Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius (6 page)

Verne could sneak him food and clothes for a time, and Nemo would certainly find his own solution before long.
 
Verne just hoped he himself could be part of it.
 
Together, they had dreamed and imagined so much . . . yet now prison doors were slamming shut around them.

It was the dark edge of twilight, and Paul hadn’t come upstairs to bed yet.
 
Verne threw himself on the blankets and lay wide awake, smelling the river fog, listening to the ship bells and groaning timbers and creaking ropes.
 
The water and the ships called to him like a distant siren song.
 

From the fourth-story window, his view of the masts was unobscured.
 
Any one of those vessels could guarantee him passage away from this sedentary place.
 
In his imagination, many times he had climbed into their riggings, raised himself to their crows’ nests, gripped the yardarms to hear the tug and flap of wind-stretched sails.
 
Did he have the nerve to make those dreams real?

Ships came and went at all times, departing for far-off lands and returning with exotic treasures.
 
But Verne had to stay in Nantes, confined in his little room in his family’s narrow house in a tiny provincial town.
 

Didn’t he?

Miserable, Verne managed to fall asleep before his brother came up to join him.

v

Nemo needed her help, more than ever in his life.
 
Caroline Aronnax vowed to do everything in her power to assist the young man who had so inflamed her imagination and unleashed her own dreams.
 
She had to keep his precious imagination alive.

Before she’d met André Nemo and Jules Verne, Caroline had never considered spending time with two young men of such different social stations.
 
But from the first moment they had talked together in the market, she’d been captivated by both of them.

Two months ago, all three had bumped into each other in front of a silversmith’s shop, listening to the shrunken old man dicker with a sailor for coral pieces to use in new jewelry.
 
Her maidservant Marie had been dealing with a pottery-seller for a new vase, and Caroline had heard Nemo and Verne discussing far-flung ports and island chains, eyeing the sailor’s coral as if it were splinters of the true cross.
 

Thanks to her father’s merchant fleet, Caroline knew all about the Canary Islands and ports in India, Madagascar, Ceylon.
 
She corrected the boys’ breathless misconceptions, surprising both of them.
 
They had talked together for a full hour while Marie flirted with the pottery-seller.

Nemo had sensed a kindred spirit in the strawberry-blond young woman and boldly invited her to join them in a night-time escapade, exploring back streets and quays where no one else could see.
 
He whispered that they might even creep aboard an empty ship on the Loire docks.
 
Caroline had promised to join them at the appointed time, giving a daring glance to her maidservant. . . .

Marie, skeptical but bright-eyed to assist her mistress in this little intrigue (after Caroline reminded Marie of her own secret activities), had helped her slip out of the row house owned by M. Aronnax.
 
At the appointed time, Caroline hurried through the streets, strange byways that took on an entirely different character with nightfall.
 
She was anxious to find Verne and Nemo, concerned they might think she had gone back on her word.

They were to meet in a darkened back street behind the smelly fish-cleaner’s stalls.
 
Anticipation of scampering about in the dark alleyways near the docks, even to go aboard one of the tall ships, sped her footsteps.
 

Forcing from her mind the unthinkable ramifications of being found out, she turned a corner and caught her breath.
 
This was no playground, no garden party.
 
Offending smells struck her hard, as did the presence of a drunken dockhand sprawled across her path.
 
What am I doing here?

As her courage was about to fail her, Nemo and Verne approached from the opposite alley.
 
Caroline’s unease melted in an instant, and she spun around with a swish of her watered silk gown.
 
Nemo grasped her right hand and smiled that broad white grin.
 
“A world of adventure is waiting,” he said, while Verne hurried to take her other hand.
 
Delighted and filled with wonder, they dashed together toward the creaking ships tied up to the docks.
 
Verne panted to keep up with them. . . .

As the stars wheeled toward midnight, they spent hours play-acting scenes of pirates and swagmen.
 
Nemo fell into the role of brave hero, proud to rescue the fair maiden from the clutches of Jules Verne, who relished being the villain -- though, whenever Nemo came at him with even a mock sword, Verne fled.

Caroline’s heart fluttered as Nemo swept her into his arms and protected her from the imagined cutthroat.
 
Earlier, she had dismissed tales of damsels in distress as mere feminine nonsense, but the swashbuckling young man made it seem so real.
 
What was it about him?

That night, months ago, had been all she’d hoped for, and more.
 
Caroline clung to the memory of climbing, laughing, jumping, even swinging from a real sailor’s rope.
 
Far from sitting still with proper manners, they had danced in the alleyways of Nantes.
 
Later, they had spun tales of adventure, casting themselves in the most outrageous of roles.

In the deepest night, as they paused to catch their breath, Verne had grown nervous and agitated.
 
“I need to get back into my home.”
 
He pulled out a thick brass key for his front door.
 
“My little brother Paul sometimes wakes up in the middle of the night.
 
What if he finds me gone?”

Sad that their adventures must end, Caroline was also aware of how terrible it would be if she were caught out.
 
Nemo stood beside her.
 
“I will see that Caroline arrives home safely, Jules.
 
Run back to your house, and step quietly up your stairs.”

With a fumbled goodbye, a confused gesture that seemed to be an attempt to kiss her goodnight but was withdrawn at the last instant, Verne ran down the streets with long legs and clomping feet.

As Nemo walked beside her, though, Caroline’s sense of urgency faded.
 
“I would never let anything happen to you,” he said, and she believed him completely.
 
Caroline did not concern herself with fears of highwaymen or cutpurses or kidnappers -- after all, had she not just seen how the swashbuckling André Nemo could deal with any foe?

When they arrived back at the merchant’s house, Caroline slipped around to the servants’ entrance -- astonished to find the door locked.
 
“Marie was supposed to leave it open for me!
 
She knew I was coming in late.”
 
Caroline bunched her small fists.

“Perhaps you are out too late, even for her forgiveness,” Nemo said in a rich, understanding voice.

Caroline shook her head.
 
“No.
 
She’s gone out on a rendezvous of her own, probably with that pottery-seller.”

With good grace, Nemo took her arm.
 
“Then we’ll just have to find a comfortable place to wait.
 
She will be back before dawn, won’t she?”

Staring at the locked door, Caroline tried to open it with sheer force of will, but then gave up.
 
“After all the times I turned a blind eye to her secret meetings, why should she have to ruin mine?”

With a smile, Nemo had led her toward the Church of St. Martin.
 
“I wouldn’t say she’s entirely ruined it.”
 
They sat together in the deserted courtyard of the old church, resting under the sweet-smelling magnolias.
 

She talked about her own dreams -- and he listened, without once suggesting that, because she was a woman, she could not achieve her goals.
 
Nemo had shared some of his hopes, too, brash enough to believe he would succeed in everything.
 
“I want to see the world, beat the odds, become something
I
choose, Caroline.”
 
He stared up at the endless sky between the fluttering, dark-green leaves of the magnolia.
 
“And I will.”

He surprised her by stealing a kiss.
 
It was the first time she had ever been kissed by a man, and she responded awkwardly -- but insisted on practicing until she got it right. . . .

There in the churchyard, all alone except for God and the midnight stars, they promised each other they would do the impossible, beat the odds.
 
Though still young, Caroline understood the importance of her words when she said, “My heart will always be yours, André.”

“My heart belonged to you from the moment I saw you in front of the silversmith’s shop.”
 
Somehow, they both understood they would keep this moment between themselves, would not even tell Jules Verne about it.

The pastel colors of dawn came much too soon, and Nemo escorted her back to her house, where a frantic Marie waited for Caroline beside the half-open servant’s entrance.
 
“My lady!
 
I thought you’d been murdered, or kidnapped!
 
You could have been robbed, killed --”

Caroline had given Nemo a warm glance.
 
“I have never felt safer than tonight, being with André.”
 
Then she chided her maidservant, “And
you
should pay more attention to the time and keep the door unlocked, as you promised.”
 
Marie ushered her inside in a flurry of clothes, ready to hurry Caroline into bed before anyone noticed.

Before the door closed, Caroline had flashed a last glance at Nemo, already eager to see him again. . . .

But that was all before the disaster of the
Cynthia
.
 
Now, penniless and fatherless, André Nemo and his enthusiastic future had been cut off at the root.
 
Unless Caroline could talk with her father and secure for him an alternative.

vi

The landlord waited several days, giving him time to grieve -- but Nemo knew the squint-eyed man would soon come to insist on payment.

All morning long Nemo ransacked the two rooms his father had rented, gathering scrimshaw combs and snuffboxes, colorful seashells, and exotic trinkets Jacques Nemo had collected as a sailor.
 
Unfortunately, with the death of his wife and the raising of his son, Jacques had already sold the most valuable items, keeping only sentimental ones.
 

Dry-eyed but sick at heart, Nemo stared at the worn deck of playing cards he and his father had used on long candlelit evenings.
 
On a shelf sat a wooden ship model the two of them had made together.
 
Building the model had taught him the basic structure of the vessels tied to the docks of Ile Feydeau.
 
But the model was worthless, other than the memories it held.

On the day after the
Cynthia
disaster, Nemo had awakened at dawn to find a small basket wedged against his doorstep, a package that contained hard bread, cheese, boiled eggs, and flowers.
 
Even without smelling the faint trace of her perfume, he knew that Caroline Aronnax had stolen these items from her family’s kitchen and sent her maidservant Marie out through the midnight streets to deliver it, unseen.

“I will talk to my father, André,” she had written in a note tucked into the basket.
 
“Perhaps I can help.”

Nemo felt a lump in his throat.
 
She had kept secret her friendship with the streetwise young man, much as she had hidden her own musical compositions.
 
Nemo could not ask Monsieur Aronnax for work in his shipping offices, or even at one of the local docks, unloading and inventorying cargoes arrived from far-off lands.
 
He had to find some other way to pay his living expenses.