Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius (61 page)

The
Nautilus
headed out into the depths of the Mediterranean Sea, setting a course eastward.
 
Nemo would not forget what lay behind him.
 
He vowed someday to return to his wife and son.

“For now,” Nemo said, “perhaps we will simply enjoy our freedom.”

Part IX

20,000 leagues

i

Paris, 1862

At the age of thirty-four and bored, Jules Verne considered his life a failure.
 

When a brown-wrapped package arrived with the afternoon post, Verne took it from the delivery man himself, trying not to let Honorine see -- knowing, dreading, what it was.
 

The sky outside was a robin’s-egg blue, the air sharp and autumn cool, pleasant enough to make pedestrians smile as they walked the streets.
 
The delivery man tipped his hat to the bearded writer and strode away, whistling.
 
Verne envied the man’s optimism.

With a growing sense of resignation, he shuffled over to the low writing desk and used a pocketknife to snap the twine on the packet.
 
Honorine watched from the other side of the room as she gathered her hoops and threads to begin a new needlework pattern for a pillowcase.
 
She smiled encouragement to him, but Verne turned his back on her.
 
He already feared what the parcel contained.

Year after year, he had continued to strive at his writing career, and achieved just enough success to keep him doggedly trying.
 
No one would sing his praises in the halls of literary fame because of the few minor plays he’d had produced.
 
No one would remember his clever verse or his magazine articles.
 
Still, he tried . . . and tried.

He had spent a full year on an ambitious new manuscript, burying himself in clippings and books and journals.
 
He had devoted his research attentions to a massive scientific study based on the uses of balloons in travel and exploration.
 
He himself had never been up in a balloon or explored distant lands . . . but he had talked with Nemo and Caroline, and had read Dr. Fergusson’s published account of the voyage across Africa.
 
That should have been sufficient.

Now, if only someone would publish Verne’s tome.
 
It had begun to seem hopeless. . .

After five uneventful years, his marriage to Honorine had settled into a quiet numbness.
 
He paid scant attention to his wife, spending but a few minutes with her at meals, during which he spoke little before dashing back to his writing study.
 
This wasn’t how he had fancied his life as an author.
 
Perhaps Alexandre Dumas had been kind in trying to discourage him, or at least make him face the realities of the career.

His tedious job at the stock market provided enough money for them to live in reasonable comfort, though without extravagances.
 
Verne had managed to represent every member of his extended family who had any money at all to invest.
 
Sometimes his advice was good, sometimes it failed, but he did nothing so rash as to make his relatives consider his performance disastrous.
 
Jules Verne made no waves, no ripples in life whatsoever.

He and Honorine became the parents of a baby son, Michel, more through a fortuitous accident rather than any ambitious effort on Verne’s part.
 
A colicky baby, Michel spent most of his time fussing and causing disturbances.
 
Dreading the future, Verne assumed the baby would grow up to be a difficult youngster as well.
 
In stories, life never seemed to happen this way.

In the household, with her daughters visiting their grandparents again, Honorine’s task was to keep the infant as quiet as possible so her husband could concentrate on his writing.
 
Later, after he had trudged off to the dreary stock exchange, Michel could wail to his lungs’ content.

As his creative frustration built, Verne became a more impatient person, sharper tempered.
 
The stamina he needed to continue his unflagging (and unrewarded) writing efforts began to wane.
 
The noise and disruptions at home made concentration even more difficult.
 
Even the plots of his own adventures gave him diminished enjoyment.

Still, Verne had been proud to complete his exhaustive balloon manuscript, convinced that he had found his path to success.
 
Honorine could sense her husband’s excitement about the project, and she smiled at him whenever he bothered to give her a glance.

Full of optimism, he had selected the best Parisian publisher and submitted the completed manuscript.
 
Surely, the hungry minds in France would want to read everything there was to know about lighter-than-air travel.
 
And the book came back -- rejected.

Undaunted, silently dubbing the editor a blind fool who could not recognize talent, Verne sent the balloon treatise to his second choice, an equally reputable and impressive publisher.
 
Again the book was returned to him.

Angry, but still determined, he submitted the manuscript over and over . . . and waited for the return post.
 
Each morning, like a sleepwalker, he went to the Bourse, uninterested in the endless routine of selling and buying shares.
 
Days, sometimes weeks, passed -- but always his manuscript came back with similar verdicts.
 
“Too long.”
 
“Too dull.”
 
“Too unfocused.”

Verne’s coworkers knew of his ambitions and joked about him being a lightheaded dreamer.
 
While they thought he wasted his time at writing, they themselves spent extra hours in the stock exchange, making (and losing) fortunes.
 

As the balloon book repeatedly failed to find a home, Verne’s mood soured, and coworkers stopped teasing him.
 
In fact, they stopped conversing much with him at all. . . .

Now, with his palms sweating, he unwrapped the parcel and closed his eyes.
 
He drew a deep breath and removed the handwritten note on top of his fastidiously produced manuscript
.
 
Deemed unpublishable
.

Again.
 

Verne had lost a substantial sum in the stock market that day, and the baby’s loud crying exacerbated his headache.
 
The letter from yet another ignorant publisher only reinforced his doubts and his foul mood.
 
Rejected seventeen times.
 
How could an 800-page manuscript about the history and engineering of ballooning possibly be
boring
?
 
It went beyond all reason.

Giving in to frustration, Verne strode across the room with the heavy manuscript in hand, his only copy of the work that had taken him a year to complete.
 
He threw open the iron door of the stove where a fire burned, warming the house against the autumn chill.
 
With a wordless gesture of disgust and a dramatic flair, he tossed the thick manuscript into the fire and slammed the door with a nod of petulant satisfaction.
 

Honorine froze in place, and her dark brows furrowed with concern.
 
“Jules?”
 
She looked from him to the torn brown postal wrapping, to the letter from the returned manuscript.
 
Then she noticed his smug expression directed at the stove.
 
“Jules, don’t you dare!”
 

Stern and uncompromising, she shouldered her husband aside and flung open the stove door.
 
Without a moment’s hesitation, she reached into the fire, burning her own fingertips, and yanked out the stack of manuscript pages.
 
She dropped it onto the floor and stamped on the edges to extinguish the flames.

“You are even more a child than Michel,” she said.
 
When he reached for the manuscript, confused and guilty but still full of rage, Honorine snatched it up and turned away from him.
 
“No.
 
I see that I must keep this safe until you come to your senses.”
 

Marching over to the desk, she opened a wooden file drawer and dropped the stack of papers inside.
 
She locked the drawer and then placed the only key in a pocket of her dark skirts.
 
“You worked far too hard on that book, Jules.
 
It took you away from me for a year.
 
You have been obsessed by it.
 
I will not let you throw it all away.
”

“But I have tried every publisher,” he said, cowed.
 
“It will never see print.”

“It will never see print if you give up and burn the manuscript, foolish man,” she said, wagging a finger at him.
 
“You have friends who are writers.
 
I hear that Dumas has returned to Paris.
 
Ask
him
for advice . . . but don’t you dare give up now.”

Though Honorine had never shown an interest in his writing, she did have a concern for her husband and knew how the passion drove him.
 
He looked at the locked desk drawer and fumed.
 

Verne didn’t speak to Honorine for the rest of that evening -- didn’t thank her, did not apologize -- but the wheels began turning in his head, and he considered other options he might pursue.
 
He went to a brasserie and read his newspapers, keeping an eye out for old writer acquaintances.
 
He found none.
 
He did, however, spot an article about a bloody civil war sweeping across the Turkish peninsula -- rumors that had been denied by Ottoman officials.
 
He considered clipping out the article for possible use in a fiction piece, but decided he had no interest in a struggle among the barbarous Turks.
 

The next day he went to see the great Dumas.
 
The enormous writer had returned to Paris, pretending that his financial troubles had never occurred.
 
Once again the big man indulged in the extravagant lifestyle that had caused him so much misery before.
 
Verne just wanted to hear some of the famous author’s advice before Dumas went bankrupt again.

He welcomed Verne, patted his young friend on the back, and insisted that the younger man join him for a glass of wine.
 
He seemed unsurprised that Verne had achieved minimal success in an entire decade of struggles as a writer.

“Oh, ho!
 
Don’t worry about it, Jules,” Dumas said.
 
“Most of those who come to me for help never succeed.
 
Most never really try -- they just want it
given
to them.”
 
His generous lips curved into a smile, then Dumas burst out laughing, his cheeks and jowls vibrating like a bullfrog’s.
 
“You, however, have an actual manuscript, a completed book.
 
You don’t understand that this already puts you far closer to success than most of your peers.”

“But no one will publish my manuscript.
 
I’ve tried everyone.”

Dumas raised a pudgy, ringed finger.
 
“We shall see what we can do about that, mmm?”
 
Already the big man looked distracted, as if he needed to be about some other business.
 

He gave Verne the name of another new author who had succeeded in getting a few pamphlets printed.
 
That author then forwarded Verne to his own publisher, Pierre-Jules Hetzel.
 
Hetzel had launched a children’s science magazine, the
Magasin d’Education et de Récréation
, and claimed to be in search of new writers for his fledgling publishing house.

Assuring Honorine that he would not harm the book, Verne coaxed her to unlock the desk drawer and remove the singed manuscript.
 
Before giving it to him, she brushed away the burnt edges, restacked the pages, and carefully wrapped them.
 
Verne took the precious package and, without much hope, hand-delivered it to the offices of Hetzel & Cie.