“Good evening Rome, Eight Seven Zero here.”
“Eight Seven Zero calling?”
“Yes, good evening, this is Eight Seven Zero maintaining Two Nine Zero over Puma.”
“Roger, Eight Seven Zero, proceed Latina-Ponza.”
Everything at the rear would finish up forward and vice versa, the Itigis, whatever hurtled them into the sea, had arranged themselves on the ocean floor along a corridor of debris almost ten kilometres in length, in the reverse of the order in which they had been flying at that moment. Every little detail was a work of deduction, the in-flight instruments as much as the rugs and carpet, neatly sheared off at the fourth row of seats. What can objects know about plots and actions? What do they know about ringleaders and accomplices? The objects are simply there. This should be the history of an aeroplane, because an aeroplane knows its history – how many people in this world know its history? In the absence of words, it would be the history of things, history of metal, metal sinning and sinned against, the fuselage knows what has produced unequal local disintegration just forward of the tailplane, the left fin of the stabiliser knows what opened a cross-shaped incision on its edge, just as the underside of the right flap certainly knows what perforated it and knows the nature of the tiny iron pellets located inside the metal sheets, the left side door knows what ripped away the external coating (simply designated “skin” in the inventory), the wrenched-off rivets know if they were detached by the speed of descent or by the force of a strike.
“Good evening, Rome. Eight Seven Zero here.”
“Good evening, Eight Seven Zero, maintain flight level Two Nine Zero, report on Ambra One Three Alpha.”
“Yes, listen, is Ponza out of action as well?”
“Sorry?”
“It’s like padding through a graveyard this evening. South of Florence, there’s hardly a beacon in operation.”
“Afraid so, nearly everything’s down tonight, including Ponza. What’s your heading now?”
“We’re maintaining heading One Nine Five.”
“OK, maintain One Nine Five. With present heading you’ll arrive some miles south of Ponza.”
“Good, thanks.”
“But look, you’re only going to be able to maintain heading One Nine Five for another twenty miles or so, no more, there’s a strong westerly wind, at your level it’ll reach One Hundred to One Twenty knots.”
“Yes, we’ve done our own calculations, and it must be something of that order.”
The frame of the toilet door knows what flattened it into that shape, whether it was a shock wave while still in flight or the rudder crashing into the cabin on impact with the sea and crushing everything in its path, the rug in row five knows what ripped it apart, each piece of metal or plastic or fabric knows which other object, which splinter, and of what, reduced it to its present state.
“The Eight Seven Zero here, can we have … Two Five Zero as level?”
“Affirmative. You can descend right away.”
“Thank you, we’re leaving Two Nine Zero.”
The Itigis did not all make their return at the same time but one by one (did the pieces left down below feel abandoned in the meantime?), first the cockpit with the nose-wheel welded onto it, the right wing, the left engine, parts of the cabin, the front service hatch, some bulkheads from the baggage hold, the voice recorder, seats, life-jackets, assorted tiny fragments. In this way, the aircraft in the hangar was re-formed in time, the crates were opened as they were brought in, the parts laid out on the cement, the items identified, the large tailplane assembled on the bearings, and for the cabin they began with the formers and battens of the structure, just as they had originally done in the factory.
“Itavia Eight Seven Zero, you’ve got Ponza three miles to the right, so for Palermo you’re more or less on track.”
“Much obliged, we’re close to flight level Two Five Zero.”
“Perfect, Eight Seven Zero, in any case report as soon as you receive Palermo VOR.”
“Yes, we’ve already tuned Papa Alpha Lima, and everything’s OK. And we have the Ponza DME.”
“Perfect. So normal navigation to Palermo. Maintain Two Five Zero, and report on Alpha.”
Who knows what emotions those who did that work will have had to keep in check (and what modest comfort they may have derived from thinking that work is work, or that they were in some way engaged on a “search for the truth”). Each item was given its tab, the maintenance manuals and the construction diagrams helped slot everything into its proper place and, in the early stages, each item hung with its label from the trestlework frame alongside the empty spaces which marked the missing pieces. As the aircraft resumed its shape and it became clear what was there and what was not, and where the destruction was more and where less complete, it became possible to read the aircraft as though it were the fragment of a palimpsest, each piece contributing to one possible reading of what had occurred, the right flank much more wracked with pain than the other, the metal not rusted even in the cracks, the company colours still seemingly fresh, the black stains of the engine air exhaust still visible; except that each piece no longer fitted with the others, because each clung to its own history, or its own deformity.
“Eight Seven Zero is on Alpha.”
“Roger, slightly right of track, let’s say . . . four miles. But look, radar service terminates here. Contact Rome Aerovie on One Two Eight point Eight for further transmissions.”
“Thanks for everything. Good night.”
“Good night, Eight Seven Zero.”
When the pieces were brought together, matched and refitted after all those years and miles of distance and separation, the eye could not determine what had occured, even if each part conserved the memory of it, because the aircraft in its present state is not as it was when resting on the sea bed, and it is on that arrangement, on that sea-chart of débris that any reading and interpretation should begin. The aircraft had either disintegrated in flight, leaving each piece to follow its own private parabola from twenty-five thousand feet to zero, or else it had plummeted headlong, engines dead, tearing itself apart on impact, and in that case it was the impact and nothing but the impact which was responsible for each and every injury, and the air and sea currents which were responsible for the drift.
“Rome, good evening, Itavia Eight Seven Zero.”
“Good evening Itavia Eight Seven Zero, ahead.”
“One hundred and fifteen miles for Papa Romeo Sierra, maintaining flight level Two Five Zero.”
“Roger, Itavia Eight Seven Zero, can you give us an estimate for Raisi?”
“Eight Seven Zero estimating Raisi around One Three.”
“Roger Eight Seven Zero, cleared to Raisi VOR, no delay expected. Report descent.”
“No delay to Raisi. Will report descent.”
“That’s correct.”
Perhaps out of respect, the passenger seats were never reassembled, the interior of the aircraft was a gangway laid out on the framework of the original flooring, as far as it could be reconstructed, and on it the carpet had been laid, and above the whole complex there was a tunnel made up of the cabin, left open fore and aft.
“Itavia Eight Seven Zero, when ready cleared to flight level One One Zero. Report leaving Two Five Zero and passing One Five Zero . . . Itavia Eight Seven Zero?”
At intervals in the hangar the families would gather around the Itigis to give vent to their pain or to give an account of the actions undertaken to obtain justice and knowledge of the truth, and on such occasions, the Itigis, after being a scheduled flight, after being wreckage lost, recovered and reassembled, became a monument to the dead. It would have been, for anyone observing in ignorance of the history, for anyone chancing upon those poor people assembled in a hangar around a patchwork aeroplane, an image of utterly incomprehensible anguish, all the more so since, on such occasions, the gangways inside the aircraft were no longer walked by experts but by police officers, authority figures and some p
hotographers.
“Itavia Eight Seven Zero, do you read?”
In time the final pieces – the final fragment of a batten, the final stringer piece, the final section of riveted lining – all turned up and the Itigis were almost completely reunited, almost. And when is the next departure?
“Itavia Eight Seven Zero, Rome here, do you read?”
The flight recorder came to light, as did the last of the life-jackets, the last of the oxygen masks, the frame of the forward door with porthole into the pilot’s cabin, one fuel pump, one longeron with lining and rivets, one fold-away stool and one door with circular handle – “Itavia Eight Seven Zero, Rome . . . ? Itavia Eight Seven Zero, Rome here . . . do you read?” – one electrical box, three hydraulic pipes, one crushed rod, one cockpit instrument, one jack with spring, one seat with safety belt – “Itavia Eight Seven Zero, do you read? . . . Itavia Eight Seven Zero, Rome here do you read? . . .” – one piece of light-blue plate steel with instrument attached, one section of wing with valves and pipes, one black electrical/electronic box, one Plexiglas window, one piece of fuselage structure with mounting containing word “Douglas,” one piece of black casing with attached tubing, one grey-green container with electrical wiring – “Air Malta Seven Five Eight, this is Rome control,” “Rome go ahead,” “Air Malta Seven Five Eight, please, try to call for us, try to call for us Itavia Eight Seven Zero, please,” “Roger, sir . . . Itavia Eight Seven Zero . . . Itavia Eight Seven Zero, this is Air Malta charter Seven Five Eight, do you read? Itavia Eight Seven Zero . . . Itavia Eight Seven Zero, this is Air Malta charter Seven Five Eight, do you read . . . do you read? . . . Rome, negative contact with Itavia Eight Seven Zero” – another two windows with emergency exit handle, the notice bearing the illuminated sign “Emergency exit,” a further piece of fuselage with red paint, another white piece of fuselage with light-blue interior bent around white exterior, a burnt transformer with cable, a fragment of the de-icing line, some pages of the flight manual, a piece of external covering scorched by friction, one instrument without dial – “Itavia Eight Seven Zero, Itavia Eight Seven Zero, this is Rome control, do you read? . . . Itavia Eight Seven Zero, Itavia Eight Seven Zero, Rome control, do you read?” – one hoist with static discharger, one piece of Y-shaped ventilation pipe, one cabin window, one frame for pulley support, the rear stairway, the end section of left wing, one white dividing panel, one electrical fuse box with lid, various battens and traverse frames, the galley, one fragment of cabin with WC flush mechanism, one toilet seat – “Air Malta, this is Rome.” “Rome go ahead, this is Air Malta.” “OK, sir, we have Itavia Eight Seven Zero unreported inbound Palermo, please, please try to call for us Itavia Eight Seven Zero, try to call for us Itavia Eight Seven Zero,” “Alitalia Eight Seven Zero?” “Itavia, sir, Itavia, Itavia Eight Seven Zero,” “Roger . . . Itavia Eight Seven Zero, Itavia Eight Seven Zero this is Air Malta. Do you read? Itavia Eight Seven Zero, do you read? … do you read?. . .”
Do you read?
EIGHT
Double Take-off at Dawn
THERE IS UNIVERSAL agreement that it was a beautiful July day, a day not made for warfare, the sea and sun of Bastia on the right, the line of hills on the left and straight ahead the runway of closely mown grass, yellowing and scented in the heat. Lieutenant Duviez pulled shut the canopy of the plane and slid down from the wing. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry switched on his radio and said: “Colgate from Dress down number six, may I taxi and take off?” He had no love for the radio, belonging as he did to an age when the radio was unknown, nor for the English language. He had recently returned from an American trip where he had repaid the triumph of his books with a refusal to speak a word in any language other than French. That morning he was in Corsica, where his right to use his own tongue was not in dispute, but the aeroplane which was about to take off was American, the squadron was Franco-American, being made up of all that was left of the great strategic reconnaissance unit, Groupe II/33 de Grande Reconnaissance, with the addition of a few USA pilots and men from camera repair. Ground Control was also American, their radio call sign was Colgate, like the toothpaste. “Colgate from Dress down number six, permission to taxi and take off?” It was also the one morning when Gavoille, Captain René Gavoille whom he had described in Pilote de Guerre as France’s best, was not there to dress him in his thermic overall, to place him in his cockpit like a bear in a cage, to tie his straps, to check oxygen cylinder, revolver and camera switches in the belly of the plane, and give him last-minute advice. Two hours later, on arriving at the airstrip, Gavoille would be upset at that little act of treachery of Saint-Exupéry’s in taking off before he got there, and a further two hours on he would regret not having himself carried out a minor act of treachery at the expense of his friend, an act of treachery that morning already agreed with the American High Command: the treachery of revealing to him an important secret, like the date of the landing in Provence, so as to invoke the regulation preventing him from undertaking further sorties because of the risk of his being captured and talking. But what could Gavoille have done? The other would have paid no heed, would have been loud in his protests, Gavoille recalled all too clearly one evening a short time before, when they had wept together and Saint-Exupéry had begged to be allowed to fly again and had finally entrusted him with the enormous manuscript of Citadelle, from which he had, years previously, read some pages to Benjamin Crémieux and Drieu La Rochelle.
“OK number six, you can taxi and take off,” said the controller. The airman Charles Suty, a boy who, to escape call-up in the Vichy Republic, had taken refuge in North Africa and joined the II/33, removed the chocks from the undercarriage. Saint-Exupéry put the engines full on and released the brakes. The aeroplane began its take-off run, the hills and sea of Bastia, even the runway itself began to race forward as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Tonio or Saint-Ex, lifted his shadow from this earth for the last time.
0715 HOURS, HEADING 243°, 7000 FEET. MIST.
There follows a brief journey towards a long story, a story of flight, narration and childhood, but also of a civil and philosophical passion for companionship and for oneness with the earth, of a few men from the Thirties and Forties, some still alive, of the mystery of a writer who in all probability crashed at sea, and of coincidences, which govern everything. The journey, mine, could well begin here, seven thousand feet above the Po delta, with the heading of the aircraft pushed very slightly off course by a light wind, a southerly wind, a genial, gentle scirocco such as could be picked up only by electronic apparatus and compasses, which every so often deviate a degree or two from the set course and seem ready to forge ahead in that direction until pressure of the foot, or a slight trim to the left, bring them back within the agreed range, or rather, so as to offset the effect of the wind, to something under it. A glance over the instruments is no different from the round of rooms made by a butler last thing at night. Since I am that butler, it would be difficult for me to attribute some heroic or mystical sense to flight; flight is no more than a science of doing, a matter of errors and corrections, of position and behaviour. At least today that is how it is, perhaps it was different when Antoine de Saint-Exupéry made his night flights over the Andes to deliver the mail in Patagonia, or was Aéropostale’s station chief in Juby in the Sahara, or fighter pilot over Arras or Grenoble, other times, heroic times, today that heroism would have no sense, and neither, fortunately, would the grand rhetoric that often accompanied it. On this July morning, no one takes voluntary risks, on the contrary, I keep things in order so as to ensure that the C 172 of which I am butler glides peacefully along airway Red 22. If this were a sea voyage, I would be speaking of waves and the ship, if a journey on foot of the sort I used to undertake as a boy I would be talking of shoes, weariness and the countryside, but now after take-off over the lagoon, the Po valley down below is invisible under an all-enveloping mango jelly, the horizon high and blurred in the heat mist, while the events of the journey at this moment amount to
no more than an occasional touch on the instruments, done with the delicacy with which one might straighten up a painting on a wall after it had been dusted. I busy myself with the Chioggia VOR behind me, the Bologna VOR ahead, the ADF over Ferrara, the LORAN which can call up three stations over the Mediterranean and can calculate position and route on its own, the DME which measures distances from places and report points not visible to me, the transponder, the gyroscopes, the variometers, the altimeters – in other words, the house in my charge has a certain number of rooms. All this paraphernalia, which in a couple of years will be obsolete, could break down at any moment, but there would always be the floating compass, swaying and dragging, which every aeroplane, from the largest to the smallest, carries in its cockpit. The clock and compass were what I was trained to use years ago, long before being initiated into the ways of the electronic Ramayana; and Bruno, whom I had to thank for my apprenticeship, is here beside me, seated across from me. Bruno is in retirement now, not that anyone would dare pronounce that word in his presence. He does not mind accompanying me on longer journeys, shows greater affability now, the effect of the invisible wear of the years, but the relationship remains unchanged. With his spectacles rammed over his nose, like a cat in a fairy tale, he holds up in front of him the aeronautical chart with the first leg of the flight, towards Alghero. The chart is folded inside the pages of a book of photographs of Saint-Exupéry and Squadron II/33, taken in Alghero in the spring of ‘44. At intervals, Bruno raises his eyes from chart and photographs, peers out over his lenses with one of those looks which once caused me more concern than any situation in which I landed myself, then returns to the photographs. He is absorbed mainly by the P38 Lightning, the plane in which Saint-Exupéry disappeared. What an aircraft! he exclaims, two Mustang fighters joined at the wings, and he accompanies this notion with a tiny gesture of the hand. Everything in this flight proceeds normally.
Take-Off Page 12