Aurorarama

by Jean-Christophe Valtat

  Daria handed him a little propaganda leaflet the girls wanted to distribute across the city. Brentford read it quickly, but his eyes stopped on one particular sentence that said: “This community aims to be rich, not in the metallic representative of wealth, but in the wealth itself, which money should represent; namely, LEISURE TO LIVE IN ALL THE FACULTIES OF THE SOUL.” He could not have phrased it better, he thought.

  Lilian had joined them.

  “Lake or Lenton?” he asked.

  “People give different names to the same things, and the same name to different things. You will see plenty of that quite soon, I’m sure. I like being Lilian Lake today. It is a sort of homecoming.”

  “What is gnostic in all this … display of military charm?” he asked her, pointing to her uniform.

  She did not feel like telling him what had really happened on the embankment. When Helen had started to appear in her dreams, calling her back to New Venice, Brentford’s name had often surfaced, for reasons that were unclear, but that she now began to understand better. But she knew little of the nature of his own relationship with Helen. Men were fragile creatures, easily scared of what they could not grasp, and she did not want to scare this one, for the moment.

  “Same answer as before,” she said, growing more serious with every sentence. “Not much to some people, I would say. Maybe it is just a way to recall that procreation is not always the supreme good, and that some women may dispense with it, if they deem it wiser. Maybe it is just a way to remind men that if my belt gets loose, it does not make me the great whore of Babylon, and that I still have a soul.”

  Brentford was slightly in his cups from the celebration and felt a sudden masculine urge to show off in front of Lilian. “You’re the Harlot and the Holy one, then,” he said, quoting as casually as he could from Thunder, Perfect Mind, an ancient gnostic treatise Helen had often talked about.

  She came closer to him and said softly, “Certainly, as any other woman, I am the one who is honoured, and who is praised, and who is despised scornfully. Or, if you prefer, in political terms, I am an alien and a citizen, I am the substance and the one who has no substance. But as to being the harlot and the holy one, I’m afraid I’m neither. Just a loyal and normally depraved girl.”

  Suddenly she glued a kiss on his mouth while painfully squeezing his testicles. In a flash, Brentford understood in his flesh the paradoxes of Thunder, Perfect Mind.

  “And of course,” she whispered in his ears as she released her grip, “like any suffragette, I carry a bomb in my muff.”

  There were, Brentford reckoned, four or five levels of interpretation to this. But before he could sum them up, she had disappeared.

  He felt, God knew why, like walking around a little.

  He passed a crimson cabinet, where hung portraits of the Seven Sleepers. He took a long look at the one that depicted the tall, aquiline Louis d’Ussonville, just to notice with a jump that Myrtle, the Ghost Lady, was behind him, faintly reflected in the glass sheet that protected the painting of her grandfather.

  “How can I thank you?” her voice said in Brentford’s head.

  “By not appearing anymore,” Brentford thought quickly and half in jest. But as soon as he finished the sentence, the ghost had evaporated.

  “Don’t worry,” said another voice, behind him, this time. “She is still with us.”

  He turned to discover Reginald and Geraldine. They had a way of looking all around them, but not in the same time at the same direction, that reminded Brentford of a clockwork armillary sphere and that made him feel dizzy and ill at ease, just as when they talked very quickly to each other in some language no one understood. He also suspected them of changing sides and playing each other’s part at times. But of this, he had no proof.

  “We also wanted to thank you,” they said, finally standing still.

  They claimed to be over fifteen, but were rather small, in a frail elfin way. Brentford crouched in front of them, holding their hands. Well, some of them, at least.

  Thank me, he thought, almost bitterly—when he had taken them away from their enchanted castle, only, maybe, to serve his own ends?

  “You do not miss home?” he asked.

  “This is home,” said Reginald.

  “Without Grandmother, we would not have been safe forever on the Island, anyway,” added Geraldine thoughtfully.

  Brentford got up, his hands on his knees. It was only now that he realized how vulnerable they were.

  “Do you think we will go over well with the people here?” she asked.

  “When you show us to all of them, that is,” her brother added.

  Brentford felt embarrassed.

  “I am not showing anyone to anyone else.” He tried to reassure them, not even reassuring himself.

  “Should we remain hidden, then?” Reginald insisted.

  Brentford sighed. They were right. Chances were that the people would see in these little wonders some sort of dubious entertainment. He did not want this refoundation to turn into a freak show, whatever the circusstances. The idea came to him that they could appear in public one at a time. This could be done, just wedging a mirror at a certain angle, with the surroundings matching properly. He would have to ask Molson, if he still was around.

  “Do not worry,” he said, “we’ll work things out.”

  The twins looked at each other dubiously.

  “Where is Gabriel?” asked Geraldine, with an almost imperceptible pout.

  “I wish I knew,” sighed Brentford.

  He found himself in the central corridor (where, he observed with relief, someone had stopped that damned cold wind), but soon perceived, in one of the adjacent rooms of the Memory Palace, Bob Dorset’s effigy of the Polar Kangaroo. It had been found earlier in the day in the basement of the Hôtel de Police, when the Gentlemen of the Night had finally condescended to surrender and, a waving luminous starched shirt as a flag, had come out of the building with champagne bottles and cigar boxes. As Paynes-Grey had predicted, their resistance had not been long. They had never worried Brentford much, anyhow. You could always count on the Police when it came to siding with the winner. One of the first moves of the Gentlemen of the Night had been to send an emissary to Brentford with the Kangaroo as a little present and as a token of goodwill. Probably because they knew (they knew everything) that Brentford and Gabriel had made a little tune for it as a present to Bob, as a souvenir of the time (it seemed eons away) when they had been together in a band called the Black Harlequins. Brentford, upon receiving the statue, had immediately ordered it to be installed in the Blazing Building.

  He now approached the statue almost respectfully. So this was the creature to whom, unknowingly or not, Douglas Norton had entrusted the protection of the d’Ussonville dynasty and, by the bye, the continuity of what remained of the Seven Sleepers’ dream. Bob’s version of it was impressive, to say the least, worked down to the most minute details, such as the ice crystals tangled in the fur, just as if it had recently been out on the icefield. Maybe it was its muscular bulk, maybe its sparkling glassy eyes, maybe it was the canines showing through the bare chops of its wolf head, but this depiction radiated something eerily powerful. It was part of the myth that images of the Polar Kangaroo held the same power as He did, and contemplating this one made Brentford feel as if he had come to consult an oracle. Maybe he should have it brought down to the Hyperboree Hall to stand on the fountain, as the official tutelary spirit of the city, and people could come to it with offerings and questions. If he did not manage to rule the city, he could always found a religion. That was so much easier.

  He was curious to know if the miniature phonograph inside the statue was still working. “Sorry,” he said aloud, as he opened a trapdoor in the statue’s posterior and cranked the mechanism. He put his head, almost resting, against the paw, hoping nobody would see him. But, for some reason, instead of the tune, what he heard was Daria Norton’s voice, joking with Lilian Lake in a distant room about what
had just happened to him. Obviously, Daria had lost nothing of her telepathic link with the Polar Kangaroo. The conversation vexed and disappointed him, but he also felt relieved, somehow, that at least two persons were not taking him seriously. Three, with himself included. He suddenly missed Lilian. He meant Sybil. He meant Helen. No. He meant Lilian.

  “What are you doing here?” asked a familiar, German-accented voice.

  Brentford lifted up his head, so quickly it bumped against the Polar Kangaroo’s jaw.

  Hardenberg was at the door with Schwarz.

  “I was wondering where you were,” said Brentford, rubbing his skull.

  “You don’t doge very well, said Hardenberg, suavely sardonic. “We have just come, Herr Schwarz and I, from giving a little present to Mr. d’Allier, who is, shall we say, lounging in the Hall. In case you were wondering about his whereabouts.”

  “Good. I’m glad he’s turned up.”

  Brentford stood silent for a while, rubbing his temple.

  “I was looking for you in order to—well, I wanted to thank you,” he said awkwardly.

  “My pleasure.” said Hardenberg. “It is the only thing that counts.”

  “What are you planning to do next?”

  “Frankly? I had the idea that I should go and plant a black flag at the pole. But if there is any place in the world that is better off without any kind of standard, even that one, it is certainly the North Pole. There are places where no state should install itself. We have heard—for we have informers everywhere—that the pope has offered a twelve-foot-high cross to an Italian airship captain, to have it dropped at the pole. I’ll just take that airship down, believe me, before the Phantom Patrol does it.”

  “What was it you said that you’d take that would be of no consequence to me?”

  “Oh! That! It is just that I clinched a deal with the good people of Crocker Land. A permanent rear base against supplies and protection. I hope you do not mind.”

  Brentford minded, but he was not sure why, and anyway, what could he say to Hardenberg, after what he had done for him?

  “I can very much imagine you in a crystal castle,” said Brentford.

  “I can, too, obviously. As Nero once said of his palace, I am now lodged as a man. Every man should have a castle for himself, don’t you think, for every man is a king. Anyway. That makes us neighbours, so to speak. Do not hesitate to come and see us,” said Hardenberg as he warmly shook Brentford’s hand. “And don’t forget to bring the kids.”

  “It’s a pity you did not like bombs,” Schwarz muttered as he saluted Brentford.

  “Sorry about that. Maybe next time,” Brentford answered, trying to be polite.

  He watched them recede down the corridor, their black clothes fading into the darkness. If he remembered correctly, he had one wish left.

  Walking down the hall, he passed in front of the guardroom. A huge fire was roaring in the fireplace, and around a long table some Varangian guards were challenging a group of Navy Cadets to a drinking contest that the Nobles of the Poop, in spite of their good will, had not the slightest chance of winning. Lieutenant Lemminkaïnen, his eyes glinting with alcohol, perceived the Regent-Doge in the doorway and warmly saluted him, expressing how happy he was to be rid of those contemptuous, picky old men that he had had to protect. Brentford had first to accept a drink of Akvaviitti that fell like a stone to his stomach, then listen, not without interest or pleasure, to the sympathetic red-cheeked Lieutenant telling him of the Sampo, a mythological magic mill that made flour, salt, and money from the air. “This is what we need here,” said the lieutenant, with conviction, banging on the table. Brentford agreed politely and thought he would have Treschler built him one. Lemminkaïnen, finally, could not resist quoting, in a somewhat slurred voice, a few lines from the Kalevala about, he explained, the truce between Pakkanen Puhurin Poika, the Frost-fiend, son of Blast, and some shamanic hero.

  These the words the Frost-fiend uttered:

  “Let us now agree together,

  Neither one to harm the other,

  Never in the course of ages,

  Never while the moonlight glimmers

  On the snow-capped hills of Northland.

  Brentford thanked him, more moved than he allowed himself to show.

  Finally, he reached Hyperboree Hall. It looked deserted in the cloudy moonlight, but atop the magnificent floor map, he could make out a dark shape, sprawled on its back all over Frislandia Island.

  Brentford sat on the fountain ledge, unfastening his bow tie.

  The shape made a move, and with a screech, a can of Ringnes beer slid upright toward Brentford.

  “A drink. In a helmet,” said Gabriel, in a somewhat slurred voice.

  Why is it that people were suddenly constantly pushing beverages on him? Did they want to poison him? Brentford chuckled to himself. He wondered how long it would be before he took that threat seriously. He took one sip.

  “How was your day, then?” he asked.

  “Ups and downs, you know,” answered Gabriel, who had done nothing all day but running and jumping to avoid the odd stray bullet. He had seen the revolution from above, like little figurines in a model city, and however much he approved of it, he found that was the best view of it. But mostly, he had been mourning his lost love. Thinke now no more to heare of warme fine-odour’d snow: such was his serrat, now, the magic formula that was only his own and by which he would live henceforward. His thighs ached from his repeated leaps and he had taken a pinch of Sweet Surf Silicium to cool down a little. He lay on his back, tides and ebbs of white noise in his ears, the only man to hear the motionless waves of the frozen sea as they crashed upon the shore. He looked through the dome openings and thought of the light of the stars and how it belonged to everyone, like the air or the earth. Who could be so vain and stupid as to claim that as his own? He tried to shake himself from his lethargy.

  “So we’re on to some Golden Age?” he managed to say.

  “It seems,” said Brentford, not sure himself if he was joking or not. “It is now officially the land of milk and honey. Money will flow and manna will fall. I heard you already had a gift from Hardenberg, by the way.”

  The answer came back with a curious lag.

  “It’s a farewell present from Stella, actually. It must be close to you, on your left.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” Brentford said. Wasn’t today supposed to be a celebration? A day of solace for every wrecked marriage or love? He had not noticed in the dim light the frame resting against the fountain. He lifted it and moved it about until he could faintly see something. It was some sort of Renaissance engraving.

  “Looks nice. What is it? Dürer?

  “The Seven Trumpets are Given to the Angels.”

  “It looks like it’s on parchment.”

  “Almost. It’s fresh human skin.”

  Brentford shivered and put down the framed tattoo with disgust, as if he feared to have bloodstains on his hands. He did not want to know more about this atrocity. He had found revolution easy, but apparently it had been harder for some.

  No wonder Gabriel did not feel too happy or talkative. He could understand, he thought. When he had shown him the first draft of A Blast, Gabriel had said that the only true community worthy of that name that he knew was that of lovers, a society against society. Now that Brentford had got his own community, Gabriel had lost his. But Brentford’s community was meant to be shared, and he would see that Gabriel got a piece of it. Or two.

  “The twins miss you. They seem to appreciate you.”

  “They’re swell kids.”

  “I wondered if you would be interested in being, let us say … hmm … Prime Preceptor for the Dauphin-Doges.”

  “I have nothing to teach to those miniature Elagabaluses.”

  “I meant in a more general way than in bed.”

  “I meant in a more general way than in bed. But precisely, yes, I want to hump them, not corrupt them.”

  Brentford la
ughed.

  “Nice curriculum. It’s no wonder you’ve been a success story in Doges College.”

  “I supposed charges were to be conferred through a democratic process, anyway,” said Gabriel, with as much gentle tease as his weary, far-out voice allowed.

  Brentford was about to answer that this could be arranged, but he corrected himself. This was how, he supposed, things had started with the Councillors. Dignified, decent, dutiful men who had suddenly let themselves believe that things could be arranged a little here and there, until everything was defaced and distorted.

  “Well. I suppose there won’t be many candidates, anyway,” Brentford said.

  “If I’m sure to win, that’s different. Put me in. Just add Plenipotentiary to the title. The word fascinated me when I was a child.”

  Plenipotentiary. Indeed it was a potent and portentous word. As was Regent-Doge. Brentford felt the responsibility weighing on him again. His revolution had been, almost literally, a gala dinner. It was as if the Council had never had a chance. The Seven had reached some invisible limit, the edge of the world that they themselves had created, and had run out of their own reality. All that was needed was a little push to send them reeling over the top. Almost everybody had wished and waited for someone else to give this nudge. It was as if the dream had tunnelled from consciousness to consciousness and finally crystallized. Today they had all pushed together a little at the same time.

  In the end, Brentford was amazed at how many allies he had with him: the Scavengers, the Aerial Anarchists, the Sophragettes, the Navy Cadets, the Inughuit. Even the Subtle Army and the Varangian Guard had deserted before they knew it themselves. He had carved himself a magic wand from the d’Ussonvilles’ crooked family tree. He had the blessing of the Polar Kangaroo, which was a little like the soul of the city. Helen had not helped as he had expected, maybe, but was he so sure? She had given him a rendezvous at the Pole for March 1, and this was, in a way, exactly where he was sitting right now on the map, except the appointment was only with himself, or with his own North Pole. And she had promised, hadn’t she, that she would feed the city. No. She was here as well. Watching over him in her usual unfathomable way.