Aurorarama

by Jean-Christophe Valtat

  “Good, huh?” asked Tuluk, with an inscrutable expression.

  It was so good that after four or five rounds, Gabriel was on the verge of walking on all fours through the narrow entrance of the igloo to go out and deposit a full northern Lights yawn, as the delicate local wit called this rather frequent phenomenon. But he remained stoical, comforting himself with the idea that the next course could not possibly be worse.

  “Seal’s eyes. Very Good,” said Tuluk, who looked sincere as he smiled, offering him a few small slices of some gelatinous matter, almost happy, it seemed, to share such a treat with their guest.

  Gabriel did not sleep, but the night had been a nightmare on its own. He had been crammed, with almost no clothes on, into a krepik between Tuluk and the repulsive Tiblit, whose sexual jokes (if he understood correctly the general notion) amused Gabriel much less than they did the others—they even forced a mild smile onto the shaman’s face. Tiblit even had sex with dogs, a straight-faced Tuluk informed him. For a descendant of dogs, as all qallunaat were according to the generous Inuk mythology, this was hardly reassuring, and Gabriel turned his back toward Tuluk instead, much to the others’ delight.

  The body heat brought back the blood to his extremities, but it was more like a long burn than a real relief. His neighbours snored so loudly that Gabriel almost expected the igloo to tumble down on them. He secretly abjured his faith in primitive anarcho-communism, or at least embraced the version which had private rooms and an à la carte menu.

  He had the strange, unpleasant feeling than he was being subjected to some sort of life lesson, that he was supposed to enjoy the sensation of breathing under any circumstances or to realize with gratitude that some people had harder lives than himself. But right now he did not enjoy it that much, to speak frankly. And what he mostly realized was that however the Eskimos lived, they were no wiser or better than he was. They knew how to do things that would be hard for him to learn, of course, but they would have a hard time learning some things he knew or could do. And in the end, anyway, the lesson the surrounding conditions were supposed to teach you so brutally was only this: when all human life is boiled down to the core, it’s not your race or class that counts but who you are as an individual. That is what matters when it comes time to decide if you are going to sacrifice yourself or sacrifice someone else. If you are just going to get down on your knees and offer your throat to the knife, or if you are going to turn around, knife in your hand, waiting for them. It is what having a soul is all about, not much more. Whether Inuk or qallunaq, the real mystery is what you are going to do when the end is here. And if you are lucky enough, you may never have to discover that at all. Whatever brought the best or the worst out in him, Gabriel, frankly, did not want to know more about than he already did. Great, he sighed, that’s it, now I’m going to think about Stella. It was one of those typical two o’clock sequences of ideas.

  The three o’clock idea was that he was somehow paying for having toyed with the Inuit’s beliefs. His brain had wanted to play at being a shaman, and now he would see what being an Eskimo really meant. At some point he even had the feeling that the angakoq was not asleep but was staring at him in the dark, but that must have been his own sleeplessness going to his head.

  Then, four o’clockish, he started worrying about Brentford. Helen, he remembered (sometimes taking for the truth what at other moments he considered a fit of delirium), was not going to help him. Gabriel had ruined his friend’s wedding, denounced his bride, and now had let him go to the North Pole on what was nothing but a suicide trip. He reassured himself by thinking that he would ask the Inuit to help him find Brentford, if it was not too late.

  When, lulled by the wind softly scraping against the igloo, he eventually fell into a rumble of unfettered pictures, the whole icehouse woke up.

  He knew the reputation that some Inuit people had for throat singing, but their throat clearing was not to be underestimated either. For what seemed a half hour they grunted, snorted, coughed, hawked, and spat on the walls and on the floor, scratching themselves all the time, while Gabriel pretended to sleep a little longer, just as an excuse to keep his eyes shut. As he opened them tentatively, he perceived Tiblit passing through his hair the hand he had just dipped in the piss-pot, but he must have hallucinated that. At some point, though, they seemed to remember that they were fugitives, and hastened a little, leaving their iglerk regretfully in order to prepare some tea that had been left on the lamp to be heated. As Gabriel had done nothing to help—this was, at least, his interpretation—he was the last to be served.

  He was as hopelessly useless when it came to packing for their departure. Contrasting with the Inuit’s rather sloppy domestic manners, strict rules and maniacal attention to detail prevailed when they loaded the sled. Gabriel, not knowing what to do with his hands, which were still unusable and burning, trampled on the ice a few feet away, trying to ignore what he felt were reproachful looks.

  He was cold as well, with his best-man clothes still a little damp, and so ridiculously smart that they made him look like some lost miniature groom standing on an endless white wedding dress. It was a foggish, greyish day, and it froze him down to the marrow of his bones, even though the igloo had been built between hummocks a few yards off the coastline to protect it from the winds as well as from being seen. The dogs were still around the igloo and Gabriel could see they had collars with little medallions hanging from them that tinkled as they moved, but although such ornaments were rather unusual for Eskimo dogs, he did not dare to come closer and check. He contented himself with exchanging looks with the lead dog, and it was a sort of relief for him to face eyes with no human intent or expectations he could not rise to. Maybe it was because the dogs were family.

  The Inuit had forgotten something and were unpacking and then repacking. They were unhurried and cautious in a way that meant that they had enough problems of their own without adding extra troubles from either sled or dogs. Eventually, as the dogs were harnessed, Tuluk came walking toward Gabriel, who noticed for the first time the bear claws at the tip of his kamik.

  “You come with us to Kalaallit Nunaat?”

  Gabriel had not dared broach the topic during breakfast, when the talk had first revolved about their dreams and about how the amiable Uitayok admired the trash deposits of the Whites that he had seen while travelling to New Venice, and how, really, he dreamed of having such heaps of rubbish in front of his own house. All this, Gabriel understood, with his tongue rather hummocky in his cheek. Then they had decided to give their guest an Eskimo name. Gabriel, interpreting this as an honour, had prepared himself to receive it with dignity. It was Tuluk who proposed the name.

  “Innatuumajuujaaraaluttuujanirartauqattalaurunnainiralaurtuugaluaq,” he had declared solemnly, setting the whole igloo, angakoq included, rolling on the floor laughing, slapping their thighs, and pointing their fingers at Gabriel, who nodded stupidly, a waning smile on his face.

  “Sorry. I do not know translate,” Tuluk said, wiping the tears from his eyes five minutes later. “It is about one who is a bit of a dreamer, who has a little dreaming seal in his head.”

  “Oh?” Gabriel had said, deeming it was not the right time for any serious proposal.

  But now it could not be avoided any longer.

  “I have a favour to ask you.”

  Tuluk frowned as if he wasn’t sure he had understood. Hadn’t they been helpful enough to the qallunaq?

  “A friend of mine, a good friend of the Inuit, is in trouble. He is on a trip to the Big Nail. I am afraid something will happen to him.”

  “What friend of the Inuit?” asked Tuluk, doubtfully.

  “Brentford Orsini,” answered Gabriel. The name had been an open sesame with the Scavengers and he had a faint hope it might work with the Inuit as well. And actually it did seem to work a little, to the point where Tuluk called the others and explained to them what Gabriel had said.

  “Orsini,” confirmed Gabriel, thinking of a way
to break the news that it more or less meant bear, as he knew that Inuit thought, just as he did himself, that the name is as large as the man. “He is a good friend of the Inuit. He wants them to rule with the New Venetians.”

  Tuluk translated, using for the New Venetians the word arsussuq: “Those who live in abundance.” It was the same word, incidentally, by which they meant the Dead.

  But the others would have little or none of it, and Ajuakangilak was most vocal about it. They had of course no reason to help, but Gabriel could feel that they still mulled over the involvement of the Polar Kangaroo and the danger of refusing anything to that white nitwit amateur of an angakoq, who had nevertheless secured the help of Kiggertarpok.

  Waiting for the results, wondering how far Brentford could have got by now, Gabriel caught the eye of the lead dog. It was like a signal he did not know he had given. The pack suddenly darted toward the North, dragging the sled behind them. The Inuit, howling and cursing, ran after them as quickly as they could, and for a moment it seemed that they could catch up. Maybe it was only that the dogs, looking behind from time to time, gave the impression that they were slackening the pace, just enough to give hope to the chasing Inuit. But as soon as the Eskimos came closer, they sped up again.

  Gabriel ran after them all, lagging behind, his feet full of pins and needles, slipping and tripping on rubbly ice, with the horrendous feeling that he was being abandoned on the frozen seas. He saw the sled disappear in the distance and then the Inuit, getting fainter and fainter, almost miragenous in the hazy morning.

  He stopped after a while, panting, sobbing, his lungs like ice blocks about to explode, his blood throbbing in his ears, quite on his own again.

  Except for the shadow that was looming over him.

  Gabriel lifted his eyes. The shadow was that of a black airship that glided above his head, the very same that had been hovering above New Venice. A trapdoor opened from under the gondola, releasing a rope ladder that fell just in front of him. What choice had he but to take it and climb? He sprinted over and seized a rung, his hand burning through his glove as he did so, almost unable to grasp it firmly. But he had to go up, however painful that would be. He twisted his forearm about the rope and set his foot on the ladder. He started to climb, his clenched jaws slashed by the cold wind, jerking with pain at each new grip he took. But up he went, slowly, until the airship became the whole sky.

  It took him endless minutes to reach the gondola. He did not dare look below, where the airship’s shadow twisted and folded as it passed over the hummocks, but looking in front of him, he could see faintly through the fog the Eskimos running behind the sled, almost catching it, but always missing it. “Follow that sled,” he said dramatically, as he reached the hatch and a powerful hand grasped his forearm to pull him inside.

  CHAPTER XXVI

  The Ariel

  That we are always against the law—it is self-evident.

  Novalis

  The Phantom Patrol had passed under the reversed runners and were now pounding on the windshield with the butts of their rifles. By chance, it was one of the new Benedictus laminated panes, and for the time being did not cave in, though it burst into cobwebs of cracked glass.

  At every impact, Brentford shook himself further from the palsy that had held him in thrall. He realized that his gun was useless against the Patrol, as would be any weapon he could improvise. He jumped to reach the hatch above his head and, lifting himself with his arms and elbows, crawled into the hold, knowing there would be a way to open it up at the bottom, which now faced the stars. He closed the hatch under himself as well as he could and, lamp in hand, began looking for the trapdoor that was used to load the ship from below. Once outside, it was his plan to sprint as fast as he could: maybe he could outrun dead men. He tried to be as silent as possible, but the trapdoor was stuck and needed a good shove. Brentford worried that they would hear the thudding and climb up the sides to meet him, but it was not as if he had any choice. So he pushed, with the strength of despair.

  As the trapdoor suddenly yielded, the hold was flooded with light from above. “That’s it,” thought Brentford. The thought flashed through his mind that he would become one of the phantoms, condemned to prowl the ice packs until kingdom come. But the light did not come from their lamps. It was the white blinding glare of a searchlight. A rope ladder fell right under his nose. Before he knew it, he was climbing it, as fast as the swaying of the rope allowed him to.

  He had no idea what he was scrambling toward but it could not possibly be worse than what he was escaping from. It seemed to him that the ladder was going up straight into the sky. It was hellishly cold, and the rungs were already caked with ice, but Brentford did not care about such trifles right now. He would keep on climbing, using his teeth if he had to. Shots cracked beneath him, with rumbling echoes; bullets whistled around his head, but he was carried away too quickly to be a sitting duck for long. He looked below: the wrecked ship was now almost invisible in the night, and all he could see of the Phantom Patrol was their lamps, the shadows they threw, the sparks of their shooting rifles. He looked up and could see that the rope led to a square of light, where some silhouettes awaited him. It looked like what people describe when they are about to die, but now he knew this is what you see when you’re resurrected.

  He was lying on the floor of an airship, a crowd of topsy-turvy people surrounding him. He slowly soaked up the images, trying to make sense of them: Gabriel was there, dressed in mourning black, his hands in bandages. Three of the four Inughuit of the Frobisher Fortress delegation were there, commenting with animation upon his presence in front of them. But there were new faces as well. A few figures wearing black jackets and woollen hats, and a lean young man, dressed in black as well, with a large forehead, an aquiline nose, and long wavy hair tucked behind his ears.

  “It is a pleasure and honour for us to welcome you aboard the Ariel,” said the young man, in a faint German accent. “The ship, I suppose, is not unknown to you. You have probably seen her floating above New Venice lately.”

  Brentford rose up and shook the hand that was offered to him. He tried to express his surprise, but after the Phantom Patrol, he found it hard to be amazed.

  “My name is Maximilian Hardenberg,” the man added, planting the gaze of his immense eyes on Brentford’s.

  “Brentford Orsini. I owe you my life, sir.”

  “No one ever owes anyone anything,” said Hardenberg, curtly but firmly. “And I pride myself on being no one’s sir.”

  “If you say so,” said Brentford, slightly taken aback.

  “If you will permit me to introduce to you some of my brothers. This is Johann Treschler, from Prague,” Hardenberg continued, as a clever-looking man with bushy brows and short blond hair proffered his hand.

  “Herr Treschler is our engineer, and this ship is his brainchild. He will give you a tour if you are interested. This is Dr. Sven Heidenstamm, our doctor and, I dare say, philosopher,” he added, indicating a stocky person who had the strangest glint in his eyes. This was not, Brentford thought, the doctor he would choose, but he was still immeasurably better than Doctor Phoenix, who still made Brentford shiver with disgust and pity.

  The next up was a bright-faced, square-headed little man with cold-steel eyes.

  “Saying that Herr Hans Schwarz is our chemist would be cruelly reducing the extant of his competencies,” said Hardenberg. “It is thanks to him that our modest armoury is so full of surprises. Our pilot, Hugo Trom, is of course busy, as are most of his crew, and they regret not being able to meet you at the moment. The rest of the people here, you know already, I think. We will leave you to yourselves for a while, but I would be glad if you joined us for dinner, even if you are, of course, totally free to behave as you wish.”

  “Nice to see you,” Brentford said to Gabriel. His friend, his borrowed black clothes flapping around him, looked slightly embarrassed, probably about the wedding. Brentford decided he would not talk of it at all. It
had been ages ago, anyway.

  “What happened to your hands?”

  “Jackfrostbitten. More ridiculous than serious. As usual.” Gabriel launched a Punch and Judy show with his bandages on the edge of the table.

  They were sitting in wicker armchairs in the almost cosy deck-saloon of the Ariel. A corridor led aft to the engine room and the cabins and berths of the crew’s quarters, and forward to the wheelhouse and the magazines, where a kennel had been improvised for the sled dogs, suddenly very compliant now that their “mission” had been accomplished, it seemed, with the rescue of both Gabriel and Brentford. Gabriel was still amazed that they had darted straight in the direction of the Kinngait, just as he had been thinking about his friend.

  The Inuit, except for Ajukangilak, who stayed sulkily in his berth, obviously trying to avoid Gabriel, were busy exploring the dirigible, pussyfooting into every nook and cranny. From time to time Gabriel and Brentford could see Tiblit passing through the lounge, usually pursued by one sturdy, black-clad, bearded member of the crew who was trying calmly but firmly to wrestle from him some object the Inuk had found especially interesting or desirable—a box of crayons, a barometer, or a brass telescope.

  “So you did not make it to the Pole,” said Gabriel, casually.

  Brentford winced, as he had when he learned that he had been found barely fifty miles from the city. This mysterious banshee must have made him run around in circles. If he had wanted to impress Helen, it had all been quite a failure.

  “No. And I’m cured of the will to go there. I would not advise anyone to try it.”

  He did not feel like talking about what he had seen, shivering at the idea of just thinking about it.

  Gabriel remained focused on his Punch and Judy show.