The Complete Works of Isaac Babel Reprint Edition by Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine
Page 99
Borisov, the second flight engineer, a somewhat sad, dour-looking man, was walking next to Vasilyev.
“An interesting machine,” he said thoughtfully. “Very interesting indeed. After all, Tolmazov’s vortex theory doesn’t quite—”
“I disagree with you!” Vasilyev hissed through clenched teeth, quickly looking around. “It’s a coffin! A flying coffin! Though I’m not even sure if it can actually fly!”
Borisov’s lackluster eyes fixed on Vasilyev with dumb astonishment. Vasilyev again quickly looked around.
“Amateurishness! Recklessness!”
“Wait a minute ...” Borisov mumbled, dragging out his words. “You—”
“Later,” Vasilyev said, noticing Natasha and Mop-head approaching.
“Comrade Vasilyev!” Natasha called out to him. “That’s treason! Why, that’s worse than treason! It’s idiocy!”
“I shall call a Komsomol committee meeting this evening,” Mop-head announced, shaking her curls.
Vasilyev flared up: “I will gladly discuss the situation with the Komsomol committee, and I won’t stop there either!”
Natasha looked at him as if this were the first time she had ever set eyes on him.
“Are you really such a blockhead?” she asked him slowly and distinctly, with a probing tone as if she were asking herself the question.
Vasilyev wanted to answer, but managed to restrain himself. He marched off, but then turned and came back.
“Could you please give me a clean handkerchief?”
Natasha gave him a clean handkerchief, took his dirty one, and dropped it into her handbag.
Mop-head stared at them in amazement.
“What a bastard!”
“What do you mean?” Natasha asked her, surprised.
“He just gave you his dirty handkerchief!”
“He left home in such a hurry this morning that he didnt have a chance to take a clean one,” Natasha explained. “Once you get married, you too will be thinking of handkerchiefs and such things.”
“Hes your husband?” Mop-head gasped.
“You guessed it!” Natasha said, and laughed out loud. “WeVe been married for over three years now!”
• • •
The entire catering staff stood waiting by the entrance of the mess hall, with Raisa Friedman standing in front.
“Comrade Pilots!” she said to the approaching group, launching into the speech she had prepared. “Allow me to welcome you in the name of the Stakhanovite3 Mess Hall Collective ...” And then she saw her son. “My son! My daredevil son is here!” Mother Friedman shouted.
“Mama,” Friedman said, annoyed. “I see you’re coasting down the runway again!”
10.
The pilots’ dormitory. The night before the test flight.
Petrenko was holding forth: “I told Mishka straight to his face!”
“Which Mishka?”
“Mishka Gromov. Which Mishka did you think? No, Mishka, I told him, I dont agree with you when it comes to altitude procedures. We can reach quite an altitude without those oxygen masks. As long as we keep a cool head.”
“Youre chattering away when you are about to climb into a coffin,” Borisov, the second flight engineer, commented dryly, sitting on his bed.
“What kind of coffin? A brocaded one?” Friedman asked. “Custom-made! Engineer Zhukov s flying coffin with a ring on its tail! I too studied the vortex theory, and I can tell you for a fact that with the ring adhering to the contiguous stratum of air, the ship will be unnavigable.”
“Well, it would be nice if Vasya heard what you were saying!” Petrenko yelled.
“Which Vasya?” Borisov asked angrily.
“Molokov, who else!”
“Why dont you just leave me alone!” Borisov said gloomily. “A whole scientific theory is falling apart here.”
Eliseyev appeared at the door.
“A committee meeting right before a flight? Off to bed!”
“Aye-aye, Captain!” Friedman replied, and stretched himself out on his bed.
“Comrade Captain, I request permission to make a statement!” Borisov said, his eyes blinking nervously. “On the basis of the flight codex of the Soviet Union, I refuse to take part in the flight, on account of the unreliability of the ring steering system.”
Pause.
Silence. Eliseyevs cheekbones rippled, and then froze.
“Fine,” he said. “You have every right to refuse. Any more refusals?”
Silence.
“There are no more refusals,” Friedman said.
“So there are no more refusals,” Eliseyev repeated. “Off to bed, then!” He turned to Borisov: “You will relocate to the Fourth Dormitory.”
Eliseyev left the room.
Borisov quickly gathered his things.
Silence. The silence became unbearable.
“Fair enough,” Borisov muttered, as he continued gathering his things together. “After all, the flight codex wasnt drawn up for laughs!”
• • •
The hydrogen engines were being tested in the hangar. Eliseyev suddenly appeared in front of Murashko.
“The second flight engineer refuses to participate in the test flight on the grounds of the unreliability of the steering system.”
“Comrade Captain,” Mop-head said, her voice trembling. “As I assembled the whole propeller mechanism with my own hands, I would like—”
“I cannot take anyone without pilot’s training on a flight!” Eliseyev said.
“ ‘I cannot take anyone without pilot’s training/ ” Zhukov parroted derisively. “Well, who do you intend to take, if not her? That girl isnt reaching for the clouds, shes reaching for the stars.”
“Reaching for the stars is not one of the specifications in the service regulations,” Eliseyev said with a smile.
“You will go up as a member of the test-flight commission,” Murashko told her firmly.
“You expect a thank-you?” Mop-head muttered.
“I can do without one.”
“She’s reaching for the stars,” Zhukov grumbled. “What more do you want?”
11.
Early morning. The slanted rays of the sun. The launch crew maneuvered the airship out of the hangar. The committee of scientists stood nearby.
“I think one could go so far as to say that the contraption has the most original shape imaginable.”
This phrase could have been uttered by none other than Professor Polibin.
Tolmazov, standing to the side, noticed Vasilyev nearby and lifted his eyebrows in surprise.,
“Aren’t you flying?”
“I officially voiced my opinion about this airship,” Vasilyev said morosely.
The powerful droning of the engines.
“I would say—” Professor Polibin began.
“So go ahead and say it!” Professor Tolmazov interrupted him so brusquely that Polibin remained speechless.
• • •
Eliseyev, Friedman, and Petrenko were in the airship s control room.
The flight engineer and Mop-head were standing next to the engine crew.
Murashko and Natasha walked through the airships inner gangway.
“So we’ll finally get off the ground, Comrade Murashko!” “Though it was tough enough to get the go-ahead,” Murashko said. “Tolmazov and Vasilyev pulled all kinds of strings to have things stopped.”
Eliseyevs command: “Release the lines!”
“Aye-aye, Captain! Releasing the lines!” the starter replied. “Takeoff!” the starter yelled.
“Aye-aye! Taking off!” Eliseyev answered.
The airship soared into the air.
Zhukov stood by the porthole, his beard quivering, then, his unseeing eyes fixed straight ahead, he stumbled toward the control panel.
• • •
“Increase altitude!”
“Aye-aye, Captain! Increasing altitude!”
“Maintain altitude at eight hundred!”
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sp; The smooth, powerful drone of the engines.
Mop-heads rapid, nimble, confident movements as she worked the controls.
Eliseyevs voice: “Full speed ahead!”
“Aye-aye, Captain! Full speed ahead!” the pilot s voice came echoing back.
On the ground.
The committee of scientists were following the airships progress. “I think one could go so far as to say,” Professor Polibins voice came filtering through, “that the atmospheric effect is more or less incapable of paralyzing Zhukovs ring.”
• • •
In the airship.
Eliseyevs distant voice: “Keep the course at a hundred and twenty!”
An answer came echoing back immediately: “Aye-aye, Captain! Keeping the course at a hundred and twenty!”
Zhukov glanced at the instruments.
“WeVe reached a speed of three hundred!” he shouted to the airship crew. He slung open his arms, and Mop-head ran and embraced him, kissed him, and hurried back to the engines.
“Oh, Im so happy!” Natasha said, looking intently at Zhukov as she always did.
• • •
On the ground.
Polibin could not resist the pleasure of announcing to Professor Tolmazov: “I think one could go so far as to say that the airship is navigating perfectly well along a horizontal plane, which to some extent could be seen as contravening your vortex theory.”
• • •
In the air.
Eliseyevs voice over the megaphone: “Im preparing for a touchdown!”
“Go ahead,” Murashko answered joyfully.
Eliseyevs voice, sounding clearer: “Prepare for touchdown! Adjust steering!”
Obedient voices responded immediately: “Aye-aye, Captain! Adjusting steering!”
But there was no loss of altitude.
The airship made another circle. Friedman turned the steering
wheel again. Zhukov looked at the altimeter. There was no loss of altitude.
“Comrade Captain!” Friedman announced in a soft voice. “The altitude steering system is not functioning!”
Eliseyev s face flushed.
“Navigate for abrupt altitude loss!”
“Aye-aye, Captain! Navigating for abrupt altitude loss!”
The airship made another circle. Friedman turned the steering wheel. The ring on the tail end of the ship was now shaking. There was still no loss of altitude.
“Good-bye, my little ringlet,” Eliseyev sang to himself, “Good-bye, true love of mine!”
The airship made another circle.
• • •
On the ground.
“What is going on, Comrade Tolmazov?” Vasilyev asked with fear in his voice.
“They cannot land,” Professor Tolmazov said, “which was to be expected.”
“I beg your pardon?” Professor Polibin barked. “What you said was that they would not be able to take off!”
• • •
In the air.
“The wind seems to be pushing us upward,” Eliseyev said with his customary calm. Then, in an abruptly altered voice: “Navigate for all-out altitude loss!”
Friedman turned the steering wheel with all his might. The ring on the tail end of the ship was now rattling loudly. The steering cables tore.
“Im turning off the power and going for a static landing,” Eliseyev said to Murashko with his usual aplomb. There’s no other way I can land with this ring.”
The airship went hurtling over the airfield. Eliseyev looked down at the swaying earth.
“Pilots Friedman and Petrenko! Climb up into the body of the airship, check the tail unit, and fix the steering cables!”
“Aye-aye, Captain!”
Eliseyev and the navigator took over the controls. Friedman and Petrenko climbed into an internal shaft in the airship’s body and crawled along it, steadying themselves on shroud lines that were fluttering in the wind. Holding on to each other, they crawled toward the tail, groped for the torn pieces of cable, and tied them together in a knot.
The wind began to push the airship down toward the ground.
“How are we doing?” Murashko asked.
“Couldn’t be better,” Eliseyev answered. “The steering system is functioning again.” Then he turned and said into the megaphone, “The whole crew, except for the pilots, prepare to jump!”
“Aye-aye, Captain! Ready to jump!”
“Jump? What for?” Murashko shouted.
“Theres no time for explanations!” Eliseyev shouted back, his face crimson. “You will do as you are ordered! You will jump according to emergency guidelines!”
• • •
The first to jump was Murashko. After him came the flight engineer, the navigator, the radio operator, and the airship engineer.
Mop-head managed to shake Friedman’s hand as she hurried to the escape hatch.
Natasha hesitated for an instant at the hatch.
“What about you, Comrade Eliseyev?”
“Don’t ask questions!” he shouted.
And Natasha jumped.
The parachutists hung in the air like little white clouds.
The airship was empty, except for Eliseyev, Zhukov, and the pilots sitting rigidly at the controls.
“Jump, Comrade Zhukov!”
Zhukov refused with a wave of his hand: “Don’t talk nonsense! I’m staying to the end!”
A sharp tug at the gas lever. The gas valve opened with a loud clank. The airship began to descend. Eliseyevs face with its high cheekbones flashed for a second—Friedman’s wide-open eyes.
On the ground.
Raisa Friedman came out of the mess hall building in her uniform jacket. Behind her came two mess hall workers carrying a large platter with a chocolate cake in the shape of an airship.
“Hurry!” Raisa Friedman said. “They are coming home!”
• • •
The airship was descending.
“Cast the anchor ropes!” Eliseyev commanded.
The anchor ropes were cast. The airship swayed and shook a few meters from the ground.
The launch crew came running across the field, grabbing for the ropes swinging in the air. The airships nose bumped against the ground. Eliseyev went tumbling to the side, the control panel split and fell on him. Zhukov fell onto the gangway. The pilots grabbed hold of their control posts.
“Good-bye, my little ringlet,” Eliseyev said. “Everything is fine.” He wiped the sweat from his forehead.
Friedman was trying to turn the steering wheel with all his might.
“You can get off now, weVe landed!” Eliseyev said to him.
• • •
The parachutists touched down one after another. Vasilyev, distraught, came running up to Natasha.
“Tell me, Seryozha, do you remember which formula we used to calculate the Reynolds Factor?” she asked him, gasping for air.
People were running to the airship. Eliseyev and Friedman lowered Zhukovs motionless body out of the hatch.
Friedmans mother was sobbing. Light tears fell onto the cake.
A fiery, scarlet stream of blood was trickling from under Zhukovs black mane of hair and down his high forehead. His snapped spectacles were hanging limply.
“Zhukov, can you hear me?” Professor Tolmazov, running in front of the others, called out.
The stream of blood on Zhukov s face was now flowing down his cheeks.
12.
Night. Three blinding rays of light from hanging lamps illuminated the inclined heads of Natasha, Varya from the draft department, and Leibovich, an old, kindly, bald, gaunt engineer.
Mop-heads inextinguishable eyes shone from a corner plunged in darkness.
“Are you almost done, Natasha?” she said, barely audibly and without moving.
“Yes.”
Natashas team was looking for a flaw in the airships design. At the other end of the corridor, in Murashkos office—his new office with heavy furniture, carpets, and portraits hanging on t
he walls—another team was also searching for flaws in the design.
It was a stormy meeting, as it is in countless commissions where passions reach the pitch that heralds ominous changes in an institution.
Murashko was sitting rigidly at the conference table. He was unusually pale. Hands clenched into fists were being shaken at him, criticism came flying from all sides.
“We signaled you a thousand times!” Borisov yelled.
“We had every right to take chances,” Friedman shouted, slamming the water jug down on the table.
Friedmans words were drowned in the roar of voices. An unruffled tenor cut through the roar.
“A tempest in a teacup!” Polibin said, entering the room. Taking out a handkerchief, he dusted off an armchair and sat down.
The scorn, self-importance, and primness bordering on squeamishness with which Polibin settled into the armchair were so incompatible with his usual demeanor that the members of the meeting fell silent.
“Carry on, my dear colleague,” Polibin said, putting away his handkerchief and nodding to Murashko. “Please carry on, you have my full attention.”
• • •
The design department, filled with the specters of distress and silence.
“Natasha, are you almost done?”
Natasha got up and, hesitating, walked on legs that seemed not her own to Leibovich’s drafting table, placed a blueprint on it, and with her eyes motioned to Mop-head.
“Leibovich, I think this is where the problem is!”
The lamps illuminated their heads leaning over the blueprint.
• • •
In Murashko’s office. Murashko was talking, his head thrown back, his hands leaning on the edge of the table: “I object, and I shall continue to object until the very end!”
“Do get to the point, dear colleague,” Polibin interrupted him.
• • •
In the design department.
Varya, Natasha, and Leibovich jumped back, as if they had seen a snake slithering over the blueprint.
Natasha closed her eyes and then opened them, her face wet with tears.
“My sweet little Mop-head!” she said, stretching her arms out to
her.
“So that’s all it was,” Varya said, shaking her boyish head bitterly. “So thats why it crashed.”
Mop-head looked at Leibovich, then at Varya and Natasha. “Leibovich! We have found the flaw!” Natasha said. She braced herself, grabbed the blueprint, and went running out of the room.