The Tale of the Rose (10 page)

That was all it took. What a wife! What a shrew! How tactless! Just when she, the admirer, invited or introduced by chance, was going to have a private talk with her pilot, the legitimate wife appears! That, believe me, is unforgivable. And yet how could I never feel sleepy, never speak to him during those endless evenings? I would have had to be made of stone! Little by little I began to understand that it was best to let him go by himself, since I had faith in him. Like a child, I thought, let’s trust in fate. There must be a God, for children and for wives!

But Tonio often grew bored during the long evenings when he went out without me, so he asked me to phone him wherever he was going. “Call me, I beg you,” he told me. “I hate the endless chitchat, the lectures, the dinners. I’ve already said everything I have to say. Believe me,
ma femme,
I’d rather waste my time than my breath. It doesn’t matter if the hostess is angry because you want me to come home right away. You know how I am; I’m very polite, and if you don’t call, I can’t come home!”

I’d gotten into the habit of going to the movies when he left and then passing by to pick him up at his friends’ homes. Oh, I thought I was very clever! I told myself he was tired of going out so much, he was invited against his will, he felt obliged to accept, without knowing why.

He was unsociable and solitary, but he also loved company. When the phone rang, it frightened him. His friends would talk to him for hours on end, and then he would want to go on with a conversation that had lasted until three in the morning the night before and would still be talking on the phone at two in the afternoon. We had breakfast with the telephone on the table. I felt completely powerless around him; I lost all common sense, like a little girl.

T
HE
A
RGENTINE AIRMAIL SERVICE
was disbanded, and Tonio lost his post as its director in Buenos Aires. “You’re unemployed, my love—relax!”

“No, Consuelo, we have to pay the rent, and for the drinks and the nights out.”

He was constantly assailed by friends who invited him out to restaurants, where he loved to pick up the check for the whole table. When he found himself short of money, he was crushed. In Buenos Aires he had earned twenty thousand francs a month, a handsome salary. And now here he was in Paris without a penny.

“I want to accept a position with Renault,” he told me, speaking slowly, “at a fixed salary. It’s more secure. I’ll go to the office every day. It’s a good job, I think. Some friends have found it for me.”

It upset me a great deal to see him submit so meekly to the imprisonment of an office. “I’ll start next month, if you want, darling.”

“No, Tonio,” I said. “I don’t want you to take this job. Your path lies across the stars.”

“Yes, you’re right, Consuelo,” he said. “Across the stars. You’re the only one who understands.”

That line about the stars, which was all I ever said to him on the subject, did the trick. He quickly changed his mind about the job with Renault. It was as if I had galvanized him, given him new hope.

He began to dream again, and to sing his “war song,” as I used to call it in Buenos Aires—for every time he set off on a trip, whether by car or by plane, he would sing

Un poteau lugubre et sombre devant moi toujours se tient
Et je vois la route d’ombre dont nul homme ne revient.

(A dark and mournful finish line stands always in my path
And I see the shadowy road from which no man ever comes back.)

Ever since then, I hear those words every time I start off on a journey.

O
NE BEAUTIFUL SUMMER DAY
, Tonio announced that he had to leave for Toulouse to meet with Didier Daurat.

“I want to go back to work as a simple mail pilot,” he told Daurat. “Assign me a taxi, quick!” (In pilot slang, an airplane was a taxi.) “I’m bored in Paris. I’ll go anywhere, I’ll fly wherever you send me. My wife will come with me. I’m ready to go. Tomorrow, if you want. I await your orders.”

He had great respect for Didier Daurat and had based the character of Rivière, in
Night Flight,
on him.

Back in Paris, he started opening drawers and cupboards, sniffing his leather flying gear, his coat, helmet, and straps, his safety lamps, his compasses, spreading them out tenderly on the rug. The phone rang all the time. His Parisian friends wanted to invite him out, but he turned them all down.

“I’m busy,” he would say. “I’m going back to work as a mail pilot. I’ve had enough of getting fat in the cafés and brasseries of Paris. Good-bye, I don’t have another minute, I’m packing my bags. My wife will tell you.” That meant he was completely out of their reach.

He pulled on his stiff leather coat, hardened by lack of use, the old comrade of many flights. From its pockets, he took little slips of paper. One day as he was reading them, he burst into uproarious laughter.

“But why are you laughing like that?” I asked. “What’s so funny? Why are you laughing like a madman?

“I can’t tell you, it’s idiotic,” he said, laughing harder and harder.

“Come on, please . . . tell me!”

“Well, it has to do with a noise, and with my radio operator a long time ago, flying over Patagonia.”

“But I don’t see anything funny about that.”

“Because I was afraid of the noise, I didn’t understand.”

“What?”

“Yes, I was afraid, until my radioman handed me a note about the noise. Read it for yourself. I’ve just found it again, here it is.”

I took the piece of paper and read: “The noise isn’t coming from the plane. Don’t be afraid. It is a fart. I’m very ill, monsieur.”

It was my turn to laugh out loud. He took me in his arms. “Oh darling,” I told him, “I’m so happy. I can’t imagine you anywhere except in the sky. Am I wrong?”

“Why are you crying?” he asked me.

“I don’t know. I’ve never liked your life in Paris. It’s less frightening for me to have you up among the stars than down among Parisian women.”

He lay me on the ground, right in the middle of all his things, and tickled me madly.

“Ow, ow, Tonio, stop! You’re hurting me—seriously,” I said.

“Where?”

“Here, in my stomach.”

“Ah, the appendix,” he said sagely. “It will be removed this very night. Dr. Martell, I hold him in the highest esteem. . . . Let’s go to the hospital. Tomorrow your appendix will be far away. We won’t be taking it with us to Morocco!”

It was all childishly simple. I felt I had nothing to fear when I was with him.

M
ONSIEUR
D
AURAT
had already called Tonio back in to give him his orders: for the time being, he would be piloting the Toulouse–Casablanca line.

As soon as a pilot accepted a job, he no longer knew where he would be spending the next night. If the night went well, he would arrive somewhere in the world—Barcelona, Casablanca, Port-Etienne, Cap-Juby, Buenos Aires . . . and then there were the routes to the Orient, including the legendary Paris–Saigon . . .

Everything happened just as Tonio had said it would: I saw his doctor, and the operation was performed. His mother took loving care of me while I spent a few days in Saint-Maurice-de-Rémens, convalescing. Then she sent me to Toulouse to join her son at the Hôtel Lafayette. There I had the pleasure of meeting Daurat and seeing him up close. He was a very serious man; what most impressed me about him was his iron will.

Toulouse was a dead city—it didn’t exist for me at all. I devoted myself entirely to my friendship with the pilots, who risked their lives every day and were oblivious to the dangers they faced and the importance of their task, which gave other men an example of heroism. To them it was just a job, and I admired them even more for that.

These pilots had traveled across nights and strong winds, and it bored them to hear their own praises sung. They wanted to drink beer, to play dice or poker. I was a quick study at poker; from time to time, timidly, I would ask what the names of the other pilots were. At the end of the first evening, I risked one small request for information about my husband. I learned to be guarded and to act tough around the pilots. I had been alone in Toulouse for a week while my husband was in the skies. I was living in his room and waiting for news of him.

“Ah,
oui,
Saint-Ex, they had him take a ‘taxi’ all the way to Dakar. He’ll replace a pilot there.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because the pilot was killed. Look, Madame de Saint-Ex, that’s three times now that I’ve taken three spades from you.”

“Really, is that what you heard?” My heart felt as if it were skipping rope in my chest, it was pounding so madly. Where was my angel?

The next day when I awoke, my husband at last appeared in our room, but only in order to empty out all the drawers. We were leaving for Casablanca, with a stop in Spain. We always lived at this bohemian pace, in a perpetual state of urgency.

“Maybe you’d like to have a swim in Almería,” he said; “it’s summer down there.”

“Yes, Tonio darling,” I said. “I’d love to.”

“Uh-oh, look—the suitcase is full. You can’t bring all these things. Choose two dresses, that’s enough. Your nightgowns are of no use; it’s too hot in Morocco.”

A few hours later, we were in Alicante. We went to the beach. He swam very quickly and I wanted to catch up, but the scar from my appendix operation kept me from showing off my talents as a water nymph. It still hurt.

W
E WERE HERE TODAY
, gone tomorrow. At times I felt like a fugitive. He didn’t know what his destiny was, and neither did I, but I certainly had no regrets about his not taking the job with Renault.

In the middle of the night he would hold me very tenderly, as if I were a small, beloved animal. One night, begging my forgiveness, he said, “I don’t yet know how to be your husband. Please forgive me. I get all tangled up in your ribbons. I’m still surprised to have a little girl like you beside me.” I was half asleep, and he lifted me up in his strong arms.

“Ninety pounds,” he said. “I weigh three times more. My cherished little dwarf, tomorrow you’ll arrive in a beautiful country. You will love it, if you really love me. A friend has already rented a nice apartment for us in the palace of Glaoui. You’ll often be alone—you’ll have time to enjoy yourself, take walks, maybe even think of me.”

I slept very little that night. I imagined the palace of Glaoui surrounded by desert sands. I was already following him to his destiny.