The Balloonist

by MacDonald Harris

  “What’s wrong with Finland?”

  “It’s cold there, for one thing, and all the inhabitants speak Finnish.” “It was you who wanted to come,” I reminded her, “on the pretence of devoting yourself to scientific inquiry.”

  “I am quite ready to inquire scientifically into something. What is there to inquire into?” I showed her how to take readings of the simpler instruments, and soon she was doing it by herself. There was no doubt she had character. Her own character, of course, but character.

  The sea was a greyish blue, streaked here and there with foam that left long scratches on its surface. The wind had mounted now; the sails, tugging obliquely, pulled us at an exhilarating speed toward the invisible Finnish coast, the guide ropes leaving three foamy trails in the water. The Aland Islands appeared ahead and, anxious to avoid tangling the guide ropes in habitations or trees, I altered our course slightly to clear them by twisting the pinion ring. (Ordinarily I would have risen over the islands by releasing a little ballast, but now, since Mademoiselle had left us short of sand, I preferred to conserve ballast by steering around the obstacle. Or, to be perfectly honest, I might have released ballast of which we had a quite adequate reserve, but I preferred quite childishly to put her in the wrong by pretending that we were short of it.) The islands were a cluster of low-lying shapes like weasels, with here and there a house or a patch of green woods. The surf broke on the outlying rocks. We passed only a half dozen miles or so from the harbour at Mariehamn; I could see the ships lying at anchor in the roadstead and a large bark under full sail working sideways across the wind toward the town. Almost directly below us a fishing smack, with a lugsail sticking up out of it, pitched into the waves and seemed to remain exactly in the same place. We swept over it, the guide ropes missing the craft by a few metres or so, and at that moment the young fisherman in oilskins raised his head and caught sight of us: an incredible apparition, a gentleman and a smartly clad young lady rushing past him overhead in a basket. He made no sound, only his mouth opened, and he followed our path by slowly rotating his whole body as the sunflower follows the sun. As he disappeared from sight, still watching, his mouth still open, his arms went mechanically back to pulling up the trotline hand over hand. A mechanical doll, a toy worked by springs.

  Gulls flew around us, observed us curiously and concluded we were not likely to throw out fish, and swept away in long curves. There was a muted crashing sound from the whitecaps below, along with the brook-like plashing of the guide ropes. On the horizon ahead there appeared some scattered brown lumps with patches of mist clinging to them: the islands along the Finnish coast. In the course of an hour we threaded, swerved, and curved our way among them with the agility of a dancer, I turning the iron handle and hoping that these long and rather shallow arcs would be enough to miss all the obstacles. Then the coast itself appeared, with some rather frightful surf smashing away at a granite cliff. The game of turning the handle was over for the day. It was too risky trailing the guide ropes across the countryside; if the ropes should catch in a farmhouse roof, first the roof would go up, then both roof and balloon would come down again, and everyone would be displeased, both farmer and aeronauts. I released a half bag of sand. We rose by increments until we were barely high enough to clear the hungry cliff, which (it seemed to my imagination) lunged up slightly to snap at us with its jaws as we passed. Now the Gulf of Bothnia was added to my accomplishments. Some specks no larger than midges appeared and plunged around the Prinzess in circles: land birds, swallows.

  It was late afternoon; the sun was beginning to dissolve in a body of mist over the sea. Now that we had turned off the mechanical wind we had invented, the Prinzess hung absolutely silently in the greyish air. We furled the sails. Below us, like a canvas landscape in a museum, the countryside unrolled evenly and placidly from the east. There was a scent of plowed earth and greenery. The land consisted of meadows and mysterious-looking woods, with a scattering of lakes. Here and there were farm buildings with red roofs and sides and white trim. For some reason not a single human being was visible. It was about five o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon, and what all the Finns were doing at that hour I had no idea. They had been spirited away by invaders from another planet and the land belonged to the cows, who cropped away at the yellowish grass and scarcely looked up as we soared by two hundred metres over their heads. No, there was a man out hacking at weeds with a scythe. He was up to his knees in a ditch, cutting the weeds at the side of the road, and he failed to notice our passage. As we passed overhead he stopped for a moment, transferred the scythe to his left hand, and wiped the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. In the silence we could even hear the patient exhalation of air he made as he turned back to work. Then the rhythmic swish of the scythe again. Would he look up and see us disappearing? No, he was intent on his work.

  Here were more lakes. The countryside that had been one fifth lakes was now two fifths lakes, and according to the chart I had spread out on my knees it would soon be four fifths lakes, transmogrifying itself from a countryside with lakes into a kind of huge freshwater sea with islands. This, according to the laws of probability, meant that the farther on we drifted the less likely it would be that we would land with dry feet, and the Finnish lakes looked as though the Finns had somehow found the secret of reducing water below the temperature of ice. It was time to bring this particular adventure to a close. It was almost dark now. I had expected the wind to die away as evening came on, but it was still blowing away with its idiot enthusiasm. I would have preferred this canvas panorama to stop rolling by underneath, just for a moment, so we could settle gently onto it. No matter, we would have to come down as best we could, before the landscape became even more watery. Without bothering to explain things to Luisa, I made dexterous preparations.

  “What must I do?” she asked finally in a small voice.

  “Take care of the instruments. Take the barometer in one hand, the theodolite with the other, and with another hand hold firmly to the gondola.”

  Without a word she set her teeth and somehow produced three hands and did as she was told. She was determined to blast once for all the myth of feminine weakness. The devil with the instruments; I only hoped she didn’t fall out on her head. Attention! It was time to grasp the nettle. I seized the cord of the maneouvring valve and pulled it gently. There was a gassy hissing from above. The balloon, we, the wicker car, everything settled delicately, with a dreamy slowness that contrasted markedly with the speed of the landscape racing by underneath us. Blast! I had forgotten the guide ropes. They would snag in something, or at the very least they would tilt us sideways and spill something important out of the car, perhaps Luisa and the two instruments she was still clutching to her bosom. Clambering up to the bearing ring, I rapidly detached them and watched them fall one by one into the meadow below. A large red farmhouse staggered toward us but managed to squeeze by under the car. Then a clump of trees; we managed to clear that too, but now we were sliding rapidly down an inclined plane and presently bumped into an elder bush. Luisa clung for dear life with her third hand, and in spite of the swinging of the car I successfully groped for and found the cord of the bursting valve. There was an enormous sigh overhead. The balloon folded in the centre and fell sideways. The car bumped twice more and by some miracle came to rest almost upright, supported by another elder bush that had providentially sprung into place. We were a stone’s throw from a large lake. If I had delayed another ten seconds in pulling the bursting valve we would have been in it. Where in thunder had that lake come from? I had never noticed it until this moment. Well, no matter. I clambered out and sank up to my ankles in the sodden ground.

  The thing to do, quite evidently, was to make my way backward toward the farm buildings that had passed underneath us only a few minutes before. Luisa insisted on accompanying me, although I persuaded her to give up the two instruments she was clutching like babies and leave them in the car. A light rain had begun to fall. Ahead of us I caught a gl
impse of a human figure, whether male or female it was impossible to tell, fleeing under the cover of the shrubbery. It was farther than I thought to the buildings, a good half a kilometer. The figure appeared briefly again, then split in two and revealed itself as an old woman and a boy, a fair distance ahead of us and running as fast as their legs would carry them to a kind of shed on the outskirts of the farm. Reaching this building, they disappeared into the door, which instantly shut again.

  We followed on behind them, panting a little, Luisa laughing over her own dexterity at skipping over the puddles. The building was more of a lodge or large storeroom than a shed. The door, built out of stout planks, was barred from the inside. I knocked, rattled the door, and called out in four languages, not however including Finnish, which I had never bothered to learn. Nothing. They were in there, the bucolic trolls, but they were not very hospitable. More pounding. I got a rock and pounded more efficiently. “Hey, mother! Friends. Telegraph hereabouts? Aeronauts from Sweden.”

  Silence. Little shufflings and bumpings from inside, but nothing more. The rain pattered gently but steadily on the roof of the lodge, on the grass with puddles, on ourselves.

  “Hey, mother. Young fellow. A bowl of soup would not be amiss. Paid for on delivery, of course; you could use a little cash, hey?”

  Bang, bang with the rock. This treatment was not good for even so stout a door as this collection of planks, but it couldn’t be helped. “Hey, mother inside. Open. Are you Christians or some kind of Turks?”

  This did it. A shutter near the door swung slightly and the old woman’s eye appeared. It was a red eye, with an eyebrow on top and a not very clean area of skin all around. “Who are?”

  She could mumble a few words of Swedish. The masters hereabouts were Scandinavian and the peasants Finnish. “Aeronauts,” I reiterated. “An expedition of friends.”

  “Are man?”

  “How, are man?” Thunder take her!

  The eye disappeared momentarily and appeared again, looking even more dubious than before. “Are not maybe—” and she added a Finnish word I did not recognize but which signified, no doubt, some demon or hobgoblin common to the neighborhood. What did she require me to do? Cross myself? Remove my trousers to show I had no tail?

  “No spooks. We are not that what-d’you-call-it I can’t pronounce, instead just common folk like yourself, balloon voyagers.”

  “Ballong resande?”

  “Yes, yes,” I exclaimed in my four languages, “friendly folk, in a balloon from Sweden to visit your land, and we’re getting cursedly cold out here, and so are our feet.”

  Well. At last the door opened and the old woman appeared, tremoring in most parts of her body, and behind her the boy with eyes like teacups. Luisa reassured them; I don’t mean that Luisa said anything, she only stood there looking cold, but it was precisely this quite concrete apparition of a pretty lady holding her elbows that convinced them that we were not malevolent spirits of the atmosphere or some kind of genii. “Master and Lady,” babbled the old woman, “come in to the fire.”

  “First, where is the telegraph?”

  This was totally beyond the old woman, who had probably been born sometime in the eighteenth century, but the boy understood and told us, speaking his first words, that the telegraph was in Helsingfors. Blast it, I knew the telegraph was in Helsingfors! It was precisely to Helsingfors that I wanted to telegraph. The point is, where was there a nearer telegraph, so we could send a message to Helsingfors and thence to Stockholm, and eventually to Paris, to assure our associates as well as Luisa’s mother and aunt that we had come to earth in good condition? The boy, wanting very much to be helpful, suggested that Timo might ride a horse. It was not clear who Timo was, perhaps a grown-up farmhand, or perhaps the boy was speaking of himself in the third person, and it was not clear besides where Timo would ride the horse to: all the way to Helsingfors, or was there a telegraph station at some intermediate point? A plague take the whole thing. Making oneself understood was too difficult. Let the chattering instrument be silent until tomorrow. Until that time we would cease to exist, we would hover in a limbo that was neither earth nor air, since nobody knew in which element we were. Where was this famous fire? Could it be used to dry one’s stockings?

  It could do better than that. In fact, the lodge was far too humble for Master and Lady, in the opinion of the locals. A strong young man with flaxen hair appeared, perhaps Timo, or if the boy were Timo then Timo’s father, and led us to a rustic cottage at a few hundred metres’ distance. It was no doubt a guest house they kept for visiting ballooners. Meanwhile, the boy ran off, his legs rotating like spindles, to get our bags from the balloon. The cottage had a low roof and decorations cut in scrollwork, and a large stone chimney at one end. It consisted of a single room with a low-roofed alcove, at one side of the chimney, to serve as a kitchen. A fire was laid instantly and a yellow tongue of flame began to creep through it. The revolving boy shot through the door with the bags. Would Master and Lady, inquired the old woman, still quavering slightly against the possibility that we were supernatural, like a supper, a bit? Yes, we would like supper a bit, and also something to drink, strong drink, at least Master would, and the opportunity to dry our clothes before we were seized with phthisis. Everything would be provided for, Master and Lady had only to request, the whole thing went on wheels. While the three of them, old woman, strong young man, and boy, revolved in and out of the door like figures in a Swiss clock, useful things appeared: a jug of ale with two pewter mugs, a bottle of spirits for me, a cold haunch of mutton, a Herculean cheese, along with bread, potatoes which the old woman shook up in a pan over the fire, and a jar of what appeared to be elderberry preserves. Towels which the old woman warmed in the same manner as the potatoes. And, I swear by Odin and Freya, a pair of slippers, and for Luisa soft felt boots of the kind worn by Lapps in the frozen north.

  Did Master and Lady find it good enough for their supper, this coarse fare that they ate themselves? Quite good enough, in fact luxurious. Did Master and Lady want more of something or anything? Nothing. What was provided was utterly sufficient. She would cause Timo (it was Timo, the strong young man with the flaxen hair) to bring an oil lamp, to see by. Unnecessary; the fire provided quite sufficient light. Thanks on all sides. A surplus of hospitality, but still with tremors. We are not spooks, old woman. Mortals like you, chilled by rain and warmed by fire, fond of cold mutton and cheese. The old woman was gone, but the boy lingered on for some reason. Finally he worked up his courage.

  “Flyga morgon?”

  What?

  “Soar again tomorrow?”

  Well, perhaps not tomorrow, but we would soar again in the future.

  “Take me with?”

  It was an even draw which was harder work for him, his courage or his Swedish. One or the other, or both together, made the sweat stand on his brow and his eyes blink, but his dream of soaring held him rooted there before us, in spite of the peril of mysterious retributions he could only guess at. Good night, Finn boy, dream of soaring, bide your time, the air is full of hydrogen and all the worms in China are making silk as you sleep. He was gone. We were alone. The rain pattered constantly on the shingled roof.

  Seated at the rustic table in the firelight, we ate the mutton and the cheese, drank the ale, and finished it off with elderberry preserves on coarse peasant bread. Luisa rose from her chair and wandered around the room, pausing finally before the fire. She held out her hands to the warmth. “Oh, I am wet. I am soaked to the skin.” She said this not as though reporting a physical discomfort but absently, dreamily, in the tone of one who says that she is sleepy, or that her tiredness is good. With the utmost simplicity she raised her arms to feel under the soft mass of hair behind her neck and unfasten certain snaps. Then, reaching lower along her back, she opened other fastenings. The traveling gown slipped down to reveal some expensive linen. As a gentleman I naturally looked the other way. I sat at the rustic table, turned up the ale mug and found it empty
, and stared at the door. Presently I heard her voice inquiring where the trolls had put the bath towel. It was at the end of the table, neatly folded.

  “Well, bring it here, foolish fellow.”

  Amid a great silence I did as I was told. When I turned with the towel I saw with a certain surprise that the expensive linen, all of it as far as I could tell, had arranged itself over the chair by the fire. She was still facing the fire with her back to me, one hand supporting herself on the back of the chair, a knee bent and resting on the chair seat. In the gloom of the half-lit room there was visible a slender back of a quite unbelievable paleness, the shadows of the vertebrae faintly visible along it. Petulantly she looked around to see if the towel was coming. The long brow was still calm (the hair had come down in some way, how the devil had that happened!) and the mouth was as usual held together with those two creases that signified, perhaps, the irritation of a will confronted with the intractability and rebelliousness of substance, its own included. The towel was put around her with a gesture like enfolding wings: holding the corners in my two hands I placed it onto the pale back and passed the corners around the shoulders to her waiting hands. But through a clumsy accident, a fumbling, these hands took not only the corners of the towel but my own fingers as well and drew them downward. The towel had escaped me and in place of it I felt two soft and warm prominences designed by a malicious ingenuity exactly to fit my hands, with something like two tiny fingers in the centres that stiffened to press against my own. For a second or two she remained motionless. Then, turning about so that the towel half fell from her, she pressed her forearms weakly against my chest to defend herself—herself! who was defending me?—while the pink spider mounted upward toward the pale shadow of her throat. “You … that is not what I meant … that is not what I meant you to do.” The flush continued over her face, her elbow dug into my chest, she really was angry or a part of her was. Yet all these struggles and twistings, these ostensible and ineffective efforts to escape that for all I know were quite sincere, were in evident conflict with another part of her being that she was powerless to influence. She was helpless against the thing and so was I. That is not what I meant … that is not what I meant you to do, she was whispering with her face close to mine. You are … oh, dearest beloved, that is not what I meant you to do. But her limbs seemed now to move quite for themselves, in ways she had not intended. Her last faint objection was muffled, crushed under the softness of her lips. When her mouth was freed again she had nothing to say. This femme savante, this reader of Stetigkeit und irrationale Zahlen had become phenomenally wordless, there was only the patter of raindrops on the shingles and the soft sputtering of the fire. Through some legerdemain we sank into a yielding abyss consisting of a bed from the previous century with an enormous feather quilt, along with some fresh bed linen smelling of lilac. The mouth erstwhile held so firmly was now seeking and tremulous, a flower with pale edges. How had this transformation taken place? It was magic too that resistance and softness could mingle so ingeniously, that a point of coral so delicately gathered on the faintly pendulous hemisphere, almost too fragile to touch, was the key when brushed ever so lightly of the power that drew us together in a soft convulsion, downward and ever downward, while we swam feebly, the motions of our limbs only carrying us farther from the surface and deeper into this sea of warm and fantastic shapes until the deepest and most secret shadow parted and drew to itself, by some miracle, exactly that seeking part of me that yearned so heartfeltly to be enclosed in exactly those pulsating rings of hot honey that quickened and tightened about it, in a manner almost alarming, until at last it—she, I, everything, I am not sure exactly what—burst into its cataclysmic and astonishingly prolonged expostulation of surrender. The storm passed, we lay finally half-tangled in each other’s limbs, knowing neither ourselves nor each other and having become a single oblivion. The fire went out, that Finnish cottage grew terribly cold, thank God for the featherbed.