The Carp Castle

by MacDonald Harris

  “Madge, where is Cereste Legrand? We must find him.”

  The two women disappear up the ladder.

  “All hands man landing stations!” The Captain is now quite calm. Nothing worse can happen to him than happened in the War. But how could an elevator cable fall off a pulley? Those idiots at Friedrichshaven!

  *

  In the lounge it was four o’clock and teatime when the League of Nations went into the fog bank. There was a sudden chill; the stewards turned on the lights. The lounge tilted upward and the passengers put their hands on their teacups to keep them from sliding. Now the dirigible slowly tips its nose down again, as though searching for the North Pole here at three thousand feet in the air.

  “They said it was like a great hotel,” says Eliza, “but great hotels don’t do this.”

  “There is a distinction between being a great hotel and being like a great hotel. When something is like something else, it isn’t necessarily identical to it in all its attributes.”

  “Enough of your philosophy. Maybe we’re landing in Gioconda.” “It’s supposed to be warm and balmy. Here it’s foggy.”

  “We’re coming out of the fog,” she tells him. “Look!” A burst of sunlight floods the lounge. A few tables away, Chief Engineer Lieutenant Günther gets up from his tea and hurries toward the exit. At that instant, the nose of the airship tilts downward again, more violently than before, and he loses his balance and sits down abruptly. The bowl of marbles slides to the edge of the piano and falls off. There is a sound of glass shattering and the marbles clatter endlessly through the legs of the chairs in the lounge. The passengers scream.

  Moira and Aunt Madge Foxthorn make their way along the catwalk in the belly of the airship, followed by Cereste Legrand carrying a tool box. A little distance behind them is Joshua Main, who has joined the salvage party without being asked. Because of the tilt of the dirigible they go up the catwalk toward the tail as though they were ascending a hill, gripping the girders for balance.

  “I am guessing that it is a little farther on,” says Aunt Madge Foxthorn.

  Every so often they pass riggers taking up the plates that cover the elevator cable. Each plate, a hand’s-breadth wide and the length of a man, is held with twelve screws and it is taking them a long time even though they are working feverishly. They don’t look up as the two women and two men squeeze past them on the aluminum beam.

  Aunt Madge Foxthorn guides them to a place almost at the end of the catwalk. She ponders for a moment, looking searchingly at one place and another in the gloomy tangle of girders. Then she indicates the metal plate at her feet.

  “I am guessing that it is here.”

  Cereste Legrand kneels down with his screwdriver and has the plate off in a minute. It reveals the cable, the thickness of a lead pencil, lying jammed at one side of the pulley. There is a catch that is supposed to hold it in place, but the catch has snapped. Cereste Legrand and the two women try to seize hold of the cable, getting grease on their hands. It is held in the clutch of obdurate metal. Joshua Main stands watching them with a genial air. Something has changed around them and Moira realizes that it is the silence. They have become so used to the thrum of the engines that its absence is almost like a sound. It is very cold in the unheated hull of the airship; their voices hang in plumes of steam from their mouths.

  The pulley itself is only held with four bolts. If they could get it off, the cable would run free. Cereste Legrand gets a wrench, adjusts it to the proper setting, and fits it to one of the bolts. But the space is narrow and there is no room for the wrench to work.

  “Try it with your left hand.”

  “I’m not very dexterous with my left hand.”

  He manages to get one bolt off and starts on the next. Aunt Madge Foxthorn holds the removed bolt. Moira stands watching with her navy cloak wrapped around her against the cold. Her green eyes, catching the glow from a lamp, glitter as though they themselves were illuminating the scene. Joshua Main has disappeared.

  Joshua Main came along with the others because he really intended to help out with the repairs, using his experience as a sailor. But on the way he passed a ladder that he knows well. He goes back to it, climbs up it unsteadily, and arrives at a platform high in the belly of the airship with a storage box on it, intended for fire extinguishers. In the box he has cached a half-dozen bottles of the finest Scotch malt whisky, or perhaps it’s only five now, he isn’t sure. He jams himself into place because of the unusual angle of the platform (She’s down by the head, the old girl) and twists the cork out of a bottle. In only a short time he feels merry and musical.

  When I coursed the stormy main

  In foul wind and in fair,

  I never thought I’d see again

  The girl with the golden hair.

  *

  In the control car matters are at a standstill. The dirigible is floating with its nose down at an altitude of five hundred feet. Everyone is holding onto something to keep from sliding to the front of the car. Through the windscreen ahead the Captain sees not sky but ice. There is no wind and the dirigible is motionless. If he starts the engines with the ship at this angle he will only drive it down to the ice. He has dropped all the ballast in the bow. He still has a few hundred pounds astern. He tries the elevator wheel again; still stuck fast. No word from the riggers inside the hull.

  A few seconds later he notices that the compass card is turning. The League of Nations is no longer headed north; as he watches through the windscreen the ice disappears and a patch of open water the size of a football field wheels by. The compass creeps toward East. He watches it over the shoulder of the rudderman. He remembers his name now; it is Rossi, the most common Italian name. He too is a good-looking chap in his Mediterranean way; not like the English angels.

  “Rudder hard left.”

  “Hard left, sir.”

  Rossi twists the wheel. Of course she doesn’t respond. But if there is no wind, why is she turning?

  Then he sees a cat’s-paw of wind appear on the lead and spin its way toward him across the open water. This little puff of air is a menace. The ship is nose-down with its elevators in down position; the wind will drive it to the ice like a capsized kite. It’s his old friend the east wind, he notes with a cynical eye, the breath of his private fate. The one that brought Thistlethwaite’s balloon swimming to him over the Prussian farmland, the one that sped him across London as he dropped the bombs on the L-23.

  Perhaps he should run the engines astern. He should have thought of this earlier. He reaches for the telegraphs, and at the same instant the squall strikes and the airship shudders.

  “Altitude two hundred, Captain I”

  “Let go all ballast!”

  The control car strikes the ice with a crash, throwing everyone to the floor. The bow bounces upward in slow motion and the tail falls. A moment later there is another crash and a sound of splitting as the tail strikes the ice. The Captain hears screams but can’t identify their source. The control car is crushed so that it is no longer possible to stand up in it. He is sitting on the floor with his leg stuck out at an odd angle. Strangely enough there is no pain. He remembers now hearing it break with a noise like a snapping branch.

  Chief Engineer Lieutenant Günther makes his way up the tilted catwalk, lighted only by its row of miniature electric lamps. A phosphorescence filters through the thin fabric of the hull. He has passed the point where riggers are unscrewing an inspection plate; ahead of him is another group of riggers who have removed two plates and are working on a third. Farther along, almost in the tail of the dirigible, he sees three dim figures conspiring like gnomes in an opera, and recognizes Moira’s flare of golden hair. His aim is to find out what those civilians are doing in a part of the airship where they are not allowed. He has just reached a point abreast of the first pair of engines when there is a crash and he is flung violently down, almost falling from the catwalk. He is half risen, kneeling with his fingers touching the catwalk, when-
there is another shuddering crash, a sound of splitting and sundering, and the air opens up before him.

  Kneeling on the catwalk facing the stern, he sees a remarkable sight. Where a moment ago he was looking into the gloomy belly of the airship, now he sees an enormous round window filled with sky above and ice below. Framed in the center, the grotesque shape of the tail floats away slowly, rising as it goes. The broken elevator cable, which caused all the trouble, hangs from it like a tendon from a severed limb.

  A blast of cold air hits him and he shivers in his thin uniform. Afraid of falling, he sits down on the catwalk and rides it like a horse. Through the widening space that separates him from the other half of the dirigible he hears a mellifluous baritone, sinking to a basso at the end.

  Many great hearts are asleep in the deep,

  So beware,

  So be-waaaaaare.

  The survivors crouch on the ice, stunned by what has happened. The squall has passed now and there is only a little wind. Somebody points. In absolute silence they all look at the spectacle of the after half of the airship with its four fins, drawing away and rising. Borne away with it are Moira, Aunt Madge Foxthorn, Cereste Legrand, Joshua Main, and the two mechanics in the after engine gondolas. The last they see of it is the gigantic pastel banner with its heart-shaped world, glowing like a dim fire in the mist. Then it too disappears.

  Eliza, who has bumped her arm but is otherwise unscathed, has managed to get her red medical box out of the wreckage. After the tail has disappeared, she turns her attention to the nose of the airship lying crushed on the ice. It seems smaller now because the bottom half of it has been crushed flat. The control car is invisible beneath the torn sheets of silver fabric with broken girders sticking out of them. She takes Romer’s arm.

  “Do you hear something?”

  If they listen carefully, now and then they hear a noise like a mewing kitten. It comes and goes. Perhaps they only imagine it, or perhaps it is gas escaping from the broken dirigible. Drawing closer, they hear it again, a plaintive mewing and keening. It is unmistakably human. The sounds come in pairs: Mew mew. Mew mew.

  It is practically impossible to get into the wreck through the smashed control car. Besides there is a corpse in there. With Eliza in the lead, they grope in the torn nose of the dirigible until they find an opening. She climbs in and Romer follows.

  Mew mew.

  The sound is clearer now that they are inside the hull. It seems to be coming from above, past a deflated gas-bag. It was only the night before that they made love on one of those things. Now this one looks like a discarded French letter. They climb up, fitting their feet into the holes in the girders. Mew mew. Eliza thinks: who is missing in the group on the ice? She knows who it is.

  Following the sound, they cross on a beam and reach a point above the collapsed gas-bag. The electricity of the dirigible is dead and the scene is illuminated only by a gash in the fabric that lets in a little zinc-colored light. They crawl precariously through the broken structure. A little farther on they catch sight of Joan Esterel squeezed between the girders, one leg hanging down, watching them out of her gold-rimmed spectacles. She is no longer making any sound.

  “I say, how did you get up here?” Romer asks her.

  “Help me.”

  “But it’s a logical impossibility for you to be here. The nose of the dirigible isn’t even connected with the passenger quarters.”

  “Help.”

  “Never mind your philosophical questions, Romer. Help me get her out of here.”

  This is not easy. A pair of girders holds her like a giant nutcracker, and another has fallen on her shoulder. They try to pull her out but she screams. Romer puts his body under a girder and pushes, and the only result is a sharp pain in his back.

  “Be calm, dear. It’s all right. We’ll get you out.”

  “Damn you, Eliza Burney. Spit on you.”

  This is surprising but not entirely unexpected. Eliza reflects that if she were suffering pain she might say the same thing to Joan Esterel.

  “Do you want me to help, or do you want to spit on me? Make up your mind.”

  As they push at the girders, there is a sound of creaking and another figure appears in the dim light below them. It is Chief Engineer Lieutenant Günther, and miraculously he has a hacksaw. He climbs only slowly, because he is not an athletic person, and he is encumbered by the hacksaw, which he keeps transferring from one hand to the other. They leave off striving at the girders until he arrives.

  He pushes them aside in a no-nonsense military manner. “Out of the way, please. Miss, if you will succor the young lady with your medical skills, I will set to work sawing through this beam. And you, sir, can help by holding up the beam so the saw doesn’t bind.”

  His uniform is too small for him and shiny in spots. Seen close at hand, he resembles a small-town dog catcher more than a military officer. He begins scrunch-scrunching with the hacksaw; a stream of silver powder falls from the blade. The three of them work together in silence, broken only by mews from Joan Esterel. Eliza pushes up on the second girder to ease the weight on Joan Esterel’s shoulder. Their muscles ache and Eliza’s hand hurts. Time passes very slowly. Perhaps it is a half an hour. Günther pauses to shift the saw to the other hand. At last the beam is cut through; Romer pushes it up and out of the way. They pick up Joan Esterel and lower her through the wreck, Romer holding her legs, Eliza carrying her by the armpits, and Günther with his hand resting on her head as if conferring the benevolence of authority on her.

  They lay her down on the ice with a tarpaulin under her. Günther lingers on the scene, still holding his saw. He searches Eliza’s face for some sign. He hopes to be accepted by her—not of course sexually, only as a companion or uncle, or sublime Platonic friend, he is not sure what— because of his prowess and engineering skill which have been applied so adeptly to the saving of a human life. But she only laughs at him, a ridiculous figure. In his little pouch of a cap with its short visor he looks like something in a Punch-and-Judy show. Lieutenant Günther, she sees now, is Punch. He needs to be swatted by the Bobby with a club full of beans.

  “Mew,” cries Joan Esterel. “Mew, mew, mew, mew, mew.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Eliza snaps at her. “Stop bawling! You’re perfectly all right.”

  “Mew. Mew.”

  Eliza gives her a perfunctory examination, pulling down her clothing and turning her over from side to side as though she were a piece of meat she is thinking of buying. She has a bruise on her shoulder and a piece of skin scraped off her bottom. She is more scared than hurt. She applies some sticking plaster to the abrasion and gives her a spoonful of laudanum to calm her. Her spectacles are bent and Eliza fixes them and puts them straight on her face.

  “I hate you,” says Joan Esterel.

  “I love you. I just love you. I love all living creatures and you’re no exception. Moira says we should even love the sticks and stones.”

  Eliza is really in a cross mood. She hates touching strangers, or being touched. She is the last person in the world who should be a nurse. Why must everything fall to her, while nobody else lifts a finger? Romer is just standing there gawking. And Günther is still lurking around at the edge of her vision.

  “What are you standing around for? You’ve done your hero act, now go about your business.”

  He reddens and walks away on the ice. Eliza pulls a tarpaulin over Joan Esterel, tucking it up to her neck, and turns her attention to the Captain and his broken leg. Trying to remember a little of her first aid course, she sets her foot in his groin and pulls hard on the broken leg. There is a kind of grating sound from inside the leg. The Captain makes no sound, but he sets his teeth and his face goes white. Eliza pardons Günther and tells him to go find something for splints. He comes back with a long aluminum tube from the wreckage and cuts it into the proper lengths with his hacksaw. She fits them around the broken leg and ties them (not too tightly, says the first aid book) with her own stockings, while t
he icy hands of the arctic creep up her legs. She gives the Captain some laudanum too, not a spoonful but half a tumbler. Then she piles on him various parkas, anoraks, and overcoats from the broken crates of clothing that the crewmen are removing from the dirigible. Later, perhaps, she will have a chance to look in the crates for some stockings for herself.

  *

  The crewmen have carried everything out of the wrecked dirigible and piled it on the ice in a kind of explorers’ cache: food, cases of Temperance Nectar, plates, silverware, glasses and goblets, suitcases from the passengers’ cabins, blankets and pillows, mirrors, vanity cases, duffel-bags from their own quarters, and hundreds of crates of supplies intended for use in Gioconda, many of them broken or split open. They smash bottles of Temperance Nectar and watch the pink fluid seep down into the ice until they are tired of this game. Then they pry open the crates and extract bottles of French wine, Spanish sherry, German beer, and French and Italian liqueurs. No one stops them. The passengers look on dumbly. Sitting on the wine cases, the crewmen drink from the bottles until they are thoroughly merry, not to say boisterous, then they begin pulling costumes from the crates and putting them on over their clothing. The two Portuguese messmen find castanets, hold up their arms clacking, and do a foot-stamping dance, wearing fandango hats and black vests. The others egg them on with claps and yells. The Germans put on white satin tutus and do Swan Lake figures. The Englishman Finch doesn’t participate for a while; he sits on a crate drinking Pilsener from a bottle and watches the others. Finally he pulls on a Japanese paper gown and joins the dance. His countryman Starkadder is gravely swaying in a chemisette of peacock feathers. Tim McCree dons a vizier’s robe and conical cap, both painted with stars and saturns. He gets up and demonstrates an Irish jig, but falls into a soft place in the ice and has to be fished out by the others. In the pale arctic light, Roman senators, Syrian rug-dealers, Greek shepherds, California Forty-Niners, Shakespearean ingenues, Folies-Bergères dancers, harem houris, lion tamers, hula dancers in grass skirts, Hindu fakirs, Chinese mandarins, Argentine gauchos, Spanish matadors, Swedish virgins in white gowns and Lucy-crowns, and curés in cassocks circulate in an inebriated carousel on the ice, to the sound of yells, laughter, and the clacking of the castanets which have now been seized from the Portuguese by a pair of Spanish stewards wearing low-cut red dresses and paper roses in their hair.