11

I arrived exactly on time for my next visit. Once again Pecheur busied himself with studying and amending the diagrams spread over the top of the counter, while I wandered among the models. And again the Chinese junk drew my attention. The proportions of its high stern and low sides struck me as unusual. Its sails looked like the wings of an exotic bird that might fly to another world.

“One of my favorites,” Pecheur said when he joined me.

“It is?”

“Yes. We call it a junk, which comes from the Portuguese junco. That, in turn, came from the Malaysian djong, a mispronunciation of the Chinese word for boat, chuan.”

I looked to see if he might be kidding me. He had alertness, a brightness, in his eyes, but nothing to suggest humor.

“There’s disagreement about it too.” He continued. “A scholarly colleague tells me that jung would be better to use than ‘junk.’ In Chinese it means ‘river.’”

“Jung has a more dignified sound,” I agreed.

“Or gorl might be best, since it’s Chinese for a large boat that sails on rivers or lakes.”

“Ah.” I didn’t know how else to respond.

“Are you ready to see more?” he asked.

I nodded.

Pecheur ushered me into the golden elevator, but this time he pushed the button for the third floor. After the slow ascent, the doors opened onto a room about the same size as those on the first and second floors. A vast maze of water, miniature in scale, filled the floor. I could see a stretch of wavy ocean, lakes, rivers, streams, canals, and reservoirs—their flow regulated by a complex of dams, dikes, locks, and gates that shaped and blocked them.

“May I?” I reached toward the water. Pecheur didn’t stop me, and my fingertips brushed the cool, wet surface. I wasn’t sure what to say. “What is this?” I finally asked.

Pecheur smiled at my tone. “A work in progress.”

“To do what?”

“Look here.” He pointed at the model. “The lowlands have been painstakingly taken back from the sea. Dikes, ever larger and stronger, allow millions of people to live in homes on land once covered by water. But there is never any certainty, no matter how strong the dikes. What if a storm is stronger? What if it breaches the dikes, floods over the banks of rivers and canals, wrecks farmlands and towns?”

“Where is this?” I asked, waving my hand toward his creation.

“This is a model, not a map.”

“But it’s like Holland, isn’t it? Is that where you’re from?”

“Yes, I grew up there.”

“Why have you built it? It’s so complex. Is it art or something else?”

“It could be called art, but not the kind that ends up in a gallery or museum. I’m trying to find a better way to work with the force of water.”

“You mean harness its power?”

“That’s part of it, but also to protect against its power to destroy. I want to find a harmony between water and land. What you see here”—he pointed to the tiny dikes—“isn’t flexible enough. There must be a better way.”

My confusion must have been evident, because Pecheur gestured to me to sit in one of the armchairs in the small semicircular space next to the elevator. The panorama filled the rest of the room. I didn’t see how Pecheur was able to move through it, much less build and adjust it.

“To explain this,” Pecheur said, as he sat in the chair next to mine, “I have to go back to something that happened when I was a young man. I attended college for several years, but I couldn’t understand the purpose of studying. The war had ended, but the suffering and devastation in Europe made a deep impression on me. What could school offer in the way of solutions or palliatives to heal our wounds and make certain we never again resorted to war? These kinds of questions consumed me. With the certainty that only young men possess, I dismissed study and academic degrees as valueless. Finally, with my parents’ permission, I took a year off from school. One year stretched to three and then six. I worked as a crewman on the riverboats. It amazed me how far we could travel on the network of rivers and canals that wove through Holland, France, Germany, and beyond. As I thought more and more about this network, I began to believe that it, with its many connections, offered an answer to the questions that perplexed me. I couldn’t exactly put it into words, but the smooth passage over these inland waterways soothed and comforted me.

“As I reached my middle twenties, and the war years receded, I couldn’t help but wonder what I would make of my life. My father practiced medicine. I considered medical school, but I couldn’t decide to return to my studies. Then came the night of February 1, 1953. Our boat docked on the Hollandse IJssel River. The crew turned in at a small hotel in the town of Nieuwerkerk aan den IJssel. This happens to be the lowest point in Holland. Much of the surrounding area was also below sea level, but the dikes holding back the sea allowed people to make their homes there. I had trouble falling asleep, because I kept wondering what would come next in my life. I felt I had to make a choice, but I didn’t desire one career or another. In a way, I lived outside the everyday world, floating on the rivers and canals, waiting to discover what would become of me.

“In the early morning hours an enormous storm came in off the North Sea. A huge, spinning dome of water, much like a hurricane, hit the southwest coast of Holland at high tide. Gale-force winds pushed the surge to record heights, as much as fourteen feet. In some places, when the dikes broke, walls of water twelve feet high rushed like a flash flood through the countryside, destroying everything. In the middle of the night I heard men yelling and banging on the doors of the hotel. I pulled on my trousers and rushed into the hallway. Our captain told the crew to get their gear and assemble in the lobby. Around us, in chaos, half-dressed people were evacuating the hotel to seek higher ground.

“When we assembled, the captain introduced the mayor of the town. He came straight to the point. The tidal surge from the North Sea had blocked the flow of the river. Tremendous pressure was being exerted on the Groenendijk, a dike on the west bank of the river. Never reinforced with stone, the Groenendijk was breaking apart. If the hole could not be plugged immediately, the flooding would imperil three million people in the city of Rotterdam and the surrounding lowlands to the east. The mayor ordered our captain to take our boat and ram it into the hole in the dike. Only that, he said, might hold back the water.

“Then our captain spoke. He simply said that whether we succeeded or failed, we were all likely to die. He wouldn’t want any man to go against his will. Instead, he asked for three volunteers from the crew of eight. I stepped forward without hesitation. Really, I didn’t think at that moment. The captain chose among the volunteers who had neither wives nor families. Leaving our comrades behind, we hurried out into the high winds and the stinging rain that flew horizontally along the streets.

“On board the ship, I went below deck to warm the engines. There, alone, I began to doubt my choice. I was young and could have a long life. If I remained on board, I would be an accomplice in my own death. What hope could a ship, even a ship of steel, have against these forces of nature? If we didn’t sink before we reached the levee, how would the ship survive the impact? Why should I die for some mad scheme that had no hope of success?

“As these thoughts ran through my mind, my hands moved over the controls, bringing fuel and fire to the hidden chambers. When the captain called on the intercom, I told him the engines were ready. The ship began to move away from its moorings.

“I knew I would die. At the same time, in that windowless hull of metal that carried me beneath the water’s surface, I couldn’t believe in that death. The captain called for maximum power. The pressure gauge trembled in the red zone. I could smell a burning scent in the thick odor of the fuel. We would either explode or hit the levee at full speed.

“Our captain feared that the ship might go right through the gap in the dike and fall to destruction on the far side. To prevent this, he brought the ship in at an angle in front of the growing hole. I blacked out when we hit and woke in utter darkness. Acrid smoke burned my throat and lungs. Strange as it sounds, I didn’t know who I was. I had no idea what had happened. A man’s voice screamed a name over the intercom. Slowly I realized that it was my name, that he was my captain, and that I lay on the hard metal floor of a ship. He ordered me to shut down the engines. I struggled until I raised an arm and felt my way across the controls to pull down the levers. For a few moments, a silence surrounded me as the engines quieted. I could feel liquid, it had to be blood, soaking the hair on the back of my skull and running down my spine.

“The floor was fixed at an odd tilt beneath me, an equipoise that could only mean we had plugged the fissure in the levee. The ship trembled and groaned like a man tormented on a rack. I realized how temporary our achievement might be. The surging waters must be working ceaselessly to dislodge and destroy us. I could do nothing but wait and hope. But later, on the bridge with the captain, I saw that the rushing current had pressed the ship across the dike like a floodgate. By a miracle, the very force of the water had held our ship in place and saved the dike. I knew that if I lived through the storm, I wanted to harness and shape these great forces.”

“Were you afraid?” I asked.

“In a way, yes.” He nodded, his blue eyes focused in an inward gaze. “But in another way I forgot myself. I was no more. There was only the drama of which I was a part.”

“Were you afraid because, now that you knew what you wanted, you might die before you could attempt it?”

“I didn’t think like that. I simply wanted to study whatever might help prevent another disaster of this kind. Because the Groenendijk withstood the flood, much of South Holland was spared the devastation in Zeeland where the dikes gave way.”

I couldn’t help but contrast my background to his. He had been shaped by war and found his calling in an act of heroism during a natural catastrophe. I doubted that anything similar would ever happen to me.

“Immediately after the disaster,” he went on, “a commission was set up to determine what had gone wrong and what must be done for the future. This led to the Delta Works, a true wonder of the modern world. It included an immense double gate to stop storm surges from entering the mouth of the Hollandse IJssel. I realized that by becoming an engineer I could contribute to these projects that might take decades to build.”

“Is that a storm surge barrier?” I asked, pointing to a rounded structure that spanned one of the model’s rivers.

“Yes, but I’m not satisfied with it.”

“Why not?”

“Because my dream is to repeat on a far grander scale what happened that night. To use the immense force of a tsunami or hurricane to protect against the very damage it might otherwise inflict. For many years, I worked in Holland to realize this vision, then traveled to foreign countries to continue my work.”

“What is that?” I pointed to a channel that led from the ocean only to turn back in the shape of a hook.

“If I could determine where a storm surge would hit first, I believe the force of that surge might be directed back toward the sea to block subsequent surges.”

“Does it work?” I asked, continuing to study the panorama.

“Sometimes it works. In the model, I mean, but it would need vast improvements to ever be useful. Look, I want you to see this.”

Pecheur aimed a remote toward the panorama and pressed several buttons. The waves of the sea rose higher and higher against the dikes. Then, in two places, sections of the dike slowly began to lower. One section sank first beneath the pounding water, which rushed through it and into the hook-shaped channel and sped back again toward the second section of the dike, which had by then lowered. The returning water met the inflow from the sea, and for a moment the two flows perfectly balanced one another. All was still.

“It can be done,” Pecheur said with a gesture of his hand.

I nodded in reply, watching as the two walls of water held one another motionless. Then, as if the force of the flows had become unequal, the water in the channel began to seep backward, and the water from the sea started spreading over the lowlands. Pecheur tapped the buttons of the remote, and the two sections of the dike rose from their nests in the ground. More remarkably, two holes opened on either side of the channel. I couldn’t see the actual holes at first but simply the spiraling downward rush of the water. Within a minute, the dike stood like a solid wall and the water had completely drained from the land.

“How do you control the openings?” I asked. “Where does the water go?”

“My plan is to store it in underground caverns.”

“Does such a thing exist?” I asked as he clicked the remote and the holes gradually closed.

“Not yet,” he said, pointing the remote toward a different part of the panorama to show me another feature of his creation.

“Wait,” I said. “What if the channel were wider and closer to the second dike?”

He lowered his head to study the remote as his fingers played over the keys.

“Let’s try it.” He aimed the remote to start the sequence again. One section of the dike lowered as before. Now I noticed that the channel had indeed become wider and almost touched the base of the second section of the dike, which again lowered as the water rushed through the hook-shaped channel. Seawater poured through to meet the rushing current in the channel, but to my dismay the seawater flowed right over the shallower water in the channel and began to flood the lowlands. Pecheur used the remote to open the holes and drain away the excess as the dikes rose to form a solid wall.

“It’s not just trial and error,” Pecheur said. “It takes hours and hours of calculation on the computer. Even so, the best I’ve been able to do is what you saw before.”

“What if you had a second wall behind the first wall?”

“Very expensive. And for centuries they’ve been building walls to hold back the sea. I want the sea to hold back itself.”

“What if the openings were larger and the caverns could store more water?”

Pecheur shook his head. “The capacity of the caverns isn’t limitless. To lower the sea to the level of the land would mean shifting an enormous volume of water, far more than any network of caverns could contain.”

“What if the holes reached to the center of the earth?” I asked. “Then the molten core would evaporate the seawater.”

Pecheur looked at me from beneath his bushy white eyebrows. I felt like a fool to have made such a suggestion. No one could drill to the center of the earth, much less funnel millions of gallons of water down such a hole.

“If you did that,” he said, “you would release tremendous amounts of energy. You could harness the power, just like the early steam engines did. Of course, it couldn’t be done now, but what if the downward force of the water turned turbines? Even if it didn’t fall that far, it could generate huge amounts of electricity.”

Pecheur had used my impractical idea as a stepping-stone to explore another possibility. I could feel myself relax.

“Do you often have people help you with your work?” I asked when the conversation reached a lull.

“No, not often.”

“I’m afraid I’d make a very poor assistant.”

“Why?”

“I’m not handy,” I confessed. “I’ve never built anything, not even a model plane or boat when I was a kid. If something needs to be fixed, I take it to a repair shop. I know nothing about computers except how to turn them on and use some of the programs that are already there. I’ve never programmed anything on my own. I’m totally ignorant about engineering. In fact, I’d say I have no qualifications to be your assistant. Honestly, I don’t know why you would want me.”

Pecheur smiled at my little speech.

“You’re candid,” he said.

“What could I do here that would be of help to you?”

“There are things in the shop. But really it’s this work that I want to see continue.”

“I still haven’t digested what you showed me on my last visit, much less this. How can I help with something I don’t even understand?”

“I have a hunch. I’ve pursued my work in a certain way. Engineering seemed a reasonable choice. Maybe other skills would have been even better. You offer something different from what I have to give. Maybe you won’t be able to do this work at all, or maybe you’ll be better at it than I am. In any event, there will be time for me to train you.”

I mulled this over as we rode down in the elevator and returned to the model boats.

“This one is based on Columbus’s flagship, the Santa Maria,” Pecheur said with a gesture of his hand. “He sought a route to the Indies and discovered America. Of course, he wasn’t the first to discover America, but he had a theory that opened the way for those who would follow him.”

“What theory?”

“That the winds blow from west to east in the temperate zones and from east to west in the tropics. The ships of his day had trouble sailing into the wind and tended to cling to the coasts of known continents. But if they were to sail along the coast to where they could pick up winds blowing in the right direction, he conjectured, they could go back and forth across the Atlantic with those winds behind them. Once his theory proved true, explorers began to sail on the oceans to every corner of the globe.”

I looked closely at the model of the Santa Maria.

“I doubt if I can afford to buy a boat,” I admitted when I looked up at him.

“Why don’t you borrow one?” he suggested.

“Could I?”

He nodded.

“I like the junk,” I said.

“Then take it.”

“When do you want it back?”

His eyes searched my face before he replied.

“When you’re ready to return it.”