Читать книгу Houseboat on the Seine - William Wharton, Уильям Уортон - Страница 7

First, I build up that side with the water sloshing in. Then I clean out and scrape or scrap all the charred interior. This involves, among other things, replacing forty-five small mullioned windowpanes. There are also two huge plate-glass view windows that are so smoke- and soot-covered, nothing can be seen through them – two more days of scrubbing there. The walls of what served as a living room and bedroom are beyond mere painting; they will take more serious treatment.

I find a bolt of gold brocade cloth at the Marché Aligré, a street market near our apartment-cum-studio in Paris. For some reason, this brocade is only about the price of burlap, so I buy it all, three bolts full. I begin to know I’m going crazy because I look forward to sticking this cloth over all the black walls and ceilings. I’m being carried away. Perhaps the entire boat is enchanted.

I use paste to cover the walls and ceiling so I can attach the gold brocade – it does cover a multitude of sins. I buy inexpensive light fixtures with amber lightbulbs, and, after some considerable electrical work, much beyond my skill level, manage to fix them so they actually light, even turn on and off with primitive switches.

I call in the rest of the family on weekends to scrub out the bathroom, the kitchen, the usual comfort necessities. These are all a uniform smoke-brownish hue. Before the school year ends, late in June, we have the boat finished. According to my wife, it looks like a drunken pirate’s private whorehouse – she’s very conservative in these kinds of things.

The layout of the houseboat is quite simple. After one comes up the gangplank, one goes through a low oaken door, about five-feet six-inches high. I’m five-foot-ten. After bumping my head the tenth time, I consider wearing a hard hat permanently, or maybe an old-time bowler.

The door opens onto a tiny vestibule. Turning right, one goes through two swinging mahogany doors with beautiful brass fittings, very boatlike. These doors lead down two steps into the main room. On the left, looking out over the river, now, after much scraping, is one of two large plate windows. It’s about seven feet wide and four feet high.

The living room is approximately twenty feet long and fifteen feet wide. At the far end, on the river side, is an entry to a small kitchen. In the center of that end wall is another pair of mahogany doors like those opening from the vestibule. These doors lead to a narrow hall with a bathroom, complete with toilet, sink and shower, opening on the right, the shore side.

Directly ahead are three steps up to the bedroom. Here we find the second of the large plate windows, also looking out on the river.

All along the shore side are small windows, four in all, opening onto the quay. These are house-type windows with shutters. There is also a window of the same design opening onto the kitchen on the river side.

It must have been a lovely place for the French explorer and his lady friend. I’m not sure how it’s going to work with a family of five, though.

We rent the boat out for the summer to a young woman (another witch) who works for the Foire de Trône, a sort of yearly carnival in Le Bois de Vincennes. My contract for our boat location stipulates someone must be on the boat at all times. The river-navigation people are already very suspicious of this crippled craft.

We leave for our usual summer vacation to the old water mill we’d bought in Burgundy when we first came to France. We paid the huge sum of two thousand dollars for this place. It was another romantic coup de foudre. Actually, the mill is only a three-hundred-year-old stone tent, but that’s another story.

Disenchantment!

We hadn’t been at the mill three weeks when we receive a telegram, our first French telegram. It’s from an elderly English couple who live two boats downriver from us. I don’t know why they wrote it in French. It says:

Votre bateau a coulé.

That’s said coo-lay, as in Kool-Aid.

I run across the street to a French neighbor hoping to find out what the word ‘coulé’ means. As if I didn’t know! I just don’t want to believe it.

I immediately take the train up to Paris, then the bus out to where the boat is. It is, indeed, coulé. Only a small corner of the roof is sticking above water. There is a medium-sized crowd along the bank. They surround the boat, babbling in French. Each seems to have a different idea as to why the boat has sunk. All of them, in French fashion, are convinced there must be a reason, C’est logique, n’est-ce pas?

After much running around, trying to find someone to lift the boat out of the water and getting nowhere, someone tells me about specialists in this kind of work, bringing up sunken boats. They are called les frères Teurnier. I phone them from the café on the corner. This town of Le Port Marly has seven restaurants, but only one café. It’s directly across the street from the boule courts, which are on the chemin de halage, or path, next to our boat. There are also two restaurants de routiers, sort of truck stops that double as cafés.

The next day, a broken down old ‘deux chevaux’ pulls up on the chemin de halage beside the boat. I’d camped, somewhat chillily, on la berge overnight. The man who climbs out of this car is in his sixties and about five feet tall. He’s wearing French workmen’s blues, filthy, stiff with oil and sweat, and a mariner’s cap, also filthy.

He shakes my hand, jabbers away, smiles, then pulls down a plank from the top of his car. He slides down the steep riverbank and throws the plank out across the water, between the land and the projecting bit of boat roof. I’m convinced he’s going to sink the whole business, but he walks like an acrobat, muttering to himself, out on that board. After looking down all sides of the boat, seeing I can’t imagine what, except dirty, black water, he comes back to me and, in a complex mixture of Breton, French, my broken French and his violent pantomime, I come to know he thinks he can raise the boat for two thousand francs (at that time about four hundred dollars).

This represents the amount we still owe on the boat and were hoping to pay off in September. I actually have it in my pocket in one-hundred-franc bills, twenty of them, plus some change. At the moment, it represents virtually our total capital.

In French and in pantomime again, he tells me he will wrap the boat with a large cloth, then pump the water out so the boat can come to the surface and we can see what’s wrong. It sounds crazy. However, he insists that before he can put the pumps in the boat to pump out the water, I must go down inside and remove anything floating in there. If I don’t, they’ll jam his pumps.

With this advice, he leaves, promising he’ll be back in three days to commence the rescue operation.

Losing My Suntan

I look at the boat. It’s noon, the bells of the village church are ringing. I figure I might as well start right off. Luckily, the crowds have diminished. In the bright sunlight, I strip down to my Jockey shorts and slide into the water. Happily, as a last-minute decision, I’ve also brought along from the mill a waterproof flashlight, a Christmas present for Matt, our fifteen-year-old son.

Usually we leave the key right in the boat door. When I’m feeling around in the blackness of water, holding my breath, I find the key. Our renter must have left it there, too. I’m half afraid to go in, expecting she might still be inside, floating, bloated, in our living room.

I turn the key and the door opens sluggishly. I come up inside and there is an air pocket. M. Teurnier had said there probably would be. I take a deep, ghoulish breath and look around. It’s dark and things are floating around as he expected, but no bodies, yet. I flash the light around the dark interior. My God, the place is filled with junk: floating doors, cabinet doors, real doors; pillows, mattresses, papers, furniture, bits of furniture; all floating in the dark. Also, there are other things floating, things I hadn’t expected, though I should have. I strap the flashlight to my head with a torn piece of wet sheet and get started.

I spend the rest of that day pulling out the floaters and spreading them on the bank. Chairs, tables, anything held together with glue, are no longer in one piece. I fish away, in and out, down and up, until dark settles over all and fatigue drags me to the ground.

Just before the bakery closes, I buy a baguette for dinner. I sit on the berge and watch the sun go down behind me. The temptation is strong just to walk away and allow someone else to deal with this mess, write it all off.

The evening is warm. I curl up and fall asleep. But I wake in the middle of the night with severe stomach cramps. My baguette goes out the way it went in and, simultaneously, the way it should come out. I accompany these gratuitous acts of my body with much grunting, groaning and feeble whining.

When the morning finally comes, I put on some clothes and walk across to the Café Brazza, the same one Alfred Sisley painted several times when the river was in full flood. I’ll never look at those paintings the same way, beautiful as they are. I use the café phone to contact a farmhouse with the only phone near our mill. They’ll pass on a message to my family that I’m all right, but I’ll be staying up here awhile, trying to raise the boat. It sounds so simple. I give the message on the edge of tears, tears of self-pity.

Back on the berge, I start my diving again. I’m now having the heaves out both ends. I didn’t know this was possible. There’s nothing in there anyway, and the river wouldn’t mind if there were. I’m as polluted as it is.

I don’t eat lunch. It seems like suicide, and, as I said, I’m very short on money. Who’d pay for the funeral? Then I notice that my skin is peeling off in great slabs. I’m baby pink underneath. My beginning summer tan is turning a gray-black and slipping away. It falls off my head and face and droops like a veil over my beard. I feel miserable, shaking inside and trembling outside. But I am pulling the last floating things from the boat. After that, I’ll have a day or two of rest. I’m having blackout spells. Time mysteriously passes, and I find myself on the ground. For some reason, it doesn’t seem serious to me, that’s how far gone I am.

The Royal Mounted Police Arrive

The next part of this tale I didn’t experience directly. I was told about it ten years later under unusual circumstances.

A Canadian-American family had rented a boat downriver, the same boat Pauline and Bob had rented. They were walking their five children along the chemin de halage. This is a dirt road beside the river, which, in the old days, was used for horses and mules to pull the barges up to the locks in Bougival. The barges were much smaller in those times.

This family, out for a walk, looks over the edge of the berge and sees me, virtually naked, curled in the fetal position and moaning. The children insist their parents check to see what’s the matter.

They’re shocked when I look up at them, or at least seem to, and speak English, American English. I don’t remember a thing, not what I said, none of it. The entire family, all seven of them, drag me down to their boat, actually carrying me part of the way. They put my heaving hulk into a bunk bed and try forcing food into me. Carol, the wife, pats cold cream over the bare red patches of my body.

They’re sure I’d just managed to survive from the sinking boat they’ve seen in the water behind me. I remember none of this, either.

I stay with these kindly people on their boat that night and the next day. But, on the third day, I’m conscious enough to explain the situation, how M. Teurnier will be coming to raise my boat and will be needing me.

I force my way onto my feet groggily and stagger back to the chemin de halage, thence to the berge with the sunken barge. M. Teurnier and another man are already there. They have a truck pulling a small boat on a trailer. They stare at me. My basic French isn’t enough. Don, the Canadian husband and father of the family, has come with me. He’s afraid I’ll collapse. He speaks French well – at least it sounds good to me. This part I can vaguely remember.

It turns out the river here is filled with sulfuric acid dumped at the Renault automobile plant upriver. M. Teurnier had assumed I knew this and so would be using a wet suit when I went into the river. He and the other man both look surprised that I’m alive. I know I must look like Lazarus risen from the grave with my gray skin flapping in pieces like a rotted grave shroud around me.

They go to work immediately, Don helping where he can, while I stumble weakly around trying to be of some assistance. They nail a large canvas tarpaulin all around the roof of the boat, letting it float down with weights along the sides. Then they set up a humongous pump and begin pumping. Water spurts out of a six-inch-diameter exit pipe. It shoots up into the air and splashes down into the river with a tumultuous, continuous crashing noise. A crowd has gathered again to watch the excitement. In the mêlée, I can’t find Don. Later, I discover this was the day they were scheduled to depart, and despite the complaints of their children, he couldn’t stay. I’ve lost my translator and trusty worker, and don’t see him again for twenty years.

The pump spouts water continually, but the boat, despite all this feverish activity, rises only a few inches, then settles back on the bottom, not unlike a beached, dying whale I once saw in California. They turn off the pump. I understand M. Teurnier saying to his brother that it must be a huge hole. They set up a second pump with an exit spout twice the size of the first. They turn this one on, and, with the two going, the boat makes a tremendous effort. The pumps make a horrendous racket, but the boat rises only slightly, then with what appears an overwhelming fatigue, settles back to the bottom. I’m weak and feeling much the same as the feelings I project into the boat.

Les Scaphandriers

Next, M. Teurnier begins to dress in a genuine diver’s outfit, a heavy canvas suit with oxygen tanks to feed a brass helmet over his head and face. He walks into the water, wearing weights around his neck, checks his hoses, pauses as his brother screws the helmet onto the top of the suit and clamps it. M. Teurnier signals with one finger to start the oxygen flowing and walks down and in, I presume through the same door I’ve been slogging in and out of during the few days I could work.

He comes back to the surface every fifteen minutes or so and tells us with hand signals and head shaking that he’s found nothing, no hole. He gives the signal to start the smaller of the two pumps. Water is rushing out again. This time, after only about five minutes, he comes staggering up the slippery bank clasping something in his left hand. His brother turns off the pump and opens the helmet.

M. Teurnier pushes his hand in front of my face, stares at me with his violet-blue eyes.

‘On vous a bien eu.’

I don’t know what this means any more than coulé. A young woman on the bank shouts to me in British English. I listen hard after all the noise.

‘Monsieur, he says you have been had!’

I also keep hearing another word that sounds like scaf on drier or maybe that’s several words run together. I look up at her.

‘Monsieur, don’t you realize how lucky you are? They are scaphandriers and the work is very dangerous.’

I look down at M. Teurnier. He seems to be embarrassed. I feel the rotted wood in his gloved hand. It’s like sponge. Maybe this is lucky, but it doesn’t seem like that to me. M. Teurnier undresses from his diving costume, stands briefly, shivering in his briefs, and dresses in his work clothes again. We walk across the street for a beer. I invite the young woman to join us. She’s somewhat leery, and I don’t blame her. I beg her to translate, she agrees and I order her a beer.

She’s all excited, it’s as bad as Rosemary with this damned boat when she first saw it. She babbles on in English.

‘These men are called les pieds-lourds because of the heavy leaded shoes they wear. This équipe that’s working on your boat is famous. Originally, it was a father and his sons. The father started as a scaphandrier in 1912; they specialize in renflouage, that is, bringing up sunken boats such as yours. You should be very proud.’

I don’t want to hear any more. This woman must be mad. I stare at her.

‘How do you know all this? It seems like very specialized knowledge, especially for a young Englishwoman like you.’

She smiles at me.

‘I am a student at l’École des mines. Also, I have always had a special interest in underwater work. A friend of mine told me about your boat sinking, and I came here to watch.’

Over the beer, M. Teurnier explains through the young woman that there is at least one completely rotten plank going from one side of the boat to the other. This is what blew out and caused the boat to sink.

‘But is it possible to bring it up again?’

His answer translates into the idea of shoving some large sheets of plywood under the suspect section, pumping to see if the boat will come up, then inspecting the damage.

The Surfacing Whale

So, that’s what we do. M. Teurnier dresses again in his diving costume, forces pieces of plywood under the leaking sections, then gives the signal for the pumps to start.

This time the boat starts rising and keeps on rising. Again it’s like a huge whale surfacing, only alive and well, more or less well. There are shouts of encouragement and applause from the village people along the bank. M. Teurnier stays down, manipulating the plywood until the hole or holes in the hull are covered. Within half an hour, the boat, filthy, waterlogged, has surfaced. M. Teurnier opens the only door to the cabin fully, and the last of the water flows out. I walk over the slippery gangplank and go inside. The entire interior is covered with dark brown mud, the consistency of thick crème fraîche, or nonemulsified peanut butter.

Again, like a latter-day astronaut, he’s undressed by his brother and jumps into his regular French blues. We go back to the café. The young woman who has been translating and instructing me as to the mysteries of les scaphandriers says she has a class and must leave. I try paying for her help with nonexistent money, but, thankfully, she’ll take nothing, which is about what I have to offer. She wishes me good luck and bon courage. Good luck, courage and more is what I need, all right.

We eat lunch at the nearest routier. Les frères Teurnier discuss what can be done. After a full bottle of wine and steaks with frites, we drive in the truck to a building-supply house. M. Teurnier buys five sacks of premixed, quick-drying, anhydrous concrete. We drive back to the scene of the crime, remove the rotted parts of the guilty board and pour the concrete over the entire area, mixing it with river water. We keep building small dams to hold the concrete in place over the damaged sections. We watch to see if the water will seep through or around it. M. Teurnier keeps looking out one of the mud-smeared windows. Everyone, except me, lights up cigarettes. Then he points out the window. One of the plywood pieces is floating away. He pulls it in with a grappling hood, then manages to hook the other as it too loosens. He’s smiling. Finally, I understand what’s happening. Now there’s no longer the pressure of water onto the boat holding the boards against the hull, so it means the leak is effectively stopped – more or less, that is.

We smile all around, a bottle of wine is brought out from the back of the truck and they somehow manage to open it with a bent nail. I don’t know what to do next. M. Teurnier takes his slug at the bottle and passes it on.

He pulls me along with him to the boat just next to mine, downriver. He rings a bell hanging on the door, till somebody comes. It’s a very dignified-looking Frenchman. M. Teurnier rattles away in his Breton French. The man looks at me and speaks in French-accented, but clear, English.

‘I always knew that boat would sink someday, wooden bottom and no one taking care of it. You must remember, monsieur, you have bought a boat with a house on it, not a house with a boat under it. There is a big difference.’

So I’m not ready for more lectures. M. Teurnier explains the problem, I can see from his pantomime. He does it even when he’s speaking French to another Frenchman. He looks at me. The man, whose name is M. Le Clerc, looks at me. He shrugs and then concentrates.

‘I do not belive any chantier, I mean slip, around here would take a noncommercial ship with a wooden coque for repairs. You could have a sabot, a metal shoe, made and slipped under your boat, but that would be very expensive. I do not really know, monsieur. Perhaps it is best to accept the loss and have the boat destroyed. It will be nothing but souci, trouble, otherwise.’

His wife comes out with some cold white wine and frosted glasses on a tray with white napkins. She offers the tray around. I think of the bottle of red we’ve just slurped down, each wiping his lips on mud-encrusted sleeves of ‘blues’, after drinking. Contrast, the punctuation of life.

When we finish, M. Le Clerc gives us a slight bow of dismissal, his lovely tall wife smiles and we leave. His boat is really a masterpiece of how one can live in style on the Seine. I look back. It lies low in the water, and the upper floor has amber translucent windowpanes all along its length. I find out later it was once a chapel. River people who worked on the Seine used to thank the river gods or whatever gods they could count on for help there.

I pay M. Teurnier the two thousand francs, counting them out until there are only two bills left in my hand. He pulls a pencil from his ‘blues’ pocket and writes his name, address and phone number. With his thumb, he points to the boat, then with his finger points to his chest. I get the message: If I need help, call. They drive off. I hope one of them is the designated driver, but that doesn’t sound very French.

An Impossible Task

I spend two days checking everything to see if the boat’s still leaking. It seems OK. I hose down and clean out the interior, checking to see where the leaks were, and to a small degree, still are. Meanwhile, I’m cleaning all my furniture off in the river, trying to wash off the worst of the mud. Then, after I’ve dragged all the dried-out and falling-apart furniture, along with the mostly dry mattresses, sheets and so forth back on the boat, I remount all the floating doors. I’m ready to leave. My raggedy skin has mostly peeled off, and I’m dead weary, sick and tired, with the boat, with myself.

I stop by at the Le Clercs’ and ask if they’ll keep an eye on my péniche for me. They aren’t too happy about the idea, but agree to phone the farmhouse near the mill if anything goes wrong. I give them the number. They’re both worried about voleurs, that is, robbers. I hate to tell them, but at this point I’d be glad if somebody would come along and steal the entire shebang. I’ve investigated, and it would cost a minimum of fifteen hundred francs to have the boat towed away and burned. That’s what they do with witches and witchcraft anyway, isn’t it?

I sleep two days when I’m back with the family. The stone tent seems incredibly luxurious. I carefully try recouping my tan. When I arrived, my wife said I looked like a giant fetus, or a very premature baby. I feel damned premature.

I decide the only thing, against all advice, is to try stopping the leak from inside the boat. What else? I ask my older boy, Matt, who’s in high school, if he will help me with it on weekends. It doesn’t seem to scare him. Ah, youth, good spirits and enthusiasm; we’ll lick those devils and witches yet.

When we come back up to the boat from the mill, the hull has water in it, too much water for comfort, but it isn’t listing. We bail one whole day. After much asking around, we find a product guaranteed to be waterproof. Happily, Matt speaks excellent French. He has lived most of his life in France. He went to French schools for the first seven years of his education. Rosemary, my wife, speaks excellent ‘Ma Perkins’ French, as do most French teachers in American high schools, but I have virtually no skills in language. I can bumble about in French, German, Italian and Spanish, but can’t speak much of any of them. The happy part is that I understand much better than I speak, not always, especially in a complex area such as the resuscitation of our boat, unhappily.

We buy fifty-liter canisters and wind up with twenty huge containers of this black, gooey, smelly stuff. We pull up all the regular flooring in the boat and pour this goop into the hold, smearing it with broad spatulas into every nook and cranny. On top of this, we jam in panels of plywood smeared with it, then work in more of this black gunk over them, again everywhere we can reach. It seems as if it should work. Foolish optimism strikes again.

We came home black as minstrels. The only thing we find that takes this goo off is turpentine. We give each other turpentine rub-downs with old towels. But around our eyes and in our cuticles and nails, including toe cuticles, we’re black as coal miners. Matt’s wonderful about it, going to school each Monday looking as if he’s just come up from some Texas oil well-drilling operation. By Friday evening, just when we’re starting to look normal, we go back at it again. I can’t coax the girls, or my wife, near this messy operation. I don’t want to, it seems so futile. Some things are too much; this project comes in the ‘too much’ category.

I manage to buy a small, used electric water pump. We attach an automatic float to turn it on, just in case water starts seeping in again. I have a length of plastic tubing to carry the water out the window and into the Seine, where it belongs. This allows me to sleep somewhat easier nights, but the jinxed boat continues to leak, not ‘sink-leak’, but there’s persistent, consistent dripping, a small puddle of water floating on our ‘impermeable’ black coating each day. And we can not find from where it’s seeping. The whole affair is maddening.

Then, one day, as we’re scraping and shoveling out mud from everything, checking our pump regularly, our summer renter of the boat arrives. She’s not drowned, she’s fresh in a pair of toreador pants and a flowered shirt. I scramble up the bank to find out how the boat sank, what happened; is she all right. She smiles. She explains in her delightfully accented French English.

‘Well, I woke late and went across the street for some croissants and a cup of coffee. I didn’t need to be at the foire until one. When I came back, the boat was on the bottom, oop la! I didn’t know what to do, and I was already late to work. So, I plucked one of the most beautiful roses from the bank and threw it onto the top of the boat. It was sort of like a Viking funeral, you see.’

I don’t see! It’s like ‘you know’. People keep saying ‘you know’ at the end of just about every sentence, and most of the time I don’t know, but they’re really not interested in whether I do or not.

‘But couldn’t you have called to tell me what had happened? It seems the least you could do.’

‘I had your address in my address book, and I’d left it in the boat. I only knew you were in the Bourgogne somewhere, and no one around seemed to know your address.

‘By the way, do you have any insurance? I lost quite a bit of clothing along with my thesis and my typewriter.’

‘No, I don’t have insurance, I’d just bought the boat. You can look through the junk I’ve pulled out and dried off. They’re piled here on the bank or in the boat. It’s an awful mess, is all I can say. I didn’t see any typewriter, and if I did, I doubt very much it would ever work again. Everything was totally saturated with mud.’

‘Oh, well, that’s all right. I guess these things just happen. I’d better rush to work now.’

With that, she’s off, probably to some other foire in some other part of France. Maybe I should have told her why the boat sunk, about that damned powdered board, but I don’t think it would have meant anything to her anyway.

The Diaper Caper

It’s becoming clear we can never really stop the leak in the hold of the boat, at least not from inside. I’m becoming more and more desperate. Then, that week, an old friend and client for my paintings comes to Paris from California for a visit. He’s shocked at what he sees. Except for our family, and those wonderful Canadians, it’s the first real sympathy I feel. I tell him about my wild-ass, last-gasp solution to the leak problem. I’ve been lying in bed nights, trying to work my way out of this mess.

My friend, whose name is Arthur, manages and is in charge of research and development for a PCV-extruder plant in East Los Angeles. I ask if it would be possible to make a heavy-duty pool-type cover with grommets all around that I could then slip under the boat like a giant diaper. A huge smile wraps around his face under his thick wire-rim glasses when I tell him the idea. He admits it’s a fascinating and possible solution, only it would be expensive. I figured on that.

‘How much would it be, Arthur?’

I might as well know the worst. He looks at me, eyes twinkling, behind those milk-bottle glasses.

‘How about two of the best paintings you’ve done this year. I’ll let you choose. I don’t have much time – I need to be at a conference in Geneva tomorrow. How’s that for a deal?’

‘You’re on. I can’t thank you enough, Arthur. The only thing which permits me to accept this wonderful gift is I know the paintings will be worth more than the pool cover, the boat, and most of this river before we’re both dead.’

We measure all around, and Arthur writes it down in a small notebook.

‘I’ll even send it air freight. I have a special rate through the company. It should be here within two weeks. What color do you want, blue or green?’

‘Green to match the Seine.’

‘That water looks more black than green to me.’

‘OK, then black.’

‘No, we’ll be optimistic and make it green. Maybe by the time those paintings are worth all you say they’ll be, the Seine will be green again.’

Arthur didn’t know how predictive he was.

Two weeks later, I receive a call from a transporter for air freight. Luckily, Matt’s home so he can translate for me. Trying to understand a Frenchman on the phone is quite a task, no pantomime. He says he has a package addressed to me and wants to know if I want it delivered. He claims there are customs duties to be paid as well as his transportation costs. I tell Matt what to ask, I’m already suspicious.

‘How much are the customs duties, monsieur?’

Matt’s face falls. The customs duty is sixteen hundred francs, about four hundred dollars. I don’t have anything nearly like that. I know the package is the pool cover I’ve been waiting for. I ask Matt to tell the man we’ll come out to look at it ourselves. Matt smiles at me.

‘We’ll come out to look at this package. Who, by the way, would authorize anyone to pay customs on something like this without having seen what’s in this package?’

Matt tells me the transporter is furious. He says he’s already paid and can’t realize the money back from customs. Matt winks at me; he’s enjoying himself.

‘That’s your problem. You should have consulted us first.’ We both smile.

After some more hassle, he admits he could probably recoup the customs duty money, but we need to come sign some papers. He tells us the number of the air-freight terminal where the package is being held at Le Bourget. Also, he tells us that after tomorrow, there will be storage bills to pay as well. What a farce.

Next morning, I’m working my way through the twists and turns at Le Bourget to Freight Terminal A5. I have Matt with me. One day missed at school isn’t going to matter; he’s not complaining. After several false leads, we find the warehouse where they’d put the package. The warehouse is huge! The package is huge, too. The officials there want to know what a ‘pool cover’ is. That’s what Arthur had written on the customs form. Matt tries to explain. I want them to open the package. Matt is telling them what we intend doing with it. The customs officer keeps repeating, ‘Pool cover? Qu’est-ce que c’est?’

There’s a woman at a desk nearby. She says clearly, ‘Piscine. C’est pour une piscine.’

Matt smiles and verifies. The man talks through and around poor Matt, insists we must pay the customs duty.

I have Matt tell him it isn’t worth that much. We don’t have money to pay. It becomes apparent after much back and forthing that we aren’t getting anywhere. He’s not going to accommodate us. The freight man is in a sweat. He has the papers for me to sign so he can recuperate his money. I don’t give a damn, once in a while these middlemen need to lose. I reach over and sign the papers with a large X. I turn to Matt.

‘Tell him it’s all his. If he wants, he can cut it up into small pieces and use it for papier hygiénique. He can ‘pisc-ine’ it if he wants, I don’t care, let’s get the hell out of here.’

I turn away quickly and stride out from the customs house. Matt is about to ‘pisc-ine’ his pants. He’s sure the cops are going to chase us. Even so, we’re both torn between being scared stiff and laughing our heads off. Matt keeps looking out the back window, but there’s nobody following us. I wonder what the customs man told his wife over dinner that night.

That’s the end of ‘operation diaper’. I’ll never know if it would have worked. I can’t imagine what they’ll do with such an odd-shaped huge pool cover, either. I don’t care too much. I write and tell Arthur what’s happened. He phones back, laughing. He’s sympathetic, but he still wants his paintings.

A Visit to a Graveyard and a Decapitated Dragon

We go back to the boat, and there’re about six inches of water in the bottom of the hull; the automatic pump didn’t turn on. We prime it till it’s working again and bail like crazy. Two hours later, the hull is more or less dry. I’m going more or less berserk! I’ve reached the point of having the boat destroyed after all.

The next day I receive a phone call. It’s from M. Teurnier. He says he has something to show me. He’s downriver from me and he’ll pick me up and take me to his boatyard. He also says he’ll drive me back in the afternoon. This is all tough to get across on the phone, especially without the pantomime. Under duress, my French must be improving. I’m hoping I understood him correctly, there are so many different ways I could be wrong. I’m also wishing I had Matt with me. It’s the story of my life apparently – my boat life, anyway – half the time not understanding what’s going on, and what I do understand isn’t going well at all.

I’m doing some adjusting on my little pump and bailing more water out when M. Teurnier arrives promptly as he said he would. He pulls up to the bank where I’ve been trying to glue my furniture back together.

He goes down the bank past me and looks around the inside of the boat. He comes out shaking his head and motions me to climb into his rattletrap of a car. His head just about clears the dash so he can see out the windshield. To make it possible, he has three ragged pillows to boost himself up on, giving him a few centimeters of height, and half a chance.

The seats in the back of the car have been ripped out, and the space is filled with grease-smeared tools and pieces of cut metal. He drives the way a madman should.

After half an hour of twisting, turning driving, we stop in the middle of nowhere. His house turns out to be a houseboat pulled up onto a section of land, a sort of small island between branches of the meandering Seine. He pantomimes with his arms how the river rises with floods.

It turns out, he moved his boat up onto the land when the flood was high, then, as the water went down, he built concrete foundations under his boat. He laughs and slaps his knee as he tells this. It certainly makes for a peculiar-looking house.

We go inside and I meet his wife, who speaks a little English. She tells me their daughter is studying English at school and will be home soon. It turns out the daughter will translate. M. Teurnier pulls me by the arm down to one of the riverbanks. I can see this is the equivalent of a boat cemetery. There are half-sunken rusty boats everywhere, from rowboats to enormous barges. They’re all rusting into nothingness. Men are cutting and arc-welding on all sides. The smell of burnt metal dominates everything, even the foul smell of the river.

M. Teurnier is dragging me over to an abortion of a filthy barge. To me it looks something like a giant sea dragon with its head cut off. It’s rusted everywhere, and where there isn’t rust, there are streaks and puddles of oil smeared haphazardly.

Now I know this kind of thing might be heaven to a real boat person, but it looks hellish to me. Before I acquired my sinking violet of a wooden boat, my marine experience had been limited to some rowing of rowboats in parks, a few fishing trips on hired fishing boats off the Jersey shore, two half-day excursions in Arthur’s sailboat out of the marina in Los Angeles, and playing with boats in my bathtub as a child. What I’m seeing in front of me is an unmitigated horror. I find myself flinching, I want to escape.

But, M. Teurnier leads me across a watery canyon between the bank and this filthy wreck. He’s jabbering away and gesticulating all the time. Lord, what am I getting myself into now?

I’m looking back to the comforts of M. Teurnier’s goofy boathouse up on stilts, on dry land, searching for some remnants of sanity. It’s then I see what seems to me like a scene from an Ingmar Bergman film. A small girl in a pinafore is running, jumping and skipping over this desolate landscape littered with rusting, sharp shards of boats and parts of boats. She’s shouting as she comes.

‘Papa!’

A French Angel Named Corinne

M. Teurnier’s face lights up and he winks at me. He moves over to the narrow plank bridge onto this derelict boat, but there’s no need. She lightly dances across it the way her father did. She runs into his arms, seemingly unaware of the contrast between her beautiful ruffled dress, covered by her school tablier, a sort of apron, compared to her dad’s mud-, sweat- and oil-covered ‘blues.’ He gives her a swing in the air. I assume she is to be our translator for whatever there is to translate. I’m right.

She pushes her face up to me for the typical Breton three kisses. I manage it, but I’m almost pulled off my footing on this slippery deck covered with various unplanned, unannounced booby traps. I almost fall into her. She appears to be about eleven years old and is absolutely bursting with enthusiasm. She looks me right straight in the eyes, hers blue as old M. Teurnier’s must have been fifty years ago. M. Teurnier speaks to her quickly, and she turns to me.

‘Ah, you are the American who has a boat mon père lifted out of the water.’

Her accent is quite good. She speaks clearly and with verve.

‘Yes, that’s right, little one. What is your name?’

‘I am called Corinne. Mama says I should tell you what Papa is trying to tell you.’

So, from then on, M. Teurnier speaks and she, haltingly but carefully, translates. She’s really rather amazing.

It seems this old shell of a hull I’m standing on had once been an oil barge, hauling oil from Le Havre to different ports along the canals that traverse all of France. The boat was built sixty years ago and had been in service every day since, until recently. This part is easy. Then she points out, at M. Teurnier’s instruction, that the plates of steel forming the boat are riveted, not welded. He points to rivets all over the hull. This, apparently, is good. We look down an open hatch into a deep pitch-black interior. I knew it was a hell. We move to the other end of the boat. It really has had the head cut off, but the beheaded dragon isn’t bleeding. In fact, it’s still shining metal where the surgery was performed. Saint George would be proud.

This part is hard for Corinne to translate. Her father has his arms going like a windmill, trying to explain. It’s so complicated, I can just barely hang on.

It seems that boats like this, standard barges, thirty-nine meters long, are no longer practical on the rivers and canals. They cannot carry enough cargo, and it takes three people to run them safely, especially going through the many locks.

This part I understand reasonably well. Then, with the wind-milling of M. Teurnier and Corinne’s stumbling, halting search for words, I gather that they cut off the part of this boat with the motor and cabin, along with two of the oil-storage sections. The idea was to convert it into a ‘pusher’. It will push four empty barges, without motors, along the river. Then, three people running it can make four times as much money as before. They cannot carry oil, only grain, sand, gravel or coal, but that’s enough.

M. Teurnier points across his no-man’s-land to what I assume is the onetime head of this monster boat. Men are climbing over it, cutting, welding, pounding. I figure this will be the ‘pusher’.

Then M. Teurnier starts marching along the length of this beheaded boat beneath us. It’s still enormous, even with the amputation. He shows me that it’s about seventy feet long. At intervals there are bulging, complex sorts of metal bubbles. Corinne explains they are the pumps that pumped the oil into and out of the barge when it functioned, before it was turned into a metal corpse. M. Teurnier makes swinging, chopping motions to show how he would cut these off. It looks impossible, but little Corinne verifies.

Now he takes me to the other end of the boat. There’s a raised hatch cover and a steep boat-type ladder staircase going down into the dark. He whips out a flashlight he had strapped to his waist and motions me to follow. Down there, it’s almost sane. A bed is fitted against one wall, a sink, some varnished mahogany cabinets, and a built-in bench with storage under it, along another wall. All the fittings are beautiful shined brass. Corinne explains this was the crew cabin. We go upstairs onto the deck mayhem again.

Now, M. Teurnier goes down into that dark hole. He motions for me to follow. It’s a metal ladder with thin, round iron rungs, standing almost vertically against the hatch opening. M. Teurnier obviously tells Corinne to stay on deck or she’ll soil her frock. She wants to come down, but he repeats ‘non’. That frock is still freshly clean, despite all. When we are belowdecks, he signals with his flashlight for me to stand with him on two boards balanced across a pair of boxes about six feet apart. The entire bottom of the boat is thick with oil, oil the consistency of mud. He starts waving his flashlight around at the black walls. The space seems small for the size of the boat upstairs. I’m on the edge of panic that I’m going to fall off these wiggling boards into the morass around us. I can’t guess how deep this glistening pool of oil might be.

M. Teurnier realizes I’m not understanding all his jabbering. Corinne is still above us, her beautiful face peering into the murky darkness. It must be how an angel would appear if one were looking up from the depths of hell. M. Teurnier gives a long spiel directed up at his daughter. She translates for me by putting her small hands around her mouth like a megaphone. Sounds rattle around and reverberate against the walls in the hull of the boat.

It seems the boat originally had six individual compartments for the oil. There are four left; we’re in one of them. There are two on a side, two in a row. I’m actually only looking at less than a quarter of the space involved.

He explains through Corinne that the back walls of the last compartments have a wall as strong against water as the hull itself. After all, they held oil. They too are riveted. There’s a bit of confusion then, but Corinne works it out.

M. Teurnier wants me to know that because this hull has always had its metal soaked in oil, it has never rusted. It’s like a new hull. This sounds far-fetched, but I don’t care, none of this means anything to me. It’s his problem; why is he telling me about it? He also makes a big point that the boat was usually full or empty, so the waterline, the part where there is the most damage to a hull, would not be a factor in my case. A factor in what?! I’m beginning to smell the rat. This is not just a tour of an old, chopped-up, oil-filled half-assed barge being provided for my enlightenment and entertainment. This is a sales pitch. We’re doing business.

Monkey Business

To my relief, we climb up out of the hull. M. Teurnier is like a monkey – he goes up and over the edge onto the deck as if he’s in a circus or a zoo. I gingerly mount the slippery, round-runged metal ladder to the deck and am forced to crawl on my hands and knees to push myself upright, so now I have filthy hands and jeans. Corinne is ladylike enough to suppress a giggle.

Well, now that I’ve had the tour, we knuckle down to the real business. M. Teurnier is convinced this derelict of a boat is the answer to my problem. It sounds to me like taking on a demanding, ugly mistress when one already has a demanding, beautiful, suspicious, although somewhat ailing wife.

Little Corinne goes on with the translating. His idea is that first we cut off all these pump bumps on deck. Then we cut out the entire center wall dividing the left from the right half of the interior hull all the way from crew cabin to the amputated back of the boat. He holds up a cautioning finger and warns that we must leave enough for structural support. This is all becoming embarrassingly hilarious. How am I ever going to get out of this insanity?

After that, he claims we’ll cut doorways in the horizontal wall, making the whole thing into one gigantic hull. He wants me to come down into the hull again to see how this scenario would work.

I’m listening. It’s all fascinating, but this entire scheme seems so wild, so expensive, so beyond anything I could ever manage, I’m totally turned off. I’m wondering how I can escape from this lunatic. I turn to little Corinne.

‘Tell your daddy that his ideas sound marvelous, but I don’t have any cutting or welding equipment or any tools to work with metal. Even if I did have these tools, I’ve no idea how to use them. Also, it sounds too expensive. I don’t have much money.’

She smiles, then makes a cute funny face at me. She begins to translate. But the big smile that comes across M. Teurnier’s face doesn’t look like that of a man who’s just had a grand scheme, a business deal, shot down. He stares smiling into my eyes. He motions little Corinne and me to follow him.

We go back across that treacherous plank. I’m trying not to look down. Then we walk across the minefield of cut and rusting metal to his house on blocks in the middle of it all. He invites me inside. His wife is cooking. She turns as we come in, smiles and says ‘Hello’ in English.

M. Teurnier is casting his eyes about looking for something, then he speaks to Corinne. She takes out her leather school bag, pulls from it a thin notebook with pale blue lines up and down, back and forth. Then she gives him a ballpoint pen, but he reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out a greasy grease pencil, about half an inch thick and flat. He reaches into another pocket, extracts a fisherman’s folding knife and sharpens the pencil, pulling the blade toward his chest. He’s talking all the time, more or less muttering to himself. Corinne doesn’t bother to translate. She shrugs.

Mme. Teurnier motions me to sit at the oilcloth-covered table in the center of the room. Corinne is leaning against the other side of it, then she sits down. M. Teurnier is sitting beside me. He’s starting to make a list. After each item on the list, he sucks the tip of his pencil, then writes a number. Corinne comes around and starts translating from the list. I can almost hear the enthusiastic timbre of M. Teurnier’s voice in her clear thin one.

‘See. I’ll sell you that entire barge at the price of scrap metal. That’s what I’d need to do anyway. It’s dead now, the name of the barge, Ste.-Margarite, went to the pusher.’

He looks into my eyes to see if I’m understanding. I’m not really. He points at the numbers beside the first item on the list. I read. He’s written 270,000 francs. That’s what it looks like to me with the seven crossed French style. That’s about what I thought would be involved. Then, as I’m about to give up totally, he puts in a comma after the second zero from the end. This is now 2,700 francs, at that time less than eight hundred dollars. That’s ridiculously low. I take the pencil from his hand, and beside his number write 2,700 NF, even crossing the seven. The French at that time (still) tended to quote big numbers in old francs. He looks at me and smiles. I smile. This is beginning to look vaguely possible, very vaguely.

Then again he talks to his cute little girl. It’s obvious she’s becoming bored with the whole business. But still I hear his vital voice through her. She’s going down the list, changing all the numbers into new francs. She’s impressive all right.

‘To cut the pumps off the deck, three hundred. To cut out the walls of the compartments, six hundred. To move the barge down to where your sinking wooden boat is, now, in Port Marly, five hundred.’

M. Teurnier pauses, looks at the ceiling, sucks his pencil again. I wait. He writes the number down. Corinne translates.

‘To put the two boats together, your boat on top of this one, one thousand new francs.’

I’m bewildered. He licks the point of his pencil and starts adding the numbers. He comes up with 5,100 new francs. He looks up at me, then knocks off the hundred francs.

He talks quickly to Corinne, who’s now sitting her doll in a tiny high chair at the table. From there she tells me what he’s saying. She’s getting more fluent with each exchange. I’m really surprised that she still plays with dolls. French children seem to play longer than American children. I will say again, she’ll make a great translator someday, dolls and all.

‘My father says the boat, with all the work, will only cost you five thousand new francs. If you need to have your old boat pulled away and destroyed, it would cost you twenty-five hundred francs. This way you can have a big two-story boat with much space for just twice that price.

‘Father also says, when the boats are together, he will send his brother out to cut windows in the barge, around both sides, for only five hundred francs more. He’ll also cut away the inside walls.’

She looks at me and smiles.

‘But, he says first you must remove all the oil in the bottom of the boat so the work can take place. He knows a man who will bring barrels and has a way to lift them away. This man uses the oil to make roads. This will cost you nothing.’

This entire business is totally unreal. None of it is making sense to me, but at the same time, I’m excited. He holds up his hand again. He’s hurrying. I can see his wife has the midday meal ready and is becoming impatient. He machine-gun-talks the rest of the deal. Corinne tries to keep up, but it’s almost impossible.

‘The oil must be out in three weeks, or a month at most. I have workers, welders, metalworkers, who will be needing work by then. Also, you must move the boat from the atelier here to Port Marly.’

I look up at Corinne and smile. I smile at Mme. Teurnier. She indicates the table with her hands.

‘Please eat with us, monsieur.’

Jack and the Beanstalk

M. Teurnier backs up the invitation with broad motions of his arms. He pulls another chair over to the table. It’s the first time I’ve been invited to share a French meal. I don’t know what’s the right thing to do. Corinne breaks the deadlock.

‘You have no automobile; you cannot go home until Papa drives you, so you must dine with us.’

Over a magnificent but simple meal, we review the details again. I keep staring at the numbers, wondering from whom I can borrow the money, how I’ll ever pay it back.

When we finish, I ask if I can use their phone. I call Rosemary at school, something I virtually never do. She comes dashing in from her kindergarten expecting the worst. Maybe this is the worst. I’ve lost all track.

‘Rosemary, I’m involved in the most complicated, interesting, extravagant arrangement to save our boat and make it more than twice its size and with a metal hull. I’ve just had lunch with M. Teurnier and his family, and I’m using their phone.’

She’s quiet on the other end, giving off vibes of impatience. One can’t leave kindergartners for more than a few minutes. I start to explain the price structure as I understand it. She interrupts.

‘Dear, can you please wait till I come home? I need to go back in my class right now. You do what you think is right. I’ll go along with anything to stop you from tossing and turning the whole night through. Goodbye.’

I look into the hole of the phone. I pause a moment to think. I make up my mind, walk over to M. Teurnier with my hand out. We shake. He puts his other hand on top of mine and winks at me. What does that wink have to do with it? He looks like a combination of Popeye and a worn-out midget version of Yves Montand. He speaks through the little girl. He faces me and she says the words. She’s preparing to go back to school, has her pack on her back.

‘We are les frères Teurnier. My father started this business.’

He holds up his hand with four fingers extended.

‘These are my brothers.’

He names them. He untucks his thumb and holds it out in the French sign for victory, success.

‘This is me, Jacques Teurnier. You will not be sorry to work with us.’

When I come home to the apartment after stopping to bail and pump the boat, I sit down at dinner and explain everything to the family as best I can with my limited understanding.

Again, despite my careful description of the enormity of this task, the ugliness of the barge, there’s enthusiasm. Matt says he and Tom, his best friend, will help with cleaning out the bottom of the barge. I try to make clear the horrendous dimensions of the job, but I take him up on it. I know I could never do it myself.

Just before he left me off at my boat, M. Teurnier told me that soon as he drove back to his boatyard, he’d have some of his men cut the pumps off the decks so we’d have light down in the hold. He also told me he’d manage to gather ten large oil drums to be put on the quay beside the boat. Those will be for dumping the oil into, and he promises to have them hauled away each week. Ten drums of oil a week? What have I gotten us into?! This could take up the rest of my life. All this would be ready by the weekend.

That Saturday, we all – the whole family plus Tom – go out to the boatyard. This involves much searching through unfamiliar territory over dirt roads, but we manage. I find the barge. We make the perilous trip through the boatyard and look at it. Rosemary gives me one of her ‘I-don’t-believe-this!’ looks. That’ll teach her to give me free rein on barmy projects.

We each walk the gangplank onto the barge and peer down into the hold. M. Teurnier, true to his word, has had the pumps cut off, so the deck is clear except for four traplike holes rimmed with jagged steel. But now we can see down into each of the sections. He has also arranged for the oil drums.

We can see there must be close to a foot of thick, black, viscous oil over the entire floor of the hold, in each section. I feel like Jack of Jack and the Beanstalk, showing the beans I’ve received for the family cow.

Matt, Tom and I have had the good sense to dress in bathing suits and old-time bathing caps. We have a few shovels, some trowels and, at Rosemary’s insistence, two dustpans. Those dustpans prove invaluable. We also have three buckets to put the black goop into and carry it up the ladder.

After much experimentation, by the end of which we look like miners coming up from the pits of Newcastle, we work out a rotating chain, one scooping the goop into the bucket, then passing it along to another in mid-ladder. After that, it’s passed up to Kate, our oldest, who’s figured a way to slide the bucket across the deck, then along the gangplank to the edge, where Rosemary helps her dump it into an oil drum. It’s sloppy, splashy work.

That first day, we fill four oil drums, not counting what’s smeared all over our bodies. I’ve brought three bottles of white spirits, and we clean the worst of it off, but it stings. We rub each other hard with old towels. Then we spread newspapers over the inside of our car and drive home quite dispiritedly (except for our stinging skin).

So Much for Science

The next weekend we’re better prepared. That first time, we’d packed lunches, but we couldn’t eat them because anything we touched became covered with oil. We also have everybody in bathing suits and shower caps this time, and pack more old towels. We fill six drums before lunch. We’re quite proud of ourselves; it’s like a war. Rosemary’s made sandwiches cut into bite sizes and wrapped in pieces of paper towel. Lunch is a matter of carefully working the mini-sandwiches out, so the paper towel keeps the taste of oil off them. We have an individual bottle of water for each of us. The necks of the bottles become black, smeared by our oil-covered lips.

We work until dark, filling ten barrels altogether. We can begin to see we’re making progress, but slowly. We have one section empty down to the hull and another started. The job isn’t impossible, it’s only intolerable.

When we reach home, I can feel my back wanting to go out. I’ve alternated, as have the others, between standing barefoot (the only way) on the bottom of the hull, scooping oil into buckets, or standing halfway up the ladder in oil-begrimed boots, passing the heavy buckets up. This might be all right for a seventeen- or eighteen-year-old boy, but this boy is over forty. Sometimes I can fool myself, but I can’t fool my back.

I’m in bed all that week, and when we go out the next weekend, I’m wearing my old back brace. It’s going to be smeared with oil, too. Poor Rosemary soaks our swimsuits, shower caps and socks in white spirits, then soaks them in soapy water after each session. The boys are beginning to lose enthusiasm, naturally, and we try bucking each other up with songs of labor. ‘Yo Ho Heave Ho’ or ‘Tote That Barge, Lift That Bale’ seem to be the favorites. It helps.

Worst of all, both Matt and Tom begin to break out in gigantic boils all over their backs. It’s almost impossible – even in a hot shower with cleansing powder – to scrub the oil out of our skin. Each Monday, the boys arrive at school looking like terminal cases with a terrible disease, dark rings around their eyes, hair sticky and discolored, boils flaring away. And then, as with the goo Matt and I spread all over the hull of the wooden boat, just when we start looking almost human, it’s back to the barge.

But believe it or not, we do pull out all that oil in four weekends. M. Teurnier is beginning to be impatient. I don’t think he figured on a family act. We’re all sore, filthy, but impressed with ourselves. Next week, M. Teurnier will push or pull our metal boat along the fifty twisting kilometers, through the locks, between where it is now and Port Marly, where the sinking wooden boat awaits. They’ll be starting at six in the morning Wednesday to avoid some of the crowds at the locks.

I really don’t yet believe, or understand, how they can hoist my wooden boat up onto the metal hull. I don’t want to think about it even. But I have. I just haven’t enough French to ask, and I’m worried.

We have two longtime friends in Paris who are scientists. One, of Russian background, named Serge, might well be the most optimistic person I know. My experience with Russians, in general, is that they are pessimistic, but Serge is the raving exception. He, of all things, is in charge of collecting cosmic dust for the French. He has ships floating all over the world gathering this dust. Would you believe it?

But he’s a world-respected scientist. I give him all the information I have, center of gravity, buoyancy, weights, heights, everything I can gather I think might be appropriate. I explain the actual physical project, that is, putting my sinking wooden boat onto the partial hull of an old oil barge.

Serge tilts his head quizzically, does a few quick calculations and gives his somewhat studied opinion.

‘It will not float. The entire combination will tip over, and your boat will be in the water upside down. There is, unfortunately, no other possibility.’

Serge has been in France long enough, so there is nothing halfway about him – it’s all or nothing. I’m about to give in, but I go to my other scientist.

This one is American. He was once in charge of the particle accelerator at Berkeley. He’s now working for a large oil company with offices in the fancy business section of La Défense. He’s a research scientist, a physicist.

I go visit him at his office. He’s most cordial, though generally a somewhat morose man, definitely a pessimist. I present my data to him. I don’t mention my other scientific opinion.

His name is Roger. Roger fills two pages of lined yellow paper with notations meaning nothing to me. I don’t recognize a single word in either French or English. He looks me in the eye with his sad eyes. I should say here, he has a strong resemblance to Dr Oppenheimer. He gives me what passes for a smile from a pessimist, a sort of double twist of the lips, a lifted eyebrow over lowered eyes, and delivers his report.

‘You don’t have a worry in the world. There’s absolutely no way the relatively light weight of the small boat you intend to place on the deck of the metal boat could possibly effect the stability of that barge. Go right to it and good luck.’

So there I am. We’re to start the marriage of the two boats in a few days. I drive out to M. Teurnier’s place with the rest of the money I owe him. I’m deeply in hock to three generous friends, none of them scientists, none of them artists, but all of them lovers of the arts, and here I am counting out 5,500 francs in five-hundred-franc bills. I must be out of my mind.

I explain to M. Teurnier, with Corinne’s help, my scientific discoveries. He laughs. He’s just finishing his lunch and has a huge piece of bread in his mouth. He almost chokes, then swallows. He waves his arms at me, signaling little Corinne to stay on and finish her dessert while he leads the crazy American outside to the boatyard.

We go hopping and hobbling alone to another section of the yard, where I haven’t been. He points. I see a barge, and on the barge is a gigantic yellow crane. On one end of the crane is a barge being lifted practically out of the water, over the side of the first barge! I can’t believe it. We look at each other. He laughs and I start laughing, too. So much for science. He puts his hand on my shoulder; it’s quite a reach for him. I’m convinced. I don’t want to interfere with his meal anymore. I feel somewhat foolish. We make our definite plans for the boat marriage.

The Marriage

At last comes the day of the great event. It’s a Saturday and a crowd of our friends are there to watch what seems to be this impending catastrophe. That is everyone except poor Matt. Two evenings before, bailing with me, he sprained or broke his ankle. We had dashed off to the emergency room at the American Hospital, and sure enough, it was a hairline fracture. This boat is definitely jinxed. But there’s no stopping now.

I know that when my friends see the cockeyed enormity of this whole thing, they’re shocked. I’m shocked myself. There, back in the boat cemetery, it almost made sense. Here, it’s a nightmare in black and white with no subtitles.

Matt has just arrived on crutches and has stretched out on the bank, when I see a flat-topped boat floating downriver. On it stands the entire Teurnier mob, feet apart, hands on hips, except for the one at the wheel. Behind them, being towed, is my barge. I go down by the water’s edge to greet them. They have the air of grown men at a picnic. Teurnier shakes hands with me, and the others shake with me in turn. He’s started issuing commands left and right. Matt slides down the hill, even with his cast and crutches. He acts as translator.

‘See, Dad, first they’re going to anchor the barge crossways on the river, blocking traffic; they’ve gotten permission from le chef de navigation for this. Then, they’re going to pump river water through the holes on the deck into the metal barge until it sinks.’

So, I’m to have another sunken boat, just what I need. Matt turns again and checks with M. Teurnier as if to verify this absurd action.

‘He says don’t worry, the crew cabin is watertight and won’t sink. So, one end of the boat, the front end, will still be sticking up. He wants you out there.’

They’ve already, with great efficiency, positioned the metal barge cross river and started pumping water into it. They then manipulate my small, pitiful wooden boat up to it, using their boat as a tug, cross river, just upriver, from the metal barge. They’re also using the motor of their boat to keep the current from pulling the two boats downriver to Le Havre. The whole affair is something like a monstrous rodeo of barges. Matt’s shouting translations to me.

‘Then Dad, you see, they’re sinking the metal barge to the bottom. After that, they’ll pull our wooden boat up on top of the metal barge. Dad, are you sure you want to try this? It sounds so goofy and dangerous.’

‘I’m in for it, Matt, ludicrous as it might seem. There’s no backing out now.’

I climb up onto the roof of my wooden boat and Teurnier throws me a rope that has been attached to a bollard on my now almost completely sunken metal barge. I can feel my heart sinking as it sinks to the bottom. They certainly go down faster than they come up. I feel as if I have a whale on the end of a light fishing line. M. Teurnier’s hollering to Matt. Matt turns to me.

‘The idea is they’re going to pull you in this boat over the metal barge, and you’ll be the one to sight along the two boats to see if they’re lined up properly. At least, I’m almost sure that’s what he’s saying. You be careful, Dad!’

Matt turns out to be right. With much pushing and pulling, and short bursts of the motor on the boat they used for pulling and pushing the metal boat down here, we do line up our wooden boat on top of the barge, at least as far as I can see through the dimness of the filthy, black water. It’s a hot day for fall, and I’m wearing only shorts. I’m dripping sweat. I’m not actually doing anything, so it must be nervousness.

Now I’m standing on the stern of the metal barge, up on the hatch over the crew cabin, peering down the length of our wooden boat, checking each side to see if it’s lined up on the sinking barge underneath.

They work the wooden boat higher and higher up the ramp of the slanted, sunken deck of the barge until the bow end is within two meters of the opening to the crew cabin. Now I’m to give the signal when it looks to me as if we’re in line. I’m an artist, so I should be able to estimate if two objects are parallel and in line, but this is the ultimate test.

Finally, in a desperation of indecision, I give the signal. The pumps start, pulling water out of the metal hull. Wooden covers have been tied over the openings where the oil pumps once were. These old oil pumps are probably already starting to fester with rust in that Père Lachaise–like cemetery for boats at M. Teurnier’s.

As the barge rises slowly, the upper boat settles onto the deck of the metal hull, and the wooden covers are removed one by one. The idea apparently is that the boat, our wooden boat, will now block water from seeping in while the pumps are pushing it out. It’s all so ingenious. I’m no use at all. I should be up on the bank with the audience, applauding or cheering, laughing or crying.

I’ve been worried that we haven’t done anything actually to attach the wooden boat to the metal boat. I yell over at Matt to have him ask M. Teurnier about it. Teurnier starts explaining to me, then throws up his arms and turns to Matt. He rattles on for about five minutes, making arm motions and finger signals as if he’s a giant tomcat trying to catch a mouse hanging from a string over his head. When it ends, Matt begins.

‘This is wild, Dad. The idea is basically that the hatch covers were cut so they have sharp edges. When the wooden boat is finally lowered down onto them, these edges will cut into the oak bottom of the upper boat. He’s convinced this will hold the boat in place. He insists our wooden boat isn’t going anywhere.’

Matt is making the same kind of clawlike upward motions with his hands Teurnier was making. It seems sort of precarious to me, but it’s too late now, and what else could we do anyway?

I’m at the highest part of the whole convoluted, bizarre complex, up on the roof of the covered hatch to the crew cabin of the lower boat, holding on to the high edge of the wooden boat’s roof. I look along the entire length before me and the view is somehow sexy, a lovely white lady lover of a wooden boat, hovering over, then lowering herself gently onto this rising giant of a black bull barge in the swirling water. Powerful, forceful jets of water surge from her supine lover, spewing up and splashing down into the river.

Just then, it starts to happen. I should have kept my dirty old man’s mind on the job, holding down that boat. I don’t, to this day, know what actually transpired. The hull is about halfway emptied, when suddenly there’s a sort of lurch, then slowly, both boats begin to tip toward the downriver side! My first thought is it’s from the pressure of river water against the hull. Or, maybe my normally optimistic Russian friend was right after all.

The boats, relentlessly, persistently, continuously tip. I move slowly. I’m still, ridiculously, trying to hold my original wooden boat from sliding off into the water, which it seems to be doing, despite the supposed effect of those jagged gripping hatches.

Everybody’s running around this way and that, cursing in Breton, French and general international obscenity. I don’t know what they’re doing, or why. M. Teurnier actually goes into the river with all his clothes on and is wrestling with something underwater. I hope he doesn’t lose his skin – I’m beginning to feel I’m losing my shirt.

He comes bounding out and runs past me up the tipping metal hull on the upriver up-boat side. I’m still frantically holding on to the edge of the roof, stupidly trying to convince myself I can keep the boat from tipping off and into the water sideways. But even more, I’m holding on for dear life. As he goes by, M. Teurnier mumbles just two words, two words even I can understand, ‘C’est malheureux.’ In direct translation, ‘It’s unhappy.’ It seems a masterpiece of understatement.

They’re still pumping water out of the lower barge like madmen. I’m convinced the answer is to pump water back into the barge and start over again, or just leave the entire mess down there. I’m spinning, considering opening a restaurant, an underwater Philadelphia-hoagie restaurant specializing in ‘submarine’ sandwiches à la Seine. What else?

Gone with the Wind

We eventually tip over to a thirty-six-degree angle from the level of the water on the high side. I measure it, later, from the watermark on the cut end of the boat.

Realizing how foolish I must look trying to hold my big wooden boat in place at an angle, I let go an instant to search for the best place where I can jump when this leaning tower of a boat gives in to gravity. That upper boat actually starts to lift, to tip slowly, when I let go! I grab hold with both hands and press down desperately. The captain will go down with his ship, or is that ships.

Then, for reasons I still don’t understand, the tipping slows, then stops. Gently the barge rights itself. In no time at all, it’s level. My leaking old wooden boat squats properly on top, more or less dry, properly placed and aligned.

I drop to my haunches on the hatch cover because my knees are so weak I can’t stand. I hear the cheers of our gallery, but I’m crying and too completely pooped physically and mentally to take a bow. I’m in the stern. I’m invisible to them.

M. Teurnier comes around with a big wrench knocking along the bottom of the upper boat for some reason, maybe it’s like kicking tires on an automobile. When he sees me, he breaks into a huge smile and reaches over; we shake hands. Then he winds it up with one of those masculine French hugs that can break ribs. He’s soaking wet, so now I am, too, combination of river and sweat. We’re both laughing.

He passes me and continues around with his ‘tire thumping’. I manage to stand alone on my wobbling legs and work my way to the other end, the shore end, of the boat. There’s an apron about two feet wide on each side of the upper boat where the metal barge is wider. It makes a passable yet treacherous walkway. I hold on to anything I can find to inch myself along.

When I come to the bow of the boat, the end facing land, there’s another rousing cheer. I look up and wave a hand, feeling like Jacques Cousteau. Maybe the crowd thought I was actually holding the wooden boat in place up there with my bare hands. I’ll take any kudos I can get, deserved or not. Sternly, I decide not to bow in the bow. It wouldn’t be seemly.

Our next maneuver is to clear out a space for our new enlarged ‘bastard’ boat. Our old one, the wooden sinker, was only eighteen meters long. We now need to fit twenty-three meters of metal barge into the old space. There appears to be enough room between my barge and the neighboring houseboats, but that isn’t exactly the dilemma.

The first difficulty is physical. It seems there’s a sandbar there, which will keep my barge, much deeper in the water now than before, from squeezing into the old place. This sandbar has built up over the years. When it was only my light wooden boat, this didn’t matter, but with my new, heavy, metal monster, five times as bulky, it’s a serious affair. When we try easing the barge into place, it just won’t fit.

The second horn of the dilemma is political, psychological, psychic, etc., but we’ll come to that. I’m still shaky and covered with sweat, dirt and water. The pumps inside the metal hull are running hard, pulling out the last dregs. Two of M. Teurnier’s brothers are down there, more or less vacuuming up the last of the water.

M. Teurnier explains the problem to Matt. A good part of our audience has disappeared. The show is over. That’s what they think; the best (worst) is yet to come. Matt translates, explains about the sandbar. M. Teurnier wants to pull our barge out to the center of the river and bring their boat into the space. Then they’ll turn on the motors full blast and blow out the sandbar. He’s convinced it will work. I’m not, but what do I know, this is all in the area of hands-on nautical engineering.

So, that’s what we try to do. The barge is pulled out into the center of the river and anchored somehow. Where did they find the anchor? I don’t know. Then, they wedge their flat-topped boat into the space. This boat could serve as a landing field for small helicopters. They turn the double motors on full blast. Water, sand and sound fill the air.

Now comes the political, psychological, psychical part. Madame Le Clerc, our downriver neighbor, is standing perilously at the stern of her boat, shouting. But no one can hear with all the racket. She’s shaking her finger at M. Teurnier and at me. I pretend not to see. What can I do? M. Teurnier bends backward at the waist with his hands on his hips and laughs at her. Oh, boy!

Next, the owner of the boat on the other side, our upriver neighbor, with the lovely pirate boat, is out on her poop deck shouting even louder. If one didn’t see us between them, one would think they were having a terrible argument, shouting dementedly at each other. Too bad that isn’t the case. We are caught directly in the crossfire, and we are not innocent bystanders.

There ensues about fifteen minutes of roaring motors, rushing water, flying sand, a wild churning up of the river. It’s making a colossal stink because the propellers of the boat are releasing years of buried methane gas. It smells ten times worse than the sewers in Paris. Finally, they turn the motors off. M. Teurnier has a gaffing hook and is testing for depth. Unfortunately, now we can hear the ladies shouting. I’m glad I can’t understand. I’m as deaf to what they’re saying as I was with the motors roaring. Matt shakes his head and doesn’t want to translate.

‘Honest, Dad. I can hardly understand what they’re saying and what I do understand, I don’t want to try translating. You don’t need to hear all this anyway. Just play dumb.’

‘Come on, Matt. I already am dumb, but I’ll need to deal with it sooner or later.’

‘OK, as far as I can tell, they’re both objecting to the fact that your new boat is going to take up more space than the old one. It seems the river law is that there’s supposed to be five meters between each boat. Teurnier insists that when your boat is in place, there will be at least five meters on each side. I think he’s right; they’re only being hysterical, fighting for and defending territory.’

‘So what else are they saying?’

‘Madame Le Clerc objects to having our old wreck of a boat beside her beautiful mansion of a boat. She’s going to call Le Navigation. She claims Monsieur LeCerb, the boss man there, is a friend of hers.’

‘That sounds bad. What do they want me to do, just sink my barge again?’

‘It all sounds bad, Dad. I can’t exactly translate what Luce, the other lady, the one on the pirate boat, is yelling because she keeps slipping into Breton. She’s the one who really seems to get M. Teurnier’s goat. She’s apparently bawling him out in full voice, exercising her waterfront knowledge and expertise in Breton obscenity. And all this hollering brings out the Breton in M. Teurnier. He yells back at her, sometimes in French, sometimes in Breton. The last thing he told her was if she didn’t shut up and go inside, he was going to come up on that boat and give her a spanking.’

‘This is better than a movie. Too bad we’re in it, even as extras. By the way, what happened to our audience?’

While all this is happening, the other frères Teurnier have been shoving our boat back into the space they’ve cut out. They concentrate and work, don’t say a thing. They’ve wedged our barge close to the bank, but it’s still too long and too deep in the water to fit properly. They use their boat as a tug to push it in sideways. They manage to work the front end, the downriver end, in, where the water’s deeper and there’s no sandbar, but the back sticks out about a meter and a half more than it should. Teurnier’s pulled out a tape measure and is measuring the distances between the boats. He shouts out the measurements to each woman; there is almost six meters on each side. They screech back at him now, words even I can tell would never be approved by I’Académie française.

As it begins to grow dark, we decide to leave the boat as is, with its upriver end, the cut-off stern, sticking out. I ask Matt to translate for me. I’m desperate. They’re about to leave, and I need to move the back of the barge against the berge. Matt listens carefully, then turns to me as they’re making ready to pull out. The crew has piled a stack of equipment on the back deck of our barge. Matt looks at me through the gathering dusk.

‘He says there’s a dredger upriver who can come here and dredge out the rest of the sandbar. It’ll probably cost another four hundred francs or so. He’ll check for us.

‘Also, he’s left cutting tools and an arc-welding set here. Tomorrow, someone, probably one of his brothers, will come at eight in the morning to start cutting out the windows. You should be here to tell him where you want them and give him a hand. He says they shouldn’t be cut closer than forty centimeters from the water level and there should be a minimum of three structural struts left in place along the sides between each window. At least that’s what I think he said.’

M. Teurnier and the rest of his finger-brothers are on their barge and about ready to head home. M. Teurnier stands at the stern lighting his pipe. He smiles at us between puffs. He seems happy with what he’s done. My God!

He yells one last time. Matt stands on his cast, pushing himself up with his crutches. He cups his hand to his ear, picking up what Teurnier’s saying over the noise of his boat’s motor. Matt turns to me as they disappear.

‘He says not to bother about what Mme. Le Clerc will say to the Navigation or M. LeCerb at the Ponts et Chaussées. Teurnier’s going to stop by and see him on the way through the lock. He’s convinced that will do it. You’re perfectly legal.’

So, there I am, with two half-assed boats joined in a naval wedlock, sort of a shotgun wedding at that. The sun is just about gone. I wander through the upper boat. It’s encouraging to see it drying, but it’s filthy. I wonder how I’m ever going to work my way down into the lower boat. All the hatches where the pumps have been cut off are now covered by the bottom of my wooden boat, so it’s completely sealed. Also, how am I going to nudge this brute into place? I’m tired. I’ll worry about it tomorrow. I feel like a water-logged French Scarlett O’Hara. I guess M. Teurnier is my Rhett Butler, and in his own way has just told me, ‘I don’t give a damn.’