New Venice 02 - Luminous Chaos

by Jean-Christophe Valtat

“The contract was signed in blood. I resigned from the War Office and wrote a few letters to relatives and friends, invoking secret missions to explain my impending silence. It was time to go. ‘Will I ever see you again?’ I asked Lucy the last time I saw her. ‘Of course,’ she answered. ‘You have a memory, haven’t you?’ You will think me a sissy, young chap, but I must say, my heart shrank in my breast like bollocks in a cold bath.

  “For the trip, I was allowed a metal canteen and nothing else. We sailed in the early summer while the frozen sea remained mostly open. It was amazingly well organized: the Night Navy, a flotilla of nondescript little icebreakers, looking battered but proving to be rock-solid, shuttled back and forth from different American and European ports. They carried only moderate quantities of goods or citizens, so that the inevitable losses would remain reasonable, and they always sailed by night to keep the whole operation secret.

  “Once aboard, officers from the Polaris Guild, in midnight-blue uniforms, gave us our first fur outfits and drilled us on survival tactics—and our understanding of the basic tenets of the New Venetian philosophy. Some dissenters, mostly desperate workers who were in it for the money, had second thoughts about the adventure, and sometimes protested, threatening to tear up their contracts. ‘No problem, gentlemen,’ the officers said, with polite smiles, ‘Once we’re there, you’ll be free to come back by your own means.’ And we, the dreamers and adventurers, already proud of being New Venetians, cackled like schoolboys because the location of ‘there’ hadn’t even been disclosed.

  “At first, the trip seemed to go on forever, the hum of the steam engines vibrating through your bones. But as we drew closer, the night disappeared altogether, and cautiously but doggedly, we sailed blinking through the ice, spotting cities at every turn before realizing they were icebergs or mirages. The travelling season was drawing to a cracking close, but at last we arrived, wherever it was we were arriving at.

  “An immense ice harbour was built a few yards from the coast, probably carved from a gigantic iceberg, its front shaped like a liner’s, its rear ending in pronged piers. A swarm of ships, bobbing like gulls among the floes, were moored and discharged, checked and refilled, and hastily sent back to where they came from, before the sea turned back once more into rugged, infrangible crystal.

  “New Venice itself, seen from the ship, seemed to fulfil its improbable promise. It was not entirely finished, but the missing parts were modelled in ice, blending almost seamlessly with the actual buildings. It was inside these immense halls of ice that the new buildings were to be assembled or reconstructed according to the blueprints, before the next batch of material arrived the following summer.

  “Up close from the landing pier, though, the city still looked rough and uncertain, the way a boomtown would. The embankments, covered in slush and mud, were scarred with dirty tracks and cluttered with crates and half-assembled machinery. Instead of bridges, wobbling metal sheets crossed empty canals. Work was going on with a sullen, dull clatter that echoed in the leaden sky. I realized for the first time in my life that a city was, above all, hours of merciless labour, one stone upon another.

  “For the length of the summer, the harbour throve, thronged with ships carrying building materials, canned food or seeds, together with “Arctic Arks” filled with plants and animals, all selected for their resistance to the cold. Horses were never a big success in New Venice, except to draw the odd sleigh, and I soon found myself leading a company of lancers atop Bactrian camels. We were doing some exploration, some guerrilla fighting with the Inuit—The War with the Eskimos, as it is now grandly called—and not seldom, we chased fugitives or searched for the bodies of the Banished and carefully erased all their traces.

  “Because, you see, young man, it was a harsh life. There is no question that the Seven Sleepers, who at that time were still called the Seven Seers, pampered us to the best of their awesome abilities. When I arrived, there were already theatres, concerts, museums, and, most of all, a lot of festivals, parades, and games, celebrating the city or its guilds. Everything was done to give the New Venetians a sense of pride and belonging, and on the whole it was rather successful. But remember that, at that time, the Air Architecture was not yet working, and the winters still took a dreadful toll on us all.

  “To tell the truth, in the night season, the ideal city looked more like one of the concentration camps we English had built in South Africa. We were kept warm and entertained, but the lack of women who were not prostitutes, the exhaustion, the low rations, the general ill will that spread between people during the Wintering Weeks … it all went to your head. The workers from the Builders’ Brigade—for the most part poor people who would have done anything for sixpence—not only brawled among themselves but also, a few times, revolted. And I must add that more than once we lancers were called on to quell that kind of trouble. There were also thefts and murders, but at that stage the Seven Seers were strict disciplinarians. The Gentlemen of the Night had not yet been formed, but there was a secret police force with informers in every nook and cranny. They were totally invisible, and their methods rather expeditious. The Ravens, they were called. A lot of ‘accidents’ happened, heads broken on slippery embankments, people falling through cracks in the ice and drowning … Felons who could not be disposed of in that way were punished with banishment, which simply meant death. Another alternative was to join the dustmen of the city, the Scavengers, who were then beginning to become Untouchables. But once again, you have to understand it what was the situation needed. It was a city that was no more solid than a mirage.”

  “Perhaps,” suggested Brentford, “you happened to meet the Sleepers? Lord Lodestone, for instance.”

  “I could have at that time, because when I arrived he was Lord Sunday, the Archon in charge of army and police matters. But in the beginning not all the Seven Sleepers were in New Venice. There were probably one or two at any given time, the rest being busy, I suppose, organizing things from the outer world. I say ‘probably’ because it was impossible to know. They were hidden away most of the time, and when they appeared, it was always out of the blue, and commanding a hushed awe I’ve never seen the like of. Even for the Two Hundred and Ten, like me or your grandfather Felice, who were supposedly closer to them, they were almost impossible to see, and only the Council, I suppose, had direct access to them. Even when they were alive, there was already this mystic aura about them, you know.

  “However, I did get the chance to meet Lord Lodestone years later, when I became Commander of the Order of the Winged Sea-Lion. He was old then, and one of the last three remaining Seers, but as I remember it, he was still very charismatic and had something very mischievous in his eyes. If he ever suspects that there are people in the know, as Mr. Paynes-Grey’s ill-considered question at the séance may have led him to believe, I am afraid that we are in a bit of fix as a result. I have seen his ways and he is a brilliant, but also quite dangerous, man. Only a dangerous man, a very dangerous man, could accomplish what he did, or, er, will. Never trust his kindness. I am sure he has some for mankind, but not for the part of it that stands in his way.”

  “I’m not standing in his way. Lord knows I want nothing but his success,” Brentford protested.

  “I know, young chap. But at this very moment, he is guarding a secret. And he may not like to find out that you know it even better than he does.”

  III

  Magnetophosphenes

  After a night of struggle with the Angel of Migraine, Gabriel was in no mood for the Colonel’s creaking ramblings, and decided to go back to the Salpêtrière to get his bruised temple examined. It had throbbed for the whole sleepless night, and in the mirror looked swollen and purple, as if a new embryonic brain were trying to grow out of the side of his head. It would be an occasion to see the new Jean-Klein.

  “It’s not great, but it doesn’t seem too bad, either,” Jean-Klein reassured him. “Avoid alcohol and drugs, perhaps.”

  Gabriel pretended that he h
ad not heard. “Is there no way to alleviate the pain? I don’t think laudanum is helping much. It’s not that painful, but it’s so constant that it’s driving me mad. Especially above my eye.”

  “Do you want me to give you morphine, too, like that friend of yours who I see hanging around here every day? Charming as he is, I’ll soon have to kick him out of the place if he doesn’t kick the habit himself.”

  “No, thanks. I prefer short-lived habits.”

  Jean-Klein thought about it for a while, then said at last, “I may have something for you. It’s a new therapy, which I find very promising but which is still in the testing stage. They’re looking for volunteers.”

  “And that would be?”

  “Magnetotherapy. Magnetic fields that are applied to the body, directly or indirectly, and seem to be efficient against various types of ailments. I hear it’s especially spectacular against muscular aches and neuralgias.”

  “It sounds a lot like suggestion, doesn’t it?” Gabriel teased Jean-Klein.

  “Except suggestion has nothing to do with it!” the intern protested pleasantly. “Our body is electrical by nature, so isn’t it only logical that it would react to electrical or magnetic stimulation? It’s happening in the Collège de France. The laboratory of Dr. Jacques-Arsène d’Arsonval. In fact, if you like, I’ll take my afternoon off and take you there. D’Arsonval is giving his leçon, and we can speak with him afterwards. That said, it may be more interesting for me than it is for you.”

  The Collège de France was located opposite the Sorbonne, midway up the rue St. Jacques.

  In a bare, yellowish classroom occupied by thirty or so happy few, d’Arsonval, half hidden behind a drooping moustache that made him look like an ancient Gaul, delivered a densely technical lecture involving the use of a “telephonic muscle”—or myophone—from a frog’s leg and used to transmit the human voice. Oh, those ingenious Frenchmen, thought Gabriel. Never a dull moment.

  The audience, though sparse, was elite, Jean-Klein explained. “That man over there is Étienne-Jules Marey, the inventor of the chronophotographic gun.”

  Brentford looked at him. “The …?”

  “Chronophotographic gun. A rifle to shoot not birds but pictures of them—it’s a camera with a revolving cylinder. He’s one of our greatest geniuses, in my humble opinion. And there, that’s Berthelot, a great chemist. He’s slated to be part of the next government, too.”

  Recognizing Jean-Klein as one of his warmest supporters, d’Arsonval was—as predicted—kind enough to receive him after the class, together with his protégé, taking them to his laboratory: a large, whitewashed, orderly place, full of generators, accumulators, resonators, and Leyden jars. A coil, looking like a cage, was suspended by pulleys from the roof—a device that would have made a mad scientist jealous. Somewhere near the laboratory, cats were howling desperately as they were taken from their cages for experiments, Gabriel supposed. “Personally, I use rabbits,” d’Arsonval said, with a wince. “Much less noisy.”

  He examined Gabriel and checked his blood pressure. “Ah, migraine …” he sighed, scratching his scalp under his not very academic casquette. “One of the biggest mysteries …”

  He motioned Gabriel towards a chair set in a wooden frame placed directly beneath the coiled cage, which was then lowered down around his head. Gabriel wasn’t too keen on the sensation. He thought of the howling cats.

  “It is a new method I am developing, which I hope will be less cumbersome than electrotherapy and equally efficient,” d’Arsonval explained, as he toggled a lever on a white panel full of dials. “The subject is exposed to a strong alternative electromagnetic field. Unlike electricity, the magnetic flow is not attenuated in the body, which is, so to speak, transparent to it. As for the use of low frequency, it causes no sensation of heat nor even muscular contractions, and it is really analgesic and quite sedative.”

  From time to time as he spoke, d’Arsonval checked the various meters and adjusted the dials by minuscule increments. “Now, the problem,” he said, “is that organs and nerves react to very specific frequencies, just as the retina or the eardrum do not respond to vibrations that are either too slow or too fast. So we always have to twiddle a little before we get the right setting, but there’s hardly a place in the body that we can’t reach this way.”

  Gabriel felt himself reddening, as if ashamed, and his face started to sweat. Whatever was happening was not painful, but neither was it comfortable. He could feel something like a tugging or a crawling on the top of his scalp, and a slight pressure on his left eye, as if someone were holding the ocular globe between grubby fingers. He closed his eyes.

  Then, suddenly, before he could say anything to d’Arsonval, his eyelids were filled with sparks. Fireworks of luminous dots and filaments, gold and green, exploded in his retinas, eddying into ever-changing, three-dimensional figures. The surrounding blackness heaved and deepened as they did, forming a fluctuating space, where the dots and lines aligned themselves, scattered, and regrouped again, sketching different patterns that remained abstract, but, if Gabriel focussed, turned into more concrete visions. Fountains. Mountains in the old Chinese style. Terraced fields. Trees in the breeze. The outline of a city.

  Vertigo seized him.

  “I see light,” Gabriel announced.

  “Ah, magnetophosphenes!” d’Arsonval explained with enthusiasm. “The magnetic flow excites your retinal neurons. It enhances what Helmholtz calls luminous chaos, the spontaneous lights that your retina produces. Very interesting. Perhaps it enters in resonance with the frequency of your eyeballs. Let me check the numbers; I’ll have to remember them. Thirty amperes, forty-two cycles per second,” he said, jotting down the figures on the page. “How are you, Mr. d’Allier? Stay with us …”

  But Gabriel said nothing. He watched the city that had just etched itself right under his eyelids like a engraving made of black and bright light.

  “Home,” he whispered, before fainting.

  IV

  The Astral Plane

  In the dreary, skyless afternoon, Brentford went back to visit Edgar de Couard in Ménilmontant. He had to knock for a long time before he was let in.

  “Forgive me,” whined the painter, stooping and casting furtive looks towards his guest while leading him inside the house. “I was doing my exercises.”

  “Exercises?”

  “Yes. Vision has to be exercised. It is a muscle like any other.”

  “Vision? As in eyesight or … second sight?”

  “Clairvoyance, if you prefer,” de Couard muttered almost inaudibly. “The art of the future will be visionary or it will be nothing. You see, Impressionism has been a wonderful step forward, but it was totally pledged to the here and now. The same was more or less true of Pointillism, with all its dreary social concerns. But there’s more to Man than reality, don’t you think? Now Painting has to win back the realms of Unreality. Do you know Moreau? Redon?”

  “Vaguely,” Brentford admitted. “But what you showed me yesterday was rather realistic. I mean in the way it was painted.”

  “Imagination deserves to be expressed as acutely as any other reality. It has to become reality, and not only for the sight, but for all the senses,” de Couard said, blushing at his own ambition as if he were confessing some shameful sin.

  They entered his studio. In the middle of the room, wide canvases hung side by side, wired from a roofbeam, each one bearing a different, simple symbol: a black reversed egg on a white backdrop; a blue circle on red; a silver crescent on a black ground; a yellow square on a shade of indigo; and a triangle, red on green. They were painted with such pure tones that they vibrated in the space and made Brentford blink—the figures seemed to hover above the background and their fringes pulsed as if the colours might run in the air. The blue circle, especially, sucked Brentford in, and he felt he could almost hear the static crackling of its wavelength. He closed his eyes, and the afterimage exploded in red, like a flaming sunset.

&n
bsp; “My,” Brentford said. “These are certainly potent. What are they?”

  “These symbols are tattvas,” de Couard whispered. “Ether winds that make matter vibrate according to their waves. Each one of them is connected to an element or sense, and can enhance its powers.”

  Brentford remained dubious.

  “So you’re an initiate of the Eastern mysteries? A theosophist?”

  De Couard timidly shrugged his shoulders.

  “Madame Blavatsky has left rather mixed memories here, but I think that in spite of the theosophists the Eastern tradition has been less muddled and abused than the Western one. So far, that is. I’m not exactly a theosophist, but I am …” he hesitated, but saw no reason not to go on, “an adeptus minor of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a British organization that has recently founded its first lodge in Paris. They were the ones who introduced me to Tattvic Vision. It is part of their curriculum.”

  “Golden Dawn. It reminds me of something.”

  “Ah, it is successful at the moment, I must say. Paris is a city of Isis and seems to remember it,” he answered, seeming reluctant to say more. “To go back to the tattvas, they function as doors to the astral plane. What attracted me to them is that they work according to the very same principles of complementary colours that rule modern painting. You concentrate on one of these symbols until the complementary colours flash on your retinas, allowing the vision. Just as in pointillism or in anaglyphs, truth emerges from the coincidence of opposites.”

  “Amazing,” Brentford mumbled politely. It always surprised him to realize that his immediate distaste for this kind of nonsense was more like a protective reflex against his own fascination with it.

  “The symbol becomes a door, through which you can project yourself into the astral plane.”

  “Astral plane? That’s a phrase I hear often, these days. Dr. Encausse—Papus—whom I met recently, seemed to use it a lot.”