The Night Clerk At The Royalton Hotel

“Cousteau asked if I’d like to travel with him from Paris to the French Atlantic port of La Rochelle, where the prototype for a new ship, with a wind-propulsion system he and his colleagues had just invented, was being tested. I jumped at the chance, rose at five A.M. in order to meet him at the taxi stand before dawn, and flew with him to La Rochelle. The maritime engineers immediately collared him for meetings, and I spent much of the day walking along the shore. Not until midnight did we board the windship for the test sail. I’d never sailed at night before, and the experience was surreal. In total blackness – with no horizon, no distinction between sea and sky, no perspective – illuminated ociean liners and fishing boats alike seemed to be sailing through space. I stood with Cousteau on the bridge. At some point before dawn, I had an experience unlike any I’ve had before or after: I fell asleep standing up. I shook myself awake just as Cousteau turned and saw me catch myself. He ordered everyone to retire to the dorms on board. He took care to assign me to a couch and left his own door open so that he could keep an eye out for me, the only woman aboard. After about two hours of sleep, he and I had to leave to catch a plane back to Paris. We landed, caught a cab, and were heading from the airport back to the city when suddenly Cousteau interrupted our conversation and said, “I’m going to sleep for fifteen minutes.” He closed his eyes. A moment later his head dropped. He began to snore softly. And then, after exactly fifteen minutes by my watch, he shook to attention and picked up the conversation precisely where we’d left off. After we had entered Paris, Cousteau instructed the driver to stop on the Fauborg St. Honore about a mile from where we each had an apartment. I looked around: We were parked in front of the Elysee Palace. Cousteau got out of the cab and told me that he had a meeting with the president of France. I kept the taxi, went home, and fell into bed. It was eleven A.M. I woke up the next morning. I was thirty-three years old. He was seventy-four. When Simone later recounted a nightmare she’d had, I could only laugh. She’d dreamed that Cousteau, not having enough to occupy his time, had taken a job as a night clerk at the Hotel Royalton in New York.”

 The Human, The Orchid, And The Octopus: Exploring and Conserving Our Natural World. By Jacques Cousteau and Susan Schiefelbein