Aurorarama

by Jean-Christophe Valtat

  The Second Sight goggles were useful but exhausting to use. After hours of searching and finding roundabout ways through the messy maze, Brentford often had to slow down, stop, and take a few minutes of nauseated rest in total darkness, or cup his head in his hands and slowly turn it from left to right, trying to alleviate the ache in his crackling cervical discs. He could hear all around him the ice crunching like splintered bones and the assassin cold mindlessly whistling a tuneless song as it tried to get inside the cabin. But soon Brentford had to get up and shuffle back to the helm, his shoulders and his eyes still painful from the strain.

  He did not go as fast as he had expected to, but it was the number one rule of any arctic trip that expectations were worthless and that everything that could go wrong would eventually do so. He had now about five days to get to the pole, which could be done, depending on the ice, and provided he lost no time. A full day of sailing, if it could be called that, had taken him only fifty miles closer to his target, but these had been, he hoped, the hardest miles.

  He tried to sleep for a few hours, but he could not find the switch to turn off the lamp in his head that was called Sybil. He remained seated and shivering in the cabin, with only his breath for company, making out through the thick blurry windshield the rough unfinished shapes of angry, growling, roaring ice sculptures mutely howling at the moon. This was pure Phobetor territory, here, a nightmarish wilderness with none of Phantasus’ creatures to animate it, the true kingdom of Icelus, as Phobetor was known among the Gods. If Brentford peered into the landscape long enough, he could see, like many explorers before him, something like the outlines of a city emerging from the icy pandemonium: buildings out of ice blocks, domelike hillocks, razor-sharp spires of crystal, the dark canals of water leads. It occurred to him that the icescape tried to imitate New Venice, unless New Venice, in its moonlit marble whiteness, was but one more dream mirage from the mind of Icelus. Maybe there was a message in this metamorphosis about how useless or impossible it was to go away, or about how badly he already missed the place. For a while, he was tempted to go back, but somehow that demanded even more fuss than continuing on. He knew well that he was, quite literally, pursuing a dream, but this did not make it any easier to call it quits, when everything else seemed to be lost.

  He was half asleep when the dawn caught him by surprise, a drowned pale sun that rolled slowly on the horizon like a coin about to fall. Mumbling about losing precious time, he shook off sleep and went out to do the chores, defrosting the windshield, scrubbing the runners and greasing the cast-iron shoes with a mixture of tar, tallow, and stearine, checking that the hulls and the rudder-skate had not suffered any damage beyond a few scrapes and minor blows. The air was so clear that he could see for miles a landscape as precise as a painted miniature, with distant sheets of ice flashing like planted mirror shards, and breathing it turned his lungs inside out. But that felt good, somehow.

  He took out the sextant and theodolite to try to take his bearings, because the constant search for a passage and the effect of the drift were likely to have made him stray off course. Under these latitudes, the compass indicated a stubborn southwestern direction, and even travelling at night, the stars could not be depended upon with Polaris too high overhead to be seen. If he was right, he had been carried away to the east, but not to an extent that rendered his trip more absurd that it already was. So he kept on.

  On this second day, the going was getting somehow smoother, with less steering around and more sastruga snow. At some point, the Kinngait even picked up speed, and the landscape jolted past in a blur of blue. Under the whirr of the fan blades, Brentford could hear the crackling and ringing of the runners, the spraying of crushed gems they spurted in their wake. In front of him, under the bow, the faint shadow of the ship, the rows and rows of swallowed rollers, the complicated lines of cracks quickly tangling and unravelling themselves wove a moving web that lulled and mesmerized him. The Kinngait went on steadily enough, except for some unexpected bumps that woke Brentford up as he dozed off at the helm. This was where he saw her for the first time.

  A woman hurried on the ice in front of him, either guiding or fleeing the ship. He first took her for some eddy of snow, but even without his goggles he could clearly make out her white shape against the bluish ice, the train of her misty dress a hundred yards ahead of him, going as fast as the Kinngait, so that it seemed impossible to reduce the distance that separated them. It was of course a hallucination. These were inevitable, but he had not thought that they would occur so early in the trip. He felt lucid enough, though, but lucidity required that, lost in the middle of the paleocrystal sea, you did not trust your own lucidity. The woman slipped behind a boulder and did not reappear.

  For a few hours, that is. Twilight soon followed dawn, and his searchlight now etching deeper, ink-black shadows in the icescape as it jumped past and dodged the yacht. At some point, when the night had risen all around him, he caught a glimpse of her again, as she advanced in front of him, almost beyond the reach of the light, straight ahead through the yellowish ice and snow. She was, it seemed, running on her bare feet, but he could not be quite sure of that. He could not see her face beneath her hood, but he figured out this much: if he thought about Sybil, then she would be Sybil; if he thought about Helen, she would be Helen; if he thought of the Ghost Lady, then it would be her as well; it could even be Seraphine, his first love, if his spirits ever went that low. The choice, he felt, was pretty much his, and it was a cruel choice to have to make.

  What surprised him most was that—as he lost her for a while, caught another glimpse of her, then lost her again, then found her once more, as if she had been waiting for him—he had not done anything but follow her, without asking himself any questions. She could well have been leading him to his death, toward some crevice or some rising ridge he would see just at the last moment before crashing into it. The siren of the frozen sea. But still he followed on, not even persuaded that she would lead him somewhere, but just because it was the thing to do. He had come here because a dream had told him to do so, and for all he knew, while he was at it, he might as well chase a ghost, faithful to the feeling of love and longing he felt toward her flight. He did not even want to catch up with her. That was how he understood what William Whale had told him, in his own way, about Peary or Cook not really wanting to go to the real pole. Because there is no real pole, or if there is one, it’s only real as long as you don’t get there. You destroy it, and yourself, by reaching it.

  As soon as he started to muse on this and lose his focus, he felt his left runner crack against some treacherous hummock, and the ship suddenly spin out of control. He threw himself on the port side to act as a counterweight, but it was too late, the Kinngait was capsizing, its right runner sliding as well, the windmill blades toppling and about to crash and break themselves on the ice. His only hope was that they would not burst through the roof and kill him as the ice yacht tumbled liked a rolled die.

  The last thing Brentford saw before the searchlight broke was the girl standing on a hillock, slowly turning toward him, her hand pulling her hood backward, and revealing herself as totally faceless.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  A Wizard in Strange Trance

  May the wolves devour the dreamer.

  Kalevala, X

  Then the wolves came. Kajjait. A pack of a dozen famished-looking silvery beasts that sniffed Gabriel’s beheaded body and started to tear it apart, growling hungrily, their jaws snapping with excitement.

  Once the thick clothes had been torn to rags, they started gnawing at the balls. “He who liveth by the sword …,” thought the head, shaken awake from its slumber at the first bite. The head, which dared not call itself Gabriel anymore, could still feel the teeth sinking into the distant body and the flesh tearing off, ripped apart in tattered shreds. It hurt, but in an eerie way, as phantom limbs are said to do, but also, because of the cold, maybe less excruciatingly than the brain would have expected. It was like b
eing operated on while under anaesthesia, when the numbed body becomes an abstract map of muscles and nerves, reacting unpleasantly to the surgery, in a dull, precise way that sets one’s teeth on edge, more an expectation of suffering than an actual pain. Still, this relative loss of sensation carried with it a certain anxiety, as if the head felt buried alive and was knocking itself repeatedly against a coffin lid made of its own skull bone.

  The head did not know whether it should close its eyes or not. The sight was awful but fascinating, as the body was flayed and mangled, the limbs jerking from the tugging of the wolves. One of them ran a few steps away, the left arm between its teeth, the gloved hand tightly curled in a fist. Gabriel’s head could see the shoulder joint protruding out of the trunk, the ribs appearing on the side, even whiter than the snow. The blood on the ground had curdled purple under the northern lights.

  One of the wolves, turning toward the head, finally noticed it, half buried in the snow. Their eyes met. But, instead of coming closer for a sniff, the wolf suddenly growled, looking at some point above it. The other wolves moved nervously, casting glances in the same direction, moving in ripples of fur as if grouping to attack. A groan resounded above Gabriel’s head, and a shadow covered it. The brain remembered the story of a dead explorer who’d been eaten by his own pack, except for his head, which was found being watched over by the lead dog, in some token of loyalty, or perhaps it was waiting for the head to give it an ultimate order. Now some animal was protecting Gabriel’s head as well: the wolves retreated and hurried on to finish the rest of their quarry, dragging it a few inches here and there with scraping sounds on the snow, cleaning up the carrion in a messy way that left strips of bloody muscle dangling from broken bones. They looked up from time to time, baring their fangs at the shadow but not daring to move toward it, as it towered above Gabriel’s head. Was it a bear? But a bear would have attacked, and why would a bear have cared about the head anyway? To reciprocate the pains the Eskimo took to groom and feed the head of a killed nanuk, so that the beast would not speak ill of the hunters when it reached its own afterlife? Whatever it was, its looming presence spoiled the party. Sometimes, a few of the wolves tried to get closer to the head, then retreated again, fearing to lose some fine morsel of the half-eaten carcass.

  Then, all of sudden, as if they had silently plotted among themselves, they attacked together. Before they could reach it, the shadow jumped over the head, a white furry beast knocking the wolves about with its powerful hind legs or its swinging tail, sending them rolling in the snow before they had a chance to bite. One of them, though, circled and darted at Gabriel’s head, catching it by the earflaps of its hat. The white shape turned around and, with a thunderous roar, scared the wolf so badly it dropped the head, sending it rolling into the nearby crevasse. The head plummeted down, having just enough time to notice that a disarticulated body was lying down in the crack.

  There was a shock and, coming toward the head at full speed, a light so strong it blinded the brain, piercing and melting it as it passed through. The burn peaked and receded slowly. Gabriel opened his eyes. He was now lying on the ice at the bottom of the crevasse, his head back on his shoulders. He tried and found he could move his limbs. They hurt in a diffuse way, but nothing, unbelievable as it seemed, had been broken by the fall. There was a God for suicides, he thought. He turned over and saw, ten yards above him, a dark streak of starry night between the narrow ice walls, and, from time and time, the muzzle of a whining wolf. No traces of the white shape remained visible, but Gabriel could feel its presence somewhere close by.

  He got up, wondering, with less concern than he would have expected, if he were alive or dead, or both, or neither. He noticed that he now stood totally naked and freezing, though he remained rather indifferent about it, as if his body, after what it had gone through, would not bother him over so little. Maybe he was simply agonizing somewhere, as he had planned, and hallucinating in his agony.

  A bluish light seemed to emanate from within the ice walls, and he could see that the crevasse went on, in front of him and behind, in a nearly straight line whose ends were invisible. He decided to follow it northward, hoping for some exit at the base of the cliff side, or for the moment when he would wake up, or forever black out.

  The path sloped downward, and at some point he noticed that the opening above had disappeared and been replaced by a glazed roof of ice. He was now, by his own reckoning, somewhere under the sea. Then he saw them: bodies inside the walls—hundreds, thousands of them, standing frozen at different depths, like dummies in thick frosted-glass shop windows. They were not lined up in a row, but seemed occupied with everyday activities or maybe, Gabriel thought, arranged to mimic their last moments. He remembered who they were: the Qimiujarmiut, if that was the correct name, the People of the Narrow Land. Those who, according to some Inuit beliefs, had died a peaceful death and were therefore not allowed in the auroras. The sight was gruesome, but after having seen himself mutilated by wolves, he found their still, blurry silhouettes almost soothing. Except that, as he kept on walking along the walls, the corpses seemed to be observing him with some curiosity, wondering why this newcomer could walk around freely. He now hurried past them, without looking back if he could help it. He had no idea what he was doing here. This was not the kind of afterlife he had wanted. His first choice would have been the good materialist Nothingness, with Heaven a close second. Even the kickball games in the northern lights would have appealed to him. But the Narrow Land had never been an option. Hell, he had certainly died violently, hadn’t he? He would have to talk to the manager.

  Then, it dawned on him that perhaps he wasn’t dead. Not quite yet. Not to the point where he would be kept in that translucent freezer he was passing through. He wouldn’t be shaking this way if he weren’t made of quivering flesh and rattling bone. This was good news, after all. A body is not unlike a pet—stupid and dirty as it is, one becomes attached to it.

  He walked on, until a smooth slab of snow blocked the ice corridor. Some voice inside Gabriel told him he would have to go through it, but he had no pick or shovel to clear the way. He took a few steps backward and then ran toward the snow slab, but this did nothing but print his own silhouette in the snow. His face flushed from the cold, he had to charge again, and this time he crashed all the way through, as if he’d burst through a paper hoop. On the other side, the crash woke up a dog with red insomniac eyes, which growled at Gabriel as he got up. He was now standing under a dome completely filled up with frozen bodies, which he could perceive through the thick ice and which were all looking back at him. An igloo stood beneath the middle of the dome, with a low narrow entry, but the dog prevented all his attempts to come closer.

  Once again, Gabriel had an inspiration. He noticed a corpse lying near him—his own, in fact, as he had seen it devoured by the wolves. Wincing with disgust, he bent to tear off a piece of his own forearm—the flesh resisted a bit, and Gabriel even thought he heard a moan—and threw it as far away as he could. The dog ran off to fetch it, stupidly wagging its tail. Barely holding back his nausea, Gabriel ran to the entrance of the igloo and advanced on all fours through the narrow corridor, as if he had always known that this was the way to behave in such a situation.

  The tunnel seemed to go on forever but eventually opened onto the inside of the igloo, which was much wider that it had seemed from the outside. Its roof, in a way Gabriel could not comprehend, was transparent, and from where he was he could see not only the starry skies but also a wide expanse of land. New Venice was on his left, not so far away, its lights visible from below, as if the ground it stood upon were made out of dark ice or glass. It made his head dizzy. Then he saw her.

  A long-haired woman. Sitting near a huge circular well. Saana, thought Gabriel. The Inuk Goddess of the Sea.

  “Oh. You can call me Helen,” said the woman, turning toward him, her face half-lit by the flame that danced from a lamp in the ceiling. It was Helen Kartagener all right, but in the tremb
ling chiaroscuro light, Gabriel thought she also looked a little like Lilian Lenton. He stood up, and noticing her amused downward glimpse, he covered with his hands his penis, which the cold had shrivelled into a shrimp.

  “How are you, Mr. d’Allier?” asked Helen, the amusement now in her voice.

  Gabriel tried not to look impressed.

  “Very well. Thank you. I’ve just fallen down a crevasse and been devoured by wolves.”

  “Rather classical part of the initiation. How do you feel right now?”

  He thought about it for a moment.

  “To speak frankly, like I’ve fallen asleep during my anthropology class.”

  Helen chuckled gently and indicated the surroundings.

  “It’s not so bad, though. I’ll give you an A for this project. And a diploma for the crash course in shamanism. The underground trip toward me wasn’t bad either. You may have confused or conflated one or two things, but after all, it has to remain an individual experience, your own version of it.”

  “As an angakoq, I may disappoint you when it comes to ventriloquism and sleight-of-hand. I may not be very entertaining during the long winter nights.”

  “I know. Things have been rushed a bit. But you already have the modesty of a true Inuk and you also have a very powerful helping spirit.”