A Prince Without a Kingdom

  “I know that he is linked to a man named Zefiro. Have you heard of Voloy Viktor?”

  No answer.

  “Voloy Viktor is a killer,” said Boulard.

  “You enjoy scaring the ladies, Superintendent Boulard.”

  “Vango can help me find Viktor.”

  Ethel pointed an accusing finger directly at Boulard.

  “You see. You came here because you want to use him.”

  “No.”

  “Let me go to my bedroom.”

  “Zefiro tried to attack Viktor, and now his island has been ravaged. There’s nothing left. I recently sent someone over there. You heard it from me; there’s not a single survivor. Just ruins. That’s what awaits Vango.”

  “As I say, you enjoy scaring the ladies.”

  Boulard sighed.

  “Give me an address; tell me where he is.”

  “My parents are dead, and my brother, Paul, might be dying in battle in Spain for all I know, so if I really could save my one friend, don’t you think I would?”

  There was a long silence. Boulard observed every tremor on Ethel’s face. He himself had experienced neither personal tragedy nor passion. The only hand he had held tenderly had belonged to a little girl from the Aveyron when he was ten years old. But he did understand the human soul.

  “But what if I believe you know where he is?”

  “Let me through.”

  “One day,” said Superintendent Boulard, opening the door, “you’ll receive a cry for help from him, and it will be too late. And then you’ll remember me.”

  He looked at her again.

  “You’ll remember me.”

  Boulard headed off in the direction of his bedroom.

  Ethel watched him climb the stairs at the end of the hall. She remained in the library. As always happened when she was alone, those feelings hidden from the eyes of others came flooding in: fear, doubt, and loneliness. What could she do? Yes, there was a place, at the intersection of two streets in New York, that had been Vango’s last address. He could still be there.

  Until the very last moment, Ethel was of two minds about telling Boulard what she knew of Vango’s whereabouts. A few weeks later, and for many years to come, she would regret not having done so.

  The following day, the comedy was in full swing again. A lovesick Mary was weeping in the kitchen. Letters had been slid into the superintendent’s bedroom. He was waiting for them, down on his knees, just behind the door.

  There had been missed trysts on the stairs, and a game of hide-and-seek played out on various landings. One night, Offenbach’s arias were heard being sung with gusto. Luckily, Boulard was sleeping soundly and didn’t recognize his mother’s voice.

  When the superintendent eventually left Everland, everyone hoped for calm again.

  But Mary shut herself in her bedroom with the umbrella that Boulard had forgotten. Her sobs could be heard all the way down to the cellars. The Princess of Albrac sang to cover these lamentations. Ethel knocked on Mary’s door. She was worried about the housekeeper staging her own death with that umbrella, like Dido falling on the sword of her fleeing lover, Aeneas.

  Two days later, in the morning, Mary reappeared. She brewed a pot of tea for the princess and buttered some slices of toast. The curtain had fallen for the end of the performance. The fever had departed the walls of the house, but inside Ethel there was a growing sense of unease.

  Berlin, Germany, March 25, 1937

  Hugo Eckener took a shortcut through the zoological gardens. This was an hour that belonged to babies, nannies, and old men basking in the sun, their feet in the daffodils. The rest of Germany was at work. It was eleven o’clock in the morning.

  Commander Eckener stopped to watch the repairs under way on an aviary. Carefully, he observed the wire meshing being assembled. As a rule, he found everything around him interesting: the welding on an old cage, the flight of a sparrow, the canvas covering the arbors. He took inspiration from everything. The gigantic Hindenburg airship had barely been flying for a year, and Hugo Eckener already had new projects in mind. But this morning, his gaze cut discreetly through the aviary netting and focused on a young man who was waiting farther off, his hands in his pockets, cap on head.

  Eckener had already noticed the lad the previous day, on the other side of town. The commander was frequently trailed by the authorities, but not usually by an eighteen-year-old kid. He started to walk again, in the direction of a brick pavilion. The young man followed close behind. Eckener felt exasperated. He had a meeting in a café a stone’s throw away, and he had no desire to turn up with this leech sticking to him.

  He entered the reptiles’ enclosure, which smelled of rotting meat. The walkways were deserted. A lackluster boa constrictor was asleep in a heap behind a glass wall. Hugo Eckener made his way across the room as swiftly as possible, leaving via an emergency exit that gave onto two vivariums packed with lizards. He closed the door quietly behind him. Because of the nightmare that his country was experiencing, he was still playing cat and mouse in the park at the age of nearly seventy. Dictatorships keep you young, he reflected.

  As he took a few moments to catch his breath, he spotted three young women pushing baby carriages. They were exactly what he needed, and Eckener joined them. They headed off together, with the commander leaning over the babies, playing grandpa, smiling at the women, performing magic sleights of hand, and showing them how he could make the swastika appear and disappear beneath the eagle on a two-reichsmark coin.

  “Ta-da!”

  One of the women looked thoughtful and inquired if he wasn’t the balloon man.

  “Me?”

  Eckener apologized profusely, muttering that he often got asked the same question and pointing out that the man in charge of those airships was much older than he was and had less hair. No, truth be told, he was in the cigar business. And he promptly took a cigar out of his pocket.

  “You really look like him.”

  “A little bit, yes, but he’s got a bigger nose, hasn’t he?”

  The commander advanced with this baby lotion – scented convoy until they reached a hedge, at which point he disappeared behind it. He waved good-bye to the company and lit a cigar. When he walked toward the park gates, there was no one behind him.

  Eckener walked down the first street and entered a restaurant that was almost empty.

  At the only occupied table, a man was reading a newspaper. It was his old pal Esquirol, the doctor from Paris.

  Hugo Eckener took a good hard look at him. He remembered the first time they had met up in the café on rue de Paradis, one winter’s evening, together with Zefiro and Joseph Jacques Puppet, the boxer-barber from the Ivory Coast: these founding members of Project Violette had made a pact for peace in the trenches. Back then, the Great War was over at last, and everything seemed possible in their eyes. But they had been wrong. Ever since that day, each time they met again it meant that a fresh danger was looming.

  Eckener sat down opposite his friend.

  “Can you read German, Doctor Esquirol?”

  The other man lowered his newspaper.

  “No, I’m looking at the pictures.”

  He pointed to a photo of Chancellor Hitler carrying a child. Eckener didn’t even glance at it. He shook Esquirol’s hand warmly.

  “How long has it been?” asked Eckener, blowing out the smoke from his cigar.

  “Two years, at least.”

  “Where is Puppet?”

  “On the Côte d’Azur, working on his suntan.”

  Eckener signaled to the waiter. They ordered two hot chocolates and stared at each other in silence through the smoke.

  “It frightens me when you come to see me,” said Eckener.

  Esquirol smiled.

  “Any news of Zefiro?” added the commander.

  “None.”

  Eckener was always worried about Zefiro.

  “Well?”

  “Well nothing,” said Esquirol. “Paris is good. Likew
ise, my patients. I’m looking after the prime minister, who sends his regards.”

  “How kind of him,” Eckener replied suspiciously.

  “I just wanted to ask you a small favor.”

  Commander Eckener put out his cigar. Everything began with a small favor. They saw their cups of hot chocolate arriving, with the whipped cream overflowing into the saucers.

  “I’m getting ready for a trip,” Esquirol announced.

  Eckener was watching his friend.

  “One of my patients needs to be treated by a colleague abroad, in America. This patient gets dreadfully seasick if he travels by boat. . . .”

  “Poor thing.”

  “He’s an important man.”

  Eckener didn’t know what important meant. He had already flattened the nose of a celebrity who had been caught secretly smoking in the Graf Zeppelin.

  “Important in what way?” asked the commander. “He’s too big to fit through the doors?”

  Esquirol tasted the cream before declaring, “I want him to take your Hindenburg.”

  “When?”

  “On the earliest departure for New York.”

  “There aren’t any at the moment.”

  “What’s the date of the first flight?”

  “The third of May. Departing from Frankfurt.”

  “In that case, he’ll wait until the third of May,” stated Esquirol.

  “I thought he was seriously ill.”

  “His illness can wait.”

  Eckener licked some chocolate off his finger and stared at his friend.

  “I know you have a new cabin,” said Esquirol, “with an external window and four beds. This gentleman is traveling with two people he requires close by at all times.”

  “And would he like the shirt off my back while we’re at it?” asked Eckener.

  “No.”

  “That’s just as well. I won’t even be on board.”

  “What?” asked an alarmed Esquirol.

  Eckener was carefully buttering a slice of brioche.

  “I’ll be in Austria that week. Max Pruss will be in command of the airship.”

  Doctor Esquirol sank back into his chair.

  “This Mr. Valpa I’m looking after,” he insisted, “wanted to shake your hand.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “He won’t embark unless he’s shaken your hand.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “What sort of disease has he got? It sounds rather alarming.”

  “I’m telling you that he’s got to shake you by the hand.”

  “Well, I hope it’s not contagious.”

  Eckener seemed resigned. He held out the butter knife to Esquirol before baring his right wrist.

  “Cut it off. And give it to him.”

  “Stop it, Commander. This is deadly serious.”

  “Yes, that’s just what worries me. It’s serious. And I don’t believe I can help you.”

  Eckener stared at his friend in silence.

  “I saw the pictures of your Olympic Games last summer,” remarked Doctor Esquirol, pushing his chair back a little.

  Hugo Eckener stirred his hot chocolate with a teaspoon.

  “A hundred thousand people in a stadium, each hailing the balloon with his arm outstretched,” Esquirol continued. “That was your hour of glory, wasn’t it?”

  In August 1936, the Berlin Olympic Games had put the seal of approval on Adolf Hitler and the Hindenburg airship. The zeppelin, decorated in the Nazi colors, had flown over one hundred thousand spectators in the Berlin stadium.

  “Be quiet, Esquirol.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Hitler wanted the Hindenburg to bear his name. . . .”

  “Adolf, what a nice name for a balloon.”

  “I refused. So I had to make a gesture of appeasement. But I’ve never detested the regime so much.”

  “A gesture of appeasement!” Esquirol sniggered.

  “Stop it. You understand what I’m talking about.”

  “No. I don’t understand. I’m simply asking you to shake this man’s hand. I shall pay for the cabin for him and his friends. Just as I shall pay for my own.”

  “Yours?”

  “I’ll be sharing it with Joseph Puppet.”

  Eckener stared deep into Esquirol’s eyes.

  “Is he sick too? This sounds like an epidemic.”

  “He’s never been to New York. So I’m taking him.”

  “How sweet.”

  Eckener sighed. What were his friends up to this time? He tapped his thumb against the tabletop, while Esquirol glanced around. There were still no other customers in the restaurant. Two waitresses were eating lunch near the entrance.

  “You’ve got a friend outside,” remarked Esquirol.

  Eckener didn’t turn around.

  “Where?”

  “He arrived just after you did. He’s sitting on the bench opposite the restaurant window, on the pavement. He’s wearing a sailor’s cap.”

  “How old?”

  “Under twenty.”

  Hugo Eckener cursed, then turned and called to one of the waitresses, “Go and get that lad for me, over there, and drag him in by the scruff of his neck!”

  A few seconds later, the young man was deposited in front of the two friends. He appeared to be standing to attention and he swayed gently backward and forward.

  Eckener mopped up the bottom of his cup with some bread.

  “Get out of my sight, and take your tramp’s cap with you.”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “Who sent you?”

  The boy’s eyes flickered.

  “Who sent you?” roared Eckener, as Doctor Esquirol looked on.

  “I . . . sent myself, Commander.”

  Eckener had put his large hands on his knees.

  “What?”

  “I sent myself.”

  “What do you want?”

  “To come with you,” volunteered the boy.

  “I don’t need anyone. Get out.”

  “I have a letter.”

  Hugo Eckener felt a tremor in his chest. Years earlier, a boy had uttered those same words, I have a letter, and he had produced the note from Father Zefiro commending the boy to Eckener.

  “Give me that letter.”

  The boy opened his jacket, briefly revealing its woolen lining covered in Nazi insignias.

  From his pocket, he removed a piece of paper that was curiously folded into the shape of a triangle.

  Hugo Eckener turned the object over in his hands. Then he unfolded it.

  There were just a few jotted words, but Eckener seemed to take a long time reading them. He glanced at the young man.

  “What is your name?”

  “Schiff.”

  The boy started rattling off the words of a Nazi song. They referred to “closed ranks” and “brown battalions.”

  “That’s enough, thank you,” interrupted Hugo Eckener.

  “I’m in your camp,” declared Schiff, taking a knife out of his pocket.

  Esquirol stood up, but the commander indicated for him to sit back down again. He prized the knife out of the boy’s hands. The words BLOOD AND HONOR were engraved on the handle: the motto of the Hitler Youth movement.

  “You see, I am with you.”

  “Yes. Put that away, right now.”

  Schiff started reciting another poem.

  “Be quiet.”

  To Esquirol’s astonishment, Eckener took out a name card. While he was scribbling on it, the commander kept on talking, like a doctor writing out a prescription.

  “What can you do, Schiff?”

  “Anything.”

  “Can you carry heavy loads?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go to the air terminal at Frankfurt. Do you know where it is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Show this note to Herr Klaus. He’ll give you work. Go straight there, all right?”

  “Yes.”

 
“Right away. Catch the train. Ask for Herr Klaus and stay there.”

  The young man took the letter, clicked his heels, and went on his way. He had left behind the knife with BLOOD AND HONOR engraved on it.

  As he watched him go, Eckener felt as if he were still glimpsing the figure of Vango from a few years earlier.

  Doctor Esquirol was sitting bolt upright opposite him.

  “It seems there are some requests you don’t refuse, Eckener.”

  “Indeed.”

  “You’ve changed,” he said.

  “Yes, I’ve changed,” agreed Eckener, taking a deep breath. “Everybody changes at one time or another.”

  “You disgust me. . . .”

  “Did you know, for example, that I studied psychology in Leipzig?”

  “That’s irrelevant, Commander Eckener.”

  “I wanted to become a psychiatrist. I earned my doctorate, then I changed my mind. What matters is knowing when to change, Esquirol. I realize now how much I would have suffered: they no longer look after the sick in our psychiatric hospitals; they eliminate them.”

  “That’s not what I’m here to discuss,” said Esquirol, standing his ground.

  Among many other shocking laws, the doctor knew about the measures taken by the Nazis against the mentally ill. Hitler had been talking for more than ten years about suppressing “life unworthy of life.”

  “You’re muddling everything up,” declared Esquirol.

  “No, I’m telling you what I see and you haven’t experienced.”

  “You are complicit in all of this. You’re giving work to this lad who’s come to see you, because he’s been recommended by people in high places.”

  Eckener gently scratched the tablecloth with his thumb. Wearily, he slid the piece of paper from the boy toward Esquirol.

  “Do you want to see the recommendation from someone on high?”

  “No.”

  But the doctor reached for the piece of paper all the same. It was a carefully presented letter, signed with an illegible name. Esquirol couldn’t read German.

  “Who wrote this?” he asked.

  “He did. Schiff.”

  “Is it a fake?”

  “No, it’s a real recipe for pork with cabbage.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Pork with cabbage, allow one and a half hours’ cooking time. Do not stir.”