From somewhere far away she heard Alain’s voice. Or perhaps she only imagined it. The voice said, “Have a little courage.”
Then she heard her own voice, so calm that she almost didn’t know it was hers. “Major Vitary,” she said casually. “So nice to see you. I am planning to go to the Tower today.”
“I should send you to Hell.”
Looking at his face, she realized how furious she had made him yesterday by striking him in front of his subordinates. A mere woman, and a foreigner at that, had humiliated him. Now she was in his realm, a trespasser, and he had every right to kill her. Behind him she saw the other soldiers had gathered. She played the only card she had left.
“Major Vitary, you would not shoot a woman, would you?”
She saw fear and anger collide in his eyes. Fear of being remembered as the man who shot a woman in cold blood; anger at the humiliation that he had already endured from her. Anger was winning as his finger slowly tightened on the trigger.
“I am going to die,” she thought. “Will I see the flash, hear the gun, feel the pain? Or does it just happen?”
Then the sergeant came up and took the pistol from Vitary’s hand. “No, mademoiselle,” the sergeant said, “he would not shoot a woman.”
Vitary glared at the sergeant for a second. Then he turned and walked, stiff legged, back toward his office.
The sergeant and corporal helped her cast off the ropes and climb aboard. It was a good thing, too. Mary Ann was shaking so badly that she couldn’t even get the rope off the hook.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s all right,” the sergeant smiled. “Alain was a friend of ours. But go quickly now, before Vitary finds his courage...or another gun.”
Then she was in the seat and moving forward, through the doors of the workshop. She realized that the drag rope had come uncoiled, and that 300 feet of it was snaking along the ground beneath her. No time to worry now. Just go up fast, before it gets snarled on anything. She shoved the rope all the way to the back, as Alain had taught her, the nose tilted up, and suddenly there was nothing but open sky in front of her.
* * *
Louise Chevrier was busy at the family bakery, making the icings for the next day’s “religieux”—black and white pastries that looked like a nun’s habit. Two little neighborhood boys, both out of breath, came running in to tell her that Alain Chevrier was flying to the Eiffel Tower.
“Alain Chevrier is dead,” she reminded them sharply. “You were at his funeral.”
“But it is his airship,” said the older boy. “We’ve seen it flying through the streets.”
She looked surprised for a moment. Was it possible? Who was flying? “Here,” she said, giving them each a bowl of icing and a paddle. “If what you say is true, you have earned it.” She ran outside, shielding her eyes against the late-day sun.
* * *
Yvette was in her bedroom in Neuilly, trying hard to forget. When she was a child and played with dolls, she would be absolutely devoted to one. Then eventually she would tire of it, become so sick of it that she couldn’t stand to look at its painted face anymore. So she would smash it, throw it out the window, or tell the maid to dispose of it.
One time she took a doll all the way to the Pont Neuf bridge on the Seine in winter, propped it on the snow-covered parapet, and pushed it in, watching as it sank. Yvette had told her friends that the doll had drowned herself over a lost love, and her friends had promptly done the same thing with their dolls.
Now Alain was gone, gone into the Seine, just like her doll. But Alain was gone even before that. He had rejected her. He had pushed her off the bridge.
And her father was gone. She could always depend on her father to save her from whatever she’d gotten into. But now his problems were greater than hers were, if, in fact, he was even alive. She heard that he had gone berserk last night and attacked Fabian Bouchard at Maxim’s. Then he didn’t come home.
The maid knocked on her door, but Yvette ignored it. The knocking grew louder and then, surprisingly, the maid opened it, unbidden. Yvette looked up, angry.
“Mademoiselle,” said the maid, “you must come down.”
“I don’t want to,” said Yvette, dismissing her with a wave.
But the maid stood her ground. “You have no choice, mademoiselle. The President of France is here to see you.”
Pouchet was fidgeting in the living room, walking back and forth. Did the man ever do anything but fidget? Yvette wondered as she came down the stairs. “Monsieur le President,” she said brightly, “so happy to see you, and I’m sure that my father would be overjoyed too, but he is not here.”
The sarcasm was lost on Pouchet. “Meurthe not here?” He seized her hand. “Then you must come with us.”
She shrank back. “I am not well,” she protested.
“No matter. You must come. It is for the glory of France. Where are your father’s papers? The prize, the medal?”
She pointed to the Kingswood desk in Meurthe’s study. “Why do you need them? What’s happening?”
“Don’t ask questions,” said Pouchet. “Assist me!”
Both of them rummaged through the desk. There was a time when she had loved that round, sculpted desk with its candlesticks at both sides and its little porthole at the top where her father used to hide her candy. She reached into that porthole. Out fell her father’s pocket watch, the big one that he used to call his “turnip.” Opposite the clock face was a picture of Alain Chevrier. Chevrier! What was Chevrier’s picture doing where her picture should have been? She threw the watch against the wall so hard that it broke and the springs popped out.
Pouchet didn’t even notice. “Here,” he said, holding up an envelope. “It’s the bank draft and the medal. Come!”
Two soldiers escorted her outside. There, waiting in the back seat of the big Mors touring car, was Fabian Bouchard. She knew that her father hated Bouchard for some reason. What was it?
“So glad you could come,” said Bouchard with an unctuous leer. “You have played as much a role in this as anyone. You should see how it turns out.”
Pouchet came running to the car. He pushed her into the back seat between them. “To the Eiffel Tower,” he ordered. “The other members of the Aéro Club will meet us there.”
“Listen,” he told her, “if your father is not back, you will have to stand in for him and give the award.”
“Award?” said Yvette. “You mean someone is flying to the Tower. But who?”
“We don’t know,” said Bouchard, “but at least it’s not one of the filthy Germans.” He glanced about nervously, then added, “they’re all dead.”
“And a Frenchman will win the medal, one of our own beloved people,” said Pouchet.
“Faster!” he yelled at the chauffeur as the big Mors, with its hood as long as a coffin, roared through the crowded city. Suddenly the touring car screeched to a halt, throwing the three of them against the front seat. One of the mounted police escorts had collided with a boy on a bicycle, who fell in front of the car.
“Get out of the way, you little turd!” shouted Pouchet.
“God,” thought Yvette. “To be trapped in a car with these two hypocrites. No, three hypocrites. Include yourself.”
* * *
As she rose higher, Mary Ann was thinking of when she was a little girl at the cottage on Cape Cod. Her father used to read western novels to her and her brother, and then they would act them out. Behind every door was an outlaw waiting to be shot down. They would charge across the fields, wooden swords waving, to face the wild Indians. They would climb trees to spy on enemy fortifications.
Then they got older, and she was excluded from his games. The stories changed too. Now they were about boy inventors who built electric trains that could travel 100 miles an hour, or an air cannon that could shoot a rocket halfway around the world or, yes, even a flying machine that would be the toast of Paris.
But they were about boys and for
boys. So, at night, Mary Ann would sneak into her brother’s room, steal his books and read them in her bed, pretending that she was the hero.
Suddenly, she felt a jerk, as if she’d been lassoed in one of those cowboy stories. The tug from behind almost threw her out of the bicycle seat. She looked back and saw the taut line of the drag rope caught on the top of the square tower at Auteuil, the city’s steeplechase racetrack far below her. A race had started, but the sound of the noisy, popping motor of the airship overhead brought the crowd to its feet with a shout. She saw flowered hats and white upturned faces and everyone waving at her. Startled horses reared their heads and three dumped their jockeys.
“Don’t daydream,” she warned herself. But what could she do? She throttled the 16-horsepower engine all the way to its maximum, feeling every cord and line in the airship tighten as it tried to break free. Flames shot out of the exhaust just behind her. If the flames got close enough to the hydrogen in the balloon...
Then with a jerk, the rope came free. Go higher, she thought. Get above the range of anything that can snare that rope.
She gave herself more orders as she went, improvising, talking her way through it. She reached forward to turn down the carburetor, trying to keep the engine exhaust from spewing out those flames. She maneuvered the handlebars back and forth as each gust of wind jostled her from behind and bounced the airship off course. The breeze was helping her move forward now, but she knew that it would be in her face, an enemy, on the trip back.
Below her was the half circle of the Trocadéro, looking like a Mississippi riverboat, its minarets looming like smokestacks.
“Almost there,” she thought. “Just across the river.”
And now, as she rose toward the Eiffel Tower, she realized this was her story. It was in her hands to succeed or fail. And it was a simple story. There was no compromise, no one to answer to, no halfway solutions. She was like one of those birds in the Region of Fire. No feet, no claws. To stop was to fall, and to fall was to die. But whatever happened was between her—and the sky.
* * *
Louise walked down the block, trying to get a better look. Mobs of people were running into the already crowded streets. Everyone was drawn to the figure in the sky. All Paris seemed to be pouring out of its offices and shops, cheering, bumping into each other—and her. Factories were shutting down. Looms were left running. Men were hanging from gables and steeples.
In the distance the little airship looked like a cylinder with two pointed cones, its white balloon glowing against a backdrop of red clouds lit by the evening sun. It was sailing with the wind, moving like a clipper ship. Who is flying? she wondered. Then it passed out of sight beyond her roof.
“L-L-Louise, up h-h-here!” she heard a voice call. It was her neighbor, his stammer more aggravated than usual by his excitement. He was sitting at the peak of his six-story building, looking as if he were perched on a cliff, and waving her to come up.
She climbed the inside steps and came out the garret window that opened directly onto the street. Below her the road seemed to jump up at her and then fall back as if it were daring her to climb out. Unlike both Henri and Alain, Louise was deathly afraid of heights. She took a breath, knowing that if she stopped to take another, she would be frozen to the spot.
But she had to know who was flying in Alain’s place. Whoever it was, he wasn’t afraid, was he? Before she could give herself time to think, she scrambled out, her feet hitting the gutter and her hands clutching the outside corners of the window frame to pull herself up. Panting with fear, her fingernails scratched the slippery black slate roof as she scrambled up to the peak.
But the sight was worth it. Below her the streets were filled with a motionless throng, a sea of humanity. Traffic had stopped. Boys trying to follow the progress of the airship tripped on the hems of women’s skirts and went sprawling.
The Seine near the Tower was crowded with small boats, jammed to the gunwales. The docks and wharves were, too. She watched a man fall almost casually off the railing of the Pont de Grenelle bridge into the river, where he floated downstream, waving at the shoreline and waiting to be rescued. No one noticed him. Every eye was on the figure above.
She watched, amazed. Chattering across the sunset sky, up in the air, and moving toward the Tower. She wished that Henri were there to see it too. Perhaps he was.
But who was flying? It looked like a boy. No, it was that woman; the one that Alain had called Marianne. She strained so hard to see that she nearly slipped off the edge.
Her neighbor caught her. “Are y-y-you all right?” he asked.
“Never better,” she said, blinking back the tears. “Never better.”
* * *
Music. Above the sound of the engine Mary Ann heard music. Was she crazy? No. In the plaza just below the Tower a makeshift military band had formed, and was pounding out a march. Two men were struggling up the last set of steps to the top with their heavy motion picture cameras and tripods on their backs.
The elevators were jammed and teenagers were scaling the girders. The Tour Eiffel had never been so crowded. It looked as if it would tip over. Those at the top held their places; those coming up pushed their way to the front. There were accidents, shoving matches, fist fights. One man leaned too far over and almost fell from the second level. He hung on by an arm and was pulled back up. But top hats, purses and papers all spilled into the void below.
As Mary Ann got closer, she heard the cheering. Then a sudden gust of wind blew off her hat and her long hair floated in the breeze. There was a gasp.
“C’est un femme!” shouted someone.
Then there was an even louder cheer, heard all over the city. The shutter of every camera clicked. She ducked as a shower of hats was thrown at her from the third level. Men leaned out to blow her kisses.
Now higher, higher. Up above the roof. To win the contest, it was enough simply to fly around the Tower. But for Mary Ann, one more thing had to be done for Alain, and herself. She throttled back until she could drift with the wind, and yanked the rudder to the left.
Her course took her directly over the roof. She stretched her hand out toward the very top, barely grazing it. Then she reached for the lightning rod.
* * *
Pouchet’s car with Yvette and Bouchard in it thundered across the Pont d’Iéna bridge toward the Tower, and past the reviewing stand. Even with police escorts on galloping horses clearing the way, they barely arrived in time. The Mors swerved around a double line of iron pipes facing straight up like infantry on parade. It took Yvette a second to realize that they were the rockets that had been ready to welcome Alain Chevrier when he flew around the Tower. Had that been only three days ago? It felt like a lifetime.
But Pouchet didn’t hesitate. “Fire the rockets!” he shouted to the soldiers as they roared on.
“How many?” she heard one yell.
“All of them!” he yelled back. The fireworks went off with a deafening roar just as the car jerked to a stop.
“Is he there yet?” Pouchet asked Bouchard. “I have lost my pince-nez.”
“Almost,” said Bouchard. “And ‘he’ is a ‘she.’”
“A woman?” said Pouchet. “Is it that American? That Marianne?”
“Mary Ann,” Yvette corrected him.
“No matter. It is Chevrier’s airship. We can still claim the victory.”
Above them the dirigible made a tight circle around the Tower. There was a second when it was lost to view, and then it re-emerged like the sun from a cloud.
“Wait a second. What’s she doing?” said Pouchet, standing up in the car.
"She reached over and snatched something that was hanging from the lightning rod," said Bouchard.
“What is it?” Pouchet demanded.
Yvette looked up. Mary Ann was waving Yvette’s stocking over her head. Then she crumpled it into a ball, and tossed it away. It came floating down like a rag in the wind, and was blown off toward the Champ-de-Mars to
the south.
“Why don’t you ask Mademoiselle Meurthe?” said Bouchard.
Yvette looked at him. He was smirking. So was the chauffeur in the front seat.
“You may turn around, driver,” said Pouchet. “Get us to the reviewing stand. We’ve seen enough.”
“Yes,” said Yvette, so quietly that she could barely hear herself. “We’ve seen enough.”
* * *
Louise heard a ragged cheer rise from the street. “What’s happening now?” she said, pulling at her neighbor’s shoulder as they sat on the roof. He had focused on the airship with his telescope.
“She’s p-p-passed the Tower,” he said. “But now she’s hitting the wind head-on, and the b-b-balloon is seesawing back and forth, as if it’s being hit by a b-b-boxer no one can see.”
Then a moan came floating up from the crowd.
“And now,” she said, shaking him, forgetting that they were both six stories above the street. “What now?”
“The balloon’s l-l-losing elevation,” he stammered, trying to stay focused on it. “It looks like it’s leaking. When the f-f-front rises, the gas swells it full and the stern crumples, but when the front dips, the stern fills up and the b-b-bow sags like a wet towel. Wait a second...”
“What!” She strained to see through her own eyes, wishing that she had brought her spectacles and cursing her vanity for never wearing them.
“It’s fluttering and flopping now, still m-m-moving, but s-s-staggering like a runner who’s out of...No, it’s...it’s doubled up. She’s going down like a b-b-bird that’s been shot. She’s done for!”
* * *
When Mary Ann turned the Tower and started back, the first thing she noticed was sluggishness. Alain’s airship had handled easily, even in the wind. But now the force of the 10-mile-an-hour gust that had helped get her there suddenly hit her—and her ship—head on. And the seam that Guillaume LeRond had ripped the night before Alain’s flight had opened.
She looked back. The sharp steel edge of the Tower, like a sword, was still close behind her. The wind would drag her back into it, raking her across the cutting edge, unless she fought it.
“Got to keep going,” she said out loud. She squeezed the throttle open, squeezing as hard as she could. The motor barked and backfired again and again. The explosions sounded like pistol shots. Flames spurted from the exhaust, much too close to the hydrogen inside her balloon.