Herma

by MacDonald Harris

  Marcel’s nocturnal habits having to be taken into account above all, they left from Paris a little before midnight in the Hispano tourer: Agostinelli at the wheel and Anna in front with him, Marcel and Fred almost lost in the large salonlike interior, the baggage on top and strapped to the rear. They arrived at the Grand Hotel just at dawn. Of all the times of day it was possible to arrive and register at the Grand Hotel in Cabourg, nobody else had ever arrived at dawn except Marcel.

  A drowsy chasseur came out and got their baggage. They were installed in three rooms: a double for Anna and Agostinelli, and large singles for Fred and Marcel. Fred and Marcel went to sleep, Fred because he had been up all night talking in the car and could hardly keep his eyes open, and Marcel because it was his ordinary time to do so. When Fred woke up it was after noon. He went down to the restaurant and had something to eat. Then he looked around a little. In the gray dawn of the arrival he had scarcely noticed anything except the chasseur showing him which way to set his feet. The hotel and the town itself were pleasant, in a late-Victorian and vulgar sort of way. The hotel faced onto a circular park, with the casino adjoining it so that you could go from one to the other without going outdoors. At the rear was a terraced garden, then the beach with the somewhat chilly-looking sea behind it. On the seawall some girls were throwing up a diabolo and catching it on a string with two sticks. At this time of the year most of the guests were women and children. There were plenty of girls, and all of them seemed to be pretty. Fred had coffee on the terrasse, looking down on the beach.

  So began a new kind of existence, the life of Cabourg. It was a brief one, lasting only for two weeks. Evidently Marcel didn’t work very much during these interludes at the seaside. He made notes, or might write a manuscript page or two and set it aside. But he came chiefly for the sea air, which was good for his asthma, and the society—so he said, although he had hardly anything to do with others and kept to his own private ways, for the most part, observing things rather than taking part in them directly. Once, to Fred’s astonishment and even the mild surprise of Agostinelli, he appeared on the golf course in white suede shoes and a long violet cloak like that of an archbishop, along with a friend encountered by chance, the publisher Calmette; but he was unable to master the game because he was convinced that the player who took the most strokes to get around the course was the winner. Perhaps this was only one of his private jokes.

  Yet in secret and in his own way he was always working, Fred began to see. Once, when he emerged in the late afternoon, he and Fred had tea on the terrasse of the hotel overlooking the beach. While they were still sitting over their empty cups a little band of girls came through the terrasse, laughing and chattering like pastel birds, on their way down to the beach. When they caught sight of Marcel they waved and smiled—he nodded, with a slightly ironic expression, in a sign of recognition. They wound on down through the paths of the flower garden. The slanting afternoon sun bathed everything in a brilliant yellowish clarity. Marcel went on looking down at the beach for a moment, then he reached for the menu on the table and tore off the corner of it. With a fountain pen he wrote something. Reading upside down, Fred managed to make out, “The shadows of young girls on flowers.” Marcel carefully put away the piece of cardboard in the pocket of his vaudeville comedian’s frock coat. The waiter came, immediately noticed the torn menu, took it and folded it under his arm, and went away with a bow.

  At sunset a ladies’ brass band played on the beach, under a spider-web of electric lights that provided illumination as twilight came on. At other times there might be chamber music, or a black American jazz band which Marcel gazed at with the fascination of one observing strange creatures from another planet. He asked Fred if jazz was played in every home in America. Fred had never heard of it until he came to France. In the evening they dined in the excellent hotel restaurant—Marcel seldom left the hotel, even after dark—and then they would usually take their coffee in the lounge—Fred bored, and Marcel leafing idly through English illustrated magazines. “I know English, you know. I’ve translated Ruskin.” “But you don’t speak it?” “Ah no. Zat eez too deef eecult.”

  Sometimes, later in the evening, Marcel played Baccarat according to an extraordinary system—he stayed in his room, reading or inhaling the fumes from Legras powders, while Agostinelli sat at the green baize table in the casino and from time to time dispatched notes by waiters to his employer to ask which card to play next, or how to extricate himself from a difficult situation. Sometimes he won by this method, more usually he lost, but not very much. In the daytime of course he slept; Agostinelli was free, and he and Fred were often together.

  Fred studied the motoring map of France, which was printed in halves, with the northern half on one side and the southern on the other. He was trying to see if you could get from Cabourg to Le Mans and back again during the day, before Marcel awoke in the late afternoon. You could. It wasn’t necessary to go through Paris; you went on a narrow country road to Lisieux and then on the highway through Argentan and Aleneon. It was only about a hundred and sixty kilometers. Agostinelli said he could do it in two hours or a little more if there wasn’t too much traffic.

  They left the next morning about ten. It was a mild day, almost cloudless, and they took off the removable window-screens from the sides of the car. Agostinelli drove with skill down the winding country road to Lisieux, a good deal faster than he drove when he was chauffeuring Marcel. He was enjoying himself. Fred slumped back in the seat with a cigar, watching the Normandy countryside with its hedgerows go by. There were long periods of silence. When they did speak the conversation was mainly about automobiles. Agostinelli told him that he had originally worked for the Taximètres Unic company in Monaco, but the company had sent him to Cabourg where there was a good deal of business in the summer. Monsieur Marcel had engaged the taxi for tours to look at the local old stones—Bayeux, the steeples of Caen, Balleroy, the cathedral at Lisieux. Finding that he was using the car almost every day, and requesting Agostinelli when he telephoned to the agency, he asked his friend Monsieur Bizet, the director of the company, if he couldn’t buy the taxi. “They were at the lycée together,” he explained. Agostinelli was evidently impressed by the word lycée, even though he wasn’t quite sure what went on in such a place. As a special favor Monsieur Bizet allowed him to buy the taxi assigned to Agostinelli, and Monsieur Marcel had it painted royal blue and upholstered in light-blue leather. Agostinelli of course came with the car. From then on he was Monsieur Marcel’s employee.

  “The Unic was a good machine,” said Agostinelli, “but it had the enclosed salon at the rear and the driver sat out in front exposed to the weather. I didn’t mind,” he smiled, “but it was painful to the mind of Monsieur Marcel to see me sitting out in the rain. And so last year he bought me the Hispano.”

  “Bought you?”

  “Yes. He bought the Hispano. It’s a much finer piece of machinery. In fact Monsieur Marcel doesn’t know how fine it is. Essentially it is a racing automobile. The chassis is that of the 15-T model which won the 1910 Coupe de l’Auto at Boulogne. It has the bored-out engine—2.6 liters—with the short-stroke crankshaft. The coachwork is by Lefèvrier of Lyon. Monsieur Marcel doesn’t really need such a powerful engine. But he told me to select any car I liked.”

  He related all this in a combination of quiet technical competence and boyish enthusiasm. He was an extremely attractive person, and best of all he was only partly aware of this himself. Everything about him suggested youth and good nature—his slight plumpness, the lock of hair that hung over his forehead so that he brushed it negligently back now and then, his charming smile—not at all complex or oriental like the smile of Marcel, simply that of a small boy who wanted to please. When Marcel wasn’t in the car he took off his chauffeur’s cap and set it on the seat beside him. He was proud of the rest of his uniform, polishing the brass buttons until they shone like gold and oiling the black leather of the military belt.

  He kept h
is hands in kid-leather gloves in the correct racing position on the wheel. He seldom took his eyes off the road ahead. “Zuccarelli, in the 15-T, turned the three kilometers at Boulogne in one minute forty,” he said.

  Between Lisieux and Argentan, driving at a hundred kilometers an hour down the winding road, Agostinelli ran over a chicken. Looking around, they saw a small tornado of feathers turning in the air, and behind it a woman napping her apron angrily and shouting something incomprehensible over the roar of the engine.

  At Argentan, about halfway to Le Mans, Agostinelli drove around through the streets until he found a paint and varnish shop. There was a glossy sign over it, “Huiles et Peintures.” Leaving the Hispano running, Agostinelli shouted to the proprietor who came to the door, “Do you have a little essence?” The proprietor nodded and came out in a moment in his spotted canvas apron, lugging two large metal cans with spouts, containing each one perhaps twenty liters or so. The two cans were emptied into the fuel tank, which was a large cylinder mounted at the rear with a filling pipe sticking up from it.

  They started off again. The Hispano was a brutish machine to crank and Agostinelli always left the engine running if possible. They had lunch at the railroad station buffet at Alençon (Agostinelli had to crank the beast afterward to start it), then came into Le Mans in the early afternoon. They drove through the outskirts and around the city to the former racecourse at Les Hunaudières, where the Wrights had flown in 1909. Now it was converted to a full-fledged aerodrome, with two large hangars with arching metal roofs, an office, and a flying school.

  There were a number of machines lined up on the grass in front of the hangars. Fred went into the office and came out with the rental manager who showed him what was available. Most of the machines were privately owned. For rental there were some obsolete Farmans, a Demoiselle monoplane, a pair of Bréguets, and a Deperdussin with the Antoinette engine that Fred didn’t trust. Fred chose a two-place Bréguet biplane, of the same type the French army had purchased for some trials for possible military use. The engine was a 60-horsepower Anzani radial with pushrod-operated overhead valves. The magneto system was twinned so that if one half of it failed the other part would still go on providing a spark. There was no oil sump; the castor-oil lubricant was mixed with the fuel.

  Agostinelli examined the engine with interest and asked a number of questions. He had never seen a radial engine and wanted to know exactly how the fuel was supplied to the cylinders. And wouldn’t the horizontal cylinders wear oval because of the weight of the pistons? The rental manager lifted his eyebrow at this. It was a well-known difficulty with radials. Obviously Agostinelli had an instinct for machinery.

  “There’s no muffler system.”

  “No. It isn’t necessary in the air.”

  “It must be very noisy.”

  “Very.”

  Fred had his helmet and goggles with him along with the rest of his flying gear. The manager lent Agostinelli a pair of goggles. Fred remembered how the mechanic Kinney had lent him the goggles when he flew at the Presidio, years ago. Like the young man who flew the Wright Flyer in San Francisco, Agostinelli turned his cap around backward so it wouldn’t blow off.

  They mounted into their places. Fred, looking around, showed Agostinelli how to fasten his safety harness. A mechanic swung the propeller a few times, the engine caught, and they were off.

  There was a tall row of elm trees a little beyond the upwind edge of the field. Obviously there were two ways to deal with this. You could try to climb over the trees or you could go into a climbing turn to the right almost as soon as you were off the ground. Fred, trusting his own flying ability more than the power of the unfamiliar engine, decided to do the turn. The elm trees swung around, as though whirled on the end of a string, and dropped away below. The Anzani had a lot of power. Probably he could have cleared the trees easily on a straight takeoff. The aerodrome dropped away behind. He went up to fifteen hundred and settled out on a course to the west, over the rolling farm country of the Sarthe. At this altitude he could catch a glimpse now and then of the valley of the Loire, far away to the south. The small map which the manager had lent him was fastened to the instrument panel with a piece of tape.

  The Bréguet had a single long cockpit with two tandem seats in it so that Agostinelli was directly behind him and could watch what he was doing. Whenever he made a maneuver Fred pointed at the control stick or at his feet on the rudder bar to show Agostinelli what he was doing. Agostinelli nodded. He was interested in everything and he seemed to comprehend quickly. Once, without touching his own dual stick, he cupped his hands around it and made motions to the right, to verify that this was what was done in a right turn. Fred, looking around, nodded and yelled, “that’s just to bank, you have to work the rudder bar at the same time.” At a certain point, with his hands and feet still on the controls, he turned around and allowed Agostinelli to pretend at least that he was banking the aeroplane in a turn. He gave it a little too much rudder and Fred held the bar stiff with his feet to stop it. “fine, fine.” He felt like Castel-Jaloux, yelling encouragement at the student who was in imminent danger at every moment of throwing the craft into a spin or breaking off its wings, “TAKE YOUR FEET OFF THE BAR NOW. LEAVE THE STICK ALONE.”

  Fred made a wide turn over a town—it was called Voivies, he verified from the map—and headed back toward Les Hunaudières, following along the ribbon of a small river which divided around an island and then came back together, thus providing him with a landmark. To the left and below he caught sight of the two large silver hangars. He glanced at his watch; they had been in the air a little less than an hour. From his long habit of renting aeroplanes by the hour Fred had developed an instinct for this unit of time and invariably glided into a landing at fifty-eight or fifty-nine minutes, thus avoiding having to pay for overtime. It was also a good way to avoid running out of fuel. If there were no women aviators, perhaps it was because they had no sense of time. Herma was always late for rehearsals. Probably Marcel couldn’t fly an aeroplane either. Fred cut the throttle, banked in a descending curve to the left, and lined up on the field.

  The grass rushed up. The field at Le Mans was smoother than the one at Issy, more like a golf course than a pasture. The heavy two-place machine dropped a little faster than he expected, and the skid bounced a little as he touched down. Stick back! Right on your pecker, as Castel-Jaloux always said. Another reason why women couldn’t fly.

  He taxied the Bréguet up and wheeled to a stop in the line before the hangars. They got out. Agostinelli took off his goggles and turned his cap the right way around. They started to walk away, then Agostinelli turned and went back.

  He looked at the Bréguet again. Standing with his hand on the guy wire that supported the two wings, he said, “Monsieur Frédéric, beside this, a motor car is a heavy and clumsy thing.”

  8.

  Agostinelli took a few lessons—once again at Le Mans, before they left Cabourg—and then, after they were back in Paris, at Issy-les-Molineaux, flying the old Farman with Castel-Jaloux’s stiff leg stuck out beside him.

  But he didn’t have much time for flying. Monsieur Marcel was always sending him on errands, and he often stayed up half the night taking Monsieur Marcel or his friends to hear music, to restaurants, or to the Ritz—Monsieur Marcel sometimes lent the car and stayed home himself, if he wasn’t feeling well enough to go out. And the next day, after being up half the night, Agostinelli was too sleepy to fly.

  Besides, he didn’t really have the money for the lessons. Monsieur Marcel paid him adequately but barely so, and he had Anna to support as well as himself. Anna was paid nothing, even though she lived in the apartment and often stayed up half the night herself administering to Monsieur Marcel’s various wants. Monsieur Marcel disliked her so much that he preferred to pretend she didn’t exist, so he didn’t pay her. He, Agostinelli, didn’t have any friends in Paris and the only one he could talk to about these things was Monsieur Frédéric.

&
nbsp; They met in a café in rue d’Astorg, just off boulevard Haussmann, near the pharmacy where Agostinelli pretended he had gone out to buy some drugs. Agostinelli complained that he was practically a prisoner. He had no freedom, he couldn’t go and do what he wanted, he was always at Monsieur Marcel’s call at any time of the day or night. He was confined to the apartment much of the time, even in the daytime when Monsieur Marcel was sleeping, because he might wake up and call for Agostinelli to take a message to Madame de Noailles, Madame Annan de Caillavet, or some other of his many society-lady friends whom he wished to please with some charming thought that had struck him, or whose invitation he wished to accept or decline.

  “You see, Monsieur Frédéric, I am still very fond of Monsieur Marcel. He has always been very nice to me. But a man is entitled to some life of his own. Even a convict in prison is left alone for a few hours while he sleeps every night. And Anna. It isn’t fair to Anna. Perhaps you could speak to Monsieur Marcel.”

  “Why don’t you talk to him yourself?”

  “When you talk to someone about things that are so delicate, it’s important that you choose exactly the right words. I’m afraid Monsieur Marcel might be angry, or that he might turn against me and that would end our friendship. You would know the proper words to choose. You’re an educated man, Monsieur Frédéric. Un homme cultivé. You would know how to talk to him.”