A J OURNEY
TO THE C ENTRE
I
Nantes, 1848
Caroline Aronnax stood at the head of the crowd on the docks, wearing her best silk gown, her finest lace cuffs, and her proudest expression. Her whalebone corset was laced up so that she stood as straight as the masts on the exploration ship about to depart. On the street beside the quays, a band played lively patriotic tunes. Spectators cheered and howled for Captain Hatteras.
“I am so happy for you, my dear,” Mme. Aronnax said, touching her daughter’s shoulder. “You must be very proud of your captain.”
Marie stood apart from Caroline in the crowd, craning her neck to get a better view; Mme. Aronnax insisted it would be unseemly for a mere maid to wait too closely beside her mistress on this momentous occasion. Caroline had to wish her new husband farewell with all due decorum.
Tied up to the dock, the freshly painted Forward creaked in the afternoon breeze. Her copper-plated hull would provide greater durability for crashing through layers of polar ice. A gangplank extended to the dock, but the crew had already boarded. The previous days had been busy as deck workers loaded crates of supplies.
As was his custom, the mayor of Nantes arrived in a spectacular carriage drawn by four white horses. White-clad coachmen drove the omnibus, and a postilion (also dressed in white) sat astride the front left horse. While rattling across the paving stones, the turning wheels actuated an internal music box that sent out tinkling chimes. These extravagant contraptions, called “White Ladies,” reminded her of something Jules Verne might have imagined for his amusing stories.
Investors and newspapermen stood beneath crepe streamers, lecturing on the potential of this voyage of discovery. Some voiced proud optimism that Captain Hatteras, would finally be the one to find the fabled Northwest Passage.
The uninspired but enthusiastic band played the French national anthem. Standing in the crowd, Caroline wished she were at her pianoforte instead, composing an original piece for the Forward ’s departure, a grand explorers’ march. At the moment, though, her job was simply to remain visible and look beautiful—nothing more. Once Hatteras departed, she could reshape her life and accomplish more than she’d been able to do under her mother’s thumb.
She was the fresh young bride of the great captain. Her parents stood with her, the successful merchant and his wife, beaming with pride as they stared at the well-provisioned ship. Caroline had married her sea captain only the day before and had seen him for no more than ten minutes this entire morning. They had spent their wedding night together, and once again Caroline had performed to the expectations that others forced upon her, but she still did not know this man who was now her husband. She wouldn’t miss Hatteras a hundredth as much as she missed her long-lost André Nemo.
Hatteras had graying hair, muttonchop sideburns, and a face weathered from years facing the salty wind—but worst of all, she did not know him. Other than her father’s records of his business dealings, Caroline had discovered little about her new husband’s past. According to M. Aronnax, the good captain’s accomplishments and glories should have made any young woman proud. But Hatteras was twenty-five years her senior. He’d been married twice before, and both wives had died from fever while he was away at sea. She didn’t know his sense of humor or his personality, had never even asked if the man liked music.
Caroline wouldn’t get an opportunity to know him either, not for a long time. Hatteras would take his ship out with the afternoon’s outgoing tide. Even given the most favorable winds and the best weather possible, she would not see her husband again for at least two years, probably more than that.
No doubt Captain Hatteras had women in other ports, as was traditional for seafarers who sailed around the world, but he seemed little interested in romance. His entire life focused upon finding a trade route around the north pole. Perhaps his heart was as cold as the arctic seas he intended to explore.
Yet Caroline had married him. She had spoken the vows before God, and before witnesses. Years ago, she had made promises to Nemo, and she had meant them at the time—but Nemo was gone, and her life would never be the same. She had to accept his loss. Hatteras was her husband now.
She had slept with him in a strange bed, in a strange house. An unfamiliar man in the darkness, he had been businesslike and oddly passionless for a man with a new young bride. Caroline had closed her eyes, tried to imagine being with Nemo instead of Captain Hatteras, but that did not help. The feelings were disappointing, and she did not want to diminish the fantasy lover in her mind. And so she found their marriage consummated, herself no longer a virgin, the wife of a sea captain who would be gone for months or years at a time.
Caroline’s path had been set, regardless of her private dreams and ambitions—impossible fantasies for a woman of her social standing in this place, in this time. She would be expected to remain home and while away the hours, as a good wife should. But she had other plans.
It would have made her miserable, had she meekly accepted society’s expectations. But Caroline Aronnax had always made her own expectations, and she had learned from Nemo never to believe that some things were impossible. Nemo had insisted that she could do whatever she set her mind to.
Married, but with her husband far away, Caroline thought her new situation might offer her a freedom that she’d never experienced before. As wife and head of the household, she controlled the captain’s finances—enough money to make her wealthy. She would live in Hatteras’s home on rue Kervegan, where she could spend every day in her own pursuits. She’d hire private tutors, not only for music and art (neither of which would raise eyebrows), but also to study business. In particular, she wanted to learn about shipping manifests and accounting practices so she could help her overworked father at his merchant offices.
Yes, as far as she was concerned, Captain Hatteras could stay away from Nantes for as long as he wished. What could have become a trap for other women, Caroline considered to be an opportunity.
Cannons blasted as Captain Hatteras and his first mate strode in full naval attire down the docks and up the gangplank. The gruff captain waved to the assembled spectators before tipping his broad black hat toward where Caroline stood waiting for him. She even managed to show some tears, though they were not for Hatteras, but for a young man gone long ago . . . gone along with so many shared dreams. With an eerie sense of disorientation, she wondered if her husband even recognized who she was. . . .
Caroline thought of her younger years, of the wild childhood dreams she had shared with André Nemo and Jules Verne . . . and especially of that special night that had changed her forever, the enthusiastic promises she and Nemo had exchanged. Together, the three of them had bolstered each other’s optimism, made it seem that she truly could write her own music or run her father’s shipping business, that Verne could become a famous writer, that Nemo could sail the uncharted seas.
But they had drifted apart, and they had each failed their own fantasies.
Though Caroline wished Jules Verne could have been here, the young redhead had already gone off to Paris to begin training for his law degree. She understood why the lovestruck young man had wanted to make himself scarce during her wedding. She felt sorry for Verne, and promised herself that she would do everything in her power to help him achieve his dreams. With Nemo lost at sea, Jules Verne was the only kindred spirit she had left. . . .
The mayor of Nantes stepped up to a hastily erected podium and extended his ponderous congratulations and well wishes (as he had no doubt been paid to do by the Forward ’s investors). Accompanied by more cheering, dock workers cast off the ropes, and the copper-plated Forward drifted into the current. Crew members pressed against the deck rails and waved back at the citizens of Nantes as the ship began to descend the Loire.
Caroline watched them, feeling strangely invisible. Streamers and confetti fell around her, clustering in damp wads on the dock planks or floating waterlogged in the river. The crowd jostled her, talkin
g loudly, laughing. She dried her eyes.
Such a large ship. So many sailors. Caroline thought of all the warm clothes and supplies the men had squirreled away in the cargo holds. Before long, they would be facing a frozen white wasteland, searching for a passage that had already killed many other explorers in the past. Did the Forward have any better chance of succeeding?
As the ship entered the current, she watched the silhouette of proud Captain Hatteras at the wheel, facing westward. Finally, as an afterthought, he turned toward her and gave a brief salute before returning to his duty.
Caroline waved farewell, but she never knew whether he had seen her.
II
Following his instincts and knowing he might never see daylight again, Nemo trudged downhill into the newly opened cave. The tunnels wound deep into the Earth, knotted and twisted like malformed worm burrows.
And still he kept going.
The Earth itself seemed to breathe, drawing air from above to fill the caverns below. Noting the direction of the torch flame, he followed the air currents. That was what Captain Grant would have done.
Many of the catacombs dead-ended. At times, the eerie light from glittering crystals and phosphorescent algaes faded inside the still passageways. He lit one of his precious torches and continued to explore, making marks on the walls at turning points with soft, chalky stones he picked up from the floor.
The existence of the predatory dinosaur that had emerged from the cave proved that some new world must lay hidden: a living, lush environment, separate from the mysterious island above. And if these tunnels did lead into the bowels of the Earth, they might also let Nemo travel beneath the ocean’s crust. He might emerge in a different place . . . perhaps one closer to civilization.
Nemo kept trudging downward, always downward.
When his first torch finally gave out, instead of lighting another, he realized that the phosphorescence now provided enough delicate illumination. Over the hours, his pupils widened to gather every scrap of light. He also became more adept at finding his way through the blurred shadows by listening to the echoes that came back to him as he walked.
When he was too tired to continue, Nemo sat down and drank a sip from his waterskin, ate dried dinosaur meat, and then slept, his sleep haunted by questions and impossibilities, and memories of lost friends. When he awoke refreshed, he continued his plodding journey downward, ever deeper.
On the next “day,” he found a trickling stream that emerged from a crack in the granite wall, a warm spring far beneath the Earth. When Nemo tasted it, the flavor was rich with minerals, and so he refilled his water skin. If he ate sparingly, the dried meat and other supplies in his pack would last him for many days. Though he had only two more torches, he continued long past the point where he could be confident of returning. Nemo had decided to risk everything and did not regret the direction he had taken.
He followed the stream as it chose the path of least resistance through the sloping stone floor until the warm water, joined by other springs and trickles, became a roiling creek that ran along one side of the tunnel.
Nemo jogged down the steepening slope, picking up speed until the stream hooked to the left and disappeared under a shoulder-high arch eroded through the stone wall. The water was like a heated bath on his feet. He splashed along, ducking under the low arch. After wading through, Nemo emerged into a chamber so vast that he windmilled his arms to maintain his balance.
The warm aquifer gushed through the wall opening and plunged over a precipice into a thundering waterfall. Spray washed up, echoing within the vaulted grotto like music in the nave of a cathedral. The cavern reflected sound waves back at him with such intensity that he could not guess its boundaries. The bottomless pit in front of him was an open mouth greedily drinking of the water.
Nemo made his precarious way along a narrow rock ledge to a forest of dripping stalactites, which he grasped in order to steady himself. Removing one of the unlit torches from his pack, he worked with flint and steel to light it. He held his breath as the blaze took hold around the firebrand, then he raised it up.
Dancing light spread through a grotto filled with more wonders than he had ever imagined. Immense faceted crystals jutted from the stone walls, dripped like tears from the ceiling, and flashed in the firelight: a treasure more breathtaking than the combined wealth of Pirate Roberts, Captain Kidd, and Blackbeard. On the side nearest him, a waterfall of stone kept timeless pace with the pouring cascade of mineralized water that had led Nemo through the arch.
He shouted with delight, and the noise echoed back at him, refracted by the crystals and stalactites, so that it sounded as if an entire chorus of wide-eyed young men had expressed their amazement. If only Caroline could be here.
He drank in the splendor for minutes, until he remembered he had few torches remaining. Then he extinguished the fire and sat waiting until his eyes adjusted. A brighter patch of the pale glow appeared from below. He would use the staggered flow of stalactites as a staircase to reach the bottom of the pit.
Nemo made his way, grasping with both hands, feeling with his feet. The stalactites were slick and damp. Every inch was accomplished at the risk of falling to his death, but he continued, undaunted. He knew there must be an easier path somewhere, for the dinosaur could never have toiled up through this treacherous labyrinth. For Nemo, though, any path that continued to lead forward was as good as any other.
Halfway down, he found a wide ledge, where he curled up and slept again. Some hours later, he woke, drank some mineralized water that had pooled in a depression on one of the rocks, and set off once more.
When he reached the bottom, he fell to his knees on the cold, hard stone. After he caught his breath, he walked toward the brightening light. He emerged into a second grotto, even more vast than the first, and Nemo knew he had stepped into another world—a fairyland beyond even the wildest theories of modern science.
The ground was soft and crumbly, and the air smelled of mulch. All around him, as far as he could see, stood immense fungi, mushrooms as tall as trees. The mushroom caps were white, each ringed with a golden frill. Some were the size of dining chairs, others grew four times as tall as a man. Wreaths of mist crept around the gigantic mushrooms, and dripping strands of moss clung to the rocks. A greenish, cold light filled the chamber as if it oozed from the rock walls.
Far in the distance, obscured by the humid air, Nemo heard a raucous cry from a bird whose species he could not determine. It sounded immense, louder and stranger than any bird he had encountered in his travels.
He walked into the forest of mushrooms like a lost wanderer and stood under them as if seeking refuge beneath Herculean garden umbrellas. They made him think of the parasols Caroline carried when she strolled out in the sun dressed in her finest clothes. Her mother had seen to it that she had the finest accoutrements, but Caroline held them awkwardly, daydreaming, letting her parasol droop to the mud as her attention wandered to other things.
Nemo shook that thought from his mind and continued.
He rapped his knuckles against the stiff stem—or was it the trunk?—of a mushroom. It was softer than wood, but still firm and thick. When he pushed harder, a rain of dusty spores showered from the broad mushroom cap. They covered him like sawdust as he coughed and sneezed, but he laughed and knocked the mushroom again, setting off another shower. He ran through the mushroom forest, bumping the pallid stems and unleashing a torrent of spores.
He climbed one of the mushroom trunks and used his pirate cutlass to hack off a chunk of the soft fungus. He chewed on it, finding the delicate flesh a wonderful accompaniment to his preserved dinosaur meat.
Nemo wandered through the mushroom forest, always continuing toward the brightening light. When at last he passed beyond the mammoth fungi, Nemo looked ahead into a steaming primeval jungle filled with prehistoric plant life. He could lose himself in its wonders and mystery for months without end.
Just then, Nemo heard the ominous sounds of
large creatures crashing toward him through the dense underbrush.
III
Paris, ah Paris!
Leaving his backwater town behind, Jules Verne felt as if he had stepped into a color-filled painting by one of the great masters. The buildings, cafes, cathedrals, street performers—the culture —were all so different from home. The Seine! The Louvre! Notre Dame! It was like a fantastic world from the stories of Marco Polo or the romances of Sir Walter Scott. Paris was indeed the center of France, its heart and its mind. And Verne reveled in being here.
He had at first been fearful of the political turmoil: bloody uprisings, gunfire in the streets, worker barricades, revolutionary fervor. His father had been concerned, and his mother had gnawed her fingernails in worry. Verne, though, wrote from his narrow room to reassure them that he was having a fine time. And, of course, learning much.
He reached Paris in July, just after a long string of violence that had plagued the capital since February. Though Pierre Verne was a staunch conservative and had raised his son to hold similar opinions, the younger Verne now found it confusing enough just to keep track of who was running which portion of the country during any given week. Politics made him dizzy.
Two years of bad wheat and potato harvests had sent prices soaring, and peasants began looting bakeries and food storehouses, demanding their due. When factories closed, unemployed workers took to the streets. The government refused to institute changes, and during a protest march in February, a frightened army patrol had fired into the crowd, triggering a riot. The incident united the dissatisfied people behind barricades, and even the National Guard joined the rebels after ransacking armories for weapons. Within days they had ousted numerous officials from the government, then marched on King Louis Philippe himself, who abdicated and fled to England. In his wake, the French people declared a new republic. Elections were held on April 23, and in the following months the government struggled to assert itself. The bloodiest battles took place in June—the Archbishop of Paris had been killed while trying to negotiate peace with a pocket of rebels.
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