The Balloonist

by MacDonald Harris

  The mother, her caste mark for some reason applied to her forehead with a slight asymmetry that afternoon, not quite in the centre of her forehead, ate petit-fours while balancing—to my considerable nervousness—a cup of jasmine tea in her other hand, and informed me that Luisa’s singing was “ex-kee.” She seemed to be under the impression that it had been Chopin, but I may have mistook something she said. (It may have been, “Vous connaissez ce pain?” meaning the pastries.) The Vibrating Matriarch did not let me off so easily. “And so, Major” (my promotion had arrived from Stockholm by that time), “and so we can expect you in the coming summer to fly away to the polar regions, and win fame and even wealth.” (I was regarded as a suitor, she was still pondering over what are conventionally called my prospects.) “I must confess that I am not quite clear as to what it is you study.” (The chin, naturally, tremored “Nay, nay” through all this.) “Sometimes it is electrical undulations in the air, at other times balloons. And who are these Germans who are going to buy you a new one? Luisa tells me that you have succeeded in making it steer by pulling on ropes. You must excuse me, I am only an ignorant old woman, but I don’t understand how pulling on ropes can make a balloon go against the wind.”

  “Go to the Canal Saint-Martin any afternoon, and you will see how pulling on ropes can make a barge go against the tide.”

  She might have countered that the lock-keeper had a stone quay to stand on, whereas this convenience was not available in a balloon. But this objection would have revealed some knowledge of Archimedes, and she had disarmed herself in advance through her pretence of being an ignorant old woman. It was true that she was old, also that she was ignorant, also that she was a woman. But these elements did not add up to her pretence: the shrewdness compensated for it all, and she saw through me as though I were a puppet made of isinglass. Her defence was astute, standing on grounds of social propriety rather than on knowledge of science where I clearly had the advantage. “I have never been to the Canal Saint-Martin at all. I believe it is in a working-class quarter. Do you know, Major, it is hard for us to understand why you are interested in us at all, trivial society chatterers that we are.” (“Nay, nay.”) “It is very flattering, of course. Something mysterious, as it were, seems to attract you to our midst. It could hardly be my old charms, and Luisa of course is engaged.”

  Both of us, tacitly, dismissed the notion that I could be interested in talking to the mother about pastries and Chopin.

  The reference to Luisa was a clear throwing down of the gauntlet, or even tapping me lightly on the cheek with it. I was informed thereby that it is not proper for persons in my circumstances to go on indefinitely frequenting a salon where there is an eligible young lady without, so to speak, taking some steps in the conventional minuet, either forward or backward. I mustered the maximum of my sang-froid and counterattacked. I might have told her, “Madame, I can’t hope to compete with the Peninsula in the area of his particular excellence,” and there were subsequent times when I wished that I had. It would have demolished a good deal of her aplomb and might even have caused her to stop vibrating for a moment, with the additional advantage of ridding me of a considerable nuisance; never again would she have crossed swords and tongues with me. But it would have been ungallant to reveal Luisa’s confidence. Instead, I contrived a riposte that, while almost equally telling, had the advantage that it was impossible for her to take objection to it. I told her, “I suppose it is Theodor, chiefly. I have contracted quite a warm friendship for him.”

  She was unperturbed. But also silent. To inform me flatly that there was no such person would have been to reveal or confess a tendency to transvestism in her niece which was inconsistent with the picture she wished to project of her household, to wit, that it almost belonged to the best society of the Île Saint-Louis. That is, it would have subjected her to the risk that I (unpredictable Swedish madman that I was) might reply, “How can there be no such person, when he has come to my lodgings, and I have gone with him to cabarets in Montmartre?” (The second of which was not strictly true, but she had no way of knowing.) And if she had said, “It is only Luisa’s vapours, and it is unseemly for you to go about with her in such places, she in boy’s clothing, when she is formally affiancéd to the Peninsula” (she would have called him something different of course, not even Alberto but Senõr this or Lieutenant that, I never even knew his last name)—had she done this, I say, I might have retorted with justice, “I find it hard to grasp how I have damaged the character of this young lady, since her ways are already so free, and seem to have been before I came on the scene.” No, my mention of the name Theodor had demolished any possibility of portraying me, in my own eyes or anyone else’s, as a middle-aged seducer bent on tarnishing the reputation of this vulnerable young thing still tremoring on the frontier of womanhood and defenceless against the machinations of a roué fresh from the vice dens of the Stockholm waterfront, and one provided with all the sorcery of a lunatic scientist to boot. My advantage assured, I was about to chase her three times around the walls of Troy when Luisa came to her rescue, and to mine too, I suppose.

  “Fi donc, Ma Tante. The Major doesn’t want to talk to boring old persons.” (Which was perfectly true, but it needs to be said with a lilt and a flair, as in those plays by Augier that seem to be made out of meringue, and Luisa through long practice had this touch to perfection.) “Come with me, Gustavus, I have what you need, a cognac to calm you down and a black coffee to excite you again.”

  Instead she took me to the sideboard, found there was no cognac (“What a pity,” before she had even searched properly for it), and poured me an elegant little orchid-shaped glass of something called Elixir Vert-Galant, which tasted like essence of violets. I took the bottle from her and read the label: “The most exquisite of table liqueurs, at the same time the most energetic of reconstituents and tonics. Strength, health, youth, and vigour are restored by this powerful regenerator. It is life prolonged with all its charms.” To tell the truth, I had had about enough of her ironies, especially since there seemed to be no time these days even for being affectionate behind doorways and I went about constantly in her presence with an embarrassment in my clothing, as though I had left a coat hanger in there at the time of putting on my trousers. Tapping zoo lions on the nose, I wished to tell her, was a dangerous game for little girls. Instead, I returned to the tactic that was most contrary to my physical impulse, and probably to hers, and if this latter were so, then probably the most effective one. I regretted that I couldn’t see her the next day, and perhaps for several days after, because I had certain investigations to conduct in the Museum of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in rue Saint-Martin.

  “Ah! the collection of clocks. Comme c’est charmant. I go there often. I can meet you at three, but I can only stay for an hour, because then I must go to Passy for my solfeggio.” And, seeing the expression on my face, she added with a kind of amused vexation, “You won’t believe I am serious, will you?”

  She was only a quarter of an hour late; I forbore from ostentatiously looking at my watch, and anyhow I could see the clock in the courtyard of the conservatory. I passed the time by reflecting on the technical matter I had come to this place to investigate. The fact was that a certain doubt (entirely unconnected with the scepticism of the aunt) had begun to form in my mind whether a combination of guide ropes and sails was really the most effective means of steering a gas-filled airship over long distances, especially in the light of recent developments in mechanics. As early as 1883, I knew, the Tissandier brothers had ascended in a balloon provided with an electric motor and screw propeller, and in 1884, according to report, they had succeeded in stemming a wind of seven knots with this apparatus. Their project had then been taken up by the War Department under Renard and Krebs. In 1885 their fusiform balloon La France, with an air propeller at the end driven by an electric motor, had attained a speed of twenty-two kilometers per hour, or about fourteen knots. But why, the puzzle remained, had this
line of investigation not been pursued further? I had several theories. One was that it was being pursued further, in secret, by the French military authorities. Another was that their apparatus was too heavy and the cruising range too short; the battery jars brought along to provide energy would soon be exhausted. The third was that Renard and Krebs had been on the right track but hadn’t known it, like poor Professor Eggert, and had run out of funds or been too easily discouraged. The propulsion machinery of their airship, I knew, was on display in the museum at the Arts et Métiers, and it was this I had come to examine, provided with a large notebook I hoped to fill up with technical figures. I knew also that Dr. Wölfert in Berlin was conducting experiments with a similar cigar-shaped balloon but one driven by a gasoline motor. This seemed to me somewhat more promising than the Renard-Krebs design. Perhaps in the next few weeks I would have to go to Germany to interview Wölfert, or try to; he was known to be notoriously secretive and even hired a staff of private detectives to bar people from his workshops. Time was growing short, but this visit to Berlin would fit in well with a call I had to make on our estimable benefactors, Prinzessin Brauerei G.m.b.H. in Hamburg, to discuss money matters. Privately I hoped that neither of these mechanical expedients would prove as efficient as the scheme I had already devised. Motors of any kind are heavy and would require something else to be deleted from the contents of the airship. Batteries smell and are liable to leak sulphuric acid over things; gasoline motors require sparks which are dangerous in the vicinity of hydrogen. In any case, I was not as fond of machines as Waldemer was, and disliked loud noises and the smell of grease. I hoped, perhaps quixotically, to soar my way where I wanted to go in blessed silence, with the assistance only of the forces of nature. Finally, an objection which was quite romantic and which I would never have dreamed of confessing to anyone, hardly even to myself: mechanical propulsion systems involving brute force necessitated a fusiform or cigar shape in the gas envelope, and this violated my quite instinctual and affective relationship to the apparatus, one which I could not defend on any rational grounds. Sphericity was feminine and fusiformity masculine, I somehow felt, and it was necessary for the new airship to be called Prinzess III if only out of symmetry with the others, and because of the thalers provided by the loyal German brewers. But it was not only this; it was that in some obscure and yet powerfully adamant part of my mind it was settled that I, a he, and the airship, a she, were going to accomplish this feat together. Anyone else who came along or had a part in it was incidental. So gas engines and electric motors were things my private soul fiercely resisted; it was as though I were being asked to marry a creature made of iron instead of out of silk and ethereal elasticity. Still the Renard-Krebs apparatus would have to be examined. Later we would see about Dr. Wölfert.

  Arrival of Luisa in a smart morning frock and paletot, immaculately gloved and hatted.

  “Now don’t be cross. I had to go with Ma Tante to rue de Rivoli, about a picture frame.”

  I was not cross; only cynical. I discounted female estimates of time entirely, by a factor of about 23 percent, and this usually proved accurate enough for practical purposes. We went into the museum without any bother about tickets—I had a pass provided by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry—and stood on the verge of the enormous and decrepit Gothic hall that until 1799 had been the Benedictine chapel of St. Martin of the Fields. It was a felicitous irony of the Revolution, I thought, to fill a desecrated church with these infernal monsters of iron that had enslaved men in the nineteenth century in place of their old masters the aristocrats; all the collection lacked was a guillotine. The first thing that caught one’s eye was a Foucault pendulum, swinging with planetary slowness from a wire high overhead in the vault and shifting around its circumference by imperceptible increments as the earth turned. Luisa proceeded to explain the principle of the thing to me, with only a few inaccuracies. Perhaps she had stayed up all night, or part of it, studying some book on Foucault pendulums. She even had the mathematics right; I was impressed but only murmured vaguely, “Yes, yes.”

  As bad luck would have it, my use of the pass from the ministry had evoked the apparition of a curator, who insisted on accompanying us and explaining what it was that we wanted to see. I had no interest at all in Cugnot’s steam carriage of 1770, or a diagram showing the coal production of France from 1789 to 1888. We came to the Renard-Krebs apparatus. Behind it was a drawing of the entire airship, showing how the propulsion machinery fitted onto the rest. Present in material form were only the motor, the air propeller, and some tangled-up wires to connect them to the battery jars. The air propeller was something of a joke; it resembled a Dutch windmill and had vanes of sailcloth. It was the motor that interested me. It was the size of a small keg of nails and probably almost as heavy. There was also a cast-iron gear box to reduce the speed of the motor, probably several thousand revolutions a minute, to one that would not rip the Dutch windmill to shreds. I inquired as to the weight of these items but the curator had no opinion. Then, as his complexion became purple with all the instincts of a curator, and he stood afraid to lift a hand against me because of the card from the ministry, I stepped over the iron chain and tested the heft of the motor. I could barely budge it; sixty kilos at least, and the gear box was worse.

  I filled several pages of the notebook. The problem of weight was explained to Luisa, who suggested, “Perhaps one could make a smaller motor, which would go faster and thus be just as powerful.”

  I offered a brief stare, devoid as I could make it of any sarcasm. “You’ve hit upon it. I wonder why Renard didn’t think of that.”

  “It would be more efficient, you see. Because the yield in mean torque of an electric motor, expressed in foot-pounds per second, is a function of the speed of rotation.”

  The devil you say. She had impressed the curator at least. I didn’t bother to explain to her that the faster the motor went, the more its speed had to be reduced by the gears, and the larger and heavier the gear box. In addition to which Renard, being a graduate of the École Polytechnique, knew more about torque and foot-pounds than she could have learned by spending a whole month of nights over her library books. In any case, I was more interested in battery jars. Where, I asked the curator, were the battery jars? He pointed out one or two. They were cells of the Leclanché design, employing solid depolarizers of magnesium dioxide with a carbon plate. They were not exactly as light as feathers either, and it was impossible for me to find out from the curator how many of them Renard and Krebs had required for their motor. It was easy for me to make a rough calculation. The motor probably ran at something like a hundred volts, and Leclanché cells were known to produce a volt and a half each. Thus sixty-seven of these weighty jars would be required. Moreover, another rough calculation showed that, with the expected current drain, the batteries would be exhausted in something like seventeen minutes. Not enough to go from Spitsbergen to the North Pole. Hurrah! I controlled my elation only with a certain effort. Renard and Krebs were on the wrong track, and their imitators would never get farther than around the Champs de Mars on a Sunday in front of a crowd of spectators. There was still Dr. Wölfert, who didn’t require any batteries—well, I would worry about one thing at a time.

  I folded up the notebook, which by this time contained several drawings and diagrams and a copious collection of mathematics, most of them guesswork.

  I forgot to note that about halfway through these researches Luisa had exhausted her curiosity on the subject of motors and Leclanché cells and had departed for the west wing and its collection of clocks, where I was supposed to come and collect her when I was finished. She herself was a collector of rare and curious timepieces and had several dozen in Quai d’Orléans, and had even learned something about their mechanism. This interest, which seemed a rather odd one at first, was on further reflection comprehensible and even logical, woman being God’s best effort at making a clock, supposed to strike every fourth week but sometimes subject to alarming delays.
I found her amid the celestial globes, clockwork figurines, and automatons of various sorts moved by springs.

  “Gustavus, come and see.”

  “What?”

  “Just come and see.”

  She led me to a glass case in which a small feminine figure, the size perhaps of a cat, was holding two little hammers in her hand and was seated before a musical instrument. She was indeed very elegant in the manner of the eighteenth century: pale beige satin gown with rosebuds and green trim, a beige-silver wig. “No. 7501. Dulcimer player. Automaton of Roentgen and Kintzing. Belonged to Marie Antoinette. Plays eight airs extracted and arranged from the Armide of Gluck.” The satin gown came down over the stool, which evidently hid the machinery. The female attendant, charmed by Mademoiselle’s own elegance in her frock and paletot, opened the glass case and set this doll going for us. The hammers descended, the airs from the previous century tinkled accurately and delicately, in rather slow tempo. Luisa clasped her hands in pleasure; she and the attendant exchanged smiles.

  “But couldn’t we see how she works? The dress—”