The man inspected the aircraft, asked his strange questions that would have been considered stupid if they had not contained hidden catches, never listened to the complete answer, and smiled. Everyone realized he had come because the war was about to end and back in Moscow they needed to issue a reminder of who was master. However, what the pilots could not yet guess was that soon the Americans, who were supplying these countless Douglases, Boeings, and Airacobras, were going to become enemies again and that all those who had taken part in this air bridge would come under suspicion. The man in black leather was already there to spot the lost sheep, to guard against ideological contagion.
At the end of his inspection he summoned those in charge of the base and the "leaders" of the squadrons. He talked about the slackening of Communist discipline, the lowering of class vigilance, and in particular castigated them over the organization of flights. "The command staff have tolerated total anarchy," he rapped out. "Bombers have been flying in the same groups as fighter aircraft and transport planes. I advise you to put an end to this chaos. Fighter planes must fly with fighters and bombers with…"
The pilots exchanged furtive glances, scratching their heads. They were secretly hoping that the man in leather would suddenly burst out laughing and exclaim in jocular tones: "I had you fooled for a moment!" But his voice remained accusatory and steely. When he spoke of flight plans being incorrectly drawn up, one of the pilots spoke up, belatedly, as if it had taken him time to bring himself to do so: "But, Comrade Inspector, a Boston has means of communication that are much more…" What he intended to say was that a bomber was better equipped with navigational aids than a fighter. The man in black leather lowered his voice almost to a whisper, and it was this menacing hiss that stopped the pilot short, better than a shout would have done: "I see, Comrade Lieutenant, that your contacts with the capitalist world have not been wasted on you…"
For several moments of heavy silence all that could be heard was the lashing of the blizzard unleashing its fury against the windows and the crunch of the gravel the prisoners were spreading over one of the runways. Quite physically, in his bones, Jacques Dorme sensed how fine the line was in this country that separated a free man, this flying officer staring in silence at his big hands as they lay on the table, from those prisoners whose only identity was a number stitched onto their padded jackets.
"Well, as for these contacts of yours, we'll see about that after the victory," the inspector resumed. "What's needed now is to bring some order into this shambles. Here is the map showing you the most direct routes between airfields. From now on you will travel via Zyryanka and not via Seymchan. This will cut out hundreds of kilometers, with a consequent saving on fuel. I wonder why the squadron commanders haven't thought of it before. But perhaps the longer route was recommended to them by American government representatives…"
This time no one said anything. On the map, a straight line, drawn with scholarly application, traced a route that started in Alaska and crossed Siberia. In its geometric logic it passed closer to Zyryanka, one of the auxiliary airfields, far to the north of the normal route. This was more of an emergency runway, envisaged for days when those at Seymchan disappeared beneath snowstorms. The man's pencil had drawn a line right across the terrible Chersky mountain chain, Arctic wastelands, even less explored than the areas currently overflown by the Alsib route… Left alone, the pilots stared long and hard at the map with its stubborn pencil line. The absurdity of it was too evident to be worth mentioning. "The Party line…" murmured the flying officer who had spoken earlier.
They knew the inspector could not return to Moscow without reporting on the subversive activities he had unmasked, the errors he had corrected. That was how the whole country functioned, by denouncing, criticizing, breaking records, and exceeding plans. And even at the People's Commissariat of State Security, to which the inspector belonged ("the GPU…" thought Jacques Dorme), plans had to be exceeded, you had to arrest more people than in the previous month, shoot more than your colleagues…
They talked briefly about the makeup of the flights for the next day then went to get some sleep. Outside, in the darkness of the polar night, the prisoners went on digging the frozen earth for the new runway.
After an hour in the air, Jacques Dorme transmitted this message to the group of aircraft he was leading: "Take the second route. Landing at Z impossible. Divert S." During the previous night he had managed to persuade the men in his squadron that the best solution was to go, as usual, to Seymchan. He alone would go to Zyryanka, from where he would call the base. The inspector, who was due to leave the following day, would not have time to hold an inquiry.
He veered slowly off to the right and in the ashen gloaming that passed for daylight saw the lights of the Aira-cobras turning toward the south.
As the minutes slipped by the man gradually became one with his aircraft, the shuddering of the steel matching the rhythm of his blood. The pilot's body yielded to the life of the machine, disappearing into the rhythm of the engine at his back as the throbbing of its vibrations varied from time to time. His gaze was lost in the gray light of this day on which the sun would not rise, then returned to the luminous specks on the instrument panel. The man was at once profoundly involved in the motion of this flying cockpit and utterly absent. Or rather present elsewhere, far from this ashen sky and these Chersky mountains that were beginning to pile up tier upon tier of their icy wastes. An elsewhere made up of a woman's voice, a woman's silences, the stillness of a house, of a time he felt he had always inhabited. This time unfolded quite separately from what was happening in the aircraft, around the aircraft. The violence of the wind made it necessary to maneuver, the icing-over reduced visibility. At a given moment it became clear that the runways of Zyryanka lay still farther to the northeast and that, at the risk of colliding with one of the mountain peaks, he was going to have to fly at a lower altitude, watch, concentrate, not give way to panic. The remoteness he sensed within himself gave him the strength to remain calm, to avoid going into a spin (that curse of the Airacobras), to stop checking the fuel at every moment. Not to sink to the level of being a man anxious to save his own skin at all costs.
He was to hold on to the sensation of that elsewhere right up to the end, right up to the purple luminescence of the northern fire that set the sky ablaze.
Alexandra finished her story as we walked back home. Dusk was already falling over the steppe. She spoke about the journey she had made to the former Alsib airfields, most of them abandoned after the war, and the peak at the southern end of the Chersky chain, three crags clustered together, which the local inhabitants called "the Trident," that she had failed to reach.
I walked beside her upon the dry grass, an endless rippling expanse that dazzled the eye as, stirred by the wind, it alternated between mauve and gold. The details of her journey stuck in my mind (and this would help me, a quarter of a century later, to locate the places she had told me about) but the astonishment I experienced was caused by something else. A man who had been quite unknown to me a week ago stood before me now, fully realized. Jacques Dorme, whose life story I perceived as a living and luminous whole.