The Painting (39 page)

I think the balloon is pretty, says a girl.

It is, says a woman pulling her scarf tighter. Look at it. And those gathered hush and tip up their faces to the black sky and the balloon.

Down the hill the carriage is arriving, and Pierre will make his accounting.
Will he shout and curse and run up the stairs? Where is the Dane? And when there is no answer, will he run into the inventory room and down the hallway to Jorgen’s old bedroom and find his few belongings, a couple pairs of stained pants and shirts, an empty cot. No note. No footprints, no tread of a dirty shoe sole, no fingerprints smeared on the window glass. A thief, he will say of Jorgen, a spy, running to the police.

The balloon has reached its full height and lofts in the wind. The balloon must take off now, announces an official. Do we have a volunteer?

His money is gone.
And so they went
. Natalia is not in Paris, but perhaps she’s in the forest just outside the city. She’s pitched her tent for the night and maybe she’s killed a rabbit for supper. Roasting it now over a small fire of alder branches. He can almost picture it, almost put himself right there, next to her.

Why did he come here if not for this? She must be right outside the city and there is no other way out, except this balloon. What is the crowd murmuring? A communal chant, a nursery rhyme of song. The bodies pressed tight, the chatter forming a single buoyant voice, And so he went.

I’ll go, he says, separating himself from the crowd.

The crowd parts and a hush follows.

I’ll go.

The National Guardsmen holding down the swaying balloon look at each other with raised eyebrows. Jorgen stands in front of a particularly tall soldier with a long red nose and hollowed-out cheeks.

Let him do it, says a woman.

An old man turns to the woman. What does this young man know about this? he asks. Look at his condition.

Well, who then? You?

He’ll be fine, says someone else.

Jorgen looks at the balloon filled with coal gas. Nearly seven tons of coal burned, and it would be foolish to waste it. Why not let me go? he says to the tall guard. He watches the soldier’s expression as he struggles to make a decision, and Jorgen imagines him thinking, This foolish man may or may not make it, but the French have lost so many men already, what is another? And
the letters, the letters of sorrow, of longing, of business, of hope, of love and official news and love and love, at least they should try to ensure they reach the recipients’ hands.

The soldier steps aside.

Jorgen’s hand rests on the hard wicker of the basket. He places his other hand on the side of the rim. One of the soldiers hoists his crutches into the basket. Jorgen straddles the basket, his stump in, then his leg, and there, at the bottom of the basket, several stacks of mail and a cage containing five pigeons. Jorgen smiles. Hello, he says, thinking this is a good sign. There is a perfectly white one with a hint of pale blue around its eyes.

There’s a bottle of champagne, and a 150-meter trail rope, which the soldier says works as a ballast, and a six-hooked anchor. If you see the big blue ocean in the distance, throw out the anchor or that will be the last of you. If a Prussian starts shooting, duck below the rim of the basket and pray.

Jorgen sets his cardboard cylinder on the floor next to the pigeons.

You’ll need another coat and a blanket, says the soldier, handing him both. Jorgen puts on the heavy coat made of virgin lamb’s wool dyed black to stay hidden in the precarious basket.

Here’s a flask, says another soldier. Pray for a strong and steady eastern wind. He tells Jorgen the pigeons have messages wrapped in their tail feathers. Let them go when you’re clear of Paris, he says.

A young woman comes up to the basket, removes the blue paper flower from her hat, and pins it on his coat lapel. She kisses both cheeks, Thank you, monsieur. You have a letter to my mother, who lives in England. The woman says her mother is quite ill. The letter, she says, will mean so much to her.

Another woman, her hair in long brown braids as thick as tree branches, offers him a kerchief of pastries. She bows her head and removes from her neck a gold chain. Her talisman, she says, putting it over his head.

An older man in gray earmuffs steps up and shakes his hand. Good luck, boy, he says. You’ll need it.

More women and men line up to hand him their charms and well-wishes, but the soldiers push them aside.

It’ll be too heavy, says the tall soldier. Enough. Get back.

Throw out some mail if you need altitude, but not that stack, says a soldier, pointing to the one tied with red rope. It’s official.

Be careful, shouts a woman. You have a message to my daughter in Norway.

And one to my husband in England.

Don’t throw out the pink envelope, shouts another woman.

He pulls in the anchor and feels the basket jolt and lift up from the ground. The throng cheers again and up he goes. He looks at the faces turned up, filled with surprise and wonder. The pigeons coo and squawk and the cylinder rolls and bumps against the cage. The crowd shouts and the ligaments of the beast wave furiously in the air. He lifts up, up, screeches beyond the dark rooftops, up to the treetops, the balloon brushes through the branches. There are the big towers and church domes, a tall building lit very white and proud. Up and up to the cloud layer; he is so light.

The balloon comes back down and settles at a height where he can see Paris below, the tiny globes of yellow streetlights, the small cooking fires in the park, the shadowy figures, the houses with people sleeping, and he imagines the rooms inside, the photographs and paintings, the stained-glass windows that in the morning will toss warm colorful light, and he feels like crying, and he is crying, not for the loss, but for the delicacy of life, for this small city, for every city dotted with people. And there, as he flies farther, he sees Prussians surrounding Paris, a ring of bonfires, and they are not far away, just beyond the wall. It is only a matter of time. She’s out there, he knows it. He can feel it.

Natalia! he shouts. His voice is a pinprick, swallowed by the expanse of night sky. Such a small sound against the vastness.

A
S HE WAITS FOR
the carriages outside, Pierre glances up and sees the garish-colored balloon. My God, he says out loud. One of the clerks comes out on the porch and stands next to him to watch. Whoever would do such a thing is a fool. No steering capability, at the whim of the wind.

Beautiful, murmurs the clerk.

Victor Hugo called these balloon expeditions an example of human
audacity, says Pierre, but it’s not that at all. It’s human stupidity. What are the chances? A death ride, a goddamn suicide mission.

But look at it, sir, says the clerk, his voice full of awe.

Yes, says Pierre, thinking of the letters floating overhead, and he recalls an old friend with whom he’d gone to the university, a smart man, they’d played polo together, and he’d heard the fellow was ill. The man lives in Nice. He often thought of writing a letter, but never did. Now he feels a surprising need to write to the man and see how he’s doing.
What do you need? Is anyone looking after you? After this damn war is over, I will be down your way to attend to you and anything else
. He’d tuck inside a few francs.

He looks down the dark alley, turns his ear, searching for the sound of a carriage rolling. Nothing but street urchins playing in garbage bins.

Pierre pulls out a bill and holds it up. The wind turns the money, blowing it east. Right direction, but damn cold, and with the cloud layer, there might be snow tonight. He heard the reports of the men in the balloons, the ones who survived, the sense of awe and wonder from the view of the sky. That is where Natalia should have gone, he thinks, not the land, but up in a balloon to touch the lips of her God. Damn her, he whispers. Damn her for going.

P
ARIS IS BEHIND HIM
, and he rises higher. The air turns bitter cold. He pulls the two coats tighter and drinks from the flask. A hamlet up ahead, surrounded by darkness. Perhaps she is there, tucked away in a warm house, waiting for the right time to return to Paris. Or maybe she’s there, he thinks, spotting a white barn, hiding in the loft, sleeping in yellow straw. The pigeons coo, and he crouches down and blows warm air on their wings. As he moves away from the lights of town, hundreds of stars flash against the darkness.

His leg begins to ache so he sits among the cushion of letters. She wrote,
And so they went
. He finishes the line for himself,
for there was nothing else to do
. His hands are frozen and he thinks the pigeons must be suffering. He opens the cage, clutches a bird, and tosses it into the night. He hears the wings flapping, like the sound of a skirt brushing against legs. Another and another, he lets them fly away.

Nestling into the bottom of the basket, he hooks the painting under his arm. He pulls out one of the letters, and with a pencil, he begins to write on the back of the envelope.

My dear Natalia
,

I am above the world looking down, and part of me feels as close to God as I ever will get. A vision that each of us should receive at least once in a lifetime, this view of human lives. Such ants we are, swarming the earth, what do we think we are doing? But I set these thoughts aside and think of you. Don’t stop thinking of me so I can find you. It is not to sea that I am heading but land, sweet land, and to you
.

He stuffs the letter back under the string. The big lofting balloon enters a pocket of cold air, and he wraps himself tighter into his coat. His eyes hurt and even the skin under his fingernails aches. In the air, the smell of cold purity, of nothingness so high in the clouds, buries in his lungs. He shoves his hands into the sleeves of his coat, feeling the smoothness of silk inside. The balloon sweeps through a gray foggy mass. He feels a spray of mist and he quickly wipes his face, for fear the mist will freeze into a mask. He pushes his hand deeper into the coat pockets and finds a hard candy, puts it in his mouth, and sucks sweetness. In his other pocket, he fingers a smooth stone he found by the Seine. An amber color, it caught his eye in the dying sun, a piece of sunlight, he thought at the time; he takes it and rubs it against his cheek. He can no longer see the land below. He has no idea which way he is going or how much time has passed. Even if he stood up and surveyed below, he couldn’t tell, land or the deep sea.

He throws out the birdcage and nudges down deeper. His teeth chatter uncontrollably, and he burrows his face into the double layer of thick coats and the blanket, while his mind clenches with fear. He tries to remember the last image he had on earth. What was it? Unhinging the cold crush on his brain, he finds a woman holding the hand of a small girl. And the girl? The girl in a pink coat, cherry-colored cheeks, a white ribbon in her hair, hair the brown of soil after a rain; the woman, her mother, a replica of the girl, in a
long black coat with a fur collar encircling her pale neck, a beauty mark above her upper lip.

He can’t feel his good leg or his stump, and now his body shakes. It feels as if he has been racing through ice air for hours.

Another image, quick, something to hold onto. He grabs the image of a small-headed man wearing a violet vest and heavy gray coat. He looked at Jorgen as he climbed into the balloon and nodded, as if giving his approval. Behind the man, an ample woman with a pile of gray hair, she leaned toward the balloon, as if she wanted to touch it.

The balloon drifts lower, and still blackness, as if he’s entered the interior of a huge animal. His mind clenches and cold slaps against his skin, burrows into his bones. He has never been this cold. His stiffened hand instinctively reaches for the cylinder and removes the painting. Under the stars’ flickering light, he slowly unrolls the painting and gazes at it, and not until it begins to happen does he know why he chose to do this. For now he is slipping away from the freezing night, away from the rocking basket, into the expansive blue sky dabbed with white clouds, warm sunlight on her limbs, the tip of her red lips curving into a smile. She is holding him, wrapping him in her elegant clothes, whispering words, taking her fingers and smoothing his forehead, his hair, touching warmth to his cold skin. Slowly Jorgen’s heartbeat settles into a regular warm rhythm.

He traces the figure of the woman, a gesture of gratitude.

He stands and looks over the edge of the basket. The balloon has fallen low enough to see the dark body of land. He returns the painting to its cylinder. He is sailing through the freezing air; he should sit down, but he can’t stop looking at the land.

The jagged-edged horizon, a patch of forest coming up, and now he is hovering above the tree branches; like arms reaching for him, they almost touch him. What he can’t see from the balloon, he imagines: each thread of pine needle, the pale veins coursing a leaf, the dimpled bark, the soft green lichen, the spiderwebs woven between leaves, and there, a small brown bird, perhaps a finch, resting on a branch, its wings tucked tight against its frail body, asleep for the night. And on it goes, from tree to tree and the life below, for he’s never felt so in love with the land.

N
ATALIA LIES FLAT ON
her belly, and through the telescopic lens she mounted on her rifle, she glasses a Prussian sentry about a hundred yards away. She’s alone now. Most of her fellow soldiers are dead; others turned back or are missing in the nearby town. For days, perhaps more than a week, she doesn’t know how long, she has been alone in these woods, not certain which direction to go, so she just waits. The only other person with her, though he doesn’t know it, is the Prussian who has just discovered her backpack and is untying it. Her mess kit clatters against a rock, her notebook sprays loose papers and dried flowers, scattering them on the snowy ground. He plunges his arm to the bottom and pulls out her treasure, a hunk of cheddar cheese. She found it yesterday in the pack of a dead soldier. He breaks off a section and as he shoves it in his mouth, she smells its pungent rich scent waft through the air. She jams together her jaws, trying not to salivate.