Houseboat on the Seine. William Wharton
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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. It seems there’s a sandbar there, which will keep my barge, much deeper in the water now than before, from squeezing into the old place. This sandbar has built up over the years. When it was only my light wooden boat, this didn’t matter, but with my new, heavy, metal monster, five times as bulky, it’s a serious affair. When we try easing the barge into place, it just won’t fit.
The second horn of the dilemma is political, psychological, psychic, etc., but we’ll come to that. I’m still shaky and covered with sweat, dirt and water. The pumps inside the metal hull are running hard, pulling out the last dregs. Two of M. Teurnier’s brothers are down there, more or less vacuuming up the last of the water.
M. Teurnier explains the problem to Matt. A good part of our audience has disappeared. The show is over. That’s what they think; the best (worst) is yet to come. Matt translates, explains about the sandbar. M. Teurnier wants to pull our barge out to the center of the river and bring their boat into the space. Then they’ll turn on the motors full blast and blow out the sandbar. He’s convinced it will work. I’m not, but what do I know, this is all in the area of hands-on nautical engineering.
So, that’s what we try to do. The barge is pulled out into the center of the river and anchored somehow. Where did they find the anchor? I don’t know. Then, they wedge their flat-topped boat into the space. This boat could serve as a landing field for small helicopters. They turn the double motors on full blast. Water, sand and sound fill the air.
Now comes the political, psychological, psychical part. Madame Le Clerc, our downriver neighbor, is standing perilously at the stern of her boat, shouting. But no one can hear with all the racket. She’s shaking her finger at M. Teurnier and at me. I pretend not to see. What can I do? M. Teurnier bends backward at the waist with his hands on his hips and laughs at her. Oh, boy!
Next, the owner of the boat on the other side, our upriver neighbor, with the lovely pirate boat, is out on her poop deck shouting even louder. If one didn’t see us between them, one would think they were having a terrible argument, shouting dementedly at each other. Too bad that isn’t the case. We are caught directly in the crossfire, and we are not innocent bystanders.
There ensues about fifteen minutes of roaring motors, rushing water, flying sand, a wild churning up of the river. It’s making a colossal stink because the propellers of the boat are releasing years of buried methane gas. It smells ten times worse than the sewers in Paris. Finally, they turn the motors off. M. Teurnier has a gaffing hook and is testing for depth. Unfortunately, now we can hear the ladies shouting. I’m glad I can’t understand. I’m as deaf to what they’re saying as I was with the motors roaring. Matt shakes his head and doesn’t want to translate.
‘Honest, Dad. I can hardly understand what they’re saying and what I do understand, I don’t want to try translating. You don’t need to hear all this anyway. Just play dumb.’
‘Come on, Matt. I already am dumb, but I’ll need to deal with it sooner or later.’
‘OK, as far as I can tell, they’re both objecting to the fact that your new boat is going to take up more space than the old one. It seems the river law is that there’s supposed to be five meters between each boat. Teurnier insists that when your boat is in place, there will be at least five meters on each side. I think he’s right; they’re only being hysterical, fighting for and defending territory.’
‘So what else are they saying?’
‘Madame Le Clerc objects to having our old wreck of a boat beside her beautiful mansion of a boat. She’s going to call Le Navigation. She claims Monsieur LeCerb, the boss man there, is a friend of hers.’
‘That sounds bad. What do they want me to do, just sink my barge again?’
‘It all sounds bad, Dad. I can’t exactly translate what Luce, the other lady, the one on the pirate boat, is yelling because she keeps slipping into Breton. She’s the one who really seems to get M. Teurnier’s goat. She’s apparently bawling him out in full voice, exercising her waterfront knowledge and expertise in Breton obscenity. And all this hollering brings out the Breton in M. Teurnier. He yells back at her, sometimes in French, sometimes in Breton. The last thing he told her was if she didn’t shut up and go inside, he was going to come up on that boat and give her a spanking.’
‘This is better than a movie. Too bad we’re in it, even as extras. By the way, what happened to our audience?’
While all this is happening, the other frères Teurnier have been shoving our boat back into the space they’ve cut out. They concentrate and work, don’t say a thing. They’ve wedged our barge close to the bank, but it’s still too long and too deep in the water to fit properly. They use their boat as a tug to push it in sideways. They manage to work the front end, the downriver end, in, where the water’s deeper and there’s no sandbar, but the back sticks out about a meter and a half more than it should. Teurnier’s pulled out a tape measure and is measuring the distances between the boats. He shouts out the measurements to each woman; there is almost six meters on each side. They screech back at him now, words even I can tell would never be approved by I’Académie française.
As it begins to grow dark, we decide to leave the boat as is, with its upriver end, the cut-off stern, sticking out. I ask Matt to translate for me. I’m desperate. They’re about to leave, and I need to move the back of the barge against the berge. Matt listens carefully, then turns to me as they’re making ready to pull out. The crew has piled a stack of equipment on the back deck of our barge. Matt looks at me through the gathering dusk.
‘He says there’s a dredger upriver who can come here and dredge out the rest of the sandbar. It’ll probably cost another four hundred francs or so. He’ll check for us.
‘Also, he’s left cutting tools and an arc-welding set here. Tomorrow, someone, probably one of his brothers, will come at eight in the morning to start cutting out the windows. You should be here to tell him where you want them and give him a hand. He says they shouldn’t be cut closer than forty centimeters from the water level and there should be a minimum of three structural struts left in place along the sides between each window. At least that’s what I think he said.’
M. Teurnier and the rest of his finger-brothers are on their barge and about ready to head home. M. Teurnier stands at the stern lighting his pipe. He smiles at us between puffs. He seems happy with what he’s done. My God!
He