Human Traces (37 page)

My Dearest Dearest Wife,

I shall write in English because you have so anglicised me. What happened to the Breton child? He is in a 'sleeping' car in California, travelling alone between the Rocky Mts & the Sierra Nevada, though little sleeping. I hope you are; and that the boy allows you to. Are you both well? You may telegraph to the station in any large town; I shall check in Omaha and New York on my return, though perhaps I shall be home before this letter. The train journey will take in all ten days, so with the sea crossing (six), the various stops and the journey from Carinthia, it will have taken me 21 days from my first pace out of the Schloss into Josef's carriage to my first footstep on Mt. Lowe, God willing. On Wednesday, we made a brief stop at a place called Sherman. This is bad-weather country, as you can tell by the number of 'snow sheds', which are like wooden tunnels to keep the snow off the most exposed parts of the track. We were urged to step down from the train for a little while. It was hard to breathe. This is landscape of enormous grandeur. Surely believers feel the hand of Him who made them among these desolate peaks. Thursday, we were in the mountains all day. I was filled with an odd sense of having lived before. This place seems so wild and terrifying. My heart melts when I think of the men and women and their children who had to cross this terrible landscape. Legends of how some never made it, fell ill or died in the mountain passes, starved, ate one another. Unimaginable yet familiar. And I somehow feel I know what it was to be a rider for the Pony Express, going on and on through all weathers, attacks from Indians, sunburned, snow-drenched, over prairie and mountain, terrible pain and lungs burning, but having to do it no alternative or your wife and child will starve, & at last seeing the light ahead of the station where you hand over the mail and fall exhausted into sleep. Two thousand miles coast to coast in nine days! Would there be food and drink? Would you make love to the stable master daughter, knowing that there are no normal rules in this wilderness? How do I know so much what it felt like? Have I lived it? Am I a reincarnated man? Is there some sort of universal human memory available to all? Or are all our little minds just aspects of one great consciousness? I do not like these thoughts. They make human life seem perpetual, with no escape from self-awareness, even through death... Oh, Sonia, reading this back, I see how little I have conveyed what I have really felt in my travels the utter loneliness, as though I knew not one soul in the whole wide world, had never seen your dear face; I sometimes wonder if you really still exist. The appalling strangeness of being entirely alone in this enormous world, a little collection of cells hurried west in clanking wagons. Above all this pointless sense of being alive, or being a soul a self perhaps for ever. If the soul is not distinct enough to die, then what one wants is utter extinction of all consciousness because there is no rest in individual death. Do you see what I mean? The belief of the Buddhists that one's soul returns again and again on its climb to perfection is surely absurd. But what we can manifestly see is just as terrifying as one is extinguished, another, near-identical, reaches self-awareness, and all the old intractable problems begin again. It is intolerable. The human mind has evolved in a way that makes it unable to deal with the pain and mystery of its own existence. No other creature is like this. Whether this thing I call myself is real or not, whether it is the flickering wave of some electromagnetic field, or exists only as a whirlpool as a dynamic movement made of other particles please, God, let it be real: because a self that does not exist cannot be extinguished. And if my consciousness is not sufficiently differentiated from those of all mankind, then something so close as to be indistinguishable from it is born again each moment in some poor city or village on earth; and I, or a being so like me as to make no difference, is bound to live again, for ever, caught up in some loop of eternal return. Dear God, may my consciousness be real, so that it may die at last... Later: That night we made Promontory, elevation 4,905 feet, so we were into our descent. Ghost town. It was just near here, I was told by the attendant who comes to bring me fresh water, that the East and West of America became one country when the rails of Central Pacific Rail Road were joined to those of the Union Pacific. Men from Maine and Florida shook hands with men from California. Flags, drums and muskets. The final tie in the track was silver-plated. As the last spikes were driven and the telegraph lines were connected 'like chained lightning', he said all work was suspended in San Francisco and New York. Bells rang out. The attendant had tears in his eyes as he recounted this story. Then Friday: the palisades of the Humbolt River. Sheer rock with our 'cowcatcher' nose a chisel through the narrow gap. Finally, the Truckee division We arrived at Reno in the evening, about nine. This was the last stop in Nevada. It was dark and I could not see outside, but there was the sound of a lone banjo and a man with an English voice singing Then I felt the train began a steep descent into the promised land. I awoke in sunshine which penetrated the lowered blind of the compartment, but it was not the usual four a.m." it was 7.15! Heavenly repose, rest. God be praised. I was in the station at Sacramento. I had just time to buy coffee and a bag of oranges on the platform. Oakland Wharf late morning. Across the Bay and disembark at ferry-slip in the city of San Francisco. A morning of transfixing beauty. Explored the city, much of it rebuilt after fires and now home to some 300,000 people, many in the hills, of which some streets served by new cable-cars. Dined at hotel on oysters and American wine! I walked at night into a place frequented only by Chinamen. Was advised to avoid the area known as the "Barbary Coast', haunt of pickpockets and villains. San Francisco is an enchantment, it seems to me, but it is also a port; & like all ports draws drifters, misfits or simply those who have fled the Puritan pioneer towns of Nebraska or Indiana. It is the end of the world. Nothing lies beyond, except what Cortez saw from Mexico and in the eyes of some of the men at night there is a kind of desperation. I spent a day in S-F, then took a train to Los Angeles: a small town, population about 20,000, I would guess, though much older than San F it has been settled for more than a century, a garden city of groves and parks with tropical fruits orange, lemon, lime, banana, eucalyptus. Connected by train to Santa Monica, bathing resort of about a thousand residents, but I had no time for the seaside waters. What if Santa Monica should precipitate a change as great as that wrought in my life by Deauville? No: it is on to Pasadena, the end of my voyage. I am on the new train that since only last year has connected the two towns, and as the warm sun floods the carriage, I have only one thought: It is for you, my dearest Sonia. May God or Providence be thanked that I found you and was not displeasing to you. I love you. I shall always love you, the thought of you, the soul of you, what lived before in your name and whatever shall survive of you. May it prove to be when I return home that you were not the product of my imagination, but exist in reality, my true and breathing wife.

Fifteen

Pasadena was a little town which at first sight looked abandoned in its orange groves at the foot of the mountains, like a piece of sleeping Eden unaccountably spared by the gold rush. Inside, however, there were signs that the settlers had ambitions, and as he stood looking up Fair Oaks Avenue, Jacques could see several stately buildings already in place. Most were formed from cast-iron frames and traditional brickwork, but many also had stone balconies, painted clapboard sides and towers with coloured tiles and flags. The rails of a horsecar line were embedded in the centre of the road, while small carriages waited by the sidewalk as their owners ducked under striped awnings into shops and offices. All around, the workmen drilled and hammered in the even light of sunshine, with palm trees to shade them and hummingbirds darting among the lemons and hibiscus. The Grand Opera House had onion-dome towers, pierced metal decorations and Moorish window arches; on its ground floor, beneath a steep white sun canopy, were the offices of the Mount Lowe Railway. "You need to speak to the Professor," said the clerk, a small man in shirtsleeves and an eye shade, when Jacques went in to ask for help. "Professor Lowe?" "No. Professor James, the director of publicity for the railway' "I only want to ask some questions, I am not offering to "I understand," said the clerk. "The Professor would be mighty pleased to help. He's from England. You from England, sir?" "No, I am from France, but my wife is English." "I thought you spoke funny, if you'll pardon me saying so. Now the Professor, you might find him taking his dinner in the Green or the Raymond. I do believe he's going to show some of his magic lantern slides there this evening. But if you want to be sure to catch him, you just stop by here at nine tomorrow morning. That's when he's always at his desk." "I'll come back," said Jacques. "And if you want somewhere good and homely to eat tonight, can I recommend you try the Acme? It's right next to the Fire Station on the corner of Dayton and Fair Oaks' "Thank you," said Jacques, a little uneasy at what this Americans idea of a good dinner might be. "Until tomorrow." At nine the next day, he found a large man with dense eyebrows and a thick greying beard, sitting at his desk, as advertised, behind a wooden sign that read: Professor George Wharton James, Mount Lowe Railway Co. He stood up and enthusiastically greeted Jacques, pumping his hand as he did so. "We welcome all kinds to Paradise, sir," he said. "But a French nerve specialist... Well, darn me, that really is something. I shall take you up the mountain myself this afternoon. Perhaps you would care to join me for dinner at Echo Mountain House? I guarantee you will have some travellers' tales to pass on to your friends back home. Let us meet here at four, when I shall have done my business at the Raymond. We take the railway to Altadena before we embark on our journey. Does that suit you, my friend?" "Very well," said Jacques. "Bring a stick if you care to do some walking in the mountains, and a coat. It will be cool tonight." "Thank you, Professor." "There is no need to call me Professor. Call me George. I shall call you Jack." In the train on the short trip to Altadena, Professor James told Jacques that Pasadena had been a settlement for little more than 30 years; it was only in the last decade, when the little town had grown to around ten thousand, that the inhabitants had started to lift their eyes up to the mountains and consider what they offered. The more athletic plain dwellers had made a trail to the summit of Mount Wilson, named after an early settler; but the hike was far too arduous for the majority, who contented themselves with a short climb into the foothills, where they walked among the fields of golden poppies. "So this paradise was unexplored. It needed vision. It needed daring. Then," said Professor James, as they stepped down from the train and crossed the platform, 'from New Hampshire by way of Cincinnati, came a genius Thaddeus SC. Lowe. You are now climbing onto one of his railroad cars for the journey of your lifetime. All aboard!" Jacques was struck by the similarity of the terrain to that in Carinthia; although what was proposed at home was more modest, many of the difficulties appeared to be the same. Lowe's engineer had devised a mixed system: an electric trolley for the gentle ascent through the first canyon, which was called Rubio; then, when the gulf ahead had proved impossible to span, the railroad was temporarily abandoned and the passengers were asked to switch to a cable-car, which hauled them to the summit of Echo Mountain, and a sumptuous hotel. Thence the electric railway resumed its more gradual ascent to the peaks of Mount Lowe. There were two other passengers in the carriage with Jacques and the bombastic Professor, as it made its way up into the canyon, grabbing power from the line above; it snaked around the poppy fields and through the hills with their covering of chaparral and cactus. Jacques tried to picture the journey as it might be experienced by some patient in the Alps, and the first thing they would need against the European chill, he thought, was wooden sides and windows rather than roll-down canvas. The ride itself, however, would pose no problem to an invalid; one had only to sit back on the wooden bench and admire the cities of the plain. Jacques glanced across at the flushed face of his companion, which was full of the joys of the ride, and at that moment they rounded a sharp bend, the track straightened and James let out a throaty cry. "There she is! The Rubio Hotel. Isn't she a beauty?" Jacques smiled. To the right of the track was a large building that seemed to be floating in the void above a narrow gorge, in a green mist of sycamore and fern. The pavilion-hotel was made more remarkable by the fact that two further floors were hanging from its underside, one with its own pitched roof beneath the terrace of the upper building. As the trolley car stopped alongside, Jacques saw that this was an illusion and that the lower floors in fact spanned the narrow ravine and took their footing from its sides; but the appearance of a three-storey pleasure palace somehow suspended in the gulf was enough to make anyone smile. "Let's have a look-see, shall we?" said Professor James, pulling his hat down firmly as he stepped onto the platform. They crossed over to the terrace of the hotel, where several brakemen and drivers were taking a rest, and the Professor led the way down wooden steps to the middle floor, from which walkways departed above the ravine. Jacques followed him at a brisk pace until they came to a waterfall, which the Professor invited him to stop and admire. "Did you ever see a prettier cascade? Look at those great boulders. Listen to the crash! We have to give folk something to do once they are up here. Most of our visitors are local people who first came out here from the Middle West. The Indiana Colony they used to call it. But since we had our rail connection to Los Angeles last year, we can expect tourists from all over America. Let's go and take tea at the Rubio, then we can go up the cable car to Echo Mountain itself. You are in for a treat, Jack!" Jacques found himself warming a little to the Professor, and as they drank tea in the dining room of the Rubio Hotel, he politely asked him about his title. "At which seat of learning are you a professor?" "Retired now," said James with a wave of his hand. "It is a courtesy more honoured in the breach than the observance. Have some cake." "And of what subject? Engineering?" "No, we have an engineer, Macpherson, none better. My qualifications are in people. Yes, Jack. People and their minds, that's my special subject." "Like me. Though I am only a doctor, not a professor." "Yes. Just like you. I used to run a correspondence school here in California. It was for memory training. The human mind is a very wonderful organ." "So I believe," said Jacques. "It never forgets. It's all in here, you know. It's just a question of knowing how to find it." Jacques nodded, thinking of Janet's statement that in the human mind 'nothing ever gets lost', which sounded more persuasive, but perhaps was no different in essence from what the old salesman was telling him. "I was born in England," James was saying, 'came out West as a Methodist missionary what they called a "circuit rider". Can you believe that? John Wesley was my hero. I used to love to preach and lead the people in singing. Proper hymns for devout people. Now if you're ready, Jack, we shall go up into the clouds." Jacques followed his guide out onto the wooden platform and over to the foot of the Incline, where an open white cable-car was waiting for them. It had three separate parts, each at an angle to the gradient, so their floors were parallel to the ground far beneath; the lowest section had gilded decorations on the bow, which made the whole contraption look like a three-tiered opera box going up into the unknown. The cable gripped and shuddered, the brakeman whistled and the car began its electrically driven ascent, noiseless but for the drag of wheels on the new rail. In a minute, they were looking down steeply on to the roof of the Rubio Hotel; a few seconds later they were lost in low cloud. Jacques felt a roar of childlike exhilaration building up in him. Halfway up the Incline, they slowed as the downward car approached, then passed, as the track briefly widened for the purpose. Shortly afterwards, the upward car lipped over the top at Echo Mountain and drew silently to a halt. It was cold. "Hop out, Jack, there's plenty to see up here." Echo Mountain House was a three-storeyed building with a dome, much larger than the Rubio Hotel below, and with a smaller companion chalet built off the edge of the hill. Both were painted bright white. In the palatial lobby of the main building, the Professor asked the housekeeper to reserve him a table for dinner "Keep me back some oysters', he called after her then took Jacques outside again. "This is our zoo," he said. "We have to keep them interested while they wait for the car to go down. We got racoons, an eagle. Watch this. Hold my hat." He pulled open a cage door and jumped down into a pit, where, to Jacques's astonishment, he began to wrestle with a black bear. "Don't worry," he called up. "She likes a roughhouse. Ursa Minor, we call her. She's a little character, she is. Here, give me a hand up." When he had dusted himself down and consulted his watch, Professor James said, "We have just about time to go on up to the Alpine Tavern. I guess that might be of interest to you, coming from Europe. We call these here the American Alps. Sure sounds better than the Sierra Madre." "And where is the Alpine Tavern?" "It's on the side of Mount Lowe, which is halfway to our final destination at Mount Wilson. After you now' They were just in time to catch a trolley car, like the first one that had taken them up into Rubio Canyon. The ride was up a r Gradient, slow but not particularly steep, as the carriage snaked round the mountains and the rails rattled on their granite bed. "You could do this back in Europe," the Professor said. "You could surely do it. But you need a first-class engineer and it could be expensive. What costs you is all the clearance. On this section alone we rolled enough rock into the canyons to build a city the size of Pasadena." "But not on the Incline, where the cable-car is?" "Not so much there. It depends on the landscape and what your surveyor says. The engineering is simple enough. It's just a thick wire that goes round a wheel! You might have trouble finding a manufacturer in Europe, but you could buy the wire and the wheel in San Francisco. It's the terrain that holds the key. Just ask the good Lord for a nice even run so you don't have to blow up half the mountain." After they had negotiated two hairpins, the car stopped to allow them to enjoy the view. Jacques looked down through the evening air from which the earlier cloud had lifted. They could see the dome of the Observatory and across to Echo Mountain House, shining white on its green promontory. The streets of Pasadena were so few and so spread, that the Professor was able to point out to him Fair Oaks and Lake Avenue, like straight scratches made with a burned match in the surrounding green scrub. Although it was evening, they could see the ridges of the hills in the plain, and the towns they enclosed: Glendale to the right, Los Angeles in the centre, and beyond it, the undeveloped land that ran down to the little bathing resort of Santa Monica; and still just visible through the thin air, as the sun began to fade, was the island of Catalina, dimly sparkling in the aptly named Pacific. Jacques sighed, loosened his tie and pushed his hat back on his head. What a country, he thought. What a place, where everything was still to do. He decided that in the morning he would make an appointment to see Macpherson, 'the finest mathematician ever to come out of Cornell', according to the Professor, and ask his advice about the feasibility of a cable-car in Europe; then he might take the train up to San Francisco to see the wire rope manufacturers. How expensive could it be, he thought a wheel, a wire and a rail? "This is our terminus," said Professor James. "For the time being at least. We call it Ye Alpine Tavern because it looks so old. In fact it's been open just six months, but it does look European, does it not?" It looked like a version of Europe, Jacques thought: to be precise, it looked like the baroque dream of a homesick European exiled in California. The tavern was in the style of a Swiss chalet, cross-timbered, with a stone foundation that rose to the sills of the ground-floor windows. The tall pines and bare-faced granite outcrop behind gave it a slightly melancholy air, though even in June, Jacques noticed, a mountain spring was running nearby. They went inside to a wooden lobby, where three women were sitting at a round table playing cards. One of them looked familiar to Jacques, though he could not quite place her. Paris... Vienna... Sainte Agnes... Where? It was quite impossible that he would happen on someone he knew at the top of a mountain on the other side of the world, so he thought no more about it as he pulled up a chair near the door. They had been there only a few minutes when one of the three women came over to their table. She was young, plump and confident; she spoke in French. "Please excuse me for interrupting, but I heard you mention your sanatorium in the Alps. I didn't mean to listen, but I couldn't help hearing. It sounded very like a place my father has been to visit. Are you by any chance Dr. Rebière?" "Yes, I am." The young woman let a cry of delight and called out to the two other women at her table. "Royal Mama! I told you so! This is the most
extraordinary coincidence, is it not? My father is Pierre Valade. Do you know him?" "Yes, of course. He is a memorable gentleman." Jacques could not help smiling at this exuberant young woman. "I was a patient of your colleague Dr. Midwinter some years ago," she said. "He travelled round Europe with us. That was before you had set up the sanatorium. Now my father says you are both famous." "Hardly. I think ' "Please come and meet my mother." Jacques bowed his head as he was introduced to Madame Valade. "And this is Roya Mikhailova. She is my sister. No, no, not really! But she is like a sister to me." There was a gloved hand offered to Jacques; as he took it, he looked up into violet eyes in a pale skin. It was hard to put an age to this second young woman twenty or nineteen, perhaps but there was something neither American nor French about her, Jacques thought, as the hand was rapidly withdrawn from his; the name Scheherazade came briefly to mind. Nadine was explaining in English to Jacques and to Professor James, who had come across to join them. "Mama and I have rooms in Roya's father's house in St. Petersburg. He is a very wealthy man stop it, please, Mama, I am allowed to say that. Roya has not been well, but now that she is better, her father thought it would be good for her to travel. California was where she had always dreamed of going. Then my father told me about this mountain railway. I think he had seen an article in a magazine." "And does the mountain please you?" said Professor James. "Very much," said Nadine, 'though we have been in the Alpine Tavern for three days and we are starting to be bored. We have done all the walks and we want to go down now." "Tomorrow, dear," said Madame Valade in French. "So," said Nadine, 'you gentlemen must stay and have dinner with us and then at last we can have a fourth at cards." "Alas," said Jacques, "I must decline. We are returning to dine at Echo Mountain House." "My visitor must sample the delights of the dining room at Echo Mountain," said the Professor. "The table here is a little more modest." "If it is good enough for us, surely it is good enough for Dr. Rebière," said Nadine. "As you know," said the Professor, 'in the evening they cook only to order for those staying over, so I doubt whether they have food enough in any event." "Oh, please, please stay' "Really, Nadine," said her mother, 'you should not press the gentleman in that way' Professor James seemed to be weakening, as he considered how all his clients could best be pleased. "If I can get a message down to Echo Mountain, I could ask them to send up some dinner on the next car," he said. "But we would not eat before seven. Would that be too late?" "That would be fine," said Jacques. "We cannot in all conscience refuse the ladies' request. "The higher up the mountain he ascended, the greater his euphoria became. The Professor looked across at Jacques. "All right," he said. "Leave it to me." An hour later they sat down at a long table to begin their dinner with a plate of oysters packed in ice. The staff of Ye Alpine Tavern, excited by the presence of the Professor and his guest, did their best to make an occasion of it, opening bottles of wine that had been ferried up from below to go with the beefsteaks that they grilled in one of the large open fireplaces that dominated the downstairs room. Jacques found himself placed between Madame Valade on one side and Roya Mikhailova on the other. The ladies had been upstairs to change from their walking clothes and Roya now wore a dress of dark purple with a black shawl over the shoulders. The violet of her eyes was echoed in the colour of the dress, but Jacques found it frustrating that so little of her skin was visible in the low light of the tavern. He checked himself in the middle of his speculation and forced himself to listen instead to Madame Valade, who was talking about... What was she talking about? It began as one thing, then, just when he was about to grasp it, transformed itself into another. There were many names of people no one knew and what they had said and how others were right to be outraged, or disappointed, or indifferent because... But they never found out why, because Madame Valade was not side-tracked exactly, because that implied that there was a path from which she had been diverted 'inspired' was perhaps the word, to continue with a new narrative that was contained within the first one, like a kangaroo in the pouch of its mother. Jacques presumed there was one main idea that she was trying to impart and he nodded in sympathy when he thought he saw it, but Madame Valade looked at him in surprise and waited for his brief interruption to finish before she resumed. It occurred to him that although she had been speaking for about fifteen minutes, he now knew less about what she meant than when she had begun. He tried to catch the eye of Nadine, but she was telling Professor James about their time in the mountains; Roya Mikhailova was making contributions to this conversation also, and had turned half away from him, so Jacques was unable to engage her attention. Finally, in desperation, he stood up from the table and asked to be excused. It had grown dark outside, though beneath him he could see white Echo Mountain House and the nearby chalet brightly illuminated by electric lamps. He breathed in the cold, thin air and sighed with the relief of silence. He would take home to the Alps, he thought, some of this exhilaration and, above all, some of the feeling he had here that all things were yet possible. At the schloss, he had undoubtedly become too absorbed by the scientific detail of his theory and by the excitement of the paradoxical connections he had made. He had lost sight of the grand design. He would have to make his peace with Thomas not from a practical point of view, because they had retained their day-to-day civility, but at a deeper level, where they would need to redefine their aims and work more closely together. He had been too much alone, he now saw, while Thomas had been a source of knowledge and invention he had not used; and Thomas himself had not moved onward as he should have done. He was aware of a footfall beside him, and a woman's voice said in French, "Are you all right?" It was Roya. "Yes, thank you," he said. "It was a little hot in there. The fire in midsummer, even at this altitude..." "Were you admiring the view?" "Very much so. One feels... enlivened. It is inspiring." "It reminds me of the Elburz Mountains in Persia, above the Caspian Sea," said Roya. "I have been there only once." Her French was lightly accented, though fluent. "But you live in St. Petersburg, I understand," said Jacques. "That is correct, though my father wishes me to travel. He says the great days of Russia are over and I need to prepare for a new world. Europe is the place, he says." "And Mademoiselle Valade said you had been unwell." "It was nothing. There was a young man in St. Petersburg whom my parents wanted me to marry. I was in love with another. It was painful. I disobeyed them." "And what happened?" "I was diagnosed as suffering some mild exhaustion. It was nothing more than you would expect." "I mean, what happened to the man you were in love with?" "He was sent to a garrison in another town. He was a cavalry officer." "You speak of him in the past tense." "That is where he lives. In the past. And you, Doctor. What is the matter with you?" "The matter?" He was surprised by the assured way this girl spoke. "Yes. You have an attitude of great weariness and frustration. As though you are fighting some long battle." Jacques looked down into the darkness below their feet. In the canyon above Rubio Hotel, hundreds of Japanese lanterns were sparkling, like fireflies. "I am suffering from the limits of my mind," he said. "There is a simple enough problem that I have set out to solve. How our minds work. How sickness enters in. Why the limits of what we can understand seem so narrow. As humans, we have a gift of self-awareness, but it seems to lead us to no explanation. Of what use is consciousness if all that one is conscious of is ignorance?" Roya laughed lightly. "Sometimes one does see through the veil of that unknowing, does one not? At moments of higher awareness?" Jacques looked across at her, but could barely make out her features in the darkness. "In a few days," he said,"I shall take the train back to San Francisco and investigate the purchase of some wire rope and a wheel. That is all I am good for. To be a workman with a pick and shovel on a railway line." "It is a noble ambition, Doctor. At least you will be lifting your endeavours to a higher plane." She laughed, and he felt her hand lightly touch his arm in consolation. Jacques's letter did reach Sonia before he returned, on account of the two weeks he spent in California, a day of which he passed with Macpherson, the engineer, and two more at the California Wire Rope Works in San Francisco. Sonia read it with fascination but a faint unease at the tone of her husband's voice. He sounded overexcited, and although such passion was not uncharacteristic, there was something worrying about the agitation of his tone. She was sitting in the office between the two consulting rooms, deep in her thoughts about Jacques, when there was a knock at the door and Kitty asked if she could come in for a moment. This was unusual, as Kitty was particular about keeping out of Sonia's way and, under instruction from Thomas, made sure never to ask about the accounts or finances of the schloss. "Come and sit down," said Sonia. "What is it, my dear? Are you all right? You look a little flushed." She had grown fond of Kitty, but whatever the evidence to the contrary could not stop thinking of her as an invalid. "I have wonderful news," said Kitty, who, in her excitement, had forgotten to take off her reading glasses, 'and I wanted you to be the first to know. You are going to be an aunt. Thomas is going to be a father." "Oh, my dear girl." Sonia stood up and embraced her. She was winded by the suddenness of the announcement. Thomas a father... There was something comical about it yet apt; she wished their own father had been alive. And how much it would connect Thomas to the world, she thought: it would be the making of him. When they had finished tearfully exclaiming and embracing one another, Sonia said,"I am not sure I like the sound of "Aunt Sonia". She sounds rather strict, doesn't she?" "Dear Sonia. I think you will be the best aunt a child could hope for. If my children grow up half as well as Daniel, I shall be happy' "That is enough, Kitty. You will make me cry again. Am I allowed to tell Jacques?" "Of course. It is due at the end of February. We had better ask Frau Holzer if she is free." "I shall write to her at once." The end of Pier 14 was so crowded that Jacques had to fight his way through the press of people standing, gazing at the City of New York, which rode like a tethered Gulliver, straining at her moorings among the tugs, barges and tenders that huffed in her shadow. On the wharf were lines of passengers waiting to embark, anxiously trying to ensure their baggage was correctly loaded, impeded by the groups of sightseers idling ladies in bonnets with parasols, small boys in flat caps who stared up in awe to the decks above them. Tiny men were in the rigging of the three inclined black funnels with their single white stripes; far below them on the deck were cranes which lowered roped parcels on creaking pallets into the hold, and animals, some butchered, some alive in cages, were winched aboard as though for a carnivorous Ark. In all the tumult, Jacques was sure he glimpsed a familiar female face, but by the time he was on board, greeted by a smiling officer at the head of the gangway and reunited with his bags, it was too late for anything but to push his way once more through the crowd. He found his own cabin, after asking directions from a steward. The stipulations of the line were strict: trunks not to exceed three feet six inches in length or 15 inches in height, and it might further have laid down a limit on the size of passenger, he thought: a man any larger than he was would have found it hard to squeeze into the space between the mattress and the bulkhead; even as it was, he had to post himself in, like a packed envelope in a narrow letterbox. These discomforts he remembered from the outward passage, so spent most of the time in the sumptuous public rooms. On the first night, as the New York pitched bow-first into the Atlantic swell, he fortified himself with brandy before sitting down to dinner at a long table in the saloon, in a chair that was screwed to the floor. The ceiling was a glass dome, like the Crystal Palace in miniature, and somewhere hidden up there an organist, invisible like a phantom of the opera in a short story he had read, was playing melodies to soothe the travellers. The lurching waiters splashed quantities of hot consomme over their wrists as they swayed up and down between the fixed seats; when they brought out the main course, Jacques noticed one of them holding the lamb cutlets in place with a determined thumb; as they set fire to the dessert he had to look away for fear the whole ship would go up in flames. Afterwards, he went to the smoking room, which was panelled in black walnut and furnished with scarlet leather armchairs, but found that the atmosphere of cigar smoke was undoing all the good of the brandy, so took one of the ascending' electric chambers' and went out on deck. It was late July, still light, and he breathed deeply on the sea air as he looked astern towards the receding coastline of America. He wished that he had felt wise or wistful, able to summa rise what he had learned from travelling the width of the country; but he did not: he felt confused and nervous, unenlightened; he felt disorientated and subtly changed. From the short raised deck where he stood, he could see a broad surface on each side of the deck house stretching back to the stern, a distance roughly as far as the length of the main street at Sainte Agnes; it was crossed at intervals by passageways from port to starboard, down one of which he saw the quick movement of that same familiar figure he had glimpsed on the pier in New York. He followed quickly, and found her still wrestling with the key to a first-class suite that opened from the gangway. "Mademoiselle. Good evening. I thought I saw you at the pier. Are you enjoying the voyage?" "Yes, thank you, Monsieur. It is kind of you to ask. Nadine and Madame Valade are both unwell, but I have barely noticed the movement." "Perhaps you would care to walk about the deck a little." "I cannot, alas," said Roya. "I must look after the invalids. Perhaps tomorrow, or when it is calmer." "Of course. Goodnight, Mademoiselle." "Goodnight." She lingered for a moment, he thought, as though on the point of changing