Vango

by Timothee de Fombelle

“Yes.”

  “Everybody has dirty little secrets, Commander. Even heroes.”

  “I am not a hero,” said Eckener.

  “Well, you certainly won’t stay one for long in the eyes of the people. I get the impression that . . .”

  Ever since takeoff, Grund had sensed that Captain Eckener was bothered by this business with the stowaway. The policeman had promised himself to make two arrests instead of one, by unmasking Eckener at the same time as his main target.

  “Come on, then. Show me what you’ve got to hide, Commander.”

  “I’m no hero,” Eckener said again.

  His voice was trembling.

  There was the sound of broken glass under his feet.

  Max Grund lowered the light. There was a broken bottle. Wine was leaking onto the floor and soaking Eckener’s shoes as he held another bottle by the neck. He seemed to be having some difficulty standing upright. The stench of alcohol was overpowering.

  Grund looked disgusted.

  “The old heroes are the best. . . .”

  “I’m not —”

  “So that’s your dirty little secret,” Max Grund said, cutting him short. “Fortunately, there’s a new Germany coming whose idols are not old drunkards who hide away to hit the booze!”

  He shone his light over the wine store. Vango was just behind, invisible. Grund spat on the floor and turned around.

  He went back down the ladder, annoyed that he hadn’t captured his prey but satisfied with his discovery. Eckener’s file was growing heavier by the day.

  “I am not a hero,” repeated the commander, staggering along behind him.

  Hugo Eckener had just paid the price of Vango’s freedom with his own honor.

  Two hours later, the stowaway was still there, waiting for the mysterious signal. He’d wound the rope around himself. The zeppelin was silent.

  Vango hadn’t left his hiding place. Not even the engines were making a sound. The hydrogen balloons were gently pushing at the airship’s canvas, making the seams creak and groan. It must have been midnight.

  Down below, after spending quite some time alone, Eckener had returned to the seating area, where a few passengers were still up despite the late hour. Captain Lehmann was standing next to him.

  “Commander, we’ve lost a considerable amount of time by not flying over France. So I don’t understand this new detour.”

  “I’ve told you, Captain. We’re making this detour to thank Dr. Andersen for saving our chef’s life.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Andersen. “I wouldn’t want to . . .”

  Dr. Andersen was the old gentleman with the goatee whose eyes didn’t miss a trick.

  “You’ve always dreamed of seeing Stromboli, so now you’re going to set eyes on the volcano for yourself!”

  “I . . .”

  “Doctor, haven’t you always dreamed of seeing Stromboli?”

  “Of course, Commander, but . . .”

  “You heard that, Captain — he’s always dreamed of it.”

  As a matter of fact, Dr. Andersen had dreamed of and was curious about everything imaginable: one life just wasn’t enough to satisfy all his interests. If someone had suggested setting off that very night to find out whether the North and South Poles were in fact flat, he would have risen to the challenge.

  Captain Lehmann simply didn’t understand his boss anymore.

  At ten o’clock that evening, just as the airship should have steered full west, level with Sardinia, Hugo Eckener had decided to hold his southward course in order to get close to the volcano of Stromboli. This kind of whim was so uncharacteristic of Eckener that Lehmann wondered what was going on. He had found the commander, just before, washing the soles of his shoes. And there was still a concerning whiff of wine about his person, even after his trip to the crew’s bathroom.

  “We’re going to arrive in Brazil eight hours late!” the captain had implored.

  “Lehmann, I’m just asking you to obey.”

  The zeppelin had been holding this new course for some time when one of the pilots walked into the saloon.

  “Stromboli, Commander.”

  The passengers who were still awake were authorized to go up onto the bridge to witness this phenomenon.

  They called it the lighthouse of the Mediterranean. For millennia, it had lit up once or twice an hour. The reddish glow of Stromboli, more than a thousand meters high, could be seen from far away at nighttime.

  Four years earlier, a gigantic eruption had proved fatal, but Stromboli had now resumed its innocent rhythm. It was a volcano island in the middle of the sea, with a few brave fishermen’s houses on its slopes.

  “It’s magnificent,” said Dr. Andersen when the orange glow dissipated.

  “If you’d like,” answered Eckener.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “If you’d like, then that’s what we’ll do.”

  “Do what, Commander?”

  “The doctor wishes to get closer to the volcano,” Eckener told the pilot.

  Andersen appeared to be choking.

  Captain Lehmann came over.

  “Commander, it’s time to steer to the starboard side.”

  “Not yet,” said Eckener.

  “We shouldn’t get too close to the volcano, with the amount of explosive gas we’ve got on board.”

  “I know better than you what we’ve got on board. Go to bed, Captain.”

  Twenty minutes later, Eckener gave the order for the engines to cut out.

  He had the balloon’s horn sound three times.

  Vango sprang to his feet.

  The signal.

  The passengers came out of their cabins in dressing gowns. The crew members emerged from their dormitories. They all ran into one another in the corridors and wondered what was going on.

  Commander Eckener’s good mood quickly put them at ease. Transformed into a circus ringmaster, he clapped his hands and called out, “Everyone over to the port-side windows. Roll up! The show is about to begin!”

  Lady Drummond-Hay hadn’t been able to find her silk slippers. So she was barefoot, curled up in an armchair in front of the bay window.

  “Port side! The show is about to begin!”

  Everybody was peering into the darkness, which was unrelieved by any sign of a glimmer. The businessman was humming circus music.

  Next to him, Dr. Andersen was feeling extremely embarrassed about being the cause of all this upheaval.

  “But I didn’t ask for any of this,” he kept saying, wide-eyed behind his spectacles.

  Otto the chef, with bruises on his face, was walking around with a basket of warm brioches, which he was offering to the passengers. If he’d been dying in the trenches of 1916, Otto would still have made pastries and strudels.

  When he came close to Lady Drummond-Hay, he wanted to avoid catching her eye. So he looked down as he held out the basket. His eyes fell on her two dainty bare feet, and when he sensed his heart racing, he realized he wasn’t over her yet.

  “You’re going to enjoy this,” said Eckener, passing Max Grund, who hadn’t removed his black raincoat since the airship had taken off.

  Grund didn’t respond. He was in a bad mood. He’d slept very little because the stench in his room was so appalling.

  Captain Lehmann was feeling moderately reassured. Eckener had finally stopped the balloon at a reasonable distance from the volcano. There was no immediate danger.

  Now, with the engines and lights switched off, the zeppelin was perfectly silent. Everyone was waiting for the big event. A few minutes went by in total darkness, only partially spoiled by the fat singer’s bad jokes.

  When the volcano finally lit up again, and a huge “Oooooh!” went up from everyone in the balloon, it might also have been possible to discern, standing on top of the zeppelin, with the starry sky above him, the figure of Vango emblazoned in red.

  Glowing swallows flew like sparks around him.

  The air was mild.

  Vango had just r
ealized where he was.

  He fixed the end of the rope to a snap hook on the dorsal spine of the airship and proceeded to lower himself down the length of the balloon canvas by letting out the rope.

  Down below, in the seating area, the chief helmsman came to see Eckener.

  “The balloon is losing height. There’s ground below us. We need to start up the engines, Commander.”

  “Let’s take our time — there’s no hurry.”

  “We’re less than a hundred meters from the ground.”

  “Let us descend to twenty-five meters,” ordered Eckener. “At twenty-five meters, you can fire up the engines again.”

  “That’s too tight a margin,” Lehmann pointed out.

  “You’re the one who’s being uptight tonight, Captain.”

  As he said this, Eckener tottered a bit.

  The captain made as if to help him, but Eckener righted himself.

  “Sorry. Just a bit of fatigue. Forgive me, Captain. I was rude to you.”

  In reality, he had just seen Vango’s shadow passing vertically in front of the window.

  Vango had commenced his descent on the right-hand side. Nobody else had noticed him.

  A minute later, the sounder announced that they were at twenty-six meters. The throbbing of the engines kicked in again. The seating-area lights were switched back on. Champagne was poured. The horn was blasted. The balloon was heading toward Gibraltar, on its way to South America.

  Vango rolled onto solid ground, his body tucked in a ball. A few kilometers away, across the sea to the southwest, a woman had come out of her house with a lantern. She was wrapped in a cape. She thought she’d heard a ship’s horn. Later, she could just make out a light shining among the stars above the horizon.

  At the end of the path, Mazzetta watched Mademoiselle going back inside the house. The nurse had been living alone for at least five years, ever since the little one had left.

  An east wind pushed the zeppelin along at top speed. The next day, at teatime, it crossed the equator. The day after that, while the passengers were sipping their morning hot chocolate, the Brazilian coast was in view. They passed Pernambuco not a minute late and continued as far as Rio de Janeiro. The passengers were driven to their hotel, the Copacabana Palace, set back from the city center, on the beach. Barely had he gotten through the revolving door than Max Grund rushed over to a telephone. He had reception call Berlin.

  “Hello . . .”

  It was a bad line, but he could hear the bellowing on the other end clearly enough when he had to admit that no, he hadn’t found anybody on board the zeppelin. Grund swore that he simply couldn’t understand it. He knew that the person they were looking for was a priority for the regime and that his escape had been denounced by somebody very reliable and very close to the authorities. The mission was fail-proof.

  “Fail-proof!” the voice on the other end shouted.

  Max Grund was swimming in the tropical heat. The telephone handset was melting in his fingers. A large fan was turning, to no avail, on the ceiling.

  Close by, in the men’s lavatories, the fat opera singer was standing in front of the mirror with a serious expression on his face.

  He ran his hand through his hair and slid off the wig that had been hiding his bare scalp. He pushed his fingers into his mouth and pulled out the piece of rubber that had been padding his gums and cheeks, thereby transforming his face. Then he undid his suspenders and opened his shirt to remove the large rubber pouch that had provided him with his paunch.

  He buttoned up his shirt again and stuck his head under the faucet.

  The face that appeared in the mirror was that of the actor Walter Frederick, star of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin and a fervent opponent of the Nazi regime. After living under a death threat for the past eighteen months, he’d had no choice but to leave Germany hastily in order to reach California via Brazil.

  He thought his life as an actor was at an end. Little did he know that a few years later, he would triumph in Hollywood and that his and Vango’s paths would cross again.

  He went out into the lobby and performed, as a final number, a few tap-dancing steps behind Max Grund, who had just hung up furiously.

  The stowaway Grund had just failed to capture was Frederick.

  Everland, Scotland, May 1, 1934

  The superintendent arrived at the castle at midday.

  He had just spent three days traveling. He had already caught two trains and one boat when his suitcase got stolen somewhere between Victoria and King’s Cross Stations, in London. He was hopping mad and cursed the English first, then Napoleon for having lost the battle of Waterloo. Passersby stared at him as he kicked the pavement, his face turning as red as a poisonous mushroom.

  There was nothing for him to do but catch the Flying Scotsman, the new train that linked London to Edinburgh in seven or eight hours. Once safely on board, the superintendent enjoyed the comforts of one of the world’s great railways. He spent half the journey eating lunch, and he even found a barber’s booth where he could freshen up ahead of his meeting the next day. On arrival, he spent what was left of the night near to Edinburgh’s Waverley Station, in a hotel that was so jam-packed he had to share a room with a redheaded giant who suffered from insomnia. By the time his neighbor finally dropped off to sleep at five o’clock in the morning, Boulard had already left.

  For the last leg of his journey, Boulard got a carpenter with a horse and cart to drop him off at the end of a long driveway. The superintendent stared at the castle for some time, at a loss for words.

  “Are you sure?”

  He repeated the address several times for the benefit of his driver, who nodded to the effect that this was indeed the right place.

  “Everland Castle,” the carpenter confirmed.

  Boulard thanked him in his impenetrable French accent, before watching the cart drive off.

  “Well, my little pussycat . . .”

  He smoothed his hair under his hat.

  “Well, my little pussycat, you don’t exactly live in a basket . . .” he muttered, recalling the fragile young woman he’d met briefly in Paris, upstairs at the Smoking Wild Boar.

  Boulard had been expecting a pleasant little house in the hills. But this was a fortress that would have made Mordachus, King of Scotland, quake in his boots.

  The superintendent didn’t feel dressed for the part of charging the castle. He could have done with a chain-mail coat, a helmet, and two horsemen, but he didn’t even have a spare pair of socks.

  He hid behind a tree, where he straightened out his clothes. Luckily, he still had his umbrella. His umbrella was key to his elegant appearance, or so he believed. He was thinking of his elderly mother, who had packed his case for him back in Paris: I’ve put in your flannel trousers, in case you need to dress up of an evening. . . .

  His thief back in London was probably passing himself off as a prince, drinking to the superintendent’s good health while sporting his dapper evening suit. Above all, Boulard was annoyed about his notebook getting stolen, because it contained what little information there was of the Parisian investigation as written up by his faithful Avignon.

  “Onward, Boulard!”

  He marched toward the castle. He was using his umbrella as a walking stick. The double doors of the main entrance swung open when he was still a hundred meters away.

  Knight Boulard was expected.

  A man showed him inside, greeting him in perfect French: “Soyez le bienvenu, Monsieur le Commissaire!”

  He helped Boulard take off his coat before reaching for the superintendent’s umbrella. Caught by surprise, Boulard tightened his grip on the handle.

  The umbrella. He mustn’t let go of his umbrella. The man was tugging at it, but Boulard clung on with both hands.

  They stared at each other and began walking in a slow circle around the umbrella, which was firmly planted on the stone floor. It was a strange samurai duel between a Scottish butler and a French police officer.
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  “Sir, allow me to take your umbrella,” the butler finally insisted.

  “I’d rather keep it,” retorted Boulard, as if fearing a small outbreak of rain in the drawing room.

  Being a good sport, the butler gave in to the visitor’s wishes. Boulard felt thoroughly relieved. After the robbery, this was all he had left. His mother thought he looked much more stylish with his umbrella. Without it, he would have felt naked inside this citadel.

  The guest was bidden to sit by a fire in what was referred to as the small hunting room, but which was in fact large enough to park two or three planes from the French airmail service. A glass was poured for him. And he didn’t say no to a second. Boulard’s feet were warming up nicely by the flames. He had discreetly removed his shoes in the hope that his socks would dry out.

  Ordinarily, the superintendent hated waiting. He only had to be left on his own for a single minute before his blood pressure started rising in much the same way as in a dentist’s waiting room. But on this occasion, he felt relaxed in the corner by the fire, in the middle of all these carpets and paintings. He was almost snoring.

  He realized that he had never waited for a young lady in a castle before. It was a giddy sensation. At sixty-nine years of age, he suddenly felt that it was high time he experienced the life of a Prince Charming.

  Boulard was starting to worry about his mental faculties when he saw the door being pushed ajar and a young doe with white spots walk through the gap.

  Yes, a doe.

  A doe.

  He stared at his glass and the animal in turn, then at his glass, then at the animal.

  Boulard, old boy, you’re worn out, he told himself.

  He threw the contents of his glass onto the fire, producing a high flame that made the young doe shy away.

  A doe.

  Boulard stood up abruptly.

  The animal was approaching him.

  “Shoo, shoo, shoo!” tutted the superintendent, waving his fingers to make it go away.

  The doe liked this game. She pranced around the room a bit before heading back toward her new friend.

  “Shoo, shoo, shoo!” Boulard tried again, realizing that he had left his umbrella and shoes by the armchair.