The Storm of Echoes Read online

  Thorn closed his eyes to stop seeing the flaw in the flooring.

  “I detest contradictions. And yet I have to put up with them since my mother infected me with Farouk’s memories. There is no ‘Other’ in these snatches of memory, but I am convinced . . . Farouk was convinced,” he corrected himself, “that Eulalia Gonde was punished on the day of the Rupture. It sometimes seems to me that I can almost remember what really happened at that moment. Farouk was the sole witness. Of that I am certain. It’s for that reason that Eulalia didn’t want anyone to ‘read’ his Book’s past.”

  Ophelia listened to him, refraining from interrupting for now. Thorn was a man who spoke sparingly, to a degree that sometimes made him difficult to fathom, but this evening he was anxious to give substance to his thoughts. With his eyes closed, he seemed to be watching a scene unfolding behind his eyelids.

  “When the Rupture took place, Eulalia was shut away in a room. She had forbidden Farouk from entering, but he ended up opening the door.”

  Thorn’s broad, migraine-afflicted forehead furrowed with the effort, glistening with perspiration, as if he were trying to bring back up to the surface fragments of a submerged memory.

  “On one side, the parquet floor, on the other the sky. The room has been sliced right down the middle. Nothing is left inside it. Nothing, except for Eulalia and . . . and what?” he asked himself, sounding annoyed as the memory slipped away once more.

  “A hanging mirror.”

  Thorn reopened his eyes and straightened his shoulders.

  “Indeed,” he finally conceded. “There was a hanging mirror.”

  “There’s always one there,” said Ophelia. “I visited the room by accident. It’s at the Memorial, in the Secretarium, inside the floating globe.”

  “At the exact center of the building’s circumference,” continued Thorn, with a flash of understanding in his eyes. “Just where half of the building was swept away by the Rupture. It wouldn’t surprise me if Eulalia Gonde had instructed the Babel architects to wall in that room during the reconstruction. When we discover what really happened, first at the Deviations Observatory, then in the secret room at the Memorial, we will have solved the whole equation.”

  Ophelia suddenly thought of her vision at the glazing-and-mirror store: the blood, the void, the terrible reunion with Eulalia and the Other against an apocalyptic backdrop. Wasn’t it, in the end, her own fears she had projected onto that mirror? She noticed her own shadow and Thorn’s, exaggerated by the lamps, stretching out at their feet and superimposed, one upon the other.

  “I, too, am asking myself many questions. I have often wondered why I resembled her to that extent. Eulalia,” she clarified, as Thorn looked questioningly at her. “I have much more in common with her than with my own sisters. I even share some of her memories, memories that haven’t been inflicted on me, like yours have.”

  She went quiet for a moment. All around them, Lazarus’s home was profoundly calm, barely disturbed by the rustle of the mosquito screens, stirred by the breeze, and the distant activity of the automatons. Not a sound reached them from the surrounding streets. Babel nights were never blighted by party music, or noisy neighbors, or the sounding of horns.

  “I think I’ve finally understood why,” Ophelia continued. “That Other I released from my bedroom mirror, with whom I blended myself,” she said, stressing that word. “It’s Eulalia Gonde’s reflection.”

  This statement would have been enough to make Thorn snigger, if he were capable of doing such a thing, but, on the contrary, he started to think very hard about it.

  Ophelia then slowly raised her left hand and watched her shadow copy her with its right hand.

  “A reflection that Eulalia would have lost at the same time as her humanity,” she murmured, in a shaky voice. “One part of me subscribes to this theory, certainly for longer than I care to admit, and another part rejects it. I know we live in a world where miracles have become the norm, but . . . a reflection capable of escaping from a mirror? Capable of acting and thinking for itself? Capable of wiping out entire arks? Would there be no limit, then, to the acceptable reality that could be transgressed? And then where would the observatory project come into it? Did Eulalia Gonde help herself to that Horn of Plenty, so as to have a multitude of faces and powers? Is that why she came into conflict with her reflection in the mirror? Is it due to that conflict that the Other appeared, and the Rupture took place?”

  Thorn consulted his fob watch, hanging from the chain on his shirt; it opened and closed its lid itself to give him the time.

  “We will have to find all the answers for ourselves,” he declared, pragmatically. “If Eulalia Gonde worked on a project that made her and the Other what they are today, then that project must be understood from the inside. What has been done can be undone, one just needs to know how. I will be off at first light, to investigate at the observatory.”

  Ophelia scrunched her gown in her fists. She really had to tell him, now. Thorn had the right to know all the implications of that mirror accident. I can’t have children. It was only a few words, after all, they weren’t even that important, in fact, so why did they refuse to come out?

  Ophelia decided that it was, doubtless, not the best moment.

  “I’m going there with you.”

  Thorn tensed up, but there was no disapproval at all in his voice:

  “I can’t take you.”

  “I know. Sir Henry mustn’t flaunt himself in the company of a foreigner with this in the middle of her forehead.” With a half-smile, Ophelia tapped her stamp. “We would arouse everyone’s suspicions. I’ll go there under my own steam. After all, Lazarus stated that I would be of interest to this observatory, as someone who is inverted. I could offer myself as a volunteer.”

  She refrained from adding that the doctor at her physical had also suggested that she do that.

  “No one takes themselves voluntarily to that kind of institution without having a very good reason,” Thorn warned her. “The Genealogists’ spy might have disappeared due to a lack of caution. If he was unmasked, they are going to be doubly vigilant at the observatory, and wary of any newcomers.”

  “I’ll start looking into the best strategy to adopt tomorrow. I, too, have informers.”

  True to character, Thorn didn’t return Ophelia’s smile. He focused hard on the stamp behind her messy curls.

  “I may wear the insignia of the Lords of LUX, but I have no idea what the point of this census is. The collapse of the city’s northeast district will have consequences. Maybe you should avoid being seen in public, at least for a time.”

  “It would take more than all of Babel’s bureaucracy to stop me from joining you.”

  Thorn’s eyebrows relaxed suddenly. He gazed at Ophelia, nonplussed, as if it were incredible that she was still there, sitting close to him on the edge of this impluvium, and totally willingly, at that. A succession of expressions then flashed across his face, so contradictory and so subtle that they were hard to separate, one from the other. Relief. Frustration. Gratitude. Rigor.

  He avoided Ophelia’s gaze, and had to clear his voice before finally replying to her:

  “I will wait for you.”

  All of a sudden, he looked uncomfortable on that stone ledge, restricted by his own skin, by his too-large arms, too-long legs, and too-heavy caliper.

  Ophelia then understood that the intimacy they had shared the previous day hadn’t given her all of Thorn; a part of him remained untouchable. The distance between them was small, but it had become too great. She suddenly felt the need to close it, but then remembered her scratched skin and dusty hair. She must be a little disconcerting to someone who made hygiene a top priority.

  “Should I disinfect myself?”

  Darkness swooped down on Ophelia. Being winded, it took her a moment to understand that Thorn had suddenly clasped her to him. Emb
races from him never came with any warning. Distance one moment, closeness the next.

  “No,” he said.

  Ophelia yielded to him without thinking anymore. She listened to the furious beating of his heart. She liked him being so big and her so small. He totally engulfed her, like a wave.

  Thorn pulled back as soon as his eyes met hers, wide open behind her skewed glasses. He turned away, pressing hard on the bridge of his nose. His ears were ablaze.

  “I am not used to that,” he explained. “Being looked at in that way.”

  “What way?”

  Thorn cleared his throat again, embarrassed as Ophelia had never seen him before. He, who was so eloquent in his speech and his reasoning, now seemed lost for words.

  “As if, from now on, I was incapable of making mistakes. It so happens that I do make some. A little more than that, even.”

  Thorn lowered his large nose, still marked by his fingers, toward Ophelia, in order to consider her with utmost seriousness.

  “If, at any time, something doesn’t suit you . . . a gesture I make, a word I don’t say . . . you must tell me so. I don’t want to have to wonder why I can’t manage to make my wife happy.”

  Ophelia bit the inside of her cheek. The truth was, they were both in unknown territory.

  “I’m already happy. A little more than that, even.”

  Thorn’s stern lips quivered. He leaned over her, resolutely this time, but the joint of his caliper jammed, halting him mid-flourish. This so exasperated him that Ophelia couldn’t hold back her laughter any longer.

  Yes, despite the world falling apart, she was happy. She wondered whether Eulalia Gonde had ever felt that way, and what she might be up to at this very moment, wherever she might be.

  SOLITUDE

  The Fake-Ginger-Fellow raised his fists. With no coordination, he stretched out his brawny arms, threw them high above his head, opened his enormous jaws, and yawned.

  Victoria drew back in fright. Not too much, though. She didn’t want to lose Godfather, who was striding down the street. It was very strange, that street. A terrace full of parasols folded in on itself, finally disappearing altogether. The same thing happened, a bit further along, to stalls of colorful fruits. Then, even further along, to a pretty newspaper kiosk. As soon as they saw Godfather approaching, people took refuge indoors, and their houses followed suit, in a sequence of intricate folds, as though made of paper. In the end, all that remained were white facades, with no doors or windows, as high as the sky.

  Soon, the street was totally empty. Apart from Godfather, the Fake-Ginger-Fellow, the Funny-Eyed-Lady, and Victoria, but she didn’t really count. The same thing had happened in the previous street, and the one before that, and the one before that.

  Godfather paused in a ray of sunshine bursting between the roofs, up on high. A finger poked out through the hole in his pocket, his braces dangled over his thighs. He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply through his nose, as if wanting to sustain himself on light. His skin and beard glistened.

  When he turned toward the Fake-Ginger-Fellow and the Funny-Eyed-Lady, he was smiling.

  “The saying is true. No one’s more elusive than an Arkadian who doesn’t want to be found.”

  Victoria couldn’t hear him very well. Journeying was like seeing the world through water from the bottom of a bathtub, but it seemed to her that this bathtub was getting deeper and deeper. She had never made such a long journey. The voices reaching her were even more distorted, even more distant, often duplicated. Godfather’s smile was the only thing here that made her feel a little bit safe.

  The Funny-Eyed-Lady rummaged in the toolkit she wore like a belt. With a hammer, she tapped on a facade, putting her ear up close to it.

  “Minimal thickness. Hiding, they are, but listening to us.”

  The Funny-Eyed-Lady spoke with one side of her mouth, the other side clamping a cigarette. She had one, lit or unlit, forever wedged between her teeth, making her even harder to understand.

  “Avoiding you, they are, ex-ambassador. Can’t deny you collect diplomatic incidents. Maybe we should avoid you, too. Eh, Fox?”

  The Funny-Eyed-Lady turned her funny eyes, one very blue, the other very black, on to the Fake-Ginger-Fellow. He made a vague sign with his chin, neither a yes nor a no. His hair looked like fire in the midday light, yet Victoria found nothing warm about him.

  Godfather lay down in the middle of the street, in the full sun, one arm folded behind his head, the other flapping his holey hat like a fan. His smile was directed only at the sky.

  “I’m afraid I may be entirely unavoidable. Even to myself.”

  Victoria would have so loved to get closer to him. Even if he could neither see nor hear nor touch her. Even if she herself could only perceive him as a blurred shape and distorted sounds. She didn’t dare. The Fake-Ginger-Fellow never left Godfather’s side, saying little, listening to everything. He terrified her.

  The Funny-Eyed-Lady sent her hammer spinning into the air and caught it by the handle, and then did the same again.

  “So that’s the plan, is it? Lie on the ground and wait?”

  “Precisely.”

  The Funny-Eyed-Lady let out a swearword that Mommy wouldn’t have been happy to hear. She had almost lost her balance due to Twit rubbing against her calves.

  “Look after your cat, Fox!”

  The Fake-Ginger-Fellow clicked his tongue, but Twit didn’t respond to his call; the cat just stared at him without moving. Victoria knew why. She, too, could see the swarm of shadows writhing beneath his shoes. He wasn’t the real Big-Ginger-Fellow. He wasn’t the one who had walked her around the garden, at home, in her pram, or the one who had caught her when she had almost tumbled off a harpist’s stool. No, this Fake-Ginger-Fellow was someone else. Victoria didn’t know who, but everything inside her was screaming “danger!” and neither Godfather nor The Funny-Eyed-Lady were aware of it.

  Victoria so wished that Father was there. He would have been able to see her. He would have chased away the Fake-Ginger-Fellow, just as he had the Fake-Golden-Lady.

  She froze.

  The Fake-Ginger-Fellow had just glanced over his shoulder; he seemed to sense her presence out of the corner of his eye. The shadows beneath his shoes instantly began contorting and wildly gesticulating.

  Right then, a voice reverberated against the white walls of the street:

  “What on earth am I going to do with you?”

  It was a voice such as Victoria had never heard before. A man’s voice and a woman’s voice all at once and seeming to come from the sky. Up there, right up there, someone was sitting on the edge of a roof. Victoria tried harder to make them out, but her journeying eyes made anything at a distance even more blurred.

  “Don Janus,” said Godfather, in greeting, lithely springing to his feet. “I was looking for you.”

  The person disappeared from the roof. He hadn’t fallen; he had simply ceased to be there. He was now standing in the middle of the street, right in front of Godfather. His body, like his voice, was neither really that of a man nor of a woman, or rather, a bit of both at the same time.

  “No one looks for me, it’s me who finds others. In particular, those who disobey me.”

  Victoria’s curiosity momentarily eclipsed her fear of the Fake-Ginger-Fellow. The man-woman was as huge, as elegant, and as inscrutable as Father was, but apart from that, didn’t resemble him at all. His skin was the color of caramel, his moustache like two spiral stairways, and the ruff he wore was so voluminous, his head appeared to be stuck on a meringue.

  The man-woman didn’t see Victoria, either. In fact, he looked only at Godfather.

  “I am well aware of all that goes on in LandmArk, niño. I know that you have created a passage between my ark and the Pole, that you have visited the number-one favorite of my brother Farouk, that you intended to bri
ng her here, to introduce her into my home, and that you were counting on your influence to make me change my mind.”

  The man-woman spoke slowly, without taking a breath.

  “My opinion remains unaltered. My orders remain the same. Nothing else must enter LandmArk, and nothing else leave it. Including you, niño. Did you really think I wouldn’t be aware of anything?”

  “I hoped so,” replied Godfather. “I was away for less than an hour and returned empty-handed. No point making a great song-and-dance about it.”

  “Eight of my Compass Roses have disappeared, worldwide.”

  Victoria was pretty sure that the man-woman was in no mood to joke, but Godfather burst out laughing.

  “Aha, that, I didn’t touch a thing! I just summoned a shortcut to the Pole. I canceled it as soon as I’d used it.”

  On one of the facades, a block of white stones detached itself from the wall and opened out, flexible as card, until a window with a balcony appeared. People were leaning over it to watch what was happening down below.

  “Eight of my Compass Roses have disappeared,” repeated the man-woman. “And the same goes for the ground on which they were situated. I asked the señores of the company to double-check, their report is categorical. You set off, and when you return, niño, the arks fall to pieces. Personally, I’m tempted to see that as a link of cause to effect.”

  He leaned his upper body forward in a movement so spectacular, Victoria thought he was going to fall on top of Godfather. She realized that there was a shadow clinging to him like a great cloak of smoke. No one apart from Victoria seemed to notice it, that shadow. Without being the same, it reminded her of the great clawed shadows of Mother and Father.

  “I have no other choice but to consider you as a member of my lineage, since a little of my family power flows in your veins. I am, however, going to have to mutilate you for having put it to such bad use.”