by Theo Varlet
She came toward us, holding out her slender hands, and shook ours without any conventional verbal formulae, simply pronouncing our names, but with a smile more expressive than speech. Her frank and honest gaze bathed me in a luminous vivacity. I immediately felt an intimate connection with her, like that of an old friend. And in spite of her false girlish ease she was delightfully womanly. While leaving Alburtin to joke about her rebellion against Medical Authority, I studied her as if I were seeing her gilded face, her willful chin, her slightly pronounced jaw and her broad prominent forehead for the first time. The whites of her eyes had the milky purity of the sclerotics of children, and the dazzling whiteness of her teeth formed the other pole of her adorable smile.
A decisive test. Was she what her face advertised, or was it lying, like Luce’s?
“I don’t have a hat! My hat-box is still in the rocket.”
No—with that voice, she had to be genuinely sincere, deep down.
Seeing that she was looking at the famous green box, placed on a stool, Alburtin stopped in the middle of a sentence and blushed. Then he pulled himself together and declared, forthrightly: “I have a confession to make, Miss. The demon of scientific curiosity has driven me to commit a frightful larceny. Without asking your permission, I took a sample of your meteorites—a few decigrams—for experimental purposes.”
All that was shining in the milky sclerotics was the disinterested curiosity of a scientist. “My intention was to offer you that sample. What was the result of your experiment?”
Visibly relieved, Alburtin extended his index-finger toward the spongy mass effervescing beneath the X-ray tube, and then the reddish patches on the conductive wires. “Look—this...and this.”
With both hands flat on the edge of the table, absorbed in serious concentration, she leaned toward the strange vegetation for a long time. Then she straightened up.
“Here are facts that will revolutionize biology, and perhaps cosmogony. It’s even more beautiful than I dared to hope. Doctor, I’m glad that you had the inspiration of experimenting on the meteorites. I intended to offer them to the University of Montreal, but who knows whether the discovery would have been made without you? I rejoice twice over that the honor will come to you, firstly because you have saved me, and secondly because it will return, via you, to my country of origin. I’m French at heart, like my late mother.”
Alburtin was about to reply, but she went on, with a sudden hint of bitterness: “Perhaps you’re astonished that I can dispose of this gift as I wish, but it’s purely scientific and incapable of making money; it’s no betrayal of the organizers of my flight. It was me, and me alone, who conceived the idea of a device designed to collect these meteorites, and who had it built and installed aboard the MC-17. My father is only interested in the Rocket as the solution to a technological problem, and his silent partner, Lendor J. Cheyne, the director of the Moon Gold Company, demands that discoveries pay. The solution of problems of the highest order counts for nothing in his eyes, unless they have practical results. He only wants one thing: to recover, with a fat profit, the capital invested in the astronautical rocket business. Matters of no interest to me…but to him! It’s understandable, however, in a financial backer who’s a businessman. Do you know how much it cost, my little four-hour excursion into space, including all the expenses of two years’ research and preliminary experiments? $800,000: 20 million francs. I know that only too well! My ears have been bombarded by it.” I saw her sketch a disgusted frown. “$230,000 just to pay manufacturers of laboratory equipment, and to allow me to carry the 500 kilos of liquid atomic hydrogen serving to propel the apparatus. Half as much to make an engine-tube capable of supporting the explosion of a gas raised to a temperature of 5000 degrees and ejected at a velocity of 6000 meters a second.”
“I had no suspicion of these pecuniary considerations when I read about your trials in the newspapers, Miss,” the doctor replied.
She gave a slight shrug of annoyance and interjected, with a smile that tempered the reprimand: “No, not ‘Miss,’ I beg you. Excuse me, but I’ve endured enough ‘Misses’—let’s leave that to the Yanks. In Canada we say ‘Mademoiselle,’ as in France.”
“Mademoiselle,” Alburtin repeated, bowing. “As I was saying, we were unaware of the enormity of those preliminary expenses. To consent to such sacrifices it must have been necessary from the very first day for Monsieur Cheyne—the Moon Gold Company, that is—to be certain of your eventual success. The exploitation of lunar gold will be a splendid speculation, when you have established communication with our satellite. Was that, as the newspapers said, the purpose of yesterday’s flight?”
She stiffened, once again bitter and impenetrable.
“To reach the Moon is, indeed, the ultimate goal for which my father and the decors of the Moon Gold Company are aiming—a purely scientific goal for my father, a speculative goal for the Company—but...” Deliberately, she changed the subject. “By the way, Doctor, has my cablegram been sent?”
“As soon as the Post Office opened, Mademoiselle, at 7 a.m.”
“I’ll have a reply today, then—and if it’s the one I expect, you’ll be rid of me and my cumbersome apparatus tomorrow. Doctor, you’re undoubtedly busy—but if you’re free this afternoon, Monsieur Delvart, would you give me the pleasure of showing me around? I feel the need to breathe a little pure air—terrestrial air—after yesterday’s excursion.”
I accepted with a joy whose manifestations I had difficulty restricting to the simple limits demanded by politeness. It was agreed that I would come to pick her up at 2 p.m., after lunch. For the moment, though, as she was talking about going to fetch her hat-box from the Rocket, she consented, at Alburtin’s request, to show us the apparatus.
Given my technical incompetence, I have no desire to risk getting lost in the details she gave us. They are, in any case, well known, thanks to numerous popularizing articles. The only advantage I have over their readers is that of having seen at close range, and touched with my fingers, that redoubtable thin “magnalium” hull, the tanks of liquefied hydrogen and oxygen, the levers and regulators controlling the take-off, acceleration and direction of the Rocket...
What excited me most was finding myself alone with the voyager for a few minutes in the cabin—which was too small to accommodate three, requiring the doctor to remain outside with his head protruding through the manhole—and to hear her evoke the fantastic hours she had spent thousands of kilometers from her native planet and human beings, in the custody of a rudimentary and unsafe apparatus, with half a ton of explosives beneath her feet, at the mercy of the slightest malfunction.
She had not had any instruments designed to measure the altitude or the distance covered; the barometer no longer functioned outside the atmosphere. There was only a “gravimeter” indicating the diminution of weight and, in consequence, the distance from the Earth, to the nearest 100 or 200 kilometers—which resulted, during the descent, in a terrible danger of smashing into the ground by virtue of deploying the parachute too late, or of being roasted by atmospheric friction by virtue of deploying it too soon after the last braking thrust of the engine...
And breathing artificial and confined air for hours on end, reeking of the caustic soda intended to “regenerate” it, the cracking of whose reservoir on impact had caused the onset of asphyxia...
And having to ensure the exactitude of every maneuver, while simultaneously gripped by migraine, limbs weakened and body drained by the atrocious malaise procured by the increase in weight during the accelerated thrust, and then its total abolition while, with the engine stopped, the apparatus ran on momentum, to collect the meteorites…a malaise that produced the dire threat of an imminent loss of consciousness, to which one did not have the right to yield, under pain of death...
As we emerged from the apparatus the young heroine saw me so emotional that she burst into valiant laughter, saying: “Bah, Monsieur Delvart, it wasn’t so terrible, since I’m here, alive and re
ady to do it again. Besides, I’m here because of a false move; I overestimated the probable westward drift, and steered too far eastwards on the return journey. If not, I’d have landed, was planned, in the American continent. But one does better the second time around, having got used to it. Interplanetary navigation isn’t very convenient, by dead reckoning, on one’s own.”
I uttered an exclamation of protest. “But why on your own? Why not have a companion…male or female?”
“A question of weight. It would be more convenient and safer with two, but an extra 60 or 70 kilos is too heavy. We are, after all, at the birth of astronautics, at approximately the same point as the first aerial navigators, Montgolfier or Charles and Robert. Then again, my father has so much confidence in my composure…and his discoveries.”
She drew away, hat-box in hand, her mood darkened again by that allusion to her father. I was beginning to scent a mystery.
Alburtin had noticed something too. As we parted company on the doorstep, he whispered: “She hasn’t been there, you know?”
“Where?”
“The Moon. That’s obvious. She almost let on. That’s why she dreads being interviewed. It would wound her self-esteem to admit her failure. And yet, she’ll have to do it in the end. Bizarre…unless it’s a matter of a stock-market coup. Perhaps she’s awaiting her father’s instructions.”
“That would surprise me, of her,” I said, simply. “Well, I’ll see you later.”
And with that, I went back to my hotel.
In the dining room, the boarders were already at table. I had the satisfaction of not seeing the Ricourts, all three of whom had gone out for the day in the car. I had to shake a few hands in passing, though, before arriving at my place, and I overheard an insufficiently discreet reflection behind me with regard to the “injured aviatrix.”
While eating lunch, I thought that Monsieur Botin and the truckers must have been talking, and doubtless Madame Alburtin too; public curiosity had been awakened. A couple of Parisian journalists, I knew, were on holiday in Cassis. Might I have to defend “Mademoiselle Aurette Constantin” against an attempt to interview her that afternoon?
But why was Aurore so reluctant with regard to reporters? Merely out of vanity, the dread of admitting that she had not reached the Moon? That was insufficient to explain the kind of irritation and repulsion that she betrayed every time there was any mention of the director of the Moon Gold Company, Lendor Cheyne, or even her father...
I invented 20 hypotheses to account for the mystery…in she evidently could not fail to play the role of damsel in distress. And I dreamed of becoming her champion, in the manner of Don Quixote, of fighting for her, of extracting her from God only knew what web of intrigue in which she was struggling impotently, in which all her science and courage could do nothing without my help!
Those three hours spent with her that afternoon were an exquisite and seductive adventure.
She walked by my side along the Porte-Miou road with an agile and alert stride, dressed as she had been that morning but coiffed with a tightly-fastened bonnet that circled her head in the same way as a flying helmet and made her once again the Envoy, the Angel of The Wonderful Visit. I had assumed that it would be necessary for me to get closer to her gradually, limiting myself at first to the role of a cicerone showing off the beauties of the landscape, in order to bring our different personalities into unison, but the approximate strategy that I had prepared proved to be unnecessary.
After five minutes, before we had even got past the beach at Bestouan, where a few fanatical bathers were sunning themselves on the shingle at that unreasonable hour, the knowledgeable American scientist found herself in complete sympathy with the French painter. No educational barrier separated us any longer; we were equals, united by the delight of schoolchildren on vacation, and we were chatting freely, like old comrades.
What she told me, reported in writing, would appear insignificant and puerile, but by virtue of the delightful perfume of confidence and the candid smile of her mouth and eyes, everything she said—even anecdotes about her dogs and cats—acquired a unique sentimental value for me. I listened, with the joy of penetrating her intimate life, and she abandoned herself to her memories, associating me with them as a benevolent and wonderstruck auditor. I talked too, I believe, but mostly, I listened, untiringly to the stories that initiated me into her past, bringing me closer to her, in a quasi-fraternal fashion. With a few swords, I stimulated her to continue, uniquely avid to listen to her voice, which stirred infinite resonance within me.
I almost forgot my role as a cicerone; she forgot to “study” the landscape—but she perceived it, taking it in without paying any heed to it. With a gesture, I showed her a little inlet with white rocks, and a pine-tree leaning into the azure; or perhaps it was her, with some other gesture—and that sufficed for us to imbibe the beauty.
It was then that I committed the gaffe. I thought us so much in unison that I thought she was bathing in the same waves as me. We had been walking for an hour; we were sitting on the isthmus separating the cove of Port-Miou from that of Pont-Pin. The bulk of Cap Canaille was displaying its wild and grandiose silhouette in front of us, devoured by light, above the indigo bay, and the middle-ground there was a dazzling limestone headland. My companion was admiring it wholeheartedly with her eyes. The splendor of the decor completed, it seemed to me, the abolition of the conventional distance between us, obliging me to speak.
“Do you know, Mademoiselle, that I have known you for months?—which is a long time, in our accelerated epoch.”
“Months!” And as if she read it in my gaze, she went on, with a smile in which I thought I could discern a hint of irony and weariness: “Oh yes, at the cinema. I’m a character in the world news. Who doesn’t know me, on the screen? That kind of celebrity has already brought me the declarations, oral or written, of countless admirers. If I were a ‘vamp,’ as they say in the United States…a femme fatale…I’d have plenty with which to amuse myself. But I don’t even want anyone to pay court to me; on the contrary, that suffices to drive me away. Do you know that in two years, I’ve received 1237 proposals of marriage?”
The warning was obvious, but I was stung to the quick. Was she about to confuse me with that flock of ridiculous aspirants?”
“What does that matter?” I replied. “Idleness and snobbery have nothing to do with my case. The first time I saw your image, I recognized you, as if we had already met in another, anterior existence. And today I’ve found you...”
She interrupted me, in a calm and indulgent one: “Monsieur Delvart, you’re forgetting that I haven’t seen you on the screen, so I’ve only known you since yesterday…or, more precisely, for an hour. I like you—quite a lot, in fact—and I’m genuinely glad the chance has brought us together. We are, I think, able to listen to one another and become good friends. I sense that you’re sincere, that you mean what you say—and that’s why I want to avoid a misunderstanding that might spoil everything between us.”
“If I were to talk to you about love?”
“You’d be the 1238th, quite simply.”
“And I’d meet the same fate as my 1237 rejected predecessors?”
“Yes. I’m already engaged.” Seeing me crestfallen and discomfited, however, she added: “Engaged by the wishes of my father and the proprieties of business, to the director of the Moon Gold Company, Lendor J. Cheyne.” And again I saw the painful contention appear on her face that every allusion to the astronautical company and its director provoked—but I took care not to commit a further stupidity by offering to put my Quixotic knight-errantly valor at her disposal.
I feared that I had broken the charm. For a few minutes she had ceased to be the insouciant child evoking her memories and offering them to me as playthings; she became Aurore Lescure, the first female astronaut, again, at odds with an agreeable companion that it was necessary to keep at a distance. Soon, though, deliberately at first, in order to demonstrate that she was not
holding my premature declaration against me, then gradually relaxing, she became confidential again, and yielded to me once again a childish soul, the sister of my dreams.
The rebuff that I had just received, however, remained within me like a nucleus of irritation. I was overwhelmed and mollified by those delectable confidences, but even so, I couldn’t help noticing that she hadn’t told me anything about her father, or her fiancé, or the reasons that made her fearful of journalists...
She had given me retrospective confidences, treated me as a good comrade, yes, but not as a friend, not as a true friend.10 Although everything about her pleased me, enchanted me, so that I clung to her with all my antennae, I did not feel the expected, hoped-for, necessary reciprocity. I was scandalized by that difference of plane between our sentiments—and yet, as she said, she had not seen me in the cinema. My amorous “crystallization” was too far ahead of hers. For her, I was not, and could not yet be, any more than a good comrade.
We had just arrived in the harbor when, in a group of idlers who were watching sardines being landed, I recognized—too late—the hideous white American sailor’s cap that Géo was sporting and Luce’s jade sweater. They had seen us—but so much the worse for the amenities, which I would clear up later. That hussy Luce was capable of anything, and I certainly wasn’t about to introduce her to my companion. Instead of continuing along the quay, we ducked into a little side-street that led to the church. Already, Luce was peering at us with her hand shielding her eyes; I saw her say something to her brother, but the latter restrained her by the arm and addressed a conspiratorial wink to me. I repaid him with an ironic nod of the head toward my red-haired Danae, who turned away ostentatiously.