Words escape me! Returning from the soirée, I threw myself on my bed and groaned as if I had been hit over the head. An hour later I was sitting at my table, my whole body shivering, and wasted a good twenty sheets of paper trying to write the following letter.
My dearest Valeria Andreyevna,
I do not know you very well, indeed barely at all, but I will not let this hinder achieving my goal. Omitting grandiloquent turns of phrase, I shall come straight to the point: I love you! I love you more than life itself! This is not hyperbole. I am an honest man. I work (there followed a lengthy description of my virtues). My life is not dear to me. I am prepared to die—if not today, then tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, a year from now, what do I care! On the table before me, just two feet from my chest, lies a revolver (a six-shot .38 caliber). I am in your hands! If the life of a man who is passionately in love with you is in any way dear to you, then please respond to this letter. Your maid Palasha knows me. You can send a reply through her.
Sincerely,
The man who sat across from you yesterday
P.S. Have pity on me!
I sealed the letter and placed the revolver on the table in front of me—more for effect than to take my life—then went outside and made my way past the dachas in search of a mailbox. A mailbox was found, and the letter dropped in.
And, as Palasha later told me, this is what happened to my letter. The next morning at about eleven, Palasha placed the letter, which the postman had just delivered, on a silver platter and took it up to her mistress’ bedroom. Valeria Andreyevna lay beneath an airy silken cover, stretching lazily. She had just woken up and was smoking her first cigarette of the day. A ray of sunlight pierced the window, and she whimsically crinkled her nose. When she saw my letter, she made a sour grimace.
“Who’s it from?” she asked. “Read it to me, Palasha. I don’t like reading those letters. They’re always so full of nonsense.”
Palasha unsealed my letter and began reading it aloud. The more she read, the wider her mistress’ eyes grew. When Palasha came to the part about the revolver, Valeria Andreyevna opened her mouth and looked at her in terror.
“What does he mean?” she asked in bewilderment.
Palasha repeated the words. Valeria Andreyevna’s eyes blinked.
“Who is this man? Who is he? Why does he write such things?” she gasped. “Who is he?”
Palasha realized that I was the one who had written the letter, and described me.
“But why does he write such things? Why? What am I supposed to do? There’s nothing I can do, is there, Palasha? Well . . . is he rich?”
Palasha, whom I had been tipping with almost everything I earned, thought for a few moments, and then said it was quite likely that I was rich.
“But there’s is nothing I can do, is there? I’m expecting Alexei Matveyich today, and the baron tomorrow . . . and on Thursday, Monsieur Romb. When am I supposed to receive him? It will have to be during the day, won’t it?”
“You’ve arranged for Grigory Grigorevich to start visiting you during the day.”
“You see what I mean! Can I receive him at all? Well, tell him . . . tell him . . . well, have him come to tea today. But that’s the best I can do!”
Valeria Andreyevna was on the verge of tears. It was the first time in her life that she had been confronted with a revolver, and it had been through my pen! That evening I drank tea with her. Though I was suffering, I had four cups. As luck would have it, it began to rain, and Valeria’s Alexei Matveyich did not visit her. In the end, I did rejoice.
FLYING ISLANDS
by Jules Verne
Translated by A. Chekhonte
CHAPTER I
The Talk
“. . . And with this, gentlemen, I conclude my talk,” said Sir John Lund, a young member of the Royal Geographical Society, and, exhausted, sank into his chair. The conference hall resounded with applause and shouts of bravo, and one after another the members came up to Sir John to shake his hand. In token of their enthusiasm, seventeen gentlemen broke seventeen chairs and dislocated eight long necks belonging to eight gentlemen, one of whom was the captain of the Confusion, a 100,009-ton yacht.
“Gentlemen,” Lund began with some emotion. “I consider it my duty to thank you for the infernal patience with which you sat through my talk, which lasted for forty hours, thirty-two minutes, and fourteen seconds”; and, turning to his old servant, he added, “I say, Snipe, wake me in five minutes; I’ll be taking a nap, if these gentlemen will permit me forty winks in their presence.”
“I shall wake you, sir,” Old Snipe replied.
Lund leaned his head back and immediately fell asleep. He was a Scotsman by birth, who had had no schooling whatever, nor had he studied anything—but there was nothing he did not know. He belonged to that small number of happy natures that achieve knowledge of all that is great and wonderful through their intellect alone. The rapture his talk inspired was entirely merited. In the course of the forty hours, he had presented to the assembled gentlemen a grand project, which, if carried out, would bring much glory to Great Britain and demonstrate the heights to which the human intellect could soar. The topic of Lund’s talk was “Drilling Through the Moon with a Giant Drill.”
CHAPTER II
A Mysterious Stranger
Lund had not slept for three minutes when a heavy hand rested on his shoulder and he awoke. Before him towered a man two and a quarter yards tall, thin as a rake and drawn as a dried snake. He was quite bald, dressed entirely in black, and four pairs of spectacles were balanced on his nose. He was sporting two thermometers, one on his chest and one on his back.
“Would you be so kind as to follow me?” the bald-headed gentleman said in a sepulchral voice.
“Whither?”
“Follow me, Sir John.”
“And if I do not?”
“Then I might be constrained to drill through the moon before you do.”
“In that case, sir, I am at your service.”
“Your manservant may accompany us.”
Lund, the bald-headed man, and Tom Snipe left the lecture hall, and the three of them made their way through the gaslit streets of London. They walked quite a distance.
“If you please, sir,” Tom Snipe said to Lund, “if our way is to be as long as this gentleman is tall, then the laws of friction dictate that we will wear down the soles of our shoes to nothing.”
The two gentlemen gave Tom Snipe’s words ten minutes’ thought, and, finding them not without wit, laughed out loud.
“With whom, may I ask, do I have the honor of sharing a good laugh?” Lund asked the bald-headed gentleman.
“You have the honor of walking, laughing, and conversing with a member of every geographical, archaeological, and ethnographical society in the world, doctor of all past and present fields of science, member of the Moscow Arts Circle, honorary trustee of the Southampton School of Bovine Obstetrics, subscriber to The Illustrated Devil, professor of greenish-yellow wizardry and introductory gastronomy at the future University of New Zealand, and director of the Anonymous Observatory, William Dunderheadus. I, sir, am taking you to . . .”—John Lund and Tom Snipe bent their knees in reverence before the great man of whom they had heard so much, and bowed respectfully—“I am taking you, sir, to my observatory, which is located twenty miles from here. I, sir, need a partner for an enterprise, the meaning of which you will only be able to grasp using both hemispheres of your brain. My choice fell upon you. But after a forty-hour talk, I doubt that you will be in a condition to enter any kind of conversation, and I, sir, love nothing more than my telescope and lasting silence. Your manservant’s tongue, I hope, will follow your command. Long live speechlessness! I am taking you to . . . I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not in the least, sir. My only regret is that we are not fast walkers and have no soles on our sh
oes, since they cost money, and—”
“I shall buy you new shoes.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Readers who wish to familiarize themselves further with Dr. Dunderheadus can turn to his remarkable study, “Did the Moon Exist Before the Great Flood, and if so, why did it not ink?” Along with this study was also published a banned pamphlet written a year before his death: “How to Crush the Universe to Powder Without Perishing.” These works characterize, like no other, this most remarkable of men. Among other things he describes how he lived for whole time in the Australian swamps, where he survived on crabs, mud, and crocodile eggs, and in the two years did not once see fire. While there, he invented a microscope just like the ones we have, and discovered the bones of a fish belonging to the Pisces family. Returning from his long journey, he settled some miles outside London and dedicated himself entirely to astronomy. Being a convinced misogynist (he had been married three times, as a consequence of which he sported three pairs of formidable horns), and not wanting to be the butt of every joke, he withdrew to live the life of an ascetic. As he possessed a fine, diplomatic intellect, he was clever enough to make certain that his observatory and astronomical findings were known to him alone. Regrettably, and to the misfortune of all true-blooded Englishmen, this great man did not live on into our times. He quietly passed away last year, swallowed by three crocodiles while swimming in the Nile.
CHAPTER III
Mysterious Spots
In the observatory to which Dr. Dunderheadus took Lund and Old Tom Snipe—(there follows an excruciatingly long and boring description of the observatory, which the translator has refrained from rendering with a view to saving space and time)—stood the telescope the doctor had perfected. Lund walked over to it, and began to look at the moon.
“And what do you see, sir?”
“The moon, sir.”
“But what do you see next to the moon?”
“I have the honor of seeing the moon and nothing but.”
“But can’t you see the moving white spots next to the moon?”
“By Jove, sir! Call me an ass if I do not see the spots you speak of! What manner of spots are they?”
“They are spots only visible through my telescope. Enough, leave the telescope. Sir John, I wish to find out, nay, must find out what those spots are! I will be there soon enough! I shall travel to them, and you must accompany me!”
“Hurrah! Long live the spots!” Sir John and Old Snipe called out in unison.
CHAPTER IV
A Rumpus in the Skies
A half hour later Dr. Dunderheadus, Sir John Lund, and Tom Snipe were already flying toward the mysterious spots in eighteen balloons. They were sitting in a hermetically sealed cube filled with condensed air and chemicals for the production of oxygen.10 This grandiose flight, the likes of which no man ever ventured on, was undertaken on the thirteenth of March, 1870. A southwesterly wind was blowing. The magnetic needle was pointing NWW. (There follows an extremely boring description of the cube and the eighteen balloons.) A deep silence reigned in the cube. The two gentlemen sat wrapped in their coats, smoking cigars, while Tom Snipe lay stretched out on the floor, sleeping as if he were at home in his bed. The thermometer11 indicated that the temperature was below the freezing-point. During the first twenty hours not a word was spoken, and nothing particular happened. The balloons entered the cloud zone, a number of lightning bolts chasing but not reaching them as they were British. On the third day, John Lund fell ill with diphtheria while Tom Snipe suffered an attack of bile. The cube collided with an asteroid and received a dreadful thump. The thermometer indicated a temperature of minus seventy-six degrees centigrade.
“How are you keeping, sir?” Dr. Dunderheadus finally asked Lund on the fifth day, breaking the silence.
“Thank you for your concern,” Lund replied, touched by the doctor’s solicitude. “I am suffering most profusely. Where is my trusted manservant?”
“He is sitting in a corner chewing tobacco, and attempting to look like a man married to ten women at the same time.”
“Ha ha, I say, that’s a good one, Dr. Dunderheadus!”
“Thank you, sir.”
The doctor was about to shake Lund’s hand when something terrible happened. There was a great rattling and a shattering bang, the thunder of a thousand cannons, a frenzied, howling piping noise. The brass cube, having fallen into a layer of thin space, could not bear the inner pressure and exploded, its shreds hurtling into endless distances.
It was a terrible moment, the most singular in history!
Dr. Dunderheadus grabbed hold of Tom Snipe’s legs, who in turn grabbed hold of John Lund’s legs, and the three of them, with lightning speed, plummeted into endless depths. One after the other the balloons tore away, and, freed from all weight, spun in circles, exploding with deafening bangs.
“Where are we, sir?” John Lund inquired of the doctor.
“In the ethers.”
“I say, if we are in the ethers, what are we to breathe?”
“Where, Sir John, is your strength of will?”
“Gentlemen,” Tom Snipe called out, “I have the honor of informing you that for some reason we are not falling downward, but upward!”
“I see . . . Damn it all! That means we are no longer within the earth’s gravitational pull . . . That means our goal is drawing us toward it! Hurrah! Sir John, how is your health holding up?”
“Thank you for your concern. But, sir, I see the earth above us.”
“That isn’t the earth—it is one of our spots. We will crash into it any moment now.”
Bang!
CHAPTER V
Prince Meshchersky Island
The first to regain consciousness was Tom Snipe. He rubbed his eyes and let them wander over the terrain on which he, Dr. Dunderheadus, and John Lund were lying. He took off one of his stockings, and with it began rubbing the gentlemen down, who immediately regained consciousness.
“Where are we?” John Lund asked.
“We are on an island that belongs to a group of flying islands!” the doctor replied. “Hurrah!”
“Hurrah! Look up there, doctor!” Lund called out. “We have outshone Columbus!”
Above them a number of other islands were floating (a description follows that would only make sense to Englishmen). The three men set out to reconnoiter the island. Its measurements were (Verne gives us numbers and more numbers—to hell with them!). Tom Snipe managed to find a tree whose sap was redolent of Russian vodka. Strangely enough, the trees were no taller than grass. (Balderdash!) The island was uninhabited. No living creature had ever set foot on it before.
“I say, doctor, what might this be?” Lund said to Dr. Dunderheadus, picking up some sort of package.
“Strange . . . most extraordinary . . . what a surprise!” the doctor mumbled.
Inside the package were the writings of a certain Prince Meshchersky, composed in some barbarian language, probably Russian.
“How could these writings have ended up here?”
“A thousand damnations!” Dr. Dunderheadus shouted. “Have others beaten us to these islands? Who could it be? Tell me, who, who? Damn them! O thunderbolts of heaven, dash my—rather large—brain to smithereens! If I get my hands on him, if only I could get my hands on him! I’ll tear him to pieces, along with his works!” And raising his hands in the air he laughed a terrible laugh. A disquieting glint flickered in his eye. He had gone mad.
CHAPTER VI
The Return
“Hurrah!” the inhabitants of Le Havre called out, crowding onto all the quays of the town. The air was filled with shouts of joy, tolling bells, and music. The massive black object in the sky that had threatened everyone with death was about to fall not onto the town but into the harbor. All the ships were hurrying out into the open sea. The massive object that had covered
the sun for so many days splashed heavily into the bay, inundating the waterfront, to the accompaniment of thundering music and the triumphant hullabaloo of the people. It began to sink, and within a few minutes the bay was free again, waves surging through it in every direction. In the middle of the bay three men were floundering. These were mad Dr. Dunderheadus, John Lund, and Tom Snipe, who were quickly pulled out of the water by a nearby boat.
“We haven’t eaten in fifty-seven days,” muttered John Lund, who was as thin as a starving artist, as he told the people what had happened.
The island of Prince Meshchersky no longer exists. Bearing the weight of three intrepid men, it grew heavier, and leaving its orbit fell into the earth’s gravity and plummeted into the harbor of Le Havre.
Conclusion
These days, John Lund is once again occupying himself with the question of drilling through the moon. The day is nigh when the moon will be graced with a hole, a hole that will belong to Great Britain. Tom Snipe is currently living in Ireland, where he has dedicated himself to farming. He raises chickens and apportions good hidings to his only daughter, whom he is bringing up in spartan fashion. He is not a stranger to scientific matters, and is quite angry at himself for having neglected, while on the flying island, to gather seeds of the tree whose sap is redolent of Russian vodka.
* * *
10A smell invented by chemists. They say one cannot live without it. Fiddlesticks. It is only without money that man cannot live. (A. Chekhonte, the translator)
11Such an instrument does in fact exist. (A. Chekhonte, the translator)
A BRIEF ANATOMY OF MAN
On an examination a student was asked: “What is man?” He replied: “An animal.” After some thought, he added: “But . . . a rational one.” The enlightened examiners agreed only with the second part of his answer; on the first part, the student was given an F.
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