He sat down on the other end of the sofa. “And how much have you learned of Orillion, liebling?”
He was not angry with me then. This time, my voice sounded penitent. “Well, I know about the painters and musicians and poets who were kicked out of Spain by that Inquisition person, Torquesomething, when Columbus left to discover America. How did they find the island in that storm, after everyone thought they had drowned? And when the pirate came—Blackbeard or Bluebeard or whatever—how did they make it fly? Was it magic?”
“Magic, or a science we do not yet understand, which to us resembles magic,” said Meister Wilhelm.
“Is that why they built all those towers on the tops of the houses, and put bells in them—to warn everyone if another pirate was coming?”
Meister Wilhelm smiled. “I see you’ve read the first chapter.”
“I was just starting the second when you came in. About how Lord Rutherford fell and broke his leg on a mountain in the Alps, and he thought he was going to die when he heard the bells, all ringing together. I thought they were warning bells?”
“Orillion has not been attacked in so long that the bells are only rung once a day, when the sun rises.”
“All of them together? That must make an awful racket.”
“Ah, no, liebling. Remember that the citizens of Orillion are artists, the children and grandchildren of artists. Those bells are tuned by the greatest musicians of Orillion, so that when they are rung, no matter in what order, the sound produced is a great harmony. From possible disorder, the bells of Orillion create musical order. But I think one chapter is enough for you today.”
At that moment I realized something. “That’s how Otto Lilienwhatever died, didn’t he? He was trying to get to Orillion.”
Meister Wilhelm looked down at the dusty floor of the cottage. “You are right, in a sense, Rose. Otto was trying to test a new theory of flight that he thought would someday allow him to reach Orillion. He knew there was risk—it was the highest flight he had yet attempted. Before he went into the sky for the last time, he sent me that book, and all of his papers. ‘If I do not reach Orillion, Johann,’ he wrote to me, ‘I depend upon you to reach it.’ It had been our dream since he discovered Lord Rutherford’s book at university. That is why I have come to America. During the three years he lived on Orillion, Lord Rutherford charted the island’s movements. In July, it would have been to the north, over your city of Raleigh. I tried to finish my glider there, but was not able to complete it in time. So I came here, following the island—or rather, Lord Rutherford’s charts.”
“Will you complete it in time now?”
“I do not know. The island moves slowly, but it will remain over this area only during the first two weeks of August.” He stood and walked to the table, then touched the yards of canvas scattered over it. “I have completed the frame of the glider, but the cloth for the wings—there is much sewing still to be done.”
“I’ll help you.”
“You, liebling?” He looked at me with amusement. “You are very generous. But for this cloth, the stitches must be very small, like so.” He brought over a piece of canvas and showed me his handiwork.
I smiled a superior smile. “Oh, I can make them even smaller than that, don’t worry.” When Aunt Winslow had visited two summers ago, she had insisted on teaching me to sew. “A lady always looks elegant holding a needle,” she had said. I had spent hours sitting in the parlor making a set of clothes for the china doll she had given me, which I had broken as soon as she left. In consequence, I could make stitches a spider would be proud of.
“Very well,” said Meister Wilhelm, handing me two pieces of canvas that had been half-joined with an intricate, overlapping seam. “Show me how you would finish this, and I will tell you if it is good enough.”
I crossed my legs and settled back into the sofa with the pieces of canvas, waxed thread and a needle, and a pair of scissors. He took The Island of Orillion from where I had left it on the sofa and placed it back on the shelf where he kept the few books he owned, between The Empire of the Air and Maimonides: Seine Philosophie. Then he sat on a chair with a broken back, one of his knees crossed over the other. Draping another piece of canvas over the raised knee, he leaned down so he could see the seam he was sewing in the dim light that came through the dirty windows. I stared at him sewing like that, as though he were now the hunchback of Notre Dame.
“You know,” I said, “if you’re nearsighted you ought to buy a pair of spectacles.”
“Ah, I had a very good pair from Germany,” he answered without looking up from his work. “They were broken just before I left Raleigh. Since then, I have not been able to afford another.”
I sewed in silence for a moment. Then I said, “Why do you want to go to Orillion, anyway? Do you think—things will be better there?”
His fingers continued to swoop down to the canvas, up from the canvas, like birds. “The citizens of Orillion are artists. I would like to play my Sturmvogel for them. I think they would understand it, as you do.” Then he looked up and stared at the windows of the cottage, as though seeing beyond them to the hills around Ashton, to the mountains rising blue behind the hills. “I do not know if human beings are better anywhere. But I like to think, liebling, that in this sad world of ours, those who create do not destroy so often.”
After the day on which I had discovered The Island of Orillion, when my lessons had been forgotten, Meister Wilhelm insisted that I continue practicing the violin, in spite of my protest that it took time away from constructing the glider. “If no learning, then no sewing—and no reading,” he would say. After an hour of valiant effort on the instrument, I was allowed to sit with him, stitching triangles of canvas into bat-shaped wings. And then, if any time remained before dinner, I was allowed to read one, and never more than one, chapter of Lord Rutherford’s book.
In spite of our sewing, the glider was not ready to be launched until the first week of August was nearly over. Once the pieces of canvas were sewn together, they had to be stretched over and attached to the bamboo frame, and then covered with three layers of wax, each of which required a day and a night to dry.
But finally, one morning before dawn, I crept down our creaking stairs and then out through the kitchen door, which was never locked. I ran through the silent streets of Ashton to Slater’s barn and helped Meister Wilhelm carry the glider up the slope of the back pasture to Slocumb’s Bluff, whose rock face rose above the waving grass. I had assumed we would carry the glider to the top of the bluff, where the winds from the rock face were strongest. But Meister Wilhelm called for me to halt halfway up, at a plateau formed by large, flat slabs of granite. There we set down the glider. In the gray light, it looked like a great black moth against the stones.
“Why aren’t we going to the top?” I asked.
He looked over the edge of the plateau. Beyond the slope of the pasture lay the streets and houses of Ashton, as small as a dolls’ town. Beyond them, a strip of yellow had appeared on the hilltops to the east. “That rock, he is high. I will die if the glider falls from such a height. Here we are not so high.”
I stared at him in astonishment. “Do you think you could fall?” Such a possibility had never occurred to me.
“Others have,” he answered, adjusting the strap that held a wooden case to his chest. He was taking his violin with him.
“Oh,” I said, remembering the picture of Otto Lilienthal. Of course what had happened to Lilienthal could happen to him. I had simply never associated the idea of death with anyone I knew. I clenched and unclenched my hands.
“Help me to put on the glider,” said Meister Wilhelm.
I held the glider at an angle as he crouched under it, fastened its strap over his chest, above the strap that held the violin case, and fitted his arms into the armrests.
“Rose,” he said suddenly, “listen.”
I listened, and heard nothing but the wind as it blew against the face of the bluff.
&n
bsp; “You mean the wind?” I said.
“No, no,” he answered, his voice high with excitement. “Not the wind. Don’t you hear them? The bells, first one, then ten, and now a hundred, playing together.”
I turned my head from side to side, trying to hear what he was hearing. I looked up at the sky, where the growing yellow was pushing away the gray. Nothing.
“Rose.” He looked at me, his face both kind and solemn. In the horizontal light, his wrinkles seemed carved into his face, so that he looked like a part of the bluff. “I would like you to have my books, and my picture of Otto, and the violin on which you learned to play. I have nothing else to leave anyone in the world. And I leave you my gratitude, liebling. You have been to me a good friend.”
He smiled at me, but turned away as he smiled. He walked back from the edge of the plateau and stood, poised with one foot behind the other, like a runner on a track. Then he sprang forward and began to sprint, more swiftly than I thought he could have, the great wings of the glider flapping awkwardly with each step.
He took one final leap, over the edge of the plateau, into the air. The great wings caught the sunlight, and the contraption of waxed canvas fastened on a bamboo frame became a moth covered with gold dust. It soared, wings outstretched, on the winds that blew up from the face of the bluff, and then out over the pasture, higher and farther into the golden regions of the sky.
My heart lifted within me, as when I had first heard Meister Wilhelm play the violin. What if I had heard no bells? Surely Orillion was there, and he would fly up above its houses of white stucco with their belltowers. The citizens of Orillion would watch this miracle, a man like a bird, soaring over them, and welcome him with glad shouts.
The right wing of the glider dipped. Suddenly it was spiraling down, at first slowly and then faster, like a maple seed falling, falling, to the pasture.
I heard a thin shriek, and realized it had come from my own throat. I ran as quickly as I could down the side of the bluff.
When I reached the glider, it was lying in an area of broken grass, the tip of its right wing twisted like an injured bird. Meister Wilhelm’s legs stuck out from beneath it.
I lifted one side of the glider, afraid of what I might see underneath. How had Otto Lilienthal looked when he was found, crushed by his fall from the sky?
But I saw no blood, no intestines splattered over the grass—just Meister Wilhelm, with his right arm tangled in a broken armrest and twisted under him at an uncomfortable angle.
“Rose,” he said in a weak voice. “Rose, is my violin safe?”
I lifted the glider off him, reaching under him to undo the strap across his chest. He rolled over on his back, the broken armrest still dangling from his arm. The violin case was intact.
“Are you going to die?” I asked, kneeling beside him, grass tickling my legs through my stockings. I could feel tears running down my nose, down to my neck, and wetting the collar of my dress.
“No, Rose,” he said with a sigh, his fingers caressing the case as though making absolutely sure it was unbroken. “I think my arm is sprained, that is all. The glider acted like a helicopter and brought me down slowly. It saved my life.” He pushed himself up with his left arm. “Is it much damaged?”
I rubbed the back of my hands over my face to wipe away tears.
“No. Just one corner of the wing.”
“Good,” he said. “Then it can be fixed quickly.”
“You mean you’re going to try this again?” I stared at him as though he had told me he was about to hang himself from the beam of Slater’s barn.
With his left hand, he brushed back his hair, which had blown over his cheeks and forehead. “I have only one more week, Rose. And then the island will be gone.”
Together we managed to carry the glider back to Slater’s barn, and I snuck back into the house for breakfast.
Later that day, I sat on the broken chair in the cottage while Meister Wilhelm lay on the sofa with a bandage around his right wrist.
“So, what’s wrong with your arm?” I asked.
“I think the wrist, it is broken. And there is much pain. But no more breaks.”
His face looked pale and old against the green upholstery. I crossed my arms and looked at him accusingly. “I didn’t hear any bells.”
He tried to smile, but grimaced instead, as though the effort were painful. “I have been a musician for many years. It is natural for me to hear things that you are not yet capable of hearing.”
“Well, I didn’t see anything either.”
“No, Rose. You would see nothing. Through the science—or the magic—of its inhabitants, the bottom of the island always appears the same color as the sky.”
Was that true? Or was he just a crazy old man, trying to kill himself in an especially crazy way? I kicked the chair leg, wishing that he had never come to Ashton, wishing that I had never heard of Orillion, if it was going to be a lie. I stood up and walked over to the photograph of Otto Lilienthal.
“You know,” I said, my voice sounding angry, “it would be safer to go up in a balloon instead of a glider. At a fair in Brickleford last year, I saw an acrobat go up under a balloon and perform all kinds of tricks hanging from a wooden bar.”
“Yes, you are right, it would be safer. I spent many years in my own country studying with Count Von Zeppelin, the great balloonist. But your acrobat, he cannot tell the balloon where to go, can he?”
“No.” I turned to face him again. “But at least he doesn’t fall out of the sky and almost kill himself.”
He turned away from me and stared up at the ceiling. “But your idea is a good one, Rose. I must consider what it is I did wrong. Will you bring me those papers upon the table?”
I walked over to the table, lifted the stack of papers, and brought it over to the sofa. “What is this, anyway?” I asked.
Meister Wilhelm took the stack from me with his left hand. “These are the papers my friend Otto left me.” He looked at the paper on top of the stack. “And this is the letter he wrote to me before he died.” Awkwardly, he placed the stack beside him on the sofa and lifted the letter to his nearsighted eyes.
“Let me read it to you,” I said. “You’ll make yourself blind doing that.”
“You are generous, Rose,” he said, “but I do not think you read German, eh?”
I shook my head.
“Then I will read it to you, or rather translate. Perhaps you will see in it another idea, like she of the balloon, that might help us. Or perhaps I will see in it something that I have not seen before.”
He read the letter slowly, translating as he went, sometimes stumbling over words for which he did not know the English equivalent. It was nothing like the letters Emma and I were writing to each other while she stayed in Raleigh. There was no discussion of daily events, of the doings of family.
Instead, Otto Lilienthal had written about the papers he was leaving for his friend, which discussed his theories. He wrote admiringly of Besnier, the first to create a functional glider. He discussed the mistakes of Mouillard and Le Bris, and the difficulties of controlling a glider’s flight. He praised Cayley, whose glider had achieved lift, and lamented Pénaud, who became so dispirited by his failures that he locked his papers into a coffin and committed suicide. Finally he wrote of his own ideas, their merits and drawbacks, and of how he had attempted to solve the two challenges of the glider, lift and lateral stability. He had solved the problem of lift early in his career. Now he would try to solve the other.
The letter ended, “My dear Johann, remember how we dreamed of gliding through the air, like the storks in our native Pomerania. I expect to succeed. But if I fail, do you continue my efforts. Surely one with your gifts will succeed, where I cannot. Always remember that you are a violinist.” When he had finished the letter, Meister Wilhelm passed his hand, still holding a sheet of paper, over his eyes.
I looked away, out of the dirty window of the cottage. Then I asked, because curiosity had once a
gain triumphed over politeness, “Why did he tell you to remember that you’re a violinist?”
Meister Wilhelm answered in a tired voice, “He wanted to encourage me. To tell me, remember that you are worthy to mingle with the citizens of Orillion, to make music for them before the Monument of the Muse at the center of the city. He wanted—”
Suddenly he sat up, inadvertently putting his weight on his right hand. His face creased in pain, and he crumpled back against the seat of the sofa. But he said, in a voice filled with wonder, “No. I have been stupid. Always remember, Rose, that we cannot find the right answers until we ask the right questions. Tell me, what did the glider do just before it fell?”
I stared at him, puzzled. “It dipped to the right.”
He waved his left forefinger in the air, as though to punctuate his point. “Because it lacked lateral stability!”
I continued to look puzzled.
He waved his finger again, at me this time. “That is the problem Otto was trying to solve.”
I sat back down. “Yes, well he didn’t solve it, did he?”
The finger waved once again, more frantically this time. “He solved it in principle. He knew that lateral stability is created with the legs, just as lift is controlled with the position of the body in the armrests. His final flight must have been intended to test which position would provide the greatest amount of control.” Meister Wilhelm sat, pulling himself up this time with his left hand. “After his death, I lamented that Otto could never tell me his theory. But he has told me, and I was too stupid to see it!” He rose and began pacing, back and forth as he spoke, over the floor of the cottage. “I have been keeping my legs still, trying not to upset the glider’s balance. Otto was telling me that I must use my body like a violinist, that I must not stay still, but respond to the rhythm of the wind, as I respond to the rhythm of music. He thought I would understand.”
He turned to me. “Rose, we must begin to repair the glider tomorrow. And then, I will fly it again. But this time I will fly from the top of Slocumb’s Bluff, where the winds are strongest. And I will become one with the winds, with the great music that they will play through me.”
In the Forest of Forgetting Page 13