In 1965

by Albert Robida

  “Let’s look at these stacks of paper…ah! Here it is! No, it’s not that packet. Verses, isn’t it, futile child? A few sonnets carried away by the wind? We’ll find them eventually.”

  Montgrabel unrolled a few pieces of paper and read:

  The age-old role of woman in the hearth…from the time of the tribe to our days, as well as in all the great civilizations… The increasingly important attributions…have gradually equipped her with a kind of instinct of calm direction...

  “Give it to me, Father, I beg you. Those are the papers that I lost...”

  “Wait a minute—you’re mistaken. What’s this? Two chapters to intercalate in the next edition.., of ‘The Household of the Nation’…but this isn’t yours?”

  “Yes, yes...no...yes! Give them to me, I beg you, and I’ll leave you…forgive me for having disturbed you…but there were letters…a packet of letters...”

  “Letters? From Charles? But no, he doesn’t rote, he prefers the tele…your letters, then?”

  “No, no!”

  “Then whose? Yes, it seems to me that I’ve seen some petty papers, letters…I but I can’t find them. What’s the meaning of this, my dear child? Why this emotion? But Suzanne, what’s wrong with my eyes? This is your handwriting…but in that case...”

  “No, no, Father, give it to me, I beg you.”

  “But yes, but yes! It’s definitely our handwriting, this…so...and this note signed Camille Boissy, also in your handwriting…what connection is there between this Camille Boissy and you?”

  “This Camille Boissy?” said Larose, very interested, his eyes lighting up.

  “No, it’s not possible! What, you, my little Suzanne, the author of that famous book…absurd and false, of course…but so seriously thought, established. It’s you who amuse yourself writing these things, I repeat, of violent absurdity...and so pernicious…!”

  Suzanne had collapsed into her father-in-law’s armchair, like a criminal, lowering her head, looking up at Monsieur Montgrabel, who continued, with the most culpable indiscretion, to leaf through the papers and pick our phrases, which he read, affecting a fearful surprise.

  “You go far, my little Suzanne, my dear Monsieur Camille Boissy. Your Household of the Nation is a veritable manifesto—a manifesto of revolt and usurpation! That’s the word: usurpation! Look—now you’ve take my armchair and my place at my desk. It’s symbolic, that.”

  Suzanne leapt out of the armchair. She would have liked to run away, but she did not dare under the mocking eyes of Monsieur Larose.

  “And I thought you were simply amusing yourself writing little poems or sugary romances for petty demoiselles!”

  “Excuse me, Father, and pardon me. You’re right, a thousand apologies…I don’t know what got into me. I’ll go and burn all this immediately.”

  As she disappeared, former député Larose began to laugh.

  “My dear friend,” said Montgrabel, “this might make a disagreeable little story. You’re in the company now; you’ll help me to stifle it...”

  When the former député had gone, Montgrabel shrugged his shoulders again, and then started rummaging through the files on his desk, talking to himself in a low voice:

  “You see that! That little Saint Touch-me-not who takes it upon herself...I’ll have her reprimanded by her husband... However, yes, it seems to me that there was something other than those few sheets in the packet of papers that was brought to me…where could I have put it? What file has it slipped into…? Ah, here’s something. Oh! But what’s this?”

  Monsieur Montgrabel had just discovered a little envelope under a pile of reports and, as he read the address, his terrible eyebrows suddenly furrowed:

  CeBy

  Poste Restante, Bureau 48, Montrouge

  “CeBy—Camille Boissy, of course. Poste Restante…that’s more serious. The envelope is empty! Suzanne! Suzanne! The only futile person in the family…and frivolous! Yes, but exactly how far can that frivolity go?”

  Suzanne, emerging from her father-in-law’s study in great distress, bumped into her chambermaid, who was looking for her.

  “Madame, Monsieur is asking for Madame at the tele…”

  She strove to smile in order to dissimulate her emotion, and went to her apartment, rather slowly, in Annette’s opinion.

  Charles was waiting at the tele, his expression a trifle impatient. The overabundant vegetation of the Javanese forests on the flanks of volcanoes was no longer visible behind him, but it was still Java. He was in a cabin of a large dirigible of the Java-India-Paris-Amsterdam-London line—a small but comfortable cabin linked to the dirigible’s wireless post.

  “I thought you’d gone out again,” said Charles. “Always out. I was afraid of not seeing you before leaving Java, in order to reach an understanding. In half an hour we’ll be taking off from Batavia. I’ve finished everything here. I’m quite content with my voyage. It’s going perfectly, with regard to the red coal. I’ll be in Paris n Saturday. Too many ports of call, four days of travel—it’s interminable. Anyway, I hope that on Saturday, you’ll come as far as Bourges, the last stop, to meet me. A little excursion with the children!”

  VIII. Meeting the Dirigible

  “Who would have believed it?” said Monsieur Montgrabel, who had just brought the strange revelation to his wife—without, however, mentioning the strange envelope addressed to CeBy, Poste Restante. “Who would have supposed that such things could emerge from that light head, my love?”

  “It’s extraordinary,” said Madame Montgrabel, still incredulous. “It’s not possible!”

  They had the confession of the guilty party, however; it was necessary to yield to it. Monsieur Montgrabel remained involuntarily preoccupied, and sought in vain to know who could have put those singularly advanced ideas into his daughter-in-law’s head.

  And that envelope of the Poste Restante letter? It was necessary to proceed with a serious investigation. It’s necessary to penetrate the Camille Boissy mystery. Come on…I’ll find someone in my office to make discreet enquiries, some fine sleuth...

  Unfortunately, a vague echo of the revelation had reached the press, for Le Flambeau was talking about its investigation again and had reiterated its question mark with new silhouettes, all female this time: a series of unknown women whose features were rendered with deliberate imprecision, some grotesque, others, on the contrary, very elegant. And Le Flambeau announced that the circle was closing in around the mysterious Boissy.

  The searchers were becoming ardent, for Suzanne found in her post a small newssheet from Marseille, La Femme Enchainée, the organ of the advanced party. Suzanne scanned the newspaper rapidly. As she feared, the name Boissy recurred on every page, with citations or developments of the ideas launched by the imprudent Boissy.

  Time passes, in spite of all annoyances, and the great day of Charles Montgrabel’s return has arrived. According to the latest wireless news, everything is going well aboard the dirigible Himalaya, which is completing its journey in ideal conditions.

  News has come in, en route, from Ceylon, Bombay, Cairo and Marseille; the last port of call is Bourges. Charles allows a slight delay to be foreseen, however; instead of three p.m., the Himalaya is expected to touch down at Bourges between five and six p.m. As the Himalaya might catch up with its timetable during the morning, however, Suzanne has made her preparations to depart early at about eleven a.m. in the miniplane, as he has requested.

  It’s much too soon, thought the pilot, we’re not in any hurry. It’s a lovely day!

  The weather promises to be superb: a calm sky, no wind, not even a breeze, and the sun shining brightly. The pleasure will be complete in heading into the blue, through the pretty white clouds floating here and there, filing past in all tranquility, like well-drilled squadrons, toward the south-west.

  Suzanne is very agitated, the children are having difficulty not jumping for joy. Fortunately, the miniplane is closed; it is a comfortable and very reliable apparatus, with a light
turbine that consumes less fuel than the old internal combustion engine.

  Nestling inside the vehicle, hugging her children in her arms, Suzanne is dreaming and not paying any attention to the route. They are going slowly, the pilot has no reason to hurry, and he is making a little tour first in order to take advantage of the fine weather.

  “Where are we, then?” Suzanne asks, perceiving the tower of Gisors on its hill beneath her. “But that’s the canal from Paris to the sea,” she says, lowering the window slightly. “That’s Gisors down below, and over there, it’s the Seine that’s glittering under the cliffs of Château-Gaillard.”

  “Yes, Madame,” he pilot replies.

  “That’s not the route from Orléans to Bourges!”

  “Not exactly. I’ve made a detour to fly under the little clouds. We have plenty of time; it’ll be prettier and calmer for the children.”

  “We’re going to miss the Himalaya, though!”

  However, the miniplane, while flying at low speed, had already passed Bourges, and by some distance, when Suzanne’s watch scarcely marked two p.m. The miniplane was describing large circles; the pilot, to occupy the time, headed eastwards in the direction of the Jura, but on perceiving the green ridges of the mountains and, further away, the white summits of the Alps, Suzanne became anxious again. The miniplane turned westwards again, more rapidly.

  When they were in the vicinity of Moulins, on the route that the Himalaya ought to be following, Suzanne, reassured, told the pilot to find a good landing-ground. The children were beginning to become restless in the miniplane, they needed to stretch their legs, and it was necessary to let them have a snack.

  A favorable spot was soon discovered, in a lovely meadow on the crest of a hill, from which they could keep watch on the entire horizon. The miniplane made a fine descent in a slow and gentle spiral; the children were about to jump down to the ground joyfully with their mother, when a man with a palette in one hand and a canvas in the other bounded fearfully from a bush, which hid an easel and a painter’s parasol.

  “Hey! Hey! One can’t risk oneself in the countryside any longer, then, without being crushed?” cried the painter, furiously.

  “No, no,” replied the pilot, cheerfully. “Have no fear—don’t move, stay where you are! I’d seen you…there’s no danger. You can resume your place.”

  “How can one work like this always threatened, always on the point of receiving ships or people one one’s head?” the painter grumbled—but Suzanne came to apologize and calm him down. He was an old man, between sixty-five and seventy, a man of the former regime, and his emotion could be forgiven

  While the children had a snack on the grass, the old painter continued moaning, pacing back and forth, palette in hand. Suzanne looked at his canvas and lavished compliments on it in order to finish dissipating the ill humor of the landscapist disturbed while working. She uttered admitting exclamations and sought the means for slipping in an offer of purchase.

  In any case, it truly wasn’t bad, that little study: a simple clump of trees in the foreground, lovely tones of green in the vaporous distance.

  They were soon chatting like good friends. Suzanne having told him that she was going to meet her husband, the painter approved; but when she had added that he was an engineer and traveled a great deal for large-scale projects, he pulled a face.

  “Yes, yes, they’re going to doom us and dislocate the entire planet, your husband and all the rest! Poor Alps! They’ve been excavated over and over again, pierce with holes like a Gruyère cheese. And tubes threading that granite Gruyère, and flight-pads, platforms and garages for airplanes everywhere, on my lovely old rocks, or at the very top in the snows, and skyscrapers in all directions, and streams dammed, and in between, under the eternal glaciers, exploitation mines for the white coal!”5

  “It’s all necessary,” said Suzanne, mildly.

  “They always say that!” The old painter was talking through his beard; Suzanne had difficulty hearing him very well. She turned back to his study in order to calm him down.

  “Truly delightful, that landscape. And as it is, how...”

  “No, I don’t sell,” he said, “it’s for me. Ought I to tell you everything? You have an air about you that makes me sympathetic, and gives me confidence. Listen, I’ll tell you, but quietly. Come closer. There…I’m quite well off now, I only work for myself. Well, I made my fortune…oh, it’s difficult to say it…I daren’t tell you, you’d be horrified...”

  Suzanne looked at him fearfully, recoiling toward her two children.

  IX. In the Dirigible from Java to Bourges and Paris.

  An Old Cubist

  The old painter was speaking more and more into his beard, as if to hide his words there, and the painful confession that emerged reluctantly.

  “The thing is, in my youth, I was...don’t be afraid, I won’t bite, I no longer bite…I was…a cubist! You know, cubism: prismatic portrait and landscapes, fragments of people and things cut up into prisms, triangles, etc. I was one of them! You mustn’t tell anyone—no one knows, I’ve changed my name. No one suspects—but I’m famous in the Rue Laffitte. Yes, it’s in cubism that I earned my income. Oh, youth, youth! Now, I’m making up for it. Look at my study. Isn’t it the case that one can’t perceive it, that no one can any longer suspect it? Madame, I’m full of contrition, I’m overflowing with contrition! Listen carefully!”

  Suzanne only heard half of the confidences of the repentant cubist. She interrupted him abruptly.

  “Oh my God! I’m sorry, Monsieur, but I must go. I’ll miss the dirigible!”

  The pilot lifted up the children and placed them in the miniplane. Suzanne embarked thereafter. The old painter continued his protestations, at a respectful distance from the apparatus, but nothing at all could any longer be heard.

  Thirty seconds later, the apparatus got under way, took off, veered gracefully away, and gained altitude. They returned in the direction of Bourges prudently, but they were not in as much of a hurry as Suzanne had pretended; it was necessary to tack for some time and describe circles in the blue and the clouds, descending and regaining altitude, going back and forth within a certain radius around the town before finally distinguishing, without fear of error, the imposing silhouette of the great dirigible Himalaya, emerging from a long streak of cumulus on the horizon and advancing majestically, casting a giant shadow on the ground below.

  “There it is there it is! It’s the Himalaya, children. Here comes your Papa. In a quarter of an hour, we’ll see him!”

  The pilot accelerated the engine in order to arrive at Bourges at the same time as the dirigible, the considerable mass of which Suzanne ant the children could see growing visibly by looking back.

  “Quickly, quickly!” said Suzanne. “It’s gaining. We’ll never reach Bourges!”

  “But we’re there, Madame,” said the pilot. “There’s the cathedral directly below. I’m heading for the flight-pad now.”

  In fact, five hundred meters beneath the miniplane, glorious sunshine bathed the town, emphasizing the tall trees lining the cross-hatching of the streets.

  In addition to the Gothic cathedral, other buildings loomed up, those of a frank modernism: the station of the Paris-Clermont-Barcelona tube, with its access platforms; and higher up, slimmer, the great aircraft flight-pad, an iron steeple, light and performated, surrounded by its globular beacon, bearing its luminous number like a plume in the first mists of the evening.

  Suzanne did not take the time to admire it; she had turned back toward the dirigible, which was slowing down and maneuvering in order to land on the platform of the flight-pad. The elegant miniplane also swerved and seemed to glide through the air, describing a long curve that brought it closer to the Himalaya.

  A great deal of movement could be distinguished on board, of passengers about to get off and going to the walkway, suitcases in hand; at the windows of the cabins, others were examining the landscape. At the very front, near the multimotive nacelle o
f the prow, someone was waving his arms broadly.

  “Papa!” cried the children.

  “Bonjour! Bonjour!” replied the man. “Land!”

  The miniplane was already turning, overtook the dirigible, and went to land on the flight-pad on the opposite side, near two helicopters that had also come to meet the Himalaya. Charles Montgrabel had leapt down on to the terrace; he helped Suzanne and the children out of the miniplane himself.

  “Come with me right away,” said Charles, after the first tumultuous embraces. The Himalaya only has five minutes; we’ll go back to Paris together; the miniplane can return to the house alone.”

  The dirigibles of the great Far Eastern lines are luxuriously fitted out. The passenger space is perhaps measured, but makes up for it in its installation. Between the front and rear cabins, in two rows, port and starboard, in the large lounge-dining room, decorated by Japanese artists. There, on comfortable banquettes, the hours of idleness pass quickly with a few books or magazines, or in the contemplation of the varied scenes that unfurl interminably down below: wild forests with giant trees, projecting their lianas and their bouquets of overabundant vegetation toward the violet depths that can be glimpsed from on high; plains of all colors, depending on the crops, improbably bright yellows, greens, browns and reds; rivers flowing broadly through those plains, and torrential streams descending in foaming cascades over rocks scorched by the flamboyance of the sun; and cities of magical architecture, set in emerald or coral...

  Then there is the sea, blue, pink or mauve, in accordance with the hour, islands with ragged contours, isolated or strung out in long archipelagoes, rocks standing up in circles of foam, or volcanic islets, the smoke of which rises up toward the dirigible.

  Thus, the time passes quickly on board, in the lounge or on the walkways. Nevertheless, Charles Montgrabel is overjoyed at the arrival. He has taken Suzanne and the children to his little cabin, and they are chatting. In half an hour the airship will be flying over Paris, and they will be home.