university, a way to a certain low street in the Meidling district, and a
desolate room. Jules had descended there because he had no money,
because his father had sent none, had sent none because Jules had asked
for none, because he had ceased to answer his father’s letters. Hendryk
F O U R F R E E D O M S / 31
found him shoeless and shirtless on his bed, in his cabinet only a vial
of prussic acid he was unable (he told Hendryk later that night) to
muster the energy to open and swallow.
Henry was right, that there was an industry to build; right that he would
not win his share in it without his brother by his side, to keep his craft
in trim. It wasn’t surprising that all his life from that time on Henry
Van Damme thought of suicide as the enemy, a universal force that
Freud had discovered (such was Henry’s understanding of what he’d
learned of Freud’s ideas, beginning that year in Vienna); nor that, close
as it was bound to brotherhood and to death, flight nevertheless seemed
to him to be the reply, or the counterforce: suicide was the ultimate
negation, but flight the negation of negation itself.
The doctors at the brand-new Landes-Heil und Pflegeanstalt für
Nerven- und Geisteskranke where Jules was treated would not explain
to Hendryk and Eudoxe what Jules suffered from, though they took
grave credit when it passed. Jules wouldn’t say what had occurred
between him and the doctors: he would only say that whatever had
been so wrong with him was now all gone forever. The brothers were
from then on inseparable in business, their contrary qualities making
them famous, nearly folkloric, figures in the capitalism of the new cen-
tury, its Mutt and Jeff, its Laurel and Hardy, its Paul Bunyan and
Johnny Inkslinger. Henry, so big, so ready for anything—he loved
speedboats and race cars, ate what the press always described as Lucul-
lan feasts, married three times, walked away from the crash of his first
Robur clipper singed and eyeglass-less and still grinning—was a match
made in the funny papers with unsmiling lean Julius, his eternal hard
collar and overstuffed document case, a head shorter than his brother.
When Van Damme Aero received the 1938 Collier Trophy for
achievement in aeronautics, Henry was seated at the luncheon next to
the President; he watched as the President lifted himself, or was lifted,
to a standing position to deliver a brief, witty speech in Henry’s honor.
Then an aide seated right behind the lectern, sensing that the President
was done almost before his peroration was finished, half-rose and
unobtrusively put a cane into the President’s hand, and helped him
again to his seat, slipping the locks of his braces while everyone looked
32 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
elsewhere or at the President’s radiant grin. He lifted his old-fashioned
to Henry, who raised his glass of water in response.
“Mr. President,” Henry said, “I believe you would enjoy flying.”
“I couldn’t do it,” the President said, with dismissive modesty, still
grinning.
“You sail, don’t you, Mr. President?”
“I do, and I enjoy it. Always have.”
“Well, air is a fluid. Managing a craft in the air is in many ways the
same.”
“You don’t say.”
“I assure you.”
It wasn’t really so—after all a boat skims the surface of one fluid
while passing through another that is fluid only in a different sense—
but at that moment it seemed true to Henry Van Damme. It seemed
important to say.
“The controls require a lot of foot power, as I understand,” the
President said mildly, affixing a Camel in a long cigarette holder.
“A technical detail, easily altered.”
“Well.” He tossed his head back, that way he had, delighted in him-
self, the world, his perceptions. “I shall put it to my cabinet. I’m sure
they’ll be happy to see me barnstorming come election time. You build
me a plane, Mr. Van Damme, and I will fly it.”
“Done, Mr. President.”
Henry spent some time with his engineers, designing a small light
plane, neat as an R-class racing yacht, that could be controlled entirely
by hands, and delivered it to the White House two months before Pearl
Harbor. When Henry and Julius flew to Washington in 1942 to propose
what would become the Aviation Board—the great consortium of all
the major aircraft builders to share their plants and workers and skills
and even their patents among themselves so as to build a fleet of planes
such as the world had never seen, and in record time too, as if there
were any relevant records—it seemed not the time to mention that pretty
little craft. Henry was more tempted to prescribe some remedies he
knew about for the weary and hard-breathing man who brought them
into his office and spoke with undiminished cheer to them, before turn-
ing them over to the appropriate cabinet secretary. Henry said later to
Julius in the washroom: The man’ll be dead within the year.
3
Glaive,” said Julius.
“ ‘Glaive’? ” Henry asked. “What the hell is that?”
Julius consulted the papers before him. The vice presidents
for Sales and Employment waited for the brothers’ attention to
return to the actual subject of the meeting. “It’s a kind of poleax,” he
said. “Like a sword on a stick.” He waved an imaginary one before
him, striking down an enemy.
“I don’t know,” Henry said, lacing his fingers together over his mid-
riff. “Let’s not give it a name people have to look up.”
Julius shrugged, to say he had sought out the possible names Henry
had asked for and wouldn’t dispute Henry if Henry had an idea he
liked better. All the Van Damme Aero military craft had the names of
ancient weapons: the A-21 Sword, the F-10 Spear.
“Mace,” Julius said. “Halberd.”
Henry stood; his special chair, designed by himself to accommodate
and conform to his movements, seemed to shrug him forth and then
resume its former posture. He approached the wide windows, canted like
an airship’s, that looked down on the floor where the A-21s moved in
stately procession, growing more complete at every station, though so
slowly it seemed they stood still. Even through two layers of glass he could
hear the gonglike sounds, the thuds and roars, the sizzle of arc welders.
34 / J O H N C R O W L E Y
“You won’t be able to build it like you build these,” he said. “It’s
too damn big. You’ll have to go back to the old way. Bring the people
to the plane, a team for each. It’ll cost more, take more time.”
The vice presidents were solemn.
“Nor can we build it here,” Henry said. He’d said that before. “Is
there land we can extend into?”
“Not contiguous to this plant.”
“How about the farms and fields?” The present plant had been built
where once a walnut orchard had stood; they’d said about it then that
the orchard had taken thirty years to grow and had come down in
thirty minutes.
“Almost all of them are producing for the armed forces now,” Julius
said. “Making a mint. If you want them you’d have to get the govern-
ment to invoke eminent domain. Could take a year.”
“Very well, you’re right, it’s a bad idea, take too long, cost too
much. We just have to find someplace new, someplace we can throw up
a lot of big buildings very quick.”
“Very quick,” Julius said. “I’m already working on it.”
“Lots of land out there,” Henry said, motioning eastward. “Across