Aurorarama - Jean-Christophe Valtat [91]
Another thing he almost regretted not believing, as the Inuit did, was that the lights were the Land of the Day and that he would go there. There, the souls of those who had died violently would play football, kicking seal skulls about and laughing like crazy. Eternal childhood and laughter of Flame. Other Eskimos, however, thought that if you whistled to the lights, they would come down and cut your head off. That, too, was tempting to try, but it wouldn’t be that easy with a mouth sealed by conkerbells of snot.
At least, he could still whistle in his head: as he trod on marble feet, his teeth chattering until the enamel cracked off, he discovered that a stubborn song had now burrowed inside his mind, an old ditty from the Furry Fruits that was broadcasting from a younger part of himself. It was rumoured to have been about Sandy Lake, who had given the cold shoulder to the singer from the Sandmovers’ archrivals. Personally, Gabriel had a theory that it was about self-abuse, but he was not so sure anymore.
She was all dressed up in candles and garlands
And presents in her eyes
Falling from Christmas skies
Have you ever held angels in your hands
Have you ever been blessed
She said and then undressed But her kiss was colder than if I’d been alone
The girl below zero
Has covered me with snow
And it soon grew darker than if she had been gone
She sure can smother you
Till you’re frozen and blue
The loop revolved in Gabriel’s brain, in the curious way music is remembered, immaterial but as inexorably real as the grooves in a shellac record. This what was the brain was, maybe, a phonograph of some sort, which would eventually repeat one silly tune in a lock groove before the needle was lifted up for good. Damn, would he have to think halfpenny thoughts until the end? Why couldn’t the brain go numb first so that it could not feel the rest being …
He took a step on a snow patch that hid a crevice and fell through. Time suddenly shifted, reduced to successive still frames. The brain took the pictures, but gave no further orders. The body, after all, did not want to die: it had taken over, a deck hand going mutinous. Pivoting as it fell, it sent its left hand darting toward a jutting edge of rock, clinging to it as tightly as it could. It stayed there for a slow-motion second, while the brain looked down in disbelief. Then, with a jerk, the body shook its shoulders and threw the right knee over the edge of the crevasse, quickly rolling over to pull itself out of the chasm. Its throat ached all of a sudden as if someone were strangling it. The cold had suddenly disappeared. The world was pumping blood, veiling the eyes with an explosion of red, an inner aurora. Then, slowly, the veil dissipated, and the cold rushed back with a shock, waking up the brain. And then the brain saw the body. It was lying at the edge of the crevice, exhausted or dead. The body was also, the brain noticed, neatly decapitated, showing the white of the spine, the neck caked with already frozen blood. The brain understood that it was still in the head, which had been projected a few yards away from the rest. Maybe the strings of the overmittens had become tangled somehow and, turned to wire by the cold, had cut through flesh and bone as the body had slammed against the edge of the crevice. Bad luck. The brain started to feel cold. Icicles stuck to its lids and lips, gluing them shut. It tried to keep its eyes open and focus on the body, but wondered how long it …
CHAPTER XXII
The Kinngait
I have asked for ice, but this is ridiculous.
John Jacob Astor IV, on the Titanic
As a little boy in Nova Scotia, and as perhaps any other child would, Brentford had first imagined the North Pole as a gigantic, 500-mile-radius skating rink, on which one could glide as in a dream. But as an older child, when he had been deemed strong enough to come