New Venice 02 - Luminous Chaos

by Jean-Christophe Valtat

“Can I see Blankbate?” asked Brentford as soon as he hit the deck.

  “Go ask him yourself,” said another, spooling back the hawser.

  They were not there for small talk, and neither was Brentford: he walked up to the wheelhouse cabin and knocked.

  “Good evening. Sorry for dropping in this way,” he apologized, as he lowered his head through the door.

  “Good evening. You’re always welcome. There’s coffee in that Dewar flask,” said Blankbate curtly, not exactly happy to see Brentford, but knowing there must be good reason for his appearance.

  Pretending to enjoy the bitter, oily brew that the Scavengers called coffee, Brentford explained the situation, although all he could see of his interlocutor in the darkened cabin was the back of his oilcloth longcoat as he steered the craft down the canal. The Scavenger listened sullenly but patiently.

  “Paris, you said?” he suddenly interjected, before falling back into silence.

  They were now gliding into the dead of night with a single light at the prow, the only sounds the faint humming of the Trouvé electric motor and the cracking of spring ice. All around them, along the deserted Rae Canal, the mansions added their shadows to the darkness, so that Brentford could hardly see the other two Scavengers crouching on the deck, except when a moonbeam fell aslant their long, curved white beaks.

  “Paris, France, yes.”

  The beaked figure nodded slowly, as if to himself, while his large gloved hands steered the barge towards a fork in the canal.

  “I may have a reason to go there,” Blankbate finally said, after another long while. “There is a condition, though.”

  Brentford was relieved to hear of Blankbate’s interest, for he had little power to convince him otherwise. To a City Scavenger, prison would have been totally useless as a threat. Whatever they really were at base—untouchable criminals doing penance behind masks or righteous judges scourging the city of unavenged wrongs—Scavengers were beyond, or perhaps below, the law.

  “I’m listening.”

  “That you do not ask me what that reason is, and you let me take care of it as I please when we’re there. I won’t bother you about it, and you won’t bother me about it.”

  “Oh, I’ve bothered you enough these past few years, I suppose,” said Brentford, sensing that it was not the time to be fastidious. “I simply hope you don’t plan to get into trouble there.”

  “Maybe I will, but I plan to get out of it, too. And on my own. So no need to trouble yourself on my account.”

  “It’s a deal, then,” said Brentford, trying not to look too worried either for the mission or for the Scavenger.

  Blankbate nodded, and they both fell silent again, each one absorbed in his own uncertain future, as the barge took the fork that led away from the gold-specked mansions, and deeper into the night.

  VI

  A Musical Evening with Kinky &

  Stinky, the Aristoskunks

  “It’s the last time I’m doing this,” said Brentford moodily as he drew the skunk mask down over his face. He had always tried not to be snobbish about having been the Regent-Doge and all that, but the idea of going onstage disguised as a skunk now struck him as a blow to his self-respect. It may have been a hoot when he was twenty, but at forty, it was a bloody disgrace. He’d had a hunch that the election was the beginning of the end, but he had never thought he would roll downhill so fast.

  “Come on!” said Gabriel, who was dressed in the same way but who, judging by the tone of his voice, seemed to be enjoying himself. “We agreed that it was the only way, didn’t we?”

  Brentford shrugged his furry shoulders

  “It’s been so long since we did this. I’d forgotten how awfully hot it was inside this costume. And it reeks of mothballs.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s just for one song, right?”

  “Yes, a song that we barely had time to rehearse.”

  “Are you people ready?” asked Bodicea Lovelace, knocking on the dressing room door.

  The two skunks left the cramped dressing room and found themselves facing the Mistress of Ceremonies, with her face mask and black corset, not to mention the leather lightning of a long whip that shone as black as the arm-length glove that held it. She passed her tongue over her scarlet lips.

  “You two look juicy,” she said.

  “Please, Bee, spare us your remarks,” said Brentford. “Does she know we’re here?”

  “She knows that one of the acts wants to meet her after the show. Just as you asked.”

  “Great, then,” Brentford sighed. “Thanks a lot for arranging this, anyway. I owe you.”

  “Seeing you like that, I feel repaid for my efforts. Are you ready to go?”

  “Hmm …” muttered Brentford.

  Bodicea strode back to the little stage, lashed the floor with her whip, raising a cloud of floodlit dust, and announced “Ladies and Gentlewomen, coming from the woods and dusk, with their hind glands full of musk, here are … KINKY AND STINKY, THE ARISTOSKUNKS!”

  Brentford “Stinky” Orsini shook his head in despair and walked to the upright piano, blinded by the light, while Gabriel “Kinky” d’Allier seized the carbon microphone with a trembling hand and squinted through his mask to see something of the darkened room. But there was little he could make out save for the glinting of the bronze shields decorating the walls, and the vague arabesque shadows of paper rose garlands festooned around them. He could feel stage fright gnawing at his stomach, and it didn’t help that there were only women and girls in the audience, men being forbidden at the Penthousilea, except as costumed entertainers.

  “Hello, Ladies,” he heard himself saying in a quavering voice, “Here is a song to our favourite goddess.”

  “One, two, three, four,” Brentford muttered before banging on the keys a devilishly vaudevillesque chord sequence of G-D-G-D-C, which Gabriel took up with a slowly growing assurance, shaking his tail as he sang:

  Well I happened to see Venus

  And I don’t understand the fuss

  She’s just another beach belle

  Surfing the swell

  On a seashell

  Well I happened to see Juno

  She’s powerful, useful to know

  But looks too much like my mother

  It’s another

  That I prefer

  She’s got a Minerva brace

  It gives her haughtiness

  And grace

  Something wise

  In her pale blue eyes

  She’s got the face

  of a goddess

  Yes, I have met Persephone

  Well, she’s not what you’d call funny

  And if you take her for your wife

  She’ll make your life

  Trouble and strife

  I had a glimpse of Artemis

  She’s a sure shot and she can’t miss

  But I’d rather not have antlers

  Me, it’s another

  I prefer

  She’s got a Minerva brace

  It gives her haughtiness

  And grace

  Something wise

  In her pale blue eyes

  She’s got the face

  of a goddess …

  Then, slowing down for the dramatic coda—

  But all her former lovers

  Have signed their monikers

  Have drawn hearts and boners

  All over her plaster …

  Out of breath, he saluted to stray handclaps and a few boos, while Brentford tried in vain to mop his brow through his mask. They must have earned a meeting with Lilian by now.

  Bodicea came up to the stage and signalled to them to follow her down the few steps that separated them from the dining room. They slalomed though the tables, their masked heads down, while some of the women amused themselves by stepping on the dragging tails of their costumes. Finally they spotted Lilian quietly smoking by herself in one of the curious semicircular booths, where both seats and tables recalled the
coiled shape of a snail.

  “Here they are, Lilian,” said Bodicea. Then, turning to the skunks with a veiled wink, “Be brave,” before quickly walking off.

  “Well, thank you, Bee,” answered Lilian.

  She smiled a little forced smile and gracefully indicated the empty seats before her, but the skunks found it hard to sit on their cumbersome tails without making fools of themselves.

  “I always thought such appendages would be embarrassing. You can take off your masks, gentlemen,” she said. “I knew who you were the moment you walked onstage.”

  The skunks obeyed.

  “I suppose you are Stinky,” she said to Brentford, as he awkwardly put his head on the table.

  “Well, right now, very probably,” he said, and winced. His sense of humour suffered strange lapses at times. This was when Gabriel found him the funniest.

  “To what do I owe the honour of your visit, your Most Serene Highness?”

  Lilian sounded sarcastic but Gabriel could see she was more amused than angry at their desperate stratagem to meet her, now that she and Brentford were no longer on speaking terms.

  Shortly after the revolution, they had been lovers, and passionate ones, but their affair had not lasted long. She’d reproached Brentford for his poletical timidity, and he had found himself unable to cope with her philanderings involving “friends” of the fair sex. Gabriel had been at a loss to understand why that was a problem, until Brentford explained that he simply did not want to share, adding grimly that neither did she.

  But now they would have to find a way to make up. Brentford had calculated that putting his pride on the table was probably the best gambit he could play. If she was still wary, she seemed willing at least to listen.

  “State affairs, so to speak.”

  “I can see that. Are you campaigning against hunting quotas again?”

  “Tell me, Lilian. When you toured the world, did you go to Paris?”

  “No. It was planned, but as you remember, it was in my suffragette days, and I got arrested for arson. So I was punished like the naughty girl I had been, and much to my regret, I’ve never seen gay Paree. But that’s hardly a state affair over here, I’d guess.”

  “And what if I asked you to take your revenge and go back there with me now?”

  “Do you want to propose to me, Mr. Orsini?” she asked, smiling through a wisp of peppermint smoke. “It is true you are not married to the Frozen Sea anymore … I heard she gave you the cold shoulder.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m afraid it’s strictly business,” Brentford parried and riposted. Gabriel could almost see the sparks between them. And they seemed to be enjoying it as much as he did.

  “You’ve been assigned to the New Venetian Embassy in Paris as ‘Special Secretary for Suffrage and Social Situations of the Sexes.’ ”

  “And ‘Stinky Skunks,’ no? Is this one of your bright ideas, Brent?”

  “Not really. It is Peterswarden’s. He wants to get rid of us.”

  “Does he? And I want to get rid of him.”

  “So everyone agrees, then,” Gabriel said, tucking his head under his arm.

  Lilian cast him a look as if she wanted to will him into invisibility, or at least into silence.

  “What if I refuse?” she asked, turning back to Brentford.

  “There’s a prison sentence.”

  “I am not afraid of jail,” she answered proudly. “I have been on a hunger strike, remember. Maybe I could do with another one,” she added, pinching a cheek that was nowhere near plump.

  “I’d rather see you in Paris than in prison,” said Brentford.

  “So that you can do your master’s bidding, eh? Without even putting up a fight.”

  “Helen seems to think that it’s better this way.”

  Lilian said nothing. It had been Helen who, through vivid dreams, had led her back to New Venice. It had been she who, in a way, had brought Lilian and Brentford together. Helen was no joking matter for Lilian. Her eyes flashed a sputtering “You’d better be sincere on this one”; the look and its meaning flickered between them as plainly as lightbulb letters.

  “So there’s nothing personal about this on your part?” she eventually said aloud, with a frown of thoughtful distrust.

  “Oh, no. Not at all.”

  “I mean you don’t imply that we could go to Paris together, and have fun, and maybe, well, start again.”

  “Not in the least, I assure you,” said Brentford, mirroring her nascent smile.

  “Be frank, Brent: You would be horribly annoyed if I came.”

  “Oh! Terribly so.”

  “And I’ll be free to roam the cabarets and go to every café-concert show I like, without giving a damn about you?”

  “Just as you always have. You’ll be free to go onstage and dance the can-can, if that’s what you want.”

  She turned away from him to better savour, Gabriel supposed, the Paris that now rose in her mind. Slowly her smile froze as she returned to the here and now.

  “Forget it. I can’t go. I have little inclination to obey Peterswarden, and besides, I have this place to run.”

  As Brentford began to protest, someone tapped him on the shoulder and, startled, he looked up to see the monocled Ms. Regina Valkyrie Frekker, looming over him with a cruel grin on her large, flushed face.

  “Ach, Mr. Orsini,” she cooed mockingly. “I liked your show very much. It’s a shame that His Highness could not see it …”

  He blushed, but saw a lifeline in her famous crown of chain-like braids.

  “Frau Frekker,” he howled, trying to be heard over the sudden blare from the stage of a neighing saxophone. “The new Prime-Preceptor of the Dauphin-Doges!”

  At this, she cast a smug look towards Gabriel, who bitterly regretted—not for the first time in his life—his lack of real musk glands.

  “And this is Lilian Lenton …” Brentford continued.

  “Whom there is no need to introduce,” Frau Frekker interrupted, dismissing his courtesies. “I am very attentive to her advanced ideas …”

  Lilian’s and Frau Frekker’s eyes clashed with the instant cold magic of mutual antipathy, metal against crystal. Lilian held her gaze until the Prime-Preceptor raised her chin with a little yelp of contempt, clicked her heels and stalked off. Lilian stared at her empty glass in silence.

  Brentford glanced towards Gabriel and rose from his chair, careful not to trip over his own tail, which he wrapped around his arm like an imperial cape.

  “Well, if that’s so, Lilian, we’ll leave you among your new friends.”

  Rather risky to be insolent to a woman when you’re dressed in animal furs, Gabriel thought, like one who knew from bitter experience. But Brentford, at least, had gotten his point across.

  “Sure, scurry off on your little rodent legs, Brent,” Lilian answered inscrutably. “And please tell me where I shouldn’t find myself under any circumstances, if I want to be spared the sight of so-called old friends.”

  “W. B. Sson’s Uraniborg Castle, tomorrow night. Seven.”

  “She did this!”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Lilian runs the place. She ordered someone to do it while we were talking. I’m sure Bodicea told her about us ahead of time, and this is exactly the kind of thing she would find amusing.”

  “Bah!” said Gabriel. “If that’s the case, she’ll send our stuff back tomorrow.”

  They walked along Barents Boulevard, still in their skunk furs since their clothes had been stolen in the Penthousilea. At first, every time a propelled sled passed by, heralded by its headlights, they hid in the shadows of the pillars that upheld the pneumatic train track. But they soon stopped caring. After all, they were leaving in two days.

  “The good thing is that we’ll be ready in time,” Gabriel said as they walked on side by side towards the end of the Boulevard, the tips of their tails tracing two parallel tracks in a fine layer of spring snow. “And without having to for
ce anyone.”

  “Yes. It seems everyone has a good reason to go to Paris. Except me, that is.”

  “Are you sure you don’t have one now, Brent?”

  VII

  The Entertaining of a Noble Head

  “Is everybody here?” asked W. B. Sson, rubbing his hands, as the guests stepped one by one from the magnetic “elevatory” into his library. This was a circular, domed room; its severe cast-iron structure was softened by scarlet drapes and warm wooden parquetry, and decorated with binding runes. There were so many books lining the walls that Gabriel could almost feel the itch and burn from the Humots book-demon tattooed on his arm, relentlessly tugging him towards the stacks.

  The wizard had been adamant that everyone should meet the pilot at the same time. Brentford had taken the mad scientist’s hint that the pilot would be his daughter and thought that he must have determined that it would be improper or imprudent to introduce the young woman to him alone, and so was waiting instead for a less intimate, more formal occasion. Maybe he had wanted her to make some sort of social debut: it crossed Brentford’s mind that W. B. Sson’s daughter could well be an automaton, a gold-plated girl with reason in her heart, waiting for an occasion like this to be unveiled to the public.

  Tonight was the first meeting of the Most Serene Seven, as Gabriel had recently dubbed them. It was an occasion meant to break the ice and give them a common aim. Not that, judging by the first contact in the hall, it would have otherwise gone altogether wrong. Lavis, always a perfect gentleman and professionally used to all kinds of people, had quickly put everyone at ease with his relaxed yet impeccable manners. Lilian and Thomas had struck up their conversation right where they had left it after the coup, even if, as Brentford suspected (or hoped), they would not have much to say to each other in the long run. Blankbate and Tuluk, of course, were the most circumspect: Tuluk, because he was entirely absorbed by all that he was seeing all around him; Blankbate, because it was most unusual for him to socialize outside the completely closed circle of the City Scavengers. But somehow, all of them were now united by the show Woland Brokker Sson intended to stage about his mysterious pilot.

  Sson cleared his throat and began his remarks with his trademark elfin smile. “First, I must apologize to Mr. Orsini. Actually, and much as I regret it, I do not have a daughter. I do, however, have a pilot. The best that ever was and, in fact, the very last there is. But I have to warn you that you may not appreciate, shall we say, his … condition.”