Ophelia had wanted to come across as resolute, but she heard her own voice treacherously cracking at those last words. Thorn stared at the tear rolling onto his thumb; his eyes were opened so wide that his scar just kept expanding.
“I must insist,” he muttered, increasing his fingers’ hold around her face. “Never again accost me from behind my back, or from any of my blind spots. Don’t do any movement that I can’t see coming in advance, or then warn me out loud.”
The transparency projector continued to flash sporadically. With each gleam, Ophelia saw Thorn under a new light: his withdrawing, his sidestepping, his reclusive existence, that distance he carefully maintained between himself and the rest of the world. “You no longer have control over your claws?”
Thorn narrowed his nostrils and pursed his lips. His entire face seemed to have shrunk at once. “I can contain them if they don’t see you as a threat. Which is why you must follow my instructions and avoid triggering defensive responses. You can’t afford to be absentminded with me, it’s as simple as that.”
“But how did it happen?” Ophelia stammered. “Could the injection of my Animism have destabilized your family power?”
Thorn’s eyebrows quivered. “Does it disturb you?”
Ophelia knew then that this loss of control was more humiliating to him than his physical handicap. Thorn hadn’t deliberately used his claws against her that last time. He hadn’t even been aware of it.
She promised herself never to tell him about it.
“No,” she replied, looking him straight in the eye. “Now that I know, I’ll be careful.”
Thorn stared at her with an almost brutal intensity. Ophelia was suddenly acutely, painfully aware of that emptiness she had felt gnawing inside her for the past three years. She began to shake. She was not afraid—she was no longer afraid. It was a vibration rising from the very roots of her being. The pressure of Thorn’s fingers on her hair first strengthened, and then suddenly relaxed, as his hands fell. He cleared his throat.
“You . . . My toolbox is under the bed in my room. Could you bring it to me? I must find a new microfilm viewer and get back to work, but to do that,” he said, grimacing as he tried to bend his knee joint, “I’m going to need my leg.”
Ophelia’s most self-centered side took over. “Is there really such a hurry?”
For the first time in an eternity, Ophelia saw that slight twitching of Thorn’s lips that she’d never known how to interpret. To her surprise, from one of his pockets he took out the old fob watch, which opened and then closed its own cover to show him the time.
“In fact, there is. A bit more than that, even. I have got until the end of the inauguration ceremony to find the book the Genealogists asked me for. Beyond that deadline, if I have nothing to offer them, they will make Sir Henry disappear from circulation. Could you bring me my toolbox?” he asked again, putting away his watch.
Ophelia stared at Thorn in disbelief. “They will make Sir Henry disappear from circulation,” she repeated, in a subdued voice. “You are Sir Henry.”
“It’s merely an identity the Genealogists created for me. They can withdraw it from me at any moment, and hand me over to God, or even worse. Which they will do without the slightest hesitation if I don’t give them what they expect from me before dawn. My toolbox, please.”
“You knew from the start that your days were numbered, and never mentioned it to me?”
“It would have been counterproductive to tell you about it.”
Ophelia didn’t know how Thorn did it, but he had a knack for turning her upside down. A moment earlier, she was resisting the desire to throw herself into his arms; now she was resisting the desire to slap him. “But why ally yourself to people like that? Why always put your life in danger like this?”
As he tried, with difficulty, to lift himself up against the bookcase, Thorn suddenly seemed to notice the scattered paper, metal, and glass all around him. Compulsively, he checked his cuff links, and then his shirt collar, as if he feared being contaminated by this mess.
“Because my life is the only thing I feel I have the right to put at stake. My toolbox, if you please. And a flask of disinfectant, while you’re at it.”
“But why?” Ophelia asked, impatiently. “Why inflict that on yourself? Why force yourself to defy forces that are beyond you? And don’t talk to me again of a sense of duty. You owe nothing to the world. What’s the world ever done for you?”
Thorn’s constant frown suddenly relaxed; but not enough to remove the furrow down his forehead.
“You think it’s for the world that I’m doing this?”
The tension electrifying his body immediately intensified, tightening his jaw and hardening his eyes. It was then that Ophelia realized that what she had always taken for determination was, in reality, true rage.
“God said he would keep his eye on you,” he muttered, in a choked voice. “Right in front of me. I make a lamentable husband, but I permit no one, particularly him, to persecute my wife. It’s impossible for me to tear you away from God, but I can tear him away from you. And that’s what I’m going to do at once, as soon as you deign to bring me that confounded toolbox. If a book exists that contains God’s secret, and allows his invulnerability to be punctured, I will find it.”
Ophelia held Thorn’s stare in a stubborn face-off, and then got up and went to fetch the toolbox under the bed in his room.
“Repair your brace and forget your microfilms,” she said, as she brought it to him. “I know where that book is.”
THE DRAWER
Ophelia cut through the crowd, against the tide. She had been first to leave the Secretarium; being seen in public with Thorn would have attracted attention, and there were still too many people in the Memorial. The visitors who had come for the ceremony were now following the Genealogists through the collections. Their silence was so respectful that, despite their number and the vastness of the place, one could hear the couple’s sensual voices from the other end of the atrium. They were taking it in turns to ask the Memorialists highly technical questions about how the new catalogue worked. The launching celebration was turning into a veritable inspection.
Ophelia thought she could see Lazarus’s big, white top hat beside the couple. She hoped he would remain there for another hour or two, long enough for she and Thorn to do what they had to do.
She made for the exit, carefully avoiding meeting Blaise, Elizabeth, or Zen, who might have felt obliged to say a few comforting words to her over the loss of her wings. She would try to say goodbye to them properly once this book business was finally over.
Before going through the main doors, she had a last look at the golden figures now going up the southern transcendium, hand in hand, like two solar stars. Thorn may have had no choice but to ally himself with them, but the more Ophelia saw of them, the more convinced she became that they were dangerous. Giving them the book would solve one problem, only to create a new one in the future. “Never mind,” she thought, leaving the Memorial. “We’ll deal with that when the time comes.”
We. Just that word produced an unexpected shiver in the small of her back. She sat down on one of the entrance steps to wait for Thorn. She could still feel the irritation on her chin left by his beard. She lifted her nose while taking a deep breath of the warm evening air. The sunset’s rays glimmered on the leaves of the mimosa trees and on the constellation of aircraft. The stormy sky had the changing consistency of some concoction in which contrasting colors combined but never managed to blend. Ophelia was about to put herself back in danger, and yet, at that precise moment, she was feeling unbelievably good.
“Do we know each other?”
She turned her head. Sitting on the same step as she was, on the opposite side of the staircase, a giant man was staring at her with an awkward smile. It was Pollux. Ophelia had taken him for one of the bronze statues. The dusk brou
ght out the night of his skin and the fire in his eyes. His huge hands were distractedly leafing through the cutaneous pages of his own Book, like some fellow would have flicked, half-heartedly, through an unfathomable novel. He looked more like an abandoned child than a venerable patriarch. There was something surreal about this scene, when hundreds of his descendants were on the other side of the doors.
“You remind me of someone,” Pollux insisted. “Generally, no one ever reminds me of anyone. I find it hard enough to remember the name of my own twin. But you,” he said, with a note of melancholy in his cello-like voice, “the more I look at you, the more familiar you are to me. Do we know each other?”
“Not personally,” Ophelia replied. “I’m a descendant of Artemis.”
“Artemis,” Pollux murmured. “I believe I do indeed remember one of my other sisters who goes by that name. Is it her you remind me of? I no longer even know why exactly I got this out,” he said, casually turning a page of his Book. “I’m so absentminded . . . ”
When Ophelia came over, Pollux stared at the tiny gloved hand she held out to him. His smile became hesitant, almost concerned, but, finally, he obediently handed his Book to her. This tome, which seemed so light in the family spirit’s fingers, required Ophelia to use the strength of both arms to hold it. She scanned the writing tattooed onto the skin of the pages, that code to which no one in the world, except God, had the key.
“There,” she said, indicating the barely visible edge of a torn-out page. “That was your memory. That’s what you were looking for. You won’t find it because someone tore it away from you a long time ago. I’m so sorry.”
Ophelia returned the Book to Pollux, whose big eyes were blinking with stupefaction. “Do we know each other?” he asked again.
She didn’t reply to him, but his distraught expression moved her. Shortly, he would have forgotten this conversation. Maybe it was better that way. Maybe it was better to maintain the family spirits’ ignorance of what they really were.
Ophelia was relieved to see Thorn emerging from the Memorial at last. He had buttoned the prestigious LUX uniform over his shirt, and, judging by the stick he was using to support his steps, he hadn’t managed to refine the mending of his brace.
She followed him at a respectable distance as he headed for the ark’s platform. They waited each in their corner, looking in opposite directions, and once aboard the birdtrain, each chose a different bench. These precautions were perhaps excessive given the few passengers traveling at this time, but, publicly, Sir Henry and Eulalia were mere acquaintances.
Ophelia noticed, with a tightening in her throat, how Thorn positioned himself so as not to have anyone around him. They exchanged not a flicker of a look throughout the journey, and yet she had never felt so close to him. He sat as he usually did, rigid and impassive, but Ophelia could tell how nervous he was from every tap of his index finger on the chrome knob of his stick.
She would have liked to sit beside him, to reassure him, to tell him that she knew exactly what she was doing, even if that wasn’t entirely true. She might know the location of the book, but she still didn’t know what it contained.
As the birdtrain prepared to land on the terminus tracks, rocked by a squall and rattling from every carriage, Ophelia got that feeling again: the unshakeable impression of being watched. It was much stronger, even, than an impression. Her ears started ringing loudly. An icy chill coursed down her back. She turned on her bench to inspect the last passengers. In the Pole, Ophelia had already been tailed by an Invisible. This feeling wasn’t remotely comparable. To her, it felt as if Terror itself, after following hot on her heels, had melted into her shadow. Was the killer who had terrorized Mademoiselle Silence, Professor Wolf, Mediana, and Fearless there, with them, in one of the carriages? Ophelia knew for certain that she knew him personally, without being able to put her finger on his identity.
She wasn’t sorry to leave the birdtrain.
She followed the metallic clicking of Thorn’s stick along the platform, avoiding, like him, the halo of the lamps. Night had fully fallen. They were both nothing but black silhouettes against an inky backdrop. The darkness enhanced the resinous scent and rustling of the needles from the umbrella pines around them.
“From here on, we will walk,” Thorn announced in a low voice. “We must avoid the inspection patrols. You are not supposed to wear the virtuoso uniform anymore, and the dress code is no joking matter for these people.”
Ophelia agreed. She had retrieved her false papers before leaving the Good Family, but she’d left her civilian toga there.
“I’ve only been to Lazarus’s place once. I’m not sure I can remember the way.”
“I can,” Thorn said. “I memorized the maps of the whole city on my arrival in Babel. That address isn’t next door, let’s not waste a second.”
They crossed a succession of badly lit building sites without encountering anyone but opossums. The city was as deserted at night as it was bustling during the day; Babelians were all as virtuous as well-behaved children. Ophelia turned around several times to check they weren’t being followed, but the anxiety that had gripped her onboard the birdtrain had disappeared.
“Are you annoyed?” she asked. She couldn’t see Thorn clearly in the gloom of the neighborhood they were now walking through, but there was something about his stony silence and the relentless banging of his stick that was a bit more than impatience. Ophelia might have sound legs, but she found it difficult to keep up with the rhythm he was imposing on them. It seemed barely believable that this man, of whom she lost sight around every street corner, had kissed her two hours earlier.
“I’m thinking,” Thorn muttered, without slowing his pace.
“You’ve been looking all this time for a book that I swiped. You have every right to be exasperated.”
Two sparks in the dark indicated to Ophelia that Thorn had just turned his eyes toward her.
“If you hadn’t removed it from the Memorial, Mademoiselle Silence would have destroyed it, and with it my only chance of survival. What bothers me about your story is strictly mathematical in nature.”
“Mathematical?”
“It took me more than two years to set up qualified reading groups in order to examine all the collections closely. The first book you inadvertently take is the right one. Your propensity to distort statistics is alarming.”
Ophelia frowned. She recalled that great day when she had discovered the Memorial with Ambrose. She saw herself again knocking over and then picking up the books by E. G. that had been on Blaise’s trolley. She felt as if she could almost—almost—remember that fleeting moment when she had slid The Era of Miracles into her traveling bag. Was that why Mademoiselle Silence had been so insistent on checking inside it? Had her ears recognized the characteristic sound of the book inside?
“It wasn’t really inadvertent.” She kneeled on the pavement to retie a lace that kept tripping her up. “I mean, part of me didn’t pick that book by chance. Part of me recognized it. Part of me wanted to appropriate it.”
“Your other memory,” Thorn commented.
“I try hard to understand where it comes to me from and what it wants to tell me. I would have liked it at least to bother to explain to me what this children’s book knows of God. But that,” she concluded, doubling the knot in her lace, “we are going to find out very soon for ourselves.”
Thorn stared at her with such piercing intensity, she lost her composure. Above them, lanterns buffeted by the wind cast a shuddering light.
“When this business is sorted out, we must talk, you and I.”
“Must talk about what?”
“When this business is sorted out,” Thorn simply repeated. With the steel-tipped end of his stick, he pointed at the columns of a portico on the opposite side of the square they had just reached. Ophelia recognized the star-reflecting pools of water lilies surr
ounding the property. They had arrived.
“I hope Ambrose will be at his father’s,” she whispered as they walked along the columns. “It was to him that I entrusted my bag; he’ll return it to me without a fuss, if I ask him to.”
She refrained from mentioning the adolescent’s sudden change in attitude once she had entered the Good Family. He hadn’t even deigned to turn around, deliberately ignoring her calls, the last time she’d seen him, on the birdtrain platform.
When Thorn hammered one of the entrance doors with the knob of his stick, an automaton came to open.
“Is Ambrose here?” Ophelia asked.
“NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE TO A WILLING HEART.”
Thorn marched in. “We will manage on our own.”
Ophelia looked around the atrium, where modern appliances blended in with historic architecture. The lamps attracted swarms of moths. There were only statues there, and the portrait of Lazarus, twinkling mischievously behind his pink spectacles.
“Ambrose?” Ophelia walked through the extensive series of rooms, their marble echoing her every step. Returning, after all these months, to the first house to have welcomed her in Babel gave her an indefinable feeling. Thorn accompanied her, walking stiffly and leaning increasingly heavily on his stick.
“I find them disturbing,” he muttered. All the automatons of the residence had gathered to follow them at a distance. They seemed unsure of the correct approach toward these visitors who invited themselves like this into their masters’ home. There was nothing hostile in their behavior, but sensing such a crowd of faceless mannequins behind one didn’t feel very comfortable.
“Ambrose?” Ophelia called out again, entering another room. Thorn indicated to her to listen carefully. There was a noise coming from the back of the property. It didn’t really sound like Ambrose’s wheelchair; Ophelia thought it more likely to be the juddering of a washing machine.
The Memory of Babel Page 35
