The Balloonist (5 page)

“Major, what are you thinking about so quietly there? Always falling into thought, you are. It's your Scandihoovian mysticism.” This is his American form of humour, a badinage consisting mainly of jolly and bluff insults. “A metaphysical lot, you Swedes. Look at Swedenborg. You have too much time to think in the winter, that's your trouble. Take the Norwegians. They have the same climate, but they spend the winter sliding around their hills on skis. They never think a bit. Look at ‘em, bursting with health.”

Actuating the string attached to the fuel valve so that the stove hanging below goes out, he pulls in the rope hand over hand and retrieves a perfectly brewed pot of coffee. This he pours into cups of a thick unbreakable variety selected by himself, and passes them to us, along with slices of coarse bread and butter.

“Ah.” He exhales contentedly. “Is the breakfast all right, Major?”

In actual fact I drink the coffee but find I have little appetite for the bread and butter. Not noticing this, he spreads his own bread thickly with butter and falls to. “Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick,” he comments in another widely applicable phrase of his. Still chewing, he gropes in his clothing for a handkerchief, removes a few crumbs from his mustache, and continues with the meal. Now and then he washes the bread down with a swallow of steaming coffee that produces another sound of satisfaction.

“There is
something in what you say,” I admit. “But you oversimplify as usual. Swedes are quite possibly metaphysical in the winter, but they are hedonistic in the summer. Around Easter a transformation takes place. From then till autumn they're as free from metaphysics as you Americans. They develop enormous appetites. They become amorous. I can assure you that in the summer a Swede never thinks at all.”

“But it's summer now. Therefore, if your theory is correct, you shouldn't be falling into thought.”

“Ah. But you see, it's precisely from summer to winter that we are journeying. In Stockholm the air is balmy, on Dane Island it was brisk but still hardly cold, and now we are headed for ice and snow. In short, my dear Waldemer, space and time are interchangeable. Ordinarily it would be necessary to wait for several months for my metaphysical phase to come on, but we can produce the same effect at will by a geographical displacement.”

“Too deep for me. One of your paradoxes, I imagine. What's this, Major, you're not eating your breakfast.”

“I might, if we were headed south.”

“Very witty. Here, give it to me, I'll finish it off.”

What is left of my bread and butter, the greatest part of it, to tell the truth, disappears into Waldemer. Then in a systematic way he sets about his morning ablutions. First it is necessary to answer the call of nature, which he accomplishes by means of the door in his underwear and a sanitary apparatus we have brought along for the purpose. Theodor finds something to look at in the other direction during this process. Then, after carefully washing his hands in a minimum of water, Waldemer turns to shaving. He fills a teakettle, puts it on the primus stove, and lowers the whole affair over the side again as in the business of coffee making, Following the rule prohibiting inactivity at any time, he brushes his teeth while waiting. The water is soon hot and the kettle below, with a kind of snoring noise, begins emitting a plume of vapour. He pulls it up, fills the shaving mug with hot water, and in a trice he has covered his face with foamy soapsuds. His straight razor he removes from a walnut case, tests for sharpness with his thumb, and holds poised over the waiting cheek.

“Ah.”

Something is
troubling him. He looks in the toilet case, turns everything over, and assumes an expression of concern mingled with annoyance. “Drat it, I don't seem to be able to find my pocket mirror. I was sure it was here.” He turns to me hopefully, apologetically, expectantly. “Major, I wonder …”

No, unfortunately I have not brought any mirror. I don't intend to shave on this expedition, I explain, and I predict that he won't either when he sees how difficult the process gets as we go farther north.

He turns to Theodor, but Theodor politely and regretfully shakes his head.

“Ah.”

Waldemer is perplexed. His face is covered with shaving soap, which is rapidly drying. The water in the teakettle is returning to the temperature of the atmosphere.

“H'mm.”

He takes a teaspoon from the provision basket, a bright and shiny new one, and tries unsuccessfully to catch his image in it, even the reflection of a small part of his cheek the size of a postage stamp, which he might shave and then pass along to the next piece.

“Bother!”

The spoon is far worse than those distorting mirrors at carnivals that send us back images of ourselves as dwarfs with three-foot foreheads. Waldemer is genuinely troubled at the lack of a mirror; if the expression were not out of character for him, I might say that he is metaphysically troubled. It is clear, if one observes him carefully, that his anxiety cannot be accounted for by his mere inability to shave. He could shave blind, by feeling with his fingers, or it would be possible for him not to shave at all. If he hurries, the water in the teakettle will still be warm enough for him to wash the soap from his face. No, Waldemer's perplexity at the moment goes beyond shaving. What troubles him deeply is that there is nothing in the universe—since the universe for the present consists of the airship and its contents to reflect his image back to him and thus verify for him his own existence. If one looks in a mirror and finds an image reflected back,
something
must be generating the image, and this something
is one's self. It is not enough merely to feel your knee with your left hand, or bump your head against a wall. This sort of thing only proves that you are having sensations. But
what
is having sensations? Perhaps the sensations exist in themselves, hanging in a void, pretending to themselves that they belong to a person. A mirror represents confirmation from the external world. Naturally Waldemer if he chose could ask one of us whether he exists. “I say, old man, I am still here, aren't I, and just the same? Or just about the same.” Thus the women who are continually asking if we still love them, or if they are pretty today, or if we like their dress. But it is typical of Waldemer that he has come to rely on a machine—since a pocket mirror is a tiny and simple machine—for a need that others satisfy through human relationships. Waldemer is troubled and I am not quite sure what is taking place in my own soul either. For I stole his mirror from his toilet case, last night in the shed, and hid it under the crate that served as our chair. It's still there in the shed, no doubt, where Eliassen will find it as he found my pocket diary—which I left behind quite inadvertently, incidentally; no metaphysical motives there. “Ah, pity, Mr. Waldemer has forgotten his mirror. How will he shave?” How indeed? Why indeed have I been so furtive and so perfidious? I don't know. Waldemer doesn't know why he misses the mirror so profoundly and I don't know why I stole it. I conclude—I prefer to conclude—that it was playfulness on my part. A mirror is a trivial thing and to be annoyed because one has no mirror is petty. It is a little joke, like cutting off a fellow's suspender buttons. Without suspender buttons his pants fall down and he has no dignity. It is really an American form of humour, like Waldemer's jolly bantering. Also, it gives me pleasure to know that there are no mirrors in the airship. What do I mean by that? I'm not sure. Perhaps that I have no need to verify my existence with a little machine, or perhaps that I prefer not to verify my existence. This little trait of mine, which I have just discovered, is perhaps dangerous, I am not sure. Perhaps not.

“Major, I wonder if I might borrow your sextant. The fact is that this infernal soap is drying at a dizzy rate. If I don't get it off soon I'll be caked with the stuff, like a Grand Guignol actor, for the rest of the trip. Drat me for being so stupid as to forget my mirror.”

The sextant is essential to our navigation in this enterprise, that is to say, to our survival. It is a Koerner of the latest model, modified through the addition of
a mercury level for the purpose of establishing the horizontal plane in the absence of a horizon. Taking it carefully from its wooden case, I hand it to him. Waldemer has respect for the sextant. There is no danger that he will break it. Carefully—most carefully—he takes it in his left hand while holding the razor in his right, and shaves himself by observing the tiny piece of his cheek which is visible in the index mirror. Man, contriving instruments to measure the world, succeeds in taking the measure of himself. Or more simply: Man as Reflected by His Instruments. When Waldemer is done he returns the sextant to me and I put it back in the box. Then he pours the rest of the water, which is still slightly warm, into his hands and vigorously rubs over the shaved places. To finish he dries himself neatly with a towel and hangs the towel in the rigging to dry. It immediately freezes.

Through all this Theodor has said nothing. He has eaten his breakfast with dignity, retrieving each crumb and wiping his fingers afterward with a linen handkerchief, but all rather absentmindedly, as though he were scarcely noticing what he is doing. Now he has set the coffee cup aside and is gazing with intelligence off into the horizontal plane, where there is nothing whatsoever to be seen. Theodor has many fine qualities but he is not quite sure yet who he is. He fancies himself a poet, and in fact writes fairly decent poetry when he is able to surmount the influence of Heine, but he is also fond of military clothing. His parents—the parents of Luisa—consist of an American father, now deceased, and a mother who was born of mixed blood in the Portuguese colony of Goa on the coast of India. The two came together somehow in Paris, but this is a whole story in itself. The mother in many ways is an interesting person, although I can't say I care very much for the Goans I have known. The combination of bloods, in my experience, produces little more than a medley of Portuguese excitability and Oriental sloth, the least attractive side of both races. The mother's main contribution to the world has been to bequeath her complexion to Luisa. Or to Theodor; I forgot for the moment that I was thinking about Theodor. His complexion is a translucent olive, pale like the moon and yet in some way at the same time dark; exactly—come to think of it—like the moon, which also gives this impression of darkness. But unlike the moon, which suffers from various pockmarks, this complexion is flawless and of a single substance, like a fine
china teacup. Moons, china, there are too many metaphors in all this. But persons like Theodor demand metaphors; they evoke them, so to speak, from the ambient atmosphere. His voice is clear and rather high, a voice that would be almost a soprano if it were a woman's voice, but since it is his voice it merely sounds refined. Theodor is a person of considerable culture, particularly in science and in languages. In addition to English and Portuguese he speaks French flawlessly, Swedish only after wrinkling his brow a little, schoolbook German, and the Italian of a Swiss hotel clerk. With his dark eyes and long aristocratic Silva e Costa face he is strikingly handsome, especially when he is speaking French or Swedish. Why have I brought him along? Because he has studied aerostatics and can sight through a theodolite, and also, no doubt, because he can regale us with some poetry if things get dull. I am beginning to see that, in spite of careful plans, there are many doubts and ambiguities in what I have brought along on this expedition and what I have left behind; for example, that I have deleted a mirror, which is useful, but have brought Theodor, who is vulnerable to the accusation of being merely decorative.

Still, it is better not to be confused about anything so fundamental as the sexes. Theodor is a man among men, the beau ideal of a young adventurer, and in spite of his complexion he is inured to the common hardships of cold, discomfort, and fatigue. I have climbed the Aletschhorn with him over the glacier and he never asked for quarter, although my legs after a while pounded like hammers. He is as contemptuous of the needs of his own body as he is of other human beings. What does he love? I hardly know. Perhaps his clothes, perhaps his dead father, or even me, in his contemptuous way. It is curious that for all his beauté he never looks in mirrors. How does he confirm his existence? His existence is inside himself. He is indifferent to the fact that his complexion and his dark eyes were never made for these latitudes. There is something Persian about him, a languor of oases, an indolence, which he subdues or ignores with the contempt for physical discomfort inherited no doubt from his frontier father. His only delicacy is a modesty about the needs of nature; in these things he is almost girlish and retreats behind a canvas stretched across a corner of the gondola. Although Waldemer hasn't noticed it he, Theodor, hasn't shaved yet this morning and yet his cheek is as smooth as it was yesterday. There are some things to come still in his manliness.