The fulcrum upon which the disagreement swung, the knife-edge on which blood was split, was a soup. A green soup in which floated dark bone-thin lumps. Perhaps they even swam. Here in the crypt-eateries of Vienna such dishes were shunned and ignored by all but certain sects of confused and sinister spinsters and, more often, by men with tastes that lay in morbid research and pompous facial hair. This was the dark-horse of soups, the traitor. The great apostate. A dish served for disgust and determination of certain faiths. The soup was sometimes a test and sometimes a fetish. This soup was a narcotic crime, a pointless culinary misadventure: a sad mistake that had led to a corruption of palates. A violation. It was a taste that was better left forgotten, too dangerous to be the subject of a tale worthy of decent folk. The soup had a life of its own, the cook /served/ it, in the sense of subjugation. You might eat it a thousand times and still be uncertain of the olfactory possibilities at each serving, it was a forgotten dish. A lost meal. Curse-food.
But on this evening the soup had met the wrong lips. The soup drove Baron Otto Von Subertan to throw his fierce bulk across the little Viennese restaurant, a giant amongst the porcelain and black candles. His fat hands hurled the bowl across the marbled floor, a bilious missile leaving a comets tail of green hissing through the air.
Subertan hooted with fury. He snorted and trembled with all the extra momentum bestowed upon him by height and massive fat. Subertan was an inconsolable beast of a man. He could curse, did curse, as an avatar of incredulity, the emissary of ire. His was a temper that had been forged upon an anvil of pure spite; he baulked at pity, raged against etiquette and slapped chivalry in the face with a salty hand, grimy with earlier misdemeanors. His mouth spattered and writhed with the residue of soup. Subertan's hairs crackled with a primal anger. The Van der Graff of hate. He shook with the crimson-faced eminence of a hysterical child, fit to burst with an unparalleled grief against the world.
Otto's companion sat upright, motionless and thin at the table. He gripped its rim, hoping that his companion would not knock him into embarrassment. Hugh Moridial was a man who never threw a fit, let alone a plate of soup. He steadied himself, hoping to ride out the storm. This however was one indiscretion that would not be forgotten, the hurricane that was the fur-clad Saxon would refuse to fade with time it had to break on something, precipitate. Von Subertan would have to throttle the chef. Pressure had been building for days. Now the seal had cracked.
The restaurant was not large, it was almost too small to accommodate both patrons and staff, but somehow it managed to be elegant and popular. Von Subertan's elegance was one of a great body in motion, a giant figure; he was a red-faced monster rolling across the immaculate space of this, the measured haunt of politicians and theorists. Respectable men, men who could only plot and scheme: Writers and Orators with all the vigour of someone who is essentially just an ageing head with real no body and no embodiment.
Von Subertan had always been /physicality/. He was most essentially in the world. His mission was to grasp that world and squeeze it until it either squealed submission or died, pale and deflated. A waiter rushed to restrain the snorting beast and the two met with an audible slap. As they collided the waiter spoke quickly, buzzing demandingly like an unattended and haywire machine. Otto rumbled, a slab of beef given voice and impetus.
The soup beneath the two men had lined the floor carefully; this sleek lining was to lubricate the shoes of both men, defeating them in a swift and fluid motion. Von Subertan swung towards the floor with stop-frame spontaneity. There was no escalation, no pendulous fall to earth, just a sudden uniform arc to the ground. He slammed into the marbled with a great roar, crushing the chattering waiter beneath him.
The German stood up, levering himself on meaty rods, slipping for a moment on more of the hated gruel. Then he was leaning into movement and recapturing his initial motion, he accelerated towards the kitchen door, intending to ram it with explosive effect. Behind him the waiter squirmed on the floor, gasping desperately as he struggled to re-inflate his chest. The air had been blasted out of him and he feared that it would never return.
The chef was a tattooed French-Swiss. He turned with an eyebrow-centered sneer to view the furor. As he did so two massive limbs came for him, hair and foul smelling breath accompanied them. Hand at is face. The Chef scrambled backwards across a great central table, scattering cabbage and salt. A junior cook threw himself at Von Subertan, striking him with a blood-encrusted rolling pin. The German struck back, stunning the young man with a gigantic backhand swipe at his head. The young cook's nose crunched and he gargled internal fluids as he fell back.
The head chef performed a deft backwards roll and then followed through his acrobatics with a bolt for the tradesman's tin-lined double door. Von Subertan caught him by the collar and clasped his neck with fat paws. The culinaire had no time to beg, no opportunity for explanation. His face quickly went purple as the ogre of Subertan crushed the life out of him, cutting off air and splintering vertebrae. The dead man slumped to the ground and Otto panted. Hard air raking in and out of his sore lungs.
Out in the body of the restaurant the clientele sat in silence. Some turned to enjoy their meal. Others nodded to each other, acknowledging the oddity of the evening. The crushed waiter was gasping at two of his colleagues who flitted around him, too scared to act. Then that temporary peace was broken again as the junior cook came running through the kitchen door, blood pouring from his face and the dark planetary mass of Von Subertan looming behind him: "Murder! Murder! He killed Monsieur Boutaine! Murder!" The young man howled.
Men stood up and women gasped, clutching their bags and bosoms. Von Subertan strode out into the room his bovine head swaying about to challenge all comers.
"You Sir, you are a Philistine, a booby, a murderous barbarian!" A bespectacled minister pointed his spiky hand accusingly. Others rumbled in agreement. The atmosphere was becoming discordant. Von Subertan snarled at them and swung his murderous hands in anger.
"Come now Moridial, I have snapped the neck of that cuisine-worm," Otto informed his companion in his throaty bark. "We are leaving."
"Yes, very well." Hugh Moridial remained English. He would have none of the panic; he would see to it that he and his ferocious counterpart would exit this establishment with a little more decorum than they had demonstrated during the meal. He stood, leaving the correct change for what they had eaten, then followed his beastly friend to the restaurant front door. He just hoped no one else would cross Von Subertan. That was the third unnecessary tantrum this week. But then, the soup /had/ been served cold.