The Woman Who Rode the Wind

  “But you were a famous writer once, weren’t you? I heard Alain say so.”

  “Don’t believe everything Chevrier tells you,” said Harding with a smile. “My father was a doctor, Ulysses Grant’s personal physician. He wanted me to be a doctor, too. So he sent sonny boy off to the Sorbonne here in Paris for the best medical training.

  “A lot of radical ideas were running around at the time and I got interested in Karl Marx. I was a little like Alain. Well, when I argued with my father about shooting workers just because they went on strike, he cut me off. Left me in Europe. Thought it would teach me a lesson. In a way it did.

  “First I joined the ‘wandering people.’ No job. No home. Traveled across Europe with a guitar, singing for my supper. Then I settled in Paris and started painting. I’m not a great painter, but I know great painting when I see it. I started to write about the Impressionists just as people in America were starting to appreciate them. And that’s how I became famous.”

  “And you ended up working for Bishop?” she asked.

  “From writing about art, it’s only a short step to buying art,” said Harding. “I helped rich stupid Americans plunder the Old World’s treasures. Manet, Monet, it was all Mon-ey to me. And that led me to Bishop, who fancies himself a Renaissance man, but couldn’t tell a Courbet from a sorbet.” He took a pull on his bottle.

  “Why do you do it?”

  “You mean, why do I drink? Or why do I work for Neville Bishop? I drink because I don’t like what I do...you saw how he operates.”

  “So why do you work for him?”

  “That’s simple. A lush like me can’t get an honest job.”

  “You’re lying,” she said. “Bishop needs you because you understand the French as if you were one of them. And they respect you.”

  “All the worse for them. Next thing you’ll be asking me if I was married.”

  “You were. Her name was Maria. Why did it end?”

  “Well, that gets back to my fatal flaw, doesn’t it? It happened right here in the City of Love. She went to see an angelmaker...”

  “A what?”

  “An abortionist,” said Harding. His voice was flat. “I told her that I wanted to paint. I wasn’t ready to have children. The French call them angelmakers because they make little angels. Except this one botched the job, so I got two for the price of one.”

  “You mean...” She looked at him in horror, not wanting to hear him say it.

  “Yeah. He killed her.” He paused. “No, let me tell the truth. I killed her. I was coming in the front door as he was running out the back.” His voice broke as he said it. “I held her while she bled to death. Before it was over and I shut her eyes she looked up and said, 'I don't blame you.' But blame is a funny thing. Do you hate me now? Probably not as much as I hate myself.”

  She didn’t know what to say. She reached over to touch his cheek, and felt it was wet, but only for a second before he jerked his head away. The hearse rolled on. They were on a cobblestone street now.

  “It’s quiet, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Yup,” said Harding, glad to change the subject, “this hearse has the new rubber tires. I’m told these things are hitting lots of people because they’re listening for the sound of the metal wheels. Creeps right up on you and next thing you know, you’re lying right here in the back. More business for this man.

  So what’s your story? An only child?”

  “I am now. I had a brother. His name was Samuel, just like my father. People used to call them ‘First and Second Samuel.’ Second Samuel and my mother both died of typhoid when I was 15. That was just before my father left Harvard.”

  “I seem to remember something about them running him out.”

  “They said he was doing ‘unauthorized experiments.’ He was trying to learn how to fly. They told him to stop.”

  “And instead he took you to that god-forsaken church down there in Tennessee,” said Harding, stretching out on the floor of the hearse.

  “Yes. He’d wander in the hills, day after day, climbing the rocks and watching the eagles and the hawks. He could tell every bird just by the way it flew. Watching them fly, he thought about his dreams when he was a child. He made flying machines, first gliders and then wings with engines. And then one day he didn’t come back. I found him out there in the hills among the rocks. He was frozen. His eyes were open. He was still watching the birds.”

  “Monsieur and Mademoiselle, we have arrived,” said the hearse driver with mock courtesy. Harding tipped him with the rest of his bottle and turned to Mary Ann. "This is my humble Paris abode," he said, and fell on the steps.

  Mary Ann managed to get him inside. When she asked the sleepy concierge where to take him, he said, “Third floor...and a half.”

  As they trudged up the narrow steps, Mary Ann understood what he had meant. She hadn’t expected much, based on the way that he lived in New York, but this amazed her. “The owner cut every floor in half, didn’t he?” she asked. “He turned six-stories into 12.”

  “Yeah,” said Harding, as she pushed him up the stairway ahead of her. “I used to ask him how the other half lived, but he never got it.” He opened the door. The famous high French ceilings were so low now that even Mary Ann almost had to stoop under the beams. The bed was only a pallet on a box, a foot above the floor. Papers were scattered everywhere.

  “Why do you live here?” she asked.

  “That’s a simple question and deserves a simple answer. I own this place. I owned it back when...when Maria and I were living here, young and poor and in love.”

  “And you kept it even...even after.”

  “Yeah. I used to lie on this bed thinking she’d come walking through that door. And after I left Paris, I kept thinking if she ever came back I wanted her to have some place to go.”

  She laid him gently on the bed and took off his coat. He was wearing crossbraced suspenders, a surprising luxury for a man who couldn’t remember to keep his suit cleaned. One of them had snapped and he had knotted it. A garter strap that held up his sock had also snapped and the sock was flapping around his ankle. He used his necktie as a handkerchief when he sneezed. His shoelaces were gnarled, and it was obvious from the broken-down heels that he seldom tied them. If he changed his celluloid collar once a week she would be surprised. He was falling apart. She started to pull off his shoes...and found that he was up on his elbows, looking at her.

  She looked back. The shoes dropped to the floor. Slowly, and with surprising tenderness, he brought his face up to hers and kissed her.

  For a second she let him. Then she heard him say, “Maria.” Not Mary Ann. Maria.

  She pushed him back down on the bed and stood up—as best she could.

  “I’m that good?” Harding said.

  “You called me ‘Maria,’” she retorted. “You’re still living on guilt, aren’t you? Guilt and rotgut.”

  Harding rolled his eyes back toward the low ceiling. “It’s been years and years and nobody’s ever taken out the sutures. But you, Mary Ann, should definitely be kissed.”

  Mary Ann’s eyes caught fire by the light of the single oil lamp. “I’ve been kissed...” she said defensively.

  “And will be again,” he broke in. “But not by me.”

  His eyes were suddenly clear and perceptive. “You love him, don’t you?” he said.

  “Who?” said Mary Ann, knowing whom he meant.

  “Alain,” he said. “You love him, don’t you?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “The truth?”

  “No.”

  “Come on,” said Harding. “Whatever else we’ve done, we haven’t lied to each other tonight. The truth.”

  “Maybe. Maybe a little.” She was sitting on the edge of the narrow bed now. Harding reached out and stroked her hair. She hated Harding. He was a big drunken oaf who had just chased a cat off a roof—and still he could read her thoughts.

  “How did you know?” she ask
ed.

  “It shows,” he said. “For one thing, you get this stupid expression on your face every time you hear his name.”

  She picked up one of his shoes and tried to whack him with it. He fended off the blow with his shoulder, still surprisingly agile.

  Then he grinned. “He invited us to visit his workshop in Saint-Cloud tomorrow...I mean this morning. Want to go?”

  “Isn’t he afraid that we’ll see his flying machines?” she asked. “After all, we’re rivals.”

  Harding laughed. “I don’t think either Bishop or that German worry him at all. Are you coming?”

  “No,” she said, walking quickly toward the door. Perhaps he would stop if she left. But his voice followed her.

  “I’ll stop by your hotel at seven to pick you up. And Mary Ann!...wear a dress. Not that brown one with the bleach stain. The one that looks like it came from a nunnery.”

  She picked up the other shoe to hit him, and saw that he was already asleep, his mouth open, snoring gently, unaware of the turmoil that he had awakened in her.

  “Bastard!” she said to herself. She went out and shut the door, softly.

  Chapter Ten: A Visit to Saint-Cloud—May 28

  An hour after they started out the next morning, they were lost in Saint-Cloud.

  Mary Ann and Harding had gone in search of the Parc de Aerostation, that fabled place above Paris where Alain Chevrier was building his magnificent aircraft. The entire city seemed to know where it was, and every newspaper had published pictures of the big church-like structure with its high gambrel roof. As they crossed the Seine at the Aqueduct Bridge and followed the rushing water toward the heights overlooking Paris, she assumed it would be easy to find.

  But the fog descended on them like a net as they got higher. “Now you know why they call it ‘Saint-Cloud,’” said Harding.

  “Did you bring a map?”

  “I lost it,” said Harding, rubbing his forehead. She could see he was nursing a hangover.

  “How did you ever find your way when you were wandering across Europe?” she asked bitingly.

  “I didn’t have you along,” he retorted.

  Saint-Cloud was a series of narrow, twisting roads running progressively upward. Streets kept changing names. The old joke about Paris was that every street has at least one alias. Harding and Mary Ann turned up and down side streets, hoping to cut across and find the Park. But the slopes were so steep that Alain’s building could have been nestled anywhere without showing a turret or a peak.

  Then Harding began to sniff the air.

  Mary Ann thought he had gone crazy.

  “Sulfuric acid,” he said. “Someone’s making hydrogen.” He ran to the edge of the hill and looked straight back toward Paris. “There!” he shouted.

  She looked. The figure of a man appeared through the fog where no man had a right to be, rising out of the mist in thin air, defying gravity.

  The figure was almost level with them, 100 feet away from the steep side of the hill, and Mary Ann could see it was Alain. He was standing, holding ropes like reins, guiding what appeared to be an enormous prehistoric creature beneath him as it reared its way up through the fog.

  As Alain rose, she could see he was standing on the front of a blue dirigible, steering it with guide ropes connected to a rudder far in the back. The rising sun refracted on the mist, breaking it into rainbow colors that arched over the top of the flying machine. Then the dirigible rose higher, and cast its shadow across them and the mountain.

  “The workshop’s down below,” Harding pointed. “Ready to go?”

  Mary Ann stood there, unmoving.

  “Lets go!” he repeated, loud enough to break through her reverie. Then he took her hand and walked her slowly down the grassy slope toward the big open door. As they did, they watched Alain lower the big dirigible gently into its berth inside.

  “What’s Alain really like?” she asked Harding.

  “People have called him a Marxist, an anarchist or a Communard, but I don’t think that any label really fits.”

  “Well, what is he?”

  Harding stopped for a moment, mulling what he should say. “An individualist,” he said finally, “who happens to be lucky enough to do exactly what he wants.”

  “Why?”

  “Because France needs him. He’s the only hope this country has of winning the Meurthe Prize and, even more important, keeping it away from the Germans.”

  “The common people love him,” said Mary Ann. “The newspapers call him ‘the Magellan of the Air.’ He gets cheered wherever he goes. Maybe that’s because he has the courage to thumb his nose at the rich and powerful. Or maybe it’s just because he looks like a hero. He’s young, handsome...and intelligent.”

  Harding looked closely at her. She started to blush. “A lot of women want him, don’t they?” she asked.

  “And a lot of men are sharpening their knives for him,” Harding shot back. “What interests me is the way Chevrier keeps crossing swords with Meurthe. He hates him. But it’s Meurthe who has put Alain in the spotlight. Before the Meurthe prize, Alain was just an obscure officer doing experiments at an army base, a man who never would have risen past captain. Now he has Paris at his feet. Yet he despises the man who put him there.”

  “What about women?” she asked. “Do you think he has a special one?”

  “I think he has a million opportunities. But Alain is like a steam kettle. All his energy comes out through his work. He’s a genius, so he sees things that are far away, like stars, but misses what’s up close...like you.”

  He waited for a reaction from her, but she deliberately walked on ahead. He wasn’t going to read her thoughts this time.

  The fog had burned off. Looking westward they could see first the blue ribbon of the Seine, then the green of the Bois de Boulogne, the city itself and finally, the distant Tower, its base lost in the haze.

  By the time they had reached the huge doors to the workshop, Alain was waiting for them. “Harding! Marianne,” he shouted. (This time she didn’t bother to correct him.) “Come in. Meet my ladies.”

  Mary Ann felt a flash of jealousy. Then she realized who his “ladies” were. They were made of gossamer, bamboo, linen and aluminum.

  They passed the big blue airship, the one they had just seen outside. “This one is ‘La Grande Dame.’ It is similar to what the Germans are building,” said Alain with a smile. “It is a rigid framework of aluminum girders with 12 gas cells inside, instead of just one big one. For today’s experiment, we even built a platform to see if it could be steered from the front. We are still trying to find the proper engine for it.”

  “How do you know what the Germans are doing?” asked Harding. “They’ve been very secretive.”

  Chevrier smiled again. “In Paris there are no secrets.”

  “Have you considered one of the new rotary engines?” asked Mary Ann.

  Alain seemed surprised by the information, as well as where it came from. “But don’t they get too hot?”

  “They’re air cooled,” said Mary Ann. “If you are traveling at 15 miles an hour or more, they won’t overheat.”

  Alain was impressed. “How do you know so much about them?”

  “My father and I investigated different types of engines when we were planning to build an aeroplane,” she said.

  “I envy you. A balloon is just a cloud in a bag. To propel a dirigible through the air is like pushing a sausage through a brick wall. And trying to control it is like waltzing with a jellyfish. All you see here...” and he swept his arm around the huge barn, “is just trying to improve the existing technology. You and your father discovered new ways to fly. When this foolishness is over, I would enjoy working with you.”

  Mary Ann shot a triumphant look at Harding. At that moment a bulky man with big hussar’s mustaches, which rolled back into the folds of his neck, came up behind them. He was holding a heavy ring with crossed swords and a ruby inset.

  “Here comes my a
ssistant, Guillaume LeRond,” said Chevrier.

  LeRond held out the ring. “I found this next to the gas tank...again.” He was glaring at Alain, who didn’t seem to notice.

  Alain took the ring from his hand. “This is my St. Cyr ring from my days at the military academy,” he said. “I don’t know why I haven’t lost it.” He looked at Mary Ann. “You like it?” He tossed it to her. “Keep it for me. Now let’s take a look at ‘The Bitch’...” He saw the look of shock on her face and added, “No, it’s not what you think...”

  At the back of the workshop, looking almost like an orphan stepchild, was Alain’s other airship, “The Bitch.” Mary Ann could see it was his favorite by the way he patted its torpedo-shaped balloon as he went by. Both ends were pointed. It looked like one of those aerodynamic racing cars except that instead of wheels it had a triangular rudder at the back for steering.

  Below the balloon was a two-seater bike frame. There was an engine up front, then the handlebar to steer the rudder, pedals to start the engine, and a seat for the driver. Behind that was another set of handlebars riveted to the frame, a passenger seat, and then a propeller. And that was all.

  “It’s like that song, ‘A Bicycle Built for Two,’” she called out.

  “Except this bicycle will take you up in the sky,” he answered.

  “How does it work?”

  He took her hand. “I’ll show you.”

  Mary Ann hesitated. The only thing holding the bicycle frame to the balloon was piano wire. She looked at Harding.

  He shrugged as if to say, “Why not?”

  “Come on,” said Alain. “Have a little courage.”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. He put both hands around her waist and lifted her slowly, effortlessly into the rear seat. It felt so sensual that she didn’t object, even though she was frightened. But if Alain was in the air, she decided that she didn’t want to be on the ground. He slid into the front seat and pedaled to start the motor. The windmill-shaped propeller started to churn behind her as they passed through the open door of the barn. Then they were up in the sky.

  Alain reached over his head to where a huge coil of rope hung from a slender pole under the balloon and moved it backwards.

  “What’s that for?” she asked.

  “Elevation!” he answered over the roar of the motor and propeller. “When I slide it back, the front of the balloon goes up; forward and it goes down.