Aurorarama - Jean-Christophe Valtat [132]
“The Northwestern Administration for Native Affairs,” said Gabriel, burning his tongue with the tea, which he noticed Mougrabin drank directly from the saucer. “Tomorrow morning during the parade. As it is a holiday, the building will not be occupied or guarded.”
“It is as if it were already done! Perform’d to point. Pfuii!!” said Mougrabin, with a graceful gesture. “And thanks to you, my friend.”
“I’ve done nothing,” said Gabriel, thinking of how much it had actually cost him to come there. He wondered why Hardenberg had so badly wanted him to carry this message. Maybe the arch-Anarchist knew about Mougrabin and Stella, and had wanted Gabriel to face the truth. As if having seen Stella with Wynne had not been enough of a truth to face. Now he had to accept that she was the sweetheart of this scarecrow, who looked at him with a tear in the corner of his good eye, and then put his mangled hand on his shoulder.
“No! I mean because of your music. The little piece you called Lobster-Cracking.”
Gabriel did not understand. He had forgotten about the little wax roll he had recorded out of boredom during the winter. He had happened to have it in his satchel when he went to Doges College, and he had given it to Phoebe as a countersign for Brentford. The last time he had seen it, it was in Wynne’s hands, at the hospital, on the night when he had met Stella …
“It is the exact frequency we need to start our little Liberator, you see. This device, Mr. Treschler has explained to the idiot I am, works with a force called resonance frequency. The bigger is the building, the lower the frequency should be, though I ask you not to ask me why. Linked to a small phonograph, such as this one, it plays the song inside the walls, making it echo through the building, and then, you just have to wait for the entire place to tumble down! It is genius. Russia would have been free long ago with such machines at our disposal! Mr. Schwarz, the chemist of the Ariel, who is a bomb fiend, was not very happy with Treschler bringing it along! Isn’t that true, my Little Star, that your daddy was angry?” yelled Mougrabin.
“Her daddy?” repeated Gabriel.
“I’m Stella Schwarz, the daughter of Doktor Schwarz and a French petroleuse,” said Stella, her eyes puffy from crying, as she leaned against the doorframe of the living room. “I’m sorry I have lied to you.”
“And the song … You stole it from Wynne …”
Stella nodded and sobbed, her face in her hands.
Mougrabin whispered in Gabriel’s ear.
“I suffered from this as much as you did, my friend. But it was the only way.”
“But … how did you know that this song existed … and could do this?” Gabriel insisted.
Stella sniffed, and took a deep breath.
“One day, as we were rehearsing at the Trilby Temple, and while I was waiting in the ballot box, Wynne, who was in charge of Handyside’s security, approached him for a private talk,” she explained between sniffs and sobs. “Wynne said that he needed Handyside to come to the Kane Clinic and mesmerize a girl, so that she would look as if she were in a coma. Their idea was to blame it on the effect of a very-low-frequency song. Of course, I had heard my father and Treschler and Max … I mean Mikhail … talking of the new device in the Ariel, and I knew that such a song was just what they needed to make it work and that it could be decisive. At some point, Wynne explained that he would allow the Gentlemen of the Night to do a round-up at the Toadstool in order to catch the man who had recorded the song. I went there after the show, but they took us to the clinic and put me in a room before I could find out anything. Then I met you. And I swear to you, on the head of Voltairine de Cleyre, Gabriel, I did not know