New Venice 02 - Luminous Chaos

by Jean-Christophe Valtat

  Brentford walked back to Gabriel, propped against a lamppost.

  “Are you all right?”

  Gabriel took a while to absorb the question, thinking it over as if it were especially tricky to answer.

  “Thinking of high places,” he finally answered.

  “The I fell tower came to mind,” Brentford answered sombrely. “And you?”

  Gabriel simply shrugged, and Brentford knew him well enough to realize that this signified that he had an idea but would not share it. He was like a cat who would go off and hide itself to die in peace.

  When they finally reached the hotel, the desk clerk looked at them as if they were lepers. Brentford quickly convinced everyone to simply go to bed—Gabriel to an oblivious sleep, Thomas (Brentford suspected) to a rendezvous with a needle, and the Colonel to—what? Brentford wasn’t sure whether the Colonel ever slept. In fact, given events, he could now well imagine the old man—once the door was closed—with his eyes wide open, staring at the empty darkness.

  Staggering, finally, into his own bedroom, Brentford was surprised to find Lilian waiting for him, sitting on his bed. He was still more amazed to stumble over a body lying on the carpet—a woman wearing a domino mask and the skin-tight black bodysuit typical of the hotel thieves that the French called rats d’hôtel. She was tightly trussed up with tasseled curtain cords, apparently unconscious, and gagged with a lace handkerchief bearing Lilian’s initials. For a split second, Brentford felt so exhausted that dying the next day seemed almost like good news.

  “What in hell happened here?” he finally asked Lilian.

  “Sorry I missed the party,” she said. “I found your pneu after I came back from a café chantant. As I wasn’t sure if I’d still find you there, I thought I’d better come here. I’ve been waiting for hours now.”

  “I can see you kept yourself busy.” He knelt down next to the Hotel Rat and lifted the domino off her face. It took him some time to remember where he had seen her before: the girl who’d been with that big fellow—Swell-in-the-Sack—at the Ange Gabriel. Marie-Honnête, he had called her. This puppet had her strings attached, now.

  “She came in through the window,” Lilian explained calmly. “I was waiting in the dark, so she didn’t see me until … well, she didn’t see me at all, actually, although she did feel my presence when I hit her on the head with the candelabra.”

  Brentford checked that the hotel rat was indeed alive, then asked, “What was she looking for? Could you tell?”

  “This,” Lilian said, suddenly brandishing the magnetic crown.

  “Ah …” He wasn’t ready to tell her more yet.

  Meanwhile he wondered who had sent the woman, and decided it must be some accomplice of the Wolf gang. After all, he had seen with his own eyes that Papus, who coveted the crown, was in league with Hébert. In any event, he had promised the crown to d’Ussonville, and he would see to it that it was delivered tomorrow. As a parting gift.

  “Well, thank you, Lilian.” He was about to stand up, but it felt right, somehow, to be at Lilian’s feet.

  But Lilian waved his thanks away with a nonchalant gesture, as if she knocked out hotel rats as a pastime.

  “So did you hear from Sson?” she asked.

  “More than I would have wished.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Well … it seems that the price for the return ticket is somewhat high.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. What is it?”

  “Death,” Brentford admitted as soberly as he could. “We have to die tomorrow night for our souls to travel back to the fork in time. A little beyond that, even—I want us to go back to a time just before we left, to make sure that we’re all alive again.”

  Lilian nodded. “You mean we have to kill ourselves?”

  Brentford shrugged his shoulders resignedly. “Or be killed. The trick is that we have to think about New Venice at the precise moment that it happens.”

  “Don’t we do that all the time? Most of the time, at least.”

  “A clear picture is needed, apparently. I don’t get them that often, and can’t conjure them at will. That part worries me almost as much as the—well, you know.”

  Lilian was quiet for a long time before saying. “How do you think you’ll manage?”

  “Well, I was thinking about paying a visit to this crazy painter—Wait, what do you mean ‘you’?”

  Lilian looked so intently at Brentford that for a second he thought she was going to cry. “I’m not going, Brent,” she finally said.

  “What do you mean?”

  Lilian struggled to find the right words, then language tumbled out of her as if she’d finally decided there were no right words. “I told you, Brent. I’m in love. I’ve decided to stay with Morgane. I—I’ve been performing again. We’ve thought of an act—I’ll call myself Liane de Thyane, and sing in cabarets.”

  Brentford panicked.

  “But you can’t stay,” he said, remembering even as the words came out of his mouth that he was ready to leave Thomas with Blanche. “Not that I can forbid you.”

  “Of course you can’t. Especially as all you have to offer is death.”

  His answer was swift. “It’s New Venice that I offer you.”

  Lilian thought about it for a while as Brentford waited anxiously, surprised to find another death penalty within the death he had already accepted. Then she said, “You’ll return to a time just before we left?” and Brentford saw his mistake immediately. “If it works, then, you’ll find me there already, won’t you, whether I come or not? You’ll go back to that Lilian, and perhaps try to reconcile with her. You may think that Lilian is a bitch, but she likes you, Brenty boy. Perhaps you should try your luck.”

  There was little he could answer to this. He wondered momentarily whether they should go back to New Venice without her, but in the next moment he regretted his selfishness. The Colonel would find Tuluk again, and Gabriel would find, well, whatever it was that he missed in New Venice. It was the right thing to do, if there was such a thing as a right thing in this failed universe. He said, “I’ve been trying my luck a little too much lately. Will you make me one promise?”

  “If I can keep it, yes.”

  “Come with us to de Couard’s studio. We need your memories of New Venice as much as we need our own.”

  “Of course, Brent. I don’t see why I couldn’t do that.”

  “And another thing. I need someone to take care of the Colonel.”

  “Take care? You mean kill him?”

  “No. Just help him to pass away. I don’t think he’ll cause any trouble. He just lost his son, and—”

  “What? What son?”

  “Tuluk.” Brentford explained wearily, then told her of his death. There was a moment of silence, so full of Tuluk that Brentford could almost hear him breathe. “All I mean is, the Colonel is ready,” he concluded.

  Lilian heaved a sigh that chased the ghost away. “This one I’ll do because you asked me,” she told him. “Go back to New Venice and say hello for me, Brenty boy. For now, though, I’m going to my room, and I’m leaving you with this girl. She’s just the way you like them: pretty and quiet.” She stood up, and, much to his surprise, bent down and kissed him on the forehead. The warmth melted his brain.

  “There should be more men like you, Your Most Serene Highness. Good night.”

  Brentford watched her go, still on his knees, wondering whether a Highness had ever felt so low.

  Brentford had brooded as much as his exhausted brain allowed. The French, he remembered, called this “grinding some black,” and indeed he had ground enough black now to set up shop as an alchemist. Eventually he fell into a deep, dirty sleep, haunted by Arctic dreams wherein he found himself on an ice field, fighting a blizzard and repeating to himself, “To the north, to the north,” although he knew deep in his heart that he couldn’t go much farther. He crawled up a hillock and suddenly saw the lights of a distant city, and extended his hands as if to pick up
the golden fruits that lay in front of him. But as he did so he understood with crystal clarity that it was but a mirage, and that he would die there on the hillock. He lay on the snow and all he could hear was his heart, beating, beating, beating …

  Then Brentford realized that what he was hearing was a steady and brutal knocking on his door, and he roused himself to find Tripotte standing on the landing wearing a smug look. Murder was the first thought Brentford entertained, if only for a split second. But Tripotte hadn’t come alone. Surrounded by agents whose panoply apparently came with a filthy moustache, the bent copper waved a search warrant under Brentford’s nose, proving that from time to time official methods were not to be shunned, especially when they caused more hassle than the devious ones. Realizing that the stakes were high, Brentford quickly regained his self control.

  “Yes?” he inquired, as if Tripotte were just another door-to-door salesman.

  “We are here for a certain object that doesn’t belong to you,” he said brusquely.

  “If it doesn’t belong to me, there’s little chance that I have it,” Brentford answered, more curtly than he intended.

  His tone wasn’t lost on Tripotte. “This isn’t the time for bravado, Mr. Orsini,” he said.

  Brentford couldn’t help himself. “No, it isn’t,” he said. “Perhaps you could come back later?”

  “Enough!” barked Tripotte. “Let us in.”

  Brentford stood fast in the doorway, ready to play his trump card.

  “By the way,” he said, “since you’re here, I want to report an incident.”

  Tripotte was immediately en garde. “An incident?” he asked warily.

  Brentford stepped aside to reveal the hotel rat, who hadn’t budged an inch during the short night. “I’ve been attacked by a burglar.”

  The look on Tripotte’s face, embarrassed but not the least bit surprised, said it all. Indeed, he’d come to see what had happened to his confederate and, possibly, to retrieve the crown for himself and his other associates.

  “We’ll take care of her,” he said grudgingly. “Is anything missing?”

  “My patience, perhaps.”

  Tripotte’s teeth were clenched so tightly he could barely reply. “We’ll see if we can find you some while we search your place,” he finally got out.

  Despite his calm demeanour, Brentford was in a near-panic as he tried to remember whether Lilian had taken the crown with her or not. With a triple fisherman’s knot in his stomach, he watched the navy-blue-clad gendarmes rummage through his things, displaying, thank Cod, more enthusiasm than efficiency. They took so much pleasure in making a mess that it began to seem like the real point of the operation was to render his room a shambles.

  Half an hour later, among strewn shirts and burst suitcases, they had found nothing suspicious.

  The pacing Tripotte was furious, which made Brentford rather happy for the first time in days. “Well …” the policeman muttered as he prepared to beat his retreat. “There are other rooms to visit.”

  “That’s not what I read on your warrant, Commissaire,” Brentford said. “I wouldn’t want to press more charges were you to unnecessarily harass my colleagues.”

  The angry realization of his mistake led to another black stare. “Don’t worry,” he finally uttered. “You can trust that we’ll get other warrants. Now, if you’d like to come and report your incident.”

  “Oh, it can wait. I’ll drop by the prefecture this afternoon.”

  Tripotte extended a pudgy finger that Brentford would gladly have bitten off.

  “It’s not going to end here, Monsieur Orsini,” he growled, “and it’s not going to end well.” Behind him, the policemen charged with removing the hotel rat were doing more handling than was strictly necessary.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” Brentford answered, thinking that in a few hours he would either be dead, or back home, or both. He closed the door on Tripotte’s glaring visage.

  Brentford fell back on his bed, hoping sleep might return to him for a few last moments. But there was something a little different about his pillow—something hard. He slid his hand into the pillowcase and pulled out the magnetic crown. The one thing Tripotte’s men hadn’t inspected, he realized. It was then that he remembered his dream about the lights of a distant city.

  II

  The Commonwealth of Vision

  Brentford had no intention of paying a visit to the prefecture, not in this life or the next. By one o’clock he was banging the knocker on de Couard’s door, surrounded by the remnants of his diplomatic delegation.

  The painter was his usual shifty self—with perhaps a touch of embarrassment added. For one thing, he must have felt crowded by this sudden invasion of strangers, which included a woman, no less.

  But Brentford quickly sensed that something else was troubling him, even as he said, “I took the liberty of bringing some friends, in connection with a very urgent matter. A matter of life and death.” Realizing this was perhaps not the best way of putting his host at ease, he quickly added, “Not that it concerns you personally. It has to do with the work I commissioned.”

  “Ah …” de Couard stammered. “There has been a slight p-problem.”

  “I’ll take slight problems over serious ones, these days,” Brentford answered in a conciliatory tone. “What happened?”

  “It’s … the notes and sketches you gave me. They’ve been t-t-taken away.”

  The little mercury ball in Brentford’s stomach fell below zero. Cautiously, he asked, “Would it be indiscreet to ask by whom?”

  “I am not allowed to tell you … But there’s a little n-note for you.” The painter reached over to a pedestal side table and picked up a card that was white—pure white—and handed it to Brentford.

  “Gabriel, can I have your lighter, please?” Brentford asked.

  Gabriel, still looking exhausted from his out-of-body adventure, took the monogrammed silver Foley & Ruse lighter from his waistcoast pocket and handed it to Brentford, who coaxed a short flame from its sulphur pellet. Words slowly appeared on the card in French …

  Dear Mr. Orsini,

  We would be delighted and honoured to discuss your most fascinating documents. Please meet us at ten o’clock tonight on Lord Savnock’s yacht in the Arsenal Harbour.

  And please don’t forget the crown.

  S:.H:.H:.

  Whatever “S:.H:.H:.” meant, the note was clearly from d’Ussonville. And if the tone was not threatening, it was not especially benevolent either. It was, after all, more an order than an invitation. On the bright side of things, if they condemned him to death for disclosing information about the foundation of the secret city that would become New Venice, he wouldn’t have to worry about the way he would die, and he would certainly be thinking of New Venice at the fatal instant. But dying at the hands of the Sleeper—that was a cruel destiny, poletics at its most freezing cold.

  Brentford tried to pull himself together.

  “So,” he said with a sigh, “Monsieur d’Ussonville has paid you a visit?”

  At the name of d’Ussonville, de Couard seemed to nearly have a seizure. It amazed Brentford that a man with such a tremor in his hand could make a living in pointillism. But more than that, it amazed him to see the power the Sleepers held over people. Himself included, he supposed.

  “Yes,” de Couard began slowly, “… last night. He came to take his painting, the one I s-showed you—Villes. But he saw your sketches … and took them, too.”

  Seeing Brentford’s face turn a waxy shade of pale, the painter quickly added, “I worked all night to make another one—from memory.”

  Brentford was surprised that de Couard had taken such a risk, which amounted to an act of disobedience. Even if it had been done less for Brentford’s sake than for his own artistic pride, it was still commendable.

  “I’m very grateful to you,” he told de Couard.

  The painter rejected his gratitude with a slight shrug of his stooped shoul
ders. “I had to do it,” he simply said. “This city is …” But rather than find the end of his sentence, he invited the strangers to his studio. There, hanging from the picture rails, was a curious installation. Pencil drawings of the city, cut out in the middle to form smaller and smaller frames, were aligned in a perspective, so as to give depth and relief to the scene. It looked sketchy at first, and blurry in places, but drawing closer, Brentford could see that de Couard had seen the city right down to the most minute details, and in many respects, it was more precise than Brentford’s half-amnesiac scrawls. There were, he was sure, buildings he had not even remembered before seeing them in de Couard’s work. For a while he wondered if a vision of his own future as a New Venetian had played a part in the artist’s inspiration.

  Lilian had noticed, too. “You have a good memory of my friend’s memory, sir,” she said in her tentative French,

  “Oh, it’s n-nothing, really, madame,” he said, blushing like a glowworm.

  Gabriel suspected immediately that the man was still a virgin. If that was the case, his art was an advertisement for sublimation. The city, on these frail pillars of graphite, seemed to tremble like a mirage, and looked as if it might fade at any second. But it was there.

  “Monsieur de Couard, we need to use this painting for an experiment,” Brentford announced.

  “I don’t understand—”

  “We need a vision. As if we were seeing this city for real, as if we were there.” This, he knew, would interest the painter. “My colleagues and I need to concentrate together on the picture.”

  Brentford’s reasoning was this: if the Most Serene Seven had forgotten things about New Venice, they had not forgotten the same things. It was like a jigsaw puzzle of partial memories whose pieces could be made to fit together.

  And, as Brentford had expected, the idea triggered something in de Couard—more tics, of course, but also a certain curiosity.