This nimbleness, too, was war.
As was the hallucinatory reappearance, the following morning, of the man in black leather…
They had reached the end of a field covered in snow, and recognized the airfield they had spent four days searching for. There, beside a heavy three-engined aircraft, the interrogation scene was being repeated, as if in a wounded man's delirious dream. There was this man clad in a long black leather coat, a man taller than and substantially different from the first, but acting out the same role. Pistol in hand, he was pacing up and down in the middle of a group of officers, uttering threats coupled with oaths, pointing at the aircraft and from time to time tapping on the fuselage. He did not seem to notice the arrival of Jacques Dorme and his guide, the flying officer.
"I know all about your sabotage!" he was yelling. "I've caught you red-handed. I know you're trying to undermine the decisions of the Supreme Commander…" Intermingled with oaths as they were, these accusations had a bizarre ring in Jacques Dorme's ears, with the Supreme Commander, Stalin, finding himself sandwiched between a "shit!" and a "fuck-your-mother!" An officer in a pilot's flight suit spoke up in the tones of a schoolboy seeking to excuse himself: "But, Comrade Inspector, we can't load twice its capacity…" There was a further procession of "fuck-your-mothers" and "shits," coupled, this time, with "the Party": "If the Party decides this aircraft can carry three tons that means it can carry three tons! And anyone who opposes the decisions of the Party is a fascist lackey and will be liquidated!" The barrel of the pistol jabbed at the pilot's cheek. He swallowed his saliva and whispered: "I'm willing to give it one more try, but…" The man in leather lowered the pistoclass="underline" "But it will be your last. The Party will not tolerate the presence of fascist agents in the ranks of our squadrons."
The pilot and another officer took their places in the aircraft. Jacques Dorme felt as if he were going in with them, imitating each move they made in the cockpit, studying the instrument panel… He had recognized the aircraft as soon as he set eyes on it, despite the state it was in: it was a Junkers 52, the very type he had flown in Spain. The machine gun had been removed and the turret dismantled (perhaps so that it could carry the famous three-ton load decided on by the Party). And the outer surface of the fuselage and the wings had been painted a murky blue.
The runway was long enough, but the aircraft began to taxi sluggishly, the jolting of the run pulled it down against the ground. A hundred yards before the line of snowdrifts at the edge, the aircraft reared, raised its nose, then clung to the runway, began to veer around, and swerved off toward the virgin snow. The engines fell silent.
The man in leather drew his pistol and began running toward the plane. Everyone followed him but with hesitant steps, not knowing how to avoid the cowardice of involvement. The pilot had climbed out and was standing close to the plane, his eyes on the running man. His comrade was hiding behind it, pretending to examine a propeller.
His voice raw with rage and the cold, the man in leather barked out: "Not content with disobeying the orders of the Party, you also attempt to destroy military equipment. For this you will all be court-martialed. You too!" He swung round at a staff sergeant who was standing on the sidelines.
At this moment the lieutenant intervened, introduced himself, introduced Jacques Dorme. The man in leather stared at them disdainfully, then cried out in shrill tones: "So what's he waiting for? Let him get in. Let him prove he's a pilot and not a spy parachuted in during the night!"
Jacques Dorme walked around the aircraft and asked to see the cargo. The pilot sighed and opened the door, and they climbed into the dark cabin of the Junkers. The interior was taken up with big wooden crates and piled high with scrap metaclass="underline" thick cast-iron slabs, tank tracks… This test flight had no doubt been devised to measure the maximum load. They climbed out. A crowd formed around Jacques Dorme. There was a steely silence. Gusts of wind could be heard hissing against the blades of the propeller. "It can be done," stated Jacques Dorme, "but there's one thing I shall need…"
The man in leather grimaced mistrustfully. "What more do you want? An auxiliary engine, perhaps?" Jacques Dorme shook his head: "No, not an engine. Two bars of soap…"
There was such a violent explosion of laughter that a flock of rooks clattered up from the roof of a hangar and wheeled off over the fields, as if borne away by a storm. The lieutenant was laughing, bent double, the pilot with his face resting against the fuselage of the Junkers, the staff sergeant with his fists pressed to his eyes, the others spinning around, their legs shaking, as if drunk. A cap rolled in the snow, their eyes wept tears. The man in leather danced around among them, thumping them on the back and shoulders with the butt of his pistol… In vain – their laughter sprang from being too close to death. When the spasms finally calmed down, when the officers had stopped pretending to soap their necks and chests, the laughter took hold of the man in leather. He could not help himself, he forced his voice to seem threatening, froze the muscles on his face, but the eruption burst forth from his clenched lips, twisted his waxen mask, he was squealing. The others looked at him in silence, with preoccupied, almost distressed expressions. It was probably in order to save face that, between two of his squeals, he shouted: "Get him what he wants!"
The aircraft gathered speed, taxied back to the start of the runway, and braked. Jacques Dorme jumped to the ground and went around to join the man in the flying suit, who had remained with the crates. At the other end of the field the inspector could be seen running toward them, waving his pistol… They lifted up one end of a long crate that loomed large there, right in the middle of the cabin. Jacques Dorme slid the two pieces of soap under its wooden base, one at each side. "If you can manage to push it forward," he said to the man, who was beginning to understand, "we're saved…" And he explained the precise moment when the center of gravity should be manipulated.
The aircraft began its takeoff run, passing a few yards away from the man in leather, and lifted clear of the earth, just grazing the rim of ice. And began to lose height.
From the ground they could see that the left wing was tilting down; it was losing speed, grinding to a halt, it seemed to them. "It's a goner!" murmured the staff sergeant. Suddenly, with an abrupt roll, the plane tilted the other way, the right wing now plunging downward, but less dangerously and losing less momentum. And once more it limped to the left, then once again to the right… Thus it gained height, now swaying less and looking more and more like an ordinary aircraft. "He tossed it!" exclaimed one of the pilots in the group on the runway. And several voices took up the cry, admiringly: "He tossed the pancake!" The maneuver was known to them as a way of getting overloaded aircraft off the ground, but only real aces could bring it off.
In the cargo area sat the man in the flying suit, leaning his back against a long crate arranged at an angle. His eyes were reddened and he was panting jerkily. When he recovered his breath, he got up and crawled over to a window. Down below lay the winding course of a river, gray beneath the ice, the airfield no longer visible. He opened the door and began throwing out pieces of scrap metal, then, shoving it along the soapy floor, a whole crate. "That way we've a better chance of landing, with that madman…" He pricked up his ears. The pilot was singing. In a language unknown to him.
At the end of April Jacques Dorme learned that he was going to be posted to a completely new squadron, a special unit that would fly American planes from Alaska across Siberia. He was disappointed. He had hoped to be taken on as a fighter pilot, to go and fight at the front. One detail consoled him: flying this route, over three thousand miles long, was considered to be much more dangerous than operating over enemy lines.