Chalet in the Sky

by Albert Robida

  “Perfect!” said Madame des Ormettes. “With all that, I’ll rest easy. I know that I can entrust my dear boys to you without anxiety.”

  “I shall bring you back men!”

  “Oh, if I weren’t so busy, if I didn’t have to live up to my obligations to my electors, I’d go with you.”

  “As well as the Cinephono University, we have a little library. I’ll make sure that my nephews work regularly.”

  “It’s so convenient, that Cinephono University,” said Madame des Ormettes, “but can you understand why they haven’t yet found a machine to correct assignments?”

  A bell rang. It was a signal from the pilot, who came out of his cockpit. It was time to go. The Beauséjour Family Aero-Boarding-House was about to take off.

  “Monsieur,” said the pilot, “it’s three and a half minutes to 4 p.m.—which is the departure time you set.”

  Everyone got up. Andoche and Moderan leapt to their feet joyfully. The others did not seem overly excited.

  “Yes, I left three minutes for effusions,” said Cabrol. That’s sufficient—life is so short! Come on, let’s embrace. No emotion, since we’ll see one another every evening on the Tele, and can tell one another calmly how we spent our day, quite at ease.”

  “When your aerovilla is installed somewhere—but what about when it’s flying?”

  “Well, what about the wireless? Come on, we’ve only got half a minute. Goodbye, and good luck to everyone! Until the Tele, tomorrow!”

  “Good luck to the Villa Beauséjour!”

  Monsieur and Madame des Ormettes were on the ground of the airstrip, Andoche and Moderan on the balcony of the villa, waving their handkerchiefs.

  The Villa Beauséjour trembled in all its limbs, rolled gently over the airstrip and took off, almost without a shock.

  The constructor was worthy of his reputation; the flying villa was as well-balanced in full flight as at its mooring. It gleamed in the sunlight, with its enameled façade and its roof checkered with pink tiles, reminiscent of the roofs of terrestrial buildings.

  On the ground floor there were three windows on each side, a large balcony in front, which extended like a beak with the cockpit at its tip, and a rounded balcony at the back. On the first floor, there were another three windows on each side. Elegance and simplicity.

  The aerovilla described a broad circle above the airstrip and headed south, while Monsieur and Madame des Ormettes went back to their jobs in their flying car.

  III. The Collapse of the Alps, the Rise of Venice,

  and Other Changes.

  The Villa Beauséjour was flying at 500 or 600 meters, at a moderate speeds, in a pale blue sky strewn with little clouds that were heading northwards in more or less compact squadrons, interrupted by long thin trails. The tall buildings of Central Paris were already fading away in the distance, along with the interminable lines of the faubourgs, amid the green patches of parks or the tangles masses of iron, pylons and towers of the industrial districts.

  It made a magnificent landscape—already significantly eroded, unfortunately, by the immense upheaval of the worldwide reconstruction.

  “Settle down, boys,” said Cabrol, who was now in a slightly bad mood, doubtless caused by the change in his domestic habits.

  “But we’re on our way, Uncle!” Andoche and Moderan replied, as one, running from one window to another, to the east or the west.

  And for a quarter of an hour there was: “That’s beautiful, don’t you think? What’s that down there? And that up in the sky? Look, the Loire! What’s that smoke? A volcano? No, the entrance to a Works.”

  “Veer slightly eastwards,” Monsieur Cabrol said to the pilot.

  “Look—Switzerland!”

  “And the sea-baths! Do you recognize them, Moderan? We were there last year, on the beaches of the Jungfrau. That subsidence of the crust last century, which caused the sinking of Switzerland and the invasion of the Adriatic through long corridors, has it finally stopped?”

  “Work has been going on in that sector for 20 years—that’s fortunate, but what work is it!”

  Poor old Venice was not sinking—oh no! Like the movement of a balance, the sinking of the Gulf of Quarnero had been causing it to rise slowly, by eight or ten meters a year, for 50 years, and it had reached an altitude of 460 meters. What a job it was to reclaim and underpin the ground beneath it! How many pillars of reinforced concrete, and cross-pieces had been slid under the pilings of the Doge’s palace!

  Look at those modifications on old map, that chaplet of seaside resorts in competition with the Lido, instead of the ancient lakes, under the ex-Jungfrau, Cervin, Brunig or Simplon.

  Leaving the panorama of transformed Switzerland, with its great sea-ports of Lucerne and Geneva, the Villa Beauséjour, having gained height, now set a course westwards and flew at top speed. To the left, Cabrol pointed out the heavy swirls of vapor, over which flashes of light were passing.

  “The Auvergne!” he said. “The volcanoes have resumed their activity, fortunately regulated by the marvelous endeavors of our engineers, and used for the central heating of hot water for a good part of our ancient continent. The repair-work is quite advanced in that region because it was begun so long ago, when someone had the idea of stiffening the ground with gigantic girders of reinforced concrete—vast checkerboards through which the sea-water, carried in huge conduits descends to be heated by the volcanoes of Puy de Dôme and rises again, boiling, to the central heating factories.

  “From here you can’t see the new, quasi-tropical vegetation that has developed in this region, which has thus become an immense and marvelous hothouse. And the work has been imitated by every country lucky enough to possess torpid old volcanoes, or even active volcanoes, which have thus been rendered inoffensive by controlling their expansions and explosions.”

  “It’s getting a little warm,” said Moderan, going out on to the balcony.

  “Yes, that’s the breath of the Puy,” said Monsieur Cabrol. Look at all that seething, and those jets of steam down there; the natural boilers of the central heating are blowing in our faces, but in a moment we’ll find the good fresh wind of the Atlantic.”

  Monsieur Cabrol spoke to the pilot, an old airman accustomed to voyages, who did not seem to look at anything anymore, indifferent to everything happening down below. With his eyes half-closed and a little pipe in his mouth, the old cloud-dweller drowsed, while following the slight spirals of smoke from his pipe. He was not completely asleep, for he darted the occasional brief glance at his control-panel and his levers.

  “Well, Barlotin?” said Monsieur Cabrol.

  “On course,” Barlotin replied. “South-south-west, altitude 745, headed for Arcachon Airport...”

  “How long?”

  “30 to 35 minutes. Should I increase speed?”

  “No, there’s no hurry. We’ll bed down at the airport.”

  The little pipe, which had never stopped working, projected a large smoke-ring, and the pilot became somnolent again..

  “Not talkative, Père Barlotin,” Andoche murmured, returning to the balcony.

  “A trusty old pilot; your father vouched for him, having often employed him. Père Barlotin, always in the air, hasn’t spent one week a year on the ground for years. He says that he’s no longer used to it, and gets vertigo as soon as he sets foot on a terrestrial floor…he can no longer walk. When, by chance, he’s in Paris, waiting for some big aircraft to fly, he doesn’t leave the 300-meter lighthouse platform of the airstrip…no, he’s not talkative…his little pipe is his only confidant.”

  The afternoon was coming to an end. Already, in the western sky, clouds were running over a broad yellow sheet, and the line of the horizon was sparkling with light mauve bands.

  “The sea!” said Andoche, leaping from one side to the other.

  “The open air has given us an appetite,” said Monsieur Cabrol. “As soon as we’re moored, we’ll eat—then a little walk under the pines, to stretch our legs—then
to bed.”

  Gently, softly, after having described two or three spirals above the long beach and pine-woods framing numerous seaside châteaux, the Villa Beauséjour landed on the blue thistles of a sandy knoll, a dozen paces from the waves that were languidly beating out the song of the evening tide.

  Andoche and Moderan did not wait for the Villa to be secured and anchored to leap to the ground and run off over thistle-free sand into a clump of superb pine trees. They braced themselves, lay down, leapt up with one bound, and began again, jostling one another with joyful exclamations.

  Monsieur Cabrol did not have so much ardor to expend; he got down carefully and walked around the Villa with his arms folded, rubbing his forehead with the tip of his finger.

  “I don’t understand it,” he said to himself. “The Beauséjour’s weight is greater than I thought. Yesterday, with all of us on board, the needle marked 2647 kilos and 125 grams; today we have 2739 kilos and 858 grams. What does the discrepancy signify? I know that I have a tendency to put on weight, but 90 kilos in a day! So what? It’s not important, but I’ll keep an eye on it all the same. I’ll only take half-pills.”

  He went to join his nephews under the pines and sat down beside them to admire the fiery Sun at his leisure. Its rays were reaching out across the sky as if in preparation for the dive into the sparkling waves in the distance.

  “Listen!” said Moderan. “You’d think we could hear Phanor.”

  “That’s true—the voice bears a strong resemblance to poor Phanor’s,” said Monsieur Cabrol, having cocked an ear. “It’s some dog belonging to the castle behind us. Or that little air-caravan that’s poised over the nearby waves, adrift on its anchors.”

  “Poor Phanor looked very sad when he saw our luggage; he understood that we were leaving and weren’t taking him with us.”

  “Poor Phanor—we were wrong to leave him behind, Uncle.”

  “Yes, we were wrong—I regret it now.”

  “Can’t we send for him?”

  “Yes, but not before we’re installed somewhere.”

  “Let’s hurry, then.”

  “Not so fast—ah! Look at Phoebus sinking; we’ll go back for dinner and then, at 9:35 p.m., a word to the family over the Tele; then bed, sleep, and wake up tomorrow at 6 a.m.”

  Monsieur Cabrol got to his feet slowly and effortfully. It was so pleasant under the caresses of that gentle breeze, in the calm of that lovely evening! Oh, how well one felt, far from Paris and the infernal upheaval of the worldwide resurfacing! This part of maritime Aquitaine was scarcely affected, in the direction of Bordeaux.

  The meal on the Beauséjour’s balcony was rapidly concluded. One pill and one synthetic droplet—which is to say, two pills each to swallow, or, if one is something of a gourmand, to allow to melt while slowly drinking a glass of cold water—doesn’t take very long. The three diners chatted, sprawling in sturdy wicker armchairs.

  “Yes, I’m something of a gourmand,” said Monsieur Cabrol.

  “Me too,” said Andoche!

  “So, in our provision of pills and gustatory capsules, I’ve set aside some nice little dishes for Sundays and holidays: roast chicken, ducks Rouen-style, lamb cutlets, roe venison, jugged hare, chitterling sausages and salmon trout; for vegetables: stuffed cabbages, sauté potatoes, peas, snipe pâté etc., to make a change from ordinary boiled beef pills…”

  Andoche and Moderan exchanged smiles of satisfaction..

  “Very pleasant…and very economical, the pills, my lads! Whereas, with chicken consumed with the aid of one’s teeth…do we still need teeth now, except for decoration?”

  Andoche and Moderan smiled, displaying natural teeth in the old style, but not very shiny, while their uncle allowed a glimpse of two rows of admirable teeth, in gold in the upper jaw and silvered enamel in the lower.

  “Nothing better has been found, as yet, to complete a face. Yes, as I was saying, how many people can one nourish with a chicken brutally consumed, in the fashion of our primitive ancestors? Two at the most. Well, the factories, by combining it with a little sea-wrack, essences and various condiments can get 50 pills out of one—which is to say, 50 complete meals. You can see the enormous advantage! How else could we feed the overpopulated Earth, I ask you? Thus Paris wanted to pay the tribute of recognition due from the entire world by erecting a great monument to the four chemists of genius who invented the synthetic pills! A colossal group, in which they are represented in the midst of their retorts, their ovens and their saucepans, receiving the long procession of all the animals useful for nutrition: livestock, game, poultry, fish, etc.—a pure masterpiece! But watch out! It’s 9 p.m. Quickly, go to the Tele, to say goodnight to your exceedingly busy Papa and your dear Mama, if she hasn’t been held up at the Budget Committee.”

  The Telespeaker, a marvelous instrument that truly suppresses absence by wireless, since, with a relay to a regular mast, one can recover on the screen of the apparatus, no matter where, the presence and the voice of dear individuals 1000 kilometers away.

  Monsieur Cabrol’s first concern, on landing, had been to plant a terrestrial antenna in the ground, to link up with the Arcachon mast.

  Art the agreed time, Monsieur and Madame des Ormettes were due to be at the rendezvous in front of their screen in Paris. Scarcely was he on the balcony of the Aero-Beauséjour when Cabrol heard the sound of raised voices in his room.

  “Come on! Your father’s getting impatient. Seeing that no one’s replying to him, he’s switched on the amplifier.”

  Andoche and Moderan were already upstairs, replying to the thunderous summons.

  “Well, well,” said Monsieur des Ormettes. “What were you doing, then?”

  “Admirable sunset! We were admiring it,” said Cabrol.

  “It’s just that I’m in a hurry.”

  “And we were idling before the panorama—but here we are. All going well, first day perfect…”

  “Where’s Mama?” asked Moderan.

  “Not back from the Chamber. Hold on, see for yourself.”

  The screen suddenly sparkled. Monsieur des Ormettes disappeared; then a big green table appeared, laden with papers, around which some 20 people—seven or eight of which were women—were arguing. Madame des Ormettes was there, reading a report. A few words and figures were heard; then the apparatus sparkled again, and Monsieur des Ormettes reappeared.

  “Everything’s going well. Good. Perfect…”

  “We’re setting off tomorrow at 6 a.m.,” said Monsieur Cabrol.

  “Goodnight, then. See you soon, children.”

  The screen went dark.

  “Now, boys, you’ve seen Papa and Mama; it’s time for bed. Sleep well. I’ll stay here—I have a few last things to say to Melanie—a list of important things to remember. For safety’s sake, I’m going to repeat my instructions in written form…”

  IV. Supplementary Voyagers

  Andoche and Moderan were still sleeping profoundly when a rather strong lurch of the Villa Beauséjour caused them to pen their eyelids slightly; the rocking continued for a few seconds, gradually dying away.

  “Hey, we’re off!” said Moderan, yawning and stretching his arms.

  “We’re leaving,” said Andoche. “Quickly—let’s not miss any of the countryside. Then again, I’m very hungry this morning.”

  The two youngsters were dressed in less than five minutes. Monsieur Cabrol, also up, was shaving in his room. “Good morning, good morning!” he said. “But what’s all that barking? Arcachon’s drawing away, but we can still hear it. Am I hearing things?”

  “But it’s still Phanor’s voice,” said Andoche. “And who’s scratching like that?”

  Moderan had already opened the door. A little dog leapt forward, ran around the two boys several times, yapping, and tried to jump into Monsieur Cabrol’s arms. Mouth agape with astonishment, with his cheeks still lathered with soap, he brandished his razor.

  “Down, Phanor, down!” said Monsieur Cabrol. “You’ll make me cut mys
elf. Down! It’s nice to see you, but where have you sprung from?”

  The door opened again. “Good morning, Monsieur. Did you sleep well?”

  This time, Cabrol dropped his razor. “Melanie! Melanie, here! But how?”

  “Well, yes, Monsieur, I’m here. Not being able to bear the idea of staying in the house all alone, far from Monsieur, who might have need of me…and the young gentlemen too…I was going out of my mind with anxiety. So, at the last moment, I stayed in the aero...at the back of the wardrobe in the guest-room…and not all alone, Monsieur.”

  Phanor yapped and bounded around Melanie. “Yes, yes, not all alone…yes, yes, Phanor!”

  Melanie, who was clutching a sort of basket-suitcase against her chest, opened her arms. Miaowing was coming from the basket and the head of a large white cat emerged from a blanket, along with two lazily-extended paws,

  “Babylas too!” exclaimed Monsieur Cabrol. “The whole household, then?”

  “Phanor and Babylas would have died of boredom away from Monsieur…”

  “What about my collections?”

  “I’ve warned the insurance company! After all, it’s Monsieur who must be looked after rather than the knick-knacks, old debris of wood or stone that can’t fall ill, or get any worse than they are. So, my duty…”

  “We’re at an altitude of 7000 or 8000 meters, Melanie; I don’t want to send you back…”

  “Monsieur wouldn’t do that…”

  “No. You tyrannize me in the house, so you might as well continue here. Come on, Phanor, down! You, Babylas, come sit on my knees.”

  The cat, undulating the white arch of his back, leapt on to his master’s knees, curled up into a ball and closed his eyes, purring, without paying any apparent heed to Phanor’s barking. The latter came to sink his muzzle into the cat’s soft fur.

  “It’s all right—install yourself upstairs, in the room, not the wardrobe. But what about your luggage? I expect that the works will be rather well-advanced before Paris becomes habitable again, you know. We’ll be staying here as long as necessary, perhaps eight or ten years.”