The Jules Verne Steam Balloon

by Guy Davenport

  10

  A glass jar of acorns. A nautilus shell. Shale slab with a fossil gingko leaf. A Greek coin from Metaponton in Sicily. A snail shell. Greek text of Marcus, dictionary, coffee cup, running shorts drying on a hanger hooked to the skylight latch. Boy Scout Handbook, with markers. Mariana, said Franklin, says she likes this place better than any she’s ever been in, and I do too. Sure glad we met you on the beach.

  11

  The greatest of these beautiful thistles has at the first many large and long leaves lying on the ground, very much cut in and divided in many places, even to the middle rib, set with small sharp (but not very strong) thorns or prickles at every corner of the edges, green on the upper side, and whitish underneath: from the middle of these leaves rises up a round stiff stalk, three foot and a half high, set without order with suchlike leaves, bearing at the top of every branch a round hard great head consisting of a number of sharp bearded husks, compact or set close together, of a bluish green color, out of every one of which husks start small whitish blue flowers, with white threads in the middle of them, and rising above them, so that the heads when they are in full flower make a fine show, much delighting those who look at them: after the flowers are past, a seed grows in every one, or the most part of the bearded husks, which still hold their roundness until, being ripe, it opens of itself, and the husks easily fall away one from another, having in them a long white kernel: the root is great and long, blackish on the outside, and dies every year after it has borne seed.

  12

  Kim, home, strayed into his father’s study. Before Henricus Hondio’s Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Geographica ac Hydrographica Tabula, he smiled at the lion and ox reclined by a pumpkin in the border. Gerardus Mercator Flander. Grapes peaches cucumbers. Like Papa to have so narrow neat and black a frame. Then he stared at the engraving of Holberg to the left of the map and reset the nudge of his penis in his pants. The view through the French windows was a Bonnard. He read all the dull mail on the desk while fitching his crotch with meditative fingerings. At the harpsichord he played a gavotte by Bach, to keep from thinking of Anders just then. Midnote a repeat he froze, swivelled around, and turned a cartwheel. The view through the French windows was Bonnard because of the greens and mauves, the rusty pink of the brick wall. Anders, talking or strolling, liked to roll the ball of his thumb against his dick through his pants, and laugh like a dog about it, no sound, only a happy look and slitty eyes. Kim slid his pants down and off. Whether anybody was home he didn’t know. His briefs caught on his shoe and had to be hopped free. He yawned grandly, and stretched. He finished the gavotte at the harpsichord, did another cartwheel, and sauntered upstairs, britchesless. On the bed he allowed himself to think about Anders, happily, wondering if he were wicked, silly, or simply lucky.

  13

  How, Mariana said, did you talk a horse out of it? And with accessories to match. I thought only sailors were so gifted. I haven’t blushed since I was ten, Hugo said. Are you always so uninhibited, and so generous? Born so, Mariana beamed. Judging character at a glance is my best talent. They were sitting on the free beach, friends of half an hour, Mariana combing her black hair dry, keeping a lookout for Franklin in the shallows. He’d picked up spadger friends and they were idiotically scooping water into each other’s faces, squealing, stomping, kicking. Mariana, naked, was on her knees undressing Franklin when Hugo strolled up on the momentum of an impulse he dared not let flag. Hi! he said, Hugo, scoutmaster, schoolteacher, adept at small fry and making friends with beautiful strangers. What do you teach, Mariana asked, weight lifting? She hauled Franklin’s jersey over his head, unpantsed and debriefed him, and combed his hair with her fingers. Little brother Franklin, she said. Our day at the beach. Mariana Landarbejder. Work in a kindergarten, with brats. So I get to sunbathe with one. Maybe he’ll drown. Hi, brat, Hugo said. Isn’t it exciting to have so sweet and good-looking a big sister? Hugo undressed, making a neat stack of his clothes beside Mariana’s. You’re gorgeous, she said as they trotted into the waves. You’re beautiful, he replied. Life can be very simple, Hugo said after their swim. I have a room over the old stables at the school where I teach, wonderfully private, which you’re going to like. And I won’t ever know if I do or not if I don’t come and see, will I?

  14

  Papa? Kim in stubby blue pants all but occulted by a jersey with the collar flicked up cockily in back, fists at thighs, head down. Yes, dear Kim? You’re as brown as an Etruscan and as fetching as Ganymedes. Who’s that? Charming chap your age in Greek legend filched by Zeus to do God knows what with. Speaking of which, scamp, an hysterical mother, dash it, called to say that you’ve been exciting the school with jabber about sex. Something she said you said about the rights of children to it in great heaps and doses as a revolution against stuffy middleclass oppression. O my yes, and the red flag down the village road followed by troops of naked youngsters. All of this, and more. My ear was ringing, rather, before she finished. All I ask, Kim my boy, is that you take the persuasions and fiercely guarded decencies of others into consideration. Eh, what? Don’t look so damnably glum. I’m only talking reason. And you’re not listening. Papa, Kim said, looking up bravely, I’m in love with my friend Anders. We want to sleep together. We’ve got to. Every night, I mean. In his bed in the dorm, or in my bed. Anders Hammel. He’s fifteen. There are other boys here who love each other. They’re just like anybody else. Anders is not a sissy or anything. Mama won’t even notice.

  15

  Rhinopithecus, a permanent inhabitant of the cold high forests of Moupin, has a very thick fur, like the Macacus. Aeluropus, the most remarkable mammal discovered by Père David and kin to the singular panda (Aelurus fulgens) of Nepal, is as large as a bear, the body wholly white, with the feet, ears, and tip of the tail black. It inhabits the highest forests, and is therefore a true Palaearctic animal, as most likely is the Aelurus. Nyctereutes, a curious racoon-like dog, ranges from Canton to North China, the Amoor and Japan. Hydropotes and Lophotragus are small hornless deer confined to North China. A few additional forms occur in Japan: Urotrichus, a peculiar mole, which is also found in Northwest America; Enhydra, the sea otter of California; and the dormouse (Myoxus). Pallas’s sandgrouse (Syrrhaptes paradoxus), whose native country seems to be the high plains of Northern Asia, but which often abounds near Pekin, astonished European ornithologists in 1863 by appearing in considerable numbers in Central and Western Europe, in every part of Great Britain, and even in Ireland.

  16

  I’m a little drunk with you, Hugo said to Mariana. We began with busting the mattress, which is fun, and now I hear your voice when you aren’t here, and smell you in my nostrils, your girl smell and your vanilla panties and that cucumber taste of your breath, milk and cucumber, and see your China-blue eyes when I’m working. Sounds awful, Mariana said. By drunk, Hugo said, I mean I lose my balance a little when, coming from class, I tell myself that I’ll see you soon, and kiss and fuck you, and hug you a nice long time afterwards, and then we’ll talk, and I’ll learn that you’ve never heard of Ibykos or Li Po or Braque. Greek poet, way back, quinces in one of his poems, and a black wind from. From. Thrace, he said. Thrace, she said. Chinese poet, green rivers, plum blossoms. Braque is a painter. Blobbed mandolins, skinny little clay pipes, anemones in a bowl. Just like Picasso but different. Read Greek, look at Braque, and then go teach Scouts how to tie knots, sheepshank clove hitch stoppers trumpet shoestring and square. Life is very simple, Hugo said, when you know what you’re doing. Yes, said Mariana, but I’ll bet you don’t.

  17

  At Elseus Sophus Bugge they swam naked, boys and girls together, showered together, and learned where babies come from. Good enough, Anders said. And, Kim went on, they learned that masturbere is good in moderation, and it was Kim who asked how many times a day is moderate, and why in moderation anyway? Girls had giggled and Kim’s friend Karl put his hands over his face and peeked through his fingers. And here, freckles, foxred hair, beaver teeth, and sn
atchy glances, was unge hr Karl in person, brought by Kim to be shown Anders’s dick. He comes a handful, Kim said, and it’s white and thick. Scrounge it out, Anders, so Karl can see how crazy big it is. Kim’s, Anders said, obliging, is going to be a whopper if he keeps it in condition with steady exercise and long workouts. Aldrig i livet! said Kim. Karl asked to feel. Sure, Anders said. Kim’s friend’s my friend, and friends can snug anyway they want, jo? Karl swallowed a frog, and said, he’d like to see Anders shoot off. No problem, Anders said. Back of the boathouse, under the willows, where Kim says he used to whack off before we imprinted on each other. Gee whillikers, said Karl. It jumps when he comes, Kim said, and bounces. At Grundtvig they walk around in the dorm in their underpants, some in nothing, and everybody whacks off whenever they want to.

  18

  Who’s Grey Eyes here in his birthday suit? Mariana asked of a canvas. That, said Hugo, is the Bicycle Rider. He never came again for me to finish the picture. He was a student here, bone lazy, a day student who lived out on Nordkalksten where, as you know, there are dens of louts mainly American and German, and where the Gospel has not been preached. Pretty nasty place, Mariana said. Creepy. I’ve seen him about I think. Tall, blond, very pretty face, clothes from the Salvation Army? He was in my Greek Myth class, Hugo said, and by the third day it began to get through to me that he was quite simply the handsomest boy I’d ever seen in my life. But with arrogantly messy hippy hair, and, as you say, oil rags for clothes. A young prince in peasant disguise, I said to myself. And then he had very little to do with anybody, except some students who envied his revolutionary costume and easy cynicism. He was quick to point out to his admirers the particular stupidities of all the faculty, whom he pitied for their stodginess. He was alert in class, though, and could fake the most sincere interest in myths and Greek culture.

  19

  Reindeer across golden moss in a cloud of their own breath, Sibelius. The forest, Kim said lying face down on the bed, talking into the pillow. Snow down the steep sides of fjords. Wolves with silver eyes. A dust of frost in the air that gets up your nose and stings, and tickles the corners of your mouth. He reached under his hips to undo his jeans, buckle, brad, and zipper. Fucking the bed, he worried and wiggled his jeans down to his knees. Bach, he said, dances. Mozart dances. But Sibelius flies. He tried getting his jeans off with a squirm of toe work, hobbling his ankles. Keeping the cadence of his humping steady, he thumbed down his underpants and fidgeted them, wriggle by twitch, as far as the wadded jeans. My wizzle, he croodled, is up so loving touchy stiff that it’s got a crick in it. He freed a foot and pushed jeans and briefs off the end of the bed. Imp, Anders said. One deplorable imp. See how long you can keep it up. I hear Rutger down the hall. O wow, Kim said. Rutger. Does he josh you about me? Wait and see, Anders said. Sibelius, Rutger said, and for guds skyld, Ven Anders, take Nipper here up on whatever he’s pushing.

  20

  The white Mountain Daffodill with Ears rises up with three or four broad leaves, somewhat long, of a whitish green color, among which rises up a stalk a foot and a half high, whereon stands one large flower, and sometimes two, consisting of six white leaves apiece, not very broad, and without any show of yellowness in them, three whereof have usually each of them on the back part, at the bottom upon the one side of them, and not on both, a little small white piece of a leaf like an ear, the other three having none at all: the cup is almost as large, or not much less than the small Nompareille, small at the bottom, and very large, open at the brim, of a fir-yellow color, and sometimes the brims or edges of the cup will have a deeper yellow, as if it were discolored by saffron: the flower is very sweet, the root is great and white, covered with a pale coat or skin, not very black, and is not very apt to increase, seldom giving offsets: neither have I ever gathered seeds, because it passes without bearing any with me.

  21

  Anders husking down his briefs, fighting out of his jersey, stripping loose his shoelaces, said that the black stripe on the neck and feet of archaic horses and asses is called in Greek the mykla. From the plains of Poland, Kim said, grasslands from this horizon to the other, the last herds of wild horses in Europe, rounded up like a hundred years ago, jo? Lovely big horses, iron grey, nickering and whinnying, up to their knees in Russian pink and Ukrainian blue meadow flowers, frolicking foals and dignified mares. Hej! So last night, reading in my sockfeet across from Papa in his fog of burnt applejuice pipesmoke and telling me bits from the paper, what assholes politicians are, my dick began to burrow in my jeans like a perky little mouse. So I nudged it along, by way of petting it, until it was hard as a rib, and throbbing. Den er mœgtig! We sluddered three jumping slurps out of it over the afternoon, with that crazy bird saying Well I never! I think so! in the tree above us, and here he was randy again. And Papa looked funny over the top of his glasses and then up to heaven, and then paid me a wink. O boy. Lille djœvel, Anders said. You’re going to have little nubbly horns growing. One here and one here.

  22

  Six or so, I suppose it was, Hugo said, when an agemate and I, Ole Vinsson, all freckles and towhead, made a scientific study of sexual differentiation, with his sister, who was ten and had a mind both forthright and level. We simply took off our togs and satisfied our curiosity. It was his sister Julie’s opinion that whereas God gave babies, people had to love each other to show that they wanted them, and that parents fucked all night long, all day long too, right after they’re married, with ineffable pleasure, until God was convinced, and supplied the baby. We found out about her kildrer, and she gave us a demonstration of tickling it. She had friends who could tickle themselves into hysterics, passing out with the pleasure of it. Real boys, she gave us to understand, had stiff peters all the time, like the satyrs of old. Surely, Mariana said, you were older, eight or nine? By then, said Hugo, Ole and I had learned from a rangy teenager the fly of whose jeans always seemed to be cordially distended that jacking off makes one’s peter grow. Doesn’t it? Mariana asked. Don’t tell Franklin if it doesn’t.

  23

  Squeamish, me? Rutger hooted, towelling down. Meg’ll not blink a lash, and like all women is nosey about you and your gamy sweetmeat nipper. Give her a hot crotch maybe even. Anders, well balanced in the articulately inflected fit of his jeans and smug about the sidesway wrench of his fly that gapped the top teeth of his zipper and canted out its tab, was in a whickering good humor. Hard balls, he said. Cock growing a bone inside. But, said Rutger, you milked that rowdy last night, and grunted a lot doing it. Twice, said Anders, and got pulled off twice in the dingle, by untuckering boypower, a tongue in overdrive, and an everloving will. Does he pant, Rutger said, when he sees your dick rearing up, like Meg? Says her heart lurches. What if I’m turned on by your pukey kid and his pink little sprig of a weewee? Every man his specialty, as you say. Whereupon Kim stomped in, hair tousled, and got hugged by Anders and, wickedly, by Rutger. I think I’m scared, Kim said, judging by one cold shiver or another I keep getting. Makes it spicier, said Rutger. Meg’s setting out about now. We meet her at the bend and head for the boathouse. Then we all fuck and whatever it is you do until we pass out with coming. And then go at it again, gasping and weak, squish squish. Crazy, said Kim.

  24

  Through the hornbeam and beech forests of Transylvania and the Djerdap Gorge, the Danube over seething rapids, white shoals, falls, foaming sluices, comes to the whirlpool of Lepenski Vir. Here, on a ledge above it, lived an epipaleolithic people whose vestiges Dragoslav Srejovič found in 1960. Their community sat on a horseshoe shelf above the great spiral of water, with the steep cliffs of the Koršo Mountains at its back. Among apron-shaped houses laid out like steps stood monumental Erewhonian statues whose faces groan with the agony of birth, or with awe before some wonder or terror. The endemic plants were lilac smokewood manna ash slow buckthorn Dalmatian toadflax cypress spurge oxeye camomile. Bone bracelets needles awls. The dead were buried as if giving birth, the skull of a stag over the shoulders. A frieze of geese
on a pot, deer in a thicket. Ovens altars hearths were decorated with wave patterns. Elk and salmon, and the navel of the river below. Owl in the hornbeam was father’s sister’s daughter, red-combed quail mother’s brother’s son, celt hook lilac, lilac circle spinning water. Night rain, noon rain. Salmon river, bear wood.

  25

  He was a pleasant interest, Hugo said. I like people. He was moreover poor, taking courses at NFS Grundtvig as a day student on tuition from a government grant, parents divorced, making him eligible for a stipend for the disadvantaged. He had the one pair of ratty jeans, a few secondhand shirts, and perhaps not enough to eat. So the first time I invited him over, ostensibly for a drawing, I laid in sausages, beer, cold ham, a potato salad, a melon. He was charming. It was his second time over that I learned he slept in a large box in a hallway. This he rented from a hack freelance artist, gay, unfortunate personality. By the third visit I’d decided to move him in with me. There’s room. So I said, Bring your traps. He said that the idea of sharing quarters with me was like a dream. He would have all these books to read. Engines in the switching yard would not wake him before dawn. No hideous fights among toughs in the street outside one’s window. No cockroaches. He was to move in on the Wednesday. I waited in a nice excitement. I like new things, new turns. I knew it would be difficult having him here. What did I know about him, really? Pretty much nothing, except that he needed taking in. I waited and waited. He never came.

  26

  Six Ryvitas, Mariana gasped. And came like a brass band passing the royal box on Liberation Day. Franklin at his lookout was chinning on a limb, up and down like a puppet on elastic strings. Det hele? he called. Forbi. The river’s not the ocean, Hugo had said. Drop in, holding your nose, bob up, and I’ve got you. Hang on around my neck and I’ll swim you out to the sandbar. Your own island. Here he danced out some intricate fantasy, crouching, springing, kicking water, falling down shot, rebounding to repulse ten insectoid invaders from another galaxy with laser spurts. Zonk, zink, zonk. Ferried back twice now to stand guard while they fucked, jeans rolled to pillow Mariana’s bottom. At Skordbærbjerg, experimental school for brats and trendies, Mariana said, run you know by worldsavers and psychologists, there was this little nipper of a girl, all of ten, going up and down the hall holding her twat, naked as a newt, and in her free hand two Ryvitas and a krone, which she was offering to whoever for a fuck. Fun was, the look on the face of some government functionary inspecting the school that day, who had already seen two teenagers doing it in the library and half the kids naked in the pool, and had been propositioned by a boy with a twinge of pubic hair if you looked close.