Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius (69 page)

He grinned at her.
 
“As soon as I completed this massive novel, Honorine, I knew in my heart that I’d written my masterpiece,” Verne crowed.
 
“This one . . . this one would make even
Dumas
proud.”

He tapped on the cover with a satisfying thump, then bustled to his writing study where he could pore over every page.
 
Once again, Verne owed this epic to Nemo, the dark-haired and daring friend who had succeeded in so many areas where the author himself had failed. . . .

Over the many months of writing the book, locked away in his study and scribbling in bound journals, Verne had shamelessly borrowed from what Nemo had shown and told him.
 
He’d described the metal-hulled sub-marine boat and even added how it preyed upon warships.
 
He wrote about the exotic landscapes of the sea bottom and even included the terrifying adventure with the giant squid.
 
The novel was his masterpiece.

By couching facts as fiction, no one would scoff at Verne, though he alone knew that the events were indeed true.
 
He had even gone so far as to name his main character, the diligent and curious Professor “Aronnax,” after Caroline, of course.
 
It was his way of honoring her in a manner that she could perhaps understand.

The readers of the magazine serialization, though, were most captivated by the brooding and mysterious Captain Nemo, an angry and impassioned man who had isolated himself from the world, divorced his very existence from human society.
 
Verne’s intent had been to make him a dour, driven fellow, consumed with the fires of vengeance, scarred by some terrible (and unspecified) event in his past -- yet the public loved him for his dark passion.
 
They saw Nemo as a romantic hero, an enigma that captured their imaginations.

Verne accepted the accolades with good grace, though at home with Honorine he remained perplexed.
 
Even after years of total absence, Nemo still managed to steal Jules Verne’s thunder.
 
What is it about the man?

In the novel, Captain Nemo took Professor Aronnax prisoner, along with the blustery Canadian harpooner, Ned Land, and the professor’s faithful manservant, Conseil.
 
The three accompanied Nemo on a remarkable voyage to underwater volcanoes, sunken cities, seaweed gardens, and polar icecaps.
 
At the end, the three captives managed to flee just before the
Nautilus
was lost in a terrible maelstrom off the coast of Norway.

In writing the novel, Verne had exorcised his own demons, his jealousy for the man who had done so many of the things Verne had denied himself.
 
The magnificent sub-marine and Captain Nemo himself were both gone, sucked down into a water vortex, never to return.
 
Verne had felt satisfied, and it was a grand ending.

Caroline, though, was outraged.

She pounded on the door of the flat while Verne was still locked in his private office.
 
When Honorine let her in, Caroline looked appraisingly at Verne’s wife, and then marched toward the closed door of the writer’s study.
 

Honorine tried to stop her, but Caroline flung the door open and stood like a valkyrie in the doorway, her russet-gold hair in disarray.
 
Verne turned around, astonished to see her, his face lighting with a surprised smile until her enraged expression registered on him.
 
He faltered.
 
“Caroline!
 
Uh . . . Madame Hatteras, to what do I owe --”

“Jules, how could you do this?”
 
Caroline’s bright blue eyes flashed with anger.
 
By the sweat on her brow and the rumpled appearance of her clothes, he guessed that she had marched all the way from her shipping offices on the left bank of the Seine.

Honorine hovered in the background, wearing an expression of stern reproof.
 
“Jules, what is it?
 
Who is this woman?”

In all the years he’d been in Paris, Verne had never introduced Honorine and Caroline.
 
At the moment, however, it did not seem to be an appropriate time.
 
He blushed and sweated, brushing his wife away.
 
“Honorine, would you give us a moment of privacy, please?”

Confused but willing to obey her husband, Honorine retreated to the other rooms and busied herself with housework that Verne would never understand.

“So . . . you must have read my new novel?” he asked Caroline disingenuously, then flashed a nervous grin.
 
“Did you see how I --”

Caroline slammed down her own copy of
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
.
 
It made a crack like thunder on his desk.
 
“You used my name!
 
You used André’s.
 
You made up this preposterous adventure . . . and then you killed him.
 
Why?
 
To get even with him for some imagined insult -- or to get even with me?
 
How could you do that?
 
Nemo was your friend.”

“But --” Verne said, flustered.
 
He leaned back in his chair, swallowed hard, and scratched his beard, at a loss.
 
He searched over the newspaper clippings and scientific journals in front of him, as if he might find an answer among the summaries in his collection.
 
“I have often used names and experiences from my real life.”
 
He sat up, gaining conviction.
 
“As you well know, I used your own lost husband as a hero in
Captain Hatteras.
 
You didn’t complain then.”

She stood, fuming.
 
“Because I did not care about him, Jules.
 
What did it matter?
 
But André . . . André --”

Verne’s heart fell like a stone, and he stared at his notes on the desktop.
 
In a brisk gesture, she swept away the piles of clippings from the wooden surface, and they scattered like a flock of geese fluttering to the floor.

“How can you do so much research, Jules, how can you know so many things about the world -- and yet understand so little about people?”
 

Caroline shook her head, and Verne saw that reading about Nemo’s death had pierced her to the core.
 
She’d always held out hope, since Nemo had survived one ordeal after another . . . yet he had never come back for her, not in all these years, even though she knew he was alive.
 
That had stung her to the core.
 
Reading his book, she must have felt her spirits rise at first, delighted with the story, her sole connection to the only man she had ever loved . . . and then been crestfallen when Verne blithely sank his character in the deep whirlpool.

“I have always encouraged you in your writing, and I have hoped for the best success and happiness for you,” she said.
 
“But must your friends pay such a high price for your dreams?
 
You are not the only one who has dreams, Monsieur Jules Verne.”
 

Then Caroline stood straight and composed herself.
 
She smoothed back her loose strands of hair, ran a hand across her damp forehead, and took a deep breath.
 
“He has always been your friend, Jules, and you know he is still out there somewhere.”
 
She gave a sad shake of her head.
 
“Many men envy you -- do you know that?
 
You have fame, money, a kind and devoted wife.
 
Why did you need to do this?
 
What more could you want out of life?”

As if slapped, Verne slumped back in his chair.
 
What more could I want?
 
He envied Nemo for the life he had
lived
, rather than just imagined.
 
But Verne had missed the opportunities -- some had been taken from him, like the voyage on the
Coralie
, like Caroline’s love for Nemo . . . and some Verne had been too reluctant to reach out and take.

But he could say none of these things to Caroline.
 
She watched him intently, as if she could read his thoughts, then she left his writing office and made her own way out the door of the apartment.
 
Before Caroline turned away, he thought he saw a single tear in her cornflower-blue eyes.

Honorine went about her routine, her face worried and curious, but Verne knew it would be a long time before he could explain everything to his wife.
 

He feared that he had lost Caroline forever.

Part X

AROUND THE WORLD

i

Nautilus,
1870

For two years, Captain Nemo’s armored sub-marine boat was the nightmare of the seas.
 

While standing like a grim statue at the helm of his
Nautilus
, he wrecked dozens of heavily armed war vessels, and the navies of the world sent out hunting craft in search of the “sea monster.”
 
Though a few of these ships blundered across Nemo’s path and opened fire with their cannons, the
Nautilus
never faced any real danger.

He continued without remorse and without any sign of stopping -- but after two years Nemo began to question whether his crusade was of any use.
 
His anger had become a habit, his revenge a routine -- and he felt that his heart and soul had died.
 
Even Auda and young Jules became mere haunted shadows in his past.
 
He was afraid to think of Caroline, how he could return to her at any moment and ask for her forgiveness and her love.
 
He dared not.

To the dedicated crew, this had never been a game, but a deadly statement that the political leaders of the world must hear.
 
Sending that message had become their job, repeated often.
 
With the blood of countless hundreds on his hands, with the tortured screams of drowning seamen unheard in the depths of the oceans, Nemo’s shoulders grew heavy.
 
His conscience trembled on the brink of despair.
 
What had it all been for?

He convinced himself that the victims he’d killed had all been willing participants in war, and thus guilty.
 
But . . . had
he
not himself been a soldier in the Crimea?
 
In fact, every crewman aboard the
Nautilus
had been recruited from that terrible war.
 
And had
he
not charged into battle because of confused orders or misguided loyalties, like some of these men?
 

Did Nemo have the right to mete out his personal justice on such people as he and his men had also been?
 
Had he become just as bad as the butchers of Rurapente, preying upon innocents who knew no better?

What would Caroline say about what he’d done?
 
And hadn’t he and Caroline been passengers aboard a British navy ship to and from their African balloon journey?

He took his vessel through the calm waters of the Red Sea to the southern end of the Suez Isthmus where the great canal had at long last been finished.
 
Though well behind schedule, the French engineer de Lesseps had accomplished his tremendous feat.
 
The narrow thread of land that separated the Mediterranean from the Indian subcontinent had been severed.
 
Sailing vessels no longer needed to make the long trek around the bottom of Africa’s Cape of Good Hope and back up again.

At the mouth of the canal, the
Nautilus
lurked underwater.
 
The crew watched the first triumphant French ships cruise through the waterway, firing celebratory cannons and waving colorful banners.
 

In his dream to become master of the world, Caliph Robur had intended to use the
Nautilus
to sink those ships, to trap them in the bottleneck of the Suez Canal.
 
Now Nemo simply watched the procession from inside his technological dream. . . .