Homo Faber

by Max Frisch

  It interested me, inasmuch as I, too, was concerned with the exploitation of underdeveloped areas; we agreed that roads would have to be built, perhaps even a small airfield, it was all a question of connections, the goods would be shipped at Puerto Barrios. A bold enterprise, it seemed to me, not unreasonable, however, perhaps really the future of the German cigar.

  He folded up the map.

  I wished him good luck.

  You couldn’t see anything on his map (1:500,000) anyway, a no man’s land, white with two blue lines, rivers, between green state frontiers, the only names (in red and unreadable without a magnifying glass) referred to Maya ruins.

  I wished him good luck.

  A brother of his, who had been living there for months, was obviously having trouble with the climate – I could just imagine it, flat, tropical country, the humidity during the rainy reason, the vertical sun.

  That was the end of the conversation.

  I smoked, gazing out of the window: below, the Gulf of Mexico, a multitude of little clouds casting violet shadows on the greenish sea, the usual play of colours, I had filmed it often enough. I shut my eyes to catch up on some of the sleep Ivy had robbed me of. The aeroplane was now absolutely quiet; so was my neighbour.

  He was reading his novel.

  Novels don’t interest me. Nor do dreams. I dreamed about Ivy, I think, anyhow I felt oppressed, it was in a Las Vegas poolroom (I’ve never been to Las Vegas in reality), there was a tremendous din and above it loudspeakers kept calling out my name, a chaos of blue and red and yellow automatic machines at which you could win money, a lottery, I was waiting among a lot of stark naked people to be divorced (though in reality I’m not married), somehow Professor O., my esteemed teacher at the Swiss College of Technology, was in it, he was wildly sentimental and kept weeping all the time, although he is a mathematician, or rather a professor of electrodynamics, it was very embarrassing, but the craziest thing of all, I was married to the Düsseldorfer!… I wanted to protest, but couldn’t open my mouth without holding my hand over it, for all my teeth had just fallen out, I could feel them in my mouth like so many pebbles…

  The moment I woke up I knew what was happening.

  Beneath us the open sea…

  It was the left-hand engine that had broken down; one propeller stood out like a rigid cross against the cloudless sky – that was all.

  Beneath us, as I have said, the Gulf of Mexico.

  Our air hostess, a girl of twenty, little more than a child to look at had taken hold of my left shoulder to wake me, but I realized what was going on before she told me, handing me a green life-jacket as she spoke; my neighbour was in the act of fastening his life-jacket, jokingly as in all such emergency drills.

  We were flying at an altitude of at least six thousand feet.

  Of course none of my teeth had fallen out, not even my crowned tooth, right upper fourth; I felt relieved, positively cheerful.

  From the corridor in front the captain announced:

  THERE IS NO DANGER WHATEVER.

  The life-jackets were just a precaution, our plane could have gone on flying even with two engines, we were eight and a half miles from the Mexican coast, heading for Tampico, all passengers were kindly requested to keep calm and for the moment not to smoke.

  THANK YOU.

  Everyone sat as though in church, all with green life-jackets on their chests. I explored with my tongue to make sure that none of my teeth were really loose, nothing else worried me.

  Time: 10.25 a.m.

  If we hadn’t been delayed by the snowstorm in the northern United States we should have landed in Mexico by now. I said so to my Düsseldorfer, merely for the sake of talking. I hate solemnity.

  No reply.

  I asked him what time he had.

  No reply.

  The engines, the other three, were running smoothly, and there was nothing to suggest any of these might cut out, we were not losing height, I could see that; then the coast in a haze, a kind of lagoon, beyond it swamps. No trace of Tampico yet, however. I remembered Tampico from an earlier visit, from a fish-poisoning I shall never forget as long as I live.

  ‘Tampico,’ I said, ‘that’s the filthiest town in the world, an oil port, you’ll see, it stinks either of oil or of fish…’

  He was fingering his life-jacket.

  ‘I’ll give you a piece of advice,’ I said. ‘Don’t eat any fish, whatever you do…’

  He tried to smile.

  ‘The natives are immune, of course,’ I said, ‘but it’s different for us… ’

  He nodded, without hearing. It seems I delivered quite a lecture on amoebas and on Tampico hotels. As soon as I noticed my Düsseldorfer wasn’t listening, I took him by the sleeve, a thing I don’t normally do, on the contrary, I hate this mania for taking hold of people’s sleeves. But otherwise he just wouldn’t have listened. I told him the whole tedious story of my ptomaine poisoning in Tampico in 1951, that is to say six years ago. Then I noticed that we were not flying parallel with the coast, but had turned inland. So we weren’t making for Tampico. I was amazed, and wanted to ask the air hostess what was going on.

  Permission to smoke again.

  Perhaps the Tampico airport was too small for our Super-Constellation (the other time it was a DC-4), or they had received instructions to fly on to Mexico City in spite of the engine trouble, which I couldn’t understand, with the Sierra Madre Oriental still in front of us. Our air hostess – I caught her elbow, a thing, as I have said, which I don’t normally do – had no time to answer questions, she had been called to the pilot.

  We were actually gaining height.

  I tried to think of Ivy.

  We were gaining height.

  Beneath us there were still swamps, shallow and turbid, divided by tongues of land, sand, the swamps were green in some places and in others red, the red of a lipstick, something I couldn’t understand, they were really not swamps but lagoons, and where they reflected the sun they glittered like tinsel or tinfoil, anyhow with a metallic glint, then again they were sky-blue and watery (like Ivy’s eyes) with yellow shoals and patches like violet ink, sombre, probably due to underwater plants, at one point a river flowed into the swamp, brown like milky American coffee, it was repulsive, nothing but lagoons mile after mile. The Düsseldorfer also had the feeling we were gaining height.

  People were talking again.

  There wasn’t even a decent map here, such as SWISSAIR always has available; and what got on my nerves was the idiotic information that the plane was making for Tampico, when it was really heading inland – and gaining height, as I have said, with three engines; I watched the three glittering discs, which occasionally seem to hesitate, though this is only an optical illusion, they were still the usual rotating circles of black. There was no cause for alarm. It was just that the rigid cross of a stationary propeller looks odd when you are in full flight.

  I felt sorry for our air hostess.

  She had to go from one row of seats to the next with an advertisement smile, asking if everybody felt comfortable in his life-jacket; as soon as someone made a little joke, she stopped smiling. ‘Can you swim in the mountains?’ I asked her.

  Orders were orders.

  I held the young lady, who could have been my daughter, by the arm, or rather by the wrist, and told her (jokingly, of course), shaking my finger at her, that she and she alone had forced me to make this flight. She answered:

  ‘There’s no danger, sir, no danger at all. We’re going to land in Mexico City in about an hour and twenty minutes.’

  That’s what she told everyone.

  I let her go, so that she could smile again and do her job, making sure everybody was fastened in. Shortly after this she received orders to bring lunch round, although it wasn’t lunch-time yet…. Fortunately the weather was fine overland too, almost no clouds, though there were gusts of wind as usual before mountains, the normal thermic conditions, so that our plane dropped and shook until it recovered
its balance and started to gain height again, before dropping once more with its wings rocking; for minutes at a time we flew along perfectly smoothly, then there came another bump that set the wings vibrating and the whole plane rolling again, until it righted itself once more and gained fresh height, as though it had straightened itself out for good now, till the next bump – the usual thing in turbulent air.

  In the distance the blue mountains.

  Sierra Madre Oriental.

  Below us the red desert.

  Shortly after this – my Düsseldorfer and I had just been given our lunch, the usual thing, fruit juice and a white sandwich with green salad – a second engine suddenly cut out, there was the inevitable panic, in spite of the lunch everybody had on his knees. Someone yelled.

  From this moment on everything moved very fast.

  The captain had obviously decided to make a forced landing, for fear the remaining engines might cut out. At all events we were losing height; the loudspeaker crackled and spluttered, so that we could scarcely understand a word of the instructions we were being given.

  My first worry: what to do with the lunch.

  We were losing height, although, as I said, two engines should have been enough; the landing wheels were out, as usual before a landing, and I simply put my lunch tray down on the floor in the gangway, although we were still at least fifteen hundred feet up.

  The air turbulence had stopped.

  NO SMOKING.

  I was aware of the danger that our plane might break in pieces or go up in flames as it landed – I was astounded at my own calm.

  I didn’t think of anyone.

  Things happened very quickly, as I have said; beneath us sand, a shallow valley between hills that seemed to be rocky, bare desert all around.

  Actually I felt only curious.

  We were coming in to land exactly as though there was an airstrip underneath us; I pressed my face to the window, you never see the runway till the last minute, when the brake-flaps are already out. I was surprised that the brake-flaps didn’t appear. Our plane was obviously avoiding any curve so as not to lose height and we flew on over the flat inviting plain; our shadow moved closer and closer to us, flying faster than we, so it seemed, a grey rag on the reddish sand, flapping.

  Then rocks.

  We rose again.

  Then, fortunately, sand again, but sand interspersed with agaves; we flew for some minutes at house-height, both engines at full speed, the undercarriage retracted again. That meant a belly landing. We were flying as one otherwise flies only at great heights, rather quietly and without an undercarriage – but at house-height, as I have said, and I knew there was no runway coming, nevertheless I pressed my face to the window.

  Our undercarriage was suddenly lowered again, although there was no runway coming, and also the brake-flaps; you felt it like a punch in the stomach, brakes, a drop as though in a lift; at the last moment I lost my nerve, so that the landing – all I saw were the agaves racing past on either side, then both hands over my face – was nothing but a blind bump, a crashing forward into unconsciousness.

  Then silence.

  We were damn lucky, I must say, nobody had so much as opened an emergency exit, I hadn’t myself, nobody moved, we hung forward, suspended on our safety belts.

  ‘Go on,’ said the captain, ‘go on.’

  No one moved.

  ‘Go on.’

  Fortunately there was no fire. People had to be told they could unfasten their belts, the doors were open, but of course no steps were wheeled up, the way we were used to, nothing but heat, like the air that comes out of an oven when you open the door, burning hot.

  I was uninjured.

  Finally the rope ladder.

  Without waiting for an order we all gathered in the shade under the wing; not a word was spoken, as though talking in the desert was forbidden. Our Super-Constellation was tilted slightly forward, there was no serious damage, only the front undercarriage was jammed, having sunk into the sand, it wasn’t even smashed up. The four propeller-crosses gleamed in the glaring blue sky; so did the three rudders. No one moved, as I said; obviously everyone was waiting for the captain to say something.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘here we are.’

  He laughed.

  All around nothing but agaves, sand, the reddish mountains in the distance, farther off than I had previously estimated, but above all sand and again sand, yellow, with the shimmer of hot air over it, like molten glass.

  Time: 11.05 a.m.

  I wound up my watch.

  The crew brought out blankets to protect the rubber tyres from the sun, while we stood around in our green life-jackets doing nothing. I don’t know why no one took his life-jacket off.

  *

  I don’t believe in providence and fate, as a technologist I am used to reckoning with the formulae of probability. What has providence to do with it? I admit that without this forced landing in Tamaulipas (2 April) everything would have turned out differently: I should never have got to know this young Hencke, I should perhaps never have heard of Hanna again, I shouldn’t know today that I was a father. It is impossible to imagine what would have happened if it hadn’t been for this forced landing in Tamaulipas. Sabeth might still be alive. I don’t deny that it was more than a coincidence which made things turn out as they did, it was a whole train of coincidences. But what has providence to do with it? I don’t need any mystical explanation for the occurrence of the improbable; mathematics explains it adequately, as far as I’m concerned.

  Mathematically speaking, the probable (that in 6,000,000,000 throws with a regular six-sided die the one will come up approximately 1,000,000,000 times) and the improbable (that in six throws with the same die the one will come up six times) are not different in kind, but only in frequency, whereby the more frequent appears a priori more probable. But the occasional occurrence of the improbable does not imply the intervention of a higher power, something in the nature of a miracle, as the layman is so ready to assume. The term probability includes improbability at the extreme limits of probability, and when the improbable does occur this is no cause for surprise, bewilderment or mystification.

  Cf. Ernst Mally’s Probability and Law, Hans Reichenbach’s The Theory of Probability, Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica, von Mises’ Probability, Statistics and Truth.

  *

  We remained in the desert of Tamaulipas, Mexico, for four-days and three nights, eighty-five hours in all, and there is little to report of this stay. It was not a magnificent experience, as everybody seems to expect when I talk about it. It was much too hot for that! Naturally I thought straight away of the Disney film, which was magnificent, and got out my camera; but absolutely nothing sensational happened, just an occasional lizard, which made me jump, and some creatures like sand spiders, that was all.

  There was nothing to do but wait.

  The first thing I did in the desert of Tamaulipas was to introduce myself to the Düsseldorfer, because he was interested in my camera; I explained its optics to him.

  Other people were reading.

  Fortunately, it soon turned out that he played chess, and as I always take my pocket chess set with me when I’m travelling, we were saved; he immediately organized a couple of empty Coca-Cola crates, we sat down away from the rest to escape from the general chatter, in the shadow of the tailplane – with nothing on but shoes (because of the hot sand) and jockey shorts.

  The afternoon passed in no time.

  Shortly before dusk, an aircraft appeared, a military plane, circled for a long time overhead without dropping anything, and disappeared (I filmed this) northwards, in the direction of Monterrey.

  Supper: a cheese sandwich, half a banana.

  I like chess because you can spend hours at a time without speaking. You don’t even have to listen when your opponent talks. You stare at the board and it isn’t in the least rude if you show no desire for personal contact, but devote all your attention to the game.


  ‘It’s your move,’ he said.

  The discovery that he not only knew my friend Joachim, from whom I hadn’t heard a word for twenty years, but was actually his brother, came by chance…. When the moon rose (I also filmed this) between black agaves on the horizon, we could have gone on playing chess, it was so light, but suddenly too cold; we trudged out to smoke a cigarette, out into the sand, where I admitted that landscapes didn’t mean much to me, and certainly not a desert.

  ‘You don’t mean that!’ he said.

  He thought it experience.

  ‘Let’s turn in,’ I said. ‘Hotel Super-Constellation, a holiday in the desert with all modern convenience.’

  I felt cold.

  I’ve often wondered what people mean when they talk about an experience. I’m a technologist and accustomed to seeing things as they are. I see everything they are talking about very clearly; after all, I’m not blind. I see the moon over the Tamaulipas desert – it is more distinct than at other times, perhaps, but still a calculable mass circling round our planet, an example of gravitation, interesting, but in what way an experience? I see the jagged rocks, standing out black against the moonlight; perhaps they do look like the jagged backs of prehistoric monsters, but I know they are rocks, stone, probably volcanic, one would have to examine them to be sure of this. Why should I feel afraid? There aren’t any prehistoric monsters any more. Why should I imagine them? I’m sorry, but I don’t see any stone angels either; nor demons; I see what I see – the usual shapes due to erosion and also my long shadow on the sand, but no ghosts. Why get womanish? I don’t see any Flood either, but sand lit up by the moon and made undulating, like water, by the wind, which doesn’t surprise me; I don’t find it fantastic, but perfectly explicable. I don’t know what the souls of the damned looked like; perhaps like black agaves in the desert at night. What I see are agaves, a plant that blossoms once only and then dies. Furthermore, I know (however it may look at the moment) that I am not the last or the first man on earth; and I can’t be moved by the mere idea that I am the last man, because it isn’t true. Why get hysterical? Mountains are mountains, even if in a certain light they may look like something else, but it is the Sierra Madre Oriental, and we are not standing in a kingdom of the dead, but in the Tamaulipas desert, Mexico, about sixty miles from the nearest road, which is unpleasant, but in what way an experience? An aeroplane to me is an aeroplane, I can’t see it as a dead bird, it is a Super-Constellation with engine trouble, nothing more, and it makes no difference how much the moon shines on it. Why should I experience what isn’t there? Nor can I bring myself to hear something resembling eternity; I don’t hear anything, apart from the trickle of sand at every step. I am shivering, but I know that in seven to eight hours the sun will be shining again. What is all this about the end of the world? I can’t imagine a lot of nonsense, merely in order to experience something. I see the sandy horizon, whitish in the green light, twenty miles away at a guess, and I don’t see why there, in the direction of Tampico, the Other World should begin. I know Tampico. I refuse to feel afraid simply because of an over-active imagination, or to start imagining things simply because I feel afraid. It was altogether too mystical for me.