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The Memory of Babel

Page 4

by Christelle Dabos


  Ophelia gazed fondly at the stone table, engraved with the map of the Compass Roses and their destination arks.

  ANIMA, the ark of Artemis, mistress of objects.

  THE POLE, the ark of Farouk, master of spirits.

  TOTEM, the ark of Venus, mistress of animals.

  CYCLOPE, the ark of Ouranos, master of magnetism.

  FLORA, the ark of Belisama, mistress of vegetation.

  LEADGOLD, the ark of Midas, master of transmutation.

  PHAROS, the ark of Horus, master of charm.

  THE SERENISSIMA, the ark of Fama, mistress of divination.

  HELIOPOLIS, the ark of Lucifer, master of lightning.

  BABEL, the ark of twins Pollux and Helen, master and mistress of the senses.

  THE DESERT, the ark of Djinn, master of hydropathy.

  THE TARTAR, the ark of Gaia, mistress of tellurism.

  ZEPHYR, the ark of Olympus, master of the winds.

  TITAN, the ark of Yin, mistress of mass.

  CORPOLIS, the ark of Zeus, master of metamorphosis.

  SIDH, the ark of Persephone, mistress of temperature.

  SELENE, the ark of Morpheus, master of dreams.

  VESPERAL, the ark of Viracocha, master of phantomization.

  AL-ANDALOOSE, the ark of Ra, master of empathy.

  THE STAR, the neutral ark, seat of interfamilial institutions.

  And, of course, the destination that didn’t appear on the list: LandmArk, the ark of Janus, master of space.

  Ophelia had studied them, these twenty-one major arks, in the confines of her room. She’d studied them, yes, but she felt as if she’d learnt nothing.

  She pulled her great-uncle’s postcard from her pocket. The photograph had suffered during the episode in the bathroom, but on it one could still see clearly the majestic building of the XXIInd Interfamilial Exhibition.

  “This is my destination,” she finally declared, to everyone’s surprise. “I must go to Babel. And I must go there alone.”

  THE SEPARATION

  Ophelia hugged the scarf tight as she contemplated the door before her. Archibald had barely closed it, with a final wink, when the light glinting through all the cracks had gone out. Ophelia turned the knob and cautiously pushed the door: plunged in darkness, a store cupboard had replaced the great rotunda of the Compass Rose. The path was closed, well and truly closed.

  “I’m alone,” Ophelia suddenly realized, staring wide-eyed into the dark recess. Alone in unknown territory, thousands of miles from home, with only a sixty-year-old postcard for reference. She’d dreamt of this moment for two years, and, now that she’d got to it, the thought made her dizzy.

  Ophelia closed the store-cupboard door with resolve. She was afraid, yes, but she had no regrets.

  She studied the location in which the Compass Rose had deposited her. A wan light filtered through the murky glass of an entrance door, defining the outlines of shovels, rakes, spades, and pots. Seemingly, a garden shed. Ophelia didn’t know whose it was, but it would be best not to encounter its owner. Even on her own ark, Anima, where everything was shared, it wasn’t the done thing to turn up at other people’s homes unannounced.

  Slipping through the shed’s door as discreetly as possible, she stopped short on the threshold: there was nothing outside. Nothing but whiteness, an unlikely and unyielding condensed whiteness. It was as if a giant eraser had made the outside world disappear, leaving nothing to be seen but a blank sheet of paper.

  Ophelia looked around in all directions, feeling increasingly anxious. The shed, not adjoined to any building, was stuck in the middle of the void like a deserted little house. The air was so hot and humid that Ophelia felt stifled in her coat, and her glasses were already misting up. What if Gail and Fox had made a mistake in their calculations? What if Archibald, overconfident in his newfound power, had got it wrong?

  “Where have you brought me?” muttered Ophelia.

  “POLLUX’S BOTANICAL GARDENS.”

  Ophelia turned with a start. The voice—a disembodied voice unlike any she’d heard before—had risen up behind her, from inside the actual shed.

  “Excuse me,” Ophelia stammered, searching for whoever was speaking to her. “I lost my way, I didn’t . . . ”

  “IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT VISITORS COME TO THE GARDENS DURING LOW TIDE,” the voice interrupted. “EVERY CLOUD HAS A SILVER LINING.”

  Ophelia finally discovered where it was coming from. An articulated mannequin was standing against a wall, so stiff, so slender, and so still that it merged in with the silhouettes of shovels and rakes. The voice was coming, more precisely, from its stomach, which was punctured with little holes; its head had neither mouth nor nose nor eyes. The only item of clothing it wore was a cap like that of a stationmaster, with the words “guided visit” embroidered on it. She had only encountered a similar automaton once before: the mechanical butler of Lazarus, the famous explorer.

  “Low tide?” she queried.

  The mannequin didn’t respond. Ophelia looked again at the whiteness beyond and realized that what she was seeing was an extraordinarily dense fog. She felt relieved. If she was in Pollux’s botanical gardens, then she was in the right place. Pollux and Helen were the twin family spirits who ruled over Babel.

  “When will it be low tide?” she asked, rephrasing her question.

  “POLLUX’S BOTANICAL GARDENS ARE OPEN DAILY IN SUMMER FROM SUNRISE TO SUNSET,” the mannequin replied, still standing to attention against its wall. “GOOD THINGS COME TO THOSE WHO WAIT.”

  It was still summer on Babel? Ophelia reflected that she should have studied her geographical guides more closely. She took out the postcard her great-uncle had given her and presented it to the mannequin, unsure how to proceed as it had nothing resembling eyes.

  “Let’s forget the tide. I have to get to the place where the XXIInd Interfamilial Exhibition was held. The photograph is a bit dated, but I believe the building still exists. Could you indicate to me where I—”

  “POLLUX’S BOTANICAL GARDENS,” the mannequin instantly replied.

  Ophelia sat down on a stone pot. This mechanical guide did remind her of Lazarus’s butler, encountered in the past: it only responded to basic instructions. She’d have to wait for the fog to lift; she’d have at least liked to know the time—she’d left Anima late afternoon, but there must be a time difference with Babel. The sweltering heat here was starting to make her thirsty.

  Ophelia’s eyes met those of her reflection in a broken pane of glass leaning against the wall. She considered for a moment her tinted glasses, her long, knotty plait, her twitching scarf, and was struck by the obvious: “I look far too much like me.”

  It had been hard for Ophelia to convince Aunt Rosaline not to accompany her, explaining again and again that together they would attract too much attention. But what if someone recognized her anyhow?

  She started nibbling at the seams of her reader’s gloves. Theoretically, it was highly unlikely that God had anticipated her arrival on Babel. She had followed that trail based on the slightest of clues: the golden mimosa, the headless soldier, and the old school. It was those three visions, triggered by reading Farouk’s Book, that had led her here.

  Three visions of which Ophelia had spoken only to Thorn.

  According to her research, and unless she was mistaken, it was on Babel that the whole story had begun. The big story: that of the family spirits, the Books, God, and the Rupture. Maybe Ophelia could have penetrated those mysteries by following Archibald on his quest, but she would have had no chance of finding Thorn on LandmArk. No, if Thorn had reached the same conclusions as she had, and had succeeded in leaving the Pole—two things that Ophelia deemed him perfectly capable of doing—he had inevitably come to Babel.

  Abruptly, she stopped nibbling her gloves, suddenly remembering that she had just the one pair left.
“The fact remains, I look too much like me,” she repeated, shaking her glasses to rid them of color.

  Now the Doyennes had let her escape, God would soon be informed of the fact. If he had planted some Guardians on Babel, as he undoubtedly had, they would surely receive a wanted-person notification with a precise description. Ophelia would have to play it carefully to go unnoticed. She couldn’t stop being nearsighted or small, but as for the rest . . .

  She rummaged around the place and soon found some shears for trimming hedges. With resolve, she ineptly cut off her plait, which fell to the floor as heavily as a sheaf of hay. Ophelia checked the result in the broken pane and felt as if she now had a cohort of question marks sticking out of her head. Her hair, freed of its weight, had sprung into curls in all directions. She’d been growing it since childhood, but, curiously, when she threw that part of herself into a bag full of weeds, she felt nothing in particular. Nothing, apart from a sudden feeling of lightness. As though it weren’t her hair she’d just cut, but the tie that bound her to her old life.

  Next, she hid her coat under a pile of aprons; if it really was summer on Babel, she wouldn’t need it. As Ophelia untied her scarf, it put up a fierce resistance.

  “You’re too recognizable. Don’t be silly, I’m not abandoning you here. You’ll stay with me, inside the bag.” Ophelia released the straps of the knapsack Fox had given her. It contained dry biscuits, a siphon of sparkling water, and several items slipped in by Aunt Rosaline. As she stuffed the scarf into the bag, she let fall the false identity papers Archibald had made for her at the Compass Rose—back there, you could get absolutely anything falsified.

  “My name is Eulalia,” Ophelia repeated, while studying her papers. “I’m an Animist of the eighth degree and I’ve never set foot on my ark of origin.” It would be credible as long as she avoided going into details. She knew from her great-uncle that she had a few distant cousins scattered on other arks.

  She instantly felt a pang of guilt: she had left members of her own family without a word of explanation. She hoped, all the same, that they weren’t too worried.

  “My name is Eulalia,” Ophelia repeated, pensively. Why Eulalia? When Archibald had asked her to choose a new name for herself, that one had come spontaneously to her lips. The more she thought about it, the more she deemed her choice ill-advised. The name sounded far too similar to her own.

  Ophelia sought a more comfortable position for herself, between two sacks of grain. What about Thorn, she wondered, closing her eyes. Had he managed to create a new identity for himself after his escape? Was he at least living in decent conditions? Did he have enough to eat, he who had so little appetite?

  She jumped when a burst of light hit her right in the face. She’d dozed off without even realizing it. Shielding her eyes, she saw, through the gaps between her fingers, the mechanical guide leaving the shed. The sun was streaming in through the door. Ophelia grabbed her knapsack and advanced into the light. She’d barely set foot outside before the heat took her breath away. In dispersing, the fog had unveiled a jungle of colors, an inextricable mix of leaves and springs, humus and fruits, birds and insects.

  Although the wild beauty of the botanical gardens was spectacular, Ophelia couldn’t appreciate it for long: assailed by unusual scents, she was hit with a sneezing fit that continued as she followed the mechanical guide through the ferns. Even without a coat, she was sweltering. The clammy air stuck to her skin and soaked her dress in perspiration. The wintry grayness of Anima was a long way away!

  Through the tall grasses, Ophelia glimpsed the strange silhouettes of marsupials she’d only ever seen in books. The screeches of the monkeys, in the foliage, were like nothing she’d heard before.

  “Where is the way out?” she asked the mechanical guide.

  “THE TOUR OF POLLUX’S BOTANICAL GARDENS BEGINS AT THE ARBORETUM,” it responded, walking straight on. “PLEASE KEEP TOGETHER.”

  Ophelia decided to give it the slip. As she was searching for the way she came across other mannequins who were clearing hedges and scraping moss from the paths’ paving stones, stopping only to oil their joints. Each time she questioned them, they replied, “SLOW AND STEADY WINS THE RACE,” and then, “ALL ROADS LEAD TO BABEL,” which wasn’t much help to her. There must be some Babelians here who weren’t automatons, surely?

  Ophelia went up some stone stairs that were dripping with bougainvillea. The higher she got, the more she gauged the scale of the gardens. They were divided into several levels, each one a veritable symphony of plants, trees, flowers, and fruits. At the lower levels, wisps of fog still clung to the palm trees.

  It seemed incredible to think that, only yesterday, she was hanging around her bedroom in her nightdress. She’d spent so much time immobile, only venturing out to get croissants from the local baker for the family breakfast, that her muscles were already seizing up.

  What concerned her more was the absence of mimosa. God’s past was, in one way or another, linked to that tree. Ophelia had never encountered one in her life, but, since she’d had that vision of the tree, she’d researched it. Mimosas could be recognized by their clusters of golden flowers, and they grew only on very few arks. If the geographical guide hadn’t been spouting nonsense, Babel should be one of those.

  Ophelia finally found the botanical gardens’ gates, majestic as those of an oriental palace. As she went through them, she felt as if she were leaving one world for another. A bridge as wide as a boulevard linked the gardens to a public market. Over there, a huge crowd undulated like a river between the stalls’ tents. Some elephants and giraffes towered over the swarm of men, women, and automatons, as if this were the most natural of cohabitations.

  Suddenly, the Tickers festival struck her as pretty tame!

  She’d barely begun crossing the bridge before her head was spinning from the aroma of spices. Dazzled by the sun, which was already high in the sky, she gazed all around her. Instinctively, her hand gripped the shoulder strap of her knapsack: the bridge she was on straddled the void. Ophelia had read, in her geographical guide, that Babel was splintered into several minor arks, but that hadn’t prepared her for the spectacle unfolding before her. A multitude of floating islands bathed in a sea of unbelievably white clouds. Some were large enough to harbor a town. Others had hardly enough space to build a house. Architecture and vegetation were as one, as if the plants and stones were interwoven. The closest minor arks were linked to each other by a network of bridges and aqueducts; the furthest away were served by flying machines that Ophelia would have struggled to identify—they looked like winged trains.

  She dived headlong into the crowd, and was immediately assailed by the cries of merchants, and a succession of fabrics, jewelry, lentils, beans, eggs, pimentos, melons, mangoes, bananas, and all manner of produce she didn’t recognize. Her stomach was telling her she’d soon have to think about finding a meal.

  “Could you direct me to this place, please?” she asked, showing her postcard to anyone she passed. With her small voice being drowned out by the surrounding hubbub, she asked her question increasingly loudly, without ever receiving a reply. Were these people ignoring her deliberately? They continued to look straight ahead, never lowering their eyes toward her.

  Disconcerted, Ophelia went over to a fountain in which pink flamingos dipped their stilts. She dampened a handkerchief to cool her face, and downed a gulp of sparkling water. There, sitting on the edge of the fountain and stroking the scarf at the bottom of the bag, she took a moment to look closely at the market. The variety of skin tones, shapes, and accents was that of a cosmopolitan population; here, there wasn’t just one, but several families. And yet they all seemed to form a single people in which Ophelia’s role was that of intruder.

  She decided not to linger any longer on this square. A patrol of men and women was cleaving the crowd. They wore breastplates over their tunics, and their spiked helmets, extended by neck-fla
ps, gave them a military appearance. They cast around them looks that, without being obviously menacing, were most disturbing: their pupils shone like gold. This supernatural glimmer betrayed their family power: eyesight so sharp that even a fly couldn’t have escaped it.

  Ophelia preferred not to deal with them. All that was close to authority was likely to be close to God. She crossed the market in the opposite direction and spotted a tram that ran on compressed air and was about to depart. It was plastered with advertising posters featuring a sun with the word “LUX” written in capital letters. The locals entered by punching tickets in a machine. Ophelia checked there was no inspector and hastened to board herself. She hadn’t even caught her breath when a passenger rose from his seat to push her gently back onto the pavement. “Don’t take it personally, mademoiselle,” he apologized, politely. “You’ve not punched your ticket, you’re not respecting the rules, I’m just doing my duty as a citizen.”

  “Listen, I absolutely have to get myself to there,” Ophelia explained, brandishing her postcard. “Could you at least tell me how . . . ” The door closed automatically, putting an end to the conversation. Ophelia’s dismay turned into panic when she felt herself leaving along with the tram. The strap of her knapsack had got trapped in the door! She tugged on her bag with all her might, stumbled forward, was dragged the length of the pavement, until she could do nothing but let go.

  “No!” she gasped, seeing the tram hurtle off on the tracks, bouncing her bag as it went.

  The scarf was still inside it.

  THE WHAXI

  Ophelia had run alongside the tracks at full speed. Soaked in sweat, covered in scratches, and stymied by a stitch in her side, she felt as if her lungs were on fire. After a bridge and a few streets, the tracks forked. Which branch had the tram taken? Which way had it gone? She looked around in all directions, searching for some indication. Nothing but a deafening maelstrom of locals, omnibuses, rickshaws, bicycles, animals, and automatons swirling around. When she raised her glasses, Ophelia felt giddy. The whole neighborhood had been conceived as a giant stairway, with each step being another street invaded by people and plants.

 

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