Aurorarama - Jean-Christophe Valtat [147]
“You’re right. There is at least something to respect here.”
A livid and trembling Brainveil, whom some ushers were propping up as best they could, cast her a venomous look.
“Lake,” he hissed, “Will nothing be spared us? First those monsters and now you, little ungrateful trollop. You should be ashamed of yourself!”
His imprecation ended in a fit of throaty coughs that shook his frame. A drop of saliva that he was too weak to wipe off slowly rolled down his chin.
Softly but firmly, Lilian pushed Surville aside and took a step closer to Brainveil, planting her eyes in his.
“Please, Mr. Brainveil, what is it that gives that you the right to tell me what I should be ashamed of? Is it the dazzling intellect that has led you to the position in which I’m seeing you right now? Is it the moral integrity that you have demonstrated these past few weeks? Shhh …!” she said, with a commanding gesture, as Surville tried to silence her.
She could feel the anger seething in her, and how helpless she was to control it.
“Is it the fear you have of me? You who cannot bear the sight of a woman except in bondage?” she kept on, looking straight into Brainveil’s narrow, malevolent eyes. Weak as he was, he held her look with a strength that surprised and further enraged her. His body may have been a wreck, but something in his soul still refused to yield; there burned some stubborn fire that would rather set the whole world aflame than let itself die out. Suddenly, it occurred to her that she knew this gaze, had known it, in fact, for longer that she could remember. And she could see that he, too, slowly recognized something in her eyes, as his stare had got lost in hers and seemed to contemplate not her person but a distant, infinite horizon. Her fury turned into something different, something she was fearing herself: the light suddenly changed, becoming brighter all around; she could hear a buzzing in the air, as a cold sweat broke out on her palms and her neck. A thrill ran along her spine. The Councillors stared at Lilian in disbelief as if her face had undergone some metamorphosis she wasn’t aware of. Then she heard herself speak with a different voice, huskier and deep, and she felt scared as words that were not hers forced their way out of her mouth.
“A trollop, you poor old fool Is that any way to talk to your mother? Have you forgot where you came from? Will I have to watch over you again, or will you put an end to your pranks for good, you and your repulsive associates, whose very name blackens the universe? Look where your arrogance and stupidity have brought you, you who think yourself a lion when you are the vilest snake, unworthy to even creep at my feet. Oh, you, shameless tyrannical child, see how this world that you deemed your plaything has been wrenched away from you in a single moment. The day will come when you will have to think of your own end. Before I think of it myself.”
At her first words, the anger in Brainveil’s stare had died down. He now looked at her with an awe that bordered on terror, searching around him for a proof that he had not dreamed it all, that he was not going mad. He felt his mind slide away from him. She had known him. She had seen through him. “Forgive me … mother,” he babbled, grasping the arms of his servants. The Councillors ran toward him, as he slumped down to the ground.
Lilian progressively came back to her senses, still a little dizzy, trying to make sense of the scene in front of her. Embarrassment seized her, and, God knows why, some pity for the fallen old man. Helen … you old bitch … doing this to me … she muttered to herself, while a distant peal of laughter echoed somewhere in her head. She cleared her throat, and resetting her feathered hat, said to Surville, who trembled at her side, “No man calls me a trollop unless I ask him to do so.”
Leaving him gaping, she took a deep breath and turned toward the Sophragettes: