Chalet in the Sky

by Albert Robida

  “My luggage is here.”

  “I get it! All those packages I didn’t recognize, scattered through all the wardrobes…”

  Melanie smiled.

  She was a slightly plump woman, a strong woman, physically and mentally. Her calm eye and the tranquil assurance of her full face clearly showed that no doubt ever crossed her mind regarding the excellence of her intentions and the legitimacy of her decisions.

  Monsieur Cabrol had already made his decision. Leaving Melanie to get on with her unpacking, he took his nephews on to the forward balcony. They all savored their morning pills, an extract of chocolate and banana, and were able to concentrate all their attention on the route.

  “Well, Barlotin,” said Monsieur Cabrol. “A fine day in prospect, eh? Beautiful sunrise…we need to cover a lot of ground in order to get to the truly interesting part of the trajectory tomorrow.”

  The pilot opened an eye; he had already raised his little pipe to his mouth, and released a few spirals of smoke before putting it back in. “I know the route well, Monsieur,” he said. “Going smoothly, without any inconvenience, we’ll be half way between Dakar and Panama this evening. I know the exact itinerary you’ve given me, with changes of course at the marked points. Besides, they’re the usual points of diversion on the Dakar-South America line.”

  “Are we working this morning?” Monsieur Cabrol asked his nephews.

  “Oh, Uncle, let us off again today—we’ll start tomorrow.”

  “All right—me too, then.”

  Andoche and Moderan installed themselves beside the pilot, pretending to take a lesson in navigation. To be ready for any eventuality, a young man of today must know how to maneuver any wheeled or flying vehicle—which is, in any case, very simple—on land or in the air, be it a small aircraft, a hydroplane, an autoplane or any other. They did not yet have their qualifications, but expected to take the tests within a matter of months.

  Nothing more was heard within the cockpit, save for the words stabilizer, tube, lever, radioetherogoniometer, radioloxodromogoniometer…

  Monsieur Cabrol, who was striding back and forth, suddenly announced, in the tone of a steward on a great airship: “Toledo dead ahead! Aleazar! Puente d’Aleantara! Puente San Martino…”

  Andoche and Moderan leaned over the balcony, binoculars in hand.

  “Look out! Don’t fall on to the bridges of Toledo from this height—you’ll break them. At their age, they can no longer be very solid. Pilot, spiral around for a better view.”

  In the Sierras, the great restoration had begun; they were old, those mountains; their crumbling carcass, baked and worn, stood out on high like a long skeleton with blanched sides, lying on a bald terrain. The Villa Beauséjour flew over it, accelerating its speed, attracted by a brilliant dot that the pilot had pointed out, on the side of another sierra, this one snowy.

  “Grenada! The Alhambra!”

  Andoche and Moderan leaned over again.

  “What’s that shining?”

  “The pilot told you—the Alhambra.”

  “But it’s made of glass!” Moderan exclaimed, after a brief pause.

  “A glass case, in fact, to preserve the old Alhambra from any accident and prolong its old age. The Alhambra attracts a lot of visitors—you can see the dirigibles of every sort circling above it—and those visitors aren’t always very careful. They drop litter and bottles, and even erode bits of the architecture as they move around. Then there are indelicate tourists who descend on to the patios by night to carry off little souvenirs—sculptures, pottery or whatever. With a thick glass cover in a strong steel framework, these dangers are averted.”

  The Aero-Villa Beauséjour continued on its way, gaining altitude. The Alhambra was now sparkling in the distance behind them, becoming confused with the snows of the Sierra Nevada.

  Ahead, at the extreme tip of Spain, well above the Rock of Gibraltar, so famous in the distant past, which had collapsed in a war, the work of world repair consisted of the enlargement of the great maritime canal of Cadiz, excavated a few centuries before to double the ancient strait. A broad white zigzag line cut across the peninsula, extending from Cadiz to the Atlantic.

  “We’ve made good progress with the wind,” said Monsieur Cabrol. “In fine weather, it won’t cause us any inconvenience, the Sun of that Africa you can see down there, yellow and ink, to our left. We’ll get to the landing-ground early.”

  There was nothing more to see but blue; they were able to have lunch in the dining room listening to the phonogazettes on the Tele—nothing interesting, just news of major reconstruction projects, complaints coming from every direction about the inconvenience and unprecedented hindrance to life and business.

  Then there was a siesta in the comfortable armchairs, a few hours of good rest.

  “A little concert?” Moderan suggested.

  “No, a little theater. What? Nothing sad, or…or…”

  “All right! I’ll choose,” said Monsieur Cabrol.

  A troop of clowns appeared on the screen of the Tele, capering hilariously, jumping over one another and doing tricks.

  Melanie had run to see the circus. Phanor almost leap on to the Tele, barking at the clowns and the clever animals—donkeys of remarkable intelligence and geese that followed them. Slightly alarmed by the drumming, Babylas took fright and came to wind herself round, without wanting to watch what was happening on the Tele, simply accompanying the actors and the music who a purr of disdainful well-being.

  After half an hour, Andoche and Moderan being drowsy, Monsieur Cabrol switched off the Tele and picked up his notebook in order to jot down a few ideas that had occurred to him, with regard to the lunatic civilizations.

  The ringing of a little bell awoke all three of them. The pilot was signaling something.

  “Good!” said Monsieur Cabrol, looking at the clock. “We must be getting close.”

  “The Caucasian Archipelago in view, Monsieur!” the pilot shouted into the telephone.

  “There! There! Get up, boys—we’re arriving…”

  “Already!” said Andoche and Moderan, yawning. “It was so comfortable!”

  “Well, you mustn’t miss anything. The Caucasus is new to you—I’ve already visited it myself.”

  The Caucasus in mid-Atlantic? Yes, the Caucasus, or very nearly. The Caucasus was the archipelago constructed 100 years before, mid-way between Dakar and Panama, when the great work of the amelioration of the Caucasus began.

  The Caucasus was then a country encumbered by its mountains, a confused network of narrow gorges between formidable rocky peaks, which considerably hindered communications between Europe and southern Asia. Tunnels had been bored through the blocks, but it was costly and dangerous; inundations of oil and collapses of rock as trains passed through rendered the exploitations of the tunnels precarious. A speculator of genius had had a good idea: all these pebbles are inconvenient; let’s remove them, clearing the Caucasus, and exploit them as an inexhaustible quarry of concrete.

  The work began. The inconvenient peaks were attacked with drills and electric crushing mills, transformed into concrete and pebble pudding or preserved in enormous blocks, which were loaded on to ships and taken away, not over short distances but via the canals of the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmora, the regularized Mediterranean and Gibraltar, into the open Atlantic, over the shallow depths of the Sargasso Sea. The double operation was a success. A practicable Caucasus was left behind, and the Caucasian Archipelago emerged from the waves.

  Here the constructors had paid attention to the picturesque, and the structure of the islands and been carefully designed and carefully contrived, with a view to making something fine out of the isles, which were surrendered to engineers, foresters and landscapers as soon as they were constructed.

  The result had been marvelous: jagged coastlines, bristling with beautiful rocks and cliffs, punctuated by promontories, fringed with white surf, with beaches of fine sand beneath admirable woodlands—a mixed African and
European flora of palms, umbrella pines, oaks and olive-trees—springs tumbling down to the sea in cascades or majestic falls; rivers descending in cataracts from a great lake-reservoir accommodate at the highest point of each island…in brief, everything necessary to make the islands a pleasant holiday-resort and air-cure, frequented by the aristocracy of six continents.

  The archipelago, in the middle of the ocean, beneath an ardent Sun but refreshed by the currents of the returning gulf stream and the breezes and gusty sea-winds, enjoyed a delightful climate.

  There was no governor or administrator. The promoter of the enterprise, the owner of more than half the shares, governed his archipelago himself, to the satisfaction of all, for a full third of a century, and founded a prosperous dynasty. There was, therefore, a completely happy people somewhere. The sedentary population, living in the towns and villages disseminated through the paradise, was not very numerous; the first arrivals had been carefully selected in their countries of origin, physically and morally; they offered every guarantee as laborers in fields and towns, tradesmen, intellectuals or magistrates: all people in good order, protected against any intrusion from outside by a civil guard.

  As soon as the aero-villa had touched down in a charming cove, superbly shaded, Monsieur Cabrol and his nephews leapt down on to the sand.

  “To the woods over there, above the rocks, quickly!” cried Andoche. “From there well be able to see the entire layout of the coast.”

  “Not yet,” said Monsieur Cabrol. “First, the medical customs—we have to pass the admission exam. If we’re admitted, the certificate will enable us to go anywhere we want in the archipelago.”

  “Where are they, these customs?”

  “That building up there, under the big trees,” the pilot replied. “I know—I’ve been here before.”

  “Good,” said Andoche, launching himself into the climb.

  “Would you like to wait for us?” shouted Monsieur Cabrol. “And Melanie, whom we’ve forgotten. She must come too. Melanie! Melanie!”

  “Do we need to bring Phanor and Babylas too?”

  “Don’t joke—these rigorous measures have preserved the archipelago from many diseases, preventing the spread of epidemics.”

  Melanie came running, anxiously. Following the pilot, all the tenants of the Aero-Beauséjour set off along the path, with was pretty but a trifle primitive. The youngsters soon went on ahead, but Melanie, a little out of breath, called: “Gently! Gently!”

  It took ten full minutes to arrive at the top, in front of the medical customs, which overlooked a truly splendid horizon.

  “Quickly! Quickly!” said Monsieur Cabrol, tearing his nephews from their contemplation in order to go into the office. “The examination, quickly! Provided that the doctor’s here. And silence! No protests, so as not to waste time—let’s do as we’re told.”

  The doctor was there. The examination did not take long, save for the housekeeper, whose excessive breathlessness required a more rigorous auscultation. In half an hour, though, they were all issued with permits.

  Andoche, disdaining the beaten paths, bounded joyfully through the countryside, but they soon caught him up, standing in the greenery in front of a clump of unfamiliar trees.

  “Isn’t all this beautiful!” he exclaimed. “The ground, the rocks, the trees…and what trees!”

  “They’re banyan fig-trees, crouched on their sheaves of roots. They’re still young—come back and look at them in 50 years.”

  “I couldn’t ask for anything better! And those, extremely tangled?”

  “Baobabs! And those candle-cacti, grouped in candelabras five meters high…and those agaves, spiny all over. Don’t get impaled on those spikes! That’s what we’re exchanging for unhealthy plane-trees, eaten away by all the chemical exhalations of our factories and industrial vehicles, and the wave-currents of every sort that intersect in our poor atmosphere! Let’s breathe, breathe deeply of this unpolluted air.”

  “I like this place!” exclaimed Moderan.

  “Me too!”

  “A trifle steep for my legs,” said Melanie. “Personally, I’m going back to the villa. I’ll look at it from down below.”

  “Above all, Melanie,” said Monsieur Cabrol, “don’t touch anything—we’re not yet anchored. Don’t go into the cockpit; imagine what would happen if you touched some item of apparatus inadvertently—you might take off with the Villa.”

  “No danger, Monsieur,” said the pilot. “Before leaving, I switched off the intra-atomic energy; the motor won’t budge. Besides, I’ll go back down with Melanie. I know the country—and I’ve forgotten my pipe.”

  “Good! That reassures me. We can continue—we’ll return to the house later.”

  The three voyagers resumed their march, in order to clamber through the arborescent ferns and the bushy clumps of cotton-trees toward a summit neatly divided by a rocky promontory, the base of which was beaten by the sea-waves.

  They passed beneath cedars brought from the Caucasus or Lebanon and 120-meter-tall sequoias originating from the Congo; they filed between the roots of Hindu banyans beside such beautifully-constructed banks, through a landscape so admirably composed.

  “I’m enchanted by the walk and furious at the same time,” said the uncle.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Look…you find this country superbly splendid, don’t you? Superior in its construction. Well, elsewhere, here, well-hidden in the depths so as not to jar with the landscape, there’s a triangulation-point that is a descent into the lower reaches for both surveillance and for internal maintenance work. Let’s go this way…look, you can see the tips of reinforced concrete girders sticking out in that ravine, and higher up, in those black holes, one can glimpse the carcass, the skeleton of the giant cliffs and the whole of that superb promontory topped with greenery.”

  Andoche and Moderan scrambled down to the bottom of the ravine, through a tangle of brushwood.

  “Watch out for wild animals!” Monsieur Cabrol shouted after them. “The Caucasian Archipelago has no dangerous animals; they only imported those recommended as quite safe—but after all, one never knows.”

  Down below, Monsieur Cabrol found the disappointed youngsters sitting on a heap of stones in front of the triangulation-post: a little rotunda sheltering the head of a stairway, closed by a grille.

  “Nothing, of course! With the door closed, you can only see a black well—but when your eyes get used to the darkness, and you can vaguely make out the enormous pillars of reinforced concrete that support the entire cape. Oh, it’s very cleverly planned—perfect work.”

  Still preceded by his nephews, Monsieur Cabrol climbed back up, talking all the while.

  “Yes, perfect. The Caucasian Archipelago has lived up to all the promises of the enterprise, realized all its plans. It’s incredible—all that vegetation in half a century—for the gross work, the rocky carcass, required an enormous time for its completion.”

  The enthusiasm of his nephews gripped him as soon as they arrived at the ridge, along which they moved over a sufficiently comfortable carpet of grass, in the shadow of a cedar, confronted by the immense panorama stretching away in a blue-tinted semi-circle.

  “Magnificent! Look at those green inlets down there, those indentations carved in the rock, which seem to be supporting the massive towers attached to the mountain-side and pockmarked with caves. Oh, very successful, very successful. Do you see those islets out to sea? Proud and luxuriant landscapes to the right and the left, everywhere! And those villages down there, that little harbor directly below us, those large villas strung out along the beaches, with a host of aeros of every sort floating above them—aircraft or aerocottages—and those flying over the open sea, taking a gentle stroll or fishing for fun.”

  “Very chic!” said Andoche. “Super-chic!”

  “Delightful! Utterly delightful!” Moderan corrected him.

  “Yes, super-chic and delightful!” declared Monsieur Cabrol. “I’m delighted, a
rch-delighted, and quite furious at the same time.”

  “Furious? Why, uncle?”

  “It’s a marvelously successful work of art, this archipelago in mid-Atlantic, this magnificent continental morsel added to a revised and corrected creation, a land of pleasure and the ideal, planned, fabricated and shaped to serve as the sumptuous frame for a dream-like existence, but…”

  “But what, Uncle? What can you find to say against these marvels?”

  “Nothing at all, since you see me plunged in admiration of them…but I’m furious…wait, furious with myself! This was an industrial enterprise, to begin with, this very successful Caucasian Archipelago, a great enterprise mounted by means of shares. Well, I inherited a dozen shares from my great-uncle. In my youthful inexperience, I didn’t foresee the immense future of the business, and I sold those shares on the stock exchange one day, at a small profit, instead of waiting for the era of fabulous dividends! Look, let’s not think about it anymore, and walk on.”

  “What about lunch, Uncle?”

  “Yes, that’s an idea—we’ve already walked a long way. What do you say to a little picnic?”

  “Right away!”

  “Not so fast. Let’s go down to the beach; we’ll be better able to breathe in the sea breeze and the foam of the waves.”

  Immediately below them there was a little round cove bordered with coconut palms. Our three hikers were soon installed beneath a coconut palm, their heads in the shade, in a warm atmosphere refreshed by the breeze and the regular beating of the waves, which sent fine droplets of water scented by algae into their faces.

  “I’m a man who takes precautions,” said Monsieur Cabrol, taking a little box from his pocket. “Before leaving the villa, I loaded myself up with victuals. Here’s a pill for each of us, of which you’ll give me your impressions. Lobster salad with pineapple—entirely appropriate for a maritime feast. We’ll wash it down with a pill of wine from the Canaries. That’s not all, of course—a third pill of fine Mocha!”