Airman's Odyssey (31 page)

Roused by the call, the pilot's wife looked musingly at her husband. I'll let him sleep a bit longer, she thought.

She admired that spanned bared chest of his
and the thought came to her of a well-built ship. In the quiet bed, as in a harbor, he was sleeping and, lest anything should spoil his rest, she smoothed out a fold of the sheet, a little wave of shadow, with her hand, bringing calm upon the bed, as a divine hand calms the sea.

Rising, she opened the window and felt the wind on her face. Their room overlooked Buenos Aires. A dance was going on in a house near by and the music came to her upon the wind, for this was the hour of leisure and amusement. In a hundred thousand barracks this city billeted its men and all was peaceful and secure; but, the woman thought, soon there'll be a cry “To arms!” and only one man—mine—will answer it. True, he rested still, yet his was the ominous rest of reserves soon to be summoned to the front. This town at rest did not protect him; its light would seem as nothing when, like a young god, he rose above its golden dust. She looked at the strong arms which, in an hour, would decide the fortune of the Europe mail, bearing a high responsibility, like a city's fate. The thought troubled her. That this man alone, amongst those millions, was destined for the sacrifice made her sad. It estranged him from her love. She had cherished him, watched over him, caressed him, not for herself but for this night which was to take him. For struggles, fears, and victories which she would never know. Wild things they were, those hands of his, and only tamed to tenderness; their real task was dark to her. She knew this man's smile, his gentle ways of love, but not his godlike fury in the storm. She might snare him in a fragile net
of music, love, and flowers, but, at each departure, he would break forth without, it seemed to her, the least regret.

He opened his eyes. “What time is it?”

“Midnight.”

“How's the weather?”

“I don't know.”

He rose and, stretching himself, walked to the window. “Won't be too cold. What's the wind?”

“How should I know?”

He leaned out. “Southerly. That's tophole. It'll hold as far as Brazil anyhow.”

He looked at the moon and reckoned up his riches and then his gaze fell upon the town below. Not warm or kind or bright it seemed to him; already in his mind's eye its worthless, shining sands were running out.

“What are you thinking about?”

He was thinking of the fog he might encounter toward Porto Allegre.

“I've made my plans. I know exactly where to turn.”

He still was bending down, inhaling deeply like a man about to plunge, naked, into the sea.

“You don't even seem to mind it! How long will you be away?” she asked.

A week or ten days, he couldn't say. “Mind it?” Why should he? All those cities, plains, and mountains.... In freedom he was going out to conquer them. In under an hour, he thought, he would have annexed Buenos Aires and tossed it aside!

He smiled at his thoughts. This town ... it will soon be left behind. It's fine starting out at night.
One opens out the gas, facing south, and ten seconds later swings the landscape roundabout, heading up north. The town looks like the bottom of the sea.

She thought of all a man must lay aside to conquer. “So you don't like your home?”

“I do like my home.”

But his wife knew that he was already on his way and even now his sturdy shoulders were pressing up against the sky.

She pointed to the sky. “A fine night. See, your road is paved with stars!”

He laughed. “Yes.”

She rested her hand on his shoulder and its moist warmth disquieted her; did some danger threaten this young flesh of his?

“I know how strong you are, but—do take care!”

“Of course I'll take care.”

Then he began dressing. For the occasion he chose the coarsest, roughest fabrics, the heaviest of leather—a peasant's kit. The heavier he grew, the more she admired him. Herself she buckled his belt, helped to pull his boots on.

“These boots pinch me!”

“Here are the others.”

“Bring a cord for my emergency lamp.”

She looked at him, set to rights the last flaw in his armor; all fell into place.

“You look splendid.”

Then she noticed that he was carefully brushing his hair.

“For the benefit of the stars?” she questioned.

“I don't want to feel old.”

“I'm jealous.”

He laughed again and kissed her, pressing her to his heavy garments. Then he lifted her from the ground between his outstretched arms, like a little girl, and, laughing still, deposited her on the bed.

“Go to sleep!”

He shut the door behind him and, passing amongst the indistinguishable folk of night, took the first step toward his conquests.

She remained, sadly looking at these flowers and books, little friendly things which meant for him no more than the bottom of the sea.

Rivière greeted him.

“That's a nice trick you played on me, your last trip! You turned back though the weather reports were good. You could have pushed through all right. Got the wind up?”

Surprised, the pilot found no answer. He slowly rubbed his hands one on the other. Then, raising his head, he looked Rivière in the eyes.

“Yes,” he answered.

Deep in himself Rivière felt sorry for this brave fellow who had been afraid. The pilot tried to explain.

“I couldn't see a thing. No doubt, further on ... perhaps ... the radio said.... But my lamp was getting weak and I couldn't see my hands. I tried turning on my flying-light so as to spot a
wing anyhow, but I saw nothing. It was like being at the bottom of a huge pit, and no getting out of it. Then my engine started a rattle.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No, we had a look at it. In perfect order. But a man always thinks the engine's rattling when he gets the wind up.”

“And who wouldn't? The mountains were above me. When I tried to climb I got caught in heavy squalls. When one can't see a damned thing, squalls, you know.... Instead of climbing I lost three hundred feet or more. I couldn't even see the gyroscope or the manometers. It struck me that the engine was running badly and heating up, and the oil pressure was going down. And it was dark as a plague of Egypt. Damned glad I was to see the lights of a town again.”

“You've too much imagination. That's what it is.”

The pilot left him.

Rivière sank back into the armchair and ran his fingers through his grizzled hair.

The pluckiest of my men, he thought. It was a fine thing he did that night, but I've stopped him from being afraid.

He felt a mood of weakness coming over him again.

To make oneself beloved one need only show pity. I show little pity, or I hide it. Sure enough it would be fine to create friendships and human kindness around me. A doctor can enjoy that in the course of his profession. But I'm the servant of events and, to make others serve them too, I've got to temper my men like steel. That dark
necessity is with me every night when I read over the flight reports. If I am slack and let events take charge, trusting to routine, always mysteriously something seems to happen. It is as if my will alone forbade the plane in flight from breaking or the storm to hold the mail up. My power sometimes amazes me.

His thoughts flowed on.

Simple enough, perhaps. Like a gardener's endless labor on his lawn; the mere pressure of his hand drives back into the soil the virgin forest which the earth will engender time and time again.

His thoughts turned to the pilot.

I am saving him from fear. I was not attacking
him
but, across him, that stubborn inertia which paralyzes men who face the unknown. If I listen and sympathize, if I take his adventure seriously, he will fancy he is returning from a land of mystery, and mystery alone is at the root of fear. We must do away with mystery. Men who have gone down into the pit of darkness must come up and say—there's nothing in it! This man must enter the inmost heart of night, that clotted darkness, without even his little miner's daw whose light falling only on a hand or wing suffices to push the unknown a shoulder's breath away.

Yet a silent communion, deep within them, united Rivière and his pilots in the battle. All were like shipmates, sharing a common will to victory.

Rivière remembered other battles he had joined to conquer night. In official circles darkness was dreaded as a desert unexplored. The idea of
launching a craft at a hundred and fifty miles an hour against the storm and mists and all the solid obstacles night veils in darkness might suit the military arm; you leave on a fine night, drop bombs and return to your starting point. But regular night services were doomed to fail. “It's a matter of life and death,” said Rivière, “for the lead we gain by day on ships and railways is lost each night.”

Disgusted, he had heard them prate of balance sheets, insurance, and, above all, public opinion. “Public opinion!” he exclaimed. “The public does as it's told!” But it was all waste of time, he was saying to himself. There's something far above all that. A living thing forces its way through, makes its own laws to live and nothing can resist it. Rivière had no notion when or how commercial aviation would tackle the problem of night flying but its inevitable solution must be prepared for.

Those green tablecloths over which he had leaned, his chin propped on his arm, well he remembered them! And his feeling of power as he heard the others' quibbles! Futile these had seemed, doomed from the outset by the force of life. He felt the weight of energy that gathered in him. And I shall win, thought Rivière, for the weight of argument is on my side. That is the natural trend of things. They urged him to propose a Utopian scheme, devoid of every risk. “Experience will guide us to the rules,” he said. “You cannot make rules precede practical experience.”

After a hard year's struggles, Rivière got his way. “His faith saw him through,” said some, but
others: “No, his tenacity. Why, the fellow's as obstinate as a bear!” But Rivière put his success down to the fact that he had lent his weight to the better cause.

Safety first was the obsession of those early days. Planes were to leave only an hour before dawn, to land only an hour after sunset. When Rivière felt surer of his ground, then and only then did he venture to send his planes into the depth of night. And now, with few to back him, disowned by nearly all, he plowed a lonely furrow.

Rivière rang up to learn the latest messages from the planes in flight.

Now the Patagonia mail was entering the storm and Fabien abandoned all idea of circumventing it; it was too widespread for that, he reckoned, for the vista of lightning flashes led far inland, exposing battlement on battlement of clouds. He decided to try passing below it, ready to beat a retreat if things took a bad turn.

He read his altitude, five thousand five hundred feet, and pressed the controls with his palms to bring it down. The engine started thudding violently, setting all the plane aquiver. Fabien corrected the gliding angle approximately, verifying on the map the height of the hills, some sixteen hundred feet. To keep a safety margin he determined to fly at a trifle above two thousand, staking his altitude as a gambler risks his fortune.

An eddy dragged him down, making the plane tremble still more harshly and he felt the threat of unseen avalanches that toppled all about him He dreamt an instant of retreat and its guerdon of a hundred thousand stars, but did not shift his course by one degree.

Fabien weighed his chances; probably this was just a local storm, as Trelew, the next halt, was signaling a sky only three-quarters overcast. A bare twenty minutes more of solid murk and he would be through with it. Nevertheless the pilot felt uneasy. Leaning to his left, to windward, he sought to catch those vague gleams which, even in darkest nights, flit here and there. But even those vagrant gleams were gone; at most there lingered patches in the mass of shadow where the night seemed less opaque, or was it only that his eyes were growing strained?

The wireless operator handed him a slip of paper.

“Where are we?”

Fabien would have given much to know. “Can't say exactly,” he answered. “We are flying by compass across a storm.”

He leaned down again. The flame from the exhaust was getting on his nerves. There it was, clinging to the motor like a spray of fireflowers, so pale it seemed that moonlight would have quelled it, but, in this nothingness, engulfing all the visible world. He watched it streaming stiffly out into the wind, like a torch flame.

Every thirty seconds Fabien bent down into the cockpit to check the gyroscope and compass. He dared not light the dim red lamps which
would have dazzled his eyes for some moments, but the luminous dial hands were ceaselessly emitting their pale and starry radiance. And in all those needles and printed figures the pilot found an illusive reassurance, as in the cabin of a ship swept by the waves. For, like a very sea of strange fatality, the night was rolling up against him with all its rocks and reefs and wreckage.

“Where are we?” the operator asked again.

Fabien drew himself up and, leaning to the left, resumed his tremendous vigil. He had no notion left how many hours more and what efforts would be needed to deliver him from fettering darkness. Would he ever come clear, he wondered, for he was staking his life on this little slip of dirty, crumpled paper, which he unfolded and re-read a thousand times to nurse his hopes:
Trelew. Sky three-quarters overcast. Westerly breeze.
If there still remained a clear patch over Trelew, he would presently glimpse its lights across a cloud rift. Unless....

That promise of a faint gleam far ahead beckoned him on; but, to make sure, he scribbled a message to the radio operator. “Don't know if I can get through. Ask if the weather's holding out behind.”