New Venice 02 - Luminous Chaos

by Jean-Christophe Valtat

  The little cortège around Jean-Klein’s grave disbanded, and Brentford and Gabriel were walking back to the gate when a short, rotund figure detached itself from a tree and waddled towards them on fat but quick little legs.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen,” the man said, touching a finger to the brim of his bowler hat. He had a ruddy face with a stubby snout and a handlebar moustache. His dark, deep-set eyes were small but inquisitive and sparkling. “Would you be the friends of the late Jean-Charles Leclou?”

  Brentford and Gabriel stopped in their tracks and looked at each other with a stern gaze saying, Beware.

  “We are, yes,” Brentford confirmed.

  “Ah, then, perhaps you can help me. I am Commissaire Tripotte from the French Sûreté. It is my duty to make sure that the foreigners in our country see all their rights respected. And a decent burial is certainly one of the most sacred rights of man, don’t you think?”

  “I hope everything was done satisfactorily,” Brentford answered.

  “No doubt, no doubt. But you know that in France we have a passion for paperwork, and this is what worries me. Nowhere could our services find the slightest document belonging to Jean-Charles Leclou. And we have checked all the hotels in Paris. You are, unless I am mistaken, Canadians yourselves, and I thought that perhaps …”

  “Certainly,” Brentford said, summoning as much self-control as he could. “Did you check with the Canadian Embassy?”

  “The Canadian Embassy? You are a true patriot. I don’t think that Canada yet has an embassy,” Tripotte said, his eyes narrowing. “There is, however, a Canadian Commission, and I have checked with them, but to no avail.”

  “You must allow them the time to search. Ours is a huge country.”

  “That is word for word what they told me! But if you ever have any ideas—such as, for instance, the name of the hotel where he resided—please do not hesitate to let me know. Here is my card.”

  Brentford took it and looked at the all-seeing eye that served as the symbol for the Sûreté.

  “I’ll contact you if I find anything,” he said.

  Tripotte saluted them and turned away, not towards the gates but towards the other ceremony, where he obviously knew people.

  Watching him go, Brentford asked Gabriel, “Are you doing anything this afternoon?”

  “Not that I know of. Weren’t you supposed to try to see de Rochas?”

  “It will have to wait, I’m afraid. We must go to the Canadian Commission—immediately.”

  A man and a woman were leaning against the wall by the gate. The man wore one of the casquettes usually sported by Parisian proletarians, and he stood with his fists in his pockets; the woman, a freckled redhead, had wrapped herself in a flowered Alsatian shawl.

  “Be careful,” the man whispered to Brentford and Gabriel as they passed.

  “Of?” Gabriel inquired.

  “Tripotte,” he said, indicating with his chin the other funeral, now drawing to a close. “Not a man you want to be in trouble with. By the way,” he said, extending his hand, “I’m Raymond Bastiani, crafstman printer, and this is Lucie Blanchard, my good friend.”

  They all shook hands.

  “Tripotte is in charge of the B Notebook,” Lucie explained a little later, a prickly red wine before her in the incredibly narrow Taverne du Vieux Moulin. “It supposedly holds files on every foreigner in Paris. And, since the anarchists’ bombings of recent years, a very close watch is kept on all of them.”

  “I thought bombings were a thing of the past,” Gabriel said, struggling to recall a little French history.

  “If you can call two years ago the past, you’re right. Since they passed the Scoundrelly Laws, anarchism is practically extinct as a serious threat. Even the worst provocateurs seem to have lost interest. And, last year, with the Dreyfus case, it was the Jews who were increasingly designated as scapegoats,” Raymond explained.

  “They have some respite now,” Lucie added, “since however hard you try, you cannot blame harsh winters on the Jews. But when food is scarce, foreigners are an easy target. So it starts all over again. The constant watching, and sometimes worse …”

  “What do you mean by ‘worse’?” Brentford inquired.

  Raymond lowered his voice. “The other funeral, for instance. It took place in the plot reserved for guillotined convicts, in a spot we call ‘the turnip field.’ There have been no public executions lately—no official executions, that is. But beheaded bodies are still turning up regularly, and most of the time they’re the bodies of foreigners. Such was the case with the burial you saw. And nobody seems to care.”

  “Did you know the victim?” Brentford asked.

  “We did, yes. What you would call an anarchist. But now anarchists are like everyone else, more concerned with their next meal than with the world to come. He was innocent of any crime. We don’t know if he was even tried before the ‘sentence.’ ”

  “Didn’t the authorities react?” Brentford asked.

  “Just enough to signal that they were not involved. Which doesn’t mean they weren’t,” Raymond said. “You’ve seen the gendarmes—even at the burial today, for instance. Officially, they’re there to prevent riots.”

  “But you’re saying that Tripotte is involved?” Gabriel asked pointedly.

  “We hear rumours,” Lucie muttered. “And we hope they’re nothing but that. But Tripotte was after our friend, and someone must be tipping off these mysterious executioners. For the rest, all we know is their name: they call themselves Les Loups des Bois de Justice.”

  “It’s a pun,” Gabriel explained to Brentford in English. “The Wolves of the Woods of Justice. Bois de justice means timbers or woods of Justice … which is also a name for the guillotine.”

  “Hilarious,” said a straight-faced Brentford.

  Lucie leaned forward. “What we mean to say is that, in our experience, it is not a good idea to attract Tripotte’s interest.”

  “I’m afraid it’s too late, unfortunately,” Brentford said with a sigh.

  II

  Skating at the North Pole

  When he’d been in Morgane Roth’s dark corridor the night before, it had taken approximately thirty seconds for Thomas to arrange a rendezvous with Blanche, the veiled daughter of Mme. de Bramentombes.

  It was early in the following afternoon (not that one could judge the time by the colourless sky) when he stepped down from the slow brown omnibus that had brought him, with significant delay and discomfort, from St. Sulpice to Pigalle, a spacious ring of houses and bars around a miserable fenced circular garden. Tuluk stepped down in his wake, overplaying a backache by grimacing and stretching. The idea of horse locomotion on snowy sloping streets seemed to him one of those half-baked ideas that the qallunaat were liable to come up with.

  “To the left, here, is rue de Clichy, number eighteen,” Thomas said, his head bent over the brand-new Baedeker he held with his only working hand. “Now, you understand, Tuluk, if she is with her mother, you’ll have to take care of her—the mum, that is. I’m sure she will be thrilled to meet an Eskimo. Especially dressed as you are.”

  On Thomas’s urging, Tuluk had made an effort to adapt to a more Western look, but the result was a tentative, piecemeal outfit that left much to be desired. His upper half might pass muster, but he had retained his warm sealskin trousers and his kamiks, which were comfortable to walk in. Even by the blasé standards of Paris, he was a sight to behold: passers-by cast bewildered, disapproving looks, and the steely stare they got in return made them hurry on their way. Thomas wondered if taking him along had been such a bright idea. Not that he had had a choice. Tuluk, who so far had never walked further than the bird market a few yards up the rue Delambre, had come back from it curious about the city, and could not be persuaded to stay at the hotel. Besides, the Colonel had encouraged him to see the sights, if only so he could tell him about them later. Putting the Inuk to use in the best possible way—as an anti-chaperone weapon—had been Thomas’s
only choice.

  Together they descended the Boulevard de Clichy, almost empty now because of the snow, and Thomas, noticing the posters plastered on the Morris columns, observed that the Parisians had not only embraced the cold weather, but turned their fascination into a sort of fashion: a singer called Polaire, who had an incredibly slim waist and beautiful almond eyes, was obviously the hottest thing in Paris, and an almost as widely advertised skating rink—the very one they were on their way to, in fact—was even called the Pôle Nord. It was funny, Thomas thought, to have to go to Paris to finally reach the North Pole. And it was still funnier that this was precisely the place Blanche de Bramentombes had suggested for their rendezvous. She was inspired, she’d said, by his question about the Pole during the séance.

  Three francs later, they were inside the Pôle Nord, and Tuluk couldn’t hold back a cry of surprise. Stretched out beneath a long iron-and-glass roof that was supported by thin iron pillars was a rink of smooth ice that was at least forty yards in diameter … and every square inch was busy with skaters, mostly women. The rink was encircled by a walkway, with tables behind it providing refreshments. A mezzanine loomed above, full of onlookers and flâneurs, and on a platform a brash brass orchestra was hammering brazen tunes in the slightly stale air. But what astonished Tuluk the most was the so-called Arctic panorama—there was even a little wooden chalet!—that surrounded the place, waves and waves of snowy hills and bluish peaks. He felt his eyes welling at the thought that it might not be possible to ever go home again.

  Meanwhile, Thomas had already rented a pair of skates and was trying to put them on in spite of his sling.

  “I suppose you don’t want me to get you some,” he said to Tuluk, who bent to help him. “I’ve always wondered why the Inuit can’t skate.”

  “Where Inuit live, the ice is not smooth,” Tuluk answered moodily. Actually, he felt like trying, but his pride forbade him from making a fool of himself in front of the qallunaat, especially on the ice. But it slightly vexed him, he realized, that the whites managed to look so elegant as they glided and swerved on it. Let’s see them at the real North Pole, he thought.

  “See if you can hunt for a seal here, then,” Thomas joked. “Now, I’m going to look for that girl, or at least, I’m going to get her to see me. Watch me, and if you see me with the mother, come closer so I can introduce you.”

  Tuluk nodded and Thomas jumped onto the ice. Even with his broken arm, he managed to slalom at full speed between skaters without ever losing his balance, showing such virtuosity that many people stopped in their tracks to admire him as he passed, while scattered applause greeted him from the mezzanine. It did not take long, of course, for the still-veiled Blanche de Bramentombes to notice him from her table along the side, and to wave at him. Skidding up in a froth of crushed ice, Thomas grasped the fence with his good hand and suavely began the conversation. Mme. de Bramentombes was nowhere to be seen.

  Not that Tuluk cared. Oblivious of his mission, what interested him now was how the qallunaat made the ice. You could actually see the machines through a window on the opposite side of the rink. He walked up and gaped in awe at the huge tank-like machines standing amidst a wilderness of pipes, belts, and wheels. A tall man with an aquiline nose and a long drooping blond moustache gave him a sidelong look.

  “Excuse me, sir. You are Inuk, aren’t you?” he asked in English, though his accent was unmistakably French.

  Tuluk looked at him and for a while had the feeling that he had seen him before. But how could that be?

  “This Inu … I am, yes,” he said, feeling uneasy.

  “From where? Greenland? Baffin Bay? Alaska?”

  Hadn’t Mr. Orsini said that they had to remain incognito? Tuluk didn’t like to lie, and it didn’t come easily to him.

  “Greenland,” he said, satisfied that it was the closest approximation.

  “And you’re in Paris for …? If that’s not too indiscreet, of course.”

  Tuluk blushed and realized he was sweating now.

  “Machines …” he improvised. “I like machines.”

  “Oh … machines.” The man looked surprised. “Machines to make ice. I suppose it surprises you that we give ourselves so much trouble over something that is so common for you? You must find it absurd.”

  Tuluk was not sure what absurd meant, except that it was a word that the whites often used to talk about their own endeavours.

  “How do they work?” he asked.

  “These? The Fixary machines? Well, you see, these on the left are steam engines. They pump ammonia gas into those big condensers over there, which turn it into liquid ammonia. From there, it’s refrigerated in this big tank, and used as a coolant to refrigerate another liquid, calcium chloride, which is then pumped through very narrow tubes that run all under the ice. With enough horsepower and ammonia, you could even reproduce the Arctic—a bit like they’ve tried to do here,” the man observed, as if lost in his own thoughts.

  Though Tuluk only understood half of this, the half he understood fascinated him. Everywhere the whites were fighting the ice, but here in their free time, they made it, with mind-boggling machines, even though they had it elsewhere already for nothing. He wanted to know more about the machines, but did not dare ask, feeling ill at ease because of the man’s own inquisitiveness. Taking advantage of his interlocutor’s brief spell of reverie, Tuluk suddenly turned away and headed towards the exit, feeling the eyes of the man following him now, like two harpoon tips in his back.

  III

  The Dominions

  On their way to the Canadian Commission, Gabriel and Brentford walked past that sturdy parthenon of the Chambres de Députés and swerved towards the bridge that led to La Place de la Concorde. As they crossed the frozen Seine, the Eiffel Tower loomed up on their left, brand-new in the blurry sun, the gilded skeleton of a chimera, a giraffe neck above elephant legs.

  “I fell—that’s an apt name for a tower that high, isn’t it?” Brentford said as they stopped to look at it.

  “What?”

  “The I fell Tower. Get it?”

  “That’s exactly what I was afraid I’d heard,” Gabriel said with a scowl.

  “Okay, let’s say that was an Interpherence,” Brentford mumbled apologetically, referring to one of the aftereffects of Transpherence, which is when words or phrases used by one’s dead father spring up directly into the transpheree’s mouth. For some heretofore-unexplained reason, these bursts of speech were inevitably incongruous, or plain daft. If the plan of Transpherence had been to imbue the son with awe of his father, it was quite a failure. Rather, it was the kind of clowning that remained longest, perhaps because, Gabriel suspected, it constituted the true core of fatherhood.

  “Well,” Brentford said, in an effort to redirect the conversation. “This is certainly some bold statement of manhood. I wouldn’t be surprised if Eiffel were one of those phallus-worshipping Masons.”

  “Oh, I think he is. Besides being a puny fellow,” Gabriel confirmed. “That said, if you stand below the I fell tower, as you so wittily named it, you will see it looks as if you were standing under your mother’s petticoat, as the French say. It is both God and Goddess, or the supreme Hermaphrodite. That’s what makes it powerful, I guess, if it doesn’t make it pretty.” And he smiled a melancholy smile, which Brentford attributed to his pining for Reginald and Geraldine.

  They were across the river now, at the foot of the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, passing a fountain overbrimming with frozen froth.

  “Now look at how, from here, the obelisk seems just to penetrate the Triumphal Arch,” Gabriel said, pointing at the culprit with his cane.

  “It’s like that fountain you showed me yesterday,” Brentford said thoughtfully. “I suppose a city is ruled by such images.” Then, he added longingly, “This is something the Seven Sleepers were good at.” A picture of New Venice formed faintly behind his eyelids, a blur of white perspectives billowing back to nothingness, but sharp enough to pierce h
is heart.

  As they moved away along the Champs-Élysées Gardens towards the Arc de Triomphe, a man who had also been looking at the Eiffel Tower suddenly turned to them, revealing a goatee and eyes that shone enthusiastically behind a pince-nez.

  “A celestial castle!” he exclaimed in a thick Russian accent, with the unecessarily loud voice of a partially deaf man. “A tower so high—tens of thousands of meters high—and from there, a cable that would naturally be stretched by the earth’s rotation and could support a celestial castle in geostationary orbit. Men could inhabit space, travelling by elevators. Would not that be great?”

  “Certainly,” Brentford said politely, though the man was evidently talking to himself. “But not before the entirety of the earth’s surface is made inhabitable, I suppose.”

  But the man, now scribbling sketches in his notebook, was not listening.

  They trudged on until the bulbous iron-and-glass roof of the Hall of Industry came into view, looking New Venetian enough to attract them like a lodestone. Built for a world’s fair, as an answer to London’s Crystal Palace, it was a titanic building, encased in arches of stone that seemed to go on forever, and its front gate—a rookery for allegories—rose as immodestly high as a triumphal arch. Inside, however, in the milky light that poured from the flyspecked roof, the endless, drafty, glassed gallery was nearly deserted, except for a few patrons at scattered tables, and a wheezing marching band whose brass looked like rusty machines and whose musicians gestured like demented automatons.

  “Slated for destruction within a year, if I remember correctly,” Gabriel informed Brentford.

  “That’s a bit sad, isn’t it?” Brentford responded. “We should take it back home. It’s a brave piece of masonry.” He paused, lost in his own thoughts. After a while, he added, “I always wondered whether they were Masons, the Seven Sleepers.”

  “They probably were. Almost everyone involved in polar exploration was a Mason. Kane, Peary from the Kane Lodge, a lot of others. It must have something to do with the arcane that eludes us.”