Samuel Spewack

“ Vladimir was moved to cry out.
There was a long silence; then the girl spoke. “You have suffered,” she said. “You say you are wrecked, you are ruined. Do you think you know what it is to be wrecked? To be ruined? You say you can no longer fly again—the sky is barred to cowards.... Do you know that I too once flew? Not in a plane, but in dreams. I flew so high I never touched earth—until the revolution came. My father died. My mother followed him. My brother was killed. And I ran away.
“I should never have run away. Hunger, death—what does it matter? A Russian should never desert Russia. ”

“ She continued to run until she was a few feet away from him, and then she slowed down into a leisurely walk.
“Your plane all right?” she asked.
But there was no answer.
The girl’s hands felt for the man’s face.
“Why do you cry?” she demanded as her hands fell to her sides.
“Because I can never fly again.” The man’s answer was low and bitter.
“And why not?”
“You felt the answer with your hands. Can a man fly who bursts into tears like a baby?”
“You are afraid of something,” the girl said.
“I’m afraid of myself,” Vladimir cried. ”

“ In amazement Vladimir looked at the barefooted peasant girl who had entered, for she spoke Russian, and a Russian with the accent of a grande dame of Petrograd. In one hand she held a pair of wooden shoes, and in the other a glass of milk. She smiled at him with her lips but not with her eyes.
“I daren’t leave my shoes outside or the dog will run off with them. He’s very strong.” ”

“ It was such an ugly city, with a soul as cold and sterile as the Prussian soil upon which it squats. It was a city where men shouted and women whined, where the purple apoplexy of the struggle against defeat had displaced the grace of living. ”

“ With the aid of the night watchman he rolled the machine out of the hangar, and started the engine. Vladimir listened carefully to the jangled symphony of the motor, noting beat and pitch with musicianly intensity. He was satisfied. The motor sang gloriously.
And the sole purpose of his flight was to convince the sneering director that Vladimir Uspensky was not through, that Vladimir Uspensky had been grossly libeled, that Vladimir Uspensky was not a drunkard but a careful, competent pilot. ”

“ He sold me a ticket to this village. With all my money gone, I could not turn back, you see. These peasants took me in. They are not our people. I cannot talk with them. But I have enough to eat and I am warm.”
Suddenly Vladimir found a limp square of paper slipped into his hand as the girl whispered:
“For remembrance from one who can never fly again, to you who tomorrow return to the sky.”
And she was gone.
Vladimir tried to follow, but his feet were unused to the stubble of the field. By the time he reached the peasant’s house, there was no sign of the girl. ”

“ And in a voice as shrill as a girl’s he told her of the little merchant, the director, the dismissal—everything!
“I stole the plane to prove to them that I could fly her at her record speed and bring her back safely,” Vladimir concluded bitterly. “And what did I do? I crashed again. I am a wreck—a ruin. I have no right to live.” ”

“ The man who writes this vivid tale of a pilot in the commercial air service of Europe today knows the scenes of which he writes and the spirit of the people who inhabit them, for, since the war, he has been one of the most active of all the American correspondents in Germany and Russia. ”