Aurorarama - Jean-Christophe Valtat [113]
“You would not have met Helen, anyway,” Judy said to Punch, with a twangy voice.
“You have a gentle way of breaking the news, these days,” said Brentford. “How do you know?”
“Because I met her,” Judy said. “And she said you did not need her anymore.”
“You met her?” asked Brentford, trying to catch Gabriel’s fleeting eyes.
Gabriel looked up and stopped clowning.
“Well, sort of. That kind of dream, you know.”
Brentford nodded as if he knew.
“Why would she have given me that appointment, then?”
“She did not approve of your wedding, obviously.”
Brentford let it sink in and sighed, his eyes on the ceiling.
“Neither did my mother and neither did you. And neither did Sybil, and neither do I anymore, I suppose. And now even the Gods are against me.”
Gabriel said nothing, promising himself not to talk about the wedding anymore. It seemed to have happened a long, long time ago anyway, and this time, he also brought good news.
“But she also said that she would take care of your hunting quota problem.”
“How’s that?”
“How would I know? She’s the goddess, not me. Expect good seal and walrus hunts, though. In my dream, it was rather her line of work.”
“Does she have anything to do with the Inughuit being here?”
“Not that I or they know of. But now that you ask, there is a kind of connection, actually. Helen referred to the Polar Kangaroo as being of great help. He was in my dream as well, and He appeared to the Inuit and took them to me just in time.”
The implication of the Polar Kangaroo was big news, indeed. If the Macropus Maritimus Maximus had surfaced again, it was both the sign of a major crisis and the signpost toward some sort of solution. What Brentford had to do was follow its big footprints to wherever they led: it had already woven some threads, hadn’t it, though Brentford was still striving to see a pattern. And if, moreover, the Polar Kangaroo was involved with Helen, the pattern promised to be quite spectacular.
He rose and walked to the window in the side of the gondola. There was nothing but darkness down there, with maybe something that stirred and was only their own shadow. What he saw was mostly his own worried reflection, trying to follow another thread in his head without getting further tangled.
“What do you know about magic mirrors?” he asked Gabriel. For some reason, Gabriel, sceptic though he was, always seemed to be acquainted with the strangest notions. However absurd the question, Brentford knew he might get an answer.
“You mean the mirror you told me about? From the coffin? With Lancelot on it?”
“The very one. I saw a woman in it,” Brentford said as he slowly walked back to the table.
“It is never be too late be acquainted with that side of your personality, I suppose.”
“A woman that wasn’t me or in me,” Brentford specified with an amused patience as he sat down.
“Hmm …” As always when he reflected, Gabriel raised his eyes slightly toward the left, as if he were reading his cue from somewhere over Brentford’s shoulder. “All I know is that such visions are called phantoramas. Some seers favour mirrors over other methods, as they induce no abnormal states and show things in a more stable, less fleeting way than the usual magnetic vision. But as to the content, give or take a few specificities, it does not differ from normal clairvoyance and is entirely dependent on the disposition of the seer. Theoretically, what you saw was either a distant or dead person photographing herself onto it, so to speak—or, of course, some trick of your sick mind.”
“Are you by any chance calling Isabelle d’Ussonville a trick of my sick mind?”
“A trick of your mind, very certainly, but sick I hope not, for I happen to have seen her as well. Dead in that coffin, first.”
Brentford opened monocle-dropping eyes at the coincidence.
“Then,” his friend went on, “I saw some younger, vaporous version of her coming from the mouth of one my students, but that, of course, is strictly between us.”
“More between us than you think,” Brentford answered, rubbing his chin, which was