New Venice 02 - Luminous Chaos

by Jean-Christophe Valtat

  “There was a French girl there—you can’t possibly imagine that our True Thomas was attentive to anything else? Though now that you mention it, there was something strange in a question Thomas asked the medium, and in Lord Savnock’s reaction to it. It was a question about a future city near the North Pole, and the answer didn’t really mean anything, but I saw that Savnock was quite startled.”

  “No wonder, if he really is Lord Lodestone.”

  “He explained to Thomas that he was, or had been, asked to fund a polar expedition. Hence his interest.”

  “That would make sense.” Gabriel nodded. He wished that he had a better brain tonight, instead of a ball of crumpled newspapers. He struggled to connect all this with Markham, but it was like trying to a put a square peg in a round hole. Nevertheless, as the news sank in, he considered the ramifications. The Seven Sleepers, or at least one of them, was in town. Timewise, it was plausible. New Venice had not yet been founded, but it wasn’t far off. Perhaps Lord Lodestone was here precisely for that reason—to get a few things done, or to oversee them. Gabriel felt thrilled.

  “You’re a genius, Lilian,” he said, blushing, which in turn made Lilian redden herself. An awkward silence fell.

  “This deserves a celebration,” Gabriel declared a moment later. “But we’ll drink together once we’re home. The Seven of us.”

  V

  Beware of the Wolves!

  When Brentford left Edgar de Couard’s studio, night had already fallen—or had less fallen, perhaps, than risen from the ground, for its murk felt earthy and damp. Going down the rue Vilin—more a wasteland than a street—he passed shadowy groups of workers shivering in the cold. Too poor to take the cable car, they were wearily trudging up the hill towards homes that would not warm them much. Most of them, in fact, went no farther than Au Repos de la Montagne, the cabaret at the top of the street.

  Taking advice from his Baedeker, Brentford reached the canal and then crossed the boulevard de Magenta—where a dead horse was lying in the middle of the snowy street—and soon found himself once again between the triumphal arches that saluted long-forgotten victories in total indifference. He followed the narrow, deserted rue d’Aboukir and was strolling around for a while, thinking about Helen, when he noticed the busts of Egyptian goddesses (was it Hathor?) on the Place du Caire, lining the façade of one of these glass-roofed arcades that were, in some respects, the blueprint for New Venice: a utopian world where you could live a life of leisure and abundance, forever protected from the wrath of the weather gods. This particular utopia looked rather dead, though, at this time of night, with its echoing tiles and closed printing shops.

  Swerving westward, he walked towards the mute bulk of the Bourse, that most vulgar of temples, and then south down the rue Vivienne, with its closed fancy boutiques, which now, at barely eight o’clock and all the lamps out, looked frozen in time by the cold.

  Suddenly, the rumble of cavorting steps drowned out the echoes of his own, and he was overtaken by a little girl of eight or ten years, who skipped along in front of him and sometimes stopped to look behind, as if to make sure that he was following. In the darkened street, all he could make out was the crude shawl around her shoulders, and her feet, sockless in sodden shoes.

  He caught up to her and she hopped alongside him.

  “Monsieur, wouldn’t you like to see my—” and she ended with a word Brentford did not understand, in a voice that was musical in the way of a tuppenny flute, although a tuppenny flute playing a rather vulgar tune. “It’s a nice little … My little sister has just … it clean.”

  Brentford did not understand every word, but grasping the general sense of the proposition, melted with horror.

  “It’s only two francs to see it,” the little girl said with poise. Now, at the corner of the rue des Petits Champs, he could see her plump cheeks, red from the cold, her little upturned nose, and grey-blue eyes under her blond braided hair. But he could also see her red nose, caked with dried snot, and the circles round her eyes.

  “And for five francs you can put your—”

  “Shut up, will you,” Brentford interrupted, frowning and waving his finger.

  “Monsieur, please, don’t be cruel to a poor little girl. Perhaps you’d rather see my little bum?”

  “Certainly not. Now—”

  “Maybe you like little boys better? If you want, I know a place—”

  “Tssk! Not another word!” Brentford almost shouted.

  “I see what it is. I’m too old for you,” she said, making a little curtsey, her head aslant in a clumsy attempt at charm. But Brentford could see the goosebumps where her shawl met her neck and the sight filled him with compassion.

  “I don’t want to hear another word. Please,” he said, taking off his scarf and placing it around her.

  “Capital! Thank you, Monsieur,” she said, clapping her reddened hands. “It’ll be one franc for you, Monsieur.”

  “Please. I’m not the man you’re looking for. And now I guess we’d better look for your mother.”

  “That’s what I thought! You like them old, do you?”

  “Keep quiet, now, will you?” he said, taking in his a little hand that felt icy right through his gloves. “Where do you live?”

  The little girl struggled, looking sincerely scared. “Don’t take me to my mother. She’ll beat me if I come back without money.”

  Brentford sighed. He had to do something, but what? Living in a wicked universe? Wanting to put it right? Go get Orsini.

  “I’ll give you money, then. More money than you’ll earn living like this.”

  He didn’t know if it was an Interpherence or not, but his tone of voice struck a paternal note that felt a little scary. “So where do you live?”

  The child hesitated. “If you give it to my mother, she will keep everything,” she said, with a little sigh.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll give you five francs right away.” He fumbled in his porte-monnaie for a silvery full moon of a coin that she then put avidly into her dress pocket. “Now where do you live and what’s your name?”

  “I’m called Pirouette,” she said joyously, spinning herself. “From rue Pirouette.”

  “And where that would be?”

  “But Les Halles, of course,” she said, shrugging her shoulders in disbelief at Brentford’s ignorance.

  So to Les Halles they went, Pirouette’s hands now warmed by hot water from a minaret-like automated fountain on the Place des Victoires. Passing a lonely, mysterious column, they entered Les Halles, the Central Market and its rows of massive square pavilions that were, at this time of night, only alive with fleeting shadows of sweepers and persilleuses, the local prostitutes. The other side of Les Halles was a maze of dark, narrow, dirty streets lined with slanting hovels whose ground floors bulged as if reaching to crush passers-by between their sodden, cankered walls. From time to time, a door opened, revealing the hellfire of a cabaret and a warm gust of roasted food, reminding Brentford that it was well past dinnertime. Not that the place was appetizing. One of Haussmann’s Labours was supposed to have been cleaning these Augean stables, but thirty years later, some islets had obviously managed to resist the soapy flood of progress. Here, Brentford surmised, you could breathe the true air of Paris, as long as you were careful not to breathe too much of it.

  The rue Pirouette was in the worst area of them all. Its little namesake indicated a house with a door barely held by its hinges. Inside, a smell of cabbage and cat’s urine filled the winding staircase, which had a greasy rope for a banister. Brentford absorbed the shock and then, Pirouette in tow, went up the creaking steps to the third floor. He could feel, in the half-dark, the child nervously twisting her hand in his.

  He banged on the door, feeling a little stage fright.

  The blowsy, disheveled hag who opened the door was so true to type that she seemed to have sprung from Brentford’s reading rather than from the dismal garret where she lived. The ceiling was low and its beams
black with smoke. A table covered with a filthy waxed cloth, a few ill-assorted chairs, and a repulsive kelp mattress on a frame of white wood were the only furniture. A cast-iron stove, on which gurgled a stew that smelled vaguely of mutton, smoked the room more than heated it. Stuck to the ragged wallpaper, a yellowish picture cut from a journal showed General Boulanger, the addicted dandy who had almost become president a few years before but had shot himself upon his mistress’s grave instead. It would have to do as a romantic touch, surmised Brentford.

  “Yes, what is it?” the woman asked, a whiff of cheap absinthe on her breath. She had a flat, flushed face under the knot of snakes that was her hair, and looked a solid fifty but could well have been younger. Brentford felt faintly nervous, until he realized that he was less scared of the woman herself than of her misery.

  She frowned at Pirouette’s presence, but as soon as she had identified Brentford as a man with money, rather than a julot—a policeman from the vice squad—she warmed to him accordingly.

  “What have you brought here?” she asked her daughter, revealing a few missing teeth in a forced attempt at a smile. Brentford tried to remember that she was a poor woman, with a life of hardships, and probably had as bad a start as her daughter was getting now, but still he found her repulsive.

  “It was actually I who brought her here,” Brentford explained, eager to put an end to any misunderstanding. “I do not think a child of this age should run the streets at night, and especially on such an errand.”

  The woman frowned.

  “What business it is of yours?” she asked malevolently.

  “The business that your daughter wanted very much from me.”

  “What!” the mother said, slapping the child before Pirouette could retreat behind Brentford’s back. “Look at that dirty little strumpet! I told you not to pester men.”

  Brentford felt a surge of anger but managed to control it. He simply raised his hand. “Please. That’s not necessary. We both know what the situation is.”

  “Why? Is she accusing me? You are so damn ungrateful!” she howled at Pirouette, before pointing at her. “She is a true bitch in heat. It’s the blood of her father, that goddamn degenerate drunk.”

  “Listen!” Brentford insisted, flashing an imposing pink and blue hundred-franc banknote. On its back, an allegory showed Wisdom vainly trying to hold back Wanton Fortune—good luck to her, thought Brentford.

  The mother’s eyes widened as she were St. Bernadette, and Wanton Fortune was the Holy Virgin.

  “This is yours if you promise me that you will take proper care of this child and not send her onto the streets again,” Brentford explained, with the nagging feeling that he was at the fifth act of some awful melodrama. “May I have your word of honour?”

  The mother sniggered at the word honour, but grasped the note.

  “Sure,” she said.

  “You promise?”

  “Whatever you want, Milord.”

  Pirouette was sobbing behind Brentford. He took her by the shoulders and placed her in front him. He could feel her trembling.

  “Now, Pirouette. There’s money in the house and no need for you to earn it as you did. If there are any problems, you can come and see me,” he said, bending down to murmur in her ear the name of the hotel.

  He patted her on the head, then lightly pushed her forward. His conscience did not feel as good as it should have, he thought. And as the curtain fell, nobody applauded.

  He pretended to go down a few steps, but then, following his instinct, remained hidden in the smelly shadows. He did not have to wait very long before he could hear the first screams and blows, and Pirouette’s yells and yelps of anguish and pain.

  With a sigh, he climbed back to the landing, and without bothering to knock on the door, pushed it open with his foot. Since candour had failed, he thought he’d try the cloak-and-dagger approach.

  The mother froze in the act of hitting the huddled-up Pirouette with her long-handled ladle. Brentford resisted smacking her, but instead pulled the little girl to her feet and dragged her to the door. As soon as he turned his back, the mother started to howl.

  “Stop, thief! He’s stealing my child!”

  Brentford turned back with a sigh, and to his utter disbelief heard himself declaim, “Say as much as another word, and I’ll push your double chin straight through to the back of your throat.”

  At this, the mother went berserk and, jumping on Brentford, started pummeling him. He parried the blows as best he could, but still found himself unable to return them. Then suddenly the air vibrated with a G-sharp bong. The mother crumpled to the floor, revealing Pirouette standing behind her on a chair with a greasy frying pan in her minuscule hands. The cloak-and-dagger drama had, it seemed, turned into a Guignol show.

  “Great,” Brentford whispered to his panting self, after checking to make sure that Madame was still breathing. She was, and poisonously so.

  “I guess she’ll be sleeping it off,” he said to Pirouette, who, still standing on the chair, waited anxiously for his verdict. She nodded, reassured.

  “Poor mummy,” he heard her say, as she stepped down.

  Brentford dragged the mother onto her kelp mattress, and Pirouette tucked her in beneath the dirty grey cover. He watched her kiss her mother’s sweaty forehead, while he pondered the mysteries of love.

  “Perhaps we should go,” he said, with a dim view of his next step. “At least, Princess Pirouette, let me take you for a dinner.”

  Pirouette’s face lit up, and she rose to put her hand on his extended forearm with a princely, haughty, clownish look. That hand, though, was still trembling from terror.

  Brentford did not want to outstay his welcome in Les Halles, but he quickly realized that he would have trouble getting into any of the city’s proper restaurants with a ragged, dirty little girl at his side, whereas it should not prove too much of a problem in these godforsaken surroundings. And if he had been looking for a sign about which course to follow, he quickly found it: the first cabaret they stumbled upon was called—if one was to believe the tin-plate angel that floated above the door—the Ange Gabriel. This will do, decreed Brentford. A little magical thinking never hurt anyone.

  The entresol looked like an ordinary wine shop, but its sinister-looking patrons marked it out as something of a flash house. Ambushed behind the brambles of their sauce-drenched moustaches, they eyed the incoming pair with a knowing, mocking look that Brentford found especially unpleasant. After mumbling something about dinner, Brentford was directed to a spiral staircase on the left, and from there into a small room, narrow as a corridor, where, miraculously, a piano had been crammed. The marble tabletops were scribbled with graffitied names and hastily sketched profiles, and the decor, Brentford reflected, would have entertained Gabriel immensely. Painted with dubious taste on a dozen panels, it told the story of the archangel coming to Paris and being seduced by a legion of scantily clad, frivolous women.

  Pirouette knew the place and reassured him as to the clientele. Most of them, she explained in the tone of a child who recites her leçon de choses, were just workers who were paid to pass as pimps or thugs—so as to provide the extra thrill to the bourgeoisie who came slumming to this place. The little scholar of Parisian low life was less encouraging, however, about a fellow who was sitting with a woman a few tables away from them. He was tall and well built, with curly black hair and a long hooked nose that was pegged on a strikingly noble face. He was the literal incarnation of the words “sublime” and “demigod” by which Parisian Workers often designated themselves, and seeing him made Brentford think of a fallen prince.

  “It’s Bath-au-Pieu,” whispered Pirouette conspiratorially.

  “What?” asked Brentford, whose French slang was limited to the few colourful words Gabriel had taught him.

  “It means Swell-in-the-Sack, Good-in-Bed, you know,” said Pirouette, patiently, as if talking to a child. “My mother says he is indeed. She loves him to death, like every ot
her woman I know. He’s been circling around me a lot recently,” she explained, not without a little pride. “But I think my mother is jealous and won’t let him do anything. Isn’t he handsome?” she added dreamily.

  As a waiter who looked fresh out of jail served them a piece of mutton that looked freshly dug from a limestone pit, he remembered that the little girl in front of him was not quite the little girl he would like to think she was. Moreso, since he had imprudently called her “princess,” there was something faintly flirtatious in her behaviour, made all the more pathetic by her cute, cheeky face, so babyish and snow-chapped.

  “I’ve got a joke for you,” he announced, desperately trying to steer the conversation towards more wholesome topics. “Do you know why the Eskimos do this when they’re watching something in the distance?” he asked, placing his hand above his eyes like a canopy. Thank God for Interpherence, he thought.

  “No,” she said with an instant smile. “I give my tongue to the cat.” Probably another of those repulsive French expressions, thought Brentford with distaste.

  “Because …” Brentford answered solemnly, flattening his palm against his eyes, “If they did this, they would see nothing.”

  She looked at him with a forgiving smile. “My turn,” she said. She pinched her small chin between two fingers, till it bulged and showed a little cleft in the middle. “What’s this?”

  Brentford shook his head.

  “My baby sister’s slit.”

  Oh, God, he thought. But, laughing at his wince, she had already switched to another game.

  “And do you know this?” she said, now very excited.

  She had taken her napkin, and unfolding it, moved it up and down like a theatre curtain behind which her face appeared and disappeared in turn, with a new expression between each eclipse. Anger, Pity, Joy, Surprise, Despair, Pleading, Wonder followed each other on Pirouette’s contorted face, as if on one of Charcot’s mad models.

  “The Faces of Paris,” she said, with a laugh. “A game my dad used to play with me.”