A Prince Without a Kingdom

  One of the young chefs, Alfred, was putting vases of flowers on the tables. Kubis noticed that he was limping. Porters passed by in the corridors, as they started to take the luggage to the cabins. There was a scent of lily in the stairwell. Kubis found the cabin boy sitting on the piano stool.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Werner leaped up, knocking over the pile of bath towels he was supposed to be laying neatly by the basins.

  “It doesn’t work,” he explained.

  “What?”

  “The piano.”

  Kubis went over and played a chord. The piano made a dreadful noise.

  “Where’s the tuner?”

  “He must have gone already.”

  Kubis played a few more notes.

  “He’s left this piano in an appalling state.”

  “Do you want me to find him?”

  “Certainly not. Deal with those towels.”

  Kubis checked his watch. There was no time to call for another piano tuner. He would handle this matter on their return. There would be no piano music on the outbound journey, which was no bad thing as far as the headwaiter was concerned, given that Captain Lehman would be on board. Lehman spent his time either at the accordion or on the piano. This delighted the passengers and tortured Kubis. Indeed, the previous winter he had argued the case for not having the piano at all.

  One minute later, Kubis walked down the footbridge to greet each of the passengers individually. There were still five missing. They hadn’t caught the bus from the hotel and were supposed to be arriving under their own steam. Kubis ordered the removal of a cart of empty gas bottles that was lying around, realizing that it was a cause of alarm for a mother of three children.

  “Stay away from there, Irene,” the woman told her eldest daughter.

  “Those bottles are empty, madam,” a steward explained.

  Nobody was in any rush to point out to this lady passenger that there would be one hundred times the quantity of explosive gas directly above her head throughout the voyage. That was the risk with these balloons, for as long as the United States refused to sell helium to the Germans. Hydrogen was a slightly more load bearing gas, but extremely flammable. Out of superstition, the danger was rarely mentioned on board. There had been no serious accidents for a very long time in the Zeppelin Company.

  The passengers were eager to climb on board. Captain Lehman, who was embarking as an observer, was speaking with two people over to one side. He looked rather self-conscious: the Berlin journalists were supposed to be writing a book about him. Lehman had become an increasingly important figure as an airship commander because, unlike Eckener, he wasn’t fiercely allergic to Nazi power.

  At the bottom of the footbridge stood Joseph Spah, an American acrobat who had come to the end of his European tour. He had jumped out of a taxi with his dog Ulla moments before. He was telling his life story to a Swedish man in a black coat and hat. When he spoke, Spah rose up on his tiptoes, like a dancer. He had missed the boat from Hamburg, but he had a show the following week and so he had raised the hundreds of dollars required for his ticket to the sky.

  Hugo Eckener was in his office, staring out the small window with its view of the airship.

  “I’m not worried, so nor should you be. You’ll understand everything in three days’ time.”

  He was talking to somebody who was sitting in the shadow. Eckener looked nervously around him before heading for the door. Just as he reached for the handle, the door opened wide. In walked the young in-flight medic, Doctor Rudiger, who was bright red.

  “Kurt?”

  “Commander, I’ve got some people here who say they have an appointment with you.”

  “Whatever happened to the courtesy of knocking, Kurt? Is this your new approach?”

  “The thing is, they’re about to —”

  Esquirol’s face appeared over the doctor’s shoulder. Eckener made Rudiger step aside.

  “I thought it must be you, with your French manners.”

  When Eckener saw J. J. Puppet appear in his luminous suit, he was stunned. Esquirol rushed center stage and hurriedly began to speak.

  “Commander, here I am, as arranged. Perhaps a few minutes late. And here are the friends I told you about.”

  Three other men had entered behind Puppet.

  “You know how important these gentlemen are for us. Allow me first to introduce you to Mr. Vincent Valpa, whom we discussed at great length in Berlin.”

  Valpa wanted to shake his hand. Eckener stared at Esquirol, who cast him an imploring look. The commander took Valpa’s hand and shook it.

  “Pleased to meet you,” said Valpa.

  “Yes, my friend told me about you,” growled Eckener. “I don’t know what he’s like as a doctor, but should you feel unwell you can always see Doctor Rudiger, who will be our onboard physician for the crossing.”

  Young Rudiger nodded.

  “I hope to remain in good health as far as New York,” said Valpa, sounding rather surprised.

  “I hope so too,” agreed Eckener compassionately. “In any event, you have a very handsome cabin. It’s brand-new. I understand that you have company.”

  He gave a forced smile to the two strapping men waiting behind.

  “And next,” Esquirol told Eckener, “I hardly need introduce you to J. J. Puppet. You know what a great champion he was. And you know that he is now our partner in our splendid venture, of which you are not . . . unaware.”

  They shook hands. Eckener couldn’t understand what was going on. Puppet beamed and wouldn’t let go of his hand. The commander opened his mouth to say something, but Esquirol leaped in immediately. “You have no doubt followed the career of our friend, his fights. . . .”

  Again, Eckener felt the urge to bellow something like “What on earth is all this song and dance about?” But while Puppet was crushing his fingers, Esquirol plugged the gap.

  “Yes, you must recall his great era, Commander. If I tell you that —”

  “I recognize him,” came a voice from the back of the room. “I’ve seen him in action.”

  There in Eckener’s chair, behind the desk, all eyes landed on a young woman nobody had noticed until now.

  Puppet finally let go of Eckener’s hand.

  “I remember very well,” she added.

  The commander was gently rubbing his wrist.

  “You haven’t given me a chance to introduce this young lady,” he pointed out.

  Ethel stood up.

  “We were in the middle of a discussion,” Eckener explained, “when you arrived with such a —”

  “Such a vote of confidence,” declared Esquirol, loudly finishing off the commander’s sentence as he went over to greet Ethel.

  But she had eyes only for Puppet.

  “This young lady will be on the same flight as you,” said Commander Eckener. “She has just informed me of this, having arrived only now. She is my goddaughter, and she is going to New York, where she hopes to join . . .”

  He hesitated.

  “To join my fiancé,” concluded Ethel.

  Clearly, everybody felt a need to finish the commander’s sentences for him.

  “Yes, Mr. Puppet, I recognize you very well,” she whispered with a smile.

  Eckener frowned.

  “I saw you at the Holborn Stadium in London,” Ethel went on. “I was five or six years old. My father used to take me to boxing matches.”

  They shook hands warmly. On the other side of the room, Vincent Valpa pulled on Esquirol’s arm.

  “We talked about a one-to-one appointment with Eckener,” he growled.

  “Of course, and that’s what we’ve scheduled,” Esquirol reassured him. “The commander is greatly looking forward to it.”

  He took a step toward Eckener, then pricked up an ear. The Hindenburg’s horn was being blasted. For Esquirol, that sound was as sweet as the bells of the Armistice, the soldier’s peace, the boxer’s gong, the reprieve of the condemned man. It
was time to go.

  “Good God,” exclaimed Esquirol, glancing up at the sky. “We’ve run out of time! It’s leaving!”

  Crestfallen but delighted, he turned toward Valpa.

  “I do apologize.”

  The next two minutes were full of confusion.

  There was a general surge toward the office door. Rudiger bumped into Valpa’s henchmen. Eckener tried grabbing Esquirol by the collar to demand some kind of explanation, but the doctor dodged him. Vincent Valpa kept complaining.

  Only Ethel took her time.

  Eckener walked behind her in the corridor.

  “Write to me when you find him,” the commander called out.

  “I will.”

  “Write to tell me he’s well.”

  The footbridge was about to be raised, so they ran across the grass.

  Ethel was the last to climb on board. The moorings were released and the balloon took flight.

  On board the Hindenburg, from Frankfurt to New York

  With only thirty-six passengers when it could accommodate double that number, the Hindenburg felt like an out-of-season grand hotel. The setting could have been Deauville or San Remo in the spring, when the hospitality trade chugs along in slow motion: umbrellas are restitched, there are plenty of empty tables, and the beach attendant has time to talk to the guests. The sixty-one crew members were able to attend to every request, however small. There were five chefs for the three dozen passengers. So it hadn’t been difficult for Eckener to find a cabin for Ethel when she had sprung a surprise visit two hours prior to takeoff.

  On taking her leave of the Cat in Paris, Ethel had planned to drive to Friedrichshafen in order to catch the zeppelin rather than the boat.

  Intending to gain a few days, she had in fact lost a lot of time. The car had skidded on a tree-lined road and turned over. In the next village, she had been promised a speedy repair, but two days later Ethel was still at the Golden Lion Hotel, waiting for miracles that didn’t happen. As chance would have it, the hotel, which was empty, belonged to the garage owner. He had to travel no farther than the end of the street to repair the car. But the engine had given up the ghost. And so Ethel abandoned the handsome but crumpled Napier-Railton and had jumped on a train instead.

  At Friedrichshafen she had found the hangars empty. The Graf was on a stop-off in Brazil and the Hindenburg was leaving from Frankfurt the next day. So Ethel had caught the train back to Frankfurt, arriving just in time. She had lost a week.

  Eckener gave her a warm welcome.

  Ethel had showed him Vango’s telegram, and the commander had stared at the piece of blue paper:

  The commander read the four words over and over again, and tried to be as reassuring as possible.

  “He’s a brave boy, my dear. He knows how to fend for himself.”

  This was exactly what Ethel was worried about. A cry for help from a brave boy was by definition an act of desperation. Eckener had the office alerted immediately so that a cabin could be reserved for the young lady. Someone replied that two tickets had just been unexpectedly purchased by some travelers from Norway. With a bit of luck, they would end up being full.

  Ethel was in the first cabin at the top of the stairs to the upper deck. When she arrived on board, she had discovered that the Hindenburg’s cabins were spread across two floors. There were fifty berths upstairs, and twenty had been added below, on the port side. No sooner had Ethel walked into her cabin than she lay down and fell asleep. It was nine o’clock in the evening. She awoke at midnight, dabbed her face over the washbasin, glanced again at the telegram, which she had tucked by the mirror, and then went out.

  Ethel almost got lost. This wasn’t the small family-run hotel she had known on board the Graf Zeppelin. It was a flagship. The cabins were in the middle of the gondola, and two handsome promenades with glazed views ran along both sides. The premises seemed deserted. Everybody was asleep. Ethel found the baby grand piano, which she stroked. A notice that read OUT OF ORDER had been put on the music stand. Intrigued by this ban, Ethel wanted to try playing a note. She pressed down on a B-flat, which sounded like a grumbling stomach, and then played an appalling F-sharp. Abandoning the piano, she pushed open a door and entered a reading room hung with paintings. A man was poring over an illustrated newspaper that he had spread out on a small table. He looked up and lowered his glasses on his nose. Ethel indicated that she didn’t wish to disturb him and went to survey the view from the large sloping window. The sky was overcast and dark. Only the occasional glimmer could be seen from the earth.

  Ethel would have liked all the lights on the balloon to be switched off, so that she could contemplate the night. She was recalling the evening when she and Vango had followed two small headlights flickering far down below them. It was when they were flying over Russia, during their world tour in 1929. Back then, Vango used to invent stories at the window of the Graf Zeppelin. Two bicycles on a country road in the middle of the night: they must be returning after a party. Vango made up names for them. The girl was called Yelena. She was cycling a little ahead. The boy was following behind. When the lights sped up, Vango said it was because they were going down a steep hill, and he asked Ethel to strain her ears. According to him, shrieks of joy could be heard as the bicycles made their descent. And then the lights slowed and drew closer together. They came to a stop. Ethel was looking at Vango. Everything had gone dark.

  “What now?” she had asked.

  Vango had smiled.

  “What do you think’s happening now?” she had pressed him.

  But he couldn’t give an answer.

  Ethel left the window. She walked toward the reader, who had fallen asleep over his newspaper, his cheek squashed against a photograph of an ocean liner being approached by a submarine. She switched off the light and left the room.

  Ethel blamed herself for not having joined Vango earlier. She had wanted to let him plunge into his past alone, so that one day he would return free. She had waited dutifully, channeling all her impatience into restoring the tiny plane. But she wondered if she wasn’t inventing dangers around her in order to justify Vango’s absence. She had even stopped writing to him, in order to protect him, and had ordered him to do likewise. Still, every morning she tore the post out of Mary’s hands, searching for his handwriting on the envelopes.

  Ethel walked down the staircase in front of her cabin. The atmosphere on the lower deck was much more lively. The small bar was still open. Three men were deep in conversation on the banquettes. The barman was slicing lemons on his counter. Behind a high-security door was the famous smoking room, which comprised the most popular twenty square meters in the airship.

  Ethel stepped inside the smoking room and Max the barman followed, closing the pressurized door behind her. A dozen men sat around in armchairs swathed in smoke. It took a few seconds to recognize J. J. Puppet beneath the cloud on the right. He smiled at her. He was alone near the picture window, with an enormous cigar.

  “Do you smoke?” he inquired when Ethel came over.

  “No, but even the carpets smoke here!”

  Ethel felt that without lighting a cigarette, she had still inhaled a cupful of tar just by opening her mouth.

  Puppet was keeping a discreet eye on one of Valpa’s men, who was sitting near to the door.

  “So,” he ventured, “your father enjoys boxing?”

  “Yes,” replied Ethel.

  “And what about you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Ethel didn’t want to mention that boxing made her cry because it made her recall the sound of her father’s voice whispering in her ear as he explained the fights.

  “It’s not a little girl’s sport,” declared Puppet.

  “Oh, yes it is. But I’m a grown-up now.”

  He looked at her.

  “What are you going to do in New York?” Ethel asked him.

  “No idea.”

  Puppet was watching Valpa’s man, who had just stood up.


  “Don’t tell anyone,” he went on, “but I’m not even sure what I’m doing here. I’m just doing a friend a favor.”

  “Is he here?”

  “I hope so. I haven’t seen him yet.”

  Ethel didn’t seem surprised. She liked mysteries.

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know. He might be hidden in the piano, upstairs.”

  Ethel laughed.

  Little did she suspect that at that very moment in the empty lounge above them, the lid of the piano was slowly being raised. Two eyes scoured the room. Nobody. The piano lid opened a bit more. A man got out. He was completely numb. It was the piano tuner.

  “Aha, so now I understand why the piano’s out of tune!” declared Ethel, back in the smoking room.

  “Have you tried it? You shouldn’t have. The hammers strike my friend when you press down on the keys.”

  Joseph Puppet half stood up.

  “Max!”

  He gestured at the barman, who approached with a tray.

  “I hadn’t forgotten you,” he told Puppet.

  “No, I’d rather you gave that glass to the gentleman who’s about to leave.”

  Puppet indicated the man who was standing close to the door.

  The barman did as requested, and Ethel saw the man sit back down again with his glass.

  “I don’t want that guy hanging around the corridors,” Puppet whispered to Ethel.

  One floor above them, in the empty lounge, the piano tuner was gently closing the piano. He was in so much pain that he could only just manage to stand up. To pass the time from four o’clock in the afternoon until two o’clock in the morning, he had been reciting the breviary. He stretched his body and cracked his fingers.

  His hands weren’t those of a pianist but of a gardener.

  They belonged to Zefiro.

  The door opened behind him.

  “Excuse me?”

  He didn’t turn around. Somebody had just emerged from the reading room, his face puffy with sleep.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Yes?” said Zefiro.

  “Are we here yet?”