The Blue Afternoon

by William Boyd

  “I wanted a complete cross-section,” Pantaleon explained. “Their signatures on the certificate of attestation will be very impressive, no?” He smiled and looked at his watch. “We’re just waiting for the final one—an American—from the Governor’s Office. I thought it was important to have an American.”

  “Who’ve you got?” Carriscant asked. His nausea had returned, it was coming and going in waves; he was beginning to wish he had eaten breakfast.

  “I don’t know. They said they’d send someone along. Are you all right?”

  “I’m a bit hungry.”

  “All I have is some beer. And champagne for afterwards.”

  “Beer will do.” Carriscant drank a bottle of gassy San Miguel beer—la mas sobrosa y sustanciosa, it said on the label—and spent the next five minutes belching softly to himself. The crowd in the meadow, sheltering beneath umbrellas, had grown to over two hundred. Small boys with stiff-bristled brushes swept any accumulating water off the wooden roadway. Carriscant noticed that the guava trees at the end of the field had been cut down and in the middle of the paddy field beyond was a large square of white canvas stretched between two poles. That marked the target distance, he supposed, and he saw a small group of people huddled not far from it, the better to witness the historic moment. For the first time he asked himself an important, practical question: if indeed they did manage to leave the ground and travel sufficiently far to reach the marker, where and how were they going to come down? He put this point to Pantaleon with some urgency.

  “Oh, in the rice fields,” Pantaleon said. “I’ve paid the farmer in advance. The mud and the water will make a soft landing. Don’t worry, I’m not going to attempt anything beyond the demands of the competition.”

  “Good.”

  “We can save turning and setting down for another occasion.”

  “Mmm.” In the corner of his eye he spotted an American soldier in uniform who looked uncannily like Sieverance.

  “Morning, Carriscant,” Sieverance called cheerfully, striding over. “I must say this is very intrepid of you.” He greeted Pantaleon. “Dr Quiroga, good to see you. Governor Taft asked me to wish you good luck and sends his best wishes.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Pantaleon said to Carriscant later, when Sieverance had gone. “I had no idea they would send him, believe me, Salvador.”

  “I suppose he was curious,” Carriscant said; the sight of Sieverance had not unsettled him as much as he had expected. “Oh dear, looks like the rain has set in.”

  But the squall passed and ten minutes later the sun shone brightly, she wooden planks on the roadway steaming visibly as they warmed. The Aero-mobile was wheeled out of the barn again and set in place at its starting point. Pantaleon climbed on a stepladder and made a short speech.

  “We are men of the new century,” he said, reading from notes, “and it is thus our signal duty to look forward. The challenge of heavier-than-air powered flight is the greatest objective mankind will face in the coming years. It seems fitting to me that this attempt on the Amberway-Richault prize should be made by two surgeons, two men who embody the new century’s spirit of science walking hand in hand with human endeavour. We who are exploring the innermost recesses of the human body should not neglect this globe’s wider frontiers. I want to thank my dear friend, Dr Salvador Carriscant, for his support and fortitude. I thank you all for being here on this historic day for our country. God bless the Philippine people and our enterprise.” Considerable applause greeted this.

  The time had come. As if in a dream Carriscant found himself climbing into the rear saddle in the nose of the Aero-mobile. The two warping handles jutted up in front of him and without thinking he grasped them firmly, pulling them this way and that and causing the tail to turn in response. A soft salvo of flash powder greeted this impulsive gesture. Behind him Pantaleon began to swing the propeller. Carriscant prayed earnestly for a fuel leak, a faulty connection, a blown gasket, anything, but on the third attempt the pistons fired and the shrill irate roar of the Flanquin filled his ears. He felt the vibrations travel up his spine and suddenly he wished he was wearing different clothes: he felt a complete fool in his white linen suit and his glossy English brogues. Pantaleon flapped round the wing in his leather coat as the second propeller began to turn. He climbed into the forward saddle and inserted his feet into the stirrup controls. He twisted round to face Carriscant, his eyes bright, two darker spots on his brown face where his blush glowed.

  “Thank you, my friend,” he said emotionally. “All that bad feeling is behind us now. Please tell me it’s so.”

  “Completely forgotten, Panta.” He paused. “Now, you’re quite sure this is safe.”

  “You’re more at risk in a carromato,” he said, with serene confidence. “Now remember, only when I reach up for the air-catcher do you take over the warp controls. Otherwise, do nothing.”

  “Right.”

  Pantaleon reached up to the twin handles above his shoulder and pushed them, raising the long flap on the leading edge to its full extent. Then he turned up the throttle control to full and the Aero-mobile began to thrum and judder violently. He gave the signal to the boy to pull away the wooden chocks and released the brake on the bicycle wheels.

  With a brutal jerk the Aero-mobile lurched forward. Carriscant was flung backwards and as the whip crack effect hurled him forward again his nose smashed heavily into Pantaleon’s back between his shoulder blades. His vision dimmed as his eyes flooded with salty tears and he sensed, rather than saw, the hot plumes of blood jet from his nostrils.

  He was aware of the tremendous noise of the engine and the hollow drumming sound of the wheels on the roadway planks as the machine began to pick up speed. As he blinked his eyes clear he saw the dark dripping splash of his blood on Pantaleon’s coat back and, to his horror, he realised that his entire front was a sopping swathe of red, that pools had gathered in the creases in his lap and that more was still snorting from his nose.

  “Stop!” he screamed. “You’ve got to stop it!”

  Pantaleon was sitting hunched forward over his controls, oblivious, like a racing cyclist in a sprint. Carriscant now felt the speed of their passage whip the ribbons of blood and snot away from his nose to sprinkle the rear section behind him, the heavy drops pattering on the stretched fabric. Then there was a sudden decrease in noise and he. realised the drumming of the wheels had ceased. Beyond his left thigh he saw the cruciform shadow of the Aero-mobile begin to shrink slowly. To his absolute horror he realised that they had taken to the air.

  In front of him Pantaleon began to whoop and caw like some maddened, tormented bird. Glancing down, he saw the white discs of the lopped trees at the meadow’s end flash beneath them and he realised they were considerably higher than ten feet from the ground. The engine too seemed to be straining unnaturally hard as the sensation of forward motion gave way and was replaced by a kind of dreamlike buoyancy as the Aero-mobile seemed to rise almost vertically in the air like a gull gliding in a warm thermal.

  “We’re too high!” Carriscant yelled.

  Pantaleon turned, gaped in shock, and almost fell from his saddle at the sight of his blood-boltered passenger.

  “My God! What happened?”

  “We’re too fucking high!” Carriscant screamed in his face.

  “Take the controls!”

  Panicking, suddenly obedient, Carriscant gripped the two warping levers and felt the animate vibration of the flying machine transfer itself to his body. Pantaleon reached up and took hold of the air-catcher flap handles. And pulled down.

  The machine shuddered and the Aero-mobile slipped nervily sideways.

  “Mother of God!” Pantaleon cried in alarm.

  Carriscant felt one of the warping levers whip itself forward out of his grasp and the machine began to descend in a quickening sideways glide to the left. Carriscant reached forward and tugged on the handle. It would not move, jammed fast.

  “We’ve passed it!” Pantaleon scre
eched, pointing.

  Over on the right Carriscant saw the square of white canvas disappear beneath the lower wing. They were higher than the bamboo still, he saw, higher than the palm trees. Jesus. Fifty, sixty feet, he thought. Oh my God. But the left side wings were still pointing down and there was no doubt that their side–slipping descent was growing speedier by the second.

  Suddenly the engine cut out. The straining roar was replaced by a pleasant whistling and creaking noise as the wind sang over the stretched wires and the wooden armature of the flying machine stretched and contracted beneath these unfamiliar stresses.

  “What’s happening?” he yelled in Pantaleon’s ear.

  “We’ve done it, my friend! We’ve done it!” Pantaleon sobbed.

  Over to the right Carriscant saw the belvedere of Sam-paloc convent and suddenly thought crazily—“low flying dove”. In front of him, over Pantaleon’s heaving shoulders, he saw the thick green mass of the riverine trees that marked the course of the San Roque estero.

  Lower, lower, they went and the pitch of the singing wires grew shriller and less pleasant.

  To his absolute shock he saw that Pantaleon was no longer bothering to work the controls. His face was buried in his hands as he sobbed fiercely in his triumph, blubbing and laughing in his moment of ecstasy.

  Carriscant tugged vainly at his jammed warping control.

  They swooped over a terrified peasant in his carabao cart.

  The sunlit green wall of trees whooshed up to meet them.

  The last sounds he heard were Pantaleon’s fervent sobs and the ethereal arctic whistle of the bracing wires.

  He never felt the impact, but he could not have been unconscious for very long. He came to, winded, on his back, with a horrible silence in his ears. He became aware of a ghastly unfamiliar coolness in his legs from the waist down. His first thought was: I am paralysed and I shall never live with Delphine. After a second or two’s smouldering, bitter despair he raised his head and realised his legs were submerged in water while his torso rested on a crescent of sand formed by a side eddy of the San Roque creek. Then he was jolted anew by the blood-soaked front of his suit, a coruscating red in the hazy sunshine. I must have lost pints, he thought vaguely, a good gallon. He touched his nose gently: tender but unbroken. He rolled on to his front and crawled out of the water. Then he vomited all the beer he had drunk, a lifetime ago, it seemed. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and stood up with great care.

  The Aero-mobile was twenty yards away, a crumpled sad-looking mess; its wings sheered off and folded back along its body by the impact of the two trees it had plunged between. Carriscant approached unsteadily. His entire body was beginning to ache. There was no sign of Pantaleon.

  He crouched by the water’s edge and washed his face clean of his blood. He told himself that any second now he would hear that daft elated voice saying, “My God, Salvador, what did I tell you! We’re the most famous men of our time!” but all that came to his ears was the disturbed twittering of the river birds and the sonorous ringing of the convent bell at Sampaloc, summoning its stunned citizens to come to the aid of the men in the machine that fell from the sky.

  He raised his eyes and saw Pantaleon’s face through the grasses on the other side of the stream. His eyes were wide, astonished, and his mouth was open. Except it was all wrong: like a face in a spoon his chin was above his mouth which was above his nose. His face was upside down but worse than that, he saw, as he waded across the stream to fetch his friend’s broken body, it was in the wrong place, peering out at him in surprise through the twisted crook of his right arm.

  ESCAPE

  The maiden flight of the Aero-movil numero uno lasted approximately seventeen seconds and observers estimated that at the apex of its climb it had reached a height of 80 feet and had travelled a distance of 2,800 feet over a pronounced leftward curving course. Unfortunately, Carriscant learned later, according to the rules of the Amberway-Richault prize, the destruction of the flying machine, or the injury or death of the flyer, rendered any attempt null and void. The senior adjudicator, Mr Gallo, thought the whole episode a great shame and hoped that Dr Carriscant would continue with his colleague’s pioneering work. He invited him to form the first committee of the Aero-Club of Manila. Carriscant agreed at once, nodding dully. Pantaleon’s death and his extraordinary achievement left him feeling both hugely upset and humbled, visited at the same time by an acute sense of loss and awestruck admiration.

  After giving his statement to the Sampaloc constabulary, and seeing Pantaleon’s blanket-shrouded body being carried into the police station, he returned to the nipa barn where he found the place deserted, the crowd quite dispersed. He wondered how many of them were aware that the Aero-mobilist himself had perished in his attempt to win the Amberway-Richault prize. Carriscant walked morosely up and down the wooden roadway trying to come to terms with what happened, trying to sort and understand those endless seconds of terror and alarm. At least Panta had felt that exhilaration he so craved surge through his body. Carriscant remembered his manic shrieks and yelps of triumph as they really flew for the first time, recalled his sobs of helpless gratitude as they hurtled towards the trees on the San Roque estero. At least Pantaleon had died happy, full of the knowledge that he had achieved something monumental and triumphant. There were worse ends than that, he reflected, worse ways to die, and he sensed some of his sadness wane, and grew aware that, simultaneously, there was a new emotion blooming inside him, a feeling building of an irrepressible and transforming jubilation. That his own life had been spared now appeared to him the most astonishing miracle and, while he knew that he would still shed a few tears for his lost friend, a voice inside him was whispering delightedly, “You’re alive, alive, ALIVE!” Whether it was blind chance or divine intervention he was taking it as a clear sign. Carriscant’s luck…Carriscant’s luck was holding. Salvador Carriscant and Delphine Blythe Sieverance were destined to be together. Everything that was due to happen in the next few days was going to go according to plan. He knew, with a fierce, passionate certainty, that now all was going to be well.

  The next morning he woke stiff and bruised, with a large livid weal on his left thigh and a left shoulder that clicked audibly, and ached, whenever he raised his hand above chest level. He endured the next few days in a somnabulist’s stupor, doggedly and diligently following the routines of his work and home life, concentrating intensely on the matter in hand however insignificant and banal. On the morning of 20 May he rose early and went to the San Jeronimo as usual. He returned home in the afternoon, knowing he would find Annaliese absent, and wrote her a note saying that a long and complicated operation looked like it would necessitate his staying late that night at the hospital and she should not wait up for him. At the end of the afternoon, before leaving, he glanced around his silent house wondering if there were any small object or precious possession he wanted to take with him, but could think of nothing in particular. He remembered Delphine’s comments, how nothing was owned, how possessions were merely borrowed from the world’s supply for a short period of time, and decided to leave empty-handed. He would stride away from his house with only the clothes he stood up in. He was going to make as fresh a start as the woman he loved.

  The evening routine at the hospital passed in its usual fashion. He tried to keep himself busy, to avoid looking at his watch or any of the clocks positioned at the intersections of passageways. Other members of staff, knowing he was taking two weeks’ leave, wished him a pleasant stay in San Teodoro, some even commented he was looking tired and was clearly in need of a rest. News of Pantaleon’s death had depressed everyone, and the mood was sombre.

  At around 9 in the evening he was suddenly overcome with fatigue, after the mental and physical stresses of the past few days, and fell asleep in the armchair in his consulting room.

  He dreamed about Pantaleon. A Pantaleon impeccably dressed, accepting a soup-plate-sized medal from a tiny potentate; Pantaleon, flying like a bird,
his arms gracefully flapping, as he circled the belvedere at Sampaloc cawing raucously like a rook; Pantaleon making a speech outside the nipa barn extolling the beauties of someone who sounded suspiciously like Delphine. Then a jumble of images from the flight itself: the freshly lopped trunks of the guava trees slipping beneath the wing; Sieverance in his uniform shaking hands with the other adjudicators; the stark shock on Pantaleon’s face as he registered the blood–soaked clothing of his co-flyer. Then he saw the twisted upside-down stare of Pantaleon dead, his lips moving as he delivered a version of his usual pre-operation injunction: “Spring has come, Salvador,” he said softly. “It’s time to plant rice.”

  He woke abruptly, immediately awake, and checked his watch. He walked through the dark wards, past the sleeping patients, quietly greeting the nuns at their stations, feeling alert and poised. There was a minimum of staff on duty. In the main reception hall at the front gate a few messengers lounged and snoozed. No other doctors were in the hospital, only a duty sister sat behind her wooden desk, patiently embroidering a muslin camisa. The San Jeronimo did not encourage emergencies out of normal working hours.

  He returned to his office via his operating theatre, just to make sure once again that everything was prepared and ready. As he stood there he felt a shiver of expectation run through him, a thin filament of excitement energising his body. It could not be long now: he was ready.

  In his office he completed his paperwork and tidied his desk. In the desk drawer of Señora Diaz was another sealed letter—with instructions for it to be delivered to Annaliese a week hence—saying that he had left her, for ever, and had gone in search of a new life. He wondered now if this was the right note to strike? If Annaliese thought he had gone to his mother’s and heard nothing after two weeks she would become alarmed. By the time she discovered he had never been there it would be too late. Searches would be initiated, the police would be informed, but there would be no sign, perhaps he might have been spotted down by the docks? Had he been killed? If not that, why would he run away? There would never be any answers to these questions and perhaps that silence would be kinder to Annaliese. She could then in her grief and bafflement construct whatever explanation was the most consoling. He went to Señora Diaz’s desk and tore the letter up.