Human anguish is the product of the loss by man of his true identity. I sit waiting for a telegram which is to announce to me either a death or a recovery. Time flows by unutilized and holds me in suspense. Time has ceased to be a stream that feeds me, nourishes me, adds growth to me as to a tree. The man that I shall be when the news comes, dwells outside me: he is moving towards me like a ghost about to fuse with me. And for want of knowing who I am, I am suspended in anguish. The bad news, when it comes, puts an end to my suspense. It causes me to suffer, which is not the same thing.
T. never knew whether, in the hour to come, he was to be transmuted into a living man or a dead man. He was aware of only one thing—the flow of time, running like sand through his fingers while he waited for the coming of a certain instant too rich in power for his resistance.
For me, piloting my plane, time has ceased to run sterile through my fingers. Now, finally, I am installed in my function. Time is no longer a thing apart from me. I have stopped projecting myself into the future. I am no longer he who may perhaps dive down the sky in a vortex of flame. The future is no longer a haunting phantom, for from this moment on I shall myself create the future by my own successive acts. I am he who checks the course and holds the compass at 313°. Who controls the revolutions of the propeller and the temperature of the oil. These are healthy and immediate cares. These are household cares, the little duties of the day that take away the sense of growing older. The day becomes a house brilliantly clean, a floor well waxed, oxygen prudently doled out.... Thinking which, I check the oxygen flow, for we have been rising fast and are at twenty-two thousand feet already.
“Oxygen all right, Dutertre? How do you feel?”
“First-rate, Captain.”
“You, gunner! How’s your oxygen?”
“I ... er ... Shipshape, sir,”
“Haven’t you found that pencil yet?”
And I am he who checks his machine guns, putting a finger on button S, on button A.... Which reminds me.
“Gunner! No good-sized town behind you, in your cone of fire?”
“Er ... all clear, sir.”
“Check your guns. Let fly.”
I hear the blast of the guns.
“Work all right?”
“Worked fine, sir.”
“All of them?”
“Er ... yes, sir. All of them.”
I test my own and wonder what becomes of all the bullets that we scatter so heedlessly over our home territory. They never kill anyone. The earth is vast.
Now time is nourishing me with every minute that passes. I am a thing as little the prey of anguish as a ripening fruit. Of course the circumstances of this flight will change round me. The circumstances and the problems. But I dwell now well inside the fabrication of the future. Time, little by little, is kneading me into shape. A child is not frightened at the thought of being patiently transmuted into an old man. He is a child and he plays like a child. I too play my games. I count the dials, the levers, the buttons, the knobs of my kingdom. I count one hundred and three objects to check, pull, turn, or press. (Perhaps I have cheated in counting my machine-gun controls at two—one for the fire-button, and another for the safety-catch.) Tonight when I get back I shall amaze the farmer with whom I am billeted. I shall say to him:
“Do you know how many instruments a pilot has to keep his eye on?”
“How do you expect me to know that?”
“No matter. Guess. Name a figure.”
My farmer is not a man of tact.
“Any figure. Name one.”
“Seven.”
“One hundred and three!”
And I shall smile with satisfaction.
Another thing contributes to my peace of mind—it is that all the instruments that were an encumbrance while I was dressing have now settled into place and acquired meaning. All that tangle of tubes and wiring has become a circulatory network. I am an organism integrated into the plane. I turn this switch, which gradually heats up my overall and my oxygen, and the plane begins to generate my comfort. The oxygen, incidentally, is too hot. It burns my nose. A complicated mechanism releases it in proportion to the altitude at which I fly, and I am flying high. The plane is my wet-nurse. Before we took off, this thought seemed to me inhuman; but now, suckled by the plane itself, I feel a sort of filial affection for it. The affection of a nursling.
My weight, meanwhile, is comfortably distributed over a variety of points of support. I am like a feeble convalescent stripped of bodily consciousness and lying in a chaise-longue. The convalescent exists only as a frail thought. My triple thickness of clothing is without weight in my seat. My parachute, slung behind, lies against the back of my seat. My enormous boots rest on the bar that operates the rudder. My hands that are so awkward when first I slip on the thick stiff gloves, handle the wheel with ease. Handle the wheel. Handle the wheel....
“Dutertre!”
“... t’n?”
“Something’s wrong with the inter-com. I can’t hear you. Check your contacts.”
“Shake it up! Can you still hear me?”
Dutertre’s voice came through clearly.
“Hear you perfectly, Captain.”
“Good! Dutertre, the confounded controls are frozen again. The wheel is stiff and the rudder is stuck fast.”
“That’s great! What altitude?”
“Thirty-two thousand.”
“Temperature?”
“Fifty-five below zero. How’s your oxygen?”
“Coming fine.”
“Gunner! How’s your oxygen?”
No answer.
“Hi! Gunner!”
No answer.
“Do you hear the gunner, Dutertre?”
“No.”
“Call him.”
“Gunner! Gunner!”
No answer.
“He must have passed out, Captain. We shall have to dive.”
I didn’t want to dive unless I had to. The gunner might have dropped off to sleep. I shook up the plane as roughly as I could.
“Captain, sir?”
“That you, gunner?”
“I ... er ... yes, sir.”
“Not sure it’s you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why the devil didn’t you answer before?”
“I had pulled the plug, sir. I was testing the radio.”
“You’re a bloody fool! Do you think you’re alone in this plane? I was just about to dive. I thought you were dead.”
“Er ... no, sir.”
“I’ll take your word for it. But don’t play that trick on me again. Damn it! Let me know before you cut.”
“Sorry, sir. I will. I’ll let you know, sir.”
Had his oxygen flow stopped working, he wouldn’t have known it. The human body receives no warning. A vague swooning comes over you. In a few seconds you have fainted. In a few minutes you are dead. The flow has constantly to be tested—particularly by the pilot. I pinched my tube lightly a few times and felt the warm life-bringing puffs blow round my nose.
It came to this, that I was working at my trade. All that I felt was the physical pleasure of going through gestures that meant something and were sufficient unto themselves. I was conscious neither of great danger (it had been different while I was dressing) nor of performing a great duty. At this moment the battle between the Nazi and the Occident was reduced to the scale of my job, of my manipulation of certain switches, levers, taps. This was as it should be. The sexton’s love of his God becomes a love of lighting candles. The sexton moves with deliberate step through a church of which he is barely conscious, happy to see the candlesticks bloom one after the other as the result of his ministrations. When he has lighted them all, he rubs his hands. He is proud of himself.
I for my part am doing a good job of regulating the revolutions of the propeller, and the needle of my compass lies within a single degree of my course. If Dutertre happens to have his eye on the compass, he must be marvelling at me.
“I say, Dutertre! Compass on the course? How does it look?”
“Won’t do, Captain. Too much drift. A little kick to starboard.”
Well, well.
“Crossing our lines, Captain. I’ve started my camera. What’s your altitude?”
“Thirty-three thousand.”