The Crew

by Joseph Kessel

  “Well?” Thélis asked him.

  “I’m not a doctor here, Captain, I’m just a pilot,” Doc sternly replied. “We’ll keep you posted once we get to the hospital.”

  Thélis didn’t reply. Like everyone else, he’d already understood…

  Jean couldn’t help but think of the overflowing cheerfulness that had characterized the squadron less than an hour earlier.

  So long as the fog persisted, there was no laughter in the mess hall. At the table, the greater amount of space between each place setting drew attention to the fact that one of them was missing. The absence was too loud. Yet by dint of their efforts to forget Berthier, his comrades succeeded.

  Only Jean, whose sensitivity had meant those events had left a deeper impression on him, steadfastly refused to banish from his mind the memory of the only conversation he’d had with the deceased, or to forget the image of Berthier’s face with his eyelids closed, his features already stiff, yet still sweet and pleasant. He’d wanted to talk about this with Thélis and Marbot, but they’d both refused him with such a tone that he couldn’t have insisted. This seeming indifference would have shocked the young cadet if Captain Reuillard hadn’t put it into a nutshell for him: “There’s no point thinking about it, rookie,” he said, “otherwise we wouldn’t be able pluck up the courage to fly any more.”

  Amidst the silence that had deliberately erased the memory of their beloved comrade-in-arms, one could still sense a fighting instinct and a secret joy at still being alive.

  When the west winds pushed the clouds past Reims, leaving a bright, spotless sky in its wake, this determination to forget asserted itself even more. Even though there were no missions at hand, other than the usual reconnaissance flights, Thélis ordered the entire squadron to take to the sky. Even Marbot, who tended to dislike flying when he didn’t strictly need to, heartily approved of the captain’s decision and said: “We have to wipe away all the bad memories.”

  The field was abuzz, a frenetic hive of activity. The captain was keeping an eye on everything: the engine tests, the departures, the landings and what the mechanics were up to. He told each pilot a joke. The captain’s voice, which spread through everyone’s nerves like wildfire, resounded everywhere. He kept running from the hangars to the planes, helping to start the propellers, checking the carburettors. Suddenly, as though intoxicated by the frenetic flurry he’d unleashed, he started rolling around on the grass with a beautiful golden retriever who never left his side and both lost themselves in their animalistic joy. Thus, he went from one plane to the next, spreading the fire that burned inside him, while each of the crews that were about to depart, to become a tiny spot in the vast expanse of the sky, felt the comradely passion that engulfed every fibre of the captain’s being.

  Herbillon went on his first flight that day. Evening was fast approaching by the time Thélis gave him the “go-ahead” gesture he’d been so anxiously awaiting. Afraid of anything that might delay his departure, Jean had brought all his equipment with him to the field early in the morning. He got ready so quickly that it brought a smile to the captain’s lips and then he leaped into his cockpit.

  Up until that point, Jean had only ever flown in training aeroplanes, slow machines that allowed one to see a landscape unfold, as though one were standing on a balcony. Yet now he felt a real warplane rumble beneath his feet. It was strong and swift, built for combat, a killing machine whose nose looked like a shark. Yet how narrow the cockpit where he’d inserted himself was, especially since a lot of the available space was taken up by the stool, the papers he’d brought with him and the butts of the twin machine guns! How could he possibly have enough room to carry out his observing duties and still fight at the same time?

  The captain asked him if he was ready, and Jean bowed his head, feeling a mixture of sensuousness and anxiety course through his body. The plane began rolling bumpily across the field, then the shaking stopped and was replaced by a smooth, upward glide. Thanks to the brisk wind and the force of the propeller, the euphoria of the open skies washed over him, the same kind of intoxicating feeling sailors experience when they stand on the prow as their ship is about to depart.

  The captain gained some altitude. At each turn, the horizon retreated further and further, while the land below faded away, and when the hangars were reduced to little more than white dots, Thélis pointed out the machine guns to Herbillon and motioned his hand towards the trigger. The cadet understood it was time to try out the weapons. He pressed his chest against the steel plate that welded the two barrels together and fired. A sharp, cheerful rattle rang out, disrupting the engine’s rhythmic drone. Two red streaks flashed across the sky. The captain shouted enthusiastically: “Fireworks!”

  He was answered by a fresh burst of gunfire, which startled him, but the song the bullets sang recalled the tune he’d been made to dance to in the mess hall. While testing his machine gun, Thélis had also started to hum the squadron’s quadrille. The captain smiled at the cadet, filling the latter with a marvellous sense of happiness. Jean wanted to laugh, sing and cry. He admired himself: handsome, bold and serious as he set the infinite expanse of space on fire. He so dearly wished his mistress and all the young women in the world—all the women that his vague yet powerful desires led him towards—could see him now, in all of his angelic splendour. After all he’d read about aviators, and all the glorious halos he’d drawn above those pilots’ heads during his long wait, Jean now had a halo of his own, which he wore like a crown of pride.

  Without realizing which part of his exaltation was contrived, he leaned theatrically against the machine-gun turret and stroked the trigger with his furred glove. However, one quick glimpse below made him change his tune. The ground had completely vanished, and he couldn’t make anything out any more. He feverishly tried to locate the white spots of the hangars, but all to no avail. Deprived of the only point of reference he’d had, he pulled out his map, which the wind almost ripped out of his hands.

  He ducked his head inside the cockpit to examine the map, but immediately lost his bearings again as soon as he tried to apply the map to the landscape. He looked at the captain, as though asking for his help, but when he saw that his head was wrapped in fur and leather, he realized he was on his own, and that by the time they were in mid-air, the two metres of fuselage that separated them had become an unbridgeable distance.

  Thus he decided to retain a visual memory of the shape of places while he flew above them so he could later put a name to them on his return.

  Roads that looked as clear-cut as though they’d just been freshly painted coiled around the geometric shapes formed by the fields and woodlands. The villages looked like scatterings of tiny dice, topped by whimsical cones, while the rivers, which looked like motionless blue snakes, slumbered between the green lines.

  Those were the trenches, laid out like a gigantic, fanciful chessboard, pale veins that had been sculpted into the same greyish soil where the river Aisne had carved its course. Tilting the plane, Thélis pointed out a snowy mass punctuated with shadowy lakes that could be seen through the wings’ shrouds. Jean recognized it as Hill 108 because he’d seen pictures of that mound, which had been ripped apart when two trenches had been cut through it so that the French and the Germans could sit face to face and stare at each other. The plane had entered the undefinable no-man’s-land that would soon lead into enemy territory.

  Moved, Herbillon thought to himself: “We’re going over to their side.”

  He steadied himself for battle, and thought he could see enemy planes coming from every direction, and mentally challenged them all.

  Yet they were alone in that unblemished blue sky and, despite the engine’s rumble, the young man could make out the silence unleashed by the twilight, which was starting to fill up the horizon. The sun was pink and the trenches had turned into bluish streams. The cathedral of Reims, surrounded by houses, was picking up the last glimmers of a sun that Herbillon could still see, even though it had disa
ppeared out of sight for anyone standing on the ground.

  Jean grew suddenly ashamed by the childish pride that had made him so fidgety. Now he felt very weak, very humble, and very small. The plane seemed puny to him, and he dreaded the terrible punishment that could be inflicted on those who dared to disturb the day in its mysterious death throes. He was knocked out of his reverie by a sudden bump. Thélis had started to nosedive towards the enemy trenches: a bloody spray of bullets burst out of his machine guns and disappeared into the bowels of the earth. Then Herbillon was hurled against his turret as Thélis pulled the plane up, like a rocket.

  The young man’s ears picked up a muffled sound, which seemed to dissolve in the air and he leaned over to try to hear it better. Under the fuselage, a curl of brown smoke had started to rise limply. Another rose on the left, and another still emerged from underneath the aircraft. They were all dense and mottled, like young trees in the springtime.

  Thélis turned around to look at Herbillon and observe the effect that these first artillery shells had made on him. Had he trembled with fear, the officer cadet might have found some pride in smiling defiantly, but he didn’t have the need to make such an effort. Far from frightening him, the explosions’ suddenness had pleased him, as did the way they ebbed and flowed like languid waves, which made them look like little balloons that burst into grey filaments.

  When the captain made an unconcerned gesture, Jean responded with a cheerful one, proud of how brave he was. Were those the dark clouds which the old pilots had spoken of with such dread? Yet they looked so graceful and made such a sweet noise! Could they really trouble a well-tempered heart?

  Now he could see them everywhere: above, below, behind the plane and almost right in front of it. It was a kind of blossoming where one explosion would bloom and then fade away, only to start the cycle all over again, while the plane attempted to manoeuvre through that field of explosive flowers. Pitched on its side, the plane slipped between those smoky buoys, while Jean shook about, clinging to the edge of his cockpit, amused by what he thought was a game that Thélis was playing, not realizing that life and death hung in the balance.

  The plane suddenly started to dance savagely. Despite the cadet’s inexperience, he felt that this time it hadn’t been the captain’s doing. He didn’t know quite how to explain that feeling, but he’d felt so carefree up until that point that it was only then that he realized he was sitting inside a lifeless machine, just a pile of wood, metal and canvas that had been assembled, and that he wasn’t in fact sitting astride a docile, sensible beast as he’d previously thought.

  At that moment, he remembered the earth. He looked at it, even though he was so distant and cut off from it, lost in a thin haze that was beginning to thicken. Jean experienced an acute desire to return to it.

  CHAPTER III

  AT THE SAME TIME, Deschamps was drinking with the NCOs as lazy words dropped from his lips while the others respectfully listened.

  That mess hall, just like countless others, was furnished with a table and a bar. Yet everything looked as though it were of a lower quality, simpler, more neglected. Inside the barracks, the floorboards were loose, there were cigarette butts everywhere, and the air was thick and heavy. While the men, with their broad faces and dressed in coarse cloth, increasingly abandoned themselves to the flow of their emotions, finding it easier than usual to unwind.

  There were three pilots there: Virense, a podgy, ruddy-faced boy, Brûlard, a former mechanic who’d become a pilot, and Laudet, whose grey hair framed his young features. Also present were Gival and Malote, the machine gunners, and Dufrêne, the photographer. Driven by Thélis’s feverish enthusiasm, they had all flown that day, and the traces of that experience could still be detected in their eyes, which shone brighter.

  While in their company, Deschamps came out of his shell. Up until his promotion to second lieutenant, which had only happened very recently, he had lived inside those barracks, eaten at that table, and drank the same viscous, bluish wine that now filled his glass. The day the squadron’s tailor had sewn his officer’s stripes to his peacoat had been the proudest of his life. It had fulfilled an ambition he’d secretly nourished, almost as though he’d been ashamed of it since it had always seemed too extravagant.

  Yet once the initial euphoria had dissipated, his new status often got on his nerves, as though it trapped him like a uniform that was two sizes too small. At the officers’ table, people spoke too meekly and their gestures were too restrained, and Deschamps was forced to keep an eye on his thick, calloused hands, which had been misshapen by working the fields and fighting in the war. Yearning for simplicity, and being all too rightly proud of his wounds and exploits, he was plagued by an inner turmoil that caused him endless suffering.

  He only managed to feel like himself again when in the company of corporals and sergeants. When in their midst, he was a big fish in a small pond, the living embodiment of the honours and glories to which they could aspire, and since all of them knew the way he’d earned them, their admiration was fuelled by sheer envy. Of all the assembled men, Deschamps’s old mechanic Brûlard was the most exhilarated.

  A pilot entered the room and interrupted the conversation. Before speaking, he drained a large glass. “That’s the stuff,” he said, “after three hours of reconnaissance.”

  Virense asked: “Are there people still flying, Verraux?”

  “The captain’s still up there: I spotted him in the far distance out of the corner of my eye just as I was leaving.”

  He slowly removed his furs and the silk stocking he used as his balaclava, revealing his thin body, sleek hair and wet lips. His catlike movements betrayed the lover and prowler in him. Then he declared: “I saw a new face on the field.”

  He had enunciated each word so as to capture everyone’s attention. Only Deschamps didn’t turn his head.

  “He’s a lieutenant,” Virense chimed in. “He started talking with Marbot when we landed. I think he’s come to join our squadron.”

  Virense looked at Marbot, who was perfectly still, and asked him: “Do you know anything about this?”

  A twitch on the mutilated man’s face stretched his scar, but he coolly replied: “I’ve heard about him: Lieutenant Maury.”

  “It seems he’s the new Chief Pilot,” Verraux insisted.

  This time, Deschamps couldn’t contain his anger.

  “That’s right,” he exclaimed, “and it’s absolutely shameful: he’s fresh out of school and just because he’s got two stripes on his jacket they’ve put him in charge of people who’ve been through the thick of it!”

  He struck his chest, making the medals that wouldn’t leave him alone jingle in unison.

  Brûlard stood up, and tremblingly fingered his raspy moustache.

  “Are they going to do that to you, Louis?” he exclaimed.

  “It’s out of the captain’s hands,” Verraux bitterly noted. “The last orders were very clear: old pilots now have to be supervised by officers with two stripes.”

  “Let him try to give me an order,” Laudet calmly said. “I’ll throw a spanner in the works.”

  “As will I!” Brûlard exclaimed.

  “I’ll jam my machine guns!” Gival added.

  “I’ll do the same with the magazines!” Dufrêne concurred.

  Deschamps happily listened to the brewing mutiny. He’d been appalled ever since he’d learned of the new officer’s appointment a couple of days earlier. Being the captain’s confidant, and as loyal to him as a dog and jealous as a wife, the news that an undeserving newcomer might come between them had dealt him a cruel blow.

  “Let’s go get a look at him,” he suggested.

  The bluish ashes of the evening rose in a luminous dusty cloud from the field, which was completely empty save for a mechanic shivering in the cold, waiting for Thélis’s return. The pilots noticed a man pacing slowly next to the hangars with his head lowered. Despite his tall frame, he was stooping, and the snugness of his overcoat m
ercilessly sketched the outline of his gaunt, narrow torso and his slightly asymmetrical shoulders.

  Having heard Deschamps and his comrades walk towards him, he approached them.

  “Hello gentlemen,” he exclaimed. “I’m Lieutenant Claude Maury.”

  He held out both his hands.

  Leading the way, Deschamps merely raised his fingers to his kepi, and made no reply.

  Maury’s arms fell back alongside his body, inert. Faced with the hostility emanating from the group, he lingered hesitantly for a moment, disconcerted. He feverishly buttoned up his coat, vainly looking for something to say, or the right kind of attitude to adopt in response to their coldness. But an engine’s murmur could be heard in the soft sky above, and everyone’s eyes turned towards the foggy horizon where a plane’s shape began to emerge…

  The captain jumped from the plane and onto the field. Herbillon rushed to join him. The same emotions were written across both their faces.

  “Well, rookie,” Thélis said, “did you spot the battery that fired at us?”

  “Not at all!” Jean cheerfully confessed.

  “The little devil’s doing well, just like I told you,” Deschamps exclaimed, proudly showing off his intimacy with his commanding officer in front of the intruder.

  Thélis had noticed the unfamiliar silhouette coming towards him and his features froze. He didn’t want to let those jokes diminish his prestige in front of an officer whom he knew nothing about.

  Herbillon didn’t know whether he liked this new officer or whether he made him feel uneasy. Was he drawn to the new officer’s thin mouth, which looked as though it had been painfully carved into his hairless cheeks? Or was it that broad, tall forehead marked by blue veins? Yet how could he possibly like his greyish pallor that seemed to spread under his skin, or the excessive gap between his nose and upper lip? And what about that clumsy body of his, the crooked knees, pelvis, shoulders—did it inspire pity or laughter?