New Venice 02 - Luminous Chaos

by Jean-Christophe Valtat

  “Well, all that might make some sort of sense regarding the current situation in France. But I still don’t see what Blankbate had to do with these butchers.”

  “From what I gather, the wolves are run by a local trash tycoon named Hébert. Blankbate may have been scavenging in forbidden territory and found himself the perfect offering for their cult.”

  “And where can we find this Hébert? I suppose turning to the police will do more harm than good.”

  “I have a hunch he is more the kind of person who finds you.”

  Brentford sighed, his eyes closed in deep thought.

  “Perhaps the Colonel is right; we should forget about this story for the moment and simply watch our backs. There are so many things going on that I was beginning to forget about de Lanternois and the magnetic crown. I feel he is the key to our next step … the next step towards home.”

  “Oh, by the way,” Gabriel said, as he got up. “I forgot something, too. A trifle, really. I met d’Ussonville again, prowling in the streets of Montmartre under the name Captain Boulogne, and apparently he’s hatching a plan to blow the Sacré-Cœur to bits.”

  Brentford stared at his cup of coffee as if it were the slough of despond. He eventually nodded and muttered, “Oh, great.”

  II

  Ladies’ Delight

  It was so foggy at the abbatoir in La Villette that morning that you couldn’t see the clock in the esplanade from the nearby entrance gate, and the pavilions of the slaughterhouse loomed uncertainly as the queue of Blood Drinkers advanced towards them. In civilian clothes for once, Thomas checked the muffled silhouettes around him to make sure that Blanche wasn’t among them. Knowing her as he did (which was, he admitted, too little), he guessed that she didn’t actually visit as often as she claimed and that perhaps she had only been putting on a show when she had brought him here earlier. Thank Cod, in any event, that she wasn’t there now; he didn’t want her to see him with Lilian, who was walking beside him in moody silence. Even if they didn’t mention it, the two of them shared something: blurry visions of their lovers softly sleeping between warm sheets.

  The queue snaked towards its destination, its fits of chesty coughing diffusing steam into the mist, breaking Lilian’s reverie with the way it reminded her of a herd about to be sacrificed. She noticed with revulsion the painting above the door of the scalding-house, which showed a man in a blue butcher blouse slitting another man’s throat. MORT AUX JUIFS, the legend above it read. No one else seemed to even notice it.

  She nudged Thomas.

  “See that fresco over there?”

  “Oh. I didn’t even see that when I was here the other day. What does it say?”

  “ ‘Death to the Jews.’ ”

  Thomas raised his eyebrows.

  “Why would they want to kill the Jews?”

  “They probably don’t know themselves,” Lilian said, in a quiet but contemptuous tone.

  A faint smell of blood and manure, rising from the greasy ground, pervaded the place and made her feel queasy. The Butcher-Boys waited in aprons, with defiant looks, charged breath, and knives on their belts. As the cow was brought to the gate, people shuffled and fanned out as if to get a better view. Lilian was among them, taking special note of the man whom the others called Le Bzou, who wielded the merlin, his muscles bulging under his shirt as if they had been cast in bronze. As Le Bzou lifted the hammer, Lilian recognized the curious hook at the back: it was the same object that she had seen on the optogram. She closed her eyes and the merlin came down with a squishy thud that brought her heart to her lips. She tried not to think about Blankbate.

  “Over there,” Thomas suddenly whispered, nodding towards the entrance arch of the pavilion. Lilian took a quick glance. Two men were at the end of the queue, spectral shapes just emerging from the fog. One was an old man in rags, the other a tall officer with a red uniform under his cape and a pith helmet above his long sad face. Something black and shiny appeared at the end of his right arm, as if he were carrying a weapon, but it wasn’t clear from that distance.

  “The old man,” Thomas whispered, “He was the one with Blankbate. And I met the other one, too. He’s not the kind of figure you forget. He knows Blanche.”

  “Blanche?”

  “The girl we saw at the séance, remember? She was the one who first brought me here.”

  In Lilian’s mind, the jigsaw puzzle that had been Thomas’s whereabouts during the past few days was suddenly completed. But now there was a new conundrum to exercise her mind.

  “What do these two have to do with this … Blanche?”

  “She seemed to be very troubled by the sight of the old man. As to the Major,” he added with disgust, “he claims to be a very good friend of hers. I’ll go and talk to him.”

  Thomas walked briskly across the few yards that separated him from the two men. As he approached, he could see the old man hunch up like a hedgehog, but Yronwoode kept his uncanny composure—half man, half tin soldier.

  “We meet again, Major,” Thomas said, full of morphine poise, as he saluted the British officer, then turned to the other. “As to you, sir, didn’t I see you here two days ago? You were with a tall fellow, with a beard and tinted glasses, you remember?”

  The old man looked at the Major as if in panic, then said something in French that Thomas didn’t need translated to understand—the old man simply wanted to get away.

  “Do you know the man I’m talking about, Major?”

  “Listen, Mr. Paynes-Grey,” the Major said. “I have already taken the occasion to warn you about getting involved in all this. None of it is your business—and you should believe me when I say that that’s rather good news for you.”

  “Partons …” the old man begged.

  “I am sorry to insist, Major,” Thomas said firmly. “But that man was a friend of mine, and the last time I saw him alive was with this person.”

  Lilian was too far away to hear anything, but she could feel the tension just by watching Thomas’s back. It quivered like a wild horse’s. She felt a twinge of remorse about the morphine solution Morgane and she had so lightly offered him. It was then that she saw Swell-in-the-Sack.

  He was walking up along the queue, a few steps away. She lowered her head, congratulating herself on the veil she wore, but he was not paying attention to the Blood Drinkers: his eyes were fixed on Thomas and the two men. He put his fist in his pocket, clenching something. Lilian immediately sensed the danger.

  She lifted her head, and then her veil.

  “Well, if it isn’t Mr. Swell-in-the-Sack,” she said softly as he walked by.

  The handsome ruffian’s eyes lit up as he recognized her. Lilian had been right in assessing him. He might pride himself on his manhood, but women were his weakness. She noticed—it was hard to miss—the purplish gash that flashed along his right cheek. She also noticed that he was one of those men who seem embellished by their wounds. Up to a certain point, at least.

  “Why! It’s Pirouette’s chaperone! Come here for a little thrill, did you?”

  His malevolent mien had abruptly given way to an easy charm that Lilian could well imagine effective, despite her distaste for him. He was a steamroller of relentless seduction. Many women must have surrendered while knowing all the time that the charm was only a show, but it was not a bad show. Somehow, and unlike the spiel of most men, you felt it had content.

  “Not the thrill I expected,” she answered.

  “There may be other kinds,” Swell-in-the-Sack said. Lilian wished she had a gramophone to record the crapulous and honeyed tone of his voice.

  “I’ll show you the sights, if you wish,” he went on softly, his eyes indicating an open door on the side of the abattoir.

  It would soon be Lilian’s turn to drink from the frothy blood that was bubbling on the ground. She knew her stomach could not take it. Not that it could take this fellow, either. But perhaps, besides keeping him away from Thomas a little longer, she would learn what the devil
he was doing here, among the Butcher-Boys, and why he had been so wound up to see the Major and the old man talking to Thomas.

  Swiftly stepping out of the crowd now elbowing its way to the fountain of blood, she followed Swell-in-the-Sack through the door and into the abbatoir. There, hanging from hooks, rows and rows of mutilated carcasses extended into the distance, it seemed indefinitely, waiting to be sold in the Carré de Vente. Lilian thought of Blankbate again and a shiver ran through her as she looked at the red scarf around Saturnin’s neck.

  He stopped and turned towards her, his half-mittened hand caressing one of the carcasses. He had broken, unclean nails, but his slender fingers were beautiful, and he obviously knew it.

  “I didn’t know you worked here,” Lilian said, trying to sound more troubled than she was and surprised it came to her so easily.

  “Oh, I used to, some years ago, and I still have a lot of friends here. But I decided that I much prefer to deal with meat that’s alive and smiling.”

  Lilian felt her blood rushing to her face, and knew from the passing smugness of his smile that he took her flush of anger for a blush of sudden arousal. That he could even think this, however, only stoked her fury.

  It was already too late for the conversation she’d been hoping for, and the situation now struck her as terribly unseemly. Already Swell-in-the-Sack had taken a step towards her, lightly placing a large hand on her arm. Lilian looked at him a little from below, her head slightly inclined, her eyes flashing “Don’t you dare,” and then again she saw that he understood this as “Please, no,” which, in his huge pocket dictionary, evidently translated as “Please.” It maddened her that every one of her reactions seemed to him like an invitation. He moved his head an inch closer, and beamed a sparkling smile. His teeth were so white they reminded her of the rib bones that she saw all about, and for a moment she was dizzy, raw meat whirling all around her.

  “I’m glad you’ve thought things over since yesterday,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about you myself.” He announced this as if it were an especially flattering compliment. Lilian shook herself from her paralysis.

  “That’s when you hit that lamp post, I suppose,” she quipped, nodding towards the gash on his cheek.

  His smile froze and his grasp tightened on Lilian’s arm. Before she could react, Saturnin’s face loomed close before her, a blur in which his smile seemed a red wound, as if he were smiling with his whole wound.

  “I’ll show you how this happened,” he whispered hoarsely.

  Lilian tried to push him away, but he was too strong. She turned her face from him, her gloves fumbling for a purchase on his clothes. He slapped her hands away and moved against her. She now could feel his breath and the way he pushed his pelvis against the front of her dress. Lilian quavered as she felt his powerful fists wrinkle her dress and slowly raise it above her ankles and her calves, crumpling her petticoat as they went. Suddenly, he dived for her mouth. Lilian closed her eyes, and as the lips brushed hers, took a deep bite. She felt the blood spurt in her mouth, strangely insipid. Saturnin cried out, losing his grip a little.

  “You bitch!” he spat out.

  He still had hold of Lilian’s dress, but he’d staggered back a step. It was her chance—her legs freed from their cotton cocoon, she kicked him in exactly the right place to fold him at a right angle. Swell-in-the Sack knelt down with a squeal, and then moaned in agony. She thought about what Pirouette had told her: Au bonheur des Dames—Ladies’ Delight.

  Drawing a long hatpin out of her chapeau she pointed it at him like a stiletto.

  “Well, that’s Ladies’ Delight to me!” she hissed. “If you ever try that again, I’ll burst your eye like a rotten grape. See if the women still like you with an eye patch beside that hideous wound.”

  Swell-in-the-Sack looked up at her, his anger, disbelief, and pain fighting for control of his face. Anger won, and he was about to leap for her throat when a voice barked behind them, “Lilian, what are you doing here?”

  It was Thomas. “Who is this goon?” he asked. “Hey, I know him. He was here the other day. He spoke to Blanche.”

  Swell-in-the-Sack, still on the ground and throbbing with pain, seemed less inclined to avenge himself. Someone called from outside in a language neither Lilian nor Thomas understood, though Thomas thought he had heard it before. They watched Swell-in-the-Sack hesitate: he could answer the call and get reinforcements, perhaps even Le Bzou, the colossus with the hammer. But Lilian could read on his face that he felt no desire to be found on his knees with another dishonourable wound, and one received from a woman at that. Proud little bastard, she thought. He looked up at them with wounded hatred. Thomas grabbed Lilian’s hand and dragged her back into the fog and away from the slaughterhouse.

  “I couldn’t get any information about Blankbate,” he explained later as they waited for an omnibus on rue d’Allemagne. “The old beggar was clearly troubled to see me again, but you should have seen his face when he saw your little friend talking to you in the queue. He utterly panicked. That’s why, when I saw you following him inside, I thought something bad was happening, so I followed you.”

  “Very chivalrous of you, but by then I had done the hard part,” she said, patting him on the back. Then, as if distracted, she said, “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Swell-in-the-Sack had something to do with Blankbate’s death.”

  Thomas took this in and frowned. “I really have to speak to Blanche about this straightaway.”

  III

  Father Tonnerre

  City Isle lay like an ice-bound ship in the middle of the Seine, the funnels of Notre-Dame standing out against the empty skies. On the quay, a sleepy Gabriel bought a one-sou coffee in a large, white, cracked-china bowl from an old woman who promised him it was “hot as hell, black as night, and sweet as sin.” Hot and black it certainly was, and having gulped it (straight from the crack, of course), he headed with a springier gait towards the archbishopric nestled at the side of the cathedral.

  Introducing himself to a mummified concierge, he asked to see Father Tonnerre, mentioning M. de Gourmont’s recommendation. For half an hour he waited in a drab corridor, meditating on a crucifix that shone pale in a slant of sickly light and finding it one of the most depressing objects he’d ever laid eyes on. He had been brought up a Catholic, in a family that had counted so many priests in its number it was a miracle that there was still a family. He had been tutored into stupor—perinde ac papaver—by a murder of Jesuits. In spite of all this, or more probably because of it, he had never felt the faintest spark of faith kindling his selfish little heart.

  Living in New Venice had more than once put his sceptical mind to the test, and certainly the nights he had had telepathic contact with the Polar Kangaroo, brushed the hair of a part-time Eskimo goddess, and started an affair with hermaphrodite albino Siamese twins born from a dead woman in a crystal castle on a mythical island, had mightily extended his sense of possibility. Not to mention his book-demon tattoo, which, though he’d gotten it as a joke when he was a student, now actually helped him find books. So it was no wonder that even he now had his moments of metaphysical musing.

  Recent events had worsened that tendency in him, but even so he was surprised to find himself looking for even vague comfort in the religion of his childhood. What did he really expect from one those priests whom he had always regarded as little more than solemn clowns with a smattering of second-rate Latin? Nothing miraculous, surely. The content in itself was not that important. After all, magic, like poetry, is the art of conjuring real effects from imperfect metaphors. Hocus-pocus, robes and masks, sparks and smoke—anything was welcome as long as it kicked open the doors of the cellars and attics of your mind. He supposed that the abracadabra of his own family tradition was, whether he liked or not, always going to be the thing that had the strongest influence on him, something that would resonate within his deepest memories. Still, all he really expected of it was to be disappointed.

  What di
d not disappoint him, however, was Father Tonnerre’s appearance.

  He was bulky more than tall, hiding his coarse face behind a grizzled beard that reached down to his chest, beneath which a charred, twisted crucifix was stabbed into the belt of his frock. He wore no socks with his sandals, as if the wool would be inconveniently soft when it came to trampling Satan’s face. His eyes were sparkling with a light that could hardly be described as heavenly. He looked, in short, like a man who ate demons for breakfast and washed them down with a full bottle of communion wine.

  “Yes?” he inquired, with a passable stab at geniality.

  “Gabriel d’Allier. I’ve come to you on the advice of Monsieur de Gourmont.”

  Father Tonnerre’s furrowed brow informed Gabriel that there were better credentials, but still the priest invited him into his office, a place that was painstakingly designed to reassure the visitor of its occupant’s total contempt for the luxuries of this world. That didn’t help to elevate him in Gabriel’s esteem.

  “I have to pray first. It is the normal procedure,” he said as he knelt on a prie-dieu and made something of a show of it for a moment. But then he got up and sat behind his desk, and spoke with a refreshing straightforwardness.

  “As it was Monsieur de Gourmont who sent you, I don’t expect anything edifying.”

  “I cannot speak for him,” Gabriel said, “but my interest in these matters is, unfortunately, not merely bookish, and I am grateful for his help in finding someone who can help me. I have been … visited.”

  Tonnerre heaved an audible sigh, but his eyes winked rapidly. “What sort of visitor? We get many visitors in this country today. I doubt he left his card.”