The Woman Who Rode the Wind

  “I will follow the line of the aqueduct down to the first crossing of the Seine...” he said. Then he stopped as he saw the pain in Guillaume’s face. For a moment the two studied each other. The depths of despair in Guillaume’s eyes might have warned another man of danger.

  “What do I tell him,” Guillaume thought. “That I have betrayed him?” He started to speak, to say something, anything that would stop what was going to happen...but Alain silenced him with an upraised hand.

  “Don’t worry, old friend,” he told Guillaume. “I’m not afraid to go up there today. It’s something else that’s bothering me. I’d rather be up there than down here among people. I’m used to that kind of danger. I enjoy it. This is the moment that I’ve spent my whole life training for. All I need is to ‘Have a little courage.’”

  Alain turned and sprang into the metal gondola of the airship like a cat leaping from floor to table, an unconscious display. He gave a sign to two of his mechanics who turned the big windmill sails of his propeller until they started to beat the air like kettledrums. Guillaume’s last words were swallowed by the backwash.

  * * *

  It was a hot, muggy morning, and the mist was rolling off the Seine when Mary Ann and Harding arrived at the Eiffel Tower. The reviewing stand, where the Aéro Club, the generals and the nobility would watch Alain’s flight, had been set up near the Pont d’Iéna bridge so that they would have a full view of the top of the Tower. Mary Ann saw that the bottom of the grandstand was packed with uniforms and dark suits, but at the top, Henri Meurthe had a place all to himself. Well, almost to himself. Yvette stood beside him.

  Yvette looked the way she always did; cool, beautiful, if anything, more confident than usual. She was watching through a pair of opera glasses hung on a jeweled chain around her neck, and, like a good actress, she had a magnificent backdrop, the frame of the Eiffel Tower. Behind the reviewing stand were the rockets and fireworks that would explode once Alain had triumphed.

  Mary Ann hesitated when she saw Yvette. Then Harding pushed her forward.

  “I don’t want to go,” she’d told Harding earlier.

  “And let Yvette know that she’s won?” he goaded her.

  He was right, she knew. Alain had made her no promises. He hadn’t led her on. He had been nothing but kind to her. Now she was going to be there to see him win. She would smile through her pain, and Yvette could go to hell.

  But she almost panicked when she saw the Meurthes. They looked so unapproachable. Then Henri Meurthe glanced down and flashed a smile. So did Yvette, but it was a different kind of smile. Meurthe motioned them to come up.

  Mary Ann recoiled.

  “Come on,” said Harding softly, nudging her. “You’ve got to face her. You’re fighting for your self-respect now.”

  Then, fortunately, another man brushed by them and pushed his way through the nobles and generals to the top, where he stood next to Meurthe. It was the German, Maximilian von Hohenstauffen.

  “No false modesty there,” whispered Harding.

  He and Mary Ann followed in his wake.

  “So glad you could join us,” said Meurthe, running his eyes over the two of them, and then fixing them on Maximilian. “I thought you would like to see this.”

  “I assure you, nothing will give me more pleasure than to witness this,” said von Hohenstauffen. “A great event. A triumph for Man no matter who achieves it. I wish him all the best.”

  Meurthe shrugged, as if he didn’t trust Maximilian’s sentiments and, what’s more, didn’t care. But von Hohenstauffen didn’t seem to notice the small discourtesy. “There!” he said. “Chevrier’s airship has started to rise. Would you like to look through my German-made glasses?”

  “Mine is French, and just as good,” retorted Meurthe, putting a telescope to his right eye. Both of them watched the distant hills of Saint-Cloud.

  Maximilian scrutinized the balloon with his powerful binoculars. It was impossible to tell, at this distance, if the device was attached. After all, it was supposed to be invisible.

  “Is that a dueling scar on the left side of your face?” asked Meurthe. “I have fought duels myself.”

  “So have I,” said Maximilian, “and always won.”

  “Yet someone managed to cut you a bit, didn’t he?”

  Von Hohenstauffen laughed. “Oh, no. When you are a German officer, it is almost ‘de rigueur’—How I love your French words!—to have a dueling scar. But no one could manage to touch me, not even my instructors. No, I did this myself—with a scalpel.”

  “Interesting,” said Meurthe. “It took God to mark Cain, but you have conveniently done the job yourself. If I were younger, I would be delighted to duel with you.”

  “Perhaps we already are,” said Maximilian.

  “The trip has begun well,” said Meurthe, turning away from him and talking directly to Mary Ann. “Chevrier is making his journey across the Bois de Boulogne past the little gatehouse in the park. There is a huge crowd at the racetrack at Longchamp cheering him on. Now he is past the Auteuil racetrack and coming over the city. He has reached the Seine below our replica of the Statue of Liberty. Both sides of the river are lined with people...”

  Mary Ann listened to Meurthe’s voice, soothing and instructive, but in the background she could sense Maximilian. The German seemed to be pacing, even though he was standing still.

  Something was wrong, she sensed.

  She turned away and found herself facing Yvette. Cool, gray-green eyes looked Mary Ann up and down. Strange how life—and love—had become a battlefield, thought Mary Ann. She set her jaw, determined to endure whatever happened. Harding spoke first.

  “Sorry we couldn’t come to your party last night,” he said.

  “That’s all right,” said Yvette, equally the poker player. “It was a bore. The real excitement is here today.” She motioned with one gloved hand to the top of the Tower where her stocking floated.

  “Do you see that? Alain and I made a private bet yesterday just before he came to our house for the soiree. When he passes the top of the Tower, he will remove my stocking and bring it back to me.”

  Mary Ann lost what little composure she had left. Her eyes welled with tears. Then she felt Harding’s hand gripping hers and forced herself to focus on the sky, where Alain’s blue dirigible was drawing closer.

  Yvette saw the pain in Mary Ann’s face. And enjoyed it. “So she thinks she is the ‘wronged woman?’” thought Yvette. “I have wronged many women. They do not frighten me. Eventually they go away.”

  “Oh, that reminds me,” said Meurthe to his daughter. “Chevrier gave me a note for you last night.”

  She opened it, holding it close so no one else could see, not sure what she would find. It said:

  Yvette:

  We must never see each other again.

  Alain Chevrier

  She looked up at her father, anger and despair in her eyes. What had he done? Why did he want to hurt her like this? Henri Meurthe looked away, following the flight.

  And Alain! Sending her this smug note! Dismissing her. Today he would be a hero of France, and she would be...

  “I hate you,” she said to the distant figure floating through the sky. “I hope you die up there.”

  The dirigible was 500 feet above the Seine when the phosphorous bomb went off and the back end of the balloon burst into flame. Alain had been standing up at the edge of the railing, and the sudden lurch nearly sent him overboard. He caught himself on the edge of the metal frame.

  Then, in a supreme act of courage, he pulled himself hand over hand back into the cockpit, where the flames drew closer every second. At the back of the dirigible the cells exploded one by one. Mary Ann saw Alain slide the ballast weight forward and put the airship into a dive. Then he set his hands on the wheel and headed up the Seine.

  She couldn’t stand it anymore. She had to do something. Yvette had turned away, the opera glasses still around her neck. Mary Ann reached over and grabbed the
m, snapping the jeweled chain. Yvette glared at her, but Mary Ann hardly noticed as she focused on the dying ship and its doomed captain.

  “Jump! Why doesn’t he jump?” yelled the crowd on the reviewing stand as the dirigible fell from the sky.

  But Mary Ann knew why. Alain had seen the spectators, many of them children, on the banks of the river. He would not let the flaming mass of dirigible crash down on them, so he was steering it directly into the Seine, but at a terrible cost to himself.

  Suddenly she was bumped from behind and saw Maximilian pushing his way down from the top of the reviewing stand. He looked angry.

  Maximilian was annoyed. He had told Guillaume to place the device at the bottom front of the balloon. That way, if Chevrier put his craft into a dive, the flames would have blown back into his face. But Guillaume had placed the bomb at the back of the airship. Could it be Guillaume knew all the time that it was a bomb?

  Alain was not concerned with his own life, as Mary Ann saw through her borrowed glasses. Behind him the flames had become a blowtorch. The frame was bright orange where the fire had burned everything but metal. He was holding onto the wheel with both hands even as it scorched his flesh. He could barely see ahead. “He’s steering by instinct,” she thought with a shudder, “the way an animal senses its way to water.”

  Alain’s last flight was beautiful and desperate, a fireball come to earth, a miniature sun. Mary Ann watched it all, saw it plunge toward the Pont d’Iéna bridge in front of her, heard the people on the bridge scream and start to run. She felt someone’s hand grip her shoulder. It was Henri Meurthe. His face looked ashen, as if he’d suffered a heart attack.

  Just before his airship hit the bridge, the flames reached the gas tank behind Alain, and it exploded with a white flash. The airship went into the river like a galleon into the deep, and the rasp and groan of the suddenly cooling metal structure sounded like the death throes of a mythical beast.

  Her last sight of Alain was as intense as her first; wrapped first in fire and then in water, his hands clutching the wheel. A cloud of steam rose from where the flaming wreck had struck the water. It was as if a curtain had dropped on the last act of a tragedy, and she waited for him to appear from behind the curtain. He was Alain Chevrier, larger than life, invincible. He had to come back!

  For only a moment, but what seemed like an eternity, no one moved or made a sound. Then Mary Ann heard a collective sigh of despair as the crowd started to breathe again. She became aware of the scratch-scratch of an artist’s pencil as he sketched the scene; the living forced to confront their own mortality.

  Yvette burst out crying. For Mary Ann, it went beyond crying. She felt empty, as if all her tears and feelings had been stolen from her, and she was with Alain somewhere under the water.

  The one who seemed most affected was Henri Meurthe. He staggered from the reviewing stand onto the grass, holding his head in his hands.

  And then she saw him sway, as if a wave had crashed over him. He tried to sit down. But because of his stiff leg, he simply fell over backwards, as if he’d been hit. Perhaps he had, she thought.

  People walked by him, in no hurry now. “Who is that stupid man sitting in the grass?” asked one woman.

  “Don’t you know? That’s Henri Meurthe, the one who started this foolishness,” said her husband.

  “That’s him? Why, he should be shot!”

  “I agree. And it may happen soon enough.”

  Chapter Twenty Two: The Corn Exchange—Afternoon, July 16

  The next morning when Harding came back with the newspapers it was obvious that Henri Meurthe had reaped the whirlwind. One tabloid had run Alain’s and Meurthe’s pictures side by side. “Chevrier...And His Killer!” screamed the caption. A cartoon in a second paper showed Meurthe with a bloody sword, standing over Chevrier’s body, while a third paper claimed it had proof that Meurthe was part of a shadowy “Syndicate” that was out to destroy France. Mary Ann kept reading them, one after another, all full of lies, insults and humiliation.

  “Look at this one,” said Harding. “I guess this ends it. Le Petit Journal is saying that President Auguste Pouchet has scratched the contest—and canceled the million-franc prize.”

  They were sitting on the Bethanie, their floating slum, with their backs up against the strange winged machine that they had built. Occasionally children would come by and point and giggle, and then their mothers would pull them away. Mary Ann was struck by the absurdity of it all. They had come all this way, labored so long and hard, suffered through the storms and heat of a Parisian summer, been sinned against in so many ways, and now, to see it end here, like this.

  “Do you think it’s true?” she asked Harding, wondering if he would give her hope.

  “I always believe what I read in the newspapers,” he said sarcastically.

  “Well, I’m going to find out.” She stormed off the boat.

  At first Mary Ann had no destination in mind. She didn’t want to go to Meurthe’s house—couldn’t even if she wanted to—remembering Yvette would be there. Then she thought for a moment. Meurthe had an office at the Corn Exchange, near the church of Saint-Eustache. Would he be there? Or would he be in hiding somewhere? No, it wasn’t like Henri Meurthe to hide.

  Mary Ann arrived at the height of midafternoon trading. Through windows inside the second and third story of the huge round building, she saw merchants come out of their offices and make hand signals to tell the traders on the floor to buy or sell. The noise was deafening, echoing off the rotunda above them where murals of iceboats, tropic steamers and trains explored the world. She started to walk onto the floor when a guard took her arm.

  “Mademoiselle,” he said politely, “women are not allowed here.”

  “But I must see Henri Meurthe.” She strained to look over his shoulder at the bustling floor, searching for the tall, distinguished-looking man.

  Then, instead of seeing him, she heard him. His voice, engaged in argument, came at her from behind a pair of nearby closed doors. The guard heard him too, and glanced in that direction. She took advantage of his momentary distraction, pushed past him, and rushed through the double doors.

  There, on either side of her, were two identical circular staircases. She didn’t have to decide which one to take. She could hear his voice—and Pouchet’s. They were coming down opposite stairways, shouting across at each other. Obviously their friendship was over.

  “I am ending this contest,” roared the French President.

  “That is not your decision to make, Auguste!” retorted Meurthe.

  “I will not countenance any further loss of life.”

  She heard Meurthe’s harsh laugh. “When did politicians ever care about people’s lives! I saw thousands sacrificed uselessly when I fought in the war. Why don’t you just admit you’re afraid the Germans will win.”

  “And if they do? There will be riots. Possibly another war. Do you remember what happened in the last one? You should. You suffered as much as any.”

  “I cannot control who wins.”

  “But what if the explosion was sabotage?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Meurthe. She could hear uncertainty in his voice.

  “We suspect Guillaume LeRond, Chevrier’s assistant. He has disappeared. When we find him, we will find the answer.”

  “Then I doubt you will find him,” said Meurthe in a voice laced with sarcasm.

  “I have been patient,” shouted Pouchet. “I have been reasonable. I have endured insult and embarrassment. But now the decision is out of your hands, do you hear me? Out of your hands!”

  Mary Ann watched Pouchet hurry down the final steps and out the door. Meurthe came down, too, but when she looked at his face, she knew better than to bother him.

  He shuffled across the floor of the Exchange, a shambling, stooped figure. She remembered how he had run down the stairs of the Eiffel Tower. Was that only a month ago? The traders and brokers cleared a path for him, as if his misfortune were co
ntagious. Faces closed when he looked at them. Eyes averted. Smiles vanished. The noise of trading hushed. Meurthe had always been envied. Now it had turned to hate, and worse—to contempt.

  Mary Ann followed at a distance as Meurthe limped across the square and into Saint-Eustache. Inside, the world’s noises—the sounds of the little Teuf-Teuf autobikes, the jangle of harnesses, the yells of the vendors—were hushed. There was only candle smoke and fading light. And peace. Old women dressed all in black—in spite of the summer heat—came, knelt, bowed their heads and departed. The little wickerwork chairs were in place for the next mass. Meurthe took one and sat, propping his bad leg up on another.

  Day edged into twilight and still he didn’t move. Light through the stained glass windows made painted shadows on the floor. Finally she steeled herself to approach him. He looked up when he saw her standing there, and smiled as if he were glad to see her.

  “I finally understand why people like churches,” he said. “They are like our petit zincs, or what you Americans would call ‘saloons.’ They’re where you go when you can’t go home. I dread going home. A hundred reporters are waiting outside my door to badger me with their questions.” He patted a wicker chair. “Sit with me for a moment.

  “I was just looking at the windows,” he pointed to the stained glass. “Did you know that each pane tells a story? There is Susanna being raped by the Elders, and then the devil with a face on his belly, and finally Cowardice as a knight being defeated by a rabbit. And that one over there,” he added, “is Abraham on the rock, about to sacrifice Isaac. That is my story. Mine and Alain’s.”

  For a second she was confused. Then, looking at his face in the dim light, with the votive candles guttering, she understood, and wondered why she had never seen it before.

  It was Alain’s face, 30 years older.

  “Do you see now?” he said.

  She nodded. “How did it happen?”

  “In the War of 1870 I was a cavalry officer, a brave and stupid one like Alain. In the battle of Sedan they ordered us to charge the German guns, time after time, until there were none of us left. In the final charge my horse fell on me. I was sent back to a Paris hospital to die.

  “Louise was a nurse there. She refused to let me die. I was not an easy patient. I knew that our country was beaten and I did not want to live under the Germans. But she was then, as now, defiant. She brought me back from death. ‘You will live to fight again,’ she told me. And she was right.