Take-Off Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Author

  Title Page

  1 All because of the Mistake

  2 Between Second 1423 and Second 1797

  3 And Everything Else?

  4 Pauci Sed Semper Immites

  5 Reaching Dewpoint

  6 Flight Manoeuvres

  7 Unreported Inbound Palermo

  8 Double Take-off at Dawn

  Copyright

  About the Author

  DANIELE DEL GIUDICE was born in Rome in 1949. He is author of two previous novels and a novella. Being a qualified pilot with many a story to tell, he was encouraged to write the present book by Federico Fellini.

  JOSEPH FARRELL, journalist, reviewer and broadcaster, teaches Italian at Strathclyde University. Italian novelists whose work he has translated include Leonardo Sciascia and Vincenzo Consolo; he has also translated plays by Goldoni, De Filippo and Dario Fo.

  Daniele del Giudice

  TAKE-OFF

  Translated from the Italian

  by Joseph Farrell

  ONE

  All because of the Mistake

  THERE IS NEITHER a precise moment nor an agreed day, no fore-warning conveyed by any external sign, by any alteration in behaviour or change in the surrounding landscape, no visible deviation from humdrum routine – the sun striking across the runway, the runway stretching towards the sea – nothing whatsoever to give any indication that, for you, that moment has arrived when, as in the blackest of nightmares, you find yourself in an aeroplane without passengers, without pilots, without any living being apart from yourself. There is no ban on talking aloud, no one will even notice if you sing or if you break into a sweat, you may turn to your right and stare at the place normally filled by your instructor, you may consider that emptiness the most painful of all representations of the absolute void or as the most poignant of all sensations of abandonment. You are, of course, at liberty to haul back the levers, switch off the propeller, open the doors, undo the safety belts, climb out waving your arms over your head, and leave it to someone else to come and move the plane you are abandoning where it stands, lined up at the beginning of the runway for your first solo take-off. An immensely wise decision, perhaps even an honourable decision, but would you call it a courageous decision? Your instructor is outside the hangar, looking on with no less perplexity, with no less concern than you are showing yourself; you are familiar with the mannerisms of flying instructors, with that way they have of gazing at the sky which makes them one with soothsayers, meteorologists and worried fathers: inside the airfield, all traffic has been suspended for your first solo take-off; however early it may be and however deserted the surroundings seem, there is always a vast, unsuspected audience for anyone about to cut a pathetic figure.

  So there you are, whatever instinct or pain or malformation of the unconscious may have led you to believe yourself capable of facing such a situation, there you are with your feet desperately jammed on the brakes to stop the plane making up its mind for you, and taxying down the runway by itself, presumably for its own first solo take-off; at this point, turning back would be more complicated than carrying on, so, having made the most detailed arrangements to box yourself in, you can once more delude yourself that you have no choice, and that now, at the very last minute, tense and silent, your only wish is to see how it will all end, to go through with it, to make for the far point on the runway, for that moment of disequilibrium which, as you lift your shadow from the earth, accompanies the ascent and the climb into the skies.

  A matter of moments ago, arms imperturbably folded, a flying instructor had been seated at your side as your shield against all responsibility for error (the God Error) or accident; a matter of moments ago the day was unremarkable and unpredictable, and you ache to return to that moment, or even to the one preceding it, to the moment of heedless tranquillity on the apron as you carried out routine checks, moving round the aircraft as though it were freshly delivered from the factory and you were its first inspector, whereas you were no more than an apprentice pilot on a plane meticulously checked by mechanics that day, every day; you would gladly return to the time when you sat in the cockpit fingering the instruments, ticking off items from a checklist you knew by heart, following a daily liturgy, reciting prayers from a manual of “All OK,” waiting for that very last moment when, as was his wont, your instructor, one of those people who never had time to dally, would finally clamber aboard and allow the engine to be started up. Bruno was not simply a captain, he was an Indian chief, an old-style Indian chief of few words and fewer explanations. Bruno was a teacher who disdained explanations, and how this was possible in matters of such delicacy will be explained later on. For Bruno, it was an article of faith that the concept of manoeuvre entailed absolute discipline and rigour, but his concern was with intuition; a correctly executed manoeuvre was less than nothing, scarcely the bare minimum, as he did not exactly say but certainly made you understand; flying was more than the nicely executed manoeuvre. He never explained, he behaved as though you were already aware and what you did not know, that is everything, you were left to pick up from the silence of his eyes and expressions, from his way of bringing you up short during manoeuvres with swift, wordless gestures of a finger pointed towards instruments or stabbing outwards towards the far horizon or towards some invisible checkpoint in the skies; this for him was learning. Never, ever would this man have hinted that the time for your solo flight had come. Like everyone else, you prayed that it came between the sixth and eighth hour of dual-control training, otherwise, of this you were certain, it would never come at all.

  Finally Bruno had climbed on board and you had begun to wait: to wait for him to place those schoolmasterly spectacles over his nose and to transcribe the initial data relating to the flight, to wait for that wave of the hand which meant switch on the engine and let’s go, to wait for clearance from the tower to begin taxying, and then, once parked at the end of the runway, clearance for line-up and take-off. Waiting was as much part of flight as flying itself, waiting, checking and double checking, there is always some worthwhile means of filling in waiting time, there is always something on board to be attended to in the final moments before you push the lever and bounce slowly forward, and, thinking it over now, you should have had seen to it then. When the cosmic order of things, or the concatenation of events or the sheer force of coincidence had finally arranged themselves for lift-off, there you were applying power, releasing the brakes, staring at the rev. counter and the anemometer, using the pedals to control the aircraft’s right-left yawing movements. The run-up to take-off is a metamorphosis; here is a pile of metal transforming itself into an aeroplane by the power of the air itself, each take-off is the birth of an aircraft, this time like all the others you had had the same experience, the same wonder at each metamorphosis. Towards the end of the metamorphosis and of the runway, you feel the aeroplane surging upwards, no longer a creature of earth, too many leaps, too much yawing this way and that, you can no longer keep it on earth, better fly than race like this, your part is simply to wait for it to become an aeroplane, to wish that the transformation had already occurred; at that point, it sometimes rises up under its own force, calming itself as it rises, at other times it needs just a gentle, very gentle invitation from the control column. You had issued the invitation with delicacy, the merest millimetre so as not to wrench the plane roughly from earth, then you had casually pulled one more time, as though repeating a word spoken too low and unheard. You pulled gently but the plane did not respond. You gave a longer pull but the plane declined to follow you. You pulled firmly but still the plane did not lift off. You had looked out onto the runway and realized that you were more than half way down its length, you saw the
strip of sea beyond the mouth of the harbour, look at how it’s rushing towards you, no, look at the dashboard and the dials, concentrate!, and you went over the instruments one by one, as though pleading with each of them to side with you in some street brawl, and they did, everything was all right, but still the aircraft refused to leave the ground. Without turning round, you sought out Bruno’s profile, a profile carved in stone, arms crossed, gaze unflinching, as though waiting: but there was nothing to wait for, the runway was ending, the aircraft was not lifting and you no longer had sufficient room to brake. Concentrate yet more intensely, stare at the instrument panel, stare harder, and by the sheer effort of staring you finally spot it: that’s what was wrong, how could you have missed it? The flaps had not been released, the flap lever was still up, flap manoeuvre zero, you had forgotten the flaps. There must be some forty metres of runway remaining, not a centimetre more, then the sea; you had endeavoured to slip your hand from the engine control to the flaps without Bruno noticing, you had desperately struggled to lower that lever, the end of the runway perilously close, your left hand still clutching the column, the right almost furtively giving the lever a sharp blow. Such was the accumulated speed that the moment the flaps began to descend from the trailing edge of the wings, the plane was sucked up, seized bodily, raised from the earth as though liberated, wrenched up above the embankment at the end of the runway, above the harbour mouth, above the bay and out over the sea.

  Bruno’s silence had immediately appeared to you a matter of concern; better say something. You had said, we forgot the flaps, in an offhand tone, with an ironic plural which implicated him in the oversight, even though he would never have forgotten the flaps; you were at the controls and it was entirely your responsibility, as well you knew. Bruno made no answer and you continued your ascent while waiting for further orders. After take-off he would announce the flight plan, the items which might feature on today’s menu: stalls and spins? sharp turns? navigation? engine trouble? radar approach to an airport? But Bruno uttered not a word, nothing, not the merest glance; he did no more than make a wide circular gesture with one hand, a downward, spiralling movement which conveyed a swerve over the sea, a rapid return to the island, an immediate landing. The gesture’s abruptness suggested that for you the landing would be definitive and permanent. So that was the plan.

  The fear of a short time previously, the fear of the runway coming to an end was as nothing compared to the desolation of the present when even your soul seemed to be blushing; had it been possible, you would have got out there and then, in mid-air, leaving him to take charge of the aeroplane; your next hope was to make at least a dignified farewell with a good landing, or more precisely a perfect landing, the sort of masterpiece of a landing that would have shown him what you were capable of, but on the final approach, over the trees which seem inexplicably to ring every airfield, you ran into a spot of turbulence: slight shudder of the aeroplane, immediate correction, landing on one wheel, bounce, land again, further bounce, land. You made straight for the hangar, you simply wanted to get there as quickly as possible, but just as you were turning onto the taxiway, you had felt a resistance on the pedals; I can’t even turn on land, you said to yourself, when it occurred to you that Bruno had his foot on the pedal on his side and was making the plane pull up at the side of the runway. What was wrong now? You had cut the revs so low that the propeller was barely turning. Bruno had given you a rapid glance, then looking at you more squarely had said – how do you feel about going up on your own?

  Don’t pretend, you understood perfectly, the whole thing happened only a few moments ago; of course you understood perfectly, but had to run the entire gamut of the emotions before regaining your balance, and even then you needed another pause before getting sufficient grip of yourself not to appear too delighted or too smug. You were then able to reply yes, if you’re sure, why not? Bruno switched on the radio, asked the tower to suspend the traffic over the airfield, explained the reason why. Then he turned to you and said, you do know it’s going to be a bit different, it will take off more quickly, climb much faster, I’ll be standing here at the edge of the airfield, make all your calls to me as though you were talking to the tower. He gave you a last look as though you were an item on the final checklist, taking in what was showing on your face, the controls, the fastened safety belts, the cockpit. He even stopped as he climbed down to check that the door was properly closed.

  On your own, here you are on your own, the solo pilot, as it will be recorded in the aeronautical registers. The word “solo” makes you sound like a violinist, when all you are is a person on your own inside an aeroplane in the middle of a runway, now speaking into the radio and communicating that you are lined up ready for take-off, even if you still can’t quite believe it yourself; lined up you undoubtedly are, but whether you are ready is another matter. Bruno replies “cleared” and reminds you of wind strengths, wind patterns and directions, but who’s going to have time to think about the wind, to figure out where it’s coming from and how strong it might be? In a moment or two there may be time, once you have pushed forward the levers and started to lift the soles of your feet from the pedals, then there may be time. The plane moves, quarter way down the runway you ask yourself why on earth Bruno ever decided to let you do it instead of kicking you out for good, half way down you begin to feel tremors of something called responsibility, even if you are not clear whose, then gradually as the machine transforms itself into an aeroplane, you too transform yourself into Bruno and assume command of yourself, and in this new dimension you pull yourself together, check yourself and correct yourself as though you were a schoolboy. There are things to do, and these cancel out every other thought, and only after doing the things that needed doing, after closing the things that needed to be closed, opening the things that needed to be opened and regulating the things that needed to be regulated, only now that the plane has levelled out in the sky can you, in the light morning mist, look out over the sea and the horizon and see them for the first time not merely as reference points for checking turns, ascents and descents but as a landscape to which from now on you could belong, just as on earth you belong to the rivers and mountains.

  You glide along the coast in a fantasy of immobility and timelessness, on the right the island, on the left the sea, you glide along thinking of the first time you made the ascent with Bruno, the first time, the orientation and test flight, preceding even the medical examination, you flew without putting a hand on the controls, seated on the right, relishing the panorama as Bruno soared calmly into the skies, at one point turning to you and asking if your seat belt was fastened properly, you had replied yes, offhandedly, and he pulled out his glasses, bent over a metal plate in the middle of the instrument panel where a notice in English indicated the aerobatic capability of the plane and, without lifting his hand from the control column, ran his fingers over the embossed lettering, no more than three spins, he read aloud, as though he did not already know that plane through and through, or as though it were essential for you to be made aware that after the third spin it was curtains, then, without a word, he had removed his glasses and sent the aeroplane careering into a nose-dive, spinning as it went, without warning every part of you was pitched forward as you both plunged downwards still seated, the plane rotating on its axis, while down below the shoreline and the beach spun crazily round as they did in films, three spins he had said, but you seemed to have done thirty or three hundred already, I’m going to die with this man I don’t know, but how were you to know then that Bruno was Bruno, that he had been an aerobatic pilot and a test pilot and that in the post-war years he had earned his living doing pirouettes at airshows, or that he had notched up thirty thousand flying hours on every type of plane. You prayed to God that this white-haired gentleman knew what he was about and that he had the skills to match, that the aeroplane would not disintegrate, that the dizzying, spinning plunge would stop at once.

  It was no better the second time wh
en, without more ado, he made you sit on the left, in the pilot’s seat, no less! Out of the vast array of instruments, dials and electronic odds and ends that make up a control panel, he explained no more than the indispensable minimum before telling you to take off and head straight for the open sea. It was a grey, overcast day, and when that dense greyness had become one all-enveloping, impenetrable, hypnotic mass, Bruno turned to you quite suddenly with the words – let’s go back, where’s the airfield? You glanced over your shoulder to look through the windows at the rear, but the view behind was the same as the view ahead, grey and more grey as far as the eye could see, with not a speck of land in sight, nothing which was in any respect distinguishable from that terrifying, flat, blinding calm. You in your turn asked – yes, exactly, where is the airfield? Bruno shrugged his shoulders. You’re in charge, he said, it’s up to you to know these things and get us home. To start with, you swung to the left, purely out of intuition, for then you knew next to nothing about compasses or back courses, and all those position-finding instruments were a closed book to you. Guided by nothing more than a memory of the space and an instinctive orientation, you turned left and left again, and when it seemed you had gone far enough you straightened up. You turned to Bruno in the hope of some sign of assent or dissent, but were rewarded with another shrug. You ploughed on in the greyness, leaning forward against the windscreen so as to see better, to guess the lie of a coast, but there was no trace of any coastline; you peered in every direction but nowhere was there any sign of land until, in the all-encompassing greyness, a greyer, finer and more distant line appeared; it was the coast, but what coast, and at which point? Well done, you had sighted land, but the airfield was not there, nor was the city nor even the lagoon. You were too far to the south. When the coast took on the feel of a real landscape, Bruno gave directions with the gestures of a camel driver. In future, he said, when you take off remember to make a note of the position, if you intend going back, that is.