“I spent the day with her, and she bought me a new dress at the Bon Marché!” she said, twirling her skirts around herself with a radiant pleasure that disarmed the disciplinarian in Brentford.
“Lilian asked me to take care of her,” the Colonel explained. “She had an appointment somewhere. This child has kept me good company. Very bright for her age, isn’t she?”
“Oh, yes. Quite advanced,” Brentford mumbled. “Forgive me, but I think it’s bedtime for little girls and clockwork colonels.”
He saluted the muttering head and, taking Pirouette’s hand, took her back to Lilian’s room, where again he knocked to no avail.
“What did Lilian tell you?” he asked her. “Was it an appointment or a date?”
Pirouette bit her lips, making her cheeks look like those of a little animal keeping food in its jowls. “I’m not saying.”
“You’re just the recruit I needed, Corporal,” he sighed, patting her on the head and leading her off towards his room.
But hearing some din behind Gabriel’s door as he passed, he deposited her safely in his room and walked back to investigate. He entered to find Gabriel sitting on a chair mounted on a low wooden table and holding a metal rod in his hand, like some demented fisherman, while Tuluk busied himself noisily with what seemed to be a Wimshurst influence machine. Where the two of them had gotten it and what they intended to do it with it was beyond imagining. Brentford decided he’d rather not know, as a matter of fact.
“Doesn’t anybody ever sleep around here?” he inquired.
“Can you help us with this, Brentford?” Gabriel asked. “It’s an old static bath machine that Jean-Klein sent me from his lab this afternoon. It’s for my headache. I tried magnetism but it did strange things to me, so I was prescribed electrotherapy instead. Jean-Klein didn’t have the time to do it himself, but he thought I could handle it.”
Brentford sighed, tried to smile, and looked at the machine. It was nothing very complicated: eight ebonite disks inside a glass case, rotating counterclockwise, producing a polarized high-frequency current. Gabriel, holding one of the rods, was to be one of the poles, while the operator, holding the other rod, would be the other. When the operator’s magic wand approached Gabriel’s charged body, the current would flow, more or less powerfully according to the distance between the two rods. Whether it would do any good to anyone was another question.
“What’s the problem?”
“We got lost between poles,” explained a perplexed Tuluk. “Mr. d’Allier is to be the negative one.”
“You don’t say. Please, Tuluk, turn the crank,” Brentford directed. “And, you, Gabriel, move your wand closer so I can check the polarity.” Brentford took up the rod that was directly connected to the machine and lit a match. As he held the match closer to Gabriel’s rod, nervous threads of violet light trembled and jumped between the discharge rods.
“That’s the positive one. You’re all set, I guess,” Brentford confirmed. “And oh, before you get fried, did you catch anything today?”
“I just met Stéphane Mallarmé,” Gabriel answered.
“The poet?”
“With a capital P, if you don’t mind. He read some poems about a future palatial city. Quite interesting. Even the bits I didn’t get. Which was most of it. Well, all of it.”
“Future palatial city? I thought that was Rimbaud?”
“It seems the topic is fashionable. Although I did look at Rimbaud’s Illuminations this afternoon. There are a lot of Arctic references, indeed. Including, if you can believe it, ‘The Splendide-Hôtel, built in the chaos of the ice and the polar night.’ Rummage through your fading memory and tell me if it reminds you of anything.”
“My wedding,” Brentford said sombrely. “I wish I had forgotten that. The chaos still haunts the place, if you want my opinion. So, seriously, you’re telling me that the first and best New Venetian hotel d’Ussonville built is actually something out of Rimbaud?”
“Quite literally.”
“It’s amazing.”
“I wonder if the fact that I saw d’Ussonville at the lecture tonight would diminish your amazement or, on the contrary, increase it.”
Brentford stood enraptured. “You saw d’Ussonville? At Mallarmé’s?”
“I even spoke to the man. Meet thy maker, I told myself.”
“And?”
“He pointed me back to Vialatte, for some reason.”
“Vialatte belongs to the Polaris Guild, as I have just learned.”
Gabriel nodded at this smooth clicking of the universe. “And interestingly,” he went on, “d’Ussonville gave as the alibi for his presence the fact that he was on the selection board for the 1900 World’s Fair.”
“A future city again.”
“I’d go so far as to say that the mysterious man behind de Couard’s painting was not Lord Lodestone but Louis d’Ussonville, who, it seems, is in league with art critics of vaguely anarchist leanings. Who knows how many of the Seven are here?”
“And did you tell him that you will some day turn his grandchildren into debauchés?”
“They debauched me, Brentford. But no, of course not. I would hate the man to give up building New Venice just because of my little quirks.”
Suddenly an enormous violet spark flickered in the room, and Tuluk was catapulted back a yard and landed on the floor.
“Are you all right?” Brentford asked, as the Eskimo, when he came to, tried with great difficulty to get up. The hair on his fur pants bristled with static.
“I am. Thank you,” Tuluk eventually said, between deep, uneasy breaths. “I think this stupid Inuk has made a little mistake.”
“You may want to ground the machine, after all …” Brentford suggested, looking doubtfully at the wiring that sprouted out of the Wimshurst. “Just pass this chain round the pipes. Well, maybe not the gas pipe, Tuluk …” Then he turned towards Gabriel. “Do you really expect to accomplish anything by this method, besides blowing the hotel to bits?”
“Jean-Klein told me it was safe. And do you know you can also absorb drugs this way, directly through the skin? I may try that someday. For now, I wondered if one could see better visions this way. I’d like to take a stroll in New Venice. I came really close today.”
Brentford disapproved of the method, but he understood the motive.
“I am probably going to use an Indian technique called tattvas that de Couard told me about, for exactly the same purpose,” he told Gabriel. “We’ll share the results and see who does best. Be reasonable with the drugs, though. I don’t feel like going to the Ivry cemetery every other day.”
“Don’t worry, Brentford. It’s under control.”
“That is, in my experience, exactly what every addict says … Sorry, Gabriel, I’m a bit overwrought. But I see we have every reason to be excited. One of these days, we’ll stroll in New Venice again.”
IX
The Dead Rat
It was almost two in the morning when Morgane and Lilian entered the Rat Mort—the Dead Rat—on the Place Pigalle. To Lilian, the ground floor looked like a normal enough restaurant, but upstairs, Morgane told her, was where the action was. And when they topped the stairs, Lilian saw it was true: amidst panels that represented anthropomorphized rats at weddings, revels, and funerals, a wavering crowd sparkled under greenish gaslight—mostly women, as Morgane had promised. Befurred, behatted, bejewelled, entramelled in the leashes of impudent poodles, they moved in a heady fog of cigarettes and perfume and addressed each other with laughter and nicknames. A gypsy band racked the air with shrill guitars and yelps. Champagne flooded, as the French say.
“So this is the place,” Lilian said to Morgane.
“The place, yes.” She stopped a girl carrying a basket of flowers and bought a nosegay of violets, which she offered to Lilian with a little curtsey.
“Well, thank you. You’re such a gentlewoman.” Lilian smiled, radiant, and sniffed the flowers.
“Just don’t snort too h
ard, Lily. The coco is in the middle.”
“Cocaïne! Is that how it’s done here?”
“Sweet, isn’t it?”
Lilian had thought herself a worldy sophisticate who had seen it all, but since meeting Morgane, she’d felt like a debutante. And Morgane, she suspected, liked it that way. They circled, looking for a table.
“Hey, look who’s here,” Lilian said suddenly.
It was the long figure of Lord Lodestone, reclining on a red plush seat, his eyes half closed, a moribund smile on his flushed, sweaty face as he nodded approvingly at the women passing before him. His eyes met Lilian’s, and in the half-light she thought she detected a wink.
Then he sprang to his feet and, two strides later, was holding her hand for a baise-main. His breath reeked of spirits as he spoke.
“Ah, I was waiting for you.”
Lilian and Morgane looked at each other.
“You mean … us?” Lilian managed to ask.
“I meant it more generally, perhaps—you or someone like you. But I could not have found better. There’s a cabinet reserved in my name upstairs. Would you care to join me for a very informal supper?”
“We are not interested in private cabinets with men, I’m afraid,” Morgane said quietly.
“Clearly. Nevertheless, I believe you’ll enjoy yourselves, and you are exactly the women I am looking for. So, no offence taken and none intended, and the invitation stands.”
Morgane was about to refuse again, when she felt an elbow in the ribs and heard Lilian say, “We’d be delighted, sir. Just give us a moment to freshen up.”
“I’m glad to hear that. I’ll be at the bar. Freshening up.”
“Is my nose clean?” Lilian asked, turning from the powder room mirror.
“Yes. And pretty.”
Morgane kissed Lilian’s nose, but then frowned as she asked, “Why did you accept his invitation?”
“I’d like to get to know him better, although not in the sense you mean—”
“I mean nothing, Lily, and any sense would be all right with me. I would be a poor medium if I were not a little open-minded. It is just that I can feel that this man is dangerous. But maybe that’s what you like …?”
“Not especially. I’d like to think of myself as the dangerous one tonight.”
“That’s the coco. Dance with it, but don’t listen to it.”
They left the powder room and asked a waiter for Lord Lodestone’s private cabinet.
“Ah, Lord Lushington, you mean. I’ll escort you there.”
“The waiter called you Lord Lushington,” Lilian observed as she sipped champagne. “You’re known by many names, aren’t you, Milord?” She trembled slightly as she spoke, for, after all, she had been a New Venetian child raised in awe of the Seven Sleepers. But the cocaine, she hoped, would make a lucid, confident woman out of that little girl.
Lodestone snorted. “Lushington! It’s just a joke. The most efficient way for an Englishman to stay invisible in Paris is to play the role of Milord l’Arsouille. They expect it—the rich, kinky rounder, who throws banknotes around like ticker tape, snorts drugs, canes little girls or boys, and suffers from a severe case of nostalgia for the mud. Or nostalgia for the slush, more appropriately, these days.”
“If I may say so, you play the part perfectly,” Lilian cracked. Morgane glanced at her with a flash of concern, preparing herself to intervene, in case Lilian went too far, and so didn’t expect what came next.
“Not as perfectly as Miss Roth plays hers,” he riposted. “That was a very thrilling séance that I had the good fortune to attend.”
“I am glad you appreciated it,” Morgane answered cautiously.
“Yet you seemed to be troubled by my friend’s question that night, Milord,” Lilian interjected.
“Both you and your friend seemed to have been troubled by my trouble. Should I put this down to the compassionate nature of that somewhat primitive but warm-hearted creature known as the Canadian?”
This was delivered with an imperceptible chill that Lilian understood as a formal invitation to dispense with further sarcasm.
“I fail to see what is wrong with compassion,” she answered, more cautious than chastened.
“I must confess myself not quite familiar with it,” Lodestone answered, this time with the obvious intention of appearing intimidating, although a bit too obviously to be taken too seriously. Perhaps, Lilian considered, it was meant as more of a warning—the kind of warning a man of his sort would surely call “benevolent advice.”
He leaned forward on the table, and she noticed that the slur had evaporated from his speech. “To get back to the topic at hand,” he said, “there is something that did strike me about the séance: that you proposed, and proved, that men are unnecessary to hypnotism. I wonder how much further you would be ready to push that argument.”
“With all due respect, further than you might think, Milord,” Morgane replied.
“I may think further than you realize, Miss Roth. Let us go all the way, then, and get straight to the point: in what ways would a society ruled by women, a gynocracy, if you prefer, be better for humankind than a society ruled by men?”
They both thought about it for a moment, and then it was Lilian who said, “It simply makes more sense.”
“In what ways? I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name.”
“Lilian Lake. It makes more sense both in terms of religion and of society.”
“A religion, really? Please explain this to me.” His query dissolved in an ironical tinge that displeased Lilian but did not deter her.
“Very well, Milord. But you’ll have to concede first that religion can be defined as what regulates the relationship of what is ephemeral with what is permanent.”
That coco must have been good, thought Morgane.
“That’s probably the best definition I’ve ever heard,” Lodestone admitted, sounding genuinely impressed.
“Then,” Lilian went on somewhat impishly, “you will recognize that the masculine principle, for some physiological reasons that are well documented, cannot claim to be such a permanent principle, cursed as it is with its sorry state of impermanence.”
“I’m surprised that this impermanence could be a concern for such a beautiful woman as you are,” Lord Lodestone answered with what men sometimes consider gallantry, and women plain vulgarity.
Lilian shrugged off this interruption. “It would be more logical to have a ruling principle that wouldn’t be subject to such accidents. Hence I would choose the feminine principle as the permanent everlasting source of all being.”
“I have no objection to this,” Lodestone said, pleasantly enough. “But how would that apply to social matters?”
“Would you have no objection either, Milord, to defining society as what regulates the relationships between men and, chiefly, the relationships between men and women?”
“You are a true little Socrates, Miss Lake. The perfect intellectual midwife for such great dunderheads as your servant. I still have no objection.”
“By social regulation of the relationships between men and women, I mean family bonds, marriages, births, inheritance, and so on—am I still correct in describing these rules as the cornerstone of any society?”
“Certainly, you are correct,” Lodestone said, growing visibly amused.
“Now, central to family bonds is the notion that sons are the children of their fathers. But, alas, it is a well-known fact that it’s not always possible to prove such a claim, and that patriarchy, by insisting on ascertaining fatherhood, actually undermines its own legitimacy. Only the mother knows who its father is. Accordingly, a matriarchy seems to me the safest and most sensible way to found family, and hence society, on a stable, certain principle. Especially as it’s consistent with the Mother religion we talked about earlier.”
Lord Lodestone applauded quietly.
“Very convincing, and I fully agree with your reasoning,” he said. “I may not come to the
same conclusions, however. Regarding religion, I would rather bypass the two principles you describe as a slightly vulgar Punch and Judy show and go a little farther towards the source: Light and Darkness, these are good principles to start with, considerably more far-reaching when it comes to the universe as a whole than the masculine and feminine, which so far only exist on our very parochial planet. Now, regarding society, your reasoning, once again, perfectly satisfies me. But history, I’m afraid, has decided otherwise, and however notoriously poor are Reality’s arguments, they are not to be easily contested. I doubt very much that men, as long they refuse to be enlightened by these truths you imparted to us with such zest, would be ready to relinquish their powers to Mother Nature, for Mother Nature, you know, has not been as loving towards her sons as she imagined. She is known to have been squint, cruel, and more than a little obsessed with death. ‘Can mercy be found in the heart of her who was born of the stone?’ as the Indians say of Kali. We have had to grow up alone. We have had to invent our own permanence, find our own path into the light, build our own world.”
“Like building cities…” Lilian murmured.
Very softly, Lodestone took Lilian’s wrist, and then squeezed it so that she felt he could break it like a twig. He leaned towards her, a broad smile on his broad face, and whispered gently, “I like games, Miss Lake. But this one you are playing, it has to be played very well, you understand?”
She pulled her hand away with a swift tug. “Have I played it well so far, Milord?” she asked, trying to withstand his glare.
“Almost perfectly, Miss Lake. Almost perfectly …”
If Lilian doubted Lodestone was dangerous, she soon had proof of it.
They walked out of the Dead Rat at about four o’clock in something that by no means looked like the morning. They all needed a little stroll in the fresh air, and Lodestone offered to escort them down to the rue Pigalle. But as they started down the street, the shadows became alive with ominous silhouettes, and by and by, a group of thugs gathered around them, intent on blocking their way.
New Venice 02 - Luminous Chaos Page 27