The Avion My Uncle Flew (8 page)

I hoped he was right.

By and by I asked him if he'd play his flute for me some more, but this time he shook his head. “No, I do not zink you need the flute now,” he said. “Only when it is needed very much do I play the flute.”

That seemed a queer thing for him to say.

I was going to ask him what he meant by it, but he leaned back against the cushions, closing his eyes, smiling to himself the oddest and most contented and encouraging smile you ever did see. With his eyes still shut, he murmured, “You will walk, my nephew. You will walk and speak the French language and win the bicycle. You will see. I promise.”

Outside the windows was darkness, except when lights flashed by. It began raining, the rain streaking the windows. Sometimes I imagined Monsieur Simonis' white face staring at me through the windows. When I shut my eyes I could hear the pound and thud of train wheels on the rails, making a regular clicking and humming. It sounded like, “Jean va, Jean va …” and it was true, all right, that John was going. But as Paris slipped further and further behind us, my mother and father miles and miles further away, I wondered just where after all I was va-ing and the idea of going, all at once, wasn't as rosy as it had been back in the warm hotel room in Paris when I'd made my bargain to get the bicycle.

5

LE VILLAGE DE ST. CHAMANT

The best way for me to tell you where we were heading is for you to open up your right hand and imagine it is a rough outline of the map of France. First, say that Paris is on the second knuckle of your middle finger. That would put Normandy and Brittany and the Atlantic Ocean over on the left side of your palm. Now, trace down to the bottom of your middle finger. You ought to find a faint line going down from there, cutting across some diagonal lines, and practically splitting your palm in half. Imagine that to be the line our train followed into the mountainous south-central part of France.

The first horizontal line on your palm that your faint vertical line crosses will be the river Loire. This river extends from the ocean into the upper center of France, a hundred miles or so below Paris. It follows a big long valley. In this valley are hundreds of castles. I was sorry it was so dark when we passed the river Loire because I didn't get a chance to see any of those castles mon oncle Paul told me about. He said some of them were over a thousand years old.

Instead of spending our money in the dining car, mon oncle opened the window and bought food when we stopped at one of the stations. This wasn't my idea of the way to eat on a train ride but I didn't say anything. I hauled out some of the money my father had given me, to pay for it. But at that, mon oncle lifted up his eyebrows. He said I was his guest. He said he wouldn't hear of me paying. He dug out a few pieces of money from an old leather pocket book. He counted out the money to the woman outside the window. In return he took a hunk of black bread and a sausage and sat down again and seemed to think we were having a feast. The bread was dry. The sausage was mainly cereals, with not much meat in it, and filled with garlic. The first taste nearly lifted the hair off my head. He said, “C'est bon!” and he meant it, too. I didn't agree it was as bon as he appeared to think it was, but I managed to nod. I choked down a little food.

We changed trains at nine o'clock. We took a smaller train—older and smellier, too. We were still chugging south. Now look at your palm, again. Where you see the second horizontal crease or line crossing your palm, is about where the montagnes began. That is a good two hundred miles below Paris. Our train followed down that line from your middle finger, the one I told you about. Most of this time I was trying to sleep—but couldn't. You see, we didn't have any berths at all.

We were supposed to sleep on the seat. If we had had both seats to ourselves, we might have been able to stretch out on them and managed to sleep. But all during the night, the train stopped and started. Sometimes the compartment would be crowded. Other times, we wouldn't have a soul in it but ourselves. Consequently, by the time a body had stretched out on the hard seat and wriggled on it and worn down the hard spots and was ready for sleep—the train would stop; people would enter the compartment. You had to sit up. In my judgment, the French didn't know how to run trains or how to travel in comfort. In fact, as the night—la nuit, as they say, if you want to be fancy about it—as la nuit endured and hung on, the hours going slower and slower, in my judgment French trains weren't worth the powder to blow them off the track. And my opinion of the French idea of being comfortable dropped down lower than gravel.

If you'll trace that vertical line extending down from your middle finger, past the first horizontal crease in your palm, past the second, you'll find it touches or comes close to a third line.

This third line starts at the left bottom side of your palm. It slants upward toward your thumb and first finger. Although it's stretching our map a little, pretend this lower diagonal line represents the river Dordogne which goes from the city of Bordeaux by the ocean up through the montagnes. About where the vertical line which we've pretended is the railroad track joins in with this bottom diagonal crease is where we were going—St. Chamant.

The big important cities of France are off on one side or the other side of your hand, never down along the center where the montagnes are. That's why the big important trains travel along the sides, too; and why our train was unimportant and slow and poky. It took all nuit and part of the next jour to go no further than the distance between, say, New York and Washington, D.C., or San Francisco and Los Angeles.

As I've explained, I'd tried to go to sleep and couldn't. For a time, probably, I didn't feel very sleepy, anyway. Too much had been happening. Oncle Paul, too, helped me from being too lonesome during the beginning of our trip. That is, at least he tried. He explained about the avion he was planning to build.

It was to be an avion, he said, without any tail at all. Eventually, it would be equipped with a rocket motor. Well, that sounded tremendously interesting. He would remove the tail and sweep the wings back so his avion would look something like a big V on its side. He expected his avion to be perfectly stable. That was the advantage of no tail and a shape like a V.

“Anyone,” said he, “can fly my airplane when I have finished. Ah yes, assuredly. The difficulty with the airplane today is that a man of experience is required to fly one. My airplane will require no experience. It will fly itself. You will see. When I have finished,
anyone
can fly it safely. A boy can fly it.”

“Like me?” I said.

“Assuredly,” he said, not thinking about me in particular. “Anyone, my nephew. Anyone at all.” He smiled and finished with his bread and sausage and folded up what was left in a big red handkerchief and declared this would be our breakfast. That wasn't
my
conception of a breakfast. But I saw this wasn't the place to explain to mon oncle that breakfast included bacon and chocolate and hot rolls and pancakes with syrup like old Jake used to make on the ranch and toast and lots of strawberry jam. I saw I was going to have to educate mon oncle on breakfasts, later.

I said, “I'm going to fly, too, won't I?”

He swiveled his nose at me. “Assuredly,” he said. “My nephew is going to fly. Mon neveu va voler.”

“What's ‘voler'?” I asked. “Fly?” I knew “mon neveu” meant “my nephew.”

He nodded.

“Jean va voler,” I said, pleased with the sound. “John is going to fly.” I shut my eyes, imagining myself voler-ing around in the sky in mon oncle's avion. “Voler” was easy to remember, too. I remembered old Mr. Collins who'd flown in the last war used to explain about volplaning to the ground which was an old-fashioned way of saying gliding down to the ground.

“One moment,” said mon oncle suddenly, as if he hadn't quite understood. “Assuredly, Jean va voler. But not at present. Not in St. Chamant.”

“Not in St. Chamant?” I said.

He hedged. “I was speaking—how do you say it? I was speaking figuratively, mon neveu. It is safe for a boy to fly—voler—yes. But—” He lifted up his shoulders and grimaced. “I zink at first we have to find if I build my airplane right, no? I zink it is best I make it and fly it and I zink—” He was speaking excitedly now. “I zink you must wait three or four years to fly it. It is better.” Then, right away, without giving me a chance to argue with him, he went on to explain that this avion he planned to build wouldn't have a motor. Not at first, anyway.

It didn't require a motor. He would glide it to demonstrate its stability. When he had proved his design he hoped a big French airplane company would take it over and manufacture it and give him a job. He had it all worked out in his head. He must have dreamed and thought about it for a long time. When I realized all he was planning to build in St. Chamant was an ordinary glider, I was so cast down and disappointed I didn't have anything to say. It would have been fun to have piloted a real airplane. I could have written back home to Bob Collins about doing that. But a glider was something on a lower endeavor entirely. Somehow I'd expected a lot more than that. I'd expected an avion with a real motor, big and powerful, capable of swooping all over the country and I had imagined me in it and having a noble time of it. Well, I saw the whole thing was a fraud. Of course, I didn't blame my mother for not knowing any better than to call a glider an avion—maybe in French a glider and an airplane were the same thing. But not in my language.

I humped down in my seat. Once more I tried to get some sleep. By and by the train stopped again, with a jerk. It woke me up. Nobody entered our compartment. There were bluish dim lights overhead in our compartment. I noticed mon oncle was drawing designs of avions under these lights. He hadn't even tried to go to sleep. I realized that avion of his was tremendously important to him. Now, as I write and look back, I can see that he was counting on it to get him a job and make him famous. Except for his family—which, oddly enough, was only my mother and my father and me—that avion of his meant more to him than anything else in the world. But I didn't know that then, on the train. He raised his head; he smiled in his engaging way; then he asked, “You do not sleep, mon neveu?”

Crossly I said, “How can anybody expect to sleep on French trains?” and once more our train started off.

Instead of becoming ruffled because I'd answered that way, he smiled placidly and said, “Ah, if you cannot sleep, mon neveu, then shall we speak French together?”

You'd think an oncle might have more sense than to try to drill a body on tedious French during a jolting train ride when all a body wanted was to get to sleep or to go home, wouldn't you? I thought so, too.

I just looked at him. He said, “You do not forget the magnificent bicycle, Jean? With the high gear and low gear and the electric lighting dynamo?”

That stirred me. For a minute, maybe, I
had
forgotten my bargain.

He smiled. “Now,” said he, “we will start our leçon in French. I will say certain words in French and you will tell me if you know them.” He asked, “Le train? Qu'est-ce que c'est que le train?”

I asked, “What is that ‘qu'est-ce que c'est que' thing you're saying? I don't know that.”

“‘Qu'est-ce que c'est que—' is how in France we ask ‘what is,' Jean.”

I said, “‘Qu'est-ce que c'est que—' is an awful long way of saying ‘what is,' isn't it?”

He laughed. “Ah, it is very long, I zink. But what can I do? I can make avions but I do not make the language. Now—qu'est-ce que c'est que le train?”

I already knew “le” was the word for our “the” but I didn't see why he had to add a practically English word like “train” after it. That appeared to me an uncommon method of teaching French. Anyway, I replied, “‘Le train' is the train,” and felt foolish doing it.

“Bien!” said he. “Qu'est-ce que c'est que l'automobile?”

“The automobile.”

“Bien! Qu'est-ce que c'est que le chauffeur?”

“The chauffeur,” said I, thinking this was a waste of time.

“Ah, très, très bien!” said he. “Le vinaigre?”

He didn't pronounce it as we'd say it, but he never did pronounce his words as people did back home, anyway. I said, “The vinegar.”

“Bien!” said he. “Et qu'est-ce que c'est que le village?”

“C'est the village,” said I, adding that “it's” in French because I was getting bored.

“Très, très bien,” said he. “Qu'est-ce que c'est que le village
de
St. Chamant?”

For me, the only new thing in that one was the little “de” and that was easy, too. It could mean only one possible thing as used with the other words. So I told him, “The village
of
St. Chamant.” And I yawned. It was the dullest business in the world. It seemed to me if he was determined to teach me French he should start by giving me some French words.

He sat back. He was grinning. He said, “Voilà! You have now learned seven French words.”

Polite as could be, I said the only words he'd given me had been “le” and “de”—“the” and “of.” All the rest were in English.

At that, he laughed. “Ah, non. But they are French words. Train and automobile and chauffeur and vinaigre and village—all,” said he, “French too.”

I blinked.

“A long time ago,” he continued, pleased as pie with himself, “a thousand years ago, I zink, some French knights and soldiers go to England. They fight with the English. They win. They rule England. For many years afterwards, everyone speaks French in England. Ah, you remember?”

And I did remember, as he mentioned it. I'd read about it in school, where William the Conqueror went over and made himself king of England, but reading about all that old history in school hadn't much stirred me.