“That’s all fine, Tonio,” I said, “but where will we go then?”
“We’ll fly somewhere else, wherever there’s work for me to do. I prefer stormy nights to the café chatter of Paris, and airplanes are my only way of saving myself. You mustn’t hate them; if I do the long-distance flight I’m thinking of and win the prize, I’ll buy you a little plane, a Simoun. What color would you like it to be? You can have a bar installed inside, throw in some colored pillows, flowers, and we’ll fly it around the world.”
“Oh yes, Tonio, I love to dream, but on the ground. In the air, I grow fainthearted thinking of the long flights when you are alone. If you were to hurt yourself very badly someday and I couldn’t come to help you, I would go mad.”
“You can always help someone you love just by loving them very much, with all that you are.”
“Yes, I know, Tonio . . .”
“All right, it’s time to go. Forgive me, I have to be in the air in ten minutes. Tomorrow I’ll be paid for the flight. It’s a stroke of luck for us, we’ll be rich, rich. Think about what present you’ll want to give me once I’ve tamed the monster.”
This was the time of the Great Depression in America; the Côte d’Azur was deserted, abandoned by its faithful visitors. The hotels stayed open nevertheless. The staff had to be paid and fed, and from time to time a French clientele would take advantage of their presence. But for the most part the great palaces were empty. My husband put me up at the Hôtel Continental. His entire family lived on the Côte, and for the price of a room we had a whole floor with full service and fires burning in the rooms. What luxury! My husband’s friends, military pilots all of them, gathered at our place in the evening for cocktails, and we sang old French songs.
During Tonio’s absence, I looked at the empty rooms, their unbelievable luxury. My dog chased itself through the suites. What peace, I thought to myself, what calm . . .
Suddenly I heard a violently loud noise that echoed through the city. Everyone ran to their windows, and so did I. I saw nothing but the sea, which had risen into the air like a cloud and then fell quickly back down, as if cannon balls were being thrown into it. As I watched the surface of the water, my dog took off and I ran to get him—the rascal had discovered another Pekinese. I carried Youti back angrily, and from my window, looking out at the sea, I slowly understood, as night fell on the icy water, that the cloud of water that had alarmed the population of Saint-Raphaël was my husband’s monstrous hydroplane. It had slammed into the sea so fast that the water had risen several yards, only to fall back down with the terrible sound that had startled the whole city. As night fell, the sea was smooth again, smooth as the Dead Sea. I didn’t move from my window. I don’t know how long I stayed there, immobile. Someone knocked at the door, but so softly that my dog didn’t even bark. It was strange. I hesitated to move from where I was, and I let them knock harder. After a few minutes, I went to the door. My husband was carried in on a stretcher, like a wounded man. We laid him down on the bed. He’d been given all kinds of medicines, artificial respiration, oxygen, and so forth. They left me alone with him.
“Ah, Tonio,” I said, “you crashed into the sea. You’re freezing. Your pants are all wet, they’re getting the bed all wet. My little one, I’m here, let me give you a rubdown . . .”
In my great haste, I picked up the first bottle that came to hand. It was pure ammonia, which I used to bleach my dog’s fur.
“Yes, that will warm your chest up, because you’re so cold!”
His furry chest absorbed the ammonia until I was choking from it. It worked much better than eau de Cologne. The ammonia entered Tonio’s lungs when he was already on the other side and made his bronchia react. He began breathing again, he stirred; water was coming out of his nose.
Stricken with fear, I shouted, “Help, my husband is dying, I’m all alone!” But by a miracle Tonio came back to himself. I pulled him into the bathroom by the head, like a huge doll, in the process banging his skull, which bled into the bathtub. A bellboy came to help me. We plunged him into boiling water. I wanted to cook him. He cried out, “Ow, it’s too hot! Do you want me to die?”
“But darling, it’s very good for you,” I said.
“My clothes are still on.”
“Yes, but what does it matter?”
“Help me take off my pants, I’m all stiff.”
“Here, let me do it. You fell into the water.”
“Ah, now I remember. Let me tell you what happened. My hydroplane didn’t want to land on the water. I’m cold.”
“But chéri, you’re sitting in boiling water.”
Captain Marville came up with the bellboy to see me, then the journalists arrived. The telephone began its frenetic ringing again—everyone wanted an interview.
A few hours later, we had a party in the Air Force barracks. We laughed and danced on the tables. But after that day, Tonio no longer wanted to sleep at night. He would press his nose against the window as I stood behind him in my nightgown, pulling him by his hand toward the bed. He would get up again and again. I would go and bring him back. It lasted a month, maybe two.
He had been as if dead. He had passed through death itself. Now he knew it.
12
“IT’S EASY TO DIE,” he told me. “To drown. Let me tell you. You have very little time to get used to the idea that you can no longer breathe oxygen. You have to breathe water into your lungs. You must not cough, the water must not go in through your nose. You are, as I was, relieved to breathe in the first mouthful of water. It’s cool, and everything is fine afterward. I realized that I had gone into the water with my plane. Water was already inside the cabin. If I didn’t get out of there immediately, I was going to drown, to die. If I managed to find an open door and get back up to the surface, I would escape from death. I wasn’t far from the coast, and even as tired as I was, I could swim. The rescue boat would see me. I groped, stretching my hand out to the right, then to the left. What an effort! I felt a great emptiness. My hand touched nothing. It was so dark, I had no notion of what position I was in. My plane had fallen backwards, I had my head down and my feet up. I thought of the turkey you had bought for me from some peasants the day before, which I had driven back to the Mirador. You wanted to celebrate Christmas in our home. The turkey was waiting for me; I couldn’t drown. I wanted to go through an opening that my hand could feel, but my foot was caught in something metallic, like a chain around my ankle. I had a knife, but by the time I had cut off my leg or cut through the metal, I would have suffocated. I resigned myself to death, but I wanted to be in a more comfortable position. I didn’t know that my head was down. I said to myself, “I want to die lying flat: let’s go!” I pulled my legs out abruptly and decided to swallow my second mouthful of water once I was in the right position. I forced my legs to move. The leg that was stuck came loose. With a superhuman effort, I threw myself into the hole my hand had felt. It was the door leading into the passengers’ cabin. I was swimming, suffocating, and I felt myself struggling to rotate into an upright position. My body reacted on its own until my head was upright again. I was able to stand up, and my head bumped against the ceiling. I was bleeding. But there was still a pocket of air up there. I took a good long breath. Then I took stock of my situation.
“The plane I was in had an upper section like a convertible car where the engineer had been sitting, along with the mechanic who had been looking after the plane’s last flight. In the fall, the two men were thrown free of the plane, into the sea. The little boat that ‘baby-sat’ my flights saw them fall and went immediately to their rescue. The mechanic had a very thorough acquaintance with this prototype, which had already drowned several of its crews. The last time, near Marseille, they had died because they couldn’t get out of the plane. It was close to the coast, but the metal had been twisted in the fall, the doors were stuck, and the men had died because they were unable to open them.
“Immediately after he was rescued, the mechanic dove down wi
th all his strength and courage to the bottom of the sea. Perhaps it was because he was used to working on the ill-fated flights of this particular prototype, perhaps it was chance or simply the will of God, I don’t know: on his very first dive he came upon the wing of the submerged plane. He tore up his hand trying to open the door. He needed air and went back to the surface. That was all he could do. The others rushed to his rescue. As for me, down in the bottom of the sea, I had heard a vague sound. Through the door, which he had managed to pry open a little way, a dim greenish light entered the passengers’ cabin where I was, and I tried to think. The water was already up to my mouth. I tried to win a few more seconds by putting my nose against the ceiling to get the last of the oxygen left in the plane. The blood flowing from my head wound refreshed my palate a little. I understood that my only chance of saving myself was to throw myself towards that greenish light, which couldn’t be anything but the bottom of the sea, the open sea.
“If I could manage it, I would find myself back outside this steel prison, and return to the surface. I gathered the last of my strength, checked my knees and feet, which were hurting, clenched and unclenched my hands, and after a great yawn against the ceiling of the plane, which made me smile because it was like a kiss good-bye to this machine that had wanted to drown me, I threw myself toward the green light and quickly found the limpid water of the Mediterranean. I rose to the surface. My hands were seen by the rescue boat, and they fished me out of the high seas, senseless, stiff, as if dead. The nurse, the diver, and the mechanic gave me first aid. They had forgotten the respirator. My heart wasn’t beating. It was a little too late. That was why they took me to you at the hotel, where the ammonia rub you gave me woke up my sleeping bronchia.
“Life, my little wife, oh, Consuelo—I owe you my life.”
13
ONE DAY MY MOTHER-IN-LAW, Marie de Saint-Exupéry, took us to the château where Tonio grew up and which he had so beautifully described in Southern Mail. It was an old provincial château. The parquet floors in its vast salons gleamed as only the French know how to make them gleam. Made of small pieces of inlaid wood, they had become, with the caress of many footsteps and the famous French method of waxing, as smooth as a vast platter. The library of Saint-Maurice, with its red felt and baronial furniture, seemed like something from a fairy tale, and the stairway was so long it looked as if it went up to Heaven. The shadows cast by the trees in the region’s famous light made the sunsets magical.
All the neighbors came to see us, kiss us, and wish us all kinds of wonderful happiness once again.
However, Tonio had to think about his career as a pilot. Our vacation under the tall branches of Saint-Maurice was soon over, and one morning we had to go back to Paris, to our new apartment on the rue de Chanaleilles.
Our new home was flooded with light, and the rooms were well proportioned. The walls were painted green, the green of a forest in early spring, and I hung curtains of pale green tulle at the windows, one at a time, for we were quite poor then. But we were together, and we were happy. Tonio rested. He would walk through the apartment for hours without doing anything, looking at me, talking to me. I played the lady of the house, serious and diligent.
Creating intimacy in three small rooms on the ground floor, with simple furniture and a telephone that never stopped ringing, required a great deal of energy and imagination and all the courage of a young, devoted, and loving wife.
After a week of work, I was very tired. Our maid came back to us, but she stole; Tonio caught her at it. A man, an Arab, replaced her. He adored Tonio. Life was easier that way. Tonio was happy as a child with his big Arab servant. It reminded us of our life in Morocco. We gave parties; the servant prepared enormous platters of couscous that we ate sitting on the floor, and we had as many as twenty people over at a time. We read, we sang. . . . But we were seriously in need of money. Tonio was hard at work developing an idea for a film, but it didn’t bring in any income.
“Consuelo,” he told me, “you know very well that I can’t stay here between these four walls waiting for the good Lord to rain fistfuls of gold down upon me.”
“It could happen, Tonio. Your book is selling very well. Your screenplays are in the hands of good agents. You’ll see, they’ll come to find you here with pots of gold.”
“I’m tired of doing nothing. It’s very nice of you to play a record for me on the gramophone every day when I wake up, and I do love Bach, it’s true, but I’m starting to get bored. Though I’d love to have been a composer, like him, to be able to say things without words, in that secret language that is given only to the elect, the initiates, to poets . . . I often wonder if there are different breeds of men.”
“Yes, Tonio, I believe we’re all very different from one another. A flower, a white tablecloth, and the sound of your footsteps are enough for me. I like to hear them as much as the music of your Bach. They speak to me, they explain life to me. You are my key of sol, my key of fa. Through you, I come to God more quickly.”
“And for me you are my child, even when I am far from you, even for a day. When I fly away forever, I will be holding your hand. But you mustn’t act like a frail child who weeps and gazes at its guardian with sobs and tears. I have to leave, leave, leave . . .”
One day a lady presented herself at our house and offered to be Tonio’s agent. She told him she would teach him to write screenplays. He asked me to let him go out alone with her. I didn’t understand why I had to be absent in order for him to learn, but I trusted my husband. They went out together all the time, to cafés and other places, and spent long hours talking. But Tonio still wasn’t writing. I suffered, all alone between my green walls.
A friend of ours asked him for some articles for the magazine Marianne. Tonio said he didn’t know how to write for magazines and refused. But we had to pay our rent—we were already two months late. So Tonio went through his papers and found a short story, “Prince of Argentina.” His text was accepted, and he was paid for it. He gave them another one. For my part, little by little, by making myself small, simple, and tender, I was able to get him to sit down at his table and write his screenplay. He quickly became involved in what he was doing. He liked his characters, and when his admirers came knocking at our door, he was annoyed. He was traveling, flying, dying with his characters, and those were sunny days in our home. Alas, I knew it couldn’t last long.
He was offered a chance to go to Moscow to write an article. The idea thrilled him.
“I’m leaving, Consuelo, I’m leaving tomorrow for Moscow. I need to see men and nations as they evolve. I feel like a eunuch tied down at home by your ribbons.”
My poor ribbons! He asked me for the one I was wearing in my hair, to carry with him in his wallet. His face was already distant, as if carved out of wood or steel. He was already in Moscow, sharing in the rigors of the five-year plan being developed there. From time to time, he muttered a few thoughts. “I know the Russians have very good planes,” he said once. “They’re doing advanced research. They’re very strong.”
“Yes, Tonio, the Russians are strong,” I said skeptically. “They’ve forgotten their songs, they’ve forgotten love. I hear that they no longer have families there. The children are placed in nurseries from the moment they’re born.”
“That may be true for now. They need all their strength. They’re preparing for a great struggle, they no longer have time to sing or to love. But one day they’ll go back to their music, their songs, their women, their lives as men. I’m sorry I’m not taking you with me. I’ll tell you everything. The phone lines between Paris and Russia are very good and not expensive. Every evening I’ll tell you what I’ve seen. Pack my bags.”
Before leaving, Tonio gave me some money. This time his absence didn’t make me sad. I would work on the house a little and have some surprises ready for him when he returned.
I also decided to take some sculpting classes at the Académie Ranson. The sculptor Maillol encouraged me to do it. The Académi
e was my Russia. One day, at sunset, drinking a glass of Pernod with my studio friends, I heard the cries of a newspaper vendor: “Fatal accident! The Maxime-Gorki, the giant Russian airplane, crashes! All passengers dead!” Saint-Ex was supposed to fly on the Maxime-Gorki. It had been planned as part of the article he was writing. Everything around me dissolved into a haze of huge newspaper headlines shouted out by vendors who jumbled together all the day’s stories to tempt prospective buyers.
As it turned out, my husband had flown in the giant airplane the day before. It was another of the miracles of his life, for he was supposed to have made the flight on the day of the crash. During that period, the Russians guarded all their airports closely; they were already making ready for their fierce war against the Germans. But they had found Tonio to be a true devotee of aviation, and the head of the airport hadn’t been able to wait until the next day to show him the enormous plaything they had invented. Thanks to him, Tonio had flown alone with the crew of the Maxime-Gorki one day before the catastrophe. I held the newspaper on my knees. One of my classmates read me the article. Little by little, I read in his expression that my husband had not been on board the plane when it crashed.
I went back to rue de Chanaleilles, where I stayed glued to the telephone, waiting to hear my strolling minstrel’s voice. The phone call came exactly on time, as it did every evening. And I was able to fall asleep that night, still dreaming about the new horizons he was discovering.
In the morning, the concierge woke me up. In her sourest voice, she demanded that I get dressed immediately. My apartment was being seized. The furniture and all the little possessions I cherished would be sold at auction on the spot. I persuaded them to give me a few hours, to refrain from piling the furniture up in the street, and to let me stay in the apartment waiting for my husband’s call.
It came at the expected time. When I told him about the events of the day, he laughed and begged my pardon for not having warned me.
The Tale of the Rose Page 11