“Jolly.”
Luisa had little more to say. Instead of paying attention to Elka, she searched around the room in an interested way to see who else was there. She and Elka were elaborately ignoring each other like a pair of strange cats. Elka eventually condescended to introduce her to the others: “Mademoiselle Hickman, a singer.” This phrase seemed to me curious on two counts. First of all, it was a long time since I had thought of her as possessing a paternal origin powerful enough to confer a surname on her. Over the months she had become, in some part of my mind, the exclusive creature and product of the two old women in Quai D’Orléans, as though they had confected her out of raw materials and brought her to life through some necromancy of their own. Now she was abruptly resurrected in another guise, the child of the cowboy-martyr who had ridden out fearlessly into the mob of howling Apaches. Perhaps this disparity, taken in the light of the hereditary theories of M. Zola, would account for at least some of her foibles and inconsistencies. But which was it, Luisa the cowgirl or Luisa the daughter of her mother, who had struck the beefy man with her crop? There was much food for reflection here. Second, Elka’s phraseology now obliged me to think of her singing as professional. Why did something in me resist this notion, something coming from below the midriff and as inaccessible to reasonable argument as it was fundamental? Jealousy? Preposterous.
As for me, nobody bothered to introduce me, but I heard someone murmur, hardly bothering to whisper, “son Suedois.” Her Swede? Another piece of grammar with curious implications. The only other male at the table was a Peruvian, an employee of a diplomatic mission as I understood it, with oleaginous hair parted exactly in the middle and a face like a sun. His elbows were on the table too like Elka’s, and he made an Incan smile.
“You perform, mademoiselle? If so I would be enchanted to come and hear you.”
“There will be a recital in February.”
“Till then—one can only wait. In the meantime …”
The devil with his pre-Columbian innuendoes. Luisa, however, hardly seemed to take notice of him. A feminine and Sapphic air seemed to pervade the place, an air of maenads. The only dancers on the floor were couples of women, and two young ladies at a table across the room—demurely clad, as a matter of fact, in blouses and long black skirts—had candidly slipped their arms about each other. Champagne came. Elka opened it—with éclat, the cork soaring across the room—and poured for both of us. Luisa and I touched glasses, her mouth set in her little well-bred and distant smile as it had been all evening.
A voice, somewhere in the depths of the room, called “Gavotte!” We were interrupted by the entertainment that broke out periodically in such places. A piano, a violin, and a set of drums played Offenbach, and two dancers cavorted into the open space in the centre of the room; there was no stage. The dancers were strong-limbed and square-jawed; the one on the left had a faint bluish shadow on her upper lip. Seizing their skirts with both hands, they kicked up their legs several times while the drum thumped punctuation, then performed the customary present-arms of their art: one foot held in the hand as far up as it would go, above the level of their heads, they bounced like concupiscent rabbits on the other foot in time to the music. The stockings were black, the rest of the costumes white. In the masses of not very clean linen, samples of bare skin were visible between stockings and knickers. Luisa was no more perturbed by this than she had been by Ubu’s monosyllable. The Peruvian caught my eye and smirked.
A drum roll. The two dancers, wearing carved wooden smiles, sprang into the air a little way twiddling their feet, and when they came down their legs split apart like broken scissors, coming to a stop stretched out on opposite sides of the floor. Applause, smoke, and more champagne. The dancers disappeared and a few lady couples took their places on the floor. Someone, probably the Peruvian, had given Luisa a long thin cigar, and now she allowed him to light it for her.
And what was the matter with me? Wasn’t I enjoying myself? That was the worst of it. I was. That is, not enjoying exactly. It was a phenomenon over which I had very little control. On the one hand I found the dancers disgusting. On the other hand a kind of imaginary elastic cord established itself in my mind, without my noticing it, between those white zones above the black stockings and Luisa’s businesslike form next to me in its English tweed. Now this cord gradually shortened, drawing the one image to the other. I found myself reminded of what I knew very well was under the tweed, a thought that up to then had not been appropriate or convenient because of the very tweedy briskness of her manner. This little worm prickled at me in a private place until I was exasperated. The Fiend carry off Offenbach anyhow! I pushed back my chair and announced in a firm voice that I had work to do the next day.
Elka, her tar-coloured lips fixed in a curve, looked at me and then at Luisa. “Mais tu restes n’est-pas chérie?”
Luisa hesitated for a moment, or at least remained silent for reasons connected with her own private tactics of managing the world about her. Then, with a smile quite as fixed and conventional as Elka’s, she said, “No, I must go.” We rose. The Peruvian started to get up and then thought better of it, putting his elbows back on the table. As we left, the Map-Faced Girl saluted in her own way: her hand raised with palm toward us, she bent down each finger in turn until it touched the palm. The hand, like her face, was plaster-white and covered with a network of fine lines.
I handed Luisa into the cab and climbed in behind her. With an audacity, a recklessness, ignoring the risk of the riding crop in her lap, I slipped an arm under her back and pulled her toward me on the leather seat. 16, Quai d’Orléans! She seemed to show no objection, and the tweed shoulder even settled complacently into the niche between my arm and my chest. Once she sighed, turned the pale oval of her face toward me in the darkened cab, then seemed to change her mind and looked out the window again. The gaslights of the Grands Boulevards went by dreamily. When we crossed over onto the Île on the Pont Louis-Philippe, she stirred and became her businesslike self again. We arrived before the house on the quai with its baroque marble pediments.
That ape of an Yves was still up and let us in. Then he disappeared. Luisa led me up the broad ceremonial staircase and down the hall in the darkness. Then, at the door of her dressing room, she told me to wait. “I have to change, don’t you see, dear heart.”
I waited, fingering the toe of a cupid caryatid who was holding up the ceiling with the help of his companion on the other wall. In the gloom my mind quite freely generated images that were concrete enough—almost—to touch: the yellow room in Stresa, the brocade like pale peach tinged with red and gold—I took a breath, calmed myself, and looked out the window into the dark courtyard, where only a flickering oil lamp illuminated the damp reticulation of the stones. The door of the dressing room opened and Theodor appeared in his military cap and boots, buttoning the greatcoat.
“What is this?”
“I must, you see. Because only men are admitted in the place we’re going.”
“Place?” “The Château Rouge, in the Marais. I told you—don’t you remember? It’s very droll, full of voyous and sinister persons.”
It was after two. The great clock in the hall below had struck while I was waiting.
“You’re mistaken. I am not going anywhere.”
“Please yourself. It would have been more amusing with a friend. But—”
“You’re not going alone?”
“Why not?”
I could see through this sort of sham easily enough. It was only a vastly complexified and more subtle version of the tactic that had before dragged me half unwillingly from recitals to the Café Royal to fittings at Worth’s and back again: the threat of some vague and unnameable peril if I was not along to offer protection. This time, still exasperated by that dumb worm of affection crawling in my vitals, I declined the gambit.
“In that case—since it’s late—I’ll get some needed sleep.”
“Ah yes, your work—” Rather distracte
dly. I had lost or was mistaken; she really was going. She even preceded me a little down the staircase as though she were in a hurry, glancing back only once. We parted on the quai, the military figure going on down under the gaslights toward the Pont-Marie. I crossed the river the other way and found a cab in Boulevard Saint-Germain. Back in that leather-lined and camphor-smelling capsule of darkness (it might have been the same one) I thrust my fists into my coat pockets and clenched my jaw. The gnawing worm was taking no account of my defiance of her, my wishing her at the bottom of the Seine; it was still as vertebrate as ever. Perhaps on my way home I should visit one of the establishments provided, for reasons of hygiene. The cabman would know. Or I could have asked Theodor.
But these are childish disappointments, of no concern at all to a mature man of character whose two hands are firmly in control of his destiny. It is I who am in command of the expedition, I tell myself, and also the captain of my soul (Luisa is fond of reciting Henley’s poem, which she knows by memory) and I can go any direction I choose through this thin whitish soup as long as it is downward. For two hours the Prinzess, with a regal dignity appropriate to her, has been descending a stairway of broad shallow steps: a half metre or so down, we throw something out, she glides level for a while, then a draft of cold air or a lazy notion strikes her and down she goes again. The guide ropes, as noted in our equipment book by Alvarez, weigh twenty-four kilos. We detach them—they unfasten with a quick-release device invented by Waldemer in case they should catch on a pressure ridge or hummock—and watch them fall to the broken slabs of ice below. The pack now resembles a large white cake which somebody has damaged through dropping. There are many gaps and cracks of black water—in places the irregular white shapes scarcely touch each other—and we must hope for luck enough to come down on the white and not on the black in this infernal checker game. Cast out something else!
“The Spiritual Telegraph?”
“No.” This is irrational on my part since it is heavy and we have no more use for it. We must keep the second and lighter of Waldemer’s two rifles too, and the primus, and a can of kerosene. All the tools can go, except for the old shears with the traces of red paint on the handles which we are keeping for a special purpose. Overboard with the medical kit, five kilos at least, and the wooden packing case we use as an all-purpose stool and navigation table. We are still sinking, although not so dangerously fast now. Our height, fifty metres. Stand by the maneouvring valve!
Theodor holds the valve cord ready in his hands, Waldemer prepares to leap out and hold the gondola from sliding along on this cake frosting, perhaps into a stretch of open water. The gondola touches the ice with a soft bump and rises, very slowly, a metre or so into the air again. Theodor pulls the valve cord to produce a hiss from overhead. The gondola bumps again and slants sideways, dragging over the ice. Everything in it—few enough as these items are now—tumbles to one side in a muddle. Waldemer is out onto the ice and so am I, but the gondola is not very hard to hold; the wind is light and the balloon has no pull to it any more. The great red and white globe that was so swelling and regal before now looks more like a dried fig; it droops to one side, twists drowsily, as though what it would really like to do is lie down and sleep on the ice.
This Prinzess will never take us anywhere any more. She must stay here. A dying friend; but oddly enough I find I have no more affection for her now that her usefulness is at an end. Ungrateful humanity! We will take care of the obsequies shortly. First we have a meal, concentrating on the heavier things we can’t take with us: Potage Hodge Podge (a specialty of ours consisting of anything at hand thrown in), steak, a mixture of cocoa powder and tea dissolved in hot water, and hardtack with raspberry syrup. A good and nourishing dinner. Then, throwing away the pots and pans instead of washing them, we set to work constructing the vehicle that will carry us south in place of the moribund Prinzess.
The Faltboot, a clever German contrivance supplied gratis by the manufacturer, fits into a kind of suitcase. There is a complicated system of struts which must be unfolded, then the oiled-canvas cover is fitted over it. When it is done it is five metres long and weighs no more than a twelve-year-old child; any one of us can easily lift it with one hand. Onto the bottom we screw oaken sled runners, and there are three ropes attached to the bow so we can fan out like Commander Peary’s dogs and pull it over the ice.
All this takes an hour. Now to the Prinzess. I climb up into the gondola and grasp the cord of the bursting valve. Putting my weight to it, I pull down three metres or more of the cord. There is a ripping sound from overhead as the stitches pull out, and a sound like a giant sigh. Quick now! There is almost no wind and the mass of red and white silk falls directly downward. I manage to drop to the ice and get away before it covers the gondola in a soft smother.
Hydrogen is odourless; that whiff of the inferno comes from the traces of the sulphuric acid the gas was made from. Taking the old red-painted shears in hand, I attack this confused mass of silk with giant-size bubbles of gas floating and oozing here and there in it. In a quarter of an hour I have cut a large rectangle out of it which will serve us as a tent. It is light, folds into a small package, and is waterproof. We set it on the ice near the Faltboot and begin selecting and piling up the other things we will take with us:
primus stove
kerosene
small saucepan
sextant and charts
compass
Faltboot
paddles
pemmican
Bovril
½ doz. misc. cans food
sugar
bacon
cocoa
Rousseau meat powder
three sleeping sacks
matches, in waterproof container
12—power binoculars
.256 Mannlicher rifle with ammunition
pair of bamboo poles, to hold up tent
1 set spare clothing, reindeer-skin
Can all this fit into that thin contrivance of canvas and struts? It seems unlikely. We set to work, experimenting with various stowage plans. The sleeping sacks are the worst problem; they are bulky. Everything finally goes in, by some miracle, and in a half an hour we are ready to leave. At noon GMT, the mist clearing a little, I manage to get a sun sight. It puts us at 82˚ 50’ north, four hundred and fifty miles from the Pole and about a hundred and eighty from the nearest land, White Island in the strait between Cape Leigh Smith and Franz Josef Land. An afternoon’s stroll, followed by a pleasant boat ride on the lake. Luisa and I have practiced for this in the Bois de Boulogne. We must remember the rules: MM. les clients are requested not to abandon their boats except in the places provided by the management. Or the deposit is forfeited by the Great Nobody.
We set out. Everybody’s face is frozen; we are wrapped in various kinds of rags and cloths to keep warm. I hardly look behind at the wreckage of the Prinzess and neither do the others. All the junk, the stale hopes and dirty frying pans of our venture, is left behind. What a glory, to have no possessions but what will fit into this thin Charon’s bark of canvas! We can wander wherever we want over this jumbled plain of ice blocks, the wind has no more power over us. We tug at our pulling ropes, I in the middle and my companions one on either side, and the Faltboot follows. Having referred once to the compass, I steer by watching the sun out of the corner of my eye.
As commander. I note that morale is good. Waldemer trudges along like a happy machine, bent against the rope, and Luisa is talkative.
“Do you know, there is a curious sensation. We are at the top of the world, and as we walk it turns under our feet. Like the bear at the circus walking on a large ball. But this means we will never get there. The ball turns as we walk, and we will always be at the top. Hör du mig, Gustav?”
“Ja, den är intressant.”
I notice only after she speaks, and after I answer, that we are talking in Swedish. We are alone; Waldemer is only a large puffing sled dog some several metres away on our right. For some time
now I have been aware of a curious sensation: that there is one more person in the party than my rational senses can account for, a ghost that melts in the air whenever I turn to find it. Now I understand it: there is a Luisa for me and a Theodor for Waldemer. The one and the other of us, looking at the slight figure in black with the shawl tied over the cap, sees or imagines something different. Which is true in all triangles of three persons, no doubt. But my case is different, because I see not only the Luisa of my own mind but also the Theodor of Waldemer’s. With a little effort of the will I can make these two images merge, then separate, like the images in a badly adjusted pair of binoculars. Waldemer is dense! I had never plumbed the depth of his density before. It is the very exquisite density of intelligence. Like the density of a gas, it increases with the pressure applied to it. He is not subject to disquieting intuitions of our sort, sensations that the world is turning under his feet and so on. His insensitivity to such nuances is a quality greatly to be envied. It keeps him happy, the lucky fellow. He doesn’t know that we are condemned always to remain at the North Pole.
“We will stay here forever, do you know, Gustav? We will go on walking over this whiteness and eat polar bears. It will be one long night, and we will dream in white. Nothing but whiteness and cold. And it will be pure, we will be pure, we will be the whole world.”
“Provided our ammunition lasts. We have fifty rounds.”
Luisa speaks slowly and forms each word with pain, not only because of the unfamiliar language, but because of the cold that has numbed all our faces and especially hers.
“We will sharpen polar-bear bones and use them to kill the others. And after we have eaten many polar bears we will become white too. We will blend into the air and become invisible. Won’t that be nice, Gustav? Haven’t you ever dreamed of being invisible?”
‘You forget that polar bears are red on the inside.”
“Not the ones we kill. They will only be dream bears. Do you think we are getting anywhere, Gustav, stumbling over these white blocks? How do you know we are going in the right direction?”
The Balloonist Page 21