Aurorarama (40 page)

“Isn’t she very pretty? I wish we were as pretty,” added Geraldine, a bit coquettishly, thought Gabriel.

He looked at the nape of her neck and discovered he felt an insistent desire to kiss it, faintly accompanied by the more obscure and unsettling urge to bite her ponytail. But with Reginald around, in his little black Lord Fauntleroy costume, that kind of privacy was, of course, impossible. From what he had heard, though, Siamese twins often got married. They were surely used to a certain amount of promiscuity. And—the thought bothered Gabriel a little—Reginald had exactly the same nape, after all. It struck him that they were fairly reminiscent of his dream about Rocket and Pocket.

“You are very pretty, I think,” he said, intending to be polite, but surprised at how sincere and confident he sounded. “It is just a lot of prettiness to handle at the same time.”

He heard them giggle and it pleased him.

“We rejoice that you’ve finally joined us as our grandmother wanted you to, Mr d’Allier,” said Geraldine suddenly, turning toward Gabriel.

So that was why they had kindly proposed to take him to his room, he reflected. They had something to say to him.

“Oh, that Lancelot thing, it was really about me, then. But I fail to see where I fit in.”

“She saw you in her crystal cabinet,” explained Geraldine, as if that clarified anything.

“That sounds great, but I am not sure I understand.”

“You can follow us there, if you’re not too tired,” proposed Reginald.

For a few minutes, they followed a mind-boggling series of corridors and stairways, the siblings sometimes whispering to each other in some strange language, until they reached a door
that Reginald opened with a key linked by a chain to the pocket of his velvet waistcoat.

“Please, go in,” he said, as the siblings stepped aside. Gabriel entered a polyhedral kiosk where the crystal all around him seemed to have a different quality than elsewhere in the palace. It was less translucent and more reflective, so that he could see infinite images of himself surrounding him, quite as if he were standing at the bottom of a kaleidoscope.

“Now, close your eyes, think of something or someone, and open them again,” said Reginald, still standing in the corridor.

Gabriel, of course, could not help thinking about Stella. As he opened his eyes, he saw dim shapes coming from inside the crystal and joining each other like pools of spilled water, gaining depth, light and colour as they did. And then they were her, walking away along the Marco Polo Midway in her black hooded coat with her overbrimming satchel that always seemed about to burst. She was doing her usual tightrope routine on the edge of the sidewalk, leaving little light footprints in a thin layer of fresh snow, which always made Gabriel want to run and catch her before she fell. All around him he could see the city in the dubious daylight, as completely and clearly as if he were in the middle of the street, and could even hear, he thought, the faint sound of distant bells floating from the church of St. Anthony. He felt like extending his arms but he realized that he would only bump against the crystal. Her own arms wide apart, meanwhile, Stella dwindled into the perspective distance and the ill-starred, starry-eyed Gabriel knew that for his own sake he had to let her go for good.

“How can I stop this?”

“Close your eyes and turn away,” said Geraldine.

He did as he was told and waited for a while, nauseated and disconsolate, the picture persisting, as if trapped under his eyelids. He could have spared himself that trick, he thought bitterly.

“Well, that was something,” he said, peeling back his eyelids again, quickly wiping a tear with his bandaged hand before he turned back and went out.

“Did you see what I saw?” he asked, a bit embarrassed, as Reginald locked the door.

“How could we? It is your mind, not ours,” Geraldine said reassuringly, but the insistent smile on Reginald’s face could have been from more than politeness.

“But I still do not see why your grandmother chose me,” said Gabriel, trying to shake off the memory of Stella walking out of his helpless reach.

The siblings shrugged their four shoulders.

“Maybe she liked your name,” offered Reginald pensively. “But mostly she remembered that only someone called d’Allier knew of her story, someone whose knowledge of the city and commitment to its values could not be doubted.”

Gabriel wondered with concern what exactly Isabelle d’Ussonville had witnessed of his antics. It also vexed him that the world and his grandmother had been spying on him, when his lifestyle demanded nothing if not the greatest discretion.

“Before she left us,” Geraldine continued, “she told us that only Lancelot and the Lady of the Lake would find out who she was.”

“Lady of the Lake?” said Gabriel. But just as he was about to deny any connection, he remembered that when he had identified Isabelle d’Ussonville he had indeed been with the former Sandy Lake.

“This … Lady of the Lake, what part does she play in this?”

“Grandmother didn’t say,” Geraldine answered.

“Not negligible, I would say,” Reginald added, nodding his head.

“This is your room,” they said, stopping at an open door. Gabriel peeked inside. He was relieved to see that the sheets and pillows, at least, were not made of crystal.

“It is a beautiful room.”

“Oh, that’s nothing, you should see ours,” said Geraldine, as Reginald elbowed her in their common ribs. Geraldine blushed, which made Reginald blush as well.

Gabriel felt like laughing.

“Thank you for bringing me here.”

“Thank you for staying with us,” said Reginald, who was a very polite boy. He had the same voice as Geraldine, but, with his white hair carefully combed back, he looked more serious than her, or at least he tried to.

“We seldom have visitors,” said Geraldine, a bit impishly. “Let alone
wicked
anarchists.”

“Oh, these are just spare clothes the anarchists lent me,” said Gabriel modestly.

“Wicked or not, we are in any case honoured to have met you,” said Reginald, “and we wish you a very good night.”

“Good night to you, and thanks for your kind hospitality.”

Gabriel bowed and they stood silent in the doorway for a glowing, embarrassing while, as when people do not want a pleasant evening to end, but none of them dares to be the first to admit it. Gabriel, especially, would have done anything not to find himself on his own, mulling over Stella.

“Here, sir,” said Geraldine, after a while. She handed him the candelabra she held, then noticed the bandages around his hands.

“Do you want us to call a maid to help you with your clothes?” she asked, a barely perceptible smile hovering on her face. “They are very sweet, and fond of foreigners.”

“No, please, do not wake anyone on account of me.” He took a deep breath. “I am sure we can work this out together,” he said, his voice almost a whisper.

In the light of the candelabras, the twins looked at each other and smiled.

A
fter having taken advantage of the pale hazy daylight for a quick morning tour, Brentford, the Aerial Anarchists, and the Inughuit had a much better understanding of Crocker Land, that mythical place that had, under various names, eluded and deluded so many explorers.

The Island, of which the mirage appeared much bigger than the reality, consisted of an inner plateau about twenty miles in diameter, rimmed all around by small basaltic mountain
ranges that showed unequivocal signs of volcanic activity. In that respect and some others, it resembled Iceland, particularly in the numerous geysers and hot springs scattered across it. These warmed the surface considerably, and this difference of temperature with the surrounding Arctic air produced a continual veil of vapour that made the island indistinct from its foggy, icy surroundings. Only an aerial view could, under certain weather conditions, disclose the secret of its improbable presence. Interestingly, when seen from more earthbound angles, its hollow shape could be construed as a hole leading to the centre of the earth.

As the nocturnal approach of the
Ariel
had revealed, the main feature of the Island was the mile-wide crystal located roughly at its centre. Even for a trained crystallographer, as Hardenberg had revealed himself to be, it was difficult to say whether it had come from a meteorite whose impact had caused a volcanic eruption, or had slowly emerged from the bowels of the earth. The pale emerald-like crystal resembled clinopyroxene, with some chrysolite penetration twinning, but was, Hardenberg said, unusually birefringent. The double vision it caused made orientation in the castle a little difficult, especially after a few drinks, a phenomenon the anarchists had experienced the night before while trying to find the way back to their rooms after supper.

The social life of the Islanders was organized around the Crystal Castle, though it held no power but a symbolic one. The four settlements that surrounded it were themselves long and wide tunnels, about forty feet in height, dug straight into the gemstone, in a way that left the crystal as thin as slightly tinted glass sheets, which were reinforced here and there by pillars of basalt, like some kind of Arcadian arcades. Dome-shaped houses lined these tunnels; a basalt pillar about six feet
high mounted with an oil lamp stood in front of each house. A series of wells, directly linked to the hot springs, were placed at regular intervals along the central path and warmed the houses through a network of pipes of a type already known, if Nicolo Zeno is for once to be trusted, amongst the Norse dwellers of Greenland—a fact which tended to prove that the islanders were indeed their descendants.

But the most curious aspect of their organization, as one of their guides explained, was that the four villages, each set at one of the four compass points, corresponded to a season of the year, by particular settings of the pipes network: the Eastern village, Gorias, had a soft, springtime temperature, with some flower beds and bowers of small trees, and was peopled by children and adolescents, colourfully dressed and playful. Findias, in the South, was almost summery, filled with small wheat fields and springing fountains, inhabited by strong but graceful young adults dressed in white. Middle-aged persons, their hair already grey, and wearing brown clothes, lived in Murias, the Western village, where one found all sort of nuts and berries, apple orchards, and, most surprisingly under those latitudes, vines with enormous red grapes, from which they made a good ice wine that Isabella had baptized Château-Cristal. The North village was called Falias, and though it was colder than the others, the white-haired elders who lived there, all dressed in grey, remained idly seated in front of their houses, mostly occupied, it seemed, with chatting and playing board games.

In every case, as the guests were prompt to note with satisfaction, the plots and ponds (abounding with a curious amphibian animal that the Inuit recognized as the mysterious
tiktaalit)
were common to all. The overall atmosphere was apparently, perhaps deceptively, one of harmony and peace, though Brentford, while taking mental notes on the Greenhouse distribution,
also found it a bit boring, like some kind of very sloooooow roundabout. This was not the kind of rustic Fairy Tale he wanted New Venice to become.

The Inuit, however, liked it better, to the point that they insisted on staying in Findias for the rest of the day. They were not very eager, one could tell, to return to the castle and meet the twins again, or as they called them, with a shiver of disgust,
tyakutyik
—“What kind of being are these two?” as Tuluk translated to Brentford.

It was only as they sat for lunch, the day already turned to a lavender twilight, that Gabriel made his appearance in the dinner room, without the twins, who, tenderly intertwined, were still sound asleep in his room.