The Nine of Diamonds

The Nine of Diamonds

“Atlas had always suffered from chronic sadness,” spoke his mother, in earnest commiseration for whom she had, and would forevermore love, “and if…I had but been a better mother, I could...have…steered him away from all those corruptive, addictive drugs that so doomed Atlas,” blaming herself for no reason save sickly heartache. She paused to observe the benign faces in her funebrial milieu, which her distraught mind hallucinated her into bethinking to be menacing, leering, and despiteful. Her tristesse beset her to paranoia. She resumed with intermittent twitches of her body, writhes from the augmenting, tempestuous deluge outside, and complexional crimsoning: 

“Should I have foreseen the bane that struck him?!” impromptu exclaiming, which echoed throughout the incapacious, modest church. “Was I unwise to allow him to mope in his room, be a recluse, and avoid all human contact besides myself - and even that, Atlas did with resentment. Am I naive for ignoring the exhaustive bags under his eyes, and his sallow pallor from his intake of drugs? Yes to all the above.” She looked at the mournful amassment in depth, realising that a shard of luminance variegated through the church, shafting as it pierced the mosaic glass, and alighted upon a familiar spectre. The anonymity was separated as alien through the oceans of time since last they had seen or spoken to one another. It was her ex-husband, withered to the appearance of a bedraggled, gaunt man. Being invited out of courtesy, none had expected him to attend the funeral since Atlas had exiled him. A Noachian flood bathed her in a lithe tenor of different emotions directed at her ex-husband: she reckoned with wrath and ruth, yearning and forsaking, curiosity and incuriosity, hatred and love. 

Wavering on her contrite eulogy, she tried to regain her lingual flow, alas, she could not. Heaving shame at her abrupt cessation, she descended from the birchen pulpit, crying, and befogged the facial hallucinations of those present. Nestling on a row where no one else was sat, she watched the remainder of the plaintive ceremony; anon wiping rheum from coursing down her ivory cheeks. All the while, a nettlesome glare scathed at her nape, scolding it with that supersensory presentiment one perceives when being ogled at unawares; deconstructed by whosoever feels the need to dissect us through their voyeurism. In her cognitive recess, she knew whom it was, but she dared not avert from the procession - not even for a fugitive retaliation. 

Once all had wept and all were sorrowed to the marrow, persons, attired in sables, began taking their leave. 

“I am awfully sorry about Atlas, Dimitra,” addressed a sincere woman from her forepassed, as she held an umbrella to shield them both from the imperishable deluge. “You ought not to condemn yourself for it. Otherwise you are letting grief conquer you.” 

Dimitra, our motherly heroine, nodded as a form of acknowledgement, though Dimitra was impervious to these condolences, and words purporting to be profound for a mourner. More of the likes flitted by, telling her in temerarious pity to be strong, courageous, and everything besides surrendering to her grief. Dimitra lifted the corner of her lip to exemplify her duteous understanding when such fortifications occurred, and bid them adieu. She wondered whether her ex-husband would approach her, or if he would be too pusillanimous to broach the death of their son. As the amassment petered out into the moist brume of the inclement day, and with nothing from her ex-husband, Dimitra started to potter off. She had not brought an umbrella, and so the deluge saturated her solemn raiments, soddening them to recede upon the pores of her sinewy melancholy. It was but when she had arrived at the Gothic gates of the church, that a lachrymose voice bellowed: 

“Stop, Dimitra!” with the audial steps of one hying over, pattering shoes squelching on the fenny mire below. 

Dimitra turned, recognised her ex-husband, perused his quondam handsome features - now ravaged by guilt-smitten degradation - and debated whether to walk or talk. The harder Dimitra looked, the less restraint she had to repress her yearnings of this phantom from her yore. These longful sentiments were soon supervened by a genuine remorse for how emaciated and nauseated he had become. His nubian nose disproportioned to that of a disintegrating Grecian effigy; his hair depilated and regressed aback his almost glabrous scalp; and his teeth now carious. How could Dimitra not be compassionate with this piteous thing?! What juxtaposed the pathos of Gustav, and influenced Dimitra to forfeit, was a rainbow shadowing hues of glorious polychromos. Where Gustav was whited and jaundiced, the skies were blued, bejewelled, and bediamonded. 

In unalloyed honesty, Dimitra posed her qualms of his frail health: “What happened to you, Gustav?” 

In false sport, Gustav shrugged his shoulders, and uttered: 

“Nothing of concern…What is of greater importance is how you have been faring,” Gustav skulked a bathetic smile as punctuation. 

“As you can imagine,” with kind yet reticent austerity, “not well.” 

“How long had Atlas been - from what I presume - suffering from depression?” 

Dimitra was torn between attributing the divorce - which Gustav had manifested - as being the originator of Atlas's depression, and absolving him by not salting his panging bereavement. It was an irrational enmity which demanded she revile the man whom she had been deceived by. She smothered that malevolence, for she knew Atlas’s depressive verity to be more complex, involute, and ambiguous than her husband having left them. When delving further in, Dimitra was aware of her having been most rent by the divorce. Atlas, on the other hand, had been quite insouciant to the behests where Gustav pleaded to see his son. The moment Gustav had quitted from their home, he had been banished from the heart of Atlas also. 

“For as long as I can remember,” was all Dimitra could muster divulging. Pondering vivified untoward memories in Dimitra, where she had embattled against the suicidal tendencies of Atlas. Shifting the tectonic plates where grounded their conversation, Dimitra questioned: 

“Why did you cower till the end of the funeral to speak to me?” 

“I was frightful of your warranted reproaches,” languished Gustav, with dour monotone. 

On a whim from her current despondency, Dimitra forgave Gustav. “My reproaches would now be unwarranted. Let the past lie abed.” 

Gustav attempted to beam a smile anew, failed, and blushed from how pathetic his demeanour was. “This may be overbold,” said Gustav, “but would you be willing to have lunch or a drink? - the latter does seem insensitive.” 

Before accepting, Dimitra burst through with doubts of Gustav’s fidelity, as if his disloyalty to her was reliving through whom she surmised Gustav engaged with. “Would Circe not be bothered by what you propose?” 

“Circe and I ended a year ago,” a tear rolled down, and was enmeshed with those of the dreitch environment. 

Dimitra could have simulated a pretence of being sorry, could have reciprocated the inane advice of Gustav fortifying himself, but she chose not to. If anything, Dimitra revelled in the fact that Gustav had separated from the woman who had destroyed their matrimony. Life has a cyclical continuance of revenging those who think they have eluded justice; one can run and hide, though poetic reprisal shall always aureole upon tenebrous abysses. 

Dimitra, however, was not so cruel as to gloat over how pained Gustav must be, and so, in tacit fashion, she omitted impressing the recollection of Gustav’s disunion by granting his wish: 

“Shall we go to a café, and have some lunch? I am sceptical as to whether I will eat anything, though I would not oppose catching up.” 

The idiom says thrice is the charm; indeed, for Gustav it was: on the third instance of him striving to smile, he succeeded. They wandered abreast yet afar to Gutav’s automobile, japanned with a virid patina, and entered whilst both remained silent as the graves whereof encircled the church. Journeying, they persisted in this state of meditative quietude, epitomised by disregarding the multitude of melodious CDs, resting in a cavernous box beside the gear stick. The sole noise was that of the deluge buffeting the exterior of the automobile, the gravel, cobble, pavements, and luscious meadows farther out. 

In the quaint town of Rade, Gustav ceased driving, and parked by the entrance to an olden café, motlied scarlet, turquoise, and Stygian. Egressing from the automobile, they headed within the café and traipsed along the icy, stern brickwork which paved its soundless floor. “Shall we sit over there?” orchestrated Gustav as he pointed to a booth with leather seats; Dimitra agreed. 

Once in the booth, the pretty waitress valetted them by seeing whether they hungered or thirsted for anything. Dimitra glimpsed at the simplistic menu. Per contra, Gustav focused his sight upon Dimitra, flashed an advertency at the waitress, who was tousling her auburn hair, and remarked: 

“Have whatever you like - food or drink. The bill shall be on me.” Noting the gratitude be countervailed by Dimitra, who did not wish to be indebted, Gustav interposed; “It is the least I can do.” With that, Dimitra succumbed to admitting his munificence by imparting she hankered for a tea. Gustav, being voracious notwithstanding the dolesome occasion, ordered an English Breakfast, substituting the brackish, pinguid bacon for black sausages. The waitress exited the histrionic tensity between them. Gustav began perspiring, which was ludicrous considering the air conditioned gelid gusts of pleasance. He was neurotic over how to converse with this woman he once endeared, and circumspect of not dejecting her already poignant grief. There were so many inquisitions he craved to know respecting Atlas, though Gustav divined that injudicious when flesh has but of late been riven asunder. Dimitra had little conflict swimming amongst her. Rather, she experienced a phenomenon where halcyon nostalgia overmasters one’s begrudgement, as well as blearing sombrous misfortune. Dimitra was able to see the light in the dark, rectitude in turpitude, and beauty in her burthens. 

The waitress, concealing how she laughed to herself, returned with the tea and English Breakfast. She hastened to deposit the aliment, and after nothing besides being required, left them to wallow in their aphonic discomfiture. 

Tiring of this charade, Dimitra disestablished the norm of which they partook - and did so with brusque fervency:

“Can you tell me why Circe and you parted?” Supping at her tea, where smoke fumed from its peaceable heat. 

Agitated, Gustav gnawed at an indenture in his skin. “Circe and I quarrelled all the time; she always had too fierce a temper for me.” 

“It is difficult to accustom to an impudent woman, when you are used to a docile, civil one.”

Gustav chuckled with regret, and acquiesced by dint of dilating his pupils ajar in an unsurprised mannerism. “To be sure, you were neither ruthless nor callous.” 

Dimitra desired to vindicate herself by concurring with his statement, but her sense saw how fruitless this was. Why remonstrate a crestfallen dog with additional lashes, when he bears the evident sign of rue? Instead, Dimitra thus pacified the dispirited Gustav by assuring him otherwise: 

“A cool temper comes with age. Seldom is it present in younger people, which is where your error lies. You were tricked by her vivacious glamour, and bargained for more than you could handle.” 

“I suppose so,” responded Gustav, and disbanded his argent cutlery on the table. He was defeated by the virtuous sibyl in his fore. Having exercised her sentences with a gentle cadence, she all the more swamped Gustav through bustling winds of him having wronged her. This implicit manipulation, however, was not what Dimitra had intended, though a chafed mind cannot resist but unclouding such fey truths and allotting them to themselves. 

O’ how Gustav lamented the deck of cards he had so substantiated! There were numerous “errors” enacted by his own doltish, impulsive volition, which Gustav lusted to reverse - or, at the least, amend. “Shall I be candid, and explain why I have brought us here?” 

Dimitra affirmed her covetous intrigue, and stirred her tea as a reflexive distraction. 

“I have a confession to make to you which long have I evaded, and no more can I do so.” 

A terrour trembled throughout the now trepidant Dimitra, as she quaffed the tea in incertitude of what may be unbosomed. Her eyes fleeted from Gustav, to the nigh-unpeopled vacancy within the café, then at the rudimentary walls. A wholesome part of Dimitra would not have cared if Gustav was to advocate their renewal of troth; albeit she was not so credulous as to confide in that improbable conjecture. There was a sinistrous portend about the way wherein Gustav evinced and minced his words. 

“Have you ever wondered why Atlas despised me? - why Atlas always refused my invitations for him to come over - why I can hazard that he never mentioned me, or quashed anything with the faintest allusion to me.” 

“Yes, I have,” answered Dimitra, straining her face as she was fed overbrimming occurrences where the above had transpired. 

“Did you ever ask Atlas why this was so?” Gustav had a quizzical integrity upon him, for he was purblind to what information Dimitra had been related. 

“A couple of times I did, however, he was reluctant and so I altogether stopped.” With odium stealing across her furrowing eyebrows, Dimitra added, “Altas would grow disputatious, indignant, and wry.” 

“There is a justifiable reason for him reacting so.” Thereupon Gustav winced at his English Breakfast, and heard his bilious stomach sicken in vomitous billows; he shoved the plate of food aside. In a frenetic series of events, Gustav glided his hands through his glabrous scalp - shearing some in the process - abraded his disproportionate nose, and bared his carious teeth, which had a suppurating nausea to them. 

Noticing his behavioural distress, and elevating her tone through how baffled Gustav had foisted her into being, Dimitra by accident shouted, “What is this mystery which you refer to?! Be plainer than all this prevaricating!” 

Coaxed into subservience, Gustav hushed Dimitra with his anxious hands. “Please, do not raise your voice. There may be few here, but this is between you and I.” Silencing herself, Dimitra showed that she had recuperated from her extemporaneous outrage. 

“Before I confess, can you promise to forgive me?” fawning with the disconsolation of one whose entirety has been jaded to a friendless, companionless, and loveless vicissitude. “I have no one left to turn to besides you.”

“I cannot promise you anything.” Dimitra angered from Gustav’s ambulatory indecision, “Let us keep in mind that this is the first time I have seen you,” rasping as she continued, “since when you abandoned Altas and I for that licentious student of yours. As to your loneliness, repenting is useless.” 

Violable to these righteous castigations, Gustav bowed in figurative accord to Dimitra being inerrable. “Well, so be it. When Altas was four…I…” thumbing the knife, edging it along his veins in angst, “I raped him.” His face atrophied in ignominy. 

Cresting between sanity and lunacy, neither buttressed to hear more nor concerned of the wherefore, Dimitra stifled Gustav with a malicious gurn. Revolted and petrified, the grief of Dimitra disembodied, and instead was inflamed at this revelation. A venefic itch broiled and rankled within the very skin housing her; she felt that, at any instant, she may leap to gore this facinorous daemon alive. The audacity of brazening her to have such mercy as forgiveness after what Gustav had avowed! She, moreover, wished he had never disclosed this repugnant vagary. Was being ill at ease with the knowledge of her son having opiated himself, till his heart swooned to fatal hebetude not enough? Did the sempiternal imprint of Dimitra having arrived at the scene of where Atlas had perished, and seeing his needles whetted with a bituminous, resinous, and viscous crust not suffice to haunt her for aye? It may be selfish, nevertheless, after all the years of being endarked of what tormented her lovesome son; after all the instances where she had to drive, in aimless consternation, at a sporadic telephoning from the police, saying they had found Atlas lost, slumbering upon the implacable streets; after all the woes they had endured, why did this daemon have to scourge her life yet fouler?! 

Dimitra arose from her seat, and cannonaded Gustav:  

“You have astounded me with how deluded you are.” The waitress and the couple whom she was serving, began listening. Gustav essayed to calm the livid vehemence of Dimitra, by snaking his hand as before; in vain. 

“What hope fooled you into thinking any human can be merciful, after the blasphemous crime you have committed against one so helpless!? Why bring me here - did you anticipate me to be permissive to your sins? What possessed you to be persuaded into materialising this depraved, infantile fantasy? What stooped you so low as to rape your own son?!” Adread, the scarcity of persons gasped in alarm. Piecing the jigsaw together, Dimitra concluded: 

“And then, without guilt (or so you prayed), you flew off with a woman younger than I, leading me to forever criticise myself for some ugly defect, or deficit of being unlovable? You ruined me, but, worst of all, you desolated your son so much through your treachery he suicided.” 

Gustav choked on the feculent horror of his trespass, “I just…couldn’t…” In the meanwhile of Gustav stuttering, the remembrance of Dimitra having not been averse to them rekindling, combusted with luridity. She reeled in drunken incandescence, hurried for the door, and roared her adieu: 

“Damn you, and I can but beg for you to be likewise tortured! Hell is too tolerant for your wicked brood.” Whereafter Dimitra quitted from the café. 

The atmosphere stilled, the few within dumbed, the deluge entempested brash dewdrops, and that rainbow variegated ashine. The bill was consigned to Gustav; Dimitra wondrous banished Gustav to lonesome exile. 

Forbidden delights end in gracious revenge.