Chalet in the Sky

by Albert Robida

  Colette called attention to herself by virtue of her indignation; she summoned Gustave to her aid, and, when he refused, threatened to come and tear off his ears. Gustave, an unnatural brother, contented himself with laughing.

  “Begin again? Never. We admit defeat, completely—trounced.”

  “Vanquished! Flattened! Demolished! Chambourcy capitulates! Villennes school is first rate! Strong courses in tennis! Crushing superiority!”

  “We throw ourselves on your mercy,” said Gustave. “I prose that a delegation from Chambourcy follow you to Villennes, to the Headmistresss, trailing on all fours…”

  “And a rope around the neck!” added Labrouscade. “Is that enough, though, to disarm your wrath? Hold on, a rhyme…

  “Is that enough, just Heaven, or would you like

  “All our throats cut and our heads on a spike…”

  “Pipe down!”19 cried Colette, sending half a dozen tennis balls into the mass of Chambourcians. Gustave caught two of them in flight, but Labrouscade and Koufra each received one in the face. That was the signal for a thrilling battle—a tennis match liberated from all inhibiting rules. There was no lack of ammunition. Chambourcy, carried away by the ardor of combat, took its revenge, perhaps rather too vigorously, for it seemed momentarily to be on the part of driving its adversaries all the way back to their school under the rain of balls.

  The form-masters of Chambourcy, who were taking the air along the Seine, heard the clamor distinctly, but they refrained from coming back, thinking that it was the hockey match that had become exciting. As for the Villennes form-mistresses, they tried in vain to cover their pupils’ retreat.

  Several window-panes were broken in Villennes’ concierge’s lodge by sharpshooters running forward. It was getting serious. The Administration, advised of the tumult, came running.

  To cut matters short, Gustave proposed to settle the difference immediately, with a vast bridge tournament on the sports field—but the senior staff of Villennes opposed it, and set about ushering the pupils inside.

  The day finished badly, the disorder continuing inside the school. Cleverly taking advantage of the ferment, the victims of the Paris-Naples Tube renewed their protests, and all the rooms resounded with the cry: “The voyage! The voyage!” sung to the tune of Lampions.20

  Things were under way. Dinner only restored a momentary calm. As soon as dessert was over, the noise resumed. A procession was organized in the grounds; when night had fallen, it set off on the march, crossed the courtyard and circled the headmistress’s house, chanting: “Down with the Administration! Down with the Administration!”

  Colette, carried away, marched at the head of the procession, carrying a Japanese lantern on the end of a pole. “At the head” is not entirely accurate, because she was pushing Valérie Mérindol in front of her, fully lit by the lantern. The other pupils in the procession were able to shout seditious cries at the top of their voice; they were indistinguishable—only Valérie was visible, evidently the instigator and director of the insurrectional movement.

  In the following days the ferment was not entirely quieted. At the end of every lesson, the most turbulent of the pupils tried to re-form processions. As the form-mistresses remained powerless to re-establish order, the most influential or most energetic professors intervened via the tele screens; they made appeal to finer sentiments or distributed impositions—a total waste of time.

  The administration threatened to punish the most indiscreet pupils—those who were setting a bad example and inciting their companions, like Colette Turbille and Valérie Mérindol—very severely.

  While Villennes was on the boil, the temperature was also rising again. Gustave and Tony Lubin decided one morning that it was necessary to take advantage of that for the terrible duel with lances, too long delayed by circumstances. They set off immediately in search of the two adversaries, whom they found in the process of working side by side in the phonoclichotheque.

  “Hey! On your feet!” cried Gustave. “25 degrees in the shade for a week, the Seine has warmed up again; it’s time. To arms, Messieurs!”

  “Eh?” said Labouscade and Koufra.

  “The duel will take place today, at 4 p.m. precisely. We’ve organized everything; it will be fine. The boats are prepared, the lances polished—everything’s ready! Have a good lunch, so as to be well set up, and full steam ahead!”

  There was no reply to be made. Labrouscade looked out of the window; the Sun was shining. Nothing to object to. Koufra also looked at the sunlight, and sighed. Life was beautiful, and he was about to expose his breast to the lance of the terrible Labrouscade!

  Between lunch and the time of the combat, Koufra tried to work—was it really worth the trouble?—while Labrouscade wrote his will, in verse.

  Time passed. At 3:30 p.m., Gustave arrived with the other seconds. Valérie Mérindol was missing. They had telephoned Villennes repeatedly, in vain. A tyrannical order retained her at Villennes, where revolution was brooding. It was no more than a matter of hours, Gustave was informed by Colette.

  Koufra required another second; Valérie was replaced by a comrade strong in all sports. In two groups, seconds and adversaries went to the Seine. Almost the whole school happened to be strolling on the bank, as if by chance, heads in the air, sniffing the breeze.

  “There must have been indiscretions,” said Gustave, who had personally advertised the duel in every class. “Rumor of the affair has leaked out.”

  “That changes nothing,” said Béguinot. “The two combatants will only fight harder under the sympathetic gazes of their friends. It’s regrettable that Villennes can’t be here, but the unfortunates are groaning under the oppression of a pitiless Administration.”

  The adversaries lost no time. They were rapidly attired for combat, swathed in the colors of Chambourcy, as were their oarsmen. Soon, each of them, standing on a little platform in the bow of his boat, received from his seconds a light buckler and a long, heavy lance, with some advice as to how to hold it in the hand, well-balanced under the arm.

  The preparations seemed long to Koufra, but on looking at the tip of his lance he saw that it was none too sharp—on the contrary, there was even a heavily quilted roundel there. Just as long as those roundels were solidly fixed—especially his adversary’s!

  Labrouscade, leaning on his lance, was standing up proudly in the prow of his boat, and had already declared himself ready.

  When Gustave had given the final instructions to the oarsmen, the boats took to the field.

  Gustave took out his watch and, at 4 p.m. precisely, gave the signal by means of a whistle-blast. “Let the combat begin!” he shouted.

  In a hushed silence, the oarsmen set off vigorously. Koufra and Labrouscade lowered their lances. They were about to clash…

  An immense cheer went up on the bank, the boats having crossed, the lances having struck the bucklers and the two adversaries, lifted from their platforms in less than a second, having performed a complete pirouette into the Seine…

  The seconds’ boat flew to their rescue. Labrouscade and Koufra were splashing around, both being rather poor swimmers. Splashing, with a good deal of glugging, they clung on to the boat desperately, both on the same side—a bad move on their part, and on the part of the seconds, who all went to render resistance at the same time. The boat tipped over and everyone, seconds and adversaries alike, was floundering in the Seine.

  But the adversaries’ oarsmen arrived, and soon brought them back to the bank. All saved, thank God! And the cheers were redoubled when Labrouscade and Koufra were seen, dripping like two mariners or gun-dogs, shaking hands as a sign of reconciliation.

  Honor was satisfied!

  The Free Student, which appeared at the end of that warm week, bore the flamboyant headlines:

  DUEL AT CHAMBOURCY

  REVOLT AT VILLENNES:

  TO THE AID OF THE OPPRESSED!

  Koufra, requisitioned again, had had to labor for long hours to polygraph, in addit
ion to the official report of the duel, articles by Labrouscade and Gustave, who had turned journalist for the occasion. The valiant Labrouscade took up the cause of the oppressed unfortunates. He began by making apologies to Villennes, on behalf of the school, for the jokes that Chambourcy had played, without malice, on the day of the competition. Chambourcy would redeem its debt by fighting for Villennes!

  The story of the insurrection, by G. Turbille, took up two pages filled with picturesque and thrilling details; it ended with this menacing sentence:

  “Chambourcy is alert; we shall not allow the reconstruction of the Bastille!”

  In the editorial, Labrouscade, after having exposed the particular protests of Villennes, had passed on to more general claims, and frankly proposed what he called “our Estates General”—which is to say, a meeting of the Congress of Schools and Colleges—to take responsibility for examining all the questions, to formulate the claims and to pass all the resolutions appropriate to bring about the triumph of the legitimate demands. The crisis was becoming grave!

  “Elections! Elections! Immediately! Immediately!” That was the general cry at Chambourcy, as soon as the proud articles of the Free Student had carried Labrouscade’s great idea into all the classes.

  They did not hang around. Within half an hour, the elections were announced, prepared and held! Every class nominated two delegates, who met and chose four députés for the school. Gustave was at the head, elected unanimously; Labrouscade came next, then Koufra, and a fourth, a boxing champion.

  “Labrouscade elected!” said one orator, announcing the result in the main drive of the grounds, filled with agitated groups. “Elected on one condition: he will not continue his Amended Virgil…”

  “Understood!” cried Labrouscade, climbing on a portico of the gymnasium. “Citizens, I shall abandon literature temporarily; besides, I don’t have time for my New Georgics…it will require a long and sustained campaign in the Free Student and all the other school magazines, and many preliminary negotiations, to arrive at the meeting of our Congress! That will take up a great deal of time, and—I won’t hide it from you—we mustn’t expect it to happen before next year!”

  “Long live Labrouscade!”

  XV. Winter Sports, Chilblains and

  Saint Charlemagne’s Day.21

  Turbille and Koufra had become the great men of 3A, and even of the school. The explosive success of the machine for fabricating impositions won them universal esteem. The stars of the sixth form paid them flattering attention. On several occasions Turbille was asked to give a little lesson on his machine to a class that was in distress because of some rather serious imposition. Koufra was even asked, since he was accustomed to it, to do what he had done for 3A and work the apparatus—and Koufra, even on the pretext of urgent occupations, was not always able to decline the invitation.

  The days passed; winter arrived with its fogs, its cold rain, its keen north winds and anticipated snow. A vile season for an open air school!

  Gustave talked enthusiastically about winter sports, heavy snow, hurtling down specially-prepared slopes in the grounds on luges or bobsleighs. Koufra wondered anxiously whether classes would be held in the park when it was frozen. The idea itself was sufficient to give him chilblains.

  But no, the arbors, in which the tall leafless trees were shivering in the north wind, were abandoned; they stayed in the buildings for lectures and study-periods. For outdoor recreations, the students put on thick pullovers, and gave preference to energetic and warming sports.

  Gustave threw himself into them as much as possible, and, considering himself to be Koufra’s trainer—the latter being somewhat numbed by the temperature—he jostled him to wake him up, to make him participate in the long jump, boxing, football, discus-throwing, golf, hockey, etc. There were cross-country runs held over a certain number of kilometers, and the painting Koufra had to follow his friend, who was always well-placed.

  What an appetite they brought back to the school’s dinner-tables! “Athletic sports,” Gustave said, emphatically, attacking the dishes vigorously, “athletic appetites! Muscles, brain, stomach! It’s as necessary to be first in beefsteak as in Latin dissertation, boxing or sciences!”

  Besides which, the meals were good. There were no kitchens in the school, only a few emergency stoves in case of a breakdown at the Central Kitchen of Paris—a breakdown that never happened, or almost never. Everything traveled from the Central Kitchen to the school and colleges of Paris via a rather complicated system of pipes. It was remarkably well-equipped, with huge stoves and expert cooks under the direction of a first-class engineer: bourgeois cuisine, healthy and abundant, served every day, by way of a quality check, to a panel of chefs in service at the ministry.

  Student critics, however, claimed to have found the formulas by which all the aliments scientifically produced and served by the enterprise were manufactured: peptogelatino-phospine (soup); defibrinated panhetamine (polony); ovonutrine (egg), ichthyosyntonine (fish); phospholecithin and oxymargarine (brains in black butter); diamylofecukline (flour); glycofermenolactine (sugared white cheese); malafructose hydrate (apple ice cream), and so on.

  When Saint Charlemagne’s Day arrived, practical jokers even went so far as to translate the menu for the banquet into chemical formulas. It was, however, a remarkable menu, carefully-planned:

  Consommé: H2O + C8H15NO2;

  Turbot: C14H27N2O4 + H2, etc, etc.

  Coffee: H2O + C24H32NO3;

  Champagne: H2O + CO2H CH2 CHOH CO2H + 18 CO2S + KOH.22

  Turbille and Koufra having both been first or second in something—Latin, sciences or sports—several times over, were at the banquet, and did honor to the menu. There was no suggestion at all of chemistry; the haunch of venison came from a roe deer, the foie gras was authentic, the iced bombe perfect and the champagne utterly sincere.

  “Headmaster,” cried Turbille, when the coffee was served, “I ask your permission to telephone congratulations to the chef via the delivery pipes.”

  The day after Saint Charlemagne’s Day, an abundant snowfall permitted the pupils to devote themselves seriously to winter sports. Gustave dragged Koufra, who was not at all enthusiastic, on vertiginous runs in luges and bobsleighs; he rolled his friend over, turned him upside-down and buried him in the snow, while Koufra thrashed his arms and legs in vain. He made him go skiing. Poor Koufra would a 1000 times rather have been doing Latin composition, advanced math or even terrible Greek imposition, but he was obliged to follow Gustave’s persuasive objurgations in support of a warming bout of boxing.

  “Come on, come on, idler, sluggard—to the ski slope! To the luge! It’s to harden you up; that way you’ll never get chilblains in the African bush!”

  “In the meantime, I’ve got them here,” groaned Koufra, blowing on his fingers, which were clad in a double pair of fur-lined gloves.

  And after somersaults in the snow, there were skating sessions. Koufra, useless on skis, hopeless on a luge, skated more on his head than his skates, while Gustave distinguished himself by the purity of his figure eights and his elegant flourishes on the ice.

  Koufra went back joyfully into the well-heated school buildings, without even waiting for the siren summons to class. He departed at a gallop, always first in the race to get back in, and far ahead of the others. He already had his nose in a book when Monsieur Virgile Radoux arrived, even though the latter did not much appreciate winter sports either.

  O sweetness of Latin composition! O joy of Greek translation! Koufra thought, his spirits revived by the central heating but still blowing on his fingers.

  “You’re a good student, Koufra,” Monsieur Radoux said to him, on one of these occasions. “Not brilliant, but willing. You’ll get there! But your comrade Turbille is disillusioning me—I expected better of him. He’s definitely too sporty; he cultivates his muscles too intensively and too exclusively.”

  “Me, Monsieur?” said Gustave, having just come in after coming up the stairs with th
e other third-formers like a whirlwind. “On the contrary, I’m very intellectual, and it’s to restrain the pressure of intellectuality slightly that I precipitate myself into vigorous games from time to time.”

  “In the meantime, my friend, you’re falling behind! It seems to me that you’re slacking in your scientific studies. I believed you to have a questing mind, avid for discoveries and new applications. You know, since a certain execution by unprecedented scientific means of a considerable imposition, in which I was able to observe a remarkable ingenuity…”

  “Yes, Monsieur.”

  “You’ll recall that I suggested a little idea to you then—I asked you, in order to encourage your scientific disposition, to find a means of realizing another machine that would be genuinely useful, and would render great service…”

  “Yes, Monsieur.”

  “A machine for correcting assignments! But you don’t appear to have given it much thought yet…”

  “On the contrary, Monsieur, I’ve been dreaming about it! It’s difficult to realize. It’s complicated. I’ve been working, planning, racking my brains—but I haven’t yet found…”

  “Come on—don’t get discouraged, my friend. Carry on racking! In that respect, Koufra isn’t doing badly. Is there good news of your father, the African monarch? Yes? Very good! He must have some nice little administrative sinecures in his nice warm kingdom…tee hee! In these icy months, that’s tempting…a nice little position out there!”

  The legend of Koufra’s father, a monarch on the banks of the Oubangui in the Congo, was now accepted by everyone at the school. When people talked to Koufra about his father’s court, he seemed quite embarrassed, but that all-too-visible embarrassment was reckoned as diplomatic reserve.

  In the absence of a machine to correct assignments, Monsieur Virgile Radoux would have been quite content with one of those little sinecures in the hot Congo Sun to which he had just made allusion, which would have permitted him to warm up his Muse, who seemed to have as many chilblains as poor Koufra.