Aurorarama - Jean-Christophe Valtat [89]
Still, Gabriel advanced, bent forward with his fists clenched in his pockets, the cold plastering him in great swathes, as if to mould his death mask. He would have been curious to see a wine-spirit thermometer (mercury would have frozen, no doubt), but some part of him deemed it better not to know the truth. With every breath, vapour crystallized and fell to bits on the ground. It made him feel like that fairy-tale girl whose every word is turned to diamonds, whereas at the wedding he had rather felt like her wicked sister who ends up spewing toads.
By a stroke of luck, though the air was wet, it wasn’t too windy, which Gabriel found a favourable omen. If he wanted to die from the cold, he did not want to suffer from it too much before going numb. Walking headlong through thick curtains made of millions of hanging, tingling razorblades is one thing, but you don’t want buckets of cold water thrown in your face while doing it.
For someone who was on his way to hypothermia, he was not so badly equipped, after all. His warm-whiskered face was bare, because a comforter or balaclava would have caused his breath to freeze right on his moist skin, and that was even more displeasing than having some ice-fiend tricksters slap you and pull your nose in the dark. A fur-lined greatcoat with pockets full of warming qiviut—musk ox wool—, thick-soled boots insulated with bladder-sedge and several pairs of hareskin socks, Knudsen of Copenhagen snow-goggles, an Elsinore hat with comfortable earflaps, wolfskin gloves and woollen overmittens—these were a few of his favourite things. He chuckled at the paradox, and thought, I could always shed some of them on my way, giving dramatic clues to a potential search party. Being found dead in the purple frock coat was a flourish to be considered. Such were his musings as he arrived at Black Cliffs Bay.
On his left, the Lincoln Sea shone moodily, waiting for some better demiurge to put some order into its chaotic rubble, which looked like ruins, or a like a building site. On his right he could make out the mile-high peaks of the New America range, like a starless area of the night. Gabriel tried to advance calmly. He knew he could take a good thermal shock, as long as he was not drenched in sweat. It wasn’t pneumonia that was on his agenda. He also knew, as he had been told countless times, that most people who had died in similar conditions had succumbed to exhaustion rather than from the cold itself. They were persuaded they had to move until they could not move anymore, when a bit of rest could have saved them. So it was important to never ever stop if he wanted to die properly. So he plodded, and tumbled, and trudged onward.
It was rough going, but the tattoo pushed him on, holding him by the neck as if he were some unclean, reluctant kitten. Somewhere above him shone the star that promised death by fever or cold. As soon as Stella had told him about it, the disastrophile in him had known how it would all end. Sometimes, he stopped for a little while and looked up at the night sky, trying to localize the aster that was his (no: he belonged to it). But he would not have known the Centaur even if it had kicked him in the face with its hooves, just as the cold was doing right now. Stars were nameless to him and constellations remained dead letters. He would have liked Stella to be with him, both of them sitting right on that cliff, passing a bottle to and fro, and laughing as they baptized them all again: the Tambourine, the Lobster, the Bearded Woman, the Carrion,