Vango

  His fearsome voice rang out in the hangar.

  The Kreisleiter of Friedrichshafen felt sick. He had a sudden desire to chew the oak leaves on his collar. At first he was speechless, then he blurted out a pulp of words, to the effect of: “I’ll get you in the end.”

  He roared a few curt orders to his men and declared, “Heil Hitler” two or three times while raising his right arm in every direction. He even saluted an old railway clock that had ended up there, before taking off his cap and tripping over the radio he himself had kicked into that position. Then off he clopped, clicking his heels like an ass on a bridge. His soldiers followed him.

  Eckener watched them go.

  He felt a moment of pity for those boys who would be used as a doormat for this buffoon, and then as a stepping-stone for someone infinitely more threatening.

  Silence was restored.

  Slowly, Hugo Eckener let out the rope in order to lower himself to the ground. He put down his paint pot and turned to face his handiwork.

  It was all so silly. He knew the battle was already lost, and that soon he would have to paint an identical swastika back in the same place. He knew he was endangering his business and his balloon — in other words his entire life — as well as putting the men who worked at his side in danger. But he couldn’t do otherwise.

  For all that he spent most of his time in the sky, his feet remained firmly on the ground. He was frightened for his country. Slowly and tragically, it was drifting in the wrong direction. Something had to be done. Tiny gestures. Barely noticeable. A little resistance, some gentle friction, to break the fall.

  He called this air resistance.

  Hugo Eckener took off his painting smock. He climbed across the footbridge and walked into the deserted zeppelin. To his right the door giving onto the airship’s kitchen was ajar. The toque belonging to Otto the chef was propped on a chair. Eckener turned to the right and crossed the handsome dining room, whose curtains blocked out the light from the hangar.

  He opened the door giving onto the passengers’ walkway. The cabins were laid out on either side. He slowed down opposite one of the cabins, then continued on his way again.

  He went as far as the last door and pushed it open. It was the men’s bathroom. He began to wash his hands.

  He glanced up to take a look at himself in the mirror. What an odd face, he thought. Then he started talking to himself out loud: “Did you hear everything? As you can see, Commander Eckener hasn’t changed,” he said very loudly, as if he wanted to be heard in the next-door room.

  “Always trying to outsmart them, you see. I won’t budge. The trouble is that the world is moving. I’ll end up getting into trouble. That’s what my wife keeps telling me.” He laughed. It was a strange monologue. He turned off the faucet and dried his hands.

  “As for you, I imagine you’re in trouble too.”

  Eckener exited and walked back up the corridor in the opposite direction, before stopping in front of the same cabin and putting his hand on the door handle.

  “I know you’re awake, Jonah.”

  He opened the door. The person Eckener had addressed as Jonah was standing in the shadows.

  “I came by a while ago,” explained the commander of the zeppelin, “but you were asleep on the banquette, having arrived here out of the blue! So I did a spot of painting while I was waiting. And then I had some visitors, so you’ll have to forgive me. Now, here we are at last, just the two of us, four years on. Jonah! What has happened? Come here so I can give you a hug.”

  Vango threw himself at Eckener and burst into tears.

  After a few minutes, Eckener loosened his grip and started laughing. He turned away slightly and slid his thumbs into his jacket pockets.

  “I remember when you turned up for the first time, Vango. You weren’t in any better state than you are today. Where have you come from?”

  He studied his friend carefully. Vango looked exhausted. He had just crossed all of France, Switzerland, and Germany in order to shake off the police who were on his tail.

  “The last time you turned up out of nowhere, you spent a whole year with us.”

  Eckener closed his eyes to recall it more vividly.

  “It’s five years ago now. . . . The black year, 1929, the Great Depression . . . The world was collapsing. So why was it such a memorable year for me? I developed a soft spot for you, Piccolo. I used to have fun teasing you that I didn’t need you on the zeppelin. But since it was my old friend Zefiro who had sent you . . .”

  Both of them smiled.

  “One whole year on board with us. A strange and wonderful year. And then you left us, just like that, without a word.”

  “I’m sorry, Commander,” said Vango.

  “I’d spent so much time telling you I didn’t need you, that I was surprised by how much I missed you.”

  “I’m . . .”

  “Be quiet, Piccolo.”

  Vango had treasured every second of that first year far away from his island.

  When, at barely fourteen, he had been thrown out by Padre Zefiro, Vango had returned to the little house in Pollara. Weighing his words, he had explained to Mademoiselle that he had to leave for a whole year but that he would be back.

  She gave him a hug. She was trying to say, “Yes. That’s a good idea. What a great adventure,” but no sound escaped her lips.

  When he disembarked at the port of Naples, a few days later, all he had was a rucksack on his shoulder and in his pocket a sealed envelope on which was written the name of Dr. Hugo Eckener in Friedrichshafen. The address was in the padre’s handwriting.

  That day, Vango had felt his heart being wrenched apart, split down the middle by this stretch of sea that would separate him from Mademoiselle, from his island, and from his invisible friends. It felt like an insurmountable wrench to him.

  He was convinced he wouldn’t be able to live, far from this little universe, even though it would still carry on without him.

  On the platform of the main station, Vango was already dreaming of returning after a few days, standing on the cliff tops again, throwing his head back like a diving bird before emerging from the water, gasping for air.

  He could feel the force of that first mouthful of air filling the bird’s lungs, its wings outstretched. He believed that once he was back on his islands, he would spend the rest of his life there.

  That said, on the train that pulled out of Naples, heading north, he was leaning out the window, already taking in the faces, the handkerchiefs waving through the smoke, the teary farewells, the children running alongside the train. He was watching the crowd: so many stories on one platform. And already, he could feel a small square of light opening up inside him.

  People. He was discovering people.

  He had known individuals, a few of them, back home. Mademoiselle and a handful of others he could name. Dr. Basilio, Mazzetta, Zefiro, and Pippo. But people, they were something else. These were strangers. Their lives brushing past at high speed, like telegraph poles beyond the train window.

  Next to him, in the train car, was a young lady with a tiny dog.

  When the station had disappeared in all the steam, and Vango had gone to sit back down, the lady asked him:

  “Would you mind looking after my dog for a minute?”

  Vango took the dog, which fit into the palms of his hands. The lady left. In a flash, he understood what the padre had said to him. Before anything else, he needed to see the world. He sensed it was the speed that gave these encounters their strength. Lives affecting other lives more powerfully when they jostled up against one another because they were hurtling along with such energy.

  On her return, the lady gave off a flowery perfume.

  “Thank you,” she said, taking her dog back. “You’re very kind.”

  That was all. She got out at the next station.

  People.

  Vango had carried on for many days and nights toward Rome, Venice, and Munich, only leaving the train in orde
r to jump on board another one. Then he had taken a single-car train toward Lake Constance.

  Five years on, Vango still hadn’t been back to his islands.

  “I loved your zeppelin so much,” whispered Vango.

  Hugo Eckener went over to the cabin window and sat down on the chair.

  “When I got your note a month ago,” said the old man, “with the drawing of Notre Dame and a date in April, telling me you were going to become a priest, I wasn’t in the least surprised. I’d known for a long time that you were seeking something.”

  As for Vango, for a long time he’d felt that something was seeking him. . . .

  They fell silent for a moment. Then Eckener asked, “Now, tell me what I can do for you.”

  Vango thought of the crowd in front of the cathedral, of the shouting of the police officers, of Father Jean’s body on his bed, and of Vango’s own escape to Germany, to the zeppelin. It had all happened in a matter of hours, a few days at most.

  Not that he mentioned any of that.

  “Keep me here. I don’t need anything else. I’ll fly with you for a few months. I’ll work. I just need a bit of time to think. Please do this for me.”

  Eckener sank a little deeper into his chair.

  “Ah . . . so that’s why . . .”

  He looked troubled.

  “I wouldn’t have done it to help you, Vango. I’d have done it for me. . . .”

  He stopped, and wiped some invisible dust off the table.

  “But the zeppelin is no longer what it was. . . . I don’t get to choose my men anymore. Everything is inspected on every flight. The crew is German. Exclusively German.”

  Commander Eckener found these last words hard to say. His zeppelin was a piece of German territory. The law of the new Nazi regime applied to it. Months of negotiations meant that he had finally been able to recruit Dick, an American from Akron in Ohio, whom the authorities already had under surveillance as if he were a spy.

  Opening the narrow door of the Graf Zeppelin to another foreigner was out of the question.

  “Have you got Italian identity papers?” asked Eckener.

  “French,” replied Vango. “I’ve had them for a few days.”

  Eckener made a face.

  “I’d have preferred Italian. It would have made things easier.”

  Mussolini, the Italian leader, was already making eyes at Hitler.

  “I’ve never had Italian papers,” said Vango.

  A sad smile passed across the commander’s face. He remembered Vango’s story, the little shipwrecked boy with no past and no origins.

  “Of course — you were Jonah being spat out by the whale on the shores of Sicily. . . .”

  Back then, Eckener had given him that name, in memory of the episode in the Bible where a prophet washes up in the belly of a whale before being spat back out. Eckener had sailed the high seas before falling in love with this zeppelin. He knew that the nickname Jonah was given to sailors who brought bad luck to boats. . . . Thumbing his nose at superstition, Eckener had assigned this nickname to Vango.

  A thought instantly wiped away the commander’s smile.

  “I wish . . . I wish I could have helped you.”

  He stood up briskly, embarrassed by this confession.

  “This is just the way it is. Good-bye.”

  Incredulous, Vango shook his head. He didn’t recognize his former boss.

  “I understand, Doctor Eckener. I’ll leave tomorrow morning. I’m sorry to have bothered you. I’m just going to sleep here a little longer, if you —”

  “No.”

  The response was curt.

  “No, Vango, you can’t sleep here. The crew will be arriving in a few hours. We’re departing at dawn for South America. You have to leave now.”

  Vango stared at Hugo Eckener. The commander of the zeppelin couldn’t even look him in the eye.

  “Now!” repeated Eckener.

  “I understand, yes, I understand. Right away . . . I’m going.”

  He took a step toward the exit.

  “Don’t you have any luggage?” inquired the commander.

  “No.”

  Vango was exhausted. He pushed open the cabin door, and his shoulder rubbed against the length of the corridor all the way to the end.

  “Good-bye, Jonah,” Eckener called out after him.

  “Good-bye,” replied Vango reluctantly as he crossed the dining room in slow motion, half asleep.

  It was here on this red carpet that he had worked as a waiter for a year, in 1929.

  Above the pyramids, over the Mauritanian desert and the Brazilian jungle, in the smoke of New York, crossing the equator and the Ural Mountains, he had served the finest meals. The guests used to stand up sometimes, napkin in hand, when a herd of reindeer was racing underneath them on the Siberian steppes or when wild geese were chasing the strange silver bird of the zeppelin.

  Vango knew that 1929, the year when he was fourteen, had not yet revealed all of its mysteries. It was here, in the shadow of this balloon, that he’d discovered one of the keys to his life being turned upside down. And now it was here that he had chosen to come first, on leaving Paris and the murdered body of Father Jean.

  He walked down the footbridge of the Graf Zeppelin. There were still men guarding the entrance to the hangar. But they hadn’t seen him. Vango knew how to avoid them. He headed toward the workshop.

  Hugo Eckener sat down at the navigating table, where his two clenched fists rested on the leather. His anger was making him tremble. He had just refused hospitality to a nineteen-year-old boy whom he loved as if he were his own son.

  He had just given in to terror.

  The young, handsome Gestapo chief Rudolf Diels had hosted Hugo Eckener for lunch the previous June. Their conversation had been trivial enough to start with.

  “I’m full of admiration for you, Doctor Eckener.”

  Eckener was eating his soup with a spoon, in silence. He wondered what this man with a scar on his cheek and impeccably slicked-back hair wanted from him. When the dessert arrived, the chief of the political police swept the crumbs off the tablecloth and placed a large file in front of the commander. The name Eckener was written in capital letters on the cover.

  Leafing through hundreds of pages, Commander Eckener had remarked, “My friend, it’s more than admiration you have for me: this is love!”

  The file was terrifying. They knew everything. The police knew every detail about Hugo Eckener and the Zeppelin Company. Every movement, every human contact, every telephone call had been written down in this register. It was a formidable weapon for pressuring someone.

  The day after that meal, the commander had been obliged to paint the swastika on his zeppelin.

  The intimidation hadn’t stopped there.

  Two months later, on a very hot day, Eckener had been summoned by Chancellor Hitler to his house in Berchtesgaden in the mountains.

  During the nights that followed, Eckener had been tormented by nightmares about that little man sitting behind his desk, the tip of his foot stroking a black dog, in that small florid chalet overhanging a valley. For the first time in his life, as he was accompanied to the door by Göring, the air minister, who detested Eckener as much as he did his zeppelin, the commander had felt both of his hands trembling.

  And from that day on, behind his provocative behavior and his bad temper, Hugo Eckener hid something in the folds of his neck, a tiny bug that clung to his skin: fear.

  Something in him had given way. Part of his pride had deserted him.

  All of a sudden, Hugo Eckener stood up.

  He knew what to do about that misplaced bug: hold his head up high and crush it.

  A few seconds later, as he was walking across the zeppelin’s grassy esplanade, Vango heard a shout behind him.

  He turned around.

  Hugo Eckener was approaching. He was out of breath.

  “I do remember a stowaway who hid inside the zeppelin. These things sometimes happen on v
oyages. Once the balloon has taken off, there’s nothing we can do about a stowaway. We’re hardly going to throw him overboard. . . .”

  Vango was waiting to hear what came next.

  “That’s all,” puffed Eckener. “I just wanted to tell you that. Now I’m going to get some sleep at home. My wife is expecting me.”

  Eckener buttoned up his coat collar and turned his back on Vango. The boy hadn’t reacted at all. After a few paces, Eckener turned around.

  “One other thing, Jonah: I haven’t seen you this evening. I haven’t seen you for four years. I can barely remember you. Right?”

  Vango agreed. Eckener headed off into the darkness. He walked tall. The lights from the hangar blended in with his white hair.

  At three o’clock in the morning, when it was still dark, the hive of the zeppelin started to stir.

  Cleaners were clearing the ground, picking up debris right, left, and center. The crew members appeared one by one. Pilots, officers, mechanics all arrived in their black leather coats, concentrating on the task ahead.

  These flights had been a regular event for several years now, but no one ever got used to the adventure of it: they still had to pinch themselves. They got ready as if they were going on a date. They all smelled of cologne and soap. The hair beneath their caps was well oiled, and their shoes were shiny.

  Coffee was being served off to one side, in one of the workshops, to avoid lighting the portable stoves close to the flammable gas that filled the zeppelin. But the men couldn’t help going back into the hangar, a steaming cup clasped in both hands, to stare wide-eyed at this sleeping giant they were tasked with waking. They smiled as they looked on, full of emotion that they were part of this small group that, in less than a decade, had made the impossible happen: an ocean liner of the air, linking Europe with Brazil or any other destination, in three days and two nights, simply but in luxury.

  That night, one heavyset man didn’t share this sense of joy.