Aurorarama - Jean-Christophe Valtat [98]
He got up, wondering, with less concern than he would have expected, if he were alive or dead, or both, or neither. He noticed that he now stood totally naked and freezing, though he remained rather indifferent about it, as if his body, after what it had gone through, would not bother him over so little. Maybe he was simply agonizing somewhere, as he had planned, and hallucinating in his agony.
A bluish light seemed to emanate from within the ice walls, and he could see that the crevasse went on, in front of him and behind, in a nearly straight line whose ends were invisible. He decided to follow it northward, hoping for some exit at the base of the cliff side, or for the moment when he would wake up, or forever black out.
The path sloped downward, and at some point he noticed that the opening above had disappeared and been replaced by a glazed roof of ice. He was now, by his own reckoning, somewhere under the sea. Then he saw them: bodies inside the walls—hundreds, thousands of them, standing frozen at different depths, like dummies in thick frosted-glass shop windows. They were not lined up in a row, but seemed occupied with everyday activities or maybe, Gabriel thought, arranged to mimic their last moments. He remembered who they were: the Qimiujarmiut, if that was the correct name, the People of the Narrow Land. Those who, according to some Inuit beliefs, had died a peaceful death and were therefore not allowed in the auroras. The sight was gruesome, but after having seen himself mutilated by wolves, he found their still, blurry silhouettes almost soothing. Except that, as he kept on walking along the walls, the corpses seemed to be observing him with some curiosity, wondering why this newcomer could walk around freely. He now hurried past them, without looking back if he could help it. He had no idea what he was doing here. This was not the kind of afterlife he had wanted. His first choice would have been the good materialist Nothingness, with Heaven a close second. Even the kickball games in the northern lights would have appealed to him. But the Narrow Land had never been an option. Hell, he had certainly died violently, hadn’t he? He would have to talk to the manager.
Then, it dawned on him that perhaps he wasn’t dead. Not quite yet. Not to the point where he would be kept in that translucent freezer he was passing through. He wouldn’t be shaking this way if he weren’t made of quivering flesh and rattling bone. This was good news, after all. A body is not unlike a pet—stupid and dirty as it is, one becomes attached to it.
He walked on, until a smooth slab of snow blocked the ice corridor. Some voice inside Gabriel told him he would have to go through it, but he had no pick or shovel to clear the way. He took a few steps backward and then ran toward the snow slab, but this did nothing but print his own silhouette in the snow. His face flushed from the cold, he had to charge again, and this time he crashed all the way through, as if he’d burst through a paper hoop. On the other side, the crash woke up a dog with red insomniac eyes, which growled at Gabriel as he got up. He was now standing under a dome completely filled up with frozen bodies, which he could perceive through the thick ice and which were all looking back at him. An igloo stood beneath the middle of the dome, with a low narrow entry, but the dog prevented all his attempts to come closer.
Once again, Gabriel had an inspiration. He noticed a corpse lying near him—his own, in fact, as he had seen it devoured by the wolves. Wincing with disgust, he bent to tear off a piece of his own forearm—the flesh resisted a bit, and Gabriel even thought he heard a moan—and threw it as far away as he could. The dog ran off to fetch it, stupidly wagging its tail. Barely holding back his nausea, Gabriel ran to the entrance of the igloo and advanced on all fours through the narrow corridor, as if he had always known that this was the way