Houseboat on the Seine. William Wharton
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