New Venice 02 - Luminous Chaos

by Jean-Christophe Valtat

  “I’m glad to see you,” she said to Thomas and Lilian. Lord Savnock got up and raised his hat again, this time revealing a head so closely shaved as to be as bald as his brow, and bowed for a baise-main.

  “Dear Madame Roth. Your salon has been recommended to me by a very dear friend. He calls you a magician.”

  “I doubt any magicians would agree with that—they tend to look down on mediums. In any case, what I wanted to tell you is that the séance you are about to see is very unusual.”

  “In what way?” Lord Savnock asked genially. Lilian noticed that his suit, which had seemed to be pitch black, was actually midnight blue, as were his tie and silk hat. She thought this strangely enhanced the effect of his gold-speckled eyes. And she found the lion’s-head knob of his cane strangely familiar without knowing exactly why.

  “Since Mrs. Williams’s unfortunate event last year here in Paris—oh.” Seeing that Lilian and Thomas were at a loss, she explained, “Mrs. Williams is an American medium who came to Paris and was exposed when séance members caught hold of her and found a white rag doll, intended as a visiting spirit, concealed in a fold of her dress. As a result, people are now extremely wary of these sorts of apparitions. And, I must add”—and here Lilian saw that she was fighting to keep a straight face—“the spirits were themselves so scandalized they no longer wished to appear in such a dubious atmosphere. We genuine mediums have had to develop new protocols for communication with them that would reassure everyone. So I hope you will understand and forgive me if our séance does not look exactly as usual.”

  “Quite the contrary,” Savnock reassured her. “This makes it all more the more interesting, I would say.”

  “If that’s the case, then,” said Mme. Roth, “I won’t delay any longer, since other people are waiting for us to join them. Please …”

  “I’m afraid I can’t touch other people’s hands,” said Thomas to the assembly at the table, pointing at his sling.

  “And if you do not mind, I would like very much to keep my gloves on,” Lord Savnock said, triggering in Lilian another faint reminiscence the origin of which, once again, eluded her.

  Miss Roth was unfazed. “No matter. Mr Paynes-Grey, just put your good hand forward, and the persons on each side of you will come closer to you to connect to your thumb and auricular. And I’m sure that those gloves are no match for His Lordship’s nervous fluid, Lord Savnock.”

  “I do not see the Magnetizer,” remarked Mme. de Bramentombes, one of the two women who had joined them, the other being her daughter. The madame was a plump, heavily made-up but good-looking lady in her fifties, dressed in mourning clothes but with a peacock feather in her hat. She seemed miffed already by these lapses in the ritual. After all, the guidance of a Magnetizer—who talked the medium into her trance and conducted the event—was important. What if the medium started to go wild and rambled about improper things? A Magnetizer’s presence was not only a common feature at a séance, it was good manners.

  But this medium did not agree. “There is no Magnetizer, dear madame, nor is there any need for one,” she answered politely but firmly, in a way that made Lilian thrill with approbation. “As you know, they are often little more than impresarios. And, if I may add, I do not think that by allowing ourselves to constantly surrender to the suggestion of men that we women will appear as the equal sex that we are. We are strong enough, I think, to entrance ourselves.”

  Mme. de Bramentombes pursed her lips, manifesting her defiance of such advanced ideas. Her daughter, however, sitting next to her with eyes hidden beneath a black veil, smiled so fetchingly at the explanation that Thomas regretted not being seated beside her. He advanced his foot under the table, trying to make contact. This was spiritualism as he understood it.

  “I use a skylark mirror,” Roth went on, uncovering a curious device on the table. It was a treelike assemblage of small rotating mirrors placed under the beam of an electric lamp suspended high above her. “It is electrical. When I fall asleep, I will automatically release the pressure on the switch. Do not forget to keep your eyes closed until the whirring has stopped. Then you may ask your questions.”

  Sitting down, she removed a black cloth from the sphere that it covered. A kind of black beetle appeared, its carapace studded with round alphabetic keys.

  “But … it’s a writing machine,” Mme. de Bramentombes exclaimed.

  “A Malling-Hansen 1892. Made for the blind,” Lord Savnock commented appreciatively. “A good friend of mine had the same one. Are the spirits going to turn into secretaries?”

  “I am the secretary.”

  “But all these machines …” Mme. de Bramentombes muttered with disgust.

  “It’s nothing new, dear madame. We have always used technical devices like Ouija boards and psychographs. Passive mediums, who write while unaware, as I do, are even called mechanical mediums. This is simply the next logical step in our commerce with the spirits.”

  “But, the spirits? Do they really appreciate it?” Lord Savnock inquired.

  “As you know, Milord, the spirits take a keen interest in human development in all its forms, not merely those that enable their own communications. And I must add, some of them are very happy to play with new inventions.”

  “Ah, well, if it pleases the spirits …” Mme. de Bramentombes sighed, before forcing a smile, chin up, and passing it around as if it were a jewel on a cushion.

  It began. The lights were turned off, hands (and fingers) joined in a circle. Lilian had never been to a séance, and she had the distinct feeling that something strange was happening. Nothing supernatural, no: just the effect of strangers, men and women, suddenly brought closer by the darkness around them. It was enough to create a palpable energy—the power, she thought, of possibilities. The mere act of agreeing to open themselves to uncanny sensations and emotions made them tingle and itch with something that was both embarrassment and a certain expectation; a fear, perhaps. And the fear, in its turn, summoned shapes, presences, shadows that seemed to be waiting in the wings of the world, behind the backcloth of the night.

  The lamp above Miss Roth flashed on. Dots of light whirled across her face and her wide-open eyes until, with a jerk, she went into a catatonic trance. The swirling lights went out, the mirror stopped whirring, and her guests opened their eyes, some gazing at the medium, some meeting each other’s looks.

  Suddenly, with a low growl, Miss Roth extended her hands over the machine.

  “Whose spirit is here?” asked Lord Savnock.

  Roth’s hands moved slowly over the black metal sphere, and then started to type very quickly. A sheet of paper crept out of the machine tray.

  Lord Savnock bent and withdrew the paper, holding it with his gloved hand. He chuckled before he read,

  What do you need my name for, you half-baked apes?

  “Well, it seems we didn’t pick the cream of the crop,” Lord Savnock said with a laugh, before pocketing the sheet. “But at least he speaks English fluently.”

  “I have a question,” said the plump Mme. de Bramentombes, half-raising her hand, as if she were in school. “I want to know,” she said after a long sigh, “whether the spirit has met the soul of my late husband, Amédée de Bramentombes.”

  Her daughter translated in a charmingly wavering English for the others to understand.

  Like a puppet, with her eyes rolled back in her head, Miss Roth banged at the keys. The lady withdrew the printed sheet and, noticing with disgust that it was in English, handed it to her daughter.

  You two-faced old hag! As if you don’t know where he is!

  Mme. de Bramentombes squealed at the translation and, breaking the circle, brought her handkerchief to the corner of her lips, as if she had been slapped. Once again Thomas thought he caught a smile under the girl’s veil.

  “It’s my turn,” he said. He was finding the séance rather funny. But as he opened his mouth, fumbling for a good joke, he suddenly thought of the pennant he’d seen in the Arsenal ha
rbour. “It’s a question about the future,” he added. “I’d like to know whether the North Pole will be conquered one day, and whether a city will be built there.”

  Lilian felt a tremor in Savnock’s hand and saw that his eyes had suddenly narrowed to slits.

  It took a long time for Morgane Roth to begin typing again.

  Lilian took the sheet and read:

  Bugger me with the holy angels’ golden horns!

  Don’t you ever again bother me with stupid

  questions when the answer is sitting right beside

  you! I’ve had enough of this dumbshow! It’s

  curtains for tonight, morons!

  Lilian and Thomas looked at each other. Well, thought Lilian, spirit or not, it’s right: we’re sitting next to each other and we know that the city will be built. It may not have the most charming manners, but that spirit seems to know its trade.

  Mme. de Bramentombes, still furious, huffed angrily while Miss Roth gradually regained consciousness. “It’s scandalous,” she said finally, bolting up from her chair and shaking her head like a loser at a roulette table.

  Morgane Roth blinked and slowly found her bearings.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in a hoarse whisper after she had perused the spiritypes. “Some spirits are not as elevated as others. And some are little better than pranksters and tricksters. Please pay no attention to these answers.”

  “As far as I’m concerned,” Savnock said, “the experience was conclusive, even if the answers were much less so. I do not know if you are a magician, madame, but you are a great artist.”

  Later in the night, Thomas and Lilian were sitting on a leather couch in Morgane’s bedroom—they were now on a first-name basis—smoking hashish cigarettes and drinking Mariani coca wine. A cranium, painted in lozenges, sat grinning on the chimney and, on the wall, a spider sketched in charcoal, with an enormous bulging eye, seemed to be crawling out of its frame. Morgane was reclining on her bed, constantly pulling at her cigarette holder, so that by and by she faded out under a wispy veil of smoke that made her look like an entranced sybil, albeit one whose oracles were always sharp and astute. She was the kind of woman, thought Lilian, whom darker ages would have gladly seen roasting at the stake.

  “I liked what you said about the women,” Lilian said, “you know, that they don’t need Magnetizers.”

  Morgane smiled, basking for a moment in Lilian’s admiration.

  “Remember that it was young girls who invented spiritualism,” she said. “And there’s good reason for this: besides being, as in my case, an alternative to prostitution, it’s one of the rare ways women are at liberty to express themselves without having to endure censorship from men. Ask yourselves, for instance, why it is that female mediums receive from the spirits so many communications about free love, the equality of the sexes, or universal suffrage? As to typewriters, believe me, they will eventually free young women from their domestic shackles. Even if it’s to take dictation from that lowest form of spirit known as the businessman.”

  Enchanted and finding herself eager to make an impression, Lilian assayed, “I wonder why that curious man called you a great artist. I found that a bit offensive.”

  Morgane laughed. “Because, whoever he may be, he understands what it’s all about. What we mediums do is a performance. We work ourselves and our audience into a state where anything could happen and, I have to say, often does.”

  “You mean it’s all humbug?” Thomas asked, slumped on the couch.

  “Now you’re being offensive,” Morgane said lightly, bending over the coffee table to roll another cigarette, her dress sliding silkily down to uncover her olive shoulder, much to both of her guests’ appreciation. And, as Lilian remarked, when it came to rolling hashish cigarettes, she truly was an artist—they were as slender and appetizing as she was.

  “Would you say that a painter or writer is a fraud because he uses fictive means to let us glimpse some truth?” she continued. “Or would you call a poet hysterical because he claims to be inspired? This is what I do in my modest way, in my little theatre, even if most of the time I must admit I don’t know where it all comes from.”

  “So you really do hear voices?” Lilian inquired. “From a particular spirit?”

  “From various spirits, if you can call them that. A lot of them. I’m what’s called a flexible medium.”

  Then she bent towards Lilian and whispered through the cloud of hashish, “And I am, believe me, very flexible.” She sat back, watching Lilian blush, then said, “And anyway, was anything that was said tonight false?”

  “Madame de Bramentombes didn’t look too convinced,” Lilian remarked, her hands cupping her knees, trying to behave as if she had not heard Morgane’s inviting murmur.

  “She was angry. Which is different. And nothing angers like a truth you don’t want to hear. But I think she got what she was asking for, though not in the sense she expected. But what about you? Was the answer you were given anything but true?”

  “In a sense, it was true,” Lilian said. “And I noticed that Thomas’s question interested Lord Savnock very much.”

  “Oh,” Thomas intervened. “He explained to me as we parted that not so long ago, he had been asked to fund a polar expedition, and that it was strange how the Arctic seems to obsess a lot of people these days—” As he tried to straighten up on the sofa he let out a cry.

  “Your arm?” Lilian asked.

  “Yes. I’ve had nothing for it today,” he said, grimacing.

  “You mean tonight.” Lilian turned to Morgane. “You wouldn’t have anything for pain?”

  “Let me see,” she said with a wink.

  She came back from the bathroom with a little bottle full of a pellucid liquid. “Will the Grey Fairy do?” she asked.

  Thomas looked at Lilian, as if to ask for her permission. Lilian suddenly got up and, taking the morphine bottle, gave it to Thomas and said, “A little of this and a good night’s sleep on top of it will do wonders. Let me see you to the door, now. I’m sure you can find a cab back to the hotel.”

  “But—” Thomas stuttered; however, before he knew it he was capped, scarved, gloved, and already half out of the door. “But, Lilian—”

  “I know, you’re a hero. See you tomorrow.”

  The door closed on muffled laughter and a square halo of light, which quickly went out.

  “She called me Brenty boy,” Brentford thought as he fell asleep.

  To be continued …

  I

  A Turnip Field Funeral

  On the list of Parisian things that gave Brentford the chills, following a hearse on a cold morning through a drab expanse of dead trees and crosses half-buried in the snow was quickly climbing to the top.

  It resonated drearily with his growing sense of loneliness, and with a sense of being let down. Of the Seven only Gabriel had accompanied him to the Ivry Parisian cemetery, and only, he suspected, because they had run into each other at breakfast. Lilian, Brentford thought with a pang, had not spent the night at the hotel, and neither had Blankbate, who had not been seen since the day of their arrival. Wherever Lilian had been, it wasn’t with Thomas, who was audibly snoring behind his closed door. Only the dependable Tuluk, at least, had a reasonable excuse: he had to look after and entertain the Colonel.

  But the only slight relief Brentford felt was that Jean-Klein, Jr., had not showed up. The whole ceremony was absurd enough as it was.

  “So, what did you do last night?” Brentford asked Gabriel, breaking both their reveries.

  “I went to that famous ballroom, the Bal Bullier, at the end of Boulevard Montparnasse.”

  “Ah, perverse and peevish!” Brentford quoted mechanically.

  “Not at all. I just watched the people dance.”

  “Not even a little flirtation?”

  Gabriel shrugged his shoulders. “You know, I’ve realized something about women recently … They’re people, Brentford, just like you and me. They are not better th
an we are.”

  “I’m surprised that it surprised you.”

  “Well, I’ve been nurturing suspicions for a while, to be honest. But still … it’s so disappointing.”

  “Well, perhaps it makes them more accessible,” Brentford offered in a comforting tone.

  “I don’t pander to real people, Brentford. Nor do I wish to impose my fancies on them.”

  Brentford was a bit surprised by his friend’s philosophy. For a man who had spent the previous year cavorting with underage hermaphroditic twins, it seemed grimmer than necessary. Maybe Gabriel missed the Twins. Maybe he’d still got the blue devils over Stella. Maybe, like Brentford himself, he had racked his brain about the Nature of Time just a little too much these past days. A bit selfishly, Brentford thought that it would be better for the mission to have a Gabriel around who wasn’t exclusively focussed on living the inimitable life, as he used to call it.

  Not that you could predict what Gabriel would do or not do. For instance, he had stubbornly refused to talk to the priest of the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul about the details of the life of Leclou; it had fallen to Brentford, just before the ceremony, to prompt the priest’s oration by expatiating inventively on the good Christian life that Jean-Charles Leclou had led until the end. Now, at the edge of the grave, the speech came back to him, preposterously useless. Yet it was not without great sadness that he watched the coffin hastily and clumsily lowered into the tomb and heard the wood grating on the granite. As a piece of New Venetian wisdom had it, “It is always silent when the goldfish die.”

  Not far from here, at the foot of the cemetery wall, another burial was taking place. There was something sneaky about it, especially in the way the people around the white wood coffin seemed hurried and nervous; but since most of these mourners were uniformed gendarmes with rifles in their hands, even their discretion looked rather conspicuous.