“Oh, my love! The joy that I asked of you—to go up with you in an airplane…you’re finally going to grant it to me?”
“Yes, I offer it to my wife.”
He leaned over her, tenderly, and said, in a low voice: “We’ll be the first to make the fight of love that seemed to be reserved for the gods.”
“Are you not mine?”
Their gazes married, as did their trembling hands, and it was a being entirely and passionately his that he bore away by car to the aerodrome, for the departure on the honeymoon flight, into the sky, toward a further azure, toward the Sun.
XVIII. An Applause of Wings
It was in an enchantment of tender sunlight that that they arrived in Villacoublay. The immense plain was bathed in soft, caressing light, which settled on the smallest shrubs in the hedges, and the yellowing leaves trembling on the slender branches of the poplars.
Their route took them past airfields on the edges of grey expanses, and low hangars displaying the names of constructors. That day, at about three o’clock, cyclists, pedestrians and automobilists, brought out by the weather, had flocked in crowds to the aerodrome.
Many of them had come because they had seen elegant limousines passing by, in which women were furtively adjusting their colored scarves in haloes of dust. Those who did not know the reason for this influx of Parisians followed them regardless, in the hope of witnessing some sensational feat.
Rozal and Nelly got out of their automobile in the midst of a crowd of friends, which grew into an army of sympathetic curiosity-seekers.
“Is all this for us?” the young woman asked.
“You see, my dear,” Rizal relied, “how successful the celebrations have been! The sun, having sulked all summer, has been smiling for three weeks on our engagement, brightening the sky into which we are about to set forth—and doesn’t it seem to you that all these people approve of us, and love us?”
Nelly suddenly clapped her hands.
“Oh, what birds? How many are there? I’ve never seen so many!”
Indeed, behind Rozal’s curious monoplane, as white as Lohengrin’s swan,25 which his friends had decorated with flowers, a multitude of machines was lined up.
The engineer asked why that host of airplanes was there; it was Turner who gave him the explanation.
“When I told the comrades that you had decided to depart on your honeymoon by way of the air, it generated indescribable enthusiasm everywhere. They all wanted to testify to their sympathy and accompany you for a few leagues.
Henri Rozal shook his friend’s hand emotionally. “Tell them how touched I am! Oh, the brave lads! That, you see, is what gives pleasure...”
“Yes, they love you, because they know what efforts you have put into the perfection of an extraordinary engine. If you had any suspicion of the hopes founded in you, especially now that you have the means of its realization, and of everything that’s expected of your genius...”
A cloud passed over the engineer’s face. Had he not let his labor lie dormant recently? While others, anxious and brave but nevertheless conscious of the instability of the engines by means of which they climbed into the clouds, were risking their lives every day, while awaiting the definitive invention, he had abandoned himself to his love, his selfish joy.
Nelly, his lovely wife, pointed at slender silhouettes in the sky, crying: “Oh, Henri! Look at those, coming to bring us their good wishes!”
They were airplanes coming from far away, from Reims, Chartres, Amiens—everywhere. Their pilots wanted to join this celebration in honor of one of them, who had triumphed—even more so than Jason—in the quest for the Golden Fleece, while awaiting that of the Ocean. One of theirs, a friend, had achieved a happiness that seemed reserved for a man of a situation less elevated than theirs, and they felt flattered, experiencing a veritable pride in the marriage. Having decorated their aircraft with flowers, leaves and branches—as Verlaine’s ballad26 puts it—they had come in haste.
In the north, the south, the east and the west, great birds of canvas were appearing, monstrous arrows in the motionless sky. Rapidly, wings extended, they were arriving over the aerodrome, amid the roar of their powerful engines, and suddenly swooping down like hawks in a terrible, heartrending fall, as if heading for catastrophe. A few meters from the ground, however, they righted themselves smoothly and flew horizontally, skimming the ground, to land with the grace of a seagull at the precise spot that they had chosen from above.
Some, on a whim, or on win admiration for the precision of their mastery—unless they were overexcited—descended in spirals on one wing, as if on an invisible pivot, drawing cries of anguish from the spectators. Pégoud performed vertiginous loops above the two spouses, and from time to time let roses fall upon them from his free hands.27
Here and there, on the field, men in white sweaters accompanied by young women swathed in sable went from one apparatus to the next, where they met up with comrades. In the magnificent décor, illuminated by the ruddy autumn sun, it was a moving and unique spectacle.
Nelly leaned toward her husband. “My love…I’d like so much to thank you for the incomparable joys I’m savoring with you.”
He looked at her tenderly, and pointed at the beautiful, cloudless blue sky, so blue and so high. “Do you want to go?” he said. “You’re not afraid?”
“Oh, my darling…with you?”
He put his arms around her tenderly and helped her up into the elegant artificial bird that his assistants had got ready.
“How lovely it is!” she exclaimed. “All white!”
She embraced her aunt, Mrs. Flower, who was weeping. Nasenberg, joyous and smiling, was watching the departure. Turner and Rozal hugged.
“Au revoir, old chap!”
“Au revoir! But I’m accompanying you as far as Dijon.”
And Turner went, very rapidly, to alert his friends and prepare his apparatus.
The robust propeller with the incurved blades, broad at the base, whirled at top speed—and Rozal’s monoplane, maintained by his assistants, vibrated, as if it were impatient to take off.
Soon, the aviator made a hand signal; the men scattered simultaneously. Then, with a sudden release, like the loosing of an arrow, the bird set off, rose a few meters above the ground, and then, carrying the married couple, headed for the blue vault, shooting through the calm atmosphere.
Immediately, from all around, an immense buzz rose into the air; it was the engineers of the flower-decked aircraft assembled there. It was like a beehive. And while the pretty nuptial monoplane with the whiter wings continued to climb into the sky, the flotilla prepared to depart. In less than a minute, ten airplanes abruptly took off, then ten more, and then another ten.
They were soon a cloud, like a colony of migratory birds, which seemed to be quitting the cold climes to fly far away, to lands of golden fruit, vermilion oranges—or, as the song says, where the breeze is softer and the bird lighter.28
From one second to the next, they became visibly smaller. Soon, as the south-eastern horizon darkened, in opposition to the enflamed west, the aerial armada was nothing more, against a grey background, than a long file of black dots, zigzagging like the tail of a kite—or, rather, a curious procession of seabirds flying, motionlessly, with necks extended and wings rigid, in the grip of the wind...
Part Two:
IN LOVE, IN LOVE
I. The Delights of Paradise
“Why are you sad, my darling?”
“I’m not sad.”
“Yes you are. People in love are never mistaken, when they read their lovers’ eyes. And I’m very much in love.”
“Then what you read in mine must give you pleasure, for I love you madly. I can’t think of anything but you.”
“That’s all you’re thinking about?”
“Jealous?”
“Oh, no—but anxious. From time to time, I look at you. Sometimes, when you seem to be avoiding my affection, it seems to me that you’re worried abou
t something.”
“Only one thing—making you even happier.”
“You’ve given me happiness. No, my darling, don’t try to deceive me with your flattery, your caressing words, those words that retain the warmth of your lips and pose themselves upon me like kisses. No, I don’t want you to intoxicate me with love, you great coward, when I talk to you seriously.”
“When women talk seriously, they cause trouble for men.”
“Brute! If I’m anxious when I glimpse a cloud in your expression, it’s because I only want you to have one sole preoccupation. I want to be party to your thoughts, to all your thoughts. I have the right.”
“You know everything about me.”
“Not yet…not yet!”
They were chatting in this fashion—on January 10, 1914—after dinner, on the terrace of the splendid Villa des Aigles, where they had been living for two months since their arrival on the Côte d’Azur.
Henri Rozal had not exaggerated when he had said to his young wife that he would deposit her in a nest of flowers, in an apotheosis of light and beauty. The next was situated above Turbie, on the upper slope of the mountain overlooking the sunlit road between Monaco and Villefranche. Below them, they had the Cap d’Ail; above them, the broad plateau of the Tête-de-Chien extended. The villa was some way from the road; access to it was gained by a rather narrow path—sufficient, even so, for an automobile—that snaked between giant cacti, aloes and laurier-roses, terminating in a broad curve in front of the terrace, from which a double staircase in white marble led up to the ground floor of the house.
The property was a marvel. With its two stories in immaculate stone, constructed in the Italian manner, the Villa des Aigles had an air of elegance and splendor, heightened by the magnificence of the artistry of nature. The entire hill, in shades of gray—but soft, calm and tender grays, warm in places—disappeared beneath centuries-old olive-trees with bizarrely twisted trunks. At intervals, in that ashen sea, greens of a prodigious intensity burst forth; that was the foliage of great carob-trees.
Other villas, entirely white, displayed their dazzling facades some distance away, in harmony with the luxuriant vegetation, to which the sun imparted golden sequins. And sometimes, in holes whose edges were dry stone walls, there were fields of violets and jasmines, or, pouring over the hill to terminate in a curtain of eucalyptus, another square field, like an extended carpet of living flowers, planted with anemones and rose-bushes.
Dreamily, Henri Rozal and Nelly gazed out, still wonderstruck, over that enchanted landscape. They had the sea before them, so blue and calm, with emerald gleams, in which silvery sparkles made capricious wrinkles. In the distance, a motionless fishing-boat with its triangular sail, was reminiscent of a giant flower set in an immense rare stone. To their right, continuing the bristling line of the coastal reefs, to which porphyry rocks added their tragic note, the three little coves of the Baie de Beaulieu designed their gracious curves. Further on, they could see the near-isle of Cap Ferrat, above fields planted with orange-trees. To their left, a strange mass, a sort of somber thick-set monster, overlooked an architecture of another era, the evocation of an ancient legend: Monaco.
Nelly’s eyes now fixed themselves on a pointed rock, almost disappearing under a mass of cactus on the edge of the sea at Eze. The American woman seemed to be absorbed by an intense meditation, for her forehead was sometime furrowed, while her hand clenched around a mimosa branch, swayed by a nervous gesture.
Suddenly, she said: “Is it Turner’s arrival that’s worrying you?”
Rozal looked at his wife, then made a decision. “Yes, it’s because he’ll be here is a little while that you find me slightly changed. I’m neither annoyed not anxious, but I’m a little ashamed.”
“Of what, my dear? Of our love? Of our having isolated ourselves, for an entire month, in the happiness of being in love.”
“No, Nelly, I don’t blush at our passion; I’m merely chagrined at not having done anything.”
“You’ve given me an infinite happiness; you’ve revealed paradise to me.”
“I’ve also abandoned my dream, as well as my work.”
She leapt to her feet. “You regret the hours of our enchantment, within that enchantment?”
He got up took and took her in his arms. “Oh, Nelly mine! Naughty Nelly! Can you pronounce such words? Don’t you understand that, if I want to work, to become great, it’s to offer you, like a unique and precious bouquet worthy of you, the fruit of my dream, my research, my audacity? And if I regret my inaction, it’s because the flowers of that heroic bouquet are still scattered, and because I should already have brought them together and laid them at your feet!”
She shook her pretty blonde head. “You talk too much; I like your kisses better. You should not have had any thought other than that of your wife during this unforgettable month. I’m jealous of your science, the desire that always grips you to risk your life by flying over the Atlantic, when your life belongs to me. There’s too much of your soul, your heart, your brain that does not belong to the one who possesses you. A part of you escapes me. When one loves as I love, one is jealous of everything. The butterfly that passes by, to which you raise your eyes because it’s pretty, horrifies me now; it has stolen one of your glances from me.
“Lovely child…lovely!”
“Yes, your little scamp.” She stamped her foot, insubordinately, and said: “I’m a terribly selfish child. I want you all to myself, you hear? You’re my Henri, my darling…my Henri, mine…my husband, my lover, my man, my adored husband!”
He took her in his arms tenderly, kissed her golden curls close to her white neck. Not without a hint of melancholy, he thought: I’m hers, since she has bought me...
She raised her large eyes toward him, however, enigmatically shadowed. “Don’t you want me to?”
“To what?”
“To love you too much?”
The large eyes of the delightful tyrant were smiling, saying things…libertine things. Her lips, so red, seemed to be begging…for what? And her throat rose up, amid fine lace, in the sensual emotion of an unappeased heart. Rozal was gripped, once again, by the captivating charm that emanated from his wife—an inebriating flower among all the flowers that surrounded them. And as the air was impregnated by the essences of the hill, where the violets, roses, tuberoses and jasmines were marrying their sweet or enervating scents, he felt suddenly intoxicated, and felt a frisson.
“I love you, I love you!” he murmured. “I only want to live for you.”
But a buzzing in the sky made the engineer raise his head. She sensed, brutally, that he was escaping from her. A monoplane, flying very low, passed rapidly by, shaving the tops of the pines that raised their rounded heads on the crest of the hill. He had shivered, and she had seen him go pale.
“I see,” she sighed, “that I don’t have you entirely…”
And a genuine sadness veiled her eyes, where the shadows darkened—and her lips formed a moue of disenchantment.
“Nelly!” he begged. “My Nelly!”
She stepped back.
“What has Georges Turner come here to do?”
“You know very well that he’s organizing a hydroplane race in Monte Carlo for next month. And as we’re close by, and he loves us...”
“I don’t want him to take you away from me.”
“Silly!”
“You’ll fly with him, when the machines have arrived?”
“Yes, of course, my darling. I’m counting on taking you for an excursion over the sea. You’ll see how beautiful the Îles de Lérins are, seen from the clouds.”
She put her hand together. “No, no! I’m begging you, Henri! If you love me, never again, you hear? You’ll never go up in an airplane again!”
He looked at her in amazement, and read in her eyes a terrible dread. Then he knew the first great dolor of his life. He stammered: “What, Nelly? You want to demand that of me?”
“I’m not demanding anythi
ng. I’m begging you to spare me. I love you too much…more than I thought, before our marriage. I love you to the point of selfishly being afraid, to the point of not being able to bear the thought that you might still escape into the sky while I remain earthbound...”
“But I want to take you with me—I told you that. And if there’s any danger...”
“I don’t want to die, even with you. I haven’t had all the happiness, all the kisses…I don’t want to die, even with you.”
He understood that nothing could vanquish her amorous obstinacy, and he lowered his head. With difficulty, he tried to prevent his eyes from misting over.
She murmured: “I’ll give you every joy, every caress, so that you won’t have any regrets.”
“No, Nelly, for you’re worth more than all the sacrifices I can make on your behalf. But I’m ashamed to admit to Turner that, since our marriage, I haven’t attempted anything toward the solution of the problem from which you distracted me.”
“I don’t want you do you any injustice. Yes, I consent to your going back to work, to your becoming an inventor of genius—but you’ll realize your conceptions by means of pilots. Above all, My Henri, don’t regret the days and nights that we’ve spent here...”
“Then we can return to Paris soon?” he said, joyfully. “I can increase the size of the factory, buy new machines? I can resume my work, with weapons so powerful that victory will be certain?”
“Yes—but let’s not leave yet, my beloved! Let’ stay here a little longer. Let’s spend days that will be further days of passion…don’t we have our entire lives in front of us.” With a vague gesture, she indicated the splendid décor that surrounded them. “All these beauties have seen our love blossom. That hill of ash and gold, that blue see, that resplendent sky, those fields of dazzling flowers, this embalmed atmosphere, this white house, the warm nest where our intimacy was born…I don’t want to leave them yet! Henri, my adored husband, my lover! Let’s not be ungrateful. Here, for an entire month, we’ve forgotten the world: let’s not go yet!”
The Human Arrow Page 13