Houseboat on the Seine. William Wharton
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