Petroff saluted Major Perezharoff. ‘Sir, this officer will be of considerable use to me as an observer. He can also relay reports directly to the English liaison people. I should like to take him up with me.’
Perezharoff shrugged. ‘He’ll be out of our way.’
Having said farewell to Captain Wallace I left the mansion. I wandered with a suddenly silent Petroff down to the lake. A small wooden jetty had been repaired and led out to where the seaplanes were moored. ‘Do you know the Oertz?’ he asked.
‘I know the Germans rejected them for war work.’
‘Not at the end. That’s how we got it. They’re devils to handle, but they’ve their own beauty. The little Hansa is a gem. You’d hardly know you were taking off or touching down. Like a dragonfly. But she’s a one-seater.’
‘You use both?’
‘I’m the only airman left. You’ve had some plane experience, didn’t Kolya say?’
‘Mine were experimental.’
‘Yes.’ He was thoughtful. ‘Kiev, of course.’
‘I owe Kolya much.’
‘You were a special friend? He was a true Bohemian. But he knew his duty.’
‘Politics?’ I shrugged. I was missing a clue to the nature of this exchange. We reached the end of the jetty.
‘Hot as hell, eh?’ Petroff removed his cap. it’s cooler up there.’ He seemed to yearn for the sky. The sun caught his monocle. It blazed like a dragon’s eye. ‘You survived, however. You’re a bit of a fraud, aren’t you? So you went into Intelligence.’
I ignored the insult, ‘It was my only possible contribution.’
‘Spying.’
‘Sabotage, too. As an engineer, I had to make the best use of my talents. In the struggle.’
‘You were always against the Reds?’
I wondered why he was interrogating me so intensely. ‘Profoundly opposed.’
‘You disagreed with Kolya?’
‘On that alone.’
‘I supported him. I was with Kerenski, you know. We’re all guilty.’
‘Kerenski’s revolution cost me my academic career.’
He looked down at rainbow oil on the water. ‘We’re all guilty. But you and I have survived Kolya.’
‘Guilty? For what?’
‘For not listening to our hearts. Everyone possesses precognition, don’t you think? It’s just that we refuse to accept what we see.’
‘The future?’
‘In a tea-cup or on our palms. In the cards, or in a cloud.’
‘I am not superstitious. I regret I’m an unmitigated rationalist.’
‘Ha! And you’re alive, while Kolya’s dead.’ He called over to a group of mechanics who lay on the grass at the water’s edge. ‘We’ll be wanting the Oertz started up.’ Then his attention seemed drawn to some distant willows.
‘We’re going now?’ I asked.
He grimaced. ‘Why not?’ He was abstracted. I thought he was unstable. ‘There’s something I want to do. For the future.’ I assumed he was thinking about death and meant to write a will.
‘You want to give it to me?’
‘What? If you like.’ He rubbed under his left eye with a gloved finger. He grinned, ‘If you like. You can’t see the future, then? And you a scientist!’
He had picked up some fragments of fashionable mysticism at the Mikhishevski ménage, perhaps from his sister Lolly, that ‘Natasha’ of happier days. ‘Come.’
I returned with him to the mansion and a small ground-floor room evidently shared by several people and which had formerly been a pantry. It still smelled of bread and mice. From under his mattress he drew an unopened bottle of French cognac. ‘You like this?’
‘I did once.’
‘Good. We’ll drink it. For Kolya.’
‘I cannot refuse.’
We sat on the ledge of the little window. There was an untidy kitchen garden outside. Two privates were trying to make something of it. They were working expertly, like peasants. Petroff uncorked the bottle and handed it to me. I drank sparingly, with relish. He took it from me impatiently and tilted his head back to drink nearly half the old brandy in a single swallow. War had evidently coarsened his palate. He gave me the bottle. I drank deep but there was still a fair amount left. He laughed that irritating laugh of his. I remembered it from Petersburg: universal irony tinged with tension and resentment. He finished the stuff off, but for a few drops, ‘It’s how airmen drink. We need it. Did you hear about those silly bastards who dragged their own planes on sleds for hundreds of versts to get to fight for Deniken? They were keen, eh?’
‘The drink doesn’t impair your control over the plane?’
‘It improves it. I’m the last member of the entire squadron.’
‘I know what it is,’ I was by now a trifle drunk, ‘to crash.’
‘You do?’ He smiled.
‘I designed several experimental planes. One went out of control while I was testing it. In Kiev.’
He drained the bottle. ‘That’s to the Wright brothers. Damn them to hell. And all inventors. Faust deserved no redemption.’
‘Shouldn’t you rest?’ I suggested. I could make neither head nor tail of his references.
‘Very soon, doctor.’ He searched under his mattress, ‘I’m sorry. That was the final bottle. Let’s go aloft now.’
Less nervous than if I had been sober, I followed him back to the lake where the Oertz was ready. Her propeller was spinning and she was pointing out at the long stretch of water. Mechanics, grateful for the breeze, held her by her tailplane and huge rear wings, as Cossacks might hold ropes on a fierce, unbroken stallion. The smell of oil was sweet. ‘You go forward,’ said Petroff. ‘Get in the front cockpit. You’ll find a harness. Strap in. There’s goggles and stuff, too. All you’ll need.’ He was tucking a bulky object, wrapped in a piece of calico, into his jacket. I wondered if it were a bomb. I was rather uncertain of my chances of reaching the cockpit. The fuselage was only wood and fabric. But I climbed through the struts on the rocking aircraft until I managed to lower myself into the small observer’s cockpit with its bucket seat and spring brackets where, in the other cockpit, the controls would be. There were binoculars fastened to the inside edge; a pistol in a holster, a map-case and a clipboard, some pencils and a pair of goggles whose rubber was frayed and hardened. Still in my kaftan, with my own Cossack pistols pressing to my hip’s, I settled myself and buckled on my harness, putting the goggles over my eyes. Petroff was behind me, now, signalling. The engine and propeller were, of course, making too much noise for him to bother trying to talk.
The machine suddenly moved forward at a rapid, almost maniacal, speed. It was like a bucking horse, an erratic sleigh-ride, at once exhilarating and alarming. Foul spray flew into my face. I almost drowned in it. The lake was stagnant.
The plane began to vibrate, to slew in the water, tipping to starboard. Then I saw ailerons move on the wings and we were rising over the green lake and the willows, banking steeply, and the brandy suddenly warmed my whole body, my mind and my soul. We were up, flying over the woods, the damaged house, the neglected fields; flying towards hills and the blue sea, a haze between sky and land. I saw the limans, with their abandoned resorts, glittering and shallow: columns of marching men; riders; motor-vehicles; gun-tenders and artillery. This was the Release of Flying. There is no greater pleasure. Why did people bother climbing mountains when they could gain so much more from this? The air was roaring and yet at peace; it is a combination of adventure and tranquillity no jet-setter will ever capture. A grey mist became the city. Odessa from the air, with her factories and her churches, her ports and railways, looked exactly as she had looked when Shura first took me there: exotic in her aura and golden in the sun; but so great was my experience of Escape that I did not care if I saw the city again for months. I was conscientious. I began to do my job. There were large groups of people on the docksides, filling the wide quays. There were few ships on the turquoise sea. There were pieces of large artillery. In the outer suburbs were guns, cavalry, infantry, but apparently few. The Reds were ill-prepared to meet Deniken. There came banging from below. For a moment the engine stopped and all I heard was the guns and the yelp of Petroff’s laughter. He dropped the nose. I felt groggy. We were being fired upon. The engine started again. Flak burst around us. Shrapnel tore at our canvas. It did no real damage.