Cockpit

by Jerzy Kosiński

  She was nervous when she arrived, but slowly relaxed as I showed her some of my recent photographs.

  “The Academy is sending me abroad for research,” I said, gazing pensively at the first snow falling outside. “I don’t mind the trip but I do mind leaving before I can do some skiing. I always spend Christmas in the mountains.”

  “What do you want me to do?” she asked suspiciously.

  “The Academy sent your division a routine application for my ticket. You could delay it simply by misfiling the folder. Mistakes happen. My file is in the December requisitions, but it could accidentally end up among the March or June requisitions.”

  I pulled out an envelope. “This contains a reward for two seconds of absent-mindedness. I am giving you a voucher for two prepaid weeks of Christmas vacation at an excellent hotel in a beautiful ski resort.”

  She took the envelope, opened it, checked the voucher and leafed through the colorful booklet promoting the resort.

  “I’ve never been to the mountains,” she said.

  “Now’s your chance,” I suggested.

  We both stared through the window for a moment. Outside, the bitter winter wind forced spiraling clouds of snow down upon the city. The woman turned to me. “I’d better take this with me right now before I misplace it. I’m so absent-minded these days.” She laughed, put the voucher in her purse and reached for her coat. After I escorted her to the door, I returned to my table and looked out the window. Propelled by the wind, she walked faster and faster, coming perilously close to stumbling with every step. It occurred to me that I had forgotten to advise her to try skiing at the resort.

  The following day, she telephoned me at the Academy to tell me how excited she was about her vacation. She remarked again that she was growing more absent-minded every day. Only minutes before, she said, she had mislaid an application she was working on and still couldn’t locate it.

  Immediately after she called, I applied for an appointment with the Director of the Academy, whose office administered all research jobs and approved all changes in the status of the employees.

  He had been selected for his post by the Party because he was an experienced bureaucrat, and many of the Academy’s research personnel, all of whose salaries and appointments depended on him, did not hide their contempt for his lack of formal education and often mocked his manners and speech.

  The receptionist ushered me into a waiting room, whose huge windows showed a panoramic view of the city. Soon the Director’s personal secretary, a young woman in a military-style blouse and skirt, appeared and led me to his office. The Director, whom I had met two years earlier when he admitted me to the Academy, greeted me warmly. “Welcome, Comrade. Sit down.” He gestured toward a chair. “I don’t often have the pleasure of talking face to face with our young scientific talent!”

  He was a short, slender man who looked rather puny behind an enormous desk cluttered with four telephones and replicas of missiles, Earth satellites and rockets. He opened a drawer.

  “How about a Havana? Or an American cigarette?”

  “No, thank you. I don’t smoke,” I answered.

  “Good for you. Neither do I. How about a cognac? Napoleon’s choice?”

  “Thank you, Comrade Director, but I don’t drink.”

  “Wise. I don’t either. Coffee, perhaps? Brazilian. Very strong and aromatic.”

  “Too strong for me, thank you,” I apologized.

  “Never touch it myself,” he reassured me. “How about tea? Chinese. Very fragrant.”

  “With pleasure, thank you.”

  He pressed one of the buttons below his desk and gave his secretary the order. The tea was brought in almost immediately.

  He must have assumed that I had come to denounce an associate, for, as we sipped our tea, he encouraged me to gossip about the Academy and asked who in my Institute was sponsoring my doctoral project. I mentioned two of my professors, both abroad at the time.

  “My secretary tells me,” he said, “that when you called her to ask for this meeting you spoke of an emergency.”

  “I did, Comrade Director. An emergency that concerns not just me but the Academy.”

  “What is it then?”

  “As you probably know, Comrade Director,” I enunciated carefully, “I am about to be sent abroad to complete my research project in the West. In fact, I have already received my official Academy passport.”

  “Good, good! Enough of ass-licking our political allies across the border!” he exclaimed. “It’s high time for you and all the other young bucks to know our true enemy and prepare for the battles of the future. When are you supposed to leave?” He leaned across the desk to pour me another cup of tea.

  “I can’t answer that, Comrade Director. Yesterday, I went to the State Bank to see the Deputy Chief of the Foreign Travel Division. I expected simply to pick up my round-trip airline ticket …” I opened my attaché case. “This is a copy of the Academy’s application on my behalf, which I personally delivered yesterday to the Deputy Chief at the Bank.” I placed the sheet in front of him, politely indicating the list of enclosures at the bottom of the page. “As you know, Comrade Director, for an application to be approved by the Academy, all documents must be presented and all originals must be inspected.”

  He noted each item on the list carefully. “You certainly submitted all the necessary data to the Bank. What’s the problem?”

  Pretending to feel uneasy, I gulped and jerked my neck and shoulders as if I were wearing a collar that was too tight. “When I handed the application and enclosures to the Deputy Chief, he said that I was—here I must quote him, Comrade—‘a low-flying butterfly from that flower bed in the sky.’ Those were his exact words, Comrade Director.”

  The Director clenched his teeth. “Flower bed in the sky? Are you certain he said that, Comrade?” he asked, looking at me intently.

  “I am positive, Comrade. I reprimanded him loudly enough for everyone in the room to hear what I was saying.”

  “Good. How did he reply to your reprimand?”

  I pretended to restrain my rage as I replied, “He did not apologize. He did not do anything, Comrade, except throw my documents into his wastebasket.”

  The Director picked up my application and scanned the list of enclosures. “He threw original documents into the wastebasket?” he asked incredulously.

  “That’s correct, Comrade Director.” I paused to emphasize the seriousness of my reply. “However, upon my emphatic request, the Comrade Deputy Chief confirmed in writing his receipt of the application and enclosures,” I continued.

  The Director studied the signature and stamp at the bottom of the page. “Indeed he did,” he said angrily, pounding the desk with his fist. “We’ll settle this matter right away,” he roared, reaching for one of his phones. I rose as if ready to leave his office.

  “You stay here,” he commanded. “I want you to witness this.” He pressed a button and an older woman with gray hair entered the room. “Get me the Deputy Chief of the State Bank’s Foreign Travel Division and don’t say who’s calling,” he ordered her. She nodded and left hurriedly.

  Almost at once, the telephone rang. The Director picked up the receiver. “Is this Comrade Deputy Chief?” He looked at me, smiling vindictively. “You don’t know who I am, do you, Comrade? Well, I’ll tell you who I am. I am the high-flying butterfly in charge of the highest flower bed in our land, Comrade; that’s who I am. If you look out your window, you’ll be able to see my office way up in the sky. A butterfly. Yes, that’s what I said; a butterfly. Hello? Hello?” He pulled the receiver from his ear, looked at it as if he wanted to smash it, then slammed it down and buzzed for his secretary. “He hung up!” he screamed at her through the intercom. “Get him back right away and this time inform him who is calling.”

  When the phone rang again, he grabbed it. “Comrade Deputy Chief? If I were you, I would wet my pants before I hung up again. I have here a copy of an Academy application and the li
st of required documents that you received yesterday.” He grinned at me, delighted with himself, and continued, “How do I know? Because you confirmed their receipt in writing. In fact, I am looking at the copy as I speak to you and I can clearly read your signature, the date, even the hour when the documents reached your desk. Here is the name of our Academy applicant.” He spelled out my name and asked the Deputy Chief to repeat it to him. “Yes, I’ll hold on,” he said impatiently.

  He kept the receiver pressed to his ear but covered the mouthpiece with his hand and turned to me. “When does the Academy want you to go abroad?”

  “In a day or two, Comrade. Of course, this unfortunate delay …” I sounded dispirited.

  “There will be no delay,” he interrupted. “Anytime I want, I can have him turned into a butterfly cavorting in a six-by-eight flower-bed cell.” We chuckled together over his joke.

  Minutes passed. He pressed the intercom button. “Call him on another line,” he yelled at his secretary, “and tell him I am waiting.”

  The phone rang a third time. Again the Director picked up the receiver. “Ah, you’re still here. I thought you had already defected to the enemy. Do you have the file?” He listened to the reply. “What do you mean you ‘can’t find it’?” he screamed. “This ‘it’ is a bright young scientist who is sitting here right now staring at your signature, Comrade.” He paused. “You what? You can’t locate the file?” he roared. “No, I won’t wait. We know you received the material because you signed a formal receipt for it. Is it possible, Comrade Chief Deputy,” he shouted, intentionally reversing the Deputy Chief’s title, “… is it possible that you threw it into the wastebasket? Not possible? Then it is all right for me to send a messenger from my flower bed to your kennel right now with a copy of the receipt you signed. Within the hour, you will deliver the authorization to the State Airlines, where it will be picked up by the applicant. You will follow regulations but this time you will also demonstrate your competence, your willingness and your promptness in fulfilling official requests … Let me remind you, Comrade Chief Deputy … ” as he once again reversed the Deputy Chief’s title, he winked at me pointedly, “… before you fail again, that there are wasps as well as butterflies among the flower beds.” He hung up and rang for his secretary, who rushed into the room. He handed her the application, instructing her where to take it. After she left, he calmed down and stretched out in his chair.

  “This was a good lesson for you, Comrade,” he said, picking up a small replica of the Earth and its first artificial satellite, then replacing it on his desk. “A good lesson in authority. Down there,” he said, looking out the window on the Tundra, “that’s all that matters.” We both rose; then, thanking him profusely, I left his office.

  An hour later, I joined the line of State officials in the Airlines office. My ticket was waiting for me at the desk. As others watched, I casually placed it in my attaché case.

  The first available plane was leaving late that night, and I decided to take it. I called my parents to say I was leaving for my vacation. My father asked me to call him from the ski resort, but I explained that my friends and I were planning a long drive through the mountains and wouldn’t reach the resort before the weekend. He told me to be careful.

  As I crossed the Tundra in the darkness, the Palace looked like a Byzantine basilica, incarnating the State. I locked myself inside the darkroom for the last time and packed all the Academicians’ correspondence in two suitcases. Even though I realized that the documents could destroy me at airport control, I decided to take them with me: they had been my dueling weapons. If I won the duel, they should be preserved. If I lost, the police would destroy them anyway.

  Fifteen years later, in Washington, D.C., immigration officials informed me of the arrival of an older man who claimed to have been my professor. He was trying to find me to obtain the professional recommendation needed to remain in the United States.

  I went to see the man and we recognized each other instantly. “You haven’t changed. Still that angry parrot glint in your eyes,” he said.

  “You haven’t changed either, Professor. Still the same powerful voice.”

  “You won’t believe it,” he said sadly, “but I, who served the State for so long, was thrown out of my country. At my age; so close to retirement. You were wise, quite wise, to leave when you were still young. Now it’s too late for me to start a new life.”

  “Why were you thrown out?”

  “Do you remember my monograph on the plight of the nineteenth-century revolutionaries?” he asked.

  “To me they were visionaries,” I said.

  “Visionaries, if you will.”

  “Now, twenty years after the Party journal commissioned and published it, the same Party charged me with writing it to highlight the role of the Jews as martyrs. Also, because my first wife was Jewish, the Party expelled me from the country as a Zionist agent! I a Zionist! Imagine that!” He looked at me for sympathy.

  “It’s hard to imagine,” I agreed. “Because, when you mentioned Jews in your monograph, you claimed that the pogroms were legitimate revolts of the proletariat against its Jewish exploiters.”

  He grabbed my arm. “You know very well that what I claimed was based on specific instructions from above. In any case,” he continued, “it’s not important who was beaten by whom so long ago. What matters now is that, because you were my student once, I took enormous personal risks to help you.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes. And you didn’t even know it. A year before you left the country on that research scholarship, you were seriously investigated by the Academy’s highest echelons.” He lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “The investigation was extremely confidential and had obviously been instigated by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. When I was approached, I wrote to the Academy that among my students you were the most intellectually stable and highly qualified candidate for travel abroad.” He looked to me for an acknowledgment of appreciation and, when I did not respond, he grabbed my arm again. “Of course, I can’t claim that I decided your fate. But you should be aware of what your old professor risked for you.”

  I looked at my watch as if I were in a hurry. “Have you ever seen the safe-deposit vaults in an American bank?” I asked.

  “No. Should I?” He seemed relieved by the change of subject.

  “I have to retrieve something I stored in a vault. It won’t take long. Why don’t you come with me?”

  Soon an escalator was carrying us down to the bank vaults, where a clerk opened the gates and admitted us. I signed a card so that he could compare my signature to the one in his files. Then he led us into the vault, took my keys and opened the compartment.

  “It’s a steel bunker,” said the professor. He looked around, impressed.

  I reached inside the safe-deposit box and pulled out a thick folder. “A bunker of stock certificates, wills, manuscripts, jewelry, money.” I removed two letters from the folder and put them aside. “By the way, are you sure, professor, you accurately recall that investigation you spoke about?”

  “Indeed I do. I received several inquires from a scientist who was a high-ranking member of the Academy.”

  I picked up one of the two letters and handed it to him. “Do you recognize this?” I asked.

  He put on his glasses and looked at the letterhead, then at the signature. “This is that very letter!” he exclaimed. “It is marked ‘Official and Confidential.’ How did you obtain it? Was the Academician who wrote it to me also exiled from our country as a Zionist agent?” he asked, astonished.

  Without replying, I handed him the other letter. It was his response to the Academy inquiry. He read it transfixed, as if for the first time.

  “I wrote this out of fear,” he said dully, after his shock had diminished. “Out of the same fear you yourself experienced when you were there. Out of fear. Forgive me,” he begged, with tears in his eyes. Suddenly, he halted and asked, “But how did you get hold of
that letter?”

  “The Academician to whom you replied never existed. I invented him,” I said.

  “That can’t be true. He was a well-known man. He personally signed the letter I received and when I sent my reply both he and the Academy officially confirmed its receipt.”

  “I invented him,” I repeated. “I wrote to you in his name and when you answered, it was I who confirmed receipt of your reply.”

  Uncertain what to do next, the professor stood up, stubbornly searching his memory. “I recall that many of my associates at the university also responded to such confidential inquiries from the Academy about you.”

  “Indeed they did,” I answered.

  “But who wrote these inquiries?” he asked.

  “Dead Souls. They are all here,” I said, pointing at my vault.

  Under the bright fluorescent light, his skin was pinched and gray, stretched taut over his bald skull. He started to say something. Instead, he blinked his eyes as if the light were suddenly too bright for him, and walked out. As soon as he was gone, I regretted having told him the truth.

  Soon after arriving in America, I moved into the university dormitory and advertised in a student paper for someone who would like to learn Ruthenian in exchange for helping me learn English during the forthcoming summer session. The most promising reply I received was from an assistant professor in the Economics Department.

  I contacted him and we arranged to meet. Robert was about my age and height, but substantially heavier and more powerfully built. His crew-cut hair was blond, his eyes were blue and he had the kind of pale skin that burns easily. He was dressed casually and explained that since his discharge from the army he favored clothing that did not restrict movement. Although he was not handsome, his gentle and attentive manner was appealing. He spoke elementary Ruthenian with a heavy accent, often confusing regular and irregular verbs.

  When he inspected my dormitory cubicle, he warned me that as the room was not air-conditioned it would be unbearable during the summer. He suggested that for the sake of my comfort and our mutual language lessons I should move into the apartment he shared with his girl friend.