The Balloonist by MacDonald Harris

Author:MacDonald Harris [HARRIS, MACDONALD]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: FIC000000, FIC019000, FIC002000
ISBN: 9781468303735
Publisher: Overlook
Published: 2012-07-10T04:00:00+00:00

Although I have controlled my excitement externally, it has had its usual physiological effect on me. I wander unobtrusively around to the other side of the gondola and perform a much-desired discharge of bladder contents. There is a good deal of steam. Some of the golden droplets solidify before striking the ice and roll across it like tiny amber pearls. When I come back around the gondola I see that Waldemer has set up his photographic apparatus on the tripod fifty metres or so away from the Prinzess. Theodor and I are obliged to stand in negligently heroic attitudes by the gondola while he slips several plates in and out and reaches around to trip the shutter by hand. (The rubber air bulb is frozen and breaks at the first touch.) Then a shot in trio; the apparatus has a delayed-exposure device that enables him to trot over and take his place by our side before it clicks. He folds everything up, the tripod over his shoulder and the oaken box clasped in his arms like a baby, and carries it back to the gondola.

And what is the fantastic fellow doing now? Up there in the gondola with only the Ice Men for company he has found one of those bits of tissue paper we use for pigeon messages, and for five minutes now he has been covering it with endless sentences in a script as minute and meticulous as fine needlepoint. The task warms him up; the pink comes back into his face, the rime on his mustache disappears. The ink freezing, he continues with a pencil sharpened to a needle point with a bit of sandpaper. At this distance I can’t read his dispatch and probably couldn’t read it even if I held it to my eye, but I can imagine what it says. Alert! Herald and Aftonbladet! Stop presses! Valorous polarnauts report from the earth’s axle bearing! An impressive triumph for mankind and the rubberized-silk industry. The heroes tired and cold but in good spirits as they stand on the peak of our planet. Thinking of loved ones. Report some difficulty in going to the bathroom and in keeping fingers warm but otherwise in good health. Could not have made it without help from Divine Providence. And so on. Oh, he is covering that tissue with a lot! Can the pigeon carry it all? I climb up into the gondola to see if he has really turned it over and is writing on the back now.

“Major, you know, I have here …”

“Yes, I know.”

“Just a few words. Later, of course, I thought …”

You will write a book and stand on platforms from Durban to Ketchikan, recalling this moment. The photographs will be projected by a magic lantern. Here are my two companions, Major Crispin and young Theodor. And here are the three of us together. Perhaps you wonder who is operating the shutter. A polar bear? No. Ha, ha! As it happens, the photographic apparatus we had with us was fitted …

The slip of tissue in his fingers, he is bending now over the wicker aviary.

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