Eugene Vodolazkin - The Aviator

A picture of my last visit to the Commandant’s Aerodrome with my father surfaced in my head. The end of August. An air demonstration, rain, umbrellas over the crowd. Aviator Frolov’s aeroplane was closest to us in the line of aeroplanes. People awaited his flight with particular excitement: it had been announced that today he would demonstrate aerobatic maneuvers never seen before.

Frolov is standing under the wing of his aeroplane, an unlighted cigarette in his mouth. He slaps himself on the many pockets of his overalls in search of matches. He finds them. Strikes one. The matches are damp in the rain. And here I am, thinking the following: if Aviator Frolov suddenly crashes today (this is aerobatics, after all), it will turn out that his wish – which was, in essence, simple – was not fulfilled before death itself.

I feel sorry for the aviator. I ask my father for matches and run across the field to Frolov. That isn’t allowed and the master of ceremonies whistles at me, but I’m running to deliver the matches to the aviator. He somehow understood everything so is already walking to meet me. Smiling. I keep running, holding the matchbox in my extended hand. We meet. The aviator takes the matches and lights his cigarette. He takes the first drag; his face is surrounded by puffs of smoke. He shakes my hand firmly when we part. I nearly cry out from the strength of his grip but manage to hold back. So that’s an aviator’s handshake. As I return to the crowd of spectators, I again cross part of the airfield, but the master of ceremonies isn’t whistling this time. He’s standing, turned away.

And there I am alongside my father, looking at the airfield. Aviator Frolov’s turn comes. He finished smoking his cigarette long ago and is sitting in the seat of the aeroplane. The propeller is working. The aeroplane jerks and shudders, held back by eight aerodrome workers. At the aviator’s signal, the workers let the wings go and fall down. Finally. The machine frees itself from the last thing that held it down. Jumping with one wheel then the other, it runs along for a brief distance and soars into the air. It gains altitude abruptly, somehow almost too abruptly.

Flight. The aeroplane floats in the air like a large bird. It is not entirely clear what holds it there. It might be clear when people explain about the laws of physics and the construction of an aeroplane. But it is not clear when you look at its solitary soaring in the sky. And it is astonishing. And very frightening to think of the person sitting in it.

There is a reason I had been afraid… A reason. It all happened after the complex maneuvers had already been demonstrated. Frolov’s aeroplane was flying in for a landing from the distant heavens. His circular and smooth descent was interrupted all at once. Even now it seems to me that the only possible comparison (which later made it into all the newspapers) is to a bird that was shot. Despite its explicit romanticism, that corresponded to what I saw: the right wing broke like a bird’s and the machine lunged downward, turning on its own axis.

They later wrote that a cable connecting the biplane’s wings snapped and the construction lost its rigidity, but the only thing clear in those moments was: trouble is nearing. Of course it might still have been possible to hope the aviator was executing an aerobatic maneuver and would now come out of his nosedive – but there was the broken wing, which had almost separated from the machine and was shuddering in the wind, leaving no hope.

The crowd at the aerodrome went silent all at once. Everyone already knew the aviator was flying to his own death. He was somehow flying for an unbelievably long time and the aeroplane’s spinning looked comical, thus especially frightening. Each time the machine turned its upper part toward us, Frolov was visible, sitting in his pilot’s seat, and his hands were arranged differently each time: he was likely pulling desperately at various levers, attempting to draw the machine out of its tailspin. The moments of his flight kept lasting and lasting, and I had time to think that this was extending his life and that I was seeing him alive now and an instant later he would be dead and everybody knew it: both he, tearing at the machine’s levers, and we, frozen in speechlessness… I prepared to catch that dreadful moment of the transition from life to death but, of course, caught nothing.

When the aeroplane’s nose plunged into the ground (the wooden crack of its structure), the silence exploded into the crowd’s thousand-voiced scream. The human mass rushed toward the aeroplane from all sides, instantaneously flooding the airfield with itself – just as spilt coffee spreads over a tablecloth. People were already prepared to run, too, and the aeroplane’s strike into the earth served as their starter. I rushed along with them, foretelling the aviator’s condition based on the machine’s broken wings. I ran and shouted but slowed my run without realizing it myself, falling further back from the first row, and deserting those who needed to be the first to approach the person who had been smashed. And the slower I ran, the louder my scream became, as if I was attempting, with that desperate scream, to make up for my absence in the forward line.

When I finally did see Frolov, his appearance turned out to be less frightening than I had feared. Cleaved forehead, stream of blood from the mouth, hand unnaturally turned. That hand had taken the matches from me. It had shaken my hand, firmly, until it hurt. Now it was not fit for any handshakes, even the weakest. I recalled that hand later, when I read this well-known verse by Blok:

More dead than a lever: I knew the cost of that detail.

WEDNESDAY [NASTYA]

I watched the report from the Kremlin on TV. My guys were on fire today. Award-winner Platonov found the opportunity to speak about Belka and Strelka during the ceremony – I think it was very appropriate and showed a love for nature. Geiger was pretty good, too: he tossed out a quick ‘thank you’ and returned to his place. Without glancing at the supreme commander-in-chief. He doesn’t like him very much; well, what’s to love about him if you come right down to it? Long story short, I was proud of both award-winners.

WEDNESDAY [GEIGER]

Innokenty and I are on the way back from Moscow. We’re in a train compartment: we decided to take the train after all.

He doesn’t handle flying well. He has memories of some aviator who perished. Perished before his eyes.

I’m writing.

Innokenty is examining our medals. He put the two little cases in front of himself: Honor in one, Courage in the other. Pensively chews at his lips. He has the look of a person stricken by bewilderment. It’s amusing to watch him.

This morning they gathered us at the presidential executive offices on Staraya Square. I knew all the future award-winners, or almost all.

Shortly thereafter, they loaded us on a bus and brought us to the Kremlin. We waited for the ceremony in a hall with a low ceiling. We ate pastries and drank juice.

A manager from the protocol service was going around the hall. He offered to take gifts for the president. One is not to present anything to the president oneself.

He approached us, too, but Innokenty and I just threw up our hands. We weren’t planning to present anything to anyone. Disappointment flashed over the manager’s face.

Innokenty was in the lavatory when the manager invited everyone to go ahead to the ceremony. His disappointment deepened.

Innokenty was called first from our pair. After glancing at a paper, the president praised his courage and compared him with Gagarin.