Houseboat on the Seine. William Wharton

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СКАЧАТЬ only five hundred francs more. He’ll also cut away the inside walls.’

      She looks at me and smiles.

      ‘But, he says first you must remove all the oil in the bottom of the boat so the work can take place. He knows a man who will bring barrels and has a way to lift them away. This man uses the oil to make roads. This will cost you nothing.’

      This entire business is totally unreal. None of it is making sense to me, but at the same time, I’m excited. He holds up his hand again. He’s hurrying. I can see his wife has the midday meal ready and is becoming impatient. He machine-gun-talks the rest of the deal. Corinne tries to keep up, but it’s almost impossible.

      ‘The oil must be out in three weeks, or a month at most. I have workers, welders, metalworkers, who will be needing work by then. Also, you must move the boat from the atelier here to Port Marly.’

      I look up at Corinne and smile. I smile at Mme. Teurnier. She indicates the table with her hands.

      ‘Please eat with us, monsieur.’

       Jack and the Beanstalk

      M. Teurnier backs up the invitation with broad motions of his arms. He pulls another chair over to the table. It’s the first time I’ve been invited to share a French meal. I don’t know what’s the right thing to do. Corinne breaks the deadlock.

      ‘You have no automobile; you cannot go home until Papa drives you, so you must dine with us.’

      Over a magnificent but simple meal, we review the details again. I keep staring at the numbers, wondering from whom I can borrow the money, how I’ll ever pay it back.

      When we finish, I ask if I can use their phone. I call Rosemary at school, something I virtually never do. She comes dashing in from her kindergarten expecting the worst. Maybe this is the worst. I’ve lost all track.

      ‘Rosemary, I’m involved in the most complicated, interesting, extravagant arrangement to save our boat and make it more than twice its size and with a metal hull. I’ve just had lunch with M. Teurnier and his family, and I’m using their phone.’

      She’s quiet on the other end, giving off vibes of impatience. One can’t leave kindergartners for more than a few minutes. I start to explain the price structure as I understand it. She interrupts.

      ‘Dear, can you please wait till I come home? I need to go back in my class right now. You do what you think is right. I’ll go along with anything to stop you from tossing and turning the whole night through. Goodbye.’

      I look into the hole of the phone. I pause a moment to think. I make up my mind, walk over to M. Teurnier with my hand out. We shake. He puts his other hand on top of mine and winks at me. What does that wink have to do with it? He looks like a combination of Popeye and a worn-out midget version of Yves Montand. He speaks through the little girl. He faces me and she says the words. She’s preparing to go back to school, has her pack on her back.

      ‘We are les frères Teurnier. My father started this business.’

      He holds up his hand with four fingers extended.

      ‘These are my brothers.’

      He names them. He untucks his thumb and holds it out in the French sign for victory, success.

      ‘This is me, Jacques Teurnier. You will not be sorry to work with us.’

      When I come home to the apartment after stopping to bail and pump the boat, I sit down at dinner and explain everything to the family as best I can with my limited understanding.

      Again, despite my careful description of the enormity of this task, the ugliness of the barge, there’s enthusiasm. Matt says he and Tom, his best friend, will help with cleaning out the bottom of the barge. I try to make clear the horrendous dimensions of the job, but I take him up on it. I know I could never do it myself.

      Just before he left me off at my boat, M. Teurnier told me that soon as he drove back to his boatyard, he’d have some of his men cut the pumps off the decks so we’d have light down in the hold. He also told me he’d manage to gather ten large oil drums to be put on the quay beside the boat. Those will be for dumping the oil into, and he promises to have them hauled away each week. Ten drums of oil a week? What have I gotten us into?! This could take up the rest of my life. All this would be ready by the weekend.

      That Saturday, we all – the whole family plus Tom – go out to the boatyard. This involves much searching through unfamiliar territory over dirt roads, but we manage. I find the barge. We make the perilous trip through the boatyard and look at it. Rosemary gives me one of her ‘I-don’t-believe-this!’ 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 СКАЧАТЬ