The Knife Thrower (18 page)

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It has passed like a dizziness, like a madness, even as Vallard pulls the valve rope and we begin to descend from those perilous regions. I look at Vallard, a man of few words, stolid, unchanged. A broad-shouldered man of twenty-six, the son of peasants from a village near Rouen. He has assured me that the provinces will rise and crush the invader. Vallard tells the story of a peasant who, coming upon a Prussian patrol, fell on him and tore out his throat with his teeth. I ask him where he learned to pilot a balloon. “Gare d’Orléans,” he says in his laconic fashion, and at once I see the great waiting room of the Gare d’Orléans, the long workbenches where rows of seamstresses sit stitching together large strips of calico in the light of gas lamps, the sailors braiding rope and fashioning the netting that encloses the balloons, workers in blue blouses assembling a wicker basket. On the floor of the great room, beside the abandoned railway tracks, partially inflated balloons, enormous and sagging, lie stretched out on their sides, their great curves looming over the workers and reaching halfway up the height of the walls. High overhead, from the station girders under the glass-and-iron roof, a few wicker baskets hang from ropes. It is in one of these training baskets that Vallard prepared for our flight, as he looked down at the long workbenches, the rows of gas lamps in the walls, the women’s hands stitching, the valves of the great balloons lying across the tracks.

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Where to look? Not down, for still I see an unpeopled world, a world without meaning, and like the tearing of a ligament the rift begins to open, the inner wound begins to bleed. Not up, for above
me I see the bottom of a yellow monster carrying me off in its claws to hellish heaven. Straight ahead then? No, for before me lie vast stretches of unearthly blue—sinister blue—a nausea of blue. I do not fear death. I am prepared to die for France. But I fear this blue nothingness, this little voice that whispers, whispers: O what does it matter, this thing or that thing, Paris or Prussia, breath-warm or corpse-cold. And a loathing comes over me, for all the world of upper air, this mocking blue heaven with its little black secret. Sick to death of it all, I fix my gaze on the humble basket: on the strands of wicker woven by rough hands, on the six-fluked anchor dangling over the side, on the leather sacks containing government dispatches and ten thousand private letters, on the bags of ballast, the coil of rope, the basket of pigeons that will be used by provincials to send messages back to Paris. The wicker. The leather. The iron. The rope. I am calm now.

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Moltke’s investing troops are spread out in an indefensible perimeter of fifty miles. They hope to starve us into submission, but we will never surrender. Today we eat horsemeat and butter our bread with yellow horsefat. And tomorrow? Tomorrow we’ll dine on paving stones! But we must act. The thought of our idleness fills me with rage. The First and Second German Armies are pinned down in Lorraine before the walls of Metz, but if Metz should fall? What then? Two armies would be released to reinforce the lines of investment about Paris, or to engage Gambetta in the south. We must attack! A double advance cannot possibly fail: a sortie
en masse
from the gates of Paris and a simultaneous attack behind the
German lines. Gambetta, fretting at Tours, is eager to recapture Orléans and march north to Paris with the Army of the Loire. I am of those who believe it is far wiser for the Army of the Loire and the Army of the North to converge at Rouen, and together move on Paris along the valley of the Seine. But one thing is certain: we must act. Any movement of our provincial armies will force Moltke to detach troops from his over-stretched siege lines. He will be weakened, confused. We must strike at once. We must crush the invader. We must redeem the disaster of Sedan. The shame of the Empire will vanish in the glory of the Republic.

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I look down at wooded countryside. Here and there a clearing in the trees, a hut with smoke rising in a straight line from a chimney. The top of the smoke shakes a little, looks like unraveling rope. A hawk flies above the trees. We do not know these forests. The compass needle spins like a drunkard. Are there Frenchmen in the woods, waiting to greet us like heroes? Or are there Prussian encampments, gun batteries, soldiers with needle-guns already looking up, taking aim? Vallard believes it is unsafe to land. Prussian cavalry patrols are everywhere. We drift higher, above the unknown forest.

•

Yesterday I walked beyond the ramparts into the Bois de Boulogne. The felling of the great trees for fuel, for barricades, has left new, disturbing vistas: you can see in the distance the white church of
Saint-Cloud, bluish smoke rising from smoldering houses. Fields of underbrush, spotted with tree stumps, stretch away. Here and there you see gray canvas tents and huts of fir branches, shirts drying on rope lines. Along the road there is a continual loud rumble of big-wheeled bronze guns drawn by four horses; ammunition wagons; the lighter roll of private carriages carrying sightseers. And in your ears, in your skin, in the soles of your feet, always the roar of cannon from the fort on Mont Valérien.

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An undulating plain, yellow hopfields and oatfields, brown plowed farmland, the dark line of a canal. Haystacks with shadows. Clumps of trees. I see a windmill with turning sails, a turning shadow beside it. In the distance, hills purplish and brown. Although I keep a sharp eye out for movement in the trees, it is peaceful here, in the blue air, drifting along. And a wayward desire steals over me: to stay aloft, to live a life in the air, to hover forever between earth and sky. The desire disturbs me. In its heart I detect a secret weakness: this sudden, unaccountable desire, is it not the sign of a weakened will, of the inner wound unhealed? To remain above, to look down, to drift along, to give way, to dream … is this not to take sides with indifference, to encourage the rift within? And therefore—sheer logic forces me to such a conclusion—is it not secretly to aid the Prussian cause? The sky is treacherous. I must be vigilant.

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I fix my gaze below on fields already changing to woods and force myself to think of war. The question of artillery troubles my sleep. Reports from soldiers who fought at Spicheren, Froeschwiller, Saint-Privat, Sedan are deeply disturbing, though perhaps exaggerated. In the confusion of battle, can the truth be known? And yet it appears that the breech-loading Krupp guns, made of steel, have much greater range than our muzzle-loading bronze cannon. Is it possible? The Krupp shells, fitted with percussion caps, explode only on impact, whereas our time-fuse shells explode mostly in the air. It is said that if Moltke gave the order, the Prussian gunners could lob shells into the streets of Paris from the heights of Châtillon, which we lost in September. Why, why, why do we sit and wait? How long will our provisions hold out? Do we wish to trade Paris for a crust of bread? We must attack. Paris is ready and eager. Our soldiers are armed with magnificent breech-loading
chassepot
rifles that are sighted at sixteen hundred yards. Think of it! The soldiers of the first Napoleon, the conquerors of Jena, were equipped with smooth-bore muzzle-loading muskets with a range of scarcely fifty yards! Our rifles are far superior even to the Prussian needle-gun, which brought Austria to its knees. Why do we sit and do nothing? In the woods I see a sudden movement, which appears to be that of an animal, perhaps a deer.

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Difficult to cast off this feeling of listlessness. Blue air, the shadow of our balloon rippling over trees. And again the desire, not a desire, but the inclination, not an inclination, but rather a picturing, an idle imagining, offspring of silence and blue air. Have I been
so deeply wounded? I must not give way. And yet, to live aloft, a floating man, a citizen of the air … surely it could be done. Touching down from time to time, in a potato field or plum orchard, the basket of the balloon hovering above its anchor; then climbing a rope ladder into my airy home and off into the impalpable element. Easy enough to construct a more civilized basket, with space to sleep, a roof to keep out rain and snow; books; stores of food; writing materials; a rifle; a telescope; a parrot in a cage for companion—a floating island; mobile nest; traveling the world above shifting scenes; the white-capped seas and monkey-chattering jungles; the glittering ice mountains of the north; my bed afloat in blue lakes of sky; never come back; childhood’s dream.

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I could push Vallard over the side. A quick motion would suffice. He would fall swiftly, turning over and over. An unfortunate accident. The suddenly lightened balloon shoots up, but I pull on the valve rope, calmly. Alone, drifting through the sky. Away from it all. It could be done.

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To have had such a thought … Am I no longer myself? Unmanned by air? Heaven-unhinged! And now—sudden revulsion—the basket fills me with loathing; the rope; the anchor; my hand like a cold claw gripping the rim; I can’t bear this place; this voyage; this up-here hovering; the inhuman sky; down, look down; and I feel a prickling in my skin, and I think: to jump, to feel the wind in my
hair, to plunge in a rush of wind, to feel myself break against a tree; sweet pain; the bayonet in my throat; blood-gush; earth-smash; anything but this.

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All at once we have entered a region of thick, swirling mist. Vallard, half a step from me, has become a ghostly form. Above me the balloon has vanished. The suspension ropes rise into smoke, are erased like lines of chalk. The clouds thicken; my hand disappears. I am invisible to myself. There is nothing in the world but cold damp desolate empty gray and the bite of the basket’s rim in my clenched palm. We have died, Vallard and I, we have entered the shadowless realm, region of erasures and absences, kingdom of dissolution. Clumps of cloud-mist enter my mouth like smoke. Here on the other shore, here at the world’s end, give me the sight and touch of things: shape of a hand, curve of a chin, weight of a stone; the heft of earthly things. Edges! Edges!

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At last; out there; a shape in the cloud-soup; and as we drift closer, there below, swathed in the mist-swirl, yes! the top of—a pine?

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We burst through the clouds, which seem to rush above us in streamers of vapor, and see below a valley, broad and deep, sun-slashed—dazzle of green, splash of yellow and scarlet—patches of
mist like smoke. Swords of sun strike from the clouds. We have drifted over a steep hill, bristly with pine. A flock of birds below us, black-blue, flying over their lagging shadows. I look at Vallard, who meets my gaze. An understanding passes between us. Has he felt it too? It’s time. He pulls the valve rope, we begin the descent. Shadows like dark lakes lie on the autumn woods and fields. A stream or river, coppery brown, flashes fish scales of sun. On the far hill a tiny farmhouse with a slate roof. Friend or foe? We have been aloft for four hours and thirty-five minutes. It is time. Our compass is crazed, useless, but the wind has shifted so often that no compass could have helped. Are we safely beyond the German lines? Have we reached the north? The west? What is this place? Have we blown as far as Brittany? Is it possible we’ve drifted east, crossed the border into Belgium? We don’t know. So be it! As we descend, I scan the woods for tents, horses, a stray patrol. I see only the play of cloud-shadow on field and wood, the farmhouse silent, a field of stubble, pinewoods. The fat shadow of our balloon glides below, dragging after it the disturbingly small shadow of our basket. Now open meadows appear, tan and yellow among the trees. Mauve shadows. Copses, fields, an outcrop of gray rock. The land rises to meet us as we come slanting down, grows larger, breaks into detail. I begin to make out high straw-colored grass, wild-flowers purple and white in a sloping field. I look up at the sky, at blue air and drifting cloud, up there where the wide spaces cleave the spirit like an axblade, I bid the whispering and too-high heavens farewell, then I cast my eyes downward, toward the rising earth, toward the solid place, the human turmoil.

P
ARADISE
P
ARK
, which was destroyed by fire on May 31, 1924, except for a number of steel and concrete structures that rose eerily from the blackened ruins until they were torn down the following year, first opened its gates on June 1, 1912, on eight and two-thirds acres of the former site of Dreamland, across Surf Avenue from Luna Park. In an era noted for the brilliance and extravagance of its amusement parks, the new park seemed to be presenting itself as a culmination. Even the diminished acreage, with its mere 652 feet of ocean frontage, proved responsible for many of the park’s most striking features, for it was immediately clear that Paradise Park was striving to overcome the limitations of space by a certain flamboyance or excess that pushed it in directions never before undertaken in the architecture of amusement parks.