A Gentle Journey
The San Sebastian Chronicles, Part XXIII
We boarded into the central chamber of the ship’s upper deck. The walls were of a metal I don’t believe I had seen before. It was thin as shoe leather, riven with small dents, and riveted to a frame of metal beams about as big around as a man’s upper arm, though one much smaller than Ugo’s. We all traipsed into this main cabin and set down our sacks. Ugo loaded our rifles into one of the lockers that lined the wall between us and the pilot’s room. Lady Paz pulled the gangplank onto the boarding structure and jumped the few feet onto the ship’s balcony. There, the latched a thick chain across the gap through which she had jumped, and entered the cabin with us, latching the door behind her.
Continued from…
“Make yourselves comfortable,” she said. “It should be a gentle journey. You’re free to go out on the balconies, but please wait until we’re out of the clouds.”
I was about to say something to her when Father Koblenza patted me on the shoulder. “So,” he said in a half whisper, “you had an encounter with the new confessor Monsignor as well?”
Everyone was milling about and no one seemed to be listening to us.
“Yes. Who is that man?”
“I’ve heard he was summoned from Italy. Apparently high command came to the opinion that I was too lax in my enforcement of moral discipline on the soldiery. So I was ousted as chaplain. And after my confession with him, here I am.”
“Is he a Jesuit?”
“Yes, and an old one. I’ve heard he was a novitiate in Switzerland at the time of the Sonderbund War, but I can scarcely believe that; he does seem quite ancient, I will grant that.”
My heart sank. “Father, I am so sorry. I feel I am to blame.”
“No, it is nothing, Charlemagne.”
I lowered my voice. “But the mammoth puerile shadow puppet…”
“Yes, but you did not do it. I knew of it too. I had heard the rumors. I didn’t forbid it. And as for those who have confessed their involvement, my penance has been light. I suppose it is sinful, but it is a comedy, not a tragedy. No worse than Boccaccio. But that is the attitude that has gotten me here.”
“Well, I am sorry.”
“Save your apologies, Charl. Now, if we come across Nuzzo and Gabler up here, they may have something to apologize for,” the priest chuckled.
“Even with those two, it is hard to say who thought of the plan and who carried it out. Were they drafted or did they volunteer? I don’t remember.”
“Well, I intend to try to look at the benefits of the matter. As should you. You will get a pilgrimage and a chance to cleanse your soul in prayer. This is something you should do from time to time when not under penitential orders, Charl. And I will say the same for me. And after our penance is done, I can go back to the college and pray for the end of this war.”
“Would that I could do the same.”
“I will pray for your safety.”
“Can one confess before completing a prior confession’s penance?”
“I’m not sure of that one, sergente. Why? Do you have something to confess?”
“Take a seat, please,” said Ugo, rattling the rivets.
“No, not yet,” I said to Koblenza. “But we have a long journey ahead.”
“Keep praying then. I am going to see if there is a place I might sleep. My fast and journey have made me most tired.”
At that, Father patted my shoulder again and went toward the back of the ship. Johnny and Gus had seated themselves in one booth in the main cabin, while Desotto and Tomasso sat at the other. Opposite these booths, against the inside wall facing the gangplank there were a mass of tubes, valves, nozzles, and gauges. There was a massive, brass lever facing down and parallel to the wall.
“Ugo!” called Lady Paz from the pilot’s cabin.
I took my seat across from Desotto, next to the bugle boy, though I now knew him to be a bugle man.
At Paz’s call, Ugo pulled and then pushed the lever from its position pointing toward the front of the ship to one pointing to the back of the craft, using all of his remarkable heft and strength to do so. This action appeared to release the moorings as right away the air ship began to move forward and just slightly up along the cable.
We heard a scratching thrum as the steel cable rubbed through three large brass loops on the ship’s port side, which we’d seen as we boarded. It was a noise that would remain a constant in the background, but which we would soon be able to ignore. From those first moments our travel up the cable was smooth and otherwise quite quiet.
A porthole as just above the table in our booth and through it we could see that the ship was in the midst of the clouds that had been hovering over us on the meadow floor. Beyond the porthole was a tangle of light gray tendrils passing us in front of a motionless thick fog beyond. Droplets began to accumulate onto the outside of the porthole from the mist.
“Do we know how long this will take?” I asked Desotto.
“No. I’d guessed an hour, but I really don’t know. It would depend, it seems, on when the cable’s route steepens and the buoyancy of this balloon craft. Quite an amazing contraption, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes, truly. I can only imagine the cost of such a thing,” I said.
Tomasso nodded, “The tubing is actually quite bugle like in that it — ”
“How shall you pass the time?” I asked Desotto, ignoring the man who saw in all things bugles.
“If I am allowed, I may go down to the cargo hold to check our inventory again. We were in such a rush.”
“Fine. I may inquire of our captain about the journey.”
I stood to walk toward the pilot’s cabin. Johnny and Gus had risen as well and were headed to the back.
“Just how long is this gon’ take sargentay if you have anyidea.”
“I am going to ask just that.”
“Usually around ten to fifteen decaminutes, but we ‘ave to go slowa because of the fog. Maybe twenty. We could make up some time when we rise ‘bove the clouds,” said Ugo, vibrating the floor.
“Well, that’s just fine. Gus here’s never played euchre. So we’re going to see if we can get a game going with those two fools, the smugglers. They went in the back somewhere’s.”
“Yes, fine,” I said, nodding. “Make sure as well that you don’t find them rummaging through our rucks or in the cargo hold filching anything. They don’t appear smart enough to descend a ladder, but we can’t be too careful.”
“I will keep a keen eye on, sergente,” said Lord Gus. “We intend to sample a bit of the this Michelberg liqueur I keep hearing so much about.”
“Don’t make the bottle a morral,” Desotto said, pointing, “I don’t know for certain what we have left and we will need something left to make our return sufferable.”
“Do not fret, corporal. We shall stick to our ration,” Gus assured us. “But perhaps we can win something for the cause from our two companions.”
“Yes, very good,” I said, and walked ahead. I decided to go out to the balcony. After getting the nod from Ugo, I opened a door on to the outer deck antipodal to the one through which we’d entered. It opened with a simple knob not unlike that on any terrestrial portal.
I stepped onto the exterior deck and closed the door behind me. Though I didn’t think I’d shut it too hard, it caused quite a large rattle, making clear how light the metal structure was.
My view was absent yet disconcerting. The clouds were thin enough that I could clearly see the thin brass railing around the deck. In an effort, I assumed, to save weight, this railing was supported by only the barest number of brass balusters, thin as thumbs. Cables thinner still ran from the intersections of these two members up to the ship’s structure at angles shallow enough to force anyone of above average height to duck beneath them when traversing the balcony. Below the decking, I could make out metal supports and curved metal beams that served as linking joists.
Despite all these ratcheted and welded supporting pieces, the cloud’s opacity made me feel that I was suspended, rather than standing in it, and that the balcony, strong though it seemed, might just give way beneath me, yet I might remain aloft, hanging in the viscous wet air.
Though it was almost a gaspacho, the air held just enough of the late-spring warmth that I was not cold. As the dew gathered on the threads of my wool jacket, though, I wished for my oiled canvas overcoat.
I found if I stared into the gray too long, I would get a juddering vertigo. So I first grabbed onto a railing. But then I noticed how slippery the decking was, and had visions of myself sliding or being sucked out under the railing into the turbid abyss all ‘round. In the end, I was made content by leaning back against the ship’s wall for support, though I could feel it softly buckling behind me at each breath as it took my weight, only to return to position if I straightened up. A curious material this hull was.
It took me three matches to light my pipe in the dripping mizzle. I amused myself by watching my pipe smoke immediately disappear into the like-colored murk. The droplets continued to collect on my sleeves, and then on my mustache and eyebrows. I considered going in to get my slicker when a door opened to my left just forward of the one through which I’d come out. Lady Paz emerged.
Her leather greatcoat was bound up around her. When she shut her door behind her she put her hands in her pockets.
“Hauptsergente,” she said with a nod.
“Lady Paz,” I said.
“Please, call me Beatriz.”
“If you insist, Beatriz. I am Charlemagne then.”
She stood on the edge of the balcony, right against the thin rail.
“Don’t worry, Charlemagne. It is a most stable mode of transport, floating up a thick steel cable. And Ugo is safely at the controls.”
“Yes, well, I won’t pretend I am not nervous. It is not every day one gets to float in the clouds.”
“For you, I am sure that is true. For me, it is three times a day. Four even. Even at night on occasion.”
“A bird you are,” I paused. That was not necessarily complimentary. But it could be. Better to leave it. “It must be quite profitable, this operation. I am sorry my companions were so stupefied at your owning this proprietorship. But it is a bit unusual, even in San Sebastian, for a woman such as yourself to own such an exotic and technological firm as this.”
“Perhaps, but if it is so exotic and technological, it should be rare for a man to own it as well.”
I did not have a response to that, for I was sure this was the only balloon gondola I had ever seen.
Lady Paz relieved my awkward pause, “But at least you know a woman can own something besides a a cheval glass, a book of poems, a key to some man’s heart.”
“Oh of course, yes. My mother, in fact. She is a lautnitza as well. She owns a number of business in her own right. Some even near here, I believe. Though I will confess she does not take much of an interest in their operations. That is left to trustees in solicitor’s offices in Lucho, men of such apparent incompetence they can’t seem to make a profit even in war time.”
I would not ask how Beatriz had come to be a lautnitza, which is the Sebastiano word for a woman of her own means and residence. There were only a few ways it happened and most of them, if not exactly scandalous, were of a private nature.
Paz looked at me. I felt she had been in this situation before and knew just what I wasn’t asking. “I came to own this business by tur capra thruna,” she said.
“Yes, for my mother it was the same.”
Continued…
