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Island of Point Nemo. Jean-Marie Blas de Robles
Читать онлайн.Название Island of Point Nemo
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781940953632
Автор произведения Jean-Marie Blas de Robles
Жанр Ужасы и Мистика
Издательство Ingram
“Not very talkative, your Russian dolls,” she said, giving them to Canterel.
“More than you would believe,” exclaimed Canterel, looking at all three together through the transparent paper. He adjusted them a little and smiled briefly in satisfaction. “Look, each of the imprints works as a fragment of the same stamp, we must assemble them in order for them to acquire meaning. Layered on top of each other like this, the markings on the treads come together to form a word: ‘Mar-ty-rio.’ That’s what I read, anyway.”
Holmes leapt out of his chair. “Terrific, my friend! I knew I was right in bringing you! Let me see that. ‘Martyrio’ . . . It’s right there. Incredible!”
“Except that we have gotten nowhere.”
“Martyrio, you say?” asked Grimod, looking thoughtful. “I’ve seen that word somewhere before. Wait . . . It was in the New Herald, in the same issue as the discovery of the three right feet.”
“Kim, please,” said Lady MacRae.
The Malaysian valet took a few steps and returned with a touch-screen framed in varnished wood. Grimod scanned it silently with his finger.
“There it is!” he said, separating the page out. “‘Chung Ling Soo finally returns to London. After his triumphant tour of the United States, the celebrated Chinese magician Chung Ling Soo will be presenting his show at the Wood Green Empire, February 5-7. He will, for the first time in years, perform his “Condemned to Death by the Boxers,” the extremely dangerous act that made a name for him at the Martyrio Circus before he went off to do his own show.’”
“Well,” muttered Miss Sherrington, “I get the feeling I should repack the bags . . .”
A Lovely Odor of Roasted Turnips
Carmen is the unfortunate wife of Dieumercie Bonacieux. The latter does not smoke or drink, he showers her with attention, he works hard, he is handy around the house. He is not ugly, despite having big teeth and a slightly stupid smile. Even his receding hairline is not without a certain charm. But his thingy doesn’t work. “Your husband is affected by ‘sexual blindness,’” the doctor said, “what is called genital ataraxia,” he even specified, fearing that they had not understood. And it’s true that, though she had tried a thousand ways to tantalize him, Dieumercie could not get it up. To make matters worse, he turned out to be one of the twenty-five percent of patients on whom even the strongest dose of Viagra has no effect. As for yarsagumba, the Tibetan fungus with a reputation for being an aphrodisiac, that did him no more good than any old omelet made with mushrooms. Or even truffles, at that price.
Given that this impotence threatens their relationship, Dieumercie is ready to try anything to fix it. Yesterday evening, his wife convinced him of the benefits of a foolproof technique, a method she heard about from a friend who is a nurse. The results should be visible by the time he returns from the factory.
At the moment we meet her, Carmen is sprawled out on the sofa bed, limbs outstretched, skirt hiked up to her belly button. Her eyes closed, she is masturbating with a duck neck. She has cooked the rest; there is a lovely odor of roasted turnips wafting through the room.
His mind on the assembly of the circuit boards that are passing between his hands, Dieumercie has a vague feeling of unease. In spite of his efforts to think about other things, images of his wife fussing at his penis play through his mind on a loop. Again he sees her insert the thin, plastic hose into the bag of serum, then hang it from the hook in the bathroom. She pulled on latex gloves, snapping them against her wrists. You’d think she had been doing this forever. A professional. Finally, she got down on her knees in front of him, disinfected him with ether, and stuck a long hypodermic needle into the skin of his balls. Having secured the catheter with surgical tape, she connected the needle to the other end of the hose. Scrotal infusion, my dear . . . A poisonous-sounding term that had not seemed to give Carmen pause, but that had made his back prickle with sweat. She made him sit on the edge of the tub, and he waited there while the liquid flowed in. Good Lord, a liter! When he began to panic, seeing his scrotum swell to the size of a handball, she reassured him from afar, her eyes never straying from whatever crappy game show she was watching on TV: it was normal, the serum was going to filter gradually into his cock, and the next evening his engine would be all revved up. He heard her blowing her nose, then she added, laughing: And I’m all stuffed up!
She was right, but also wrong. What he now has between his legs looks just like a large beer can, but a soft one. Dieumercie is worried. Besides the fact that at this very moment he is having trouble walking normally to leave his post, he knows already that this plan is going to fall to pieces.
When the carriage dropped them off at 7 Cheapside, High Road, in front of the marquee at the Wood Green Empire, they were fifty minutes late. They hurried through the doors; under the colored poster announcing the show, in big red letters: “Chung Ling Soo, the marvelous Chinese magician, inimitable and rare jewel, remnant of the Yellow Empire.”
Holmes showed their tickets to an usher. They followed her up the grand staircase, ran down the deserted corridors, then cautiously took their seats in the central box that Lady MacRae had reserved for them.
Chung Ling Soo was on stage, which was sumptuously decorated with painted canvases meant to represent the interior of the Summer Palace by means of lanterns and views of pagodas. He was wearing a robe of embroidered silk that touched the ground; his hair, which he had shaved from his most of his head, fell in a long braid that he had draped over his right shoulder. The audience burst into applause. The magician had just pulled a live goose out of the gutted drum that hung from his waist, a fowl that joined—next to an aquarium full of red fish—an improbable number of rabbits, bouquets, and multicolored umbrellas. Chung Ling Soo bowed, his hands together, not moving a single muscle of his face, and then the curtain fell.
“Topping show,” murmured Holmes. “We should have gotten here on time!” And, reading the program over his glasses: “There is only one number left before the end.”
The lights had come back on for a short intermission. As was typical of Edwardian architecture, the interior of the Wood Green Empire gave the impression of both luxury and rococo exuberance. The hall was a jewelry box hung with red velvet, in which the stucco, gilding, crystal chandeliers, and Ionic columns decorating the arches over the loges seemed to exist only to illustrate the line from Shakespeare that was embossed on the cornice: All the world’s a stage. Welcomed into the show, the spectators felt lifted into the same halo of glory as the actors, as if they, too, were transfigured by the limelight. The audience could see, on the trompe-l’oeil canvas at the front of the stage, an imaginary proscenium flanked by twisted columns and stairs leading up to a tableau curtain at the back, whose heavy cloth was gathered up at the sides of the stage.
Knowing that the change of scenes would last only ten minutes or so, the spectators had not gotten up, but were stirring in their seats, loosening stiff muscles, carrying on about the virtuosity of the acts, or trying to explain the tricks. The audience was certainly not fit for an opera, but neither were they the patrons of vulgar music halls. They were dressed up, and in the orchestra, amid the tailored frock coats, certain young women would easily have outshone those who were watching through their binoculars from the twilight of the galleries.
“I am going to start being bored very soon,” said Canterel, massaging his temples. “Are you sure we need to attend this . . . thing?”
“Absolutely certain,” replied Holmes.