morning I take my things away and bring them back again in the
evening, making out as though I had just arrived. In the eating rooms
we take the first course, costing fifteen kopecks, on even days, and the
second course, costing twenty-five kopecks, on odd days. We wander
about the vast, spacious city, along the embankments of the broad Neva,
and Pyotr, who feels quite at home in Leningrad, tells me about the
Bronze Horseman while I think, 'Will they accept me or not?'
Three examining boards-medical, credentials and general education.
Heart, lungs, ears, heart again. Who am I, where was I born, what
school did I go to, and why do I want to become an airman?
Was it true that I was nineteen? Hadn't I added to my age-I didn't
look it? Why was my recommendation from the Y.C.L. local signed
'Grigoriev'-was he a brother of mine or just a namesake?
And now, at last, the day of all days. I stand outside the Aviation
Museum. This is where we had our entrance examinations. It is a huge
lion-guarded building in Roshal Prospekt. The lions look at me as if
they, too, are about to ask me who I am, where I was born, and whether
I am really nineteen.
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But the really terrifying part of it comes when I mount the stairs and
stand before the black showcase displaying the list of persons enrolled
in the flying school.
I read the names in their alphabetical order: 'Fadeyev, Fedorov,
Frolov, Golomb, Gribkov, Hertz...' A mist swims before my eyes. I read
again: 'Fedorov, Frolov, Golomb, Gribkov, Hertz...' I'm not there! I take
a deep breath and start again: Fedorov, Frolov, Golomb, Gribkov, Hertz.
I stare at the list, which seems to contain all the names under the sun
except my own, and I feel like a man would feel who has nothing more
to live for.
I go home under a pouring rain. Fedorov, Frolov, Golomb ... Lucky
Golomb.
Pyotr opens the door and starts at seeing me, drenched and white.
'What's the matter?' 'Pyotr, my name's not on the list.' 'Goon!'
Semyon's mother comes flying into the kitchen to ask whether the
house-manager saw me coming in. I do not answer her. I sit on a chair
and Pyotr stands facing me with a glum look.
The next morning we go together to the Aviation Museum and I find
my name on the list. It was in another column along with several other
boys whose names began with G. including a couple of Grigorievs-Ivan
and Alexander. Pyotr said I hadn't been able to find it because I was too
excited.
Time races on, and I see myself in the reading-room of the Aviation
Museum, where we had faced the examiners. Thirteen men passed by
the credentials and medical boards are lined up, and the School
Superintendent, a big, jovial, red-haired man, comes out and says:
'Comrade air cadets, attention!'
Comrade air cadets! I am an air cadet! A cold shiver runs up my
spine. I feel as if I had been dipped alternately in cold and hot water. I'm
an air cadet! I'm going to fly! I do not hear what she Super is saying.
Time races on. We go to lectures straight from work at the factory where
Semyon Ginsburg has fixed me up as fitter's mate.
We listen to lectures on materiel, the theory of aviation and the
engine. After eight hours at work we feel very sleepy, but we listen to the
lectures on materiel, the theory of aviation and engines, and once in a
while Misha Golomb, who turned out to be as short as myself, leans up
against my back and starts to snore gently. When his snores become too
audible I carefully bump his head on the desk.
We study at flying school, but what little resemblance that school has
to those that go by that name today! We have neither engines, nor
aeroplanes, neither premises nor money. True, the Aviation Museum
does display a few old sky wagons, in which one could imagine oneself
doing air reconnaissance in a De Havilland or seeing a fighting plane in
a Newport which last did service at the Civil War fronts. But you
couldn't learn to fly on these distinguished 'coffins'.
We assemble engines. Armed with credentials of Osoaviakhim, that
infallible warrant empowering us to take off the walls any aeroplane
parts we might need, we make a round of all the recreation rooms and
clubs of Leningrad. Sometimes we find these aeroplane parts in the
office of the house management, hanging over the desk of the accounts
clerk, who happens to be an aviation fan. We commandeer them and
carry them off to the airfield. Sometimes this goes off peacefully,
sometimes there is a row. Three times we visit the Clothing Workers'
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Club, accompanied by a technician, trying to prove to the club manager
that the old engine standing in the foyer is of no propaganda value.
Our day starts with our trying, each in turn, to explain to Ivan
Gribkov what 'horizon' is. We have a fellow named Ivan Gribkov who
has all the school trying to explain this to him. Afterwards came the
instructors and flight training begins.
My instructor—he is our School Superintendent and has charge of
materiel and supplies as well—is an old pilot of Civil War days, a big
jovial man, who loves to tell extraordinary stories and can tell them for
hours. He is quick-tempered, but quick to cool off, brave and
superstitious. His idea of his duties as instructor is of the simplest
order: he just swears at you, his language becoming stronger with the
altitude. At last he stops swearing—for the first time in six months! It's
wonderful! For ten minutes or so I fly in the rarest of good moods. I
must be doing the stickwork jolly well, seeing that he doesn't swear at
me! Despite the roar of the engine I seem to be flying in complete
silence—quite a new experience for me!
But the next moment I see what it is. The intercom had got
disconnected and the phone was dangling over the side. I catch it and
together with it the close of what must have been a long speech:
'You clot. You shouldn't be flying, you ought to be serving in the
sanitary brigade.'
