One morning in June, after he had sprayed a potato field and was flying low over the roof of the adjacent farm, he saw the farmer’s wife and her children standing on the gravel next to the barn. He picked up speed, rolled to the right (his least favorite side, but to the left was a row of tall poplars), and shot back across the field. Somewhere above the wooded bank that bounded the land, he brought up the nose until he felt the upward thrust fighting the downward pull. He kept on pulling the stick, looked left, and saw the horizon swerve. At the height of the loop, the engine sputtered. That often happened if the plane rose sheer for too long, the fuel pipes sometimes emptied. As soon as the nose was pointed down again, the kerosene would get to the engine.
But this time it didn’t. The horizon tilted, the nose dropped, the engine remained silent. He pulled the stick back, aware that he had insufficient height to come back around if the engine didn’t ignite. Then he heard it, the harsh roar. The nose went up; the potato field, which had been coming straight at him, went gliding under him. Now he was flying so low that the tops of the trees at the edge of the field seemed to tower above him. He threw the stick left and pulled it toward him. The wooded bank became a haze and disappeared. He had no time to look over his shoulder, but knew he was flying dangerously close to the ground. He pressed back in his seat, pulling hard on the control stick. Now he could no longer see the trees. He pulled a little more, moved the control stick to the middle and noticed that he only had a little speed left. The engine sputtered again and fell silent. He was now drifting crookedly over the field, at a height of ninety feet or so, a wooden fence before him, and behind him, a ditch, meadow, and cows. He pulled left slightly and kept on turning. The farm came into view again. Standing there, like tiny figures drawn in pencil, were the farmer’s wife and her children. He could clearly see that they were waving. Five insect legs against the wall of the barn. He screamed with anger and helplessness, rammed his fist down on the start button, heard nothing, and yanked the stick to the right. The plane shot over the fence. Shortly afterward he felt the ground, the wild jolting as he bounced over the bumpy meadow. He could barely see in front of him and when the left wing hit a cow’s head and he lost the last bit of control he had over the plane, he was so amazed that, for an entire second, he forgot everything else.
The rest of this unsuccessful crash landing passed him by. He heard the story later from the farmer’s wife, who came with her husband to visit him in the hospital.
She hadn’t realized that the pilot was no longer trying to entertain her and the children until the plane flew low over the fence and landed. Shortly afterward the cow went hurtling through the air, the plane spun around on its left wing, which was now dangling helplessly, seemed to make a pirouette, and crashed with its left side against the ground. When the farmer’s wife got to the wreck, the right wing was sticking up proudly. The left half of the plane had carved a deep track through the grassy field. The pilot looked like a rag doll pressed against the back wall of the cockpit, his face caked with dirt.
In the weeks after the operation, my father looked like half a mummy. His left leg was in a cast up to his pelvis, as was his left arm. His chest was bandaged, the left side of his face was swollen and blue. The right side of his body was strangely unhurt. Anyone who happened to walk into his room saw what, to all intents and purposes, was a healthy man. But if they walked past the bed and looked back, they were surprised by the sight of a mummy swathed in plaster and bandages.
And so they met: the pilot who fell from the sky and the nurse who fell to the floor. Although she didn’t actually work in the ward where my father lay, my mother could be found there whenever she was off duty. The head nurse, who caught her reading Anna Karenina to the patient during visiting hours, reported her curious behavior to the matron, but my mother said that the patient never had visitors, didn’t seem to have any family, and that she didn’t see the harm in keeping him company in her own free time. No one could think of anything to say against this. It wasn’t until months later, when the two of them were found in the hospital garden, he in a wheelchair, she on the bench next to him, kissing with impassioned clumsiness, that it became clear to everyone that my mother was no Florence Nightingale and he, no Icarus. By that time, however, it was too late for moral indignation. He was soon to be discharged from the hospital, and that raised a completely new problem.
Before the accident, my father had rented two rooms from an old landlady in a village not far from the airstrip from which he and his mates took off to go spraying. There was no
