Aurorarama - Jean-Christophe Valtat [39]
“Hey!” she cried, “move or you’ll freeze.”
Once he was stark naked but for gloves, boots, and Elsinore cap, he switched on his skates and, shod with steel, launched himself on the tinkling ice, dizzy and weak as he was, happy not to have taken the Fly Fantasia Flint he had bought earlier at the Toadstool. He scraped his warm body against the coldness of the night and it felt like a rash all over his skin.
He tried—his legs barely responsive—to skid toward her but tripped and fell forward, hearing her laughter and feeling the burn of the ice through his gloves as he caught himself just in time. He stood up and looked around in panic, as if afraid he had lost her. But there she was, whirling round him, a comely comet whose hand he tried to grasp: she always took it back at the last moment, her laughter echoing in his head like crumbling crystal stalactites.
He launched himself again. With the hiss of a giant hand, the wind slapped him about, forcing a crown of cold steel around his burning head. He strove to move toward her, the lodestar of desire, going faster and faster, cutting across her ellipses, but as soon as he came closer, she would take a sharp turn and speed up again, gleaming on the glassy plain, tattooed stars tangled in her hair, her bubbly buttocks a Milky Way in the moonlight. He realized that to hold her naked brilliance, he would be willing to give all.
After a dreamlike while, as he was still pursuing her in vain, she suddenly turned toward him and waited for him to bump against her, which he tried to do as softly as he could. They clasped each other and almost fell over, but eventually stood firmly on the ground, his head spinning still as the world wheeled by them. He kissed her, his hands full of constellations, for a long time, or so it seemed, until the universe came to a standstill around them. Slowly, he took her back to the slope, where their clothes were waiting, and he laid upon them her heavenly body. She laughed and overthrew him, went on top, a cascade of steamy black hair erasing the night; then the stars fell down on him and covered him, so close now, as if he had died and been turned into one.
Much to Gabriel’s surprise, this led to a ghost station of the disused Pneumatic subway line.
Book Two
Magic & Mayhem
The combined effect upon the spectator of the spoken word and the eyes together is generally irresistible.
David P. Abbott, Fraudulent Spiritualism Unveiled, 1907
CHAPTER XI
Nordlicht
“Das Fest im Geist! Des Urlichts Ausbruch aus der Natur kann uns, auf der nordwärts gerichteten Heimreise, zum Ruhepol in uns, zu einer überraschenden Feiertag werden. Pfingsten erfüllt und erwartet den Nordwärts-schreitenden. Den Nordwärtsdenkenden. Den, der den Norden erleidet.”
Theodor Daübler, Das Nordlicht, 1910
Holy Cod!” thought Gabriel, as he saw Brentford waving to him through the large window of the Nordlicht Kaffee. Their eyes had met and it was too late to pretend that he had not noticed him. There was no other choice but to go into the Kaffee and pray that no Gentleman of the Night or affiliated spy was witnessing the scene. However, the past few days had convinced Gabriel that this was a rather idle hope.
The Nordlicht Kaffee was an über-chic spot located off Koldewey Canal in an area of gabled, finely sculpted Gothic houses known as Neu-Vineta. This quarter, which specialized in luxuries, drew its name from a Baltic harbour that according to some German legend had been doomed and drowned because of its riches. It emerged, said the tale, for a single day once in a century, and plunged back into the depths if the merchants failed to sell their splendid goods to some unsuspecting stranger. Needless to say, prices tended to drop dramatically as the day advanced. But though