And then the bus, never going very fast, changed into a train, a train which we were responsible for driving. There was nothing very complicated mechanically about this. We were now in the front of the vehicle and it was running along lines, still following or continuing the same route as the bus had taken. I keep on saying ‘we’ because I wasn’t by myself, but I wasn’t with any other specific people either, I was in the first person plural. We were now in front of the train which was running a little faster along a single track. Although we were in a deep cutting with high stone walls (or were they brick? they were black brick), although we were in this cutting, I had a sense of being at a very high altitude.
I saw a bend in the line ahead. I wasn’t the one who was driving at this moment, but I was looking up at the configuration of the lines of bricks at the top of the cutting wall, high above us, and I could tell by the way that they were converging that round this next bend the cutting would open out and that we would be flooded with light. It was now no longer night. The fact that I could read this in the walls gave me a great sense of satisfaction (although perhaps partly my pleasure came from my anticipation of that opening out and the bright light which was awaiting us round the bend). The train was now going fast. As we turned the bend, there, as I had foreseen, the cutting walls fell away. We were high up, high up, above a whole landscape and a whole bay, a bay of the sea—an idyllic landscape, blue sea, hills, gentle beaches, woods. All laid out below us. But at the same moment as we turned the bend we saw that the lines of the railway descended at an extremely sharp angle, like the lines of a switchback train; and not only this, we saw that they led, several hundred feet below, straight into the sea.
This constituted one of those moments of imminent resolution of which I spoke. The end of the line, like this, leading into the sea, explained the strange nature of all our previous journey and the reason why the route had been abandoned. The view beneath us was of an ineffable beauty, which made even more sense of the whole journey than the white bird had. The white bird in that small circle of light. And now the whole landscape and seascape beneath us. There was no question of stopping the train. For an instant we were balanced at the top of the steep descent, and then we began to descend, fast and dangerously. This had been foreseeable from the very instant that we had turned the corner but had in no way diminished my pleasure. And although there was a grave inevitability about the end we were approaching, it seemed neither tragic nor pathetic. To the rest of us I shouted out: Swim! as we hurtled down. The train disappeared deep under the water. I was not drowned. But some of us (belonging to my first person plural) were.
‘The progress of today in every field is nothing else but the absurd of yesterday.’
Today I wish to write about an event which took place in September 1910.
The Aero Club of Milan had offered a prize of £3,000 to the first man to fly over the Alps. Geo Chavez, twenty-four years old, a Peruvian already famous in the aviation world, has been waiting for several days in Brig, beneath the Simplon Pass in Switzerland, for the weather to improve. Several other competitors are also waiting.
Most of the pilots are of the opinion that it is already too late to attempt the flight this year; June or July would be more suitable months. During the last five days they have made trial flights, climbing to over a thousand metres but then returning to the small field called Siberia where canvas hangars have been erected. All of them have complained of the treachery of the air currents which tug at their planes as soon as they approach the entrance to the massif: all except Weymann, the American, who wears a pince-nez and says about everything that you have to get used to it.
A few weeks ago, Chavez broke the world altitude record. Across the Alps there is no need to climb as high as he did then. Yet the mountains appear to constitute an absolute frontier. The buildings of Brig crouch low on the ground before them. The mountains induce the idea that there is nothing beyond them. To believe that Italy and Domodossola are on the far side is an act of faith, supported, it is true, by the traffic on the Simplon road and by history, for it was near here that Hannibal and Napoleon crossed the Alps with their armies, but denied by the five senses within whose pentagon each man is alone.
I quote from the report by Luigi Barzini, a well-known Italian journalist, in the Corriere della Sera of 23 September 1910: ‘This morning around ten o’clock the news from the Simplon was not at all encouraging. On the north side the weather was calm. But a wind was blowing through the valley at the bottom of which, like white stones after a landslide, were the small snow-covered houses of the village. On the Monscera and in Italy the weather was splendid.
‘ “I would like very much to go,” Chavez told me sadly, “I will never find better weather conditions on the Italian side.”
‘He kept on telephoning his friend Christiaens who was making meteorological observations on the Kulm.
‘All of a sudden Chavez says: “I must go and see. A car.” We took a racing car belonging to a young American and sped up the mountain, deafened by the roar of the engine, and hanging on to our very seats so as not to be thrown out at the corners.
‘A very strong east wind was blowing against the very highest peaks, at perhaps 3,000 metres, dragging clouds along with it. But lower down the weather was perfect. The trees were still. The smoke of fires lit by tourists in the woods was rising slowly into the sky. It was not too cold, although above 1,300 metres everything was white with snow …
‘Chavez looked around him, studying the air. A continuous working of his jaw showed that he was grinding his teeth. Nothing else showed that he was preoccupied or anxious. He had not shaved, he had got up quickly in the morning and he had just forgotten this detail of his toilet in the dawn of the victorious day.
‘He spoke little. He asked the time. “I must go,” he exclaimed. And after a few minutes he added, “If I can’t get through, I’ll land at the Simplon Hospice, I’ll certainly be able to get as far as that.”
‘Christiaens climbed into the car and exchanged a few words with the aviator—serious words.
‘ “The wind?” asked Chavez.
‘ “There’s still wind,” Christiaens replied.
‘ “No chance of going through?”
‘ “No.”
‘ “What’s the wind speed?”
‘ “Fifteen and increasing.”
‘In the valley of Krummbach the pines were moving and the grass was bent low under the icy wind.
‘ “It’s very strong!” said Chavez, “it’s making the pines sway and it takes some wind to do that …”
‘A car was coming up from the valley. It was Paulhan, who had gone ahead to explore. We stopped and Paulhan told us that towards the Monscera the weather was absolutely calm. The two aviators became engrossed studying the likely air currents.