tumbled to the ground atop each other like frantic lovers , both emitting breathless sub-human grunts and growls , the young violinist found a soft depression on the baron ’ s neck , twisted the baron ’ s head around until they were almost touching face to face , straddled him and like a cowboy about to brand a heifer , slowly began to grind his boney kneecap deeper and deeper into the baron ’ s slackening flesh , pausing only to turn his head away politely when the baron let out a garlicky dying grunt —
When the young musician awoke , the sun was high in the sky . And though he had long since lost all awareness of the passing of time , he realized he had been sleeping several hours and now found himself stretched out on the footpath that lined the highway on both sides with his thumb in his mouth , wondering what he was doing there lying asleep on the side of the road and not in his bed .
And when he remembered where he was and what he had done , he got up and relieved himself behind a bush , shook himself dry , buttoned his fly and only then , and most reluctantly , acknowledged the presence of the corpse already discovered by a swarm of quietly buzzing flies , gnats and fluttering moths , and which now , reluctantly and with fastidious distaste , he dragged to the edge of an embankment and clumsily rolled down a steep slope to the briar-choked copse below , and finally slid clumsily down the slope himself for one last look —
Yes , no doubt about it — he mused silently to himself while shooing away the voracious preening flies buzzing contentedly around the brownish liquids dripping from the dead man ’ s nostrils and mouth — no doubt about it : that puffy powdered arrogance could belong to no one else but the Baron von Gugelstein , “ The Boudoir Prince ” himself —
17 BLACK RENAISSANCE NOIRE