“So there may be something to those—what was it?—Palladian Masonic lodges that Encausse told us about. Where they were printing ‘antichurch’ pamphlets … We should look into that, don’t you think?”
“Yes. Why not?” Gabriel said, unconvinced but willing to try anything that would take them back to where they belonged. “Before we freeze in here, preferably.”
The upper stretch of the Champs-Élysées seemed to be better off than the rest of the city. At the end of the garden, near the circular Ice Palace—a name that triggered a conniving smile between them—Brentford and Gabriel observed an army of blue-clad street sweepers cleaning the road with military discipline, while behind them a dozen other workers pushed a huge wooden contraption designed, Brentford guessed, to plane and resurface the remaining layer of snow.
“They’re taking care of appearances here, aren’t they?” Gabriel remarked.
“Well, where images rule, they have to remain visible.”
The Canadian Commission was located just off the Champs-Élysées on rue Montaigne. It had been there little more than a decade, representing a Confederation not yet in its thirties and with little official involvement yet in diplomacy or foreign affairs. Introducing themselves as Canadian citizens, Brentford and Gabriel were promptly received by a French Canadian with red hair in an unruly cut, a long face that was liberally freckled, and a clever but fiendish look.
“Alexandre Vialatte,” he introduced himself. “Monsieur Fabre, the General Agent, cannot receive you at the moment, but I am his secretary. I’ll do my best to be useful.”
As happens via life’s mysteries sometimes, there was an immediate and mutual sympathy between Vialatte and the New Venetians, which did not stop the latter from some subterfuge.
“Brentford Orsini from Annapolis Royal,” Brentford said, fumbling for his best Nova-Scotian brogue.
“Gabriel Daley, from St. Anthony,” Gabriel added, overplaying his Newfoundland accent.
Vialatte nodded, visibly amused.
“I’ll get straight to the point.” Brentford said. “We are in Paris for what you might call a secret mission …”
“You’re not going to tell me on whose behalf, I suppose.”
“Oh. Friendly powers. Very friendly. That should not concern you. You have my word of honour on this point.”
“I understand. Please go on.”
“We have recently been in contact with a local officer of the Sûreté. Tripotte is the name. From what I understand, he’s in charge of some infamous ‘B Notebook.’ ”
“And, for discretion’s sake, you would rather not be in it? I understand, but I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do for you,” Vialatte said.
Brentford persevered. “Actually, we are perfectly happy to be in the notebook. But as certified Canadian subjects, declared such by yourselves. And it would be great if you could confirm as well that a certain Jean-Charles Leclou is actually French Canadian.”
“Oh, yes, Leclou. Buried this morning, right? Your friend Tripotte was pestering me about him yesterday, but I did not want to give him the impression I knew him when I have nothing on any Leclou whatsoever. But tell me, don’t you have papers certifying that you are, as you say, Canadian subjects?”
“More or less, yes,” Brentford admitted. “But we think a word from you would do more to placate Monsieur Tripotte and his ilk.”
“ ‘More or less’? I suppose you could say that all Canadians are more or less Canadians, at the moment. But, pardon my frankness—” he insisted, tapping his pen impatiently on what Gabriel observed was a copy of Tardivel’s Pour la patrie—“Are you, or are you not, compatriots of mine? I’d like very much to know the facts, before I decide whether or not to lie to the French police.”
“I am, as I said, a Newfoundlander,” Gabriel said. “I suppose it will be a couple of years before we join the Confederation. But I don’t think the difference should matter to Monsieur Tripotte, and I do already see myself as Canadian.”
“Oh, you’ll be one eventually, I suppose. Perhaps more than I will ever be,” Vialatte said with a smile, exaggerating his Québécois accent a little.
“Well. As I said, I was born in Nova Scotia,” Brentford conceded, which was true, since it was customary for children of New Venetians to be raised under somewhat milder climates until they were seven. “But I admit that since then, I’ve lived a bit off the map.”
Vialatte stared at them, puzzled but interested. “Off the map? You mean unexplored areas? Up north?”
Brentford and Gabriel looked at each other and decided to take the chance. “Farther than that,” Brentford finally answered, feeling a thrill of expectation as he waited for Vialatte’s reaction.
Vialatte tapped his pen against his desk, a half-smile on his face. “Interesting. There seems to be a lot going on up north these days. Strange dealings, indeed. Not that I am at liberty to say, really …”
“Would that be around Ellesmere Island?” Brentford tried.
“That’s as good a guess as any other, I suppose,” Vialatte answered, approvingly. “So you’re part of that, are you?”
“Maybe we are,” Brentford said, dying to actually be a part of whatever took place on Ellesmere Island circa 1895.
Vialatte leaned forward over his desk and whispered, “As a matter of fact, a certain gentleman was here but two days ago to discuss certain matters with us. Very delicate matters, I may add. But I suppose that’s no news to you, who are familiar with friendly powers.”
“Oh, we are but minor figures in all this,” Gabriel assured him.
“I see,” Vialatte answered, a bit sombrely, as if he regretted having said too much.
“So, regarding Tripotte …?” Brentford pressed.
“To be frank with you, I’ll gladly mislead Monsieur Tripotte for no other reason than that it would give me the greatest pleasure. I find him a thoroughly unsympathetic man. And what I know of him is not likely to make me change my mind.”
“What do you mean?” Brentford asked, expecting more rumours about the Wolves of the Woods of Justice.
“He’s one of those French coppers who put a little butter in their spinach, as they say here, by being on payroll of the Okhrana.”
“The Russian secret police?” Gabriel asked.
“It is run here by a certain Rachkovsky, a very devious fellow. Rich and cunning. From what I gather, his policy is to encourage anarchist agitation here and in Britain so that they pass harsher laws against foreigners. To this end, he has recruited former or actual Sécurité officers to pass along files on political refugees, so as to infiltrate them with informers and provocateurs. We Canadians may be drifting away from the Crown, but there are still some aspects of British law that I am not willing to abandon. Respect for individual freedom and liberty of conscience are among them. So, actually, if you want me to tell Tripotte or any other Okhranist scum that you come from the moon, I’ll gladly do that.”
Brentford tried to suppress a smile of relief. “Canada will be enough, if you don’t mind,” he replied.
“Canada or what’s left of it,” Vialatte said, with a smile neither Gabriel nor Brentford was sure he understood.
IV
The Eskimo Explorer
As soon as he left the “North Pole,” Tuluk walked down the rue de Clichy all the way to the boulevards. He breathed deeply, relishing his freedom. The trip to Paris had been pure nuanangilaq—no-fun time. It reminded him of the bleakest days of winter, when he was a young Inuk, forced to remain for days in a cramped, smelly igloo while a blizzard raged outside. It can drive people to murder, this absence of solitude and space. One of his cousins had stabbed another, just because he could not stand to stare at the other’s big belly any more, just inches away from his eyes. “I couldn’t help it,” the cousin had explained. “He was so fat …” But the nightmare journey was over now, and Tuluk felt like walking for hours. No matter where he went, he would not lose himself. The whereabouts of the Grand Hôtel des Écoles
remained constantly tugging in the back of his mind, and at any given time, he could easily spool his way back.
He had been told that the city had a problem with the snow and the cold, but he couldn’t understand what it was. It looked solid and rich, this city, and so what was wrong with a little snow? It was the inhabitants who were the problem, Tuluk reckoned. They did everything wrong, from the clothes they wore to the vehicles they used. They were trying to fight snow and ice without realizing that these elements can be protective, easy to work with, even fun. They had to wait for their food to come from outside, like infants. Their helplessness was pathetic, when you thought about it.
But he understood as well that the Seven were also helpless in their own situation. He was not quite sure what that situation was, but neither were the others, it seemed. The idea of being trapped in time made no sense to him, perhaps because, after all, the Inuit had always lived secluded in a time of their own, and whatever history they had was endlessly recycled into tales for the too-long evenings. What had happened to him and his companions during the trip seemed one of those stupid things that would only concern the whites, with their way of always putting themselves in desperate muddles just for the hell of it. And it would be a white who would get them out of here, sooner or later. That was the kind of thing they were able to do, when they set their minds to it. Sometimes it seemed they could do anything. Except cope with a little snow.
For the time being, though, he found Paris a fascinating place. The boulevards, for example, were amazing. They were wide and deep and apparently endless, making the Marco Polo Midway or Barents Boulevard look puny by comparison. There were more people here than he had ever seen put together, busy like black flies on the long white backbone of the road. The houses were high, their ground floors a row of cosy restaurants and dazzling window displays. The whole place had the distinct sheen of money, Tuluk reflected, that mysterious white magic that enlarges buildings, sharpens angles, and refines details, that is warm to the eye and cold to the touch.
And he discovered that he liked being among so many people. At the beginning of his life in New Venice, the crowds had troubled and aggrieved him. They were so big, he simply could not get them inside his head. But now the lights and the noise were in his veins, and he could not imagine himself going back to a life that consisted simply of hunting, eating your hunt, and talking about your hunt. Maybe it was because he was half-white, even if he had never known his father, some burly Scottish sailor or, perhaps, seductive explorer. Other Inuit he knew had never gotten over meeting the qallunaat. Some fell for the life and drank until they were crazy. Some went back to the old ways and suddenly found them too harsh and senseless. And not a few had killed themselves. Tuluk would be as white as his survival demanded. It was as simple as that.
He ogled white women as he made his way along the avenue, and he blushed when his gaze was returned. Sometimes it was the man who walked with the lady who stared back, in anger, and Tuluk found it amusing to answer with his best murderous look until the man averted his eyes and lowered his head. But none of these women was as well-mannered or smelled as good as the ones he had visited in the red-lanterned house at 63 Boulevard Quinet yesterday, prompted and funded by the Colonel, in exchange for a report. They had been very nice, although it was a shame that they wore no tattoos on their faces.
He had walked a long way, effortlessly, as if the sidewalk were taking him along, vaguely looking for some more red-lanterned houses, thinking that more women might await him, and that he still had a few francs from the Colonel’s purse, when a man stopped him in front of a fancy building, showing him the archway with insistence. Tuluk entered, passing through a lobby full of the frills and gilt that the whites were so fond of and that made their houses look like cakes, and found himself purchasing a ticket at a booth—for what, he was not sure, but his curiosity took over, and he climbed stairs that were pleasantly white and smooth as ice to the top.
His first reaction was terror.
Wax figures in the likeness of men stood still in the half-light. They were dressed in strange costumes and played out unclear scenes with outrageous gestures and the fixed stares of madmen. They reminded Tuluk of the effigies of the Seven Sleepers that were sometimes paraded in New Venice. But here these inunnguait were doing something, in their sick and clumsy way: someone was stabbed in a tub, some red-robed, dark-skinned men with spears fought against white soldiers with guns, someone was sitting in prison while men in uniform cut the collar of his shirt. It was the way the whites saw the world, all too rich and bloody, and it gave you the williwaws.
He passed among the figures cautiously, jumping in alarm at every corner, feeling the powerful magic that exists in such images, the way they seem about to wake when you look them in the eyes. He was sweating and wanted to leave, but at the same time, he felt compelled to go on. There was something familiar here, which he could sense was drawing him in. Maybe it was because the place looked like the Inuk afterlife, that underground place where the dead are said to relive their last moments for ever. And then he saw it.
It was a diorama, just like the one at the ice rink they called the Pôle Nord: an Arctic landscape so well imitated that Tuluk, for a brief spell, could almost see the hummocks dusted by light snow, hear the wind rustling his fur hood, feel the presence of a seal, like a faint grey liquid shadow, under a sheet of ice. The light was done just right—an agonizing golden haze, bathing the distant hills in a powdery halo. But that wasn’t all. Tuluk moved closer to look at the dying man.
He wore furs yet was clearly not an Inuk, but rather an explorer. He was on all fours, like an animal, his feet probably frozen. His right hand was extended in front of him, as if to call for help from someone he had just seen.
Tuluk bent to read the plaque in front of it, thanking his days at the missionary school. But he did not speak French and so could not make sense of what he read after all—except for the word “Ellesmere.”
Tuluk stood silent, listening to his senses. The stillness of the scene buzzed around him oppressively. There was something he still couldn’t quite discern: what the man was looking at. Tuluk bent closer and looked the figure in the face, but couldn’t see through its snow-goggles to its obscured eyes. He took a quick look around, then, with a deft gesture, took off the goggles and looked deep into the glass eyes. In one of them, he could make out a faint white shape. He drew closer. Wasn’t it …
“Hey, you! What do you think you’re doing?” a guard called out from behind him.
Tuluk stood up suddenly as the man seized his arm.
V
The Cabaret of Nothingness
By the time Thomas and Blanche de Bramentombes walked out of the North Pole, night had fallen. The sky had turned lilac blue and coloured the snow a tender mauve, and as the streelights came on they sent stooped, hurried shadows reeling across the rubbly sidewalks.
“It’s still early. Would you like to accompany me for a drink?” Blanche asked Thomas, in her fumbling but delicate English. She had learned it, she said, from a friend.
“Won’t your mother be worried?”
“She’s supposed to be busy tonight. There’s a nice place a little farther, back on the boulevard.”
It was going very smoothly, Thomas thought. She was pleasant and easy, not to mention comely. Her talk was lively and witty, although sometimes interrupted by a cough that sounded like the tearing of silk, and he could hear a faint wheezing in her breath as they walked side by side up the street. She must have had a bad cold, or maybe a touch of asthma, he reckoned. Her mother must have thought that skating at the North Pole would be good for her health.
Regardless, it would have been the perfect evening, except for one thing: the gnawing feeling that someone was following them, hiding in shadows made even blacker by the snow and the sickly light. But every time he turned back, there was nothing suspicious, just a dark downhill stretch of street and indifferent passers-by. Maybe he was simply nervous. From the
morphine—or lack of it.
“This is a strange place …” Thomas said as they took their seats in a cabaret on the Boulevard de Clichy. He was going to add “for lovers,” but that seemed a tad premature.
“Tourists are supposed to love it. You’re a kind of tourist, aren’t you?” Blanche asked him teasingly, as she lifted her veil above her haloed eyes to take a Geraudel cough drop from a little heart-shaped, filigreed silver pillbox. She was not, perhaps, the aristocratic beauty that her name promised, but to Thomas there was something very French, very cheeky, in her open and almost mischievous face, and in her rouged cheekbones and little stub of an upturned nose, which allowed an easy passage to her lips—a journey that Thomas promised himself to take at the first opportunity.
He averted his eyes and looked around him again. There was a touch of New Venice about the place, in the way that nothing inside it hinted at its surroundings. The decor was mostly black, and the walls were covered with ghastly paintings, all the more spectral when seen through the blue fog of cigarettes. Overhead dangled an atrocious chandelier made of human arm bones holding candles in their skeletal hands. The long tables beneath were coffins on which a few tapers had been glued down. The obnoxious waiters were dressed as priests or undertakers and served a drink that they advertised in sepulchral voices as Death Germs.
“Our speciality, Maggot Juice and Tubercular Spit!” the waiter announced, dressed as a sinister priest, as he banged down two glasses on the table.
Blanche laughed and coughed again, with a wink at Thomas. A dark thought about her health crossed his mind, but he dispelled it with the brave cowardice of youth.
“Now, if I were your mother, I’d be worried,” he said, struggling to be heard above the hellacious din.
“It’s you that’s worried about Mother. Since you’re so concerned with peace in my family, you should know that I was brought to the Pôle Nord by my uncle, and when I go back, I’ll simply tell my mother that I left him because he had business to do. And business he does have, believe me.”
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