Dream Paris (19 page)

You are coming, again and again.
I could feel myself blushing.

“We might be able to help you find your mother.”

“We?” said Francis.

“The
Banca di Primavera
. Now, the table is set, the guests are in attendance. Shall we depart?”

I looked at Francis.

“What about the wine?” he said, looking at his glass.

“Leave it for the two
monsieurs
who are standing in the broom cupboard, wishing they hadn’t mistaken it for the exit.”

There was an edge to Kaolin’s voice, a note of amusement. Something about that convinced me. She had a sense of humour. She could be trusted.

I know. Naive.

“We should be delighted to join you,” I said.

“Excellent!” Kaolin rose to her feet in another series of disconnected movements. “Then let us depart immediately!”

“Is it far?” asked Francis.

“Across the other side of the city, ’andsome Francis. The
Banca di Primavera
has leased part of the North Tower. But don’t worry, pretty Anna. I have brought transport.”

“Pretty?” I’d had a shower but I’d put back on the same grubby clothes I’d been wearing all day. I felt very frumpy and plain. “I don’t think so, Kaolin. Not like you. You’re so very pretty. So delicate.”

And she was. And she knew it.

“Thank you for acknowledging it, pretty Anna. My mother was a talented craftswoman.”

“You have a mother?”

I rolled my eyes to the ceiling. Francis had no tact.

“No longer. Sadly, she’s now nothing but a pile of crumbling clay.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Kaolin’s painted face was immobile. I had no way of knowing Kaolin’s feelings about her mother.

“This is the way of things.”

“Is it? Was she badly made? Poorly fired?”

Why couldn’t Francis shut up?

“We come from a river bank. A very different place to here. Much hotter, much damper. The river flows wide and slow by our bank, the okapi and tapir wander through the rainforests, the cranes wade through the river…”

“There are china people living by the river?”

“Some. But I’m talking about the beginning. Back then there was nothing but clay, clay that lay by the river bank, doing nothing. Lazy clay, without drive or entrepreneurial instinct. The sort of clay that thinks that the world owes it a living, that it can just go on being clay whilst everything around it does the hard work. Clay that was quite content to just lie there doing nothing.”

“Doing nothing?” said Francis. “It was clay! What was it supposed to do?”

“Embrace the challenges presented by the modern world, of course! Join the go-ahead world of interreality commerce! Interealisation is the key to the future!”

“But it was clay! How can clay do anything?”

“By realising the opportunities offered by potential investors. The river bank was lucky enough to be visited by the
Banca di Primavera
!”

“What did the
Banca di Primavera
do?” asked Francis.

“It made us a loan of the necessary capital required in order to realise our assets.”

“I don’t understand. You mean it made a loan so that people could buy the mud and build factories and so on?”

“No! Much more elegant than that! It loaned the clay sufficient intelligence that it could think about ways to make a return on itself. It loaned the clay the wherewithal to animate itself!”

“You’re the clay?” I said. “That’s what you mean! The
Banca di Primavera
fashioned you from the clay!”

That was clearly the wrong thing to say. Kaolin flinched as if I’d slapped her. She looked down at the floor.

“I’m sure you do not mean to be so rude, pretty Anna. I’m sure that, like ’andsome Francis, you speak from ignorance, that you do not deliberately mean to hurt me.”

“Oh, Kaolin! I’m sorry! I don’t mean to insult you!”

“Pretty Anna, surely you have the sensibility to comprehend the world of difference between the first red worms that rolled themselves out of the clay and a young lady of refinement such as myself?”

“Of course, Kaolin. I was speaking from ignorance.”

“I am not one piece of clay, slapped on the wheel and turned by the hands of some rude artisan! My body was formed of a select mix of materials including feldspar, ball clay, steatite, quartz, petuntse and alabaster! I tell you, I am not paste! There is no bone or glass in me!”

“I didn’t mean to imply there was!”

“I am a young woman of refinement! I wasn’t slip or shell cast. Every line on this body was shaped and reshaped by my mother’s hand! I was biscuit fired in the best kiln and then removed to be painted and glazed by Sancai himself! My final firing was the subject of intense speculation! Quite a crowd gathered around the kiln door for my coming out, I can tell you that!”

“Kaolin, I’ve already apologised. No one could possibly mistake you for anything but the most refined of women!”

The misunderstanding had carried us from the café out into the street. Now that we were there, Kaolin forgave us.

“I understand, pretty Anna. Forgive me if I speak too much. We are all of us the way we are. Now, let us depart.”

K
AOLIN’S CARRIAGE SHONE
light and colour onto its surroundings. A piece of blown crystal, twisted over and over, it shone from within with ruby and emerald light, sending patterns dancing over the pavement. Chameleons came skittering from every direction to bathe in the colours, sucking up the patterns to carry back to their lairs for later use.

“Look,” said Francis. “China horses.”

He walked to the front of the carriage and patted one of the porcelain animals, elegant in blue and white. It paid him no attention.

We climbed into the carriage and sat down on porcelain seats patterned in blue willow. The crystal walls of the carriage allowed a perfect view of our surroundings and of the purple night sky above, the yellow beam of the searchlight sweeping back and forth. The carriage began to ripple forward, and I saw the horses moving like Kaolin did, in a succession of ticks, rather than as a flowing whole.

We turned onto a wider street and then onto an even wider boulevard, and Dream Paris unfolded around us like a midnight flower opening its petals to the moon. First there was the wide space of the boulevard, filled with the mad whizzing motion of little cars the shapes of teapots and top hats, all weaving this way and that, racing recursively to fill the gap left by the previous car. There was something odd about the cars, and after staring at them for a while I realised what it was.

“Why don’t they have headlights?” I asked.

“The citizens voted against them,” said Kaolin, in what sounded like a sniffy voice. “They said they didn’t want headlights interfering with the
Son et Lumière
that is Dream Paris. The cars use sound for navigation in the dark.”

Now I understood the purpose of the gramophone horns on the front of the cars. The drivers navigated like bats. The constant sound of traffic horns resolved into something quite different.

We turned a corner and looked down the widest boulevard of all and there at the end, rising up into the night sky, the tallest of the Eiffel Towers. The master tower, standing in the middle of a vast clear space, surrounded by pools of water and fountains lit up in turquoise, more trees wrapped in silver and white lights, spotlights picking out the blue and white harlequin wrapping that swaddled the tower, and above it all, that searchlight, picking out the Zeppelins that drifted northwards to Montmartre, a white fortress on a distant hill.

“Is that where we’re going?” asked Francis.

“No. That’s the headquarters of the Committee for Public Safety. Our tower is not quite so tall. Follow the Zeppelin…”

She pointed upwards, just as the carriage turned a corner. Looking up we saw a Zeppelin overhead, heading the same way as us, descending, moving towards another Eiffel Tower swaddled in silver that lay directly ahead of us.

“The North Tower,” said Kaolin. “We’re going to Floor 105. The
Restaurant du Révolution.
”

We came to a halt opposite the base of one of the vast piers of the tower. A yellow carpet led up to a pair of doors.

Francis was still straining upwards. I followed his gaze and saw the Zeppelin high above, nosing up to the docking point at the top of the tower. Ballast water fell around us as light rain.

“I think there are a lot of people expecting you,” said Francis.

THE BANCA DI PRIMAVERA

W
E RODE A
lift to the stars, rising into a deepening purple sky. The Christmas colours of Dream Paris – the geometric lines and curves of its streets and boulevards all enclosed by the grey city wall – were a faded attraction compared to the heavens. The higher we rose, the more clearly we saw the rivers of purple and mauve and vermillion that ran through the sky. The stars that billowed like sheets lost their twinkle and assumed the shapes of spirals and spheres.

Francis was gazing out of the glass wall of the elevator, his mouth open. I realised my mouth was hanging open too.

“It’s… incredible…” I said.

“Do you think so?” said Kaolin. “I don’t care much for the lower reaches. It’s in the ’igher ’eavens that the spectacle begins.”

The lift slowed to a halt. The doors opened onto a wide room, empty of all furniture save two long wooden tables, each with two long benches on either side. There must have been nearly a hundred smartly dressed men and women, seated and waiting for their meal. As we entered the room, every man rose to his feet. The women remained seated. None of the prospective diners were so ill-mannered as to stare at us, but I saw how they watched us from the corner of their eyes as Kaolin led us to our places.

“It’s like an Army mess,” said Francis.

“This restaurant adheres to the principles of the revolution,” said Kaolin. “We all eat together, brothers and sisters.”

“That’s nice,” I said, looking at the pearl-embroidered dress of a woman pretending to powder her nose whilst examining me in the mirror of her compact. These people looked more like they should have been up against the wall rather than out there revolting.

Kaolin indicated three seats at the far end of the room. They were at the head of the left hand table, with excellent views from the floor to ceiling windows.

“What happened to the stars?” asked Francis.

“They’re on the other side of the tower,” replied Kaolin. She raised her voice. “Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce pretty Anna, the spy, and ’andsome Francis, ’er bodyguard.”

The standing gentlemen and seated ladies nodded to us.

“Anna, Francis, may I introduce Monsieur André Jarre, ’ead of the Dream Parisian division of the
Banca di Primavera
.”

“Delighted to meet you,” said M Jarre, shaking our hands. He pulled out a seat for me and waited for me to take my place, then he did the same for Kaolin. On cue, all the gentlemen sat down.

“Welcome to the
Tour du Nord
, Anna,” said M Jarre. “And to you, too, Francis. Would you like to take your backpack off?”

“I’m fine, thank you,” said Francis. “I hardly notice I’m wearing it anymore.”

I shot him a glance, but Francis didn’t seem to notice. He turned his chair sideways and sat down.

M Jarre rubbed his hands together. “Now, shall I introduce a few of our most distinguished guests? And then we can eat.”

There must have been a hundred people seated in that room, every one of which wasn’t looking at us and wasn’t letting us know how hungry they were.

“You’ve already met Kaolin, of course,” said M Jarre.

Kaolin inclined her head.

“Now, going around the table we have Monsieur Duruflé, my Chief Accountant.”

A well dressed gentleman with a neat grey beard, trimmed to a point, nodded at us.

“Next to him is Madame Pigalle, former courtesan.”

I’ve never met such a thin, joyless woman as Madame Pigalle. That she was a former courtesan was not so much of a surprise as the fact she was ever a courtesan at all. She looked like a deflated set of bagpipes, and like a set of bagpipes, the thought of her being put to her intended purpose was enough to fill any rational person with a sense of horror.

“Here is Count Thomas von Breisach, attaché to the Dream Prussian Embassy. Beside him, his beautiful wife, Helène la Fée.”

Thomas inclined his head, his scar covered face a marked contrast to the ethereal beauty of his wife’s. Helène la Fée wore a simple white dress that draped over her superb form in a manner that indicated she wore nothing else underneath. She smiled charmingly at Francis.

“
Bonjour, monsieur
!”

“
Bonjour, madame
,” replied Francis, who seemed to be picking up the language remarkably quickly all of a sudden. “You’re French?”

“Parisian.” She ignored me completely, I noticed. M Jarre continued his introductions.

“And this is Madame Lefevre,
le Fermier
. She represents Dream Champagne.”

“
Shom-parn-ya,
” corrected Madame Lefevre. She had dirty nails, a dirty dress and a dirty grin.