The Conqueror of Death, page 10
“In a submarine boat!” you’ll say, with your severe little pout. “What an idea! But how was my little Jeannette, who is such a coward, able to do that?”
I am a coward, of course; in fact, that’s why I preferred Le Désiré—that’s the name of my fish-boat—to the ordinary ferry-boat that stupidly provides the service on the service. I was horribly afraid of sea-sickness. And on that day, the sea was choppy, swarming with white sheep. Now, I’d heard it said that submarine boats didn’t roll or pitch, the agitation of the wav sot extending below a certain depth. That was tempting I can assure you, and in my place, Madame Grumpy, you’d have been seduced just like that little hothead Jeannette, for, if I’m not mistaken, you haven’t been vaccinated against sea-sickness any more than I have.
Then again, it was funny to do what no one had done before and improvise the role of naiad. Indeed, at the end of the jetty one could read, in large letters, on a calico strip, the following notice: “Today, at noon precisely, the submarine boat Le Désiré, commanded by the inventor Claudius Bouget in person, will depart for Dover.”
My decision was made. Following the example of Griboule, whose story amused us so much at school, for fear of the sea I went across the sea beneath the surface. It’s the sea that would be taken by surprise. Oh yes!
What wasn’t easy, of course, was to convince Papa. You know Papa, you know how stubborn he is. But this time, his stubbornness was complicated by a peculiar repugnance. He didn’t believe in submarine navigation. When he was a naval construction engineer he had, it seems, been given the job of making a report on a submarine boat, which he had condemned “for mathematical reasons,” as he put it, without even having consented to go down in it.
“But Papa,” I asked him, “how did you know that the boat was worthless, since you hadn’t tried it out?”
“What! What about algebra? And geometry? And physics? The sacred formulae. Remember what I told you: submarine navigation can only ever be a utopia or a paradox, a dream or a hoax.”
“But Papa, people said the same about the phonograph. You told me a story yourself about a member of the Institut, a very learned scientist, who began by thumbing his nose at the man who presented the phonograph, on the fallacious pretext that he was a ventriloquist.”
“But it’s not the same thing.” Hmm! Hmm! How tiresome they are these fin-de-siècle girls! “It’s not the same. First of all, the phonograph wasn’t invented by a Frenchman. He was some sort of Bohemian, a pillar of the brasseries, by the name of Charles Cros, I believe...”
“The author of Le Coffret de santal?”17
“Exactly. You see! A poet who had invented the phonograph! All right for the monologues, but the phonograph! Such machines, besides, could only be invented by Americans. You can’t understand, my dear Jeanne, but listen to your father and believe me, for a French invention to be any good it needs to have gone via America, Is it Edison who’s built it, this submarine boat? No, it isn’t, is it? Well, they’re trying to put one over us. Besides which, a phonograph doesn’t take passengers and it doesn’t travel underwater.”
“No doubt, Father—but Le Désiré does travel underwater. Have you read the Figaro?”
“Get away! Journalists’ stories! I know those soap-boxes, It only works in the novels of Jules Verne. We naval engineers can’t be made to swallow sea serpents of that size. A fish-boat! Ha ha—that’s a joke. A fish, yes, but a drunken fish, a blind fish. Don’t you know that three meters under the water you can’t see a thing? It couldn’t steer, your fish-boat. It would break its nose on the slightest obstacle.”
“Even so, Papa, it’s going to go. Read that notice. It’s even taking passengers, who won’t suffer from sea-sickness!”
“Yes, I’ve seen it. I don’t understand why it hasn’t been forbidden. Oh, if I were the government...”
Papa wants everything that annoys him forbidden, along with everything that disturbs his habits and everything that he doesn’t understand.
In spite of everything, what a woman wants, God wills. You put the proverb into application with your husband; for want of anything better and until further instructions, I only apply it to Papa.
By dint of coaxing, I ended up, not without difficulty, in getting his consent—but I ought to add, to be frank, that he was utterly convinced that Le Désiré wouldn’t be going anywhere. Perhaps he doubted its existence. He’d never have given in otherwise.
Le Désiré does exist, however—I can vouch for that. It has a very strange appearance, though. Imagine a monster of the apocalypse in the form of a flattened cigar, almost as long as your drawing room in Kermorvan—Papa says that’s about fifteen meters—and about as large in the middle as the sidewalk in the Rue Auber, with a pointed muzzle, a shiny copper tail, ludicrous fins and large crystal portholes reminiscent of living eyes. On the top, about a meter fifty above the crests of the waves, there was a light canvas walkway supported by collapsible metal colonnettes, like telescope tubes, which reminded me of the elephants’ palanquins in the Jardin d’Acclimatation. When the sea is calm and Le Désiré is sailing on the surface, the passengers can go up on that balcony, but when the sea becomes heavy and there’s a danger of spray, the walkway is retracted, the hatches are hermetically battened down—see, I’m already talking like a sailor!—and the boat dives. You can’t imagine how amusing it is!
As you can imagine, there was an enormous crowd to watch us leave. They clapped loudly as we went by.
“There’s a little blonde who hasn’t got cold feet! Bravo, bravo, little lady!”
It was almost in my ear that a tall young man dressed as a sailor, with a clue collar and a waxed cap, shouted that at me, as I was setting foot on the walkway. My God, it was a trifle familiar, but it gave me pleasure all the same. I looked at the sailor and smiled at him, to thank him. Was that naughty of me? He had such white teeth, and such a nice profile, like those one sees on old medals, with skin the color of a ripe orange.
Papa was in a terrible mood. He was walking stiffly without looking at anyone, with the clenched features he has at official ceremonies. It was only when we were about to embark that he relaxed. At the extremity of the breakwater we passed a little man with salt-and-pepper hair, very elegant, with long red-brown moustaches curled up at the ends, and disturbing eyes—my God what eyes!—as sharp as gimlets, that drilled into you. Papa knew him, for, after having saluted him, he went toward him with his hands extended. But the little man slipped away. He returned Papa’s salute, winked at him, put his finger over his lips, and then, without saying a word, turned away and was lost in a group of unsavory-looking individuals.
“He’s not very amiable, your friend,” I said to Papa.
“That’s Monsieur Marigron,” he said.
“Who’s Monsieur Marigron? An engineer?”
“No, no. Marigron, you know, is the head of the Sûreté.”
“Oh! That doesn’t prevent him from being polite, even if he is the head of the Sûreté.”
“You don’t get it, you silly girl,” Papa said, impatiently. “Monsieur Marigron’s on duty. He must be on the lookout for some criminal. I assume so…that’s why he didn’t want to be recognized.”
It’s possible, as father says, that I’m only a silly girl, but I think that when one doesn’t want to be recognized one doesn’t go out with eyes like that. At the very least, one does what General Boulanger does and puts dark glasses over them. Then again, I also think that when one is recognized, no duty, lookout or criminal ought to prevent you from having a little chat with friends, especially if there’s a lady, who isn’t yet, so far as I know, very frightening…
We haven’t finished, anyway, with Monsieur Marigron. It’s necessary, in fact, that I tell you…but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, as your husband says all the time, in the Chambre, when he’s talking to that old minister who’s so angry and so ugly.
It was the inventor of the submarine boat, Claudius Bouget in person, who welcomed us on to the walkway and did us the honors.
I’ll give you a sketch of the fellow in four strokes of the pen. Very tall, barrel-chested, neck like a bull, massive shoulders, a tumultuous face but full of energy, and an astonishingly square chin, planted vertically like a block of bronze; a solid chap, about thirty years old, giving the impression at first glance of a Hercules—the Farnèse Hercules, if the marble were made flesh. Certainly, with his broad cheeks, his moustache as stiff as a brush and his big head already going gray, his leonine silhouette, his rude jaw, his brick red complexion and his ruddy nose, he’s not what we’d have called a handsome fellow when we were still in short skirts. On the other hand, thought, there’s so much harmony in his lines, so much elegance in his gestures and his bearing, so much softness and pride in his gaze—the luminous gaze of a hypnotizer, tender and harsh by turns, flamboyant not moist, beneath bushy eyebrows—with his musketeer swagger and a certain chivalrous, determined, bold and cheerful air about him, frank and gracious at the same time, that his entire person radiates charm. He positively fascinates people around him, and even Papa was taken with him.
I confess that when we had to go down into the boat by means of the little iron spiral staircase as narrow as a ladder pierced in the rod, I felt a vague frisson, and a desire to run away crossed my mind—but the captain looked at me in such a fashion that I got my confidence and courage back immediately. He must be a magnetizer, that man, I’m sure of it, in his spare time. One senses that one would follow him to the ends of the Earth, and even further. Besides, Papa was grumbling; I didn’t want to seem as if I was afraid, you see—so, bravely, I plunged into the hole. All right! As Miss Maud, our old English mistress use to say, when she finished her lesson.
“Well, Mademoiselle, here you are in the belly of the monster. It’s not too bad, as you see.”
The fact is that there was nothing disagreeable about the place.
We were in a little circular boudoir, with carpets, divans, curtains, electric lights, knickknacks and a piano. By way of windows, there were immense lumps of glass held in iron frames, through which one could see gray-green water, as in the aquarium tanks at the Trocadero. In the middle of the floor there was a big round bowl, like the bowls at the fair at Neuilly where the trained seals are shown, surrounded by a red velvet balustrade. At the bottom, there was another immense horizontal sheet of glass, through which the ocean bed was visible. In one corner, there was a kind of keyboard, with taps and handles, and little machines that looked like stout watches with needles running round graduated scales, which serve, apparently, to indicate depth, direction, air pressure, etc., and telephonic apparatus. That was the captain’s post; it’s from there that he directs the maneuvers, while chatting with his guests. As for the crew, one doesn’t see them. In addition to the salon, in fact, Le Désiré has two other compartments: the forward chamber, where the lookout is stationed who lights the way ahead and signals obstacles, and the rear chamber, where the mechanics supervise the electric batteries and the engine.
No doors! One passes from one chamber to another with the aid of an extremely original system of communications, which I recommend. One gets into a sort of niche carved out in the wall, and presses a switch. Click! The niche pivots on itself and you find yourself, in the blink of an eye on the other side, without the bay having remained open for an instant. In a word, it’s a kind of mobile sentry-box, like those double seashells one sometimes finds on beaches. You must have seemed rotating spy-holes in cloistered convents established on a similar model. It’s like that, it appears, in case there’s an accident in one of the compartment. The inventor explained it at length to Papa, who couldn’t believe his ears.
“Do you understand, Monsieur? If a leak is produced, after a collision, in the pilot’s post, or if, for some reason, the piles produce asphyxiating gases in the mechanics’ post, or the engine is damaged, or the pumps swell up—any breakdown whatsoever, in brief—there’s not the slightest danger. Not a drop of water or bubble of gas can filter through these doors, whose cracks are sealed automatically, as you can see, by rubber joints. You’re as safe here as in an express train.”
“Yes, yes,” Papa replied, “I can see that. But if your apparatus breaks down, how can you get back to the surface, even if you’re only four or five meters beneath it? What does it matter, in that case, that nothing can filter through the watertight doors, if we’re obliged to stay there, in the middle of the Channel, under water, until someone comes to look for us.”
“Well, Monsieur, you’re forgetting the safety weight. Here, look at this button. It controls a lead weight of 12,000 kilograms suspended beneath the keel, and I only have to turn it—like this, see!—for the ballast to sink to the bottom, while the boat bobs up like a cork to the surface, where we can, without inconvenience or danger, open our hatches and await rescue. Believe me before taking aboard passengers, I’ve tested that emergency anchor thoroughly, at my own risk.”
Personally, I was convinced. Papa was still kicking. When one has been a naval construction engineer, one doesn’t like to admit—especially in front of civilians—that one is mistaken.
But that reminds me that I haven’t introduced you to our traveling companions. Oh, it’s soon done.
Firstly, there was the young Spanish bride with her lord and master; then two nasty-looking fellows with badly-dyed yellow beards and cloth caps—Englishmen, evidently—who never stopped playing cards, without unclenching their teeth, while drinking something colorless that smelt like varnish. Then a bald man, very wizened, wearing spectacles—at great scientist, it appears, a famous zoologist; Papa told me his name but I’ve forgotten it—who was taking notes all the time in a huge notebook and muttering gibberish.
That’s all. Or, rather, that was all, until the moment of departure. At that moment, in fact, an incident occurred that almost degenerated into a tragedy. It’s at this point that the plot thickens.
The captain had just given his men to prepare to cast off; the uprights of the walkway had already been retracted. A sailor was getting ready to lower the heavy lid of thick glass over the stairwell that serves as a kind of skylight for the submarine boat, when someone suddenly leapt from the quayside on to the boat, whose bronze hull resonated like a bell under his heels, squeezed through the half-open hatchway, and tumbled into the salon, at the risk of breaking his neck.
It was a man of about forty, vigorous, well-built, with regular features, but pale and weary, with a sharp gaze and a sly look about him; his lips were too red, his sideburns too black, his shirt too white and he had too many rings on his fingers, like those “posers” we saw once in the Plaza del Toros and whom your husband called, I think, “flashy foreigners.”
“What does this mean?” exclaimed Claudius Bouget, launching himself toward the intruder with a menacing expression. “My boat isn’t a circus, damn it! Why are you coming aboard with a perilous leap, without warning?”
“I beg your pardon, M’sieur,” the flashy foreigner replied, with a pronounced Italian accent, “but I am in a great hurry. It’s absolutely necessary that I reach London this evening, and I missed the ferry. If I hadn’t leapt the way I did, I couldn’t have got aboard. Besides, I am known. I am il marchese de Maltoti. Here are my papers. And this is to pay for my passage.”
“Good, good!” said the captain, somewhat mollified. “As long as you have papers. It’s already five past noon…but it doesn’t matter. Next time, try to be a little less casual...”
“I beg your pardon,” repeated the supposed marquis, who was becoming even paler, and whose entire body as gripped by a nervous tremor. “A thousand pardons! But I beg you, will we be leaving soon?”
“We are leaving,” said Monsieur Bouget. “We’ve left.”
In fact, a bizarre trepidation was beginning to make the floor and walls vibrate, while singular ripples of light were running over the windows. I wanted to cast one last glance at the world where one can breathe. It was then that I perceived the short gentleman with the salt-and-pepper hair, the long turned up brown moustaches and the eyes of an inquisitor standing on the last step of the landing stage, which was full of gendarmes, who was waving his arms and shaking a piece of paper. He was certainly signaling to Le Désiré, trying to stop her leaving. For sure, he had something to say to the captain, and as Monsieur Marigron was the head of the Sûreté it had to be something very important and very urgent. For sure, if I had told the captain, who was absorbed at that moment in the delicate operation of getting under way, what I alone had observed, he would immediately have stopped his boat…but I wasn’t about to show any zeal on behalf of a keen-eyed magistrate who turns his back on people who salute him, under the shoddy pretext that he’s on duty.
Anyway, two seconds later, the water passed over the boat and the land had disappeared. We were submerged, and I was entirely overwhelmed by the novelty of the experience.
My God, it’s wonderful!
First of all, one can’t hear anything, except for the purr of the electrical machinery, like the wing-beat of a giant fly, the creaking of the timbers and a continuous rustle, as if someone were crumpling silk in the next room, which is produced by the friction of the water. No shaking at all. Nothing resembling the swaying movement, so fatal to weak stomachs, of old-style ships, nor the enervating tremolo of railways. It’s a gentle glide, like that of the blade of a knife cutting into butter.
But what a feast for the eyes! Green everywhere, more green and green forever! The entire spectrum of greens, with fugitive flickers of yellow and blue, from the tender green of newly-sprouting buds to the darkest bottle-green, passing through olive, apple-peel, dying frog, pear, ultramarine and goose-caca. There’s a dazzling emerald. A greenish light inundates the interior of the boat, and as one could see clearly enough by it, without lighting the electric bulbs, the two Englishmen continued their game of cards imperturbably, while the wizened old scientist was feverishly taking notes and il marchese de Maltoti was no less feverishly examining papers that he took from a portfolio stuffed with banknotes. Our very faces were green; one might have thought that we were traveling inside an immense bottle, like the ones pharmacists mount, by way of a sign, over the gas-jets in their display-windows.
