Four
Inside the house, the lawyer Pierre Verne kept a telescope pointed through an upstairs window toward the clock face of a distant monastery, so he could always know what time it was.
The family Verne lived in the most desirable section of Nantes, in the heart of Ile Feydeau’s old town. Their narrow four-story house stood on rue Olivier de Clisson, named after a fourteenth-century French commander who fought against the English in the Hundred Years War.
The low tables in their sitting room displayed the weekly Parisian publication Le Magasin Pittoresque. The elder Verne encouraged his two sons to read illustrated geographical stories about foreign places and explanatory articles on scientific subjects. As a Christmas gift, Jules had even received a model telegraph, a toy that was all the rage across France.
When the family sat down to a formal evening dinner, Pierre Verne insisted on proper etiquette. Verne’s two sisters changed into lacy silk and chiné dresses complete with constricting whalebone corsets, while Jules wore an embroidered waistcoat and cravat, as did his ten-year-old brother Paul. They sat at a long, dark table made in a style that imitated the great French masters. Meals were served on fine china that had been part of his mother’s dowry when she’d married Pierre.
Now, several days after the tragedy of the Cynthia, Jules found this particular dinner and this conversation more maddening than usual. His mother had broiled small squabs for each of them, three for his father, accompanied by buttered peas and delightful onion pastries (a secret family recipe she had tried to teach her elder son, though thus far Jules had mastered only her special omelet).
With linen napkins folded in their laps, the family solemnly prayed. Verne’s father then opened the bottle of Bordeaux, poured a goblet for himself and his wife, and then watered some wine for each of the children. Pierre was a gaunt man with long sideburns and dark hair, without the slightest twinkle in his eye or an appreciation of the humor his elder son displayed.
They ate under an imposed silence broken only by the sound of silverware clinking against china, the gurgle of wine as his father refilled his goblet, the delicate chewing and prying of meat from small pigeon carcasses.
Verne and his siblings waited for their father to begin the evening’s conversation, usually when he was half finished with his main course, always before the dessert. As a lawyer, Pierre Verne was a man of rigid habits who adhered to schedules, written and unwritten.
Sometimes he would challenge his children with word games or round-robin poetry, having each of them make up verses—a pastime at which Jules excelled. Other evenings, they waited until after the meal, when his sisters would demonstrate their prowess on the heirloom pianoforte.
Tonight, however, with grim face and ill temper, the lawyer chose Verne’s least favorite activity: a discussion of current events and local matters. Pierre Verne held strong opinions; thus, the family did not have a dinner discussion so much as a lecture in which Pierre instructed his family on what they should think about the matters of the day.
Before his father spoke, Verne already knew the issue that concerned him. “Since the burning of the Cynthia, there’ll be work coming into the office. When you get older, Jules, I intend to have you as my assistant, but for now I must hire help to draw up papers, submit forms and claims. It is an unconscionable mess.”
The lawyer drew a deep breath as if this all made him very important. He dabbed the corner of his mouth with a napkin. “Lawsuits will be filed on the part of the ship’s investors. The carpenter who caused the disaster lost his life in the explosion, unfortunately, so there can be no seeking restitution from him.”
“And not against his family, I hope,” Verne’s mother, Sophie, said.
“Family?” The lawyer frowned. “The man was a sailor and shipbuilder,” he said, as if the profession were an insult. “It hardly seemed worthwhile to go looking for any family.” Jules was stung by his father’s callous dismissal of everyone like André Nemo, whose father had also died in the wreck.
Reading her son’s distress, Sophie Verne looked at him with compassion and understanding. “Do you know what your friend will do now, Jules?”
He smiled at her in gratitude. He hadn’t realized his mother knew the extent of his friendship with Nemo. “I suppose he’ll be able to survive for a while. André is a very resourceful young man.”
“He’s going to have to be.” Pierre Verne looked up in surprise, interrupted in his thoughts and puzzled for a moment. “That young man’s father had no money. He was bankrupt. All wasted on gambling and liquor, no doubt.”
“Pierre!” Sophie snapped, but her husband didn’t back down.
“What do you mean he has no money?” Verne said. “Monsieur Nemo just finished building a ship and had a bonus coming. He worked every day.”
“The man left no inheritance for his son, mark my words. I’ve already seen repossession paperwork come through. That young man is in trouble.”
Verne could barely speak, daunted by his father’s lack of sympathy. “But what … what is he going to do?”
“He’ll be thrown into the streets, I expect.”
Verne looked across his dinner plate and for the first time assessed Pierre Verne as a person, not simply as his ever-present father. The man took care of local matters in his tedious law practice, though he had never set foot in court nor spoken with eloquence at a dramatic trial. Pierre handled little more than property deeds and standard contracts. Only at a time like this, after a horrible tragedy, did he show any excitement in picking up the pieces.
“Perhaps André can go into an orphanage,” Sophie said.
“Too old,” Pierre answered with a dismissive wave of his left hand, which still clutched the now-soiled napkin. “No orphanage would take a young man of working age. Maybe we should hope those idiots in Paris get us into another war, and then Nemo can join the fighting and take a soldier’s pay.”
Sophie spoke in an artificially sweet voice. “And which idiots are those, dear? The monarchists, the Republicans, or the Bonapartists? I can’t remember from week to week.”
“I shall let you know after I read tonight’s paper,” her husband said. Then he looked over at his son, as if expecting his words to carry some kind of comfort. “You’re lucky you aren’t in that young man’s situation, Jules. You have prospects, a secure place in town, and a job with me in the law office.”
Sick to his stomach, Verne pushed himself away from the table. “I need to be excused, Father.” He hurried up the narrow stairs to the room he shared with his younger brother.
He opened the shutters to let in the moist air. Outside his window, the tall masts of sailing ships in port rose like towering trees. How could his father be so dismissive of other people’s lives? Verne felt trapped at home. He looked out toward the empty dock that had held the unfinished Cynthia; now nothing remained except a few protruding boards from her sunken hull, burn marks, and soot.
Despite his father’s confidence, Verne’s life appeared to be a dead-end path. He would never leave France, never have adventures and explore the world as his fictional heroes did. And now, André Nemo—who had always shared his enthusiasm, creativity, and energy with Verne—had lost everything. Where would he go? How would his friend survive?
Verne could sneak him food and clothes for a time, and Nemo would certainly find his own solution before long. Verne just hoped he himself could be part of it. Together, they had dreamed and imagined so much … yet now prison doors were slamming shut around them.
It was the dark edge of twilight, and Paul hadn’t come upstairs to bed yet. Verne threw himself on the blankets and lay wide awake, smelling the river fog, listening to the ship bells and groaning timbers and creaking ropes. The water and the ships called to him like a distant siren song.
From the fourth-story window, his view of the masts was unobscured. Any one of those vessels could guarantee him passage away from this sedentary place. In his imagination, many times he had climbed into their riggings, raised himself to their crows’ nests, gripped the yardarms to hear the tug and flap of wind-stretched sails. Did he have the nerve to make those dreams real?
Ships came and went at all times, departing for far-off lands and returning with exotic treasures. But Verne had to stay in Nantes, confined in his little room in his family’s narrow house in a tiny provincial town.
Didn’t he?
Miserable, Verne managed to fall asleep before his brother came up to join him.