“Oh, you!” She tore away and fastened the dressing gown up to her very neck, furious. “You take everything wrong! I exhaust myself trying to be pleasant and charming, I try to bring some sweetness and light into our existence, and you spoil everything by reducing it to the—to the—animal.”
She stormed away into the kitchen to find her coffee, and I followed. Now I tried to arrange my face. No chance of making it affectionate, let alone seductive, but at least I could behave in a civilized manner and make it clear to her that I appreciated her efforts even if they only succeeded in arousing the animal in me. It was a quite harmless animal really, liked a sugar lump now and then, and appreciated being stroked.
“There’s no chance of finding what I want in Milan. You can come back to Paris with me. I can go on with my work, and you can come to rue de Rennes and hold the wires while I solder them. You know,” I added recklessly, “the sun sets in Paris too.” As soon as I said that, I wished I hadn’t, because if the sun ever set in rue de Rennes I would never again be able to do any work there, her perfume and her invisible feminine necromancy would permeate the place and I would never be able to think of anything there but that.
“We’ve been here only five days.”
“How long did you expect to stay?”
“Five weeks. Or five months.”
I snorted.
“You didn’t find it pleasant then?”
Ha! Stresa was already in the past tense. “I find it pleasant as can be. It’s only that—to be perfectly candid—after a time it is necessary to get back to the serious business of life.”
“Thank you for your exquisite candour. And what might that be—the serious business of life?”
I was a little at a loss. It hardly seemed convincing to tell her that it was some wire wound around a pair of sticks. “May I beg to remind you that it was you who originally initiated our relationship, and on what grounds? That you wished to improve your mind by devoting it to difficult and intellectual matters, you could scarcely control your enthusiasm for aeromagnetism in those days and you begged and pleaded that I would give you a list of books to study, whereas as soon as you had enticed me into that den of she-serpents in Quai d’Orléans—”
I paused, and after a moment she said almost calmly, “What?”
“It was you who began to turn me into something else, and with a fair success—something that was not what I am and must be, something that interfered with and in fact made impossible the very work, the very intellectual lucubrations that had caused you to admire me so fervently in the first place—a Lovelace, a Parisian coxcomb, an escort to café concerts and a wearer of frock coats …”
“Go on, go on.”
“That’s all.”
“Then go!” she burst out, actually stamping her foot. “I notice that you always become intellectual, for a few days, just after your affections have been satisfied. Later perhaps you will come back with that moony look in your eyes, and want another bonbon so that you can be gratified and go back to your soldering iron. I don’t care for the bargain. Garofana, get out! Vai! Vai! Vai al inferno!” (The serving woman had come in.) “You speak of the way I behaved at the Musée Carnavalet. What kind of a spectacle do you think you provided? As soon as you caught my eye you were smitten all over with lechery. I could see it from ten rows away.” (Could this be true?) “And your pretence that you could take any interest in my mind! It was, ‘Come to my hotel, mademoiselle, and I can give you an, um, list of books.’” (I had said nothing of the kind.) “I can tell you that I’ve had enough of the whole business! J’en ai marre! Go, go, I tell you. Take your lofty intellect, your Hyperborean erotomania, and your stockings, which smell, incidentally, and go back to playing with your copper wires. Go! If you hurry you can catch the afternoon train for Paris. There might even be one for Stockholm, that would even be better.”
She followed me around, pointing out my shortcomings to me as I jammed everything in my valise. For example, she reproached me for leaving her. “You’re just like all men! As soon as you get what you want it’s adieu without so much as a glance behind you! Why don’t you leave me some money? You can put it on the mantelpiece. Five francs, I believe, is the customary sum. And be sure to relate all the details to your gentlemen friends.” (I didn’t have any gentlemen friends except for Waldemer, who was terribly straitlaced and would refuse to listen to anything of the sort.) “You don’t even know how to pack a valise! You’re wrinkling everything. You’re a ridiculous puppet, and a stupid one besides, a Punch, you need to be beaten by a policeman.”
The valise and I were finally in the carriage, going down the road. It was a cool clear day and I felt better, even good. This was probably the end of it, I expected. There are some things that, once having been said, cannot be taken back. For example, “I don’t love you” can be taken back, but not “Your stockings smell.” So much the better! I longed for my rented rooms in rue de Rennes, for my solitude, for the clean and chaste intoxication of thought. Milan was rather gloomy with the grey haze of November hanging over it, but it didn’t matter because I wasn’t staying there. Vetturino, Stazione Centrale! The crystal roof over the station was black with soot, I noticed now. It is possible to be much more observant when one is alone and the thoughts unclouded. I drove off a porter who wanted my valise by threatening to dismember him. “One ticket to Paris, second class.”
“By way of Domodossola?”
“I don’t care! Parigi! Parigi!”
The first thing I did after leaving off the valise in my lodgings was to go to Pertuis et fils in Avenue du Maine and buy a roll of number 36 annealed copper wire, which I insulated myself by dipping it into shellac with a roller device I had contrived. Then I set to work to build the frame for the antenna basket, which took me several days because I wanted it just right, and because I was a natural philosopher and not a carpenter and had to compensate for my lack of skill with infinite pains. It was to be not only a laboratory model but also, I hoped, a serviceable instrument sturdy enough to be used in the field and even taken aloft. The upright consisted of a stout dowel of oak, and the cross bar made of a batten of the same wood was set into the upright through a mortise. Tiny holes were bored in these two members (the wire was only five mils in diameter) and a hundred and eighty metres of wire, enough to reach from the room where I was working to the Luxembourg Gardens, was wound through the holes and tightened into a flat diamond shape. That part of the cylindrical upright extending below the antenna basket was held in two oaken bearings and provided with an azimuth ring and a handle so that it could be turned conveniently. Then came the problem of transferring the waves from this rotating antenna to the Marconi rectifying apparatus. As I had promised myself in Stresa, this was a simple engineering problem. I had to go out for more materials, once again to Pertuis: two brass slip rings of the kind used in electrostatic apparatus and a pair of thin graphite bars to make contact with them. The theory of this part of the work was rudimentary but the mechanics were exacting. I had to fabricate two little boxes of mica to hold the graphite bars, with tiny springs in them to apply pressure to the slip rings. This, along with the business of mounting the bar holders on the apparatus and aligning them exactly in place, took several days. I had just begun connecting the lead wires to the springs inside the mica boxes when the concièrge knocked on the door. It was the first time she had taken notice of my existence since Theodor had paid his little visit of honour on me several weeks before. Without looking around I called for her to enter.
“Pardon, monsieur. Y a une dame.” “What kind of a lady?”
“A foreigner.”
“Well, I am a foreigner too. What else?”
“Well dressed. Enfin, c’est une dame.”
“Well, show the infernal nuisance in.”
She disappeared and Luisa metamorphosed in her place. She was well dressed, it was true, but in a different manner now, a woolen skirt and jacket in the English style, with a simple shirtwaist and mannish
tie. Her hair seemed to be shorter. It still ended in a soft coil hanging to one side, but now it came only a little below the ear. Her face was even paler than usual, and she seemed thin.
“Am I disturbing you?”
“Yes, but come in.”
Her manner was different too, not the fashionable young lady of the Île Saint-Louis and not the sibylline enchantress of the yellow room. It was a third Luisa. She was smooth, cool, intelligent, polite, and even a little distant, while at the same time she made herself thoroughly at home. Everything inside the English clothes corresponded exactly to the clothes themselves. Her yellow gloves came off and she put her umbrella in the stand herself so as not to disturb me. Her voice was controlled and lower than before. She addressed me in the formal second person when she spoke French and called me nothing at all in English, thus avoiding the intimacy of the first name. We talked amicably for a quarter of an hour while I went on working.
“It’s been so long since we’ve seen each other.” (It was about a week.) “You know, I’m afraid I behaved frightfully in Stresa. Of course your work is important. I was a silly vain thing to object to your coming back to Paris. You were quite right; it was originally to help you in your work that I became your friend, and not to hinder you. And I’m afraid that in the heat of discussion I said some rather—unkind things about your character.”
This was noble of her. She probably expected me to reciprocate by taking back the things I had said about her in the heat of discussion. But I didn’t feel that the fact I had told her she was a nincompoop was really equivalent to the remark she had made about my stockings. However, all this seemed behind me now—behind us. There was a kind of intimacy we could never enter into again and perhaps it was all for the best, since it had produced in her the English suit and a new and more intelligent manner—and if I made no apologies I refrained from stirring up the coals of old conflagrations, confining myself to polite small talk as I went on connecting up the wires. I even made conventional inquiries.
“And your aunt? And your mother?”
“Well, thank you.”
“And your uncle in Pondicherry?”
“All well.” She looked around the room, smoothed her hair, and said briskly, “May I make you some tea?”
“Please do.”
“No,” she reflected on second thought, “I won’t. These—roles, you know. Are so conventional. You might make me tea if you like, later, when you’re not working. What is it that you are doing, please? And might I not help you in some way?”
“I’ve just finished soldering the lead wires onto these springs, which in turn make contact with these two bars of graphite, which as you can see slide back and forth in their holders.”
“Bars of graphite?”
“Yes.” Carefully I mounted the mica holding boxes into position before the two slip rings. “You see, in order for the Marconi rectifying apparatus to receive impulses, it is necessary for the waves to pass from the antenna basket—hereto the condenser and coil—here. The two can’t be connected directly, because the antenna basket must rotate. And so I’m arranging this system of graphite bars and slip rings, in order to collect the waves from the antenna and direct them to the receiving apparatus.”
“Why must the antenna basket rotate?”
“In order to determine the direction from which the Hertzian waves are coming.”
“But what is sending the Hertzian waves?”
“The clouds! The clouds bumping and grinding together produce electricity exactly like the static generators you are undoubtedly familiar with from your excellent education.”
“And why do you want to determine their direction?”
“Primo, if aerostatic phenomena are taking place in the atmosphere, in order to study them it is first necessary to know where they are. Secundo, I am interested in constructing a directional receiving apparatus for its possible use in prophesying the weather. Tertio, scientific knowledge of any sort is an end in itself.”
She addressed herself smoothly to the antenna basket, examining it carefully for the first time, and yet as though it were something she was not going to be intimidated by and which her mind was perfectly capable of mastering.
“And the Hertzian waves strike on—which side?”
“On either side.”
“Then—it seems to me”—she was still thinking—”the apparatus will be incapable of differentiating between sides. Because a wave striking the antenna from the north—let us say—will produce exactly the same effect in the apparatus as one striking it from the south.”
Brava, Luisa. This problem of reciprocality was the one that still bothered me, although I was thinking about it and considering a number of solutions. She had walked up to the thing, looked at it without even touching it, and instantly I perceived its chief limitation in its present form. I might have found this intuition a little annoying, instead I chose to admire her.
“In a single observation this might be a handicap. With several observations from a moving platform, however, a vector may perhaps be established which will make it possible to determine a unilateral source for the waves.”
“Ah … since the deflection caused by the motion of the platform itself would be unilateral—to the left, let us say, if the motion were to the right—and this would be inconsistent with a reciprocal wave coming from the rear of the observer.”
“Exactly.” Thunder take it, there was also a mind here in addition to intuition.
But she showed no signs of being pleased with herself; she was still cool, crisp, and detached. Having clairvoyantly seen through to the chief flaw of the antenna basket, she now permitted herself to touch it, setting her well-manicured fingers onto it lightly, with care not to bend the wires or damage their shellac insulation.
“I can hardly believe that the clouds send out waves you can hear in such an apparatus.”
“If you would like to wait, you could hear some. With good luck I’ll be finished in a half an hour. There’s a storm building up in the direction of Rambouillet.”
“I would adore hearing some. But I would prefer not merely to wait for a half an hour. Surely there’s something I can do to help.”
She was so brisk and intelligent, so businesslike in her cambric shirtwaist, that in the end I let her do it. I showed her the problem of shaping the ends of the graphite bars to the curvature of the slip rings, a task for which at least three and perhaps four hands were useful. “The bars must fit snugly onto the slip rings, otherwise electricity from the waves will be lost. The bars are flat and the slip rings curved. I will wind fine emery paper around the slip rings—thus and hold it with my fingertips. Then, as I rotate the vertical shaft of the antenna basket, you must press the graphite bars firmly onto the rings. The tension of the springs is not enough. The emery paper will grind away the ends of the bars in the exact shape of the rings. You see?”
“Very well.” She grasped the bars with her thin fingers and pressed them inward. With her hands stretched out, the sleeve of the cambric shirtwaist fell down over one wrist, and she removed the other to push the sleeve up. A black smudge appeared on the cambric.
“Why is this messy black substance necessary?”
“Graphite is self-lubricating, and is an excellent conductor of electricity.”
She examined her fingers briefly and went back to the task. I turned the shaft with one hand and held the emery paper with the other, she pushed on the bars. The graphite was hard and it was slow work.
“Have you noticed, we both have long fingers. I can’t stand people who have short fingers. There’s a woman who comes to Quai d’Orléans, her name is Lucienne de Portoriche but I call her Madame Gecko. She’s an impossible person, really. Darting at you with little chops of her head, almost as though she had a tongue a yard long and were catching insects.”
I didn’t know Madame Gecko, so I made no comment.
“Have you ever noticed that each person you meet, if you look more closely, resembles
an animal?”
“Which animal?”
“That’s it, you see. Each person resembles a different animal. One is a camel, another a hedgehog, someone else a flitterbat. Chauve-souris is a funny word. In Italian it’s pipistrello; I like that better.”
This chattering, or demonstration in comparative linguistics, was not really necessary to our task. However, she was so smooth and helpful in other ways that I decided to take it in good grace. To remain silent in the face of such an elegant effort at conversation would seem curmudgeonly.
“And I?”
“A lynx.” She almost smiled here, caught herself, and resumed a grave intensity of expression, with her mouth even drawn a little together in her concentration on the task. I examined myself in a mental mirror. The rather high brow and slightly outstanding ears, the bristly hair at the temples that would not lie flat, the somewhat prickly mustachio with the corresponding tuft under the lip. If I had been younger and less experienced I might have reddened. I decided not to tell her what animal she reminded me of, because I suspected she wouldn’t appreciate it, although why she thought I would appreciate being equated with a slinky marauder of the forest I didn’t know. Getting a little impatient at the task by this time (my left hand was at an awkward angle and getting tired), I rotated the shaft more rapidly. Just at that moment she moved her hand to get a better grip on the graphite bar, and the fragile substance broke under her fingers.
“But it’s brittle.”
“Of course.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I didn’t think it was necessary for me to give you a lecture on the physical properties of various elements and compounds before you helped me in a simple task.”
Her lips tightened. But she didn’t say, “Are you going to commence that again?” Instead, still calm, she said, “What must we do now?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Pertuis is closed for the day. I can go there tomorrow, at ten o’clock in the morning, and buy another bar of graphite, if he has one in stock.”
The Balloonist Page 17
