The Woman Who Rode the Wind

  Then at noon his prayer was answered. Both of them heard the stuttering sound of a faulty car engine. Alain looked out from the cabin. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “It’s Yvette.”

  Most women of that era would not drive automobiles, although they were more than happy to ride in them. But Yvette was not most women. She liked to drive, and drive fast. Her hair was swept back by the wind and a small pair of square-framed dark glasses covered her famous green eyes. She was wearing a shimmering pink dress with a skin-tight bodice and a lace choke collar as she roared into the big barn.

  As always, Yvette was well aware of the impression she was making. She stepped from the automobile, catching up the hem of her garment just enough to show a triangle of flounced underskirt. Work stopped as all the men turned to look. But her attention was on only one man, who stood in the cabin above her, and ignored her.

  “Monsieur Chevrier,” she said. And repeated it, knowing that he had heard. Finally he looked down.

  “I wish to apologize for my father...”

  “You can go back to your father,” Alain retorted, “and tell him to apologize for himself. Tell him to apologize for being who he is and for everything he has ever done.”

  They glared at each other for a moment. Then Yvette turned away. “I’m sorry that I bothered,” she said. “I’ll leave now.”

  She tried to start the car with her hand crank. It backfired and stalled. She tried again and it coughed and died. Finally she turned and looked up, helpless. “It won’t start.”

  “I can see that.”

  “How shall I get home?”

  “Why don’t you take the Necro?” Alain shouted down.

  The “Necro” was the nickname for the new metropolitan subway system. It was so badly ventilated that people believed you could suffocate riding it. The image of Yvette riding the Necro sent roars of laughter echoing through the workshop...until she started to sob.

  Alain, for all his gruffness, was not about to leave a lady in distress. He turned to LeRond. “Well, Guillaume, if a man is going to be guillotined for a crime, he might as well commit it.”

  He jumped down from the airship, walked over and looked under the hood. Then he tightened two bolts with his hand. “The carburetor has shaken loose,” he said. “It will start now.”

  “My father just bought this for me. How was I to know?”

  “The rich girl can’t get her toys to work,” joked Alain, but his voice was not rough. “I will drive you home. I would not have your father accusing me of abducting you.”

  They traveled down the slopes of Saint-Cloud and across the Aqueduct Bridge in silence.

  Finally Yvette spoke: “My father is not a bad man.”

  “Yes. I am sure that his dog loves him, too.”

  “I must tell you,” she giggled, “you made him so mad when you came to the Ball without a suit and tie.”

  “I don’t wear ties,” said Alain. “A tie is a symbol of slavery. In the Middle Ages, when the king captured a city, all the men had to come out wearing nooses around their necks to show that the king had the right to hang them. Also, a tie is a useless garment. What purpose does it serve? It is like underwear. It constricts the body for no reason.”

  “You do not wear underwear?” Yvette appeared shocked. She was silent for a moment. Then she asked, “Have you named any of your balloons?”

  “I have named my favorite one after a woman.”

  “Oh,” said Yvette. “Which woman? Evangeline, Liselle, perhaps Mary Ann...”

  “I call her ‘The Bitch,’” said Alain with a grin.

  “Really, Monsieur Chevrier,” Yvette retorted. “Is that the only kind of woman you know? You, who could have any woman you want?” She tossed her head to show the amber glow of her hair. “Well, almost any woman.”

  Alain was silent.

  “So, do you have a woman?” she asked.

  “No, I don’t have a woman, nor does any woman have me. Slavery was abolished several years ago. It was in all the newspapers. No one has a claim to anyone else’s life—or love.”

  “Then you believe in free love? I’ve heard that you anarchists do.”

  “Let’s put it this way. I’ve never had to pay for it.”

  “I wonder what it would feel like to make love in a balloon,” she mused, rolling her eyes toward the heavens. “So public, up there in the sky, and yet so alone. I am told that if you take a woman high enough, she loses all her inhibitions.”

  “That’s all talk. However, if you go high enough, as some of our aeronauts have, your brain becomes starved for oxygen, and you act as if you were drunk. But who would want to make love in a balloon when there’s so much to look at?”

  “Pah!” she said. “You lack imagination.”

  “No, I don’t. I just see things differently from you. You would go to a bourgeois play like ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and say ‘how marvelous.’ I would see two cats, one on the balcony and the other in the alley below, howling at each other.”

  “Then what do you see?”

  “I see the stars.”

  “Is it true that you see the stars in daylight?” she asked.

  “Anyone can. You just have to look hard enough.”

  He stopped the car. “Look straight ahead of you and up.” He put his arm on her shoulder. “Over there where Orion stands. There is a legend that—when God comes—he will come from Orion. There is just the faintest glow.”

  Then he realized that he had touched her.

  Yvette turned and looked at him over the top of her dark glasses. Their faces were only inches apart.

  “Come,” said Yvette, “we are going to the Eiffel Tower.”

  “I thought that I was taking you home.”

  “First I have a challenge for you. We will have a race.”

  When they arrived at the Tower, Yvette bolted for the elevator. Alain ran for the stairs and started up, leaping two and three at a time. Yvette took the trolley elevator where passengers sat 10 abreast, and when she arrived at the first level, he had already passed her.

  The elevator from the top took its time coming down. She watched the pulleys as they spun like bobbins. Behind her waited a child waving a tin sword and a man holding his wife like a sack of potatoes. They all got on and the elevator started up with a lurch. Through the window she could see them gaining on Alain as he ran from landing to landing. She turned to the operator.

  “Can you slow it down?”

  He looked surprised. It was the first time that he had ever heard this request.

  Yvette reached into her purse and handed him a 10-franc note. “Now can you slow it down?”

  “But mademoiselle,” he said, “the other passengers?”

  She gave them all 10-franc notes.

  She reached the top a few seconds after Chevrier. He was panting, but proud of his victory. “Man against machine! I’ve always wondered if I could win a race like that."

  He pointed out. “Below on the river is the Americans’ craft, almost ready to fly. That menacing building in Montparnasse is the Germans’ huge barn. And up there, in Saint-Cloud, is where I will fly from...”

  Yvette looked at him levelly. “And when will you fly?”

  “When I’m ready.”

  “And could someone persuade you?”

  “With what?” he said. “Something more than money?”

  Yvette raised her right leg to the top of the railing like a ballet dancer to the barre and, oblivious to the stares, slowly rolled down her stocking. She had a red tulip embroidered into the stocking at the ankle, something nice girls normally didn’t do. She gave Alain the stocking.

  “Tie it to the lightning rod at the top of the Tower,” she told him. “Then, when you fly around it, you can retrieve it and give it back to me. And afterwards you’ll be rewarded...with something more than money.”

  She smiled at him.

  He took the stocking and climbed up the latticework that led to the roof.

  When she
heard his footsteps on the slippery brass sheathing above her, she realized what she had done. What if he fell? Then she considered it. What better for a woman’s reputation than having a gallant young aeronaut make a leap of love from the Eiffel Tower?

  Suddenly he was down again.

  “Now, I think it is time for you to drive me home,” she said.

  They traveled back through the quiet, tree-lined streets of Neuilly with its secluded estates and high, spiked walls, and stopped in front of the wrought-iron gate of the Meurthes’ mansion.

  “Kindly slide the bolt on the gate,” said Yvette, moving into the driver’s seat. “I’ll drive from here.”

  “All right,” he said, a little put off by the way she had taken charge. “But be sure to get your automobile fixed. It still rattles.”

  She turned to him as he stood by the gate. “I have one more challenge for you, Alain. I’m having a soiree tonight and I want you to come.”

  “Why would I do that?” he scoffed.

  “Perhaps because my father doesn’t want you there...”

  “A soiree? I’ll think about it.”

  “Don’t debate with yourself too long, Monsieur l’Anarchiste,” Yvette laughed.

  Again her face was only inches away from his, and he leaned in to kiss her. She threw the car into gear and sent it rattling through the gate, leaving him behind.

  When Yvette had turned the corner of the building, she got out a wrench and flung up the hood. A quick adjustment and the rattle stopped; the engine ran smoothly. Men always believed that women were stupid about mechanical things. It was insulting, but it could also be turned to advantage, if one were clever enough. He will come, she thought. He is a man who needs to be challenged, and I can challenge him better than anyone else.

  When she entered the house, the maid gave her a knowing look. “Send another invitation for the soiree tonight,” Yvette ordered.

  “For Captain Chevrier?” the maid asked.

  “No,” said Yvette. “Captain Chevrier needs no invitation. This one is for a mademoiselle...Pitman.”

  Chapter Nineteen: At Guignol’s House—Afternoon, July 14

  Guignol was one of the most famous people in Paris. His house was in the center of the Garden of Luxembourg, near the pool where the children sailed their wooden boats. He was short, mean-spirited, stingy, long-nosed, hard of hearing and empty-headed. He beat his wife and drank too much, so he was very popular with everyone.

  Now Guillaume LeRond was going to meet Guignol.

  LeRond had been there before in happier times when he was young. As one of the children fidgeting in the long line that snaked around the hedge and small cottage, he had pulled on Mama’s hand, impatient to get in. The ritual never seemed to change; there was always a new generation that loved Guignol.

  But I have changed, he thought. Now he felt out of place, the only man there, and the only adult without a child. He looked around nervously to see if he’d been followed.

  It didn’t help when he got a strange quizzical look from the ticket-taker, who sat on a small stool next to the wooden gate outside Guignol’s house. Guillaume pushed past him through the gate and entered the backyard enclosed by the hedge.

  He saw rows and rows of wooden benches filled with a sea of small happy faces, all waiting for Guignol. Then, at the far back, he saw another face, scarred but handsome, waiting for him. Maximilian’s long legs were stretched out in the dirt aisle and he patted the seat next to him. Guillaume moved carefully to the back and slid in beside him.

  “Nougat?” said Maximilian, offering a bag of candy. “I’m sharing it with my little friends here.”

  Guillaume shook his head and glanced around before pulling out one of his Gauloises cigarettes. “Why are we meeting here?” he whispered. “Don’t we stand out?”

  Maximilian snapped a match with his thumb. The flame seemed to come right out of his fist. He held it steady for Guillaume, whose cigarette was trembling in his hand.

  “Not at all,” he said. “We look like a couple of bored fathers who brought the little darlings to see Guignol and then went back for a smoke. Do you see anyone here who might be a policeman or an informer? And how could they hear us even if they were?”

  The red velvet curtain went up and the children screamed, “Guignol! Guignol!” He popped up on stage, seemingly out of nowhere. Guignol was a hand puppet with a long nose and a red stocking cap, like the French revolutionaries.

  Guignol was having trouble again with his wife Madelon. She was a bigger puppet than he was, so she beat and bullied him and the two had many good fights. He would come in late and she would catch him—just as he reached the edge of the stage—and hit him over the head with a pot.

  The children loved the swift, jerky movements of the two puppets, and they particularly loved the way Guignol talked to them. He would complain long and loudly about Madelon, not knowing that she was coming up behind him. The children would giggle. Then she would knock him down, his head hitting the floor with a solid wooden thump, and he would run for the wings of the stage.

  The children would try to warn Guignol whenever his wife came closer. When Guignol didn’t hear them they shouted louder, jumping up as they tried to make themselves heard over the other children who clustered at the fence in front of the stage.

  In the back, Guillaume complained to Maximilian: “I have given my time and sweat to the Army for 20 years, and what do I get? Guillaume go here, Guillaume do this. Guillaume, this is your responsibility. But the glory is all Chevrier’s. He gets it all!”

  Maximilian nodded sympathetically. “I know. But the question is: what are you going to do about it?”

  Guillaume was taken aback. “What can I do?”

  “You can come with me to Germany.”

  “Do you mean that?”

  “Would I be here watching this silly children’s show if I didn’t?”

  “But how could this be arranged?” asked Guillaume. “And what kind of prospects would I have in your country?”

  Maximilian thought this would be easier than expected. “When I saw you,” he told Guillaume, “I said ‘There’s the man with the brains behind this project, a man Germany can use.’”

  Guillaume laughed harshly, and pulled out another cigarette from his pocket. His movements were as jerky as those of the puppets on stage. “Ha, you are forgetting, my friend. You are German and I am French.”

  Maximilian looked straight at him. “In our new world, the world in the sky, nationality is nothing. Ability is everything. The people who understand what it takes to get up in the heavens; the future is theirs, no matter what language they speak. Some day they may even have their own language.”

  For the first time, Guillaume lost his skeptical look. He wanted to believe. “You know what would happen if they caught me here with you? They shoot spies. Look what they did to Dreyfus, and he wasn’t even guilty.”

  Maximilian shrugged. “Dreyfus is a Jew, and they are all part of a worldwide conspiracy. He deserved what he got.”

  On the small stage, Guignol had declared that he would give anything to be rid of his troublesome wife. A figure in red with a mustache and pointed chin popped up behind him. The children screamed. They knew who he was. Their mothers and the priest had frightened them with him often enough, and many nights they had crawled deep under their blankets, hoping the tapping sound outside the window was not his knock.

  But today in the bright sunlight, they were not yet afraid. “Look behind you!” they cried. “No, to your left! Your right!” But their cries were useless. Every time Guignol turned to one side, the devil came up on the other. The message was clear. He would be seen only when he wanted to be seen.

  Finally the devil shouted “Boo!” and Guignol’s head popped up. The children giggled.

  The devil was sympathetic to Guignol’s problem. He asked Guignol if he would like to be rid of Madelon. Guignol nodded his head vigorously.

  “Just promise me, old friend, that you?
??ll give me a small reward later on,” said the devil. “A very small reward, in your case.”

  Guignol agreed. His wife’s booming voice was heard offstage calling him, and the devil ran off.

  Maximilian recognized the plot. It was the classic Faust. Guignol little knew that he had struck a bargain with the devil and would have to give up his soul. Silly to think of a puppet having a soul...or even a man.

  Now it was time to move his plot forward. Maximilian leaned over so close to Guillaume that their faces were only inches apart, and pretended to be lighting a cigarette from LeRond’s.

  “I am going to tell you something that even my subordinates don’t know,” he confided. “The Kaiser is very interested in this project and has authorized me to do anything necessary to make it succeed. At any price,” he emphasized. “And that includes citizenship and a handsome salary.”

  “How much money would I get?”

  Maximilian wrote down a figure on a slip of paper and passed it to him.

  Guillaume gasped. “That much?”

  “Every year.”

  Guillaume’s face showed his surprise. Suddenly he had value; far greater value to Maximilian than to Alain.

  “But...” said Maximilian.

  “But...” mouthed Guillaume after him, anticipating his next sentence.

  “But first we must win the Meurthe Prize,” said Maximilian. “What you get later depends on how well I do now.”

  Guignol’s wife was in the kitchen, her trusty pot in hand, when the devil entered from the other wing and stole up behind her. Again the children screamed: “Là-bas! Regardez là-bas!” (“Over there! Look over there!”) But Madelon might as well have been deaf. She went on mumbling about how much work she did and what a clochard was Guignol.

  The devil grabbed her from behind. She whooped and hollered and battered the devil with her pot. But when he seized her by the feet and upended her, Madelon’s head hit the stage with a crack, and the devil, chuckling, dragged her off.

  Guillaume had no interest in the Guignol show. It was a distraction. His mind was racing ahead to future glories. What does it matter where I live? A wrench is a wrench and a bolt is a bolt, and no one can match them up as well as Guillaume. Maximilian sat there, letting the game play out, letting the fish have more line. Finally he spoke.