I sat and stared at the last page for almost a minute. How, in the name of one of Vanessa Lincoln’s sweaters, was I going to do this? The letter gave me so few clues. Grandpa wasn’t kidding when he said this was beyond difficult. The wreckage had been found more than a decade ago, off the coast of Marseille. Almost every trace of it was gone now and it had been 250 feet deep anyway!
I had only tried underwater diving once, during a holiday Mom and Dad and I went on in the Caribbean two years ago. It had been pretty simple stuff: just puttering around using a snorkel in shallow water as clear as blue glass, looking at exotic fish. We were planning to go again next year and swim with dolphins.
Two hundred and fifty feet deep? That seemed like an awfully long way down. And when I got down there, I’d be looking for a needle in a haystack or, more accurately, a rock in a sea, which was even worse.
But I wasn’t going to give up. The odds had been stacked against me in the first task, and I’d achieved it, hadn’t I? Sort of? I got to my feet and started to pace. Soon I’d made up my mind that there was no use trying to be clever about this. There was only one way I would have any chance of accomplishing the task. It was straightforward. I had to discover exactly where the wreckage had been and then find a way to the bottom of the Mediterranean. Which one first? I wondered if there was some way to kill two birds with one stone. Local divers likely knew all about this famous wreck.
I grabbed the Provençal phone book, which I assumed had Marseilles listings in it. What was the French word for diving? I thought of my private lessons and recalled a related word, the one for swimming pool, because it was so rude. Piscine, pronounced something like “pees-in,” or as I preferred to say, “piss-in.” I remembered having a good laugh at that and telling my friends—all of whom I’m sure had peed in pools at one time or another—about it. For once, being crude was turning out to be helpful. I was sure I could connect the word for pool to the one for diving. Jean dives into the pool. How would you say that? I was certain I had learned it. And then it came to me: Jean plongées dans la piscine. Plongée or something very close to it meant dive! I flipped through the phone book.
There it was: Plongée Sous-Marine. Underwater diving. There were about ten businesses offering scuba-diving instruction to beginners and expeditions for advanced divers. I picked one called Plongée Internationale, whose advertisement was partly in English.
I didn’t want to call them on my cell since I was afraid that I would have a difficult time understanding them. There was a much better chance of us communicating clearly in person, especially considering that I had such a complicated request.
It was just a little past noon. I got a stamp at the front desk, mailed my letter to Vanessa and headed down to the restaurant where the young waitress worked. She was wearing a very short dress today, loose and plain and white, almost see-through, her only decoration a red scarf. But she looked great, of course, seemingly unconcerned about her revealing apparel. She had changed her hair. It was spiked today. She gave me that knowing smile, suggested a different meal and took her time bringing it to me. There was something about her style that made me envious. She didn’t seem anxious about life, the way I was, the way all my friends were back in Buffalo. She seemed to be moving slowly and happily through life, satisfied to be doing what she was doing. I knew there was a word for her. Finally, it came to me. Natural.
The concierge hailed me another cab, and by two o’clock I was headed toward Marseille, a little concerned about ending up somewhere in the city not far from where Mom and Dad were staying. Though I’d been texting them every day, saying I was okay, I didn’t want them to see me or know what I was doing. This was between Grandpa and me.
But I need not have worried. The cabdriver never even entered Marseille. He got on a highway just to the north and drove around the city, dropping me in a suburban area to the south. It was a pretty laid-back neighborhood. There were a few homes and businesses and a sandy beach. The coastline was rocky and led to a point in the Mediterranean. When I got out and stood facing the blue sea, I could see Marseille to my right with its big buildings and docks and rocky islands off its shore. To my left, a few miles in the distance, were more rugged islands and a huge expanse of water, seemingly endless, with almost no horizon. St. Ex had gone down somewhere way out there. Somehow, I was supposed to find a little rock he might have had?
Plongée Internationale was at the far end of a street not more than a two-minute walk from the water, and it was indeed set up for tourists. It was two stories high and fairly large, its stucco exterior painted blue like the sea, with fake palm trees outside and a sign that read We Speak English over the door with an American flag beside it. The building smelled of rubber and seaweed. There wasn’t much to the interior, at least as far as I could see. The first room was small, with a counter and shelves piled high with all sorts of rubber suits and scuba-diving equipment. There were photos on the walls of amazing underwater scenes in crystal-clear blue water and a video of similar adventures played on a screen in the corner of the room. There was a staircase leading upstairs, and I could see a big room through a wide doorway behind the counter. Obviously this outer area was simply for sign up. All the action took place elsewhere.
There was just one man behind the counter. His face was bronzed from the sun and his long hair was reddish and tinged with a gray that streaked through his ponytail and was more prominent on the beard that grew uncontrolled across his face. He was in shorts and a T-shirt bearing the company logo, and his flip-flops snapped on the floor whenever he moved. He looked up when I entered and gave me a smile that was obviously forced. His whole life must have been spent dealing with tourists. I was glad I was tall, since I hoped he’d think I was a little older than sixteen.
“Américain?” he asked.
I wished they’d stop doing that.
“Oui.”
“What can I do for you, my friend?” I didn’t have the sense that he was my friend. But he knew I could pay. I’m sure he was thinking, Young American, out on his own.
I explained what I was after and watched as he smirked.
“What you are asking, my friend, it is impossible.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because, unless you are an internationally acclaimed diver—and I know many of them and they are mostly French—then this cannot be done. Nitrogen narcosis—rapture of the deep—have you heard of that? The bends?”
I considered lying. “No,” I finally said.
“I thought not. Let us just say that that sort of depth is…out of your depth, and most everyone else’s too. C’est impossible! Most tourists we take to maybe fifty feet, maximum. There are regulations too. No one, certainly no tourist, is allowed to go as deep as you want to go.” He looked down at his books again.
“But I need to see that site!”
He raised his head again, as if my comment was a great intrusion on his time and dignity.
“Then you will need an atmospheric diving suit, you know, with a helmet and full body covering.”
“How much?” I took out the bank card my grandfather had given me. The man looked down at it. A sort of greedy expression passed over his face, then disappeared.
“No. Americans, they think they can buy anything.”
“No?”
“You are an amateur, my friend. You said so yourself, before you began with your fantasy story about Saint-Exupéry and his plane. You admitted that you were not experienced at all. I will not put you in a suit!” This time he glared at me.
“But I must—”
“There is nothing to see there! It is all gone, just like him. What are you looking for anyway? He wasn’t carrying gold, you know. He wasn’t that sort of man. What mattered to him was, you know, inside here.” He pointed to his chest.
“I’m not looking for gold. I can’t say what it is.”
“And I cannot help you.” He looked down at his books again and didn’t look up.
I began to walk away, back to the door. This was a disheartening dead-end. I was guessing that all the other diving places would have similar rules. If I couldn’t go down there myself—and that seemed absolutely impossible—I certainly couldn’t trust anyone else with the task of looking for my grandfather’s rock. Maybe I should buy a diving suit from a different supplier, without revealing that I was about to use it, and try this alone? Or pay someone to take me underwater illegally? I stopped at the door.
“Do not consider trying this, in any way,” added the pony-tailed man, who had obviously seen me pause. “If you do it, you will die.”
Well, that ended that possibility. I absolutely couldn’t dive by myself. Was there anything else I could do to make this happen? At least this guy had spoken to me again. Maybe I could get something out of him about the crash site, the wreckage. Maybe he could lead me to the people who found the plane.
“You,” I said, turning around, “you said that there was nothing to see at the site. How do you know that?”
“I have been there.” He wasn’t even looking up.
“You what?”
“Of course!” He looked up and smiled at me. “We all have. This is St. Ex, my friend! This was the greatest find in our lifetime.”
“Where is it?”
He paused. “I suppose there is no harm in telling you. If you stand outside my shop and look to your left, around the point there, you will see a series of islands, an…archipelago, no? L’île de Riou, a place of rocks.”
“Yes.”
“St. Ex went straight down out there that day, some kilometers in that direction over the water, maybe four kilometers from the shore?”
“Really? That is the actual spot?”
“But his body, it has never been found. They will never find it! And we will never know what happened that night. It is a mystery, no? St. Ex, he was a mysterious man. He knew things we do not know. He knew the truth. He has gone back to his planet!”
“I don’t want to find his bones or any—”
“Then, what do you want?”
I said nothing.
He smiled. “You, young man, are an unusual Américain. They never ask about someone like Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. They ask only about the nightclubs, the wine, the women or the men. But you—you want to be near the great soul of la France. That is unique; that is admirable.”
I could tell he was leading up to something.
“I know a man here who helped with the St. Ex dives. He is an artist of the waves. He will be impressed with you. He might help you. He has a…what is the word? A submersible?”
“A summer saw blue?” That was honestly what I thought he’d said. And that comment almost lost it for me. He wasn’t pleased with my imitation of his accent. But I couldn’t help it. I didn’t know what he meant.
“Un sous-marin. A submarine,” he said tersely.
“A submarine?”
“A little one. Un petit. A man and a boy could fit in it. I will make a contact to him for you.”
The next day I received a call on my cell from the man at the diving place. He had talked to his friend, who he described first as an oceanographer then as a marine scientist and then as a “guy who likes to invent things,” and told him about my interest in St. Ex. The friend had apparently been impressed. He was planning to make a few dives in his submersible that week and was willing to let me go with him.
I was thrilled out of my mind.
But I wasn’t nearly as thrilled when I met my submarine captain. He was standing on the rocks a few miles east of Plongée Internationale, exactly where I was told he would be, the top of his wet suit stripped off and his hairy, naked back turned to me as he stared out over the sea. He was gazing in the direction of l’île de Riou. It was a gorgeous day, the water deep blue and lapping gently on the shore, the sky a lighter blue and cloudless, the white and gray rocks rising up like sculptures on the islands a few miles away. The sea smelled of fish and algae. The submersible was anchored just offshore, a miniature submarine that looked like the one on the cover of one of Dad’s Beatles’ records from eons ago. It really did. It was even yellow and painted with brightly colored peace signs. It was so small that it looked like a toy. I wondered how the two of us would even get into it. It was patched in places too, which didn’t inspire much confidence. A thick hose lay on the rocks in huge coils, tethering the submersible to what appeared to be a massive oil tank or oxygen chamber. It looked like there were literally miles of that hose. A big truck was parked nearby on the little rocky road. A boy of about thirteen or so stood beside the tank and turned to look at me when I approached, though he never said a word. He was wearing designer jeans that were so low-riding that I could see most of his underwear and the top of the crack of his butt. Not a pretty sight. He wore a torn T-shirt with the words Le Punk on it, and his dark hair was done up in some version of dreadlocks. He completely ignored me as I walked by him and right up to the pilot, who I assumed was his father.
“Monsieur Halliday?”
The man nearly jumped out of his wet suit and into the sea.
“Mon dieu!” he cried. “You-you terrify me!” He put his hand over his heart. Or at least I think that was where it was. The gray hair on his chest was so thick that it was hard to tell. A bear would have been proud of such a coat. But he wasn’t built like a bruin. He was as skinny as a rail and the hair on his head was at least as impressive—or unimpressive—as his chest hair. It hung down almost to his nipples and looked like it hadn’t been combed in decades, although he immediately began tying it up in a knot, as if suddenly ready for action.
He seemed to instantly forget that I’d scared him. He beamed at me. “Américain, oui?”
“Oui.”
“But you, monsieur, are not like all the rest?”
“I—”
“You want to find le location du poet du ciel, oui? You want to be near him?”
“The poet of the sky? Saint-Exupéry? Oui.”
“Ah!” He stood for a long time and just smiled broadly at me. I felt very uncomfortable. Then he took me into his arms and hugged me and wouldn’t let go. It was hard to know what to do. His behavior seemed very inappropriate. And yet somehow I feared nothing from this guy. For one thing, he was about half a foot shorter than me. His arms and legs were like matchsticks. I could snap him in half, if need be.
“Peace,” I heard him say quietly.
But suddenly he came out of the hug and was all action, making frantic motions, crying out to the boy (“Johnny!”) to let some of the hose loose and turn on various things, to bring my wet suit to me so I could get into it and offering instructions that I could barely understand, three-quarters French and one-quarter English.
But as soon as I was wedged tightly behind him in the submersible, and we were underwater, I forgot all his weird ways. Our surroundings were stunningly beautiful and crystal clear, like being inside Finding Nemo, on the world’s largest 3-D screen, 360 degrees around and many feet deep. Awesome, brightly colored fish swam by. Some stopped to gawk at us. Sea plants waved in the water. I was absolutely blown away. Leon would have fit in this little sub with us easily. He’d love this. But this was the sort of thing he’d never get to do. We plunged lower and lower, and I could feel pressure in my chest. Then we started to move farther out to sea.
Monsieur Halliday was very kind to me that day. When we got to the area that was obviously the crash site—obvious only because he said “Voilà!” and turned a light on and began flashing it around on the sea floor—he spent a great deal of time there. We moved back and forth over that half-mile area many, many times.
“Le tombe du St. Ex!” he cried out more than once as tears rolled down his cheeks. It was indeed moving, though I wasn’t about to cry.
But unfortunately what was most moving about it was a sense of absence, the sense that all traces of the great man and his plane were gone. The divers and oceanographers had picked the sea floor clean. And rocks? There were acres of them, most covered with algae and barnacles. They all looked the same.
I stared like an eagle at every rock that came into sight, hoping to see one that could be Grandpa’s, but it was obvious that I was literally looking for something even more elusive than a needle in a haystack. Floating among all of that beauty, privileged and lucky to be there, in the very spot where the creator of The Little Prince died—and deeply moved by it—I could feel my heart sink, lower than the very depths we were in. I finally let Halliday take us back up to shore.
All the way home, he went on and on, half in French and half in English, about how impressed he was at my interest in St. Ex, how moved he was to have shown it to me, how remarkable it was that I didn’t seem to want to leave the site and had insisted on seeing every inch of the floor with the searchlight.
We got out and stripped off our suits, young Johnny still not saying a single word. Mr. Halliday was reluctant to take the stack of Euros I offered him but, in the end, accepted them and hugged me tightly again, tears in his eyes, and kissed me four times on each cheek. I was about to say goodbye, when he mentioned something that stopped me cold.
“I wish, monsieur, that you could have…plongé avec nous…uh, dived with us on that important day. I had…mes mains…my hands on the pieces of the plane itself. I was just a…assistant…mais…I touch the things St. Ex touch. I even give Johnny here a—how do I say it?—gift…from the plane.”
“A gift?”
“We could not, you know, keep anything from the plane itself, mais…I found a rock in the cockpit.”
“A rock?”
“Oui. I turned it over, and underneath it was, uh, remarkable. It was un couleur un peu bizarre—”
“Bizarre? It was…it was a strange color?” My heart began to pound.
“Oui. It must have smashed through the cockpit window of the plane when it crashed. So it was not part of the plane but it had been inside it. I thought that was special, especially le couleur bizarre, so I give it to Johnny.”
My head snapped over to butt-crack boy. I must have given him a strange look, because he actually stepped away from me. What if this rock hadn’t smashed through the cockpit window from the outside when the plane struck the bottom of the sea? What if it was already in the cockpit, carried there by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry?
“Did it say anything?” I asked.
Halliday looked a little alarmed. “Say anything? Dit quelque chose? Monsieur, it was a rock.”
“Was there anything written on it?”
He appeared relieved. “Mon ami,” he chuckled, “what a strange thing to say! It came in through the window! It had many algae sur le surface, no? And barnacles? Johnny was two year old, maybe three, but I just thought he would like le couleur, et—”
“I want to see it. Now!”