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 reasons I still don’t understand, the tipping slows, then stops. Gently the barge rights itself. In no time at all, it’s level. My leaking old wooden boat squats properly on top, more or less dry, properly placed and aligned.
I drop to my haunches on the hatch cover because my knees are so weak I can’t stand. I hear the cheers of our gallery, but I’m crying and too completely pooped physically and mentally to take a bow. I’m in the stern. I’m invisible to them.
M. Teurnier comes around with a big wrench knocking along the bottom of the upper boat for some reason, maybe it’s like kicking tires on an automobile. When he sees me, he breaks into a huge smile and reaches over; we shake hands. Then he winds it up with one of those masculine French hugs that can break ribs. He’s soaking wet, so now I am, too, combination of river and sweat. We’re both laughing.
He passes me and continues around with his ‘tire thumping’. I manage to stand alone on my wobbling legs and work my way to the other end, the shore end, of the boat. There’s an apron about two feet wide on each side of the upper boat where the metal barge is wider. It makes a passable yet treacherous walkway. I hold on to anything I can find to inch myself along.
When I come to the bow of the boat, the end facing land, there’s another rousing cheer. I look up and wave a hand, feeling like Jacques Cousteau. Maybe the crowd thought I was actually holding the wooden boat in place up there with my bare hands. I’ll take any kudos I can get, deserved or not. Sternly, I decide not to bow in the bow. It wouldn’t be seemly.
Our next maneuver is to clear out a space for our new enlarged ‘bastard’ boat. Our old one, the wooden sinker, was only eighteen meters long. We now need to fit twenty-three meters of metal barge into the old space. There appears to be enough room between my barge and the neighboring houseboats, but that isn’t exactly the dilemma.
The first difficulty is physical.
