EXILES OF THE SKY

The man who writes this vivid tale of a pilot in the commercial air service of Europe today knows the scenes of which he writes and the spirit of the people who inhabit them, for, since the war, he has been one of the most active of all the American correspondents in Germany and Russia.

He walked unseeing into the Tiergarten. It was winter—the sunless winter of Berlin, when trees sway like despairing skeletons praying to the wind for snow to cover their bones.

The man pressed the collar of his sheepskin coat closer to his throat, shivering not with cold but with an aching sense of the world’s injustice to man—to himself. He was dazed with constant rehearsing of the scene that had taken place in the director’s office only half an hour ago. The scene itself had taken but a few minutes. Directors of passenger airplane services have very little time to waste, their secretaries will tell you.

It hadn’t hurt so much until the director, big-jowled and thin-lipped, had taken up the red pencil and drawn a brutal line through the name: Vladimir Uspensky.

“We have no use for pilots who crash,” the director had shouted, but those words had not hurt.

That ruthless scrape of the red pencil through his name had hurt. If it had been a blade tearing through his flesh, the pain could not have been more intense. Why hadn’t the director put him up against the wall and shot him? That’s what they did to soldiers who faltered. But shooting was an act of mercy compared to that red line.

True, he had crashed. But he had never crashed before. Why couldn’t the director give him a second chance? Bookkeepers, captains of industry, doctors, editors and statesmen err, and are forgiven. And other pilots had crashed. Why, that Westphalian pilot had had two crashes and had not been dismissed. If only that little cowardly merchant had not complained! But who would have thought that he would? Instead of commending him for his skill and quick wit in preventing their all being crushed to dust, that damned little merchant had testified, unsolicited, that the pilot had had two glasses of vodka in quick succession in the flying-field waiting-room at Reval.

The wretched man began mumbling to himself as he plunged deeper into the park.

Yes, he had had two drinks. But a man could not get drunk on two glasses of vodka, particularly a Russian. He had crashed because the cooler had sprung a leak. The motor had stopped. But he had glided to earth. Was this not proof enough that he was sober? And the plane was not even damaged. Not even a scratch on her wings. And he had never had a crash before. He’d asked the director that, but the director had been too busy finding the red pencil to answer. Well, had he?

No. Never. Never! Nobody could say that Vladimir Uspensky had ever had a crash before.

Consumed by his misery, the man looked neither to right nor left. Yes, he had had two drinks.

“And after four years of service with us, are you still unacquainted with our regulations?” the director had asked sarcastically.

“And dumb beast that I am, I couldn’t even answer him,” Vladimir remembered bitterly.

Yes, he had taken two drinks. He’d taken them, too, because he was coming back to Berlin, when he longed with all his being for Moscow.

Vladimir Uspensky hated Berlin. It was such an ugly city, with a soul as cold and sterile as the Prussian soil upon which it squats. It was a city where men shouted and women whined, where the purple apoplexy of the struggle against defeat had displaced the grace of living. Uspensky knew all the capitals. For him New York had movement, Paris beauty, London age. But there was only one city that he loved, and that was Moscow. Loverlike, he credited to that blood-stained snow-mound the movement of New York, the beauty of Paris, the age and dignity of London.

It had been a sudden pang of homesickness, and had come upon him unawares. Vladimir had never before let homesickness interfere with the business of flying. But this time—it had caught him like the springtime desire of a young girl to be loved....

A park bench by a still, dirt-screened pond greeted the unhappy man icily. He had no sooner fallen onto it when overhead a metal bird hummed in flight. He looked up—a Fokker monoplane, blue and brown. He knew it. He knew the pilot. He had often saluted him in the air when their paths crossed between Amsterdam and Berlin.

The thundering thing came nearer, taunting the discredited pilot on the bench. “You, there,” it roared, “you can never fly again.”

Vladimir rose unsteadily to his feet. No—he could never fly again.

Suddenly he buried his head in his coat, and cried. An old derelict shuffling up looked at him anxiously.

“Are you sick?” the stranger quavered at Vladimir.

Vladimir looked back quickly.

“No, no,” he coughed, clearing his throat. “I am not sick. Not sick.”

No—he could never fly again. “Are you sick?” the stranger quavered.

The derelict hurried on. The metal bird had faded in the gray sky. One could hear only a thin, persistent thrumming. Vladimir put his hands to his ears.

He walked out of the park, through the rectangular streets that seemed to squeeze him like a giant maw. He paused at a dim Weinstube, hesitated and then entered. The plump barmaid brought him a vodka. He looked at it, and then at her. She edged away. His eyes frightened her.

Vladimir brushed the glass from the table. The crash startled the proprietor, who came panting from the kitchen.

“Another crash!” shouted Vladimir. “Do you see it? I am that glass. I crashed too.”

“Crazy Russian,” growled the proprietor. “Pay and get out.”

“You think I am crazy? Perhaps you think I am drunk too. It is your city that crashed me, your damn’ city without a sun, without a soul. I hate it. I hate you—all of you. You robbed me of my plane. You robbed me of my life—”

“If you don’t get out this minute, I’ll call the police.” The proprietor moved to the door.

Vladimir surrendered. He threw a two-mark note upon the bar.

He lumbered up the avenue of commercialized gayety—Kurfürstendamm—where even in the mottled afternoon painted women sat together in the huge cafes, waiting. Orchestras played with Teutonic discipline one-year-old jazz, born of a primitive people and now, robbed of its abandonment, employed to stimulate these human automatons. Vladimir did not see, nor hear. He walked on.

Toward evening he found himself at Templehof—the flying field. What was he doing here? This patch of green in the wilderness of factory lands, where the flight of men began and ended, was his no longer. What matter if he knew it from the sky as other men know a beloved face? He was now an exile from the sky and from this field, which brought men to the sky. This field to him had become home when revolution had exiled him from his home. And now he had lost this too.

Even the night watchman—silly doddering old fool—had his place here. But Vladimir Uspensky, proudest of pilots, had none. Probably the night watchman knew of his disgrace, and would pity him. What irony! But wait. Perhaps he did not know. They would not tell him until the next day. Then—

The plan was born.

He slept in a draughty little hotel near the field. He rose at four. It was still dark. He dressed slowly, paid his bill, and found his way to the hangars.

The night watchman greeted him with customary obsequiousness. He did not know.

“I came out early to tune up the machine myself,” explained Vladimir. “I don’t trust these mechanics any more.”

With the aid of the night watchman he rolled the machine out of the hangar, and started the engine. Vladimir listened carefully to the jangled symphony of the motor, noting beat and pitch with musicianly intensity. He was satisfied. The motor sang gloriously.

And the sole purpose of his flight was to convince the sneering director that Vladimir Uspensky was not through, that Vladimir Uspensky had been grossly libeled, that Vladimir Uspensky was not a drunkard but a careful, competent pilot.

He stepped into his flying suit, adjusted his helmet and his goggles, saw that the rolling map was fixed in its proper place. He looked at his wrist-watch. In another hour flying officials would begin to descend upon the field. He must be off. He clambered up the metal rests of the wings and strapped himself into the pilot’s seat.

His eyes sparkled exultingly as he bent low. The plane rattled over the field, faster and faster. He turned. The motor subsided, and then leaped into hammering life again. He began to rise over the hangars, higher and higher. A thin morning sun melted the surrounding haze, and the mist on his wind-shield and goggles. Below, factory chimneys yawned, and the trains in the railroad yards turned and twisted like black snakes.

It was good to be in the air again! How he would laugh at them when he returned! Show them he had been to Danzig and back again, in schedule time, without a scratch. Could a drunkard do that?

East he flew, over the pines of Brandenburg, over the marshes beside the hard-won little fields and the precise farmhouses. He knew this land. He slipped lower in his seat and gave himself up to the blended roar of wind, motor and propellers, and the gentle heave of the metal bird. Thus for two hours.

He craned his neck over the wind-shield. He did not like the sky, nor the clouds, nor the fog spreading over the earth. But fortune was with him today. Fortune must be with him today. He would show them that even a storm was but a slight obstacle to Vladimir Uspensky. On, on! The speedometer quivered at one hundred and ten. The plane shook as if in fever. He sat bolt upright.

The wind charged him from the side, and it took all his strength to right the plane.

Now the fog choked him in gray darkness, and he had only instinct and a pathetically inadequate compass as his guide. A strange fear gripped him in this mist-woven wilderness of sky. Suddenly the image of the director drawing the red pencil through his name reappeared.... But the fat-jowled, thin-lipped face had no eyes—just sockets.

To the fear-crazed pilot, this was the writing in the sky—the red pencil was Death and the eyeless face was Fate.

“A man can fight Death—but not Fate,” shouted Vladimir, but no one heard. And no one saw when, slumping to his knees, he clutched the control lever as if in prayer. The plane with its unconscious burden crazily sank.

He opened his eyes in a snug attic with a roof so low that he could touch it with his hand, if he felt like trying. But Vladimir didn’t feel like trying. Didn’t feel like moving at all. Underneath the warm feather-bed, his body lay stiffly tired. But his eyes roved fearfully from wooden ceiling to whitewashed walls and unpainted door. No thought disturbed the vacancy of his gaze.

Suddenly his ears caught the steady clop-clop of some one ascending stairs, and then the door opened and an old peasant with a long pipe entered. He took a deep puff and nodded several times. “How do you feel?” he asked.

Vladimir recognized it with difficulty as the German spoken in bleak Pomerania.

“Feeling better?” the old fellow repeated, louder and with a hint of irritation.

Vladimir nodded.

The old man regarded him for a moment, then puffed and spoke again:

“You’re the second one that’s dropped outside our door within the past two years,” he announced. “That girl who found you was the first. She didn’t fly to us. My wife found her exactly where that girl found you.”

The old peasant looked at the pilot, sucked his pipe a moment, and turned to the door.

“That girl covered your bird with straw,” he said, and left.

Covered his bird with straw? Why? The plane was probably smashed to bits....

“Excuse me for bringing my dirty shoes and your milk in at one time.”

In amazement Vladimir looked at the barefooted peasant girl who had entered, for she spoke Russian, and a Russian with the accent of a grande dame of Petrograd. In one hand she held a pair of wooden shoes, and in the other a glass of milk. She smiled at him with her lips but not with her eyes.

“I daren’t leave my shoes outside or the dog will run off with them. He’s very strong.” She smiled as she set the sabots on the floor and closed the door behind her.

“You are Russian?” Vladimir asked unsteadily.

“Yes, I’m Russian,” the girl answered as she approached his bed. “I knew you were because when I found you, you cried out in Russian. And now no more questions. Drink your milk.”

The girl lifted the pilot’s head and supported it with a strong right hand, while with the left she held the glass against his mouth. The sick man drank obediently, but his questioning eyes never left her face.

It was a lovely face with dark eyes that brought back to Vladimir the sound of silver laughter, of troika bells, and the sight of gilt domes, the blue sky and snow-covered streets of Moscow.

“Most of us went to Paris, but I chose Pomerania,” the girl explained easily. “And now sleep. Tomorrow we’ll talk.”

But the next day, the girl didn’t stop to talk, despite her promise. She placed Vladimir’s food on a stool near his bed and left, smiling her lip smile, as she slipped her feet into the wooden shoes at the door.

When he finished his food, he felt so much stronger that he arose and dressed. He found his clothes neatly folded on a shelf. Cautiously he stretched arms and legs and twisted his neck about. Miracle of miracles, he was all sound and unhurt. A deep, grateful sigh burst forth unbidden from his heart but died on his lips as that lost look which had shrouded his eyes in the fog crept back.

“What is going to happen to me?” he cried out in agony. “I’m afraid—again. Why couldn’t I die when I crashed?”

His eyes suddenly caught the glint of a razor blade on the floor. Why, it was his own razor blade, evidently dropped from his pocket when he had dressed. His teeth bit into his indrawn lips as he reached for it. He would show them if he was afraid!

There was a sudden knock at the door, and the peasant girl entered.

“What!” she cried. “Up and dressed! Then you can have supper with us below. You’d better go down now. Food’s on the table.”

The razor slid from Vladimir’s fingers and buried itself in the bed.

The man felt curiously ashamed of himself. Had she seen the razor?

He looked up anxiously at the girl. But her back was turned to him as she adjusted the little curtain to the tiny window. She had evidently not seen. He felt relieved.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Better hurry,” the girl advised, without turning around. “You’ll find soap and towel near the pump outside.”

When he had gone, the girl reached for the razor in the bed and hid it under a loose plank in the floor, for she had seen.

A moment later Vladimir, facing the old Pomeranian peasant and his equally ancient wife, heard the light pat-pat of the Russian girl’s bare feet.

The meal of black bread and thick potato soup was eaten in silence. At its close the old peasant offered Vladimir a puff at his pipe, but Vladimir refused, remarking that he preferred a cigarette. The old peasant woman disappeared, and the girl in the far corner of the kitchen washed the dishes, putting them on the stove ledge to dry.

Having finished his smoke, the old man rose.

“There’s still enough light for you to look around,” he suggested. “My pigs are the best in all Pomerania. You must see them.”

As Vladimir followed his host out, the girl called out in Russian:

“A few feet away from the barn is your plane.”

When Vladimir did not return with the old peasant a half-hour later, the girl threw a shawl over her shoulders and ran out into the field. It was now completely dark. With difficulty she made out his figure, dim and uncertain in the distance.

She continued to run until she was a few feet away from him, and then she slowed down into a leisurely walk.

“Your plane all right?” she asked.

But there was no answer.

The girl’s hands felt for the man’s face.

“Why do you cry?” she demanded as her hands fell to her sides.

“Because I can never fly again.” The man’s answer was low and bitter.

“And why not?”

“You felt the answer with your hands. Can a man fly who bursts into tears like a baby?”

“You are afraid of something,” the girl said.

“I’m afraid of myself,” Vladimir cried. That confession wrested from him by the impersonal sympathy of the girl’s voice now made him long to pour forth words of explanation, of supposition, of self-justification. But he found he could not, for his cracked and trembling voice hinted at a renewed outburst of self-pity.

“Did you ever crash before?” The girl’s voice was still gently impersonal.

The man winced.

“Yes,” he replied. “But only once before.”

And in a voice as shrill as a girl’s he told her of the little merchant, the director, the dismissal—everything!

“I stole the plane to prove to them that I could fly her at her record speed and bring her back safely,” Vladimir concluded bitterly. “And what did I do? I crashed again. I am a wreck—a ruin. I have no right to live.”

There was no murmur of pity, no cry of scorn from the girl beside him. She stood there silent, almost lost in the darkness.

“You see you turn away from me,” Vladimir was moved to cry out.

There was a long silence; then the girl spoke. “You have suffered,” she said. “You say you are wrecked, you are ruined. Do you think you know what it is to be wrecked? To be ruined? You say you can no longer fly again—the sky is barred to cowards.... Do you know that I too once flew? Not in a plane, but in dreams. I flew so high I never touched earth—until the revolution came. My father died. My mother followed him. My brother was killed. And I ran away.

“I should never have run away. Hunger, death—what does it matter? A Russian should never desert Russia. I ran away. I told you before that instead of fleeing to Paris, I made my way here. That was a lie. I wanted to get to Paris, but my money gave out when I reached Berlin. You’ve walked in the Tiergarten on a muggy November day. So have I. Not just one day. One night, I slept on a bench there. The next morning when a man spoke to me on Friedrich Strasse, I went with him. He fed me. He maintained me for a month, and then he brought me to a friend of his, the proprietor of a night club on Kurfürstendamm. The first evening I took my place at the table assigned me was also a birthday for me—my nineteenth. That is how I celebrated.”

“The first evening I took my place at the table assigned me, was also a birthday for me—my nineteenth.”

Vladimir wanted to cry out for the girl to stop, but his voice stuck in his throat.

The colorless voice suddenly broke.

“Don’t cry,” the man begged.

“I’m not crying,” the girl replied. “I think all my tears dried up inside of me when I sat at the table in that red plush seat. Three months after my horrible birthday celebration, I woke up in my room with the noon sun on my face. I’d forgotten to draw the curtains the night before. I reached for my hand mirror and looked at myself, and then I got down on my knees and prayed.

“In the afternoon I sold my three evening dresses, the cheap perfume and the imitation jewelry. I bought a pair of heavy shoes, the dress I have on now, and a warm jacket—all secondhand. I walked to the railroad station and looked on the board for the list of departing trains. A train for Pomerania was leaving within ten minutes. I showed the ticket-agent the money I had left and asked how far that would take me. He sold me a ticket to this village. With all my money gone, I could not turn back, you see. These peasants took me in. They are not our people. I cannot talk with them. But I have enough to eat and I am warm.”

Suddenly Vladimir found a limp square of paper slipped into his hand as the girl whispered:

“For remembrance from one who can never fly again, to you who tomorrow return to the sky.”

And she was gone.

Vladimir tried to follow, but his feet were unused to the stubble of the field. By the time he reached the peasant’s house, there was no sign of the girl.

By the light of the lamp Vladimir looked hard and almost grimly at the faded snapshot of a laughing girl in white. What the girl must have been at fourteen—when she had flown.

Reverently, Vladimir, to whom the wrecked woman had given back his manhood—reverently, he brought the snapshot to his lips.

He rose with the dawn the next morning and hurried down. The girl was already in the kitchen. To his greeting, she replied in a murmur and avoided his eyes. She handed him his coffee in silence.

When he had finished, he held out his hand.

“Good-by,” he said.

She extended hers timidly. Her hand trembled.

“You’re flying back?” she asked.

“Yes, back to Berlin,” he said, taking her hand in his.

“They may arrest you for stealing the plane.” The girls soft dark eyes searched Vladimir’s face anxiously.

“I’ve considered that.” The man nodded gravely. “I shall probably go to prison.” His grip on her hand tightened until it hurt her. “But if I knew you were waiting for me—Tatiana, would you trust yourself to fly with me?”

Their eyes met.

“Yes,” the girl answered.

“It may mean death, if I crash.”

“But you will not crash,” the girl made answer.

Twenty minutes later the aged peasant heard what seemed to him to be the bellow of a released wild beast. He saw the machine skim across the field and soar into the sky until it melted into a gray speck and was lost to sight.

That was two years ago.

Today, should you fly between Moscow and Odessa, you may have for your pilot Vladimir Uspensky, and you could wish for no better. Should you land in Moscow, you may even meet the sky bride, Tatiana.