Madame Victoria Read online

  I stood up and set my foot down on the ground, which was oddly cold and rough. I made my way to my bed as best I could. My legs were unable to carry me. My head was unable to think. I slept one last time in the palace of Zenith, with the Destroyer and his thousand laughing mouths. The next day the White Priest escorted me to my parents’ house. Outside, I opened my eyes wider than wide. I had put out of my mind the violence in the streets, the smell of roasted pigeon, the cries of the vendors, and the sores of the stray dogs. I had forgotten the magnitude of the prayer, when the chants filled the buildings and the brow of every passerby. My Eternal Eye had been erased, I was dressed in grey, and no one recognized me.

  My mother had died five years earlier. I didn’t know. My father had chosen not to disturb the goddess with such details, and, besides, the priests had forbidden him from telling me. My brother had left home to go defend the borders along with other young men who would never come back. The house was cramped and crooked and the food was stale. The little shoes my father had sewn for my return did not fit. I had very large feet. Feet that could no longer walk straight.

  My father now worked as a fisherman. He would go out on the oily river for weeks at a time, sailing with two or three stalwarts until the water could not be plumbed, where the fish swim joylessly, waiting to be caught and sold to the rich in Montreal. He came home reeking from head to toe, his eyes still full of terrifying storms and aquatic monsters; he rested for a few days before putting out to sea again.

  While he was away, I nibbled on nuts and overripe fruits, I watched the drab sun cross the city from east to west, I slept amid the howling of lost dogs. The sacred matter that had occupied the inside of my head had scattered and not been replaced. I twisted bits of thread, pretending to sew clothes without any idea of how to make them; I kept the fire going, hard put to accept the idea that it no longer bent to my will, that epidemics came and went at the command of another goddess. In truth, I was at loose ends. My father left me enough money to keep me from begging. I could neither read nor dance. I didn’t know anyone. Men gave me wide berth because whoever married a former Kumari was struck down within a year. Through the window I watched the young lovers and the thieves loitering in front of our house.

  One winter, my father did not return. The fishing season was drawing to a close, and the sailors came back covered with frostbite and completely cloaked in green plastic. My father was not among them. I did not know how to find him, whom to ask. I began to search for him at all the piers, stumbling whenever I tried to step over a fish head. Part of me was horrified at the thought of treading the ground; I was convinced that the earth would gobble up the soles of my feet through my thin shoes. I stopped at each vessel and said my father’s name, to no avail. No one had heard of him. The snow set in and obliterated all traces. There was nothing I could do anymore.

  Miniature temples were aflame on every square, lighting up the cold, enveloping the passersby in their scents and then gently releasing them when they were done praying. Like everyone else, I stopped there briefly, joining my hands together in front of my brow. But on one particularly harsh December morning, I found myself on my knees, my shins sunk into the frozen mud, bowing to a saint with indistinct features. Tears were streaming down my cheeks although I was not sad.

  I worshipped for an hour, maybe more, in the grip of that venerable vise. Suddenly, a peppery heat radiated over my forehead. I broke off my meditation and turned around. Before me stood a Sage, barefoot in the snow, wearing only a simple sheet, her braid floating on the cold wind. She laughed as she drew an indiscernible symbol between my eyebrows. She placed her large, bony hand on my head and looked at me first with her blue eye, then with her green eye.

  “Little Kumari, you have not lost the divine. The gods inhabit all things, all creatures. Your skull is still warm. You are a step away from the blessed renouncement. You know where to go.”

  She bent down before me. She was right. I knew. The Sage touched her chin by way of a greeting. I stayed on my knees in front of the now derisory altar. I, too, laughed. My heart spread out to every part of my body. I stood up, located north, and set off. I was an arrow, patient and straight.

  I quickly learned the stride of true walkers, of wanderers and saints, those who move swiftly without ever hurrying. My legs grew long and powerful. I crossed the city and its winding streets. Along the way I came across men pulling heavy carts laden with objects found in the unfathomable crusts of civilization. I saw children, little girls with tiny truths suspended in their eyes, and sulking boys who one day would find enlightenment. Women washing their hair in icy streams, caring for the beauty that had been entrusted to them while at the same time letting it drift away. Each of my steps slipped another loop onto the long prayer that I dedicated to them. They were in me, and I poured myself into them.

  Then a blizzard blew in. The mountain loomed more imperious, its reign grew jealous. But the trails I took had been there for centuries, blazed by people who had died for me long before I was born. The steepest slopes did not leave me breathless; the abrupt descents did not compel me to run. I was slow and sedulous and I covered the distances in giant strides. The snow piled up swiftly. At times my legs were buried to mid-thigh; the winds rushed to meet me head-on, but I felt neither suffering nor hardship. I advanced without needing to rest or eat. My journey was a meditation, and my body, my limbs, my bones, my blood resonated with one lone, long syllable.

  I climbed until I heard the sound of the drum. The gods were close. I examined the rock face. An outcrop formed a modest grotto surrounded by soft-shaped crevices. I sat down. The snow did not reach me even though it was within reach. I did not feel the wind, yet it too blew the same long syllable. No living thing stood before me, only a frail city, only a prayer.

  All saints belong to a place. They discover it, settle in there, live there, and when they die the place takes their name; centuries on, pilgrims and inhabitants remember them and point them out, drawing nourishment from the calm that emanates from them. This was a perfect spot, neither too high, nor too low, nor too hard, nor too easy. I shut my eyes.

  Victoria in Time

  She was the kind of woman whose beauty serves as a rudder or, more exactly, a keel. Their fate becomes a compound of the desires of others, of those who attempt to get closer to them with all sorts of offerings. Half-blind to this situation, such women advance, take, enjoy, discard, and forget so easily, never wondering about the inner workings of that ease.

  Already as a little girl, Victoria was entitled to special consideration. She was scolded less than her siblings. She was allowed to stay up later, go barefoot, and snack between meals. Without even realizing it, her teachers would give her higher marks. Shopkeepers treated her to so many sweets that for a long time she believed that candy was essential and free, like water. Staring into empty space, she would suck on the sweets while the sugar spread inside her. Then, one day, puberty overtook her body and she was borne away toward empires that succumbed even before she could name them.

  She was a fashion model, a dancer, and had starred in four films, her tranquil face evincing in a single quiver the whole range of human emotions. She sang with famous musicians, and her voice, thin but true, became the soundtrack of a generation. She was recruited by a major news network and supplied the entire planet with its daily dose of news, gently floating above wars and famines with her spellbound audience in tow.

  Luxurious clothes, perfumes, fine wines and food as sublime as ether, the most exquisite works of art—all of it came to her like little animals scurrying toward her unbidden. She lived in sumptuous houses, apartments, or country estates with fur-lined walls at the heart of which her own heart pulsed, pink, slow, and sound. She travelled the world and outer space, and cast her placid gaze on everything. She was hardly aware of being asleep, and shifted from waking to sleeping and from sleeping to waking with the same fluidity as the air going in and out o
f her lungs.

  There was love, of course, a burning problem that she had never brought to heel. Passions and pledges flowed in her direction, but all the men who passed through her life went insane. They crumbled in her hands like little chunks of dry bread, crying for their mothers as soon as she touched them. Some tried to shut her in and thus imprison her unbearable beauty. Others, men for whom no woman is deserving of kindness, treated her with a blend of contempt and brute desire. Victoria handled all of them with equanimity. She slipped through their fingers and returned to her sphere, her perfect wholeness.

  She rarely laughed, ate without appetite, drank without getting drunk, and walked the way others skate. That stride took her to the centre of summit meetings, where she acted as a balm on the strained relations between world powers. She was the one who rang the opening of stock markets, who lit the Olympic flames, who greeted the first hour of the first day of every new year and kissed the astronauts on their return from distant planets.

  So it was to be expected, once the reputed firm Eon & Eon had put the finishing touches on their machine, that they should choose Victoria for its maiden voyage. Who else could they have invited to be the ambassador of the twenty-fifth century? The media’s mighty synthetic heart beat in time with the preparations, broadcasting Victoria’s voice far and wide as she discussed her forthcoming journey like someone heading to the beach. In fact, nothing about this new venture frightened her. The machine had been tested, Victoria had absolute faith in the scientists who had designed it, and she would be dealing with a reasonably advanced epoch. She had nothing to fear.

  The departure was set to coincide with her birthday. There were banners everywhere emblazoned with her picture and the words VICTORIA, THE FIRST TIME-TRAVELLER. A group of protesters had gathered in front of the laboratory to voice their opposition to the voyage on the grounds that by visiting the twentieth century Victoria might perturb the course of history. It would be better, the malcontents argued, to send someone who looked ordinary and could go unnoticed among the masses of that period. Victoria risked turning the bygone society topsy-turvy, endangering thousands of births, delaying suicides, befuddling poets and politicians. But a change of plan was now out of the question. Victoria was to be propelled into the past like a glorious arrow shot toward the north of History.

  The capsule was as cozy as a nicely brooded egg yolk. Victoria installed herself in a throne-like seat. Enthralled technicians checked the machine’s calibrations one last time to make sure their precious pioneer would not end up locked in a cosmic gap for all eternity. In every corner of the earth and throughout the colonies, among the last of the Bedouins and the most reclusive hermits, those who did not follow every second of the great departure were rare indeed. Victoria’s casual wave would become an iconic image. She had achieved immortality.

  The capsule was launched and a mild fatigue swept over her. She could have dozed off in that very intimate cabin transported by the rivers of time. Her breathing grew deeper, deeper still, and weaker. Suddenly, Victoria found herself drenched. Groping around her she realized that she was floating in a warm, dark liquid. She took a few moments to indulge in that sensation, and when she sensed there would be no more movement she pressed gently against the wall of her vessel. The hatch creaked open and Victoria rose to her feet.

  The room was dark and filled with soothing sounds. Looking down, she saw that the instruments, the seat, even the water that had been in the cabin a few moments ago, had vanished. Victoria shrugged and stepped out of the cabin to search for an exit. It appeared of its own accord when a door opened for a woman in white.

  “You’re already dressed? Your session isn’t over. You have the use of the float tank for a full hour.”

  Victoria eyed her calmly. She was keen to go out and explore the twentieth century. She waited to be allowed to pass; instead, the woman pushed a switch that brought the lights up.

  “You’re soaking! Didn’t someone tell you to take your clothes off before getting in?”

  Elbowing Victoria aside, the lady went over to the tank.

  “There’s no water? What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Victoria replied and went out.

  The corridor was suffused with a hazy brightness. Still dripping wet, Victoria imprinted the floor with little bluish puddles as she proceeded down the passageway. A majestic mahogany staircase took her to the ground floor, where large windows finally let her feast her eyes on the old earth-bound cars and people going by in archaic clothes. Something settled in Victoria’s gut like a fallen flower petal, a certainty, a conclusion. She had done it.

  Ignoring her sopping clothes and hair, she headed toward the door, ready to glide out into the windy streets. But she was intercepted by the woman who had greeted her.

  “Madame! Madame! You can’t just leave like this.”

  “It’s okay, it’s not very cold outside, is it?”

  “What’s going on?” a man behind an oak desk wanted to know.

  “This lady went in with all her clothes on,” the employee explained. “Not only that but she somehow drained the tank!”

  Victoria turned slowly toward the man. He studied her unsmilingly. Then he screwed his face up in an ugly frown. She shuddered.

  “I’m sorry, but I’m not to blame,” she said.

  “The fibres foul up our tanks. You’ll have to pay for the cost of cleaning it up,” the man declared in a sinister tone of voice.

  As she had never been involved in a confrontation like this, Victoria, unlike ordinary people, lacked the subtlety of verbal jousting. She took a chance and fell back on an old classic.

  “Fuck you!”

  Once outside, she ran for a while, covering several city blocks with loping, fluid strides; she passed rows of corkscrew staircases and turned down right-angled streets. When she finally stopped, she was somewhat drier; she didn’t recognize anything around her. She entered a random café.

  The organizers of the voyage had given Victoria a small sum of period currency so she would not have to worry about getting by during the first weeks. Naturally, the banknotes were counterfeit, but the forgery was undetectable. In any case, Victoria, who had never paid for a thing in her life, doubted that the money would be necessary. But she liked the rustle of the small bills in her pocket, the coarse yet greasy sensation of the wad of cash on her fingers.

  The place was packed and stifling. The crowd brushed against Victoria’s sides, rough hands touched her elbows. Unfazed, she focused her attention on the server, who finally stopped to tell her, without batting an eye, that she would have to wait at least twenty minutes for a table. Victoria smiled incredulously at the young man. He gazed back at her for a few seconds with the same quizzical look.

  “Listen, we’re swamped right now. Wait there if you’d like something to eat, otherwise, you’ll have to move out of the way.”

  Victoria, bewildered, burst out laughing, and the cascade of laughter took her by surprise. She paused to consider this sensation, to examine its tiny mechanism, and then left the restaurant. Rush-hour Montreal rumbled past, grey and lucent. There were decisions to be made, actions to be initiated, but until late into the evening all she could do was walk, hypnotized by a bus, distracted by the wail of a siren, drawn down an avenue by a trash collector’s movements, captivated by the intricacy of a wrought iron balcony.

  What interrupted her wandering was hunger, a sharp, red hunger that pierced her stomach with a fury she had never known. In a panic, she dashed into an eatery and wolfed down a rubbery pizza that rammed into her belly like a piledriver. Replete and exhausted, with a strange hum filling her ears, she made her way to a hotel. The noise swelled when she stepped into her modest room, and she had to duck her head down in the bathwater to silence it.

  The next day she continued to ramble through the streets. Everything fascinated her: the cracked concrete, the parks and their maj
estic trees, the chemical-coloured clothes, the grisly stench of household garbage, the roar of the trucks. There was something seductive about this prodigal abundance. Downtown, the music spilling out of the shops made her stumble at every street corner. She spotted the building that the organizers of the voyage had indicated. Inside, she watched the office workers getting into and out of an elevator. The car emitted a worrisome squeal each time it went up. Shaking her head, she decided to take the stairs.

  Her lungs were burning by the time she reached the eighteenth floor. After going around in circles, she eventually found the office of La Perle, a gossip magazine whose past issues were lovingly stored in the archives of the Eon & Eon company. Still in a sweat, she dictated to the clerk the wording of an advertisement to be published the following week. GREAT TRAVELLER HAS LANDED. VICTORIA SEARCHES FOR LOST TIME. The clerk noted down the message without looking up or asking any questions, never suspecting that the words he was writing on the form were intended for women and men whose great-grandparents had not yet been born.

  With this detail out of the way, Victoria located the streets where the fashionable restaurants and boutiques were concentrated. Feeling both at home and a stranger in this antiquated luxury, she dined on duck legs and bought a pair of suede leather boots. Stuffed with flesh and shod in animal hide, she continued to roam the city. Actually, the terms of her mission were exceedingly broad. She simply had been told to leave, live for a while in 1999, and come back whenever she felt the need. The primary goal was to test the device that made it possible to travel from one epoch to another. Everything else was a fog that Victoria was free to navigate as she saw fit.

  After what seemed like an endless day, sleep still eluded her. At around two a.m. she realized what the matter was and undressed. Ever since she had been a teenager this was how she’d filled her idle hours. When she was alone, her nudity took on a new meaning. In the presence of others she attracted every particle of attention and sucked up all the ambient energy. But in an empty room, this body of hers was no more than a body that she could caress and listen to, one that breathed through every pore. Victoria stroked her skin, her hair, massaged the small muscles of her feet, hefted the perfect orbs of her chest. She was a loaf of bread, a tree, a heavy and friendly bolt of cloth. Yet something was not right. Something was off, didn’t add up. A worried frown creased her brow. What if she had lost something during the voyage? What if her molecules had not reassembled correctly?