Death on the Installment Plan (55 page)

He said it again for my benefit, he wanted me to get it straight: “Ferdinand, never forget that we must preserve the character of our performances at any price … the mark of the
Genitron
… They must never degenerate into buffoonery! masquerades! aerial tomfoolery! empty-headed tricks! No, no, and again no! We must preserve the tone, the spirit of Physics! Of course we have to entertain … and never forget it! That’s what we’re paid for. It’s only right and proper! But better still, if possible, we must fire the minds of these rustics with a desire for exact knowledge, for genuine enlightenment. Of course we have to go up. But we must also elevate those yokels you see standing around with their mouths open! Ah! it’s not easy, Ferdinand …”

It’s perfectly true that he would never have left the ground without first explaining all the details, the principles of aerostatics, in a cozy little talk. To command his audience, he balanced himself on the edge of the basket, resplendently decorated, in frock coat, panama, and cuffs, with one arm passed through the rigging … He explained the working of the valves, the guy rope, the barometers, the laws of weight and ballast. Then carried away by his subject, he embarked on other fields, expatiating, ad-libbing without order or plan, about meteorology, mirages, the winds, cyclones … He touched on the planets, the stars … Everything was grist for his mill: the zodiac, Gemini … Saturn … Jupiter … Arcturus and its contours … the moon … Bellegophorus and its relief … He pulled measurements out of his hat … About Mars he could talk at length … He knew it well … It was his favorite planet … He described all the canals, their shape and itinerary! their flora! as if he’d gone swimming in them! He was on the friendliest terms with the heavenly bodies. He was a big success.

While he was perched up there shooting the shit, spellbinding the masses, I took up a little collection … That was my little private racket. I took advantage of the circumstances, the excitement … I slipped into the crowd … I peddled the
Genitron
at two sous a dozen … returns … little autographed handbooks … commemorative medallions with a tiny balloon engraved on them … and for the ones I could spot that looked dirty-minded … whose hands went roaming in the crush … I had a little selection of funny, entertaining, spicy pictures, and transparents you could slide back and forth … It was a bad day when I didn’t unload the lot … All in all, with a little luck, it brought in twenty-five smackers! That was good money in those days. When my stock was gone and I’d finished collecting, I’d give the master the high sign … He’d shut off steam … He’d turn off the blarney and climb down into his basket … He’d straighten his panama … batten down the hatches, unfurl the last sheet … and slowly push off. I only had to hold the last rope … It was I who sang out “Let her go” … He’d answer me with a blast from his bugle … With the guy rope dragging, the
Enthusiast
rose into the air … I never saw her go straight up … She was limp from the start. For a number of reasons we were very careful about blowing her up … As a result, she rose crooked … She careened over the roofs. With her colored patches she looked like a fat harlequin … She bobbed up and down in the air, waiting for a decent breeze … She could only puff out in a real wind … She was pathetic like an old petticoat on a clothesline … even the cowfloppiest yokels caught on … The whole crowd laughed to see her teetering over the roofs … I was a good deal less cheerful … I foresaw the horrible, decisive, disastrous rip! The final smashup … I made all kinds of motions to him … he should drop the sand right away … He was never in much of a hurry … He was afraid he’d go up too high … There wasn’t much to fear . . ‘. Considering the state of the fabric, there wasn’t a chance … My worry was that he’d flop in the middle of the village … that would have been the end … It was always a narrow squeak … or that he’d collide with the schoolhouse … or take the weathercock off the church … or get caught in the eaves … or settle on the Town Hall … or founder in the little clump of woods. He’d be doing all right if he got her up to 150 or 200 feet … I figured roughly … that was the maximum … Courtial’s dream, in view of the state of his equipment, was never to go any higher than the second story … That was fairly safe … Higher was madness … In the first place we could never have pumped the bag full … With one or two bottles more it would have split for sure, from top to bottom … exploded like a bombshell from valve to valve … When he’d passed the last house, cleared the last fences, he’d throw out his sand … He’d make up his mind and unload the lot of it … When the ballast was all gone, he took a little hop … a leap of about thirty feet … Then it was time for the pigeons … He quickly opened their basket … They shot out like arrows … Then it was time for me to shake a leg … Believe me, I ran like hell … I had to stage a tragedy to get the yokels interested … to make them run after the balloon … and help us to fold up quick … the enormous ragbag … and tote the whole mess back to the station … to hoist her up on the derrick … We weren’t through yet. We had to do something to prevent our audience from clearing out, the whole lot of them at once … Our best dodge was the disaster act … It worked every time … without it we were sunk … We’d have had to pay them to do any work … We’d have lost money … It was that simple …

I began to scream and yell! I lit out like a stuck pig! I ran lickety-split through the muck in the direction of the catastrophe … I heard his bugle … “Fire! … Fire!” I yelled. “Look! Look at the flame! … He’s going to set the whole place on fire! She’s over the trees! …” The mob got moving … They came on the gallop … They followed me … As soon as Courtial saw me with the peasantry at my heels, he opened all the valves … He disemboweled the whole contraption from top to bottom! … She collapsed in her rags … She lay down in the muck, crippled, exhausted, bushed … Courtial popped out of the basket … He landed on his feet … He blew another blast on the bugle to rally the pack … And he started another speech … The hicks were scared shitless, they expected the whole thing to burst into flame and set their haystacks on fire … They threw themselves on the bag to keep it from billowing … They folded her up … But she was a disgusting wreck … from catching on every branch in sight … She’d lost so much material there was nothing left but heartbreaking rags … She’d brought back whole bushes between the bag and the net … The rescuers were delighted, overjoyed, jumping up and down with excitement; they hoisted Courtial on their shoulders like a hero and carried him off in triumph … They took him to the taproom to celebrate … They drank plenty … All the work was left for me, the rottenest lousiest chore … Collecting all our junk out of the swamp before nightfall … from the fields and furrows … Recovering all our tackle, anchors, pulleys, and chains, all the wandering hardware … The mile and a half of guy rope … the log, the cleats, scattered far and wide in oats and pasture, the barometer, the aneroid pressure gauge … a little Morocco leather case … the nickel doodads that are so expensive …. A picnic, take it from me … Keeping those repulsive beggars happy with wisecracks and promises … And telling smutty jokes to make them handle those fifteen hundred pounds of exhausting junk all free gratis and for nothing! The gasbag that looked like a massacred shirt, the remains of the hideous catafalque! Getting them to toss the whole junk pile in the last freight car just as the train was pulling out! Hell! Believe me, it took some doing. When I finally squeezed through the corridors and found Courtial, the train was under way. I found my zebra in the third class. Calm as you make them, talking, showing off, handing his audience a brilliant lecture … The conclusions to be drawn from his adventure! … So attentive to the brunette on the opposite bench … considerate of youthful ears … watching his language … but the life of the party even so … drunk as a lord, throwing his chest and his medals around … And still drinking, the stinker! Jollity! High spirits! A slug of the red stuff all around! Hold out your glasses, everybody! … He was stuffing his face full of bread and butter … Why worry … He didn’t ask about me … Take it from me, I was fed up … I put a crimp in his merriment.

“Ah, so it’s you. Ferdinand? It’s you?”

“Yes, my dear Jules Verne! …”

“Sit down, boy. Tell me all about it … My secretary … My secretary.”

He introduced me.

“Well then, is everything all right in the freight car? … You’ve attended to everything? … You’re satisfied?”

I made a very glum face, I wasn’t the least bit satisfied … I didn’t say a word …

“Then it’s not all right? … Is something wrong? …”

“It’s the last time,” I said. I didn’t mince words. I was very dry and firm …

“What’s that? Why is it the last time? You’re joking? What do you mean? …”

“The thing can’t be repaired anymore … And I’m not joking at all …”

A real silence fell … No more applause and sausage. You could hear the wheels … the creaking of the carriage … the glass of the lamp jiggling up top … He tried in the dim light to make out what I was thinking … if I wasn’t kidding a little. But I didn’t bat an eyelash … I kept my long face … I stuck to my guns …

“You really think so, Ferdinand? You’re not exaggerating?”

“If I say it, I mean it … I know what I’m talking about.”

I’d got to be an expert on holes, I refused to be contradicted … He sat back gloomily in his corner … That was the end of our conference … We didn’t say another word …

All the others, on their benches, wondered what was going on … Clankety-clank! Clankety-clank! from one jolt to the next. And the oil dripping from the top of the lamp … All the heads nodding … then drooping.

If there’s one thing in the world that needs to be handled with care, it’s perpetual motion … Don’t touch it or you’ll get your ringers burned …

Inventors in general can be classified according to their bugs … There are whole categories that are practically harmless … The ones who go in for mysterious radiations, “tellurism,” for instance, or the “centripetals” … They’re easy to handle, they’d eat breakfast out of your hand … The little household gadgeteers aren’t very rough either … the cheese-graters … the Sino-Fin-nish kettles … the two-handled spoons … well, everything that’s useful in the kitchen … Those boys like to eat … they know how to live … The ones who want to improve the subway? … Ah, there you’d better begin to watch your step. But the real screwballs, the wild men, the vitriol throwers, are mostly all of them in “Perpetual” … Those characters will go to any length to demonstrate the value of their discoveries … They’ll turn your gizzard inside out if you express the slightest doubt … They’re no good to fool with …

One of the boys I met at Courtial’s, an attendant at the public baths, was a fanatic … He never talked about anything but his “pendulum,” and then only in a whisper … with murder in his eyes … Another one who came to see us was a public prosecutor in the provinces … He came all the way from the southwest just to bring us his cylinder … an enormous ebonite tube with a centrifugal valve and an electric starter … It was easy to spot him in the street, even from far away, he always walked slantwise, like a crab, along the shop fronts … That was his way of neutralizing the influence of Mercury and the “ionic” radiations of the sun, that pass through the clouds … And he never took off the enormous muffler he wore around his shoulders, day and night, made of braided asbestos, lisle, and silk. That was his ray detector … When he walked into “interference” … right away he began to shiver … bubbles came out of his nose …

Courtial had known them for ages … he knew what to expect of them … He called a number of them by their first names. We were on pretty good terms with them … But one day he got the idea of organizing a contest for them … That was sheer lunacy … Right away I sounded the alarm … I let out a howl … Anything but that! … He wouldn’t listen … He needed money bad, ready cash … It was perfectly true that we were having a hell of a time finishing out the month … that we owed at least six issues of the
Genitron
to Taponier, the printer … So we had plenty of extenuating circumstances … Besides, the balloon flights weren’t paying off so well anymore … Airplanes were breaking our backs … By 1910 the yokels were all hopped up … they wanted to see flying machines … We were still writing letters like mad … incessantly … We de-defended every inch of ground … We pestered all the hicks … the archbishops … the prefects … the postmistresses … the druggists … and the horticulture societies… In the spring of 1909 alone we had more than ten thousand circulars printed … we fought to the last ditch … But I also have to admit that Courtial was playing the races again. He’d gone back to the Insurrection … He must have paid his debts to Formerly … Anyway, they were on speaking terms again … I’d seen them together … At one throw my boss had won six hundred francs at Enghien on Carrot … and then two hundred and fifty on Célimène at Chantilly … It had gone to his head … He began raising his bets …

The next morning he comes into the shop all steamed up … He starts in right off the bat …

“Aha, Ferdinand! My luck’s turned! This is it! I’m in luck … Do you hear me … After ten years … after losing almost uninterruptedly for ten long years … That’s all over … My luck is running … And I’m holding on! … Take a look! …” He shows me the
Dingbat
, a new racing sheet … he had it all marked up in blue, red, green, and yellow. I said my piece right away …

“Watch out, Monsieur des Pereires! It’s the twenty-fourth already … We’ve got fourteen francs in the till … Taponier has been very nice … very patient, I’ve got to admit, but even so, he says he won’t print the rag anymore! … I might as well tell you right now! He’s been biting my head off for the last three months every time I show my face on the rue Rambuteau … Don’t count on me to go around there anymore! not even with the pushcart!”