The Big Book of Modern Fantasy

by The Big Book of Modern Fantasy (retail) (epub)

  There you are, you turn your back on the black window, you listen to the fish that move inside the walls, just behind the place where you are sitting, and, under that bluish light which softens the somber harshness of the night, you look at the carp and the ruffes, the sardines and the tench, the perch which appear abruptly, in silence, casting on the world a golden, inexpressive glance, and then release a bubble. The wall fish are saltwater fish and freshwater fish both.

  You don’t sleep. In the building, the neighbors don’t make noise, the yowling of the tiger-striped cats in the stairways isn’t too loud, but you don’t sleep.

  And then, one day a carp extends its head, an arctic carp, covered in silvered fur, a little gray-green. It extends its already rather large head, mustachioed, bewhiskered, and emerges from the cement a meter away from the couch, and, instead of releasing a deep midnight blue cubic bubble, it says:

  “Is anyone there? Is there a sheriff in the house?”

  You don’t respond. You don’t know if you’re supposed to respond. Then it says, this strange carp with its flabby lips, in a slightly hoarse voice, in a voice accustomed to the shadows of the wall, a voice a little damaged by repeated scraping against the cement inside the wall, it asks:

  “Is this where the Great Mimille lives?”

  I don’t know what you think of this, but as for me this type of question in the middle of the night makes me jump, and even makes me a little afraid.

  “For a sheriff, you’ll have to go elsewhere,” I said.

  That was last night. I was reading by the light of the cubes. During the night, when I can’t sleep and the yowling of the tiger-striped cats in the corridor isn’t too dreadful, I read books.

  “The police don’t exist anymore, but if you absolutely need to see a sheriff, I would advise you to go beat on a drum, in the ruins of the old police station. If you pound on it long enough, maybe a sheriff will come.”

  The carp stuck out its lips, with the pucker polar carp are capable of making when they pout. It had a murky, dark gray eye that transmitted no feeling, no emotion. It is in no way pleasing, to receive such a glance.

  “That’s what’s written on the door,” I added. “It’s posted.”

  I spoke to it, but I did not look straight at it.

  “What story are you telling, you and your drum,” it said. “You wouldn’t be Emilio Popielko, by chance?”

  “I am Bobby Potemkine,” I asserted. “Not so long ago, everybody called me Mickey. That troubled me deeply. But Emilio Popielko, no. Up until now, no one has called me that.”

  The carp burped softly. A cubic bubble had formed at the corner of its mouth, very blue, of a very intense navy shade. The bubble detached itself from between its lips and began to float, then it rose to the ceiling and mingled with the cubes already there above me.

  “I busy myself with strange cases,” I continued. “Otherwise, as to the police or sheriffs, sorry, I can’t help you.”

  “We’re not asking for your help,” said the carp. “Emilio Popielko, he’s the next sheriff.”

  And it belched out a new bubble. The bubble climbed to the ceiling. At the end of a few seconds, it was lost among the others.

  “We’re in the middle of building him.”

  “You’re building him?”

  “We are fabricating our next sheriff with whatever is available. With bubbles. We don’t have anything else.”

  At that instant, the carp withdrew its head inside the wall. The plaster closed itself back up. No trace of the place where the head had exited then reentered was visible.

  The room was again very silent. On the ceiling, the cubes pressed against one another, emitting a blue light.

  I laid my book down on the couch next to me.

  I picked up the telephone and dialed Lili Nebraska’s number.

  * * *

  —

  For those who no longer remember, or who have started this story in the middle, I’m going to give a little reminder here. Lili Nebraska is a friend, a street-violinist, brown like gingerbread, with splendid black designs on her cheeks and around her navel. When the police were done away with, upon her was conferred the task of resolving the most urgent cases; for example, the affair of the baby pelicans, and also the disappearance of the moon, and also the fabrication of the trembling tent. Ever since ceasing to exist, the police have been mainly confronted by strange conundrums, and, since these are a bit my specialty, I help Lili Nebraska as best I can. I am not a good investigator, but I give her a hand. For a long time, Lili Nebraska used the “Fruits and Vegetables” aisle of the minimarket that is next to the RER station parking lot as her workplace, but there was an infestation of mushrooms there. Snow chanterelles, very aggressive, if my memory serves me. The “Fruits and Vegetables” aisle became uninhabitable, for the chanterelles swelled noisily, occupied all the space, and exuded nauseating gases. Lili Nebraska had to move. Now, she lives in the same building as me, on the third floor. We like each other a lot, often we spend the night together.

  “Are you there, Lili?” I asked through the receiver. “Am I bothering you? Were you sleeping?”

  “I was in the middle of playing a slow waltz in D minor,” said Lili.

  I don’t know if you have ever heard Lili Nebraska play a slow waltz on her violin, but, if that’s the case, you know what happens next: you shiver from head to foot, you want to cry for beauty, you want to be very small forever and stay in the music, as if nothing else existed. And when it is a waltz in D minor, you are so moved your teeth chatter.

  We spoke a bit of music and emotion, both, for a quarter of an hour. And then, I told Lili the story of the cubic bubbles, without forgetting, evidently, what the carp had told to me, about this sheriff that the fish intended to build.

  “I have wall fish here on the third floor, too,” said Lili Nebraska. “And this doesn’t please me at all, this business.”

  “As for me, I find it bizarre,” I said.

  “Perhaps the police will have to take care of it,” Lili reflected.

  “The police no longer exist,” I reminded her.

  “I know, Bobby,” said Lili. “But we’re the ones replacing them for the moment. Whether we want to or not, we are the only ones who can solve strange problems.”

  We chatted for a moment longer about current investigations. None were resolved. But, at least, the files were open, and there was a chance of one day arriving at a result, even if the chance was slim.

  Finally, we decided to see each other right away about this fishy affair.

  “Do you want me to come join you on the third floor?” I offered.

  “No,” said Lili. “There are huge tiger-striped cats in the stairways. I know how to speak with them better than you. They don’t claw me when I come near. And also, I would like to see where things are at, at your place, with your bluish cubes and your wall carp.”

  “Okay,” I said. “But bring your violin. S’il te plait. I would like very much for you to play one or two slow waltzes.”

  Lili hung up.

  I started waiting for her. I glued my ear to the door that opens onto the landing of the seventh floor, because that’s where I’m in residence, now, on the seventh. I heard cats as big as tigers come and go in the hallway, I smelled the very strong odor of piss that floats in their wake. Drafts whistled. A door without a lock flapped in the icy wind, in the darkness, no doubt on the sixth floor where nobody lives. From time to time there was a grunting, from time to time there was a roaring. No matter how much I concentrated on the sounds, I did not distinguish anything that could be Lili Nebraska’s footsteps.

  Then Lili knocked, but against the window-pane. She had scaled the façade. I opened the window and had her come in. She entered, very cute, adorable even. She had put a bracelet of black pearls around her left wrist and, as far as clothing went, apart from t
he violin case that she wore bandolier-style, that was all. She had, on her upper cheeks and around her navel, the black designs that I always found splendid. I kissed her on the designs.

  “It’s a cold one,” she said. “I came up on the façade because there were two new tigers on the third floor landing. Not very accommodating. They barred my path. They started spitting as soon as I wanted to move forward. I didn’t insist. They weren’t listening to what I was saying to them. They frightened me.”

  I closed the window again. Outside, needles of snow flew by horizontally. The sky was horribly black. A rain of meteorites was brewing and the wind screamed as it mixed the ice crystals. But apart from that, calm reigned again in the town, above the streets of the town.

  “There is going to be a rain of stars,” I said. “You arrived before it was triggered, fortunately.”

  Lili Nebraska set her violin on the table. She was trembling.

  “If you had an eiderdown, my Bobby,” she suggested, “I would voluntarily put myself under it. An eiderdown or a blanket.”

  I went looking for a quilt. She sat down on the divan, wrapping herself in it. I showed her the places where the fish had burst through the plaster and released a bubble, the place where the carp had pushed its head out to speak to me. Lili listened to me attentively. Above us the bluish cubes shone.

  “You know, Bobby,” she said at the end, “fish in the walls are nothing extraordinary, when you think about it. If they want to stick their heads out, eyes expressionless, and spit out a cubic bubble, you just have to get used to it. It’s not very bothersome. And plus, on the ceiling, the cubes make a rather pretty light. But it’s this business of the sheriff that changes everything.”

  “It looks like they want to bring back the police. What is he going to be like, their Emilio Popielko?”

  “I don’t know,” said Lili Nebraska. “In any case, we have to open an investigation.”

  “We must above all stop them from bringing back the police,” I said.

  Lili silently agreed. Outside, the wind had ceased, as it often does when the world prepares for a rain of shooting stars and meteorites. In the room, there was practically no light, except the slightly phosphorescent, blue-toned light that fell from from the bubbles up above.

  At that instant, the wall crackled behind my back, and a fish sidled its chest out of it, it had stuck out its head to just behind the gills. It was a rather large head. I am not very gifted when it comes to identifying species of fish, but here you could hardly be mistaken. It was the head of a monkfish. I don’t know what you think of them, of monkfish, but I find that they have a completely appalling appearance. You are not at all tempted to engage in friendly conversation with them. Rather, you want to bring the interview to a close as soon as possible, hoping that you will soon cease to have before yourself their immense flabby mouth, their brownish, warty skin, and their cloudy gray eyes ringed with lifeless gray.

  “Is anyone there?” asked the monkfish.

  It wasn’t looking at anything in particular, its eyes had no life to them, they appeared blind.

  Lili Nebraska rid herself of her blanket and went to place herself in front of the large head. She took on a police-like tone.

  “Might we know what you want?” she asked.

  “I’m looking for a sheriff,” declared the monkfish with its warty head, its enormous and flabby mouth.

  “What sheriff?” asked Lili Nebraska.

  “The Great Mimille,” said the monkfish.

  “There is no Great Mimille here,” said Lili Nebraska. “Would you be confusing him with a certain Emilio Popielko? That’s a name that has already been pronounced within these walls.”

  “Emilio Popielko or the Great Mimille, it’s all the same,” snickered the monkfish.

  I shivered.

  Finally, on the question of monkfish and their appearance, I still have not heard your opinion, and perhaps you don’t find them truly ugly, these creatures. But as for me, when they start snickering, it gives me the creeps. Their faces become frightening, so monstrous that a shiver runs from my head to my toes, and, this time, it was not like when Lili Nebraska plays a slow waltz in D minor on her violin; I didn’t want to cry for beauty, not at all, no. Oh, no. Not at all. Just the opposite.

  “And when his fabrication is complete,” added the monkfish, “you will no longer be able to say that the police no longer exist. You’ve been warned, my little lady.”

  Lili Nebraska shrugged her pretty shoulders. Like you, like me, she hates being called my little lady.

  “What do you want to do with a sheriff?” she asked. “Do you need one as much as all that?”

  The monkfish did not respond. It was in the middle of fashioning a bubble, a dark blue cube, midnight blue, shining, gelatinous, almost as large as its enormous head.

  Other fish had emerged from the walls, next to me or on the wall that divides the living room and the kitchen. They were barely visible in the darkness, but you saw the bubbles that were forming at the corners of their lips.

  “Is anyone there?” questioned the head of a sardine. “Are you there, Emilio?”

  “Emilio Popielko or the Great Mimille, it’s all the same,” remarked a tench’s head. “Emilio, are you there? Your manufacture, it is advancing?”

  “Is there a sheriff there?” questioned the head of a gilt-head bream. “Is this where the Great Mimille lives?”

  We didn’t answer, Lili and I. We were sitting against one another, under the blanket. These fish heads, which were suddenly appearing to call for the Great Mimille, which were speaking in the darkness, which attached no importance to our presence, which were looking around outside of the walls and giving you the impression that they saw nothing, which chewed their cubic bubbles before releasing them to the ceiling, which wanted the reestablishment of the police, these fish heads absolutely did not please us.

  “I have rarely come across anything so bizarre,” said Lili Nebraska. “Starting tomorrow, we will put all our efforts into this matter.”

  “All our efforts,” I sighed. “It will require at least that.”

  I went and placed myself near the window. Those days, I often looked out the window, at night, in order to not have to contemplate the inside of the apartment, with its darkness, its fish heads, its bubbles which had invaded the ceiling and which glowed.

  I started to examine the country outside. I saw nothing, everything was very dark, as always when a rain of loose stones announces its coming from the sky. Suddenly a first meteorite pierced the clouds. It threw itself toward the ground, squealing, and a muffled rumble was heard at the moment of impact, with a thousand and one jingling windowpanes, and the music of the glass debris spreading itself over hundreds of meters of sidewalk. I turned toward Lili Nebraska.

  “Don’t be afraid, Lili, it fell far away. I believe it’s in the ruins of the police station.”

  “There’s not much left of that police station,” said Lili.

  “That must have destroyed the remains,” I supposed. “Don’t be afraid.”

  “I’m not afraid,” lied Lili.

  I heard her teeth chattering.

  Outside a new star pierced the clouds with an ear-splitting cry. The sky reddened for a second. There was a thud, shards of glass tinkled a little bit everywhere in town. I too began trembling with fear.

  I slipped under the blanket right up against Lili Nebraska. We wrapped ourselves up, I rubbed her back, her stomach, her wings and her feet, and she, she warmed me as best she could. It was very cold outside of the blanket. We spent all night shivering against one another, like little animals in a burrow. Above the town, the sky opened, the stars whistled and rumbled, croaked, hooted, vibrated and, around us, the fish stuck their heads out of the walls without seeing us and released cubic bubbles that climbed toward the ceiling.

  A little befor
e dawn, the rain of stars ceased. We shuddered for a quarter of an hour more then got up, both of us. Lili Nebraska went to look for her violin, she tuned it, and she began to play. She played a fugue in C major and then a slow waltz in D minor. The music was so beautiful that I began to shiver again from head to toe.

  * * *

  —

  In the bathroom, the water was freezing. The faucet spat little flecks of snow that pattered on the enamel of the shower stall. The day broke behind the windows. Inside the apartment, the atmosphere was still Siberian, horribly cold. Lili rubbed herself while gritting her teeth, and then, when I in turn had come back from the bathroom, she wrapped me in big, fluffy towels and encouraged me to wriggle about to warm myself up. I did some exercises and then I came back to press myself against her for a few minutes. She kissed me so that I would stop moaning from cold. I like it a lot when Lili Nebraska kisses me.

  We continued to shiver for another moment, then, as there was no other solution, we got used to the low temperatures again. And then, we started to work on the case of the Great Mimille.

  “You ought to make inquiries of your friend the wooly crab,” suggested Lili Nebraska.

  “Big Katz?”

  “Yes, Big Katz, the wooly crab. He’s your friend, right?”

  “It’s true that he is more familiar with fish than us. But for the past several months it’s been difficult to talk to him.”