Vintage 1954 E-Book

Antoine Laurain

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 252

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

'A glorious time-slip caper... Just wonderful' Daily MailFrom the bestselling author of The Red NotebookWhen Hubert Larnaudie invites the fellow residents of his Parisian apartment building to drink a bottle of 1954 Beaujolais, he has no idea of its special properties. The next morning, Hubert finds himself waking up in 1950s Paris, as do antique restorer Magalie, mixologist Julien, and Bob, an American on his first trip to Europe.After their initial shock, the Paris of the past begins to work its charm on all four. But ultimately, they need to get back to the present. And time is of the essence...Translated by Jane Aitken and Emily Boyce.

Leseprobe

1‘A glorious time-slip caper … Just wonderful’

Daily Mail

‘Delightfully nostalgic escapism set in a gorgeously conjured Paris of 1954’

Sunday Mirror

‘Like fine wine, Laurain’s novels get better with each one he writes … a charming and warm-hearted read’

Phaedra Patrick, author of The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper

praise forAn Astronomer in Love

longlisted for the dublin literary award 2024

shortlisted for the edward stanford viking award for fiction 2024

winner of the prix de l’union interallié and the grand prix jules-verne 2023  

‘Perfect for the poolside or sitting outside a café with a pastis and olives – and bound to give you just the same cheering lift’

The Times 2

‘A brilliant love story … The supporting cast, including a notquite-dead dodo and a zebra, will have readers laughing and crying in equal measure’

TheLady

‘Cinematic and enchanting’

ForewordReviews(starred)

‘Simply beautiful. An enchanting dual-timeline story of a love written in the stars’

Fiona Valpy, author of TheDressmaker’sGift

‘A witty, lovely, surprising triumph’

William Ryan, author of AHouseofGhosts

praise forThePresident’sHat

‘A hymn to la vie Parisienne … enjoy it for its fabulistic narrative, and the way it teeters pleasantly on the edge of Gallic whimsy’

Guardian

‘Flawless … a funny, clever, feel-good social satire with the page-turning quality of a great detective novel’

Rosie Goldsmith

‘A fable of romance and redemption’

Telegraph

‘Part eccentric romance, part detective story … this book makes perfect holiday reading’

TheLady 3

‘Its gentle satirical humor reminded me of Jacques Tati’s classic films, and, no, you don’t have to know French politics to enjoy this novel’

Library Journal

praise forTheRedNotebook

‘A clever, funny novel… a masterpiece of Parisian perfection’

HM The Queen

‘In equal parts an offbeat romance, detective story and a clarion call for metropolitans to look after their neighbours… Reading TheRedNotebookis a little like finding a gem among the bric-a-brac in a local brocante’

Telegraph

‘Resist this novel if you can; it’s the very quintessence of French romance’

TheTimes

‘Soaked in Parisian atmosphere, this lovely, clever, funny novel will have you rushing to the Eurostar post-haste… A gem’

DailyMail

‘An endearing love story written in beautifully poetic prose. It is an enthralling mystery about chasing the unknown, the nostalgia for what could have been, and most importantly, the persistence of curiosity’

San Francisco Book Review45

6

7

8

9

‘I’m looking for somewhere else, but a somewhere not far from here’

Jean-Jacques Sempé, Quelques mystiques10

Contents

Title PageEpigraphVintage 1954AcknowledgementsReading Group QuestionsMore from Antoine LaurainAvailable and Coming Soon from Pushkin PressAbout the AuthorsCopyright

11

Vintage 1954

It happened in the middle of a brightly moonlit night in the Beaujolais vineyards. The official account ran over four typed pages in triplicate:

Charmally-les-Vignes.MonsieurPierreChauveau(47)– witness statement on the events of16 September 1954.

Section 557: local matters

I was going home through the vineyards, a little before midnight. I’d had a drink with Michel Perigot and François Lecharny at L’Auberge de la Belette Rouge, and then I’d left them at the war memorial. Anyway … I was making my way through the vineyards with only the moon to guide me. It wasn’t giving off much light, but it didn’t matter, I know the way like the back of my hand. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. That’s when it happened (witnesspauses). There was a very bright flash, like the moment lightning strikes, except that this lasted for a while. I was in the Saint-Antoine vineyard, the one Jules Beauchamps owns. The flash was huge, and there were lights everywhere in the sky. It looked like a town with lots of tiny little windows, but there was no sound. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I 12felt so dizzy I had to sit down in the dirt. The thing stayed there for a while, hovering over the vines. Perhaps there were people in it looking down at me. Then suddenly it vanished as quickly as it had appeared. But it was there. I saw it and that’s why I’ve come to give a statement even though my wife and family advised me not to. I’ve come to report what I saw to the authorities.

Being of sound mind and body and in full possession of my faculties, Pierre Chauveau

This unusual testimony was classified by the police as follows: Report of an unidentified flying object by one Pierre Chauveau, a winegrower residing in Charmally-les-Vignes. Despite the singular nature of the account, the duty officers that morning were not overly surprised. Since the beginning of the year police stations across the country had taken down an unusually high number of such statements. Coming from all walks of life, the witnesses included notorious alcoholics, storytellers, lawyers, the simple-minded, local notables, unknown truck drivers, priests, city-dwellers and farmers. The police did their job and duly noted down people’s accounts, passed them on to the relevant authority and filed them away in triplicate. The press – especially the local papers – never passed up an opportunity to entertain readers with these bizarre tales. By the end of 1954, more than a thousand witness statements and almost five hundred reports of UFO sightings had been received by the police across the country. No explanation for this phenomenon was ever found, and 13gradually the number of reported sightings fell back to normal levels – between fifty and a hundred a year.

As his family had predicted, Chauveau was endlessly mocked, and he earned the nickname of ‘Mr Flying Saucer’.

In 1978, his grandchildren took him to see CloseEncountersoftheThirdKind. When the mother ship appeared on screen to the amazement of François Truffaut in the role of Claude Lacombe, Pierre Chauveau shouted, ‘That’s the one I saw! I saw the whole thing in 1954!’ The other cinema goers tutted and shushed, and one, who could not be identified, called out, ‘Shut up, Chauveau!’ That evening at dinner, as his wife looked on disapprovingly, Pierre Chauveau decided to drink the bottle of Château Saint-Antoine 1954 that he had laid down. As usual, he also poured a drop into the bowl of his dog, Ausweis – daughter of Schnell, granddaughter of Sieg, a German shepherd left behind by the Waffen SS as they fled, whom everyone assumed was part wolf.

The next day, he set off for the wine cooperative and neither he nor Ausweis was ever seen again. The last image his nearest and dearest would have of him was of a man with his dog at his side, raising his collar and drawing on his pipe: ‘Foul weather,’ he had said, then he had closed the door and never reappeared. His family had put out a missing person appeal, dragged the ponds and organised a search of the forests but all to no avail.

The wine produced by the Saint-Antoine vineyard in 1954 had been exceptional. The eight hundred bottles of that vintage were all snapped up that year. Even though the wine was new it seemed to have the depth of flavour of a thirty-year-old grandcru. An oenologist declared that he detected 14‘the tannic notes and lingering flavour of a very good Chambolle-Musigny’. Jules Beauchamps said that was because of his hard work and the new techniques he had used. But he was never able to reproduce such wonderful wine and Château Saint-Antoine reverted to being the very ordinary table wine it had always been.

15

Skies above Paris – 2017

‘Please fasten your seat belts, stow your tray tables and return your seats to the upright position. We are now beginning our descent into Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle. The local time is nineteen forty, and the temperature on the ground is fourteen degrees.’ By the time the announcement had been made the powerful landing gear of the American Airlines Boeing 767 had already locked into place. Paris. Finally. After the ten-hour flight, Bob Brown would set foot in Paris for the first time in his life. He closed the copy of Hemingway’s AMoveable Feast given to him by his son and daughter, folded his table away and moved his seat into the upright position. ‘Here we go, Goldie …’ Bob murmured, tapping the armrest of the empty seat next to him. On the aisle side of him, a fat Chinese man dozed on, his sleep mask over his eyes. The air hostess gently woke him, whereupon he in turn put the back of his seat up.

Bob and his wife Goldie had always dreamed of going to Paris. As the years had gone by, the French capital had taken on mythical status. Montmartre, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the bridges of the Seine, Place de la Concorde, the Louvre, café terraces, the Opéra and other well-known landmarks 16seemed to belong to an enchanted city that would be forever out of their reach. Like ancient Alexandria with its lighthouse and library, the Colossus of Rhodes, or the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, with its trees and flowers cascading in tiers towards the Euphrates. Their obsession with Paris dated back to when they first met.

Thirty years earlier, aged twenty-eight, Bob had pushed through the saloon doors of Why Not, a bar on Lyon Street in Milwaukee. That stifling August day, he was due to meet another young man who was selling a second-hand Harley-Davidson XR-750. It wasn’t in great shape, but the price was enticing. Because he was a mechanic, Bob wanted to see the bike before making an offer with the few hundred dollars he had set aside. He had gone up to the bar, and come upon the blonde hair and pretty smile of Goldie Delphy, the new barmaid who was wiping pint glasses with her delicate hands. Years later Goldie would often describe this scene to their children: ‘Your father came into my bar like Clint Eastwood!’ To which Bob would always add, ‘I’d only ever seen women like your mother on garage calendars!’

The meeting to buy the Harley would have to wait. Because now Bob could only think about the barmaid and the Milwaukee-made motorbike no longer seemed important. But how to approach her without sounding like an idiot or creep or, most likely, both? Bob’s eye was caught by a postcard of the Eiffel Tower against a blue sky, sellotaped to the pillar of the bar. He thought he might try saying ‘Eiffel Tower’ in French and smiling at the young woman. That might work. It would sound intelligent, worldly, perhaps. He sipped his beer and launched in with ‘LeTourEiffel… Paris!’ Goldie 17immediately turned to him – she too had been wondering for the last quarter of an hour how she could strike up a conversation with Clint Eastwood without sounding like a cheap hooker.

‘Yes!’ she said enthusiastically. ‘It’s from a customer who’s on holiday over there. He sent it to the owner.’

‘It looks cool – so tall!’ replied Bob, staring at the image.

‘It certainly is. It’s as tall as the John Hancock Center in Chicago.’ Goldie moved towards Bob to take a closer look at the postcard, though she was very familiar with it by now.

Bob nodded. ‘But no one lives inside it?’

‘No, it’s open to visitors, though.’

‘So it’s not used for anything?’

‘No, nothing at all; they built it because … well, just because it’s beautiful.’

‘What a nation,’ said Bob, admiringly, nodding again. ‘They assembled thousands of steel girders which weigh a ton, to make a giant pointed thing that does absolutely nothing.’

‘Yes,’ replied Goldie, ‘I think that’s very French.’ And their faces were even closer together now as they both looked at the monument, as if expecting to see tourists waving back at them.

Bob’s meeting never took place. After half an hour talking about people who build useless things, and another half-hour discussing Paris, where neither of them had been, Bob left with Goldie’s parents’ phone number. He had given her the number of Joe Feldman’s garage, Mensch’s Motors.

Paris was destined to remain a fantasy for them. Two months after they met, although they had become engaged, chosen their wedding rings and dreamed of spending their 18honeymoon wandering the streets of Montmartre, Bob was contacted by Harley-Davidson. Their headhunters had spotted his talent as a mechanic, and they were offering him a job designing new engines, for three times what he was earning at Mensch’s Motors. Bob’s career was taking off and the flight to Paris could not compete.

Over the next thirty years together, Bob and Goldie lived in a lovely house in Milwaukee with a Stars and Stripes flag planted in the garden and brought up two children, Jenny and Bob Junior. Goldie had bought the Why Not bar. And when Bob was getting ready to retire from the engine research department, after three decades’ loyal service working to improve the vroomvroomof the world’s most famous motorcycle, Goldie hired a manager to look after the bar. Time had flown by and they had never got round to leaving the confines of the American continent. Miami, New York and Las Vegas were the furthest they had ever travelled. The rest of the time, they enjoyed motorbike trips on over thirty different Harleys. Bob was part of the Road Captain squad and like all members wore the HOG (Harley Owners Group) black leather vest covered in badges. The Milwaukee Harley-Davidson Chapter was not at all like the pugnacious Hell’s Angels. Milwaukee Eagles members were peaceable folks who loved their families, friends, barbecues and the gleam of motorcycle chrome.

‘Goldie, it’s time!’ Bob had said eight months ago. Finally, they would go to Paris. They had been taking language classes at the local French Institute and watching the classic French films their teacher, Abigail Doherty, had recommended because the actors’ diction was so clear. Bob and Goldie had discovered Jean Gabin, Maurice Chevalier and Fernandel.19

And now they were ready. They had booked flights and worked out where they would stay. But that was when Goldie fell ill. Seriously ill. The first treatment she tried was useless. Her leukaemia was incurable. ‘Even though the kids are grown up, you should find a new wife,’ Goldie told Bob. ‘You won’t be able to look after yourself.’ Bob had said nothing, turning to look unseeingly at the tree outside the hospital window. ‘Bob? Are you listening to me? You don’t even know how to put the washing machine on!’, and the tree had blurred in front of his eyes, which were suddenly blinded by tears.

Goldie had now been in a coma for two months, her nervous system overwhelmed by cancerous cells, and she was on a ventilator. Her condition had stabilised, but the doctors had ruled out any possibility that she would regain consciousness.

Bob had wanted to abandon the trip to Paris, but the airline was uncooperative. The insurance policy they had taken out did not cover one of the travellers falling into a coma. The only valid reasons for cancellation were the death of a passenger or a letter signed by the passenger who had fallen ill. When, finally, the airline saw sense and agreed to reimburse the tickets ‘as a gesture of goodwill because of your unfortunate circumstances’, Bob changed his mind and said to his children, ‘That damned plane is not leaving without me and your mother!’ He turned down a refund, even of Goldie’s tickets. The seat beside him would remain empty. Bob packed as best he could. He made a list, and carefully folded his leather HOG vest. He had promised the members of the chapter that he would wear it to take a selfie at the Eiffel Tower. His son drove him from Milwaukee to Chicago airport, and his daughter came too to see him off. Bob Junior’s pick-up 20was escorted all the way by twenty Harleys sporting little American and French flags.

When the plane touched down, Bob opened the folder with the details of his rental apartment, chosen by his children on Airbnb: Madame Renard, 18 Rue Edgar-Charellier – ‘If anyone asks, say you are one of the American cousins.’

21

The studio shop on the ground floor of the building was bathed in evening sunshine. Laid out on the table were the 267 china fragments of a statue of Eros, which would have been about three feet tall before having fallen on the marble-tiled floor of a conservatory. Having carefully counted the pieces, Magalie had sorted them into piles by colour. The beautiful nineteenth-century statue had literally exploded when it hit the ground. The owner had done exactly the right thing and swept all the fragments into a cardboard box before hurrying round to Magalie’s studio. Most people think that something that has shattered in this way is broken for ever. But that’s not true. Unlike living creatures, objects can be put back together. In three months’ time, the beautiful Eros would once again take its place among the plants of the conservatory and no one would ever imagine that it had shattered into 267 little pieces on the floor. Of course, it would have to be handled with care, but that would be all. It would be there, reborn, like all the items which had passed through the hands of Magalie Lecœur over the last five years – a glazed earthenware jug, a marble statue, an enamel goblet, a sculpted ivory figure, a china teacup, an opaline vase … ‘You’re a magician,’ her customers often said to Magalie, and, whether they were antique dealers or ordinary members of the public, it was the best compliment they could pay her.22

Magalie had studied Restoration and Conservation at the École de Condé and then trained with several studios before setting up on her own at the age of twenty-seven. She had taken over the lease at 18 Rue Edgar-Charellier from the carpet shop. Azar Raffi, who’d had the shop for thirty years, specialised in Persian rugs and was keen to retire. ‘No one wants carpets, these days, Mademoiselle. Young people want waxed parquet now. I sold rugs to their parents, and when they inherit them, they bring them back here! I’m quite happy to buy back my rugs, but who can I sell them on to? I’m like a cat chasing its tail. I’m going round in circles in my shop and I’ve had enough. I’m off.’ The shop came with a vast studio on the sixth floor of the building, made by knocking together several maid’s rooms. Azar Raffi used it as a stockroom. Magalie did it up and it became her apartment.

The arrival of the restoration specialist in the building did not pass unnoticed. Magalie may have practised an ancient craft, working in the world of fine art and museums, but her appearance was more gothic rock chick, or perhaps Tim Burton movie character. She had several piercings in her left ear, a pale complexion and scarlet lips. Her hair, which was often in pigtails, was artfully tousled. Her wardrobe consisted mainly of skimpy dresses adorned with skull and crossbones, or cats, and she usually wore ankle boots with big chrome buckles. At first the little old ladies who lived in the building were a bit frightened of Magalie, but they had soon taken her to their hearts after she offered to do their shopping, post their letters and even water their plants or feed cats, dogs or canaries when they were away. It was just such a shame, they 23said to each other, that such a pretty girl would make herself look so ugly.

One morning she stopped the chairman of the building’s management committee in the entrance hall. ‘Monsieur Larnaudie, can I ask you something?’

‘Of course, and if it’s about life at number 18, I should be able to help.’

‘Yes, it is about that …’ Magalie looked down at the studded toes of her boots and then up at Monsieur Larnaudie. ‘Is it true that everyone in the building calls me Abby?’

At the time, NCISwas breaking viewing records every Friday evening. And one of the main characters was Abby, a young forensic scientist at the Naval Criminal Investigative Service who was highly gifted, always cheerful, and dressed like a goth. She spent all her time in her white coat in the lab, listening to techno music as she pieced together fingerprints, microfibres, SIM cards and DNA to help her colleagues solve crimes. Magalie too was in her studio from morning till night, wearing a white coat and listening to unidentifiable music as she carried out repairs with scientific precision. The resemblance, both physical and professional, had not escaped the residents of the building and they had lost no time in dubbing her Abby.

That morning, Hubert Larnaudie began to reply, ‘Listen, Abby, I don’t know what people in the building say privately …’ then he stopped in horror and apologised. ‘It’s not meant in any way to be insulting, Mademoiselle Lecœur,’ he went on seriously. ‘On the contrary, it’s a mark of our great affection for you. Madame Lacaze and Madame Baulieue, our longest-standing residents, can’t speak highly enough of you. You’ve brought new life to 24that sleepy old shop and you’ve won over our concierge, Madame Da Silva – which is not easy. Everyone here likes you tremendously, you can be certain of that.’

Magalie nodded in silence and it seemed to Hubert that there might be tears in her eyes.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured. ‘Have a good day, Monsieur Larnaudie.’

If Magalie was a big hit with the old ladies, she had been less successful when it came to men. Her most recent boyfriend had left her, and all Magalie had to relieve her loneliness was broken fragments on which her hands would work their magic. Unfortunately she was unable to cast the same charm on her own life, which seemed to her like a puzzle whose pieces did not fit.

The fragments of statue spread over her work table shook imperceptibly. A week ago, the tunnel-boring machine extending line 14 of the metro, known as Méteor, had reached Rue Edgar-Charellier. The enormous machine with its round boring head was operating more than sixty-five feet below ground but for the last forty-eight hours it seemed to be under number 18, because if you looked closely you could detect vibrations. The fragments stopped shaking and the doorbell rang. ‘Coming!’ cried Magalie.

She sorted one final fragment and went to open the door to a man of about thirty holding a bunch of violets. ‘Is it time to go?’ she asked before seeing the flowers.

‘I found these on the way; they’re for you,’ said Julien.

‘Thank you! Come in and I’ll find a vase for them.’ Magalie picked up an opaline vase with a chipped neck and a ticket round it.25

‘Have you been to one of these management committee meetings before?’ she asked Julien as she filled the vase at the tap.

‘No, never. I’ve always rented up until now.’

‘Well, you’ll see, they go on for ever but they can be entertaining. Monsieur Larnaudie looks after everything; he lives for this building. I bet he’s going to talk about the broken basement shutters; he’s been obsessing about them for three days now … They’re very pretty, thank you, Julien,’ she said, stepping back to admire the little bouquet on the table.

‘I wanted to cheer you up,’ mumbled Julien.

‘Well, you’ve succeeded!’ She smiled. ‘Shall we go?’

26

Julien glanced at Magalie as they walked along the street, not listening to a word of what she was saying about the annual management committee meetings. It had been love at first sight. There was no other way to describe it. Julien remembered the moment he’d met her four months earlier as clearly as if it had just happened. He had been on his way down to put a few things away in the little cellar that had come with the tiny apartment he had bought with a twenty-year mortgage at 1.6 per cent interest. The cellars were the only part of the building that hadn’t been renovated since its construction during the Second Empire. Wooden doors that opened with big iron keys, the dirt floor covered in threadbare rugs and the signs (‘Coal bunker’, ‘Roadside window’, ‘Communal cellar’, ‘Lift mechanism’), painted on the walls by signwriters who were long dead, were like relics of a lost world.

‘Hi, are you the new owner of the ground-floor apartment? I’m Magalie Lecœur, but everyone here calls me Abby because of some stupid American TV series.’ His world had tilted on its axis. Her eyes were so green, her lips so red and smiling, her skin so pearly white. When Magalie had put her hand in his to shake it, it was as if a bomb had gone off inside Julien’s head. He felt as though he was finally meeting the faceless girl he had seen in his dreams since his teenage years.27

Julien was painfully shy around women, and only came into his own with a cocktail shaker in his hand and a barman’s white apron tied around his waist. Back at catering college, he had quickly realised that waiting on tables was not for him. ‘Madame, Monsieur, may I present the chef’s pot-roast duck accompanied by morel ravioli and a white pepper sauce. Bon appétit’; such phrases would not be the soundtrack to his evenings for long. Coming from Beaujolais, he had been brought up to appreciate a fine vintage, and while his parents had since left the family vineyard for the city, they still upheld the tradition of opening a good bottle on the birthdays and special occasions that punctuated their lives.

One day while on a training placement at a provincial four-star hotel, he had been enchanted by the sight of the newly done-up bar. Dozens of bottles lined the shelves, cleverly lit with coloured LED bulbs. There was something soothing about the warm glow of the lights and the big leather armchairs dotted about the room. The painstakingly polished mahogany bar and its gleaming brass fittings were like a runway on which sparkling glasses would touch down, filled with the most sophisticated drinks. Two customers were sitting talking on a sofa while the barman, a slim man with short white hair and half-moon spectacles, was pouring the contents of several bottles into the cocktail shaker: gin, cherry liqueur, cranberry juice, rose liqueur … Julien walked towards him, entranced. The barman, whose name, Gérard, was embroidered on his apron in red thread, looked up and peered over his glasses. ‘Trainee, are you?’ he muttered.

‘Yes, Monsieur,’ Julien replied.

‘In the kitchen?’28

‘Front of house, Monsieur.’

The barman gave him a pitying look. ‘Here behind the bar we’re in our own little world.’ He picked up the shaker, shook it smoothly over his shoulder and then opened it. The chrome was frosted from the shaken ice and Gérard divided the chilled liquid perfectly between two triangular glasses before garnishing each one with a cherry and a sprig of fresh mint. ‘Golden Jaipur. One of my creations,’ he said, placing the glasses on a silver tray and carrying them over to his customers.

That was when Julien knew what he wanted to do with his life. Or rather, where he was meant to be, which was behind a bar, with a white apron with his name embroidered on it tied round his waist and a head full of thousands of cocktails ready to mix on demand, when he wasn’t inventing his own.

A month later, Monsieur Gérard was writing a letter which began, ‘Monsieur Julien Chauveau is by far the most gifted trainee I have encountered in my long career.’ After three years at college, he passed his mixology diploma with top marks. The night before he left for London, he invited his brother, sister and parents to join him for a celebratory meal at one of the best traditional bouchonrestaurants in Lyon. His father raised his glass and said solemnly, ‘Your great-grandfather would have been proud.’ There was a silence then Julien said, ‘I’m sure he’s watching us … from above.’ No one reacted to that except his younger sister, who rolled her eyes. Then they all turned to drinking an excellent Juliénas.

Pierre Chauveau remained the big mystery of the family. Though Julien had been born ten years after his disappearance in 1978, the tale of ‘Mr Flying Saucer’ had fascinated him since childhood. He was always asking his father and aunt 29about the night they had been to a screening of Spielberg’s film and his great-grandfather had shouted out in the cinema that the mother ship was just like the one he had seen in 1954. Julien had found out all he could about that year, known to enthusiasts as ‘The Year of Flying Saucers’. He had gathered an impressive collection of documents on reported UFO sightings, most precious among which was a rare copy of the self-published 1955 cult classic AlienVisitsandSpacePhenomena, in which the author, legendary astronomer Charles Arpajon, argued that there was a link between flying saucers and time travel.