The Jules Verne Steam Balloon

by Guy Davenport

  ANEMONE

  Wheat figured in gold on the steel blade of his sword, in sudden windflowers that came with the rain, clad in white linen, Hyakinthos.

  BLUE-EYED SUSANS

  To the reedy plangencies of a harmonium from Sheffield (John Robinson, Instruments, 1869) Buckeye sang O lead me onward to the loneliest shade. Sing through your nose, Quark said, with quavers and shakes. That’s the way they do it. By gaslight in the Methodist Chapel. The dearest place, Buckeye obliged, that quiet ever made. Holy milk cow, Tumble called up from the meadow below. Where kingcups grow most beauteous to behold, and shut up green and open into gold.

  EPPING FOREST 1840

  I found the poems in the fields and only wrote them down.

  37

  Pascal’s folks, Pastor Tvemunding said, thought it would be best if I came with them, and here we are, ready for anything. Mariana, Hugo said, heard you first and is exchanging Eve’s dress for modester raiment. Well, Pastor Tvemunding said, you were allowed to run naked here as a boy, even after you qualified for the toga virilis. There’s not a soul in miles. How come, Franklin said, after being kissed on the top of the head, forehead, and chin by Hugo, Hugo can be naked and Mariana not? Answer that, Mariana said from somewhere in the cabin, and lots of other answers will follow. Papa Tvemunding, hi! Tailless rats, hi! You’ve all three turned up together, what fun. She’s going to kiss you, Pascal, Franklin said. So kiss back.

  THE TWELVE DAYS

  The kallikantaroi, daimons or perhaps centaurs (the Greeks still believe in them), were loose on middle earth, from underneath, for the twelve midwinter days, playing havoc. If they could be appeased and sent back to the underworld, the new year could begin. They were horses, or halfhorse halfhuman, ithyphallic, unprincipled and raw. The Greeks, even so far back in time, had the sense that life was wild impulse that needed taming, needed synchronicity, regularity, rhythm. Noise must become music, sexuality a longing of affinities, violence government, babble poetry, wild grass wheat, fear of the inexplicable religion, the puzzle of the world philosophy. But the romping centaurs have stayed on, in rituals all over Europe, and the dance of the hobbyhorse is their last vestige. At the beginning they are indistinguishable, let us surmise, with the idea of daimons in general: spirits who possess or guide or tempt. Tell you about the hobbyhorse? Well, it’s man in a horse suit, many variants. He does a dance in which he gets sick and falls down. A lady horse comes and revives him with her attractions. Then something that was wrong has been set right again. Springtime can come. Crazy, said Franklin. Folklore, said Pascal. Neat, said Mariana. I think I see what you mean, said Pastor Tvemunding.

  39

  With a floppy and sidewise gait, goofy of eye and with idiot teeth, an agile cripple, sinking in his pace, the hobbyhorse falls down. Poor. Old. Tired. Horse. Doctors try pills and enemas. The old horse moans, the old horse groans, like to die. This is the one dramatic role rustics up and down the map get to play. They practiced their reins, their careers, their prankers, their ambles, their false trots, and Canterbury paces. They wore horse bells, plumes, and braveries, and bragged in the opening dance to tabors and fifes, bagpipes and clacker sticks, of having a mane new-shorn, and frizzled, and of having a randy wayward giddy leaning toward the tupping of a mare. And dances himself silly. He falls. The women show him eggs. But he is old, he is tired. Hope on High Bomby he is not, nor a coach horse of the Pope, who can mount thirty mares one after the other, whickering and neighing, with his black yard still hard as a hoe handle, his tail waggling, a fine roll to his handsome eye, and his ballocks throbbing with lewdness. Oh no, that’s all past. He’s a sick old horse fallen in the road. But then a young mare is brought for him to see. He looks, he neighs Whee Hee. The mare says Tee Hee.

  40

  The daimons, Papa Tvemunding said, were the agents of Fate. It is my understanding that Yeshua cancelled Fate.

  41

  Oh no! Franklin said. Not Sunday School out here! It’s all a blur, Pascal said. Hugo said, Use your imagination. Olive groves. The olive leaf is dark green on top, light grayish green on its underside. So if there’s a breeze, you see sudden, rolling, tossing changes of color. Like foam on breakers at the shore. I’m seeing it, Franklin said, closing his eyes. Me too, Pascal said. OK then, Hugo went on. Yeshua. Hair probably black, black and shiny with perfumed oil. Sidelocks in curls down by his ears. A hat? Yes, let’s give him a big round straw hat, shallow-crowned, for walking in the broiling sun. A beard. Imagine him as a comely man, wonderfully attractive, big-nosed, very Mediterranean. Tall and sturdy: he was a carpenter. Though God knows, for all we’re told, he could have been chubby and bald. Big floppy trousers, like a Turk, or modern Cretan. Sandals. And a kind of coat: a caftan, I suppose. He would have spoken Aramaic, and probably Greek. That was the common-market language of the Roman empire. He could read Hebrew, which no one any longer spoke: we see him doing it in the synagogue.

  A ROW OF ZINNIAS

  Listen to the ringdove, Pastor Tvemunding said. It’s the angle of light in its retina, Hugo said. They’d brought a table out on the meadow where it flows into the cabin’s grounds. Wonderful that you brought tea, Mariana said. Hugo never thinks to. These intellectuals assume everybody likes coffee. What a glorious, sweet afternoon. I hear more than ringdoves, I hear unchanged voices over in the larchwood. Happy voices, Pastor Tvemunding said. Hugo, I’ve read far enough into your thesis to see that the faculty is going to adjust its glasses page after page, wondering if it’s reading what it’s reading. But I imagine they’ll kick through with a degree. I like it. It stands to reason that something so universal in Mediterranean belief as daimons would get into the gospels, and be removed, except for the traces you indicate, by scribes who didn’t understand what they were excising. There was the worship of angels at Kolossai. Your theology is going to be carped at. You require an organism for spirit, allowing for no occurrence of mind except in something, even if it be an organization of matter still unrecognized by science. And you allow for no knowledge of the future in the mind of God, as the future hasn’t yet happened, and is not something of which there can be any knowledge. That’s good logic, isn’t it? Hugo asked. Yes, his father said. Sounds absolutely useless to me, Mariana said. Hugo, what are you looking at? The light, he said. He was looking at Quark in a French sailor’s suit, standing behind his father. He gave Hugo a wink, which meant: Nobody but you can see me. He mouthed light frequency. He sniffed the teapot, and signalled for Tumble, whose slender honeybrown body was clad only in briefs which Hugo had last seen on Franklin. Buckeye was probably on the roof of the cabin: he dared not look. The whole crunch of theology, he said, is to what extent do people imagine that creatures of another realm, higher or lower, or invisibly within ours, interact with our lives?

  GUYOT, 1900

  It is not enough to describe, without rising to the causes, or descending to the consequences. A complete account of vision would contain far more than a description of the sequence of chemical reactions that begins when a rhodopsin molecule absorbs a photon.

  SCALIGER ON ACTS XVII:18

  Ethnici non credebant diabolum esse; Socratis daemonium vel deum vel genium esse credebant.

  45

  Steam seeping from the brass throttle, the red lantern glowing brighter as the dusk thickened to dark, the balloon eased to fifty meters above the larchwood, most of which was already in deep green night, with some clearings and tall trees still suffused with the last thin pink of sunset. Buckeye, pushing back his Norwegian forager’s cap on his curls, tried another sip of coffee. They drink it, he said. It’s a bean, Tumble explained, from a beautifully slender tree in the Indian Ocean islands. It came up here over long trade routes years and years ago. The bean’s roasted and then ground, sometimes powdered. Hot water makes it into a tisane. Add granulated cane sugar, and it’s a drink. Tastes more than a little of lion piss, wouldn’t you say? Ah, but the bouquet, the aroma, Quark said, rolling himself into his blanket for the night. Hugo the theologer
likes it, and his da. Mariana pretends to like it. Tumble pretends to like it. I do like it, Tumble protested. HQ, you know, isn’t really interested in this bunch. A cute old man, his tall randy son who can’t keep his generator in his pants, one sprightly girl and her little brother, and his friend. So Hugo is writing some gibberish, and teaches the old languages, which he mispronounces, and has a loving heart, what’s the bother? Pass the molasses cookies. Maybe it’s all for Pascal, Buckeye said. He’s the deep one.

  A GARDEN IN POMPEII

  Hello, Quark said. He was behind a beech, looking around. Hugo saw a portion of blue student cap, an eye, a quiff of hair. Where is the balloon? Hugo asked, and then in a temper, why do you bother with it? Asking questions won’t do, Quark said, trying to be very serious. Be silent, be bold, be of great heart: that’s the message. But the other morning, Hugo said, you talked to me about Pompeii, the old olive, the dog. You cannot imagine what curiosity you excite. We can’t read minds, Quark said. We got an admonitum on the thread for talking too much, and for borrowing Franklin’s underpants. From whom? Hugo asked. What’s on the other end of the thread? The Consiliarii. Hugo looked more puzzled than ever. We have only heard their voices, Quark said. They give us messages to deliver, charges to look after, things like that. Where are you when you aren’t here? Hi! said Tumble, looking around the other side of the beech. Where are we when we aren’t here? I wonder if we know. It is left to us to rig out our expeditions. We got the balloon out of a book of pictures, and we get our clothes where we can, and our food, as when we’re inside a system we have to live in its structure. Are you always ten-year-old boys? Oh no, Tumble said. We have been wolf puppies when a mother lost hers. Dolphins. Magi from Persia. Watch it, Quark said. We don’t remember all of our assignments. And once they’re done, it wasn’t us, somehow, who did them, you know? Actually, Tumble said, they keep things from us, practically everything I sometimes think. Pompeii, Hugo said, to hold onto that, because you remember it. Do you know what happened to it? Happened to it? Quark asked. Our information, like yours, as best we can tell, is not magic, as your language has that word. Did something happen to Pompeii? Have you no way, Hugo asked, of finding out?

  47

  I agree with you, dear Mariana, Papa Tvemunding said, about the light up here. It finds something in our souls. As for Hugo’s youthful adventures on the Arctic Circle, I imagine the version I got years ago, as it must seem to you, but only yesterday to me, Hugo has grown up so swiftly, is slightly different from the one you’ve heard. I’m fascinated by what you tell me about little Pascal. A kind of genius, is he? And for Franklin, my charming Franklin, to be bringing him out: that’s a sweet wonder. I have had an entire troop of Scouts suddenly fill the house, when Hugo had the prescience to march them in. Once, even, when Margarita was alive. Tents in the garden, bedrolls on every floor.

  FICUS

  All three kinds of fig trees are in leaves and growing one like another, save for their height, color, and sweetness of the fruit, having many arms or branches, hollow or pithy in the middle, bearing very large leaves divided sometimes into three but usually into five sections, of a dark green color on the upperside, whitish beneath, yielding a milky juice when it is broken, as the branches also or the figs when they are green: the fruit breaks out from the branches without any blossom, contrary to all other trees of our orchard, being round and long, shaped like a small pear, full of small white grains, of a very sweet taste when it is ripe, very mellow, and so soft that it cannot be carried far without bruising.

  49

  Come up! Buckeye called down to Hugo. You can see the nacelle, the engine. Hugo, naked as Tarzan, had come out early to walk around the woods, as he always did of a morning. The balloon was suddenly above him before he was aware that it was anywhere near. Up he climbed, feeling giddy as the rope ladder swung away, rung by rung, and began to sway wildly before he reached the taffrail. Tumble and Quark were still rolled up in a blanket, arms around each other. I’m on watch, Buckeye explained. Quark woke, grinned, disentangled himself from Tumble and the blanket, impulsively gave Hugo a kiss and hug, and went to the taffrail to pee over the side. Hugo took in the strangeness of the nacelle: the brass-and-walnut levers, the Edisonian phone and telegraph, the neat cabinets, steam gauges from the age of Isambard Kingdom Brunei, and none of this was out of style with the Danish togs draped over ropes, American jeans, French underpants, Finnish sweaters, an Italian coffeepot. Breakfast, Tumble said, his thick hair a wreck, eyes sleepy. Croissants, to be heated in the engine. Espresso. Fig jam, from the country store over the hill. Butter. The four of them sitting, knee against knee, filled the floor of the basket, with room for cups and saucers in the ring of their toes. I can’t stay long, Hugo said. They’re beginning to wonder about it all. Pompeii, Quark said. You asked. We asked. They have the records at HQ. They have everything at HQ, if you know who to ask. It’s awful. There was a day, I forget the coordinates, when the sky was all white, which was dust and smoke, and then it was yellow, slowly turning black. This was the volcano Vesuvius, it had erupted. Ashes in the air, miles high, which sifted down for days on the garden on the Via Nuceria, so deep that it covered the great olive, and Ferox’s doghouse, the flowers, the very roofs. A flower garden one day, an ash heap the next. Fig jam and butter, Tumble said, they tickle the back of the throat. But I knew that, Hugo said. Then, Buckeye said, why did you ask us to find out?

  A BLUE SUMMER SKY

  Franklin! Mariana! Hr. Tvemunding! Hugo! Pascal said, running from the meadow. Up in the air! There’s an absolutely scrumptious hot-air balloon over the larchwood. It’s all decorated with signs of the zodiac, and circus colors, and fancy patterns. I waved, and whoever’s in it waved back. They were hauling in an anchor, so they must have been tethered over there. Hurry, or you’ll miss it.

  About the Author

  Guy Davenport (1927–2005) was an American writer, artist, translator, and teacher who was best known for his short stories that combined a modernist style with classical subjects. Originally from South Carolina, Davenport graduated from Duke University and was a Rhodes Scholar at Merton College, Oxford, where he wrote his thesis on James Joyce. After earning a PhD from Harvard, he taught English at Haverford College from 1961 to 1963 before accepting a position at the University of Kentucky, where he remained until his retirement in 1990. In 2012, the university appointed its inaugural Guy Davenport Endowed English Professor. Davenport won a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for his literary achievements and an O. Henry Award for his short stories. He was also a visual artist whose illustrations were included in several of his books. His works include Da Vinci’s Bicycle, Eclogues, Apples and Pears, and The Jules Verne Steam Balloon.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  These are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  “The Meadow is reprinted through the kind permission of New Directions, which published it (under the title “Wild Clover”) in New Directions 50. “Pyrrhon of Elis,” “Bronze Leaves and Red,” and “Les Exploits de Nat Pinkerton de Jour en Jour” were published together as Trois Caprices, in 1981, by the Pace Trust of Louisville, Kentucky. “Les Exploits de Nat Pinkerton de Jour en Jour” was originally published in the Mississippi Review. “We Often Think of Lenin at the Clothespin Factory” is reprinted, with permission, from Conjunctions. “The Bicycle Rider” was first published as a book by Red Ozier Press, in a different version. The allusions in this story to the Danish film Du er ikke alene are deliberate. “Jonah” was first published as a book by Nadja Press. “The Ringdove Sign” is reprinted from Parnassus.

/>   Copyright © 1987 by Guy Davenport

  Cover design by Mauricio Díaz

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-1964-4

  This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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