Aurorarama - Jean-Christophe Valtat [86]
“Step back,” said Gabriel threateningly. “I’ve had enough trouble because of you.”
Brentford, taken aback, stopped in his tracks.
Scorpio pretty much rising, Gabriel went on, his voice nervously venomous.
“I’ve been spied on, defamed, arrested, hypnotized, burglarized, cuckolded … Talk about a blast.”
Brentford tried to speak as calmly as he could, so as to better bottle up this noble gas, which he felt was highly volatile.
“I do not know what you’re talking about. Don’t you think you should sleep on all this? It would help me to get things back in order.”
Gabriel sneered. He narrowed his eyes nastily, as if to take better aim.
“Yes. His Highness the Duke Brentford Orsini. The man who puts things back in order, while his fiancée is being poked by some ugly quack in the Ingersarvik, while Baron Brainveil is watching.”
Brentford said nothing, only turned his back and went away.
Isaiah’s ludicrous threat about scoffers who discover that the bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on, and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in, had stopped amusing Brentford. For tonight, at the Splendide-Hôtel, he was that man and he was in that bed, barely breathing so as not to disturb Sybil, trying to endure in silence his bitter restlessness. He would have gladly exchanged for a nightmare the memories of that night. The failure of the feast humbled and humiliated him. Here he was, lecturing people on how to run a city when he could not even throw a decent party. The blend of boring arcticocrats and careless scenesters had made an especially disgusting cream cake, with the world’s worst best man as a poisoned cherry on top of it all. Talk about the True Community. As to what Gabriel had said … had Gabriel said anything? Brentford must have dreamed it. He did not want to think about it. A sentence circled in his head, lulling him until he fell asleep: There are only a few days left; if I want to go the Pole, I should go tomorrow, or it will be too late, too late, too late …
Then he found himself there: he knew because “North Pole” was written on the record label that he stood upon, with some inscriptions that were either the song duration or some spatial bearings. The record spun, and he spun with it, very fast. Sleigh tracks around the pole moved as he turned and somehow formed the grooves of the record, and at every round he made, Brentford could see the needle approaching in the shape of an icebreaker stem, pointing toward him, closer each time it passed.
And then he suddenly woke up. A shadow had shifted on the wall, as if someone were crawling or kneeling alongside the bed, not breathing but making some imperceptible buzzing and clicking. Brentford did not move, but followed the shadow out of the corners of his eyes, mentally detailing the muscles he could still count upon. All of a sudden the shadow made a wider move. Brentford rolled away as the awl struck the pillow, and then back over again, catching and blocking the arm before it could pull the point back. The arm cracked like a dry branch as Brentford twisted it. He felt teeth sinking into his thigh. He howled, and let himself fall from the bed, crushing the aggressor under his weight. The teeth released their pressure and Brentford pivoted quickly, seizing the struggling feet below him and trying to get up in spite of the pain. He grasped the ankles, and now held Little Tommy Twaddle at arm’s length, dodging the fist that aimed at his knees and the teeth snapping at his groin. He started turning on himself, more and more quickly, knocking the dummy’s head into everything that met its trajectory, bedpost, mantel, commode. He couldn’t see very well, but he could hear the head splinter and crack and burst, shards of wood and scraps of metal flying everywhere, and the croaking screams of the automaton. Brentford soon felt dizzy and had to stop before falling down, but kept on bashing the