Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius (73 page)

“I will go alone,” he called to the anxious crew.
 
“Mr. Harding, you are in command of this vessel.
 
There is . . . someone I must see.”
 
The second-in-command nodded knowingly and took over the bridge controls.
 

Nemo leaped across the intervening gap to the cobblestoned walkway alongside the river.
 
Dirtying his old uniform from Rurapente, he hauled himself up to the street level.
 
The handful of scurrying citizens looked as if they had been stunned, like kittens being chased with a broom.
 
Rail-thin refugees ran back and forth, searching for something . . . safety, perhaps.
 
Few of the downtrodden people even noticed the sub-marine boat lying like a dark fish in the oily Seine.
 

The shelling continued.
 
Explosions rocked the night.
 
Ducking low, Nemo ran along the Quai Anatole France, beside the smoking buildings.
 
Spreading flames spilled out of broken windows.
 
New fires encircled this section of the Left Bank, and these venerable structures were doomed.
 

As he approached Caroline’s place of business, Nemo was dismayed to see the rowhouse already threatened by fresh flames.
 
Earlier, before he had set out for the Crimean War, he had stood in front of this place in the dark of early morning.
 
Now, fire flowed up the brick sides, gnawing at the half-timbered reinforcements.
 
The plank floors and wooden furniture inside only served to fuel the blaze.
 
Nemo hoped Caroline hadn’t remained here -- but he had to check.
 
He would not let her down again.

With his shoulder, he broke through the tall door; it had been closed tightly against the jamb, but not locked.
 
Several of the windows had already smashed in the rising heat.
 
Over the growl of spreading fire, he could hear someone moving about in the back upstairs room.

“Caroline!”
 
He ran up the stairs.
 
The thickening smoke made his voice hoarse.
 
The flames grew louder as they ate their way through the walls and timbers.
 
His time was running out.

In the back room he found her, and his knees went weak.
 
All of the clerks and workers had gone, probably weeks ago at the beginning of the siege, judging from the cluttered condition of the desks.
 
But Caroline had remained, long after the others had fled.

He barged into the well-appointed office and saw her -- face streaked with grime, hair loose and in disarray.
 
She scurried about, gathering documents from drawers in her heavy desk.
 
He couldn’t imagine what business records could be so important that she would take such a risk to protect them.
 

When Caroline saw him standing in her doorway, framed by firelight, she froze.
 
“André?”
 
Her voice was the barest whisper.

Words caught in his throat.
 
Caroline looked so familiar and yet so changed.
 
After many painful years, she was even more beautiful than he remembered.
 
His heart ached as he drank in the sight of her.

“I knew you’d come,” she said, her voice thick with relief.
 
“Somehow, I knew that if I waited long enough . . .”

Nemo stepped into the room, shoulders squared, refusing to face the fire.
 
“I’ve come to take you away from here, Caroline.
 
You must leave Paris.”

She shook her head, haunted.
 
“No one can break the siege, not even you, André.
 
The Prussians control all exits.
 
We have had no food, no peace.”
 
Then she blinked.
 
“But -- how did you get into the city?”

Nemo extended his hand.
 
“I have a way.
 
Let me take you to safety.
 
Leave your papers behind.
 
They won’t mean anything where we’re going.”
 
Then he noticed the circles, dots, and slashes of musical notes, long compositions in her own hand.
 
Her music.
 
Of course she would have come back for it.
 

“No, I have to take this.
 
I kept the papers hidden here, locked away, so no one would find them in my house.
 
A full symphony, some concertos, sonatas --”
 
As the fire grew brighter, she grabbed more sheets of music that had been stored in her desk drawer.

Nemo snatched up the compositions she had already piled on her desk.
 
“If you come with me, you won’t need to hide your music anymore.”
 
Their eyes met in a long, deep silence.
 
“I have something to show you, and then everything will change.
 
We have both lost so much.”
 
His voice became quiet, aching.
 
“It is time we both gain something at last.”
 

Windows shattered as the heat increased, and Nemo grasped her arm.
 
“That’s all we can take.
 
Hurry!”
 
They ran down the stairs and out of the rowhouse, leaving the inferno behind. . . .

Prussian cannons thundered without respite, and gunfire rattled from outside the city -- either an enemy attack, or just bored soldiers letting off volleys to intimidate the Parisians.
 
Together, the two ran down the streets, pushing past scattered people who ran in circles, terrified but with no place to go.

Nemo took Caroline along the river’s edge, dodging broken stones and bricks from the buildings pounded by Prussian artillery.
 
Finally, they reached the shadows beside a bridge embankment.
 

Caroline looked down at the river and saw the armored hull of the floating vessel.
 
“That . . . that is the
Nautilus
?
 
The real
Nautilus
?
 
Jules’s descriptions did not do it justice.”

Nemo helped her step across to the hull.
 
“This is how I will get you out of Paris.
 
We’ll dive beneath the river and slip out with the current.
 
The Prussians won’t see us.
 
I’ll keep you safe.”

She touched his arm.
 
“Since we were little more than children, when you and I stayed out all night under the magnolia trees at the Church of St. Martin, I have always felt safe at your side.”

vi

In normal days, Jules Verne loved to be aboard his private yacht, out on the sea just like a bold sailor.
 
But during the dangers of wartime, he would have preferred to be safe at his vacation home in Amiens.
 
Unfortunately, too many people in the French government expected him to be like one of the heroes of his novels.

The conflict with the Prussians grew desperate enough that Verne found himself conscripted into the military, even at the age of forty-two.
 
Because of his fame, he was not asked to fight on the battle lines; instead, he was assigned to the coast guard, due to his love for and proficiency in sailing.
 

Jules Verne, defender of France!

Several years earlier, the bearded author had purchased his own yacht, which he’d christened the
Saint Michel
in a moment of parental guilt.
 
Before the war, Verne frequently sailed the
Saint Michel
up and down the Loire; he also cruised the Atlantic coast from Paimboeuf all the way up to Brittany.
 
Every trip had been a fine outing.

Now the French military, in its bureaucratic wisdom, had decided that Verne should command his own boat -- like his fictional captains Grant and Hatteras -- crewed by a group of old veterans from the Crimean War.
 
The legendary author would patrol the coast around Le Crotoy and protect France from invaders.
 
Surely von Bismarck would tremble to learn of such a foe. . . .

Just before hostilities had begun, Hetzel called in numerous favors to get recognition for his extraordinarily successful author.
 
In one of his last actions before the outbreak of war, Emperor Napoleon III had summoned Jules Verne to the palace to present him with the Legion of Honor -- and Verne had been as pleased as he could be.

To celebrate, Verne took Honorine and Michel away from Paris to visit his parents in Nantes.
 
Gray-haired Pierre Verne’s health was declining, and the elderly attorney had grown even more sour-tempered over the years.
 
Yet given Verne’s celebrity as a writer, he grudgingly admitted that his idealistic son had made a good career choice after all.
 
Sophie Verne took pleasure in her rambunctious grandson, tolerating even Michel’s worst behavior.
 

Then the war had erupted, the Emperor suffered a shameful defeat at Sedan, and Prussian troops converged on the capitol city.
 
Verne’s younger brother Paul was off in the navy, fighting against the enemy warships said to be prowling the Atlantic shores.
 
While in Nantes on holiday, Verne had received his call to service.
 
With the escalating hostilities, all citizens were obliged to contribute to the defense of their nation. . . .

Thus, he spent the winter months off the northwestern corner of France, patrolling the shores and remaining as far from the actual fighting as possible.
 
Since Verne was completely unschooled in how to command the twelve grizzled veterans, they ran a rather chaotic ship.
 
These aging, battle-scarred men were not healthy enough to fight on the front, so they rode with the author in the choppy waters near the coast.
 
They were driving Verne insane with their incessant chatter, bragging, and scatter-brained ideas.

Though his crew had been designated a military unit, they possessed only three flintlock rifles among them, and Verne was forced to supply all of their food out of his own pocket.
 
A single tiny cannon had been mounted on the bow of the yacht; whenever it was fired, the gun barked like a poodle.
 

For week upon dreary week, the
Saint Michel
sailed in a tight pattern, ready to meet the Prussians and terrified lest that day should ever arrive.
 
The invaders had full-fledged warships filled with cannons and professional soldiers.
 
Verne had no idea what his little yacht and its single gun could be expected to do against such an attack.
 
Flee, probably.

In an odd way, though, the change of routine was a welcome balm for his writing life.
 
Leaving the scrawny veterans in charge of the patrol, Verne could retreat to the captain’s cabin with his notebooks and journals -- and he was able to write.
 
During those tedious months he completed several new novels in longhand, though they would have to wait for publication until the end of the war and a return to peace and prosperity.

Pierre-Jules Hetzel had been trapped in Paris during the worsening siege.
 
The publisher was forced to continue a correspondence with his author through “Vernian” means -- sending letters via balloon or carrier pigeon.

Verne did not think much about the political turmoil, which seemed so far away in Paris.
 
He was here on his boat, which he loved . . . on the ocean, which he also loved . . . listening to the sound of waves and feeling the gentle sway of the currents.
 
He was able to concentrate on his stories without the incessant interruptions of family life, without social responsibilities, without the noises of unruly Michel (who had already been dubbed “the terror of Le Crotoy” in the short time Verne had lived in the small port city).

As he sat back now, deep in thought at his small writing desk, Verne pondered a new novel about an enormous ocean liner so large that he titled the book
A Floating City
.
 
He relished the quiet and solitude.