Vango

by Timothee de Fombelle

  The memories gave him butterflies.

  His final voyage had only lasted three weeks, but that was when it had all started. Happiness and fear. They had made each other promises, the only promises in his life that Vango hadn’t kept, and which were now an open wound.

  Today, those times seemed as distant to him as the memory of his island. He was a criminal hunted down in the country he had made his home for the past four years. And now he’d had no choice but to take refuge in the belly of this whale where nobody would come to pull him out. Vango felt ashamed of not having confessed to Eckener why he was on the run. By hiding the reason behind his arrival, he felt as if he were deceiving the commander and abusing his trust.

  But he knew that nobody would ever have let him on board, even as a stowaway, if they’d known about the crime of which he stood accused.

  Eckener was at his usual post: the starboard window of the large flight deck.

  He was staring beyond the empty expanse of ground at four sets of car headlights coming toward them out of the darkness. The helmsman had just asked for a few more moments to rectify a problem with the balance. Eckener had granted the request because he took pleasure in the thought that these few late cars would also be able to witness takeoff. Commander Eckener felt extremely grateful for the enthusiasm that prompted hundreds of people to rise before dawn, simply in the hope of seeing the Graf Zeppelin take flight.

  He sat down in his small wooden armchair, his elbow resting on the frame of the open window, and discreetly took from his pocket a crumpled piece of paper, which he glanced at once again. It was an article that had been cut out of a French newspaper. He had read it at a table at the Hotel Kurgarten, where it had been left behind by a traveler. For three days, he hadn’t shown it to anyone. The article was about a sordid incident in Paris. A murder. A photograph of Vango illustrated the three columns.

  Eckener had no intention of keeping his young passenger on board for long. As soon as he’d seen him, sleeping like a cherub on the banquette in the cabin, the evidence was clear: this child wasn’t guilty.

  But although Eckener was convinced of his innocence, he had less confidence in the courts. Vango wasn’t like other boys. His whole life was a mystery. There were shadowy aspects to him, which the justice system wouldn’t appreciate.

  He was in danger of the gallows.

  Eckener intended to drop him off at the end of the voyage, in South America, where he could start a new life. A one-way ticket to the unknown. A strange destiny . . . he thought. With some people on this earth, we’ll never know where they’ve come from, or where they’re going to.

  The cars were only two hundred meters away now. The tooting of their horns could be heard. The commander folded the newspaper article again, stood up, and told his captain to give the signal for departure.

  “I’d rather cross the mountains before ten o’clock this morning. After that, we don’t know what kind of risk we’d be running. I don’t want the Graf Zeppelin grazing the edelweiss.”

  “Yes, sir! The helmsman can finish regulating the ballast after takeoff. We’re ready.”

  From the cockpit, bellpulls served to alert the mechanics of the five engines.

  To the rear, among the passengers, every window was full.

  Down on the ground, a crowd surrounded the airship.

  The crew started emptying the water bags in order to lighten the balloon. The ropes yanked at the arms still keeping the airship on the ground. The water that was let out showered the onlookers, who gasped in surprise. Hugo Eckener assumed his position to call out, “Chocks away!” This was the signal to drop everything and commence takeoff.

  Just then, the four cars all braked at the same time. Fifteen armed men got out. Doors slammed, and, through a megaphone, the order rang out: “Stop! Commander Eckener, remain on the ground. Orders from the minister of the interior. Don’t move!”

  Eckener gritted his teeth.

  He didn’t need a megaphone to bellow from the window: “I have all the permission I need! Switzerland and Italy have just radioed in their consent!”

  “The flight will go ahead,” insisted the nasal voice, “but two places have been requisitioned for surveillance and security purposes. Open the door! I am ordering you!”

  Commander Eckener let out a string of swearwords that would be impossible to repeat here, then gave a long sigh and said, “Open up for them. We’ll make them sleep in the drains.”

  He had a ladder brought out of the hangar.

  When the two agents climbed up, Eckener recognized Officer Max Grund and his associate Heiner. Once the maneuver was completed, the doors were sealed again.

  “Let her go!” the commander ordered.

  And the balloon rose up amid cheers. The engines started up one after the other, drowned out by the sheer volume of the zeppelin. Only the windows of the gondola were lit up at the front. The rest of the balloon formed a violet haze in the darkness.

  Everything grows small, Lady Drummond-Hay wrote in beautiful handwriting in her notebook. The dream has just begun. Lake Constance is nothing but a mirror in a bedroom where the lights have been switched off. We’re leaving.

  Otto the chef was weeping against the kitchen tiles.

  Looking worried, Captain Lehmann watched the police cars disappear into the distance, little luminous dots in the middle of the night.

  The fat businessman was singing opera arias at the top of his lungs in the corridor, near to the kitchen, as he inhaled the aroma of bread rolls in the oven: “Ah, dear south wind, blow once more! My lass longs for me. . . .”

  “Did you wish to speak with me, gentlemen?” Eckener asked.

  “Yes, Commander. We’re not just here to check on your itinerary. We have received some confidential information.”

  Eckener didn’t move. Max Grund fixed him with a fearsome look.

  “Commander Eckener, there is a stowaway on board this zeppelin.”

  “Only one? I think I can see two of you, gentlemen!” said Commander Eckener, staring at each of them in turn. “Mr. Kubis will show you where to sleep. It’s the only place we’ve got left. You’ll have to forgive the smells, but we need to store our trash and the dirty water from the balloon in those bags, so as not to lose weight. . . . We don’t throw anything away. Which is my only reason for keeping you fellows on board!”

  Hugo Eckener’s bad jokes fell flat. They didn’t suit him. He was talking too much, and he knew it.

  Who could know about Vango? How was it possible? Eckener didn’t understand anything anymore. Max Grund was watching him very closely, as if reading his thoughts.

  “Mr. Eckener . . .”

  The officer didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence. The jovial businessman passed by, singing again from Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman.

  “Papam papaaaaaaam!”

  The singer stopped.

  “Aren’t any of you hungry?”

  He directed this question at Officer Heiner, who curtly requested that he return to the seating area.

  “Ooh, are we being secretive?” The man winked. And he let out a guffaw of laughter as he pushed open the door.

  “I demand complete freedom to search the zeppelin,” said Grund, addressing the commander through gritted teeth. “You’ll provide us with a man to act as our guide.”

  “Why give us permission for takeoff?” asked Hugo Eckener.

  “It’s more difficult to escape at an altitude of three hundred and fifty meters, Commander. And I believe we have enough time . . .”

  Grund glanced at his watch.

  “Seventy-two hours before landing on the Brazilian coast.”

  Just then, Kubis, the headwaiter, appeared.

  “Show these people to their room,” said Eckener.

  He indicated the compartment he was thinking of.

  Kubis looked surprised.

  “Really?”

  When Eckener gave the go-ahead, Kubis took a clothespin out of his vest and popped it on his nose.


  “Follow me, gentlemen,” he announced, flashing a perfect smile.

  Grund and Heiner’s mission was more complicated than it seemed.

  The main problem was the presence of seventeen passengers and thirty-nine crew members on board. How were the officers going to spot a stowaway among the dozens of people they could run into anywhere in the balloon? But Grund was extremely smart and his memory faultless. In just a few hours, he had identified the faces of the fifty-six people on board.

  He numbered them so as not to be encumbered with names. Number 1 was Eckener, and Number 56 was Lady Drummond-Hay. This obsession with numbering was something Max Grund would hold on to during the ten years that would lead him toward the peak of power and the depth of horror.

  When you get rid of names, everything becomes simpler. There are no feelings involved.

  Most impressive of all, Grund had managed to organize his manhunt in a harmonious fashion, without disturbing the passengers. He had politely explained to them that his mission was to study the security procedures for the great zeppelin of the future, the LZ 129, currently under construction in Friedrichshafen.

  But the members of the crew were aware of his real purpose.

  The Gestapo inspector treated them with no respect.

  A mechanic pointed out that Grund and Heiner hadn’t allocated numbers to themselves. So in secret they were known as Zero and Zero-Zero.

  The officers began by searching the cabins and all the command areas to the fore of the airship, then they were taken down into the keel.

  The gondola for passengers and pilots represented only a modest part of the zeppelin. You could travel for hundreds of meters along walkways in the rest of the balloon, down into the intestines of the airship. There, in that enormous space, could be found the tents pitched for the crew, the five tons of water in reserve, and the nineteen small balloons made out of cow guts containing the hydrogen that enabled the zeppelin to fly.

  Max Grund was holding a plan of the airship. He was conducting his research with the greatest care. He had immediately understood the balloon’s structure and was able to spot the possible hiding places.

  The two officers were guided by Ernst Fischbach, the apprentice helmsman and former kitchen boy. Ernst had started work on board the Graf as a cabin boy. He had only been away from his plane for one year, to learn English in Middlesex at the home of a Mr. Semphill, an airplane pilot and occasional passenger on the airship.

  “You’ll find your stowaway, if he’s here.”

  Ernst said this with some regret. He had nothing against stowaways. He knew that if he hadn’t been accepted on the balloon, he too would have found a way of sneaking on board. The urge to fly was too strong and the zeppelin too handsome.

  “What have you got against him, exactly?”

  “Who?” asked Heiner.

  “The stowaway.”

  “Be quiet,” said Grund.

  The officers were approaching the engines, which clung to the sides of the balloon like skiffs. Access to each engine involved a delicate maneuver down a ladder. Then you had to step across the void. And on this early morning above the Swiss Alps, that void consisted of peaks and glaciers bristling like a fakir’s table. Grund had the bright idea of sending Zero-Zero.

  “Are you sure?” Agent Heiner gulped.

  “Quite,” snapped Grund.

  Heiner opened the trapdoor and braved the wind as he began his descent down the ladder. Grund and Ernst watched him. Barely had he reached the engine than he glanced beneath him and hurriedly climbed back up again.

  “There’s somebody in there!” he shouted.

  Max Grund turned triumphantly to the young Ernst.

  “We haven’t wasted any time!”

  Now that they were this close to it, the engine was extremely noisy.

  “I can’t really hear what you’re saying!” shouted Ernst.

  “He’s just found somebody!”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I’m telling you that somebody is hidden in that engine!”

  “And my answer is: of course!”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “It’s lucky there is someone — you wouldn’t want the engines turning all by themselves!”

  Max Grund’s expression changed.

  “There are two mechanics who alternate day and night shifts in the gondola for each of the five engines,” Ernst explained. “So we have ten on board for that job. Which makes an awful lot of stowaways. Your bosses will be very happy!”

  “Search the engine and tell the man to show himself!” Zero called out furiously to Zero-Zero.

  Heiner climbed back down and entered the hull, and a few seconds later, they saw the smiling face of Number 47 appear: Eugen Bentele, a former worker at Maybach’s, and an onboard mechanic since 1931. They didn’t find anything else either in that engine or in the four remaining engines. But, because of all the noise and as a thank-you for his efforts, the sound of small portable engines continued throbbing in Officer Heiner’s ears for several hours afterward.

  The atmosphere in the seating area was calm and muffled. Some people were reading. Many were peering out the windows. Others were playing cards. The fat singer was snoring in an armchair. The room was agreeably warm. The women had thrown on traveling scarves, nothing more. A Frenchman, who was half deaf, complained about the way his fellow cardplayers kept standing up all the time to admire the view.

  “Stupid tourists,” he grumbled.

  The view was extraordinary. A frosted sun had risen to the left of the balloon, like an orange sorbet. The snowy mountains gave off a pinky haze. The zeppelin was playing a gentle game of leapfrog over the peaks and passes. In the distance, Mont Blanc watched over its immaculate flock of sheep.

  “My God,” said an old man with a goatee, leaning out the window. “I can hardly believe what I’m seeing.”

  Behind him, the opera-singing businessman opened his eyes and yawned. He stood up and looked out the window too, but his gaze was toward the rear of the balloon, to the country the zeppelin had just left behind. When the old man caught his eye, moments later, it looked to him as though the jovial singer had been crying.

  “Do you . . . ? Do you need anything?”

  The well-fed businessman was startled.

  “Me?”

  “There are tears in your eyes.”

  The singer burst out laughing.

  “I slept like a sea lion! That’s all! I just need time to wake up properly. And while we’re on the subject of sea lions,” he went on, rubbing his eyes, “did you know that in the Berlin Zoo . . .”

  The singing businessman insisted on telling a ridiculous story about a penguin and a sea lion, a story he narrated in a very loud voice, so that even the deaf bridge player would be able to get the joke. But it was met with weary sighs.

  By midday, the airship was already flying over the city of Florence.

  Eckener walked into the passenger cabin.

  Kubis was setting the tables for lunch. Down below, the Tuscan sun was making the rooftops glisten. The headwaiter had opened the windows and put a gentle waltz to play on the gramophone. Nearly all the passengers were in their bedrooms.

  Since leaving the mountains, the zeppelin was flying at its cruising altitude: three hundred meters was low enough to hear the children shouting in the squares and the peals of bells, and to see the Florentines coming out into their courtyards to watch the ship passing overhead. The music from the gramophone accompanied this spectacle.

  Eckener stood in the doorway to the cabin. He was struck by the contrast between a perfect moment and the anguish he’d been feeling since this morning. He knew that they would find Vango. He had no means of warning the stowaway about what was in store for him.

  “Kubis.”

  “Yes, Commander?”

  “Tell those two men from the police that they can take lunch with the passengers.”

  The headwaiter nodded.

  Eckener wanted to bu
y some time. He was the one who had given Vango the idea of boarding the zeppelin as a stowaway in the first place. The idea risked proving fatal for the young man. Once he was discovered, he would be handed over to the French police, who would immediately recognize him.

  Who could have tipped off the German authorities? It remained a complete mystery.

  The devil himself seemed to be after this child.

  Two hours later, the guests were sitting around the tables and finishing off their meals. They had been served duck with white wine from the Jura. Max Grund was sitting silently at one table. He had forbidden his assistant to join in the meal, so that surveillance on the comings and goings in the keel could continue.

  Eckener had been hoping to get to Vango at lunchtime, but he had to give up on that idea when he saw Grund sitting alone. The commander had therefore sat down in a corner with a cup of coffee and was answering the passengers’ questions in a friendly fashion.

  He was telling them how, for example, in 1915 during the war, a military zeppelin had been struck down at Ghent, in Belgium, above an orphanage run by nuns. A soldier named Alfred Mueller had fallen through the roof and landed in the bed of a young nun.

  “Heavens above!” exclaimed Lady Drummond-Hay.

  “The nun had just gotten out of bed. And soldier Mueller swore the sheets were still warm.”

  Only Max Grund failed to join in the laughter.

  “And that’s why we don’t have parachutes on board,” the commander concluded. “I believe in providence.”

  “Ooh, and it encourages all sorts of liaisons,” added the opera singer, drooling.

  Lady Drummond-Hay rolled her eyes. She was appalled by how vulgar this man was. From the first hours of the flight, all the passengers had been avoiding his company.

  Only the old gentleman with a goatee, who was sure he’d seen the opera-singing businessman crying, was keeping a close eye on him as he tried to see through his clownlike mask.

  Kubis was getting ready to serve a second round of coffee when a shout rang out from the front of the airship.