“Twenty years ago. She is a young girl, but an old aircraft.” He smiled. “She is American made, as you know, and all measurements are in feet, miles, and gallons.”
“What is her stall speed?”
“She stalls at any speed. So go as slow as you please. She will stall when she wants. Just give yourself enough altitude to recover.”
“What speed, Signore Bocaccio?”
He shrugged. “The airspeed indicator is inaccurate. And the needle jumps. The airplane is, how you say in English, out of trim. The leading edge is banged up.”
“I noticed.”
“Well, so, the stall speed is perhaps sixty. But when she was young, she could go forty-five. But what difference does that make? You must just give yourself the altitude to recover — and why would you want to approach stall speed?”
“I want to go low and slow. I want to make steep banks and turns. Will she do that?”
Signore Bocaccio looked at him closely. “That is not the way to Gondar, my friend. Gondar is three hundred miles due north. There are no steep banks or turns to be made.”
“We are looking for the war, Signore.”
“This is not a plane for that. She knows the way to Gondar as a straight line. She does not like to be fired at.” He put his finger into a bullet hole, then patted his plane and dusted off his hands. He also informed Purcell, “The government does not want you looking for the war from the air. That is their job. If you do that, they will think you are spying for the Royalists. Or the Eritreans. Or the British or the Americans—”
“Cruising speed? Altitude?”
“This airfield is already at eight thousand feet. You will get the best cruising speed if you climb to perhaps twelve thousand. To go much higher would take too long. Especially with four people. As you go over the valleys you can drop down if you wish, but you must remember that at eight thousand feet, you may meet a nine-thousand-foot mountain. You understand?”
“Si. And what will she make?”
“Perhaps you can get a hundred fifty out of her. I make Gondar in two and a half hours, normally.”
“How’s the prop?”
“She wanders. Sometimes a hundred — two hundred rpm. Give it no thought.”
“It can wander all it wants as long as it doesn’t wander off the airplane.”
“The hub is solid. It has no cracks.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“Do you think I am”—Bocaccio tapped his head—“pazzo?”
“Well, Signore Bocaccio, if you are, so am I.”
He laughed, then looked at Purcell and said seriously, “Do not try tricks with Mia, my friend. She will kill you.”
“Capisco.” He said to Signore Bocaccio, “Are you ready to teach me how to fly Mia?”
He smiled. “After all I have said, you still want to fly her?”
“If the Ethiopian Air Force can fly her, I can fly her.”
Again Bocaccio looked at Purcell. “Whatever is your purpose, it must be important to you.”
“As important as your coffee beans.”
Apropos of nothing, Signore Bocaccio said, “This has become a sad land.”
“You should leave.”
“I will…” He smiled and said to Purcell, “Perhaps L’Osservatore Romano would like to buy Mia.”
“I will ask.” He looked up at the cockpit. “Ready?”
“I fly, you watch, then you fly and I watch you. Next time, you fly and I watch you from the ground.”
“Let’s hope for a next time.”
Signore Bocaccio laughed, and they climbed into the aircraft.
Chapter 34
Henry Mercado, wearing a bathrobe and undershorts, sat on the balcony of his top-floor room sipping coffee. The fog was lifting, and in the distance he could see a single-engine black aircraft rising off a hilltop airstrip. He said, “That must be Frank.”
Vivian, sitting next to him, replied, “He said to look for him about seven.”
Mercado glanced at her. She was wearing a short white shamma that she’d picked up somewhere, and she had obviously worn it to bed. The shamma reminded him of Getachu’s camp. The parade ground. The pole. He wondered if she’d thought about that.
Vivian told him, “Frank said he’d do a flyby and tip his wings.”
He supposed that meant she had to leave and get to her own room — or Purcell’s room — so that Purcell would not see both of them having coffee on Henry Mercado’s balcony at 7 A.M. But she didn’t move.
To make conversation, he said, “This is a squalid city.”
“It is not Rome.”
“No. This is the Infernal City.”
She laughed.
He had developed a strong dislike for Addis Ababa in 1935, and forty years later nothing he’d seen had changed his opinion. Even the Ethiopians disliked it. It was like every semi-Westernized town he’d seen in Africa or Asia, combining the worst aspects of each culture. Its only good feature was its eight-thousand-foot elevation, which made the climate pleasant — except during the June-to-September rainy season when mud slid down the hills into the streets.
He poured more coffee for both of them. Vivian put her bare feet on the balcony rail and her shamma slipped back to her thighs.
He was surprised that she had accepted his invitation for coffee on the balcony, and more surprised when she came to his door wearing only the shamma and little else. Or nothing else.
On the other hand, Vivian was of another generation. And sometimes he thought of her as a child of God: naturally innocent while unknowingly sensuous.
He looked out at the black aircraft in the distance. It was circling over the hills and making steep, dangerous-looking turns. He said, “I hope he’s a good pilot.”
She was staring at the aircraft and didn’t reply.
He looked out again into the city. Like all the cities of his youth, he hated this place because it reminded him of a time when he was hopeful and optimistic — when he believed in Moscow and not Rome. Now he was burdened with years and disappointments, and with God.
If he looked hard enough into the swirling fog below, he could see Henry Mercado dashing across Saint George Square to the telegraph office. He could hear the roar of Italian warplanes overhead. He could and did remember and feel the pleasure of making love to the nineteen-year-old daughter of an American diplomat in the blacked-out lobby of the Imperial. Why the lobby? He had a room upstairs. What if they’d snapped on the lights? He smiled.
“What is making you smile, Henry?”
“What always makes me smile?”
“Tell me.”
So he told her about having sex in the lobby of the Imperial Hotel during an air raid blackout.
She listened without comment, then stayed silent awhile before saying, “So you understand.”
He didn’t reply.
“We do things when we’re frightened.”
“We were not frightened of the air raid.”
“We want to hold on to another person.”
“I didn’t follow this person to Cairo.”
She didn’t reply.
He looked out at the Imperial Hotel. Its surrounding verandas seemed to sag. He had the nostalgic idea of checking in there instead of here, but maybe it was enough to visit once a day when he went to the press office. In fact, the places that once held good memories were best left as memories.
The aircraft was climbing to the north, and Mercado saw that it cleared a distant peak by a narrow margin. Vivian didn’t seem to notice, but he said to her, “I hope you’re prepared to do some aerial photography in a small plane with a novice pilot.”
“You should stay here, Henry.”
“I don’t care if I die, Vivian. I care if you die.”