Death by Publication Page 6

  He didn’t even bother to ask about my father, not to mention my mother. Nor did he seem the least interested in what I might be doing to help the war effort.

  Every man for himself was his motto, and the only man he was interested in, the only man he had time for, was himself. He was purely and simply blind to anyone else. I felt he would be nothing but a negative force in my life and made up my mind not to see him again.

  And yet only a few brief weeks later I did see him again, this time at Queen Victoria Hospital. His plane had been badly shot up in the course of a mission over Germany, and he had just managed to nurse it back across the channel, making a crash landing from which he had barely escaped alive. He had been in a coma for three days. Even now, after having regained consciousness, his temperature hovered between 104 and 105 degrees, despite the ice-filled blankets he was bundled in. In the beds around him I found once again the same sad collection of human misery I had encountered on the old troop ship that had brought me back to England: men whose bodies had been burnt beyond recognition, others with an arm or leg missing—sometimes both—still others whose faces had been blown to smithereens.

  My position as an officer in His Majesty’s Special Services opened more than a few doors to me, including those of the military hospitals. Thus I had the opportunity to question the doctors and nurses about Nicolas’s medical situation and its possible evolution. They told me that he was suffering from multiple traumas, and said that they were at this point unwilling to make any medical pronouncements about the possible consequences of the accident. On this, my first visit since hearing the news of the crash in the newspapers, Nicolas was bandaged from head to toe. Heavily sedated, he gazed at me from his bed with glazed eyes, and I could tell that he hadn’t the faintest notion who I was.

  I returned to the hospital every night I was not on duty, and he seemed to enjoy my visits. His dangerously high temperature had been brought under control, and he seemed to be gaining strength each time I saw him. He vaguely remembered an explosion in the fuselage of his plane, then nothing else. In the bed next to him a dying patient was moaning lugubriously, and a few beds farther on another badly wounded soldier was raving deliriously in his sleep. Each day a new cargo of devastated bodies and damaged minds arrived in the old hospital, at such a rate that the doctors and nurses were overwhelmed. The operating rooms were busy around the clock, and some surgeons were working as much as twenty hours a day. The rooms were overcrowded, and beds had to be set up in the hallways to accommodate new arrivals, some of whom remained for days on end on the stretchers on which they had been brought in. The smell of disinfectants permeated the corridors. Several days later, profiting from the fact that he was on special treatment, Nicolas was put into a private room, sheltered from the odors and screams of the wards. That privacy seemed to be more therapeutic than any miracle medicine might have been. His migraines abated, and his speech, which had been badly slurred, rapidly became normal.

  Nicolas’s stay in the hospital was a boon to our relations. No jealousy, no perversity, shadowed my feelings toward him. I even enjoyed listening to him talk, hearing his memories of war, long monologues that I was careful not to interrupt, sensing that in the endless flow of words he was finding release from all the pent-up nervous tension built up over the past several years when he had daily risked his life. I even found his self-indulgent speeches somehow touching. . . . Nothing serious could befall him, he was convinced. He had a lucky star, and death could not reach him. Death was for the others. He surrounded himself with good-luck charms, amulets and fetishes that he had brought back with him from Egypt, and he never flew a mission without his trusty stuffed koala bear in his cockpit. He also wore a special flying jacket modeled after the suit of light worn by a bullfighter, convinced that if his plane was gored, as he put it, his matador’s cape would take the horn, not he. Of course he knew fear, as everyone did, but fear was part of the game. Several times he had returned to his home base with his plane riddled with bullet and shrapnel holes. Several times he had had to make emergency landings, his plane engulfed in flames, and climbed out intact.

  He maintained that for him aerial combat was like so many beams of light, so many fiery explosions. He thanked his lucky stars that he had not been a pilot in World War I, when there were real dogfights, when opposing pilots went at it one-on-one, flying so close that they could not only see each other’s faces but, as they say, the whites of their eyes.

  “I never see the eyes, or even the face, of my opponent—he who is going to die,” he said soberly. “At most there is a vague shadow of a person that blends into the cockpit. I have the impression I’m shooting down a machine, not a man.”

  It was as if he had a protective layer around him that colored both the way he saw things and the choices he made. He recalled the “fun” he had had—that was the word he used—chasing the V-l rockets the Germans launched against London and described how he used to “take care of them” in midair. For him it was like a sporting event, and he described it in sporting terms.

  “Just try and picture it, Edward! First, you put your plane at full throttle, you rev it up to full speed to catch up to the V-l, then you slow down and slip your wingtip ever so gently under the aileron of the bomb, all the while reciting your paternosters, because you never know. . . . But still, that’s the easy part. The next stage is the real bone-chiller. What you do now is a quick barrel roll, the point being to try and destabilize the V-l’s gyroscope. Some ballet, eh? . . . First you rub up against the bomb, you make solid contact, you bank away and at the same time head the nose straight down in case the damn thing goes off, so that its shock waves won’t kill you. And the rest is in the hands of the gods. A man ought to have his head examined, no?”

  And at the same time he was relating these hair-raising stories, he could ramble on endlessly about his chief mechanic’s fox terrier, a dog that bore the unlikely name of Dollar, who apparently loved Nicolas more than anyone or anything in the world. When he described the way Dollar used to greet him upon his arrival back at the base after a mission, his voice would choke up and there were tears in his eyes. There was at this point in Nicolas’s life a curious mixture of complete lack of feeling on the one hand and, on the other, a sensibility that bordered on the maudlin, a characteristic that had perhaps always been present but that the war had brought out even more. And that compassion—if that is what it really was—extended to all the creatures on the face of the earth and in the waters below, from moths to whales, from crows to crocodiles.

  However mad and oblivious he may have been, the fact remains that by the end of the war he had racked up ten proven victories in the air, ten enemy aircraft shot down. That made him an ace, and a recognized war hero, and I could only admire this Icarian side of him. His was a glory I could only dream about.

  One day, after he had revealed virtually all of his exploits and future plans to me, he admitted that he had started writing a novel about his war experiences. So he had not merely been living a wartime life of follies and festivities, he had also been thinking about what it all meant. “And I mean thinking long and hard,” he added. “No matter how tired or cold I was,” he said, “I always took the time to write down my thoughts and impressions.”

  At times his memory seemed to fail him, and he became confused about the chronology of events, remembering only bits and pieces. I was especially struck by this when he told me the story of his final mission.

  “I remember very clearly shepherding this crippled B-17 back home,” he said. “The plane had taken a lot of German flak over Bremen, and looked like a wreck. There were bullet and shrapnel holes from the antiaircraft batteries from one end of the plane to the other. The plane’s machine-gun stations were simply gone, wiped out. One of its motors was on fire, spouting black smoke, which made it virtually impossible for the pilot to see. Both the copilot and navigator had been killed, and the pilot himself wounded. In fact, the cockpit itself had been virtually demolished by a di
rect hit, and I couldn’t help wondering how anyone in there had survived. Anyway, I had to adjust my speed downward to keep pace with this ghost-plane, which sometimes I could barely see because of the dark trail of smoke pouring out of its various wounds. I had picked up the plane over the North Sea, so we had a hell of a ways to go to make it home. And our slow speed made us a perfect target for both enemy antiaircraft and any planes that might pick up our trail. All I could do was grit my teeth and play the good shepherd, knowing that at any moment the damn thing might explode in my face, taking me with it. But, by God, we did make it back: I remember vividly how I felt when I saw the white cliffs of Dover looming in the distance. And I knew that a few minutes later we’d reach the edge of the highway that had been designated for emergency landings in just such cases.”

  “So then what happened? How did the B-17 manage to set down?”

  “I beg your pardon?” Nicolas said, his eyes suddenly glazed.

  “I said, how did the mission end? How did it finally turn out?”

  “How did what turn out?”

  “But the story you’ve been telling me, Nicolas.” “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re talking about. I need to get some rest.”

  I was completely taken aback. Although he seemed to have recovered so fully from his accident, I realized that he was still suffering from some sort of memory loss. At the time I attributed it to the trauma he had suffered. One does not recover all that quickly from a plane crash that serious. But as time went on I had to face up to the harsh facts. Nicolas was indeed suffering from partial amnesia. Or, more accurately, there were repeated gaps in his memory, especially covering the several-week period prior to his accident. Apparently it wasn’t terribly serious. I thought that in time he would recover his full memory, as was generally the case of those who had suffered regressive amnesia.

  Taking advantage of my position as a member of the prestigious Dorchester group, I asked the head nurse—who greatly appreciated the concern I had shown for her patient—if I could have a look at Nicolas’s medical records. She was reluctant at first, but assured that as his closest friend my request was legitimate, she finally produced his file, reminding me as she handed it over that this should remain completely confidential. Despite all the medical jargon I had to plow through, I was able to ascertain that one of the specialists at Queen Victoria Hospital had picked up and duly noted the problem, which he considered serious. He had not only carefully noted all the disturbing symptoms, he had also stressed that, in his professional view, they could be recurring, and voiced his opinion that Nicolas should not fly again. The other medical reports were more or less routine and made no mention of the recurrent amnesia problem, but focused on the rapid physical recovery he had made in general. I closed the file with a feeling of sadness, but at the same time, I have to confess, a tinge of satisfaction. If I had understood the report correctly, Nicolas’s flying days were over. The hero of the wild blue yonder had been grounded. Never again would he take the controls of a Spitfire.

  On a sudden impulse, I reopened the medical file, removed the specialist’s damning report, and slipped it into my pocket. Nicolas already had enough problems to cope with in this hospital. If he were to learn the contents of the specialist’s report, there was no telling what it might do to him.

  A fortnight later, immediately after he was released from the hospital, General de Gaulle himself pinned on Nicolas’s breast the medal of honor for “extreme bravery and heroic conduct in battle.”

  Why did I keep that medical report, which indicated not only that Nicolas had amnesia but that it might someday surface again? I swear by all that’s holy that at the time I did it solely out of pity, to spare him any possible pain. But perhaps, subconsciously, was it also to serve my own purposes, whatever they might be, if I needed a weapon against Nicolas in the future?

  Today this document is carefully filed away in my desk drawer, together with other mementos of my past life. It sits there patiently, awaiting its appointed hour.

  Chapter 6

  The plane was due to arrive at London’s Heathrow Airport at three-thirty. It doubtless would have been on time had it not been for the usual imponderable, in the instance a sudden and violent storm that materialized out of nowhere and forced us to circle the airport interminably. The wind screamed, and our plane was tossed about like a fly in the pipe of a church organ.

  I felt uncomfortable at first, then was overcome with panic. The plane was going to crash, I was sure. And unlike Nicolas, there was no way I would ever walk away from it.

  Wasn’t that the story of our respective lives? He’d been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, whereas my life had been jinxed. If Nicolas had died in that crash, he would have died a hero’s death, gone down in a blaze of glory. Posthumous medals would have been bestowed upon him, endless speeches made in his honor. Me? At most a couple of lines in a newspaper article: “A British Airways plane on its way from Paris to Heathrow crashed in the English Channel yesterday afternoon, apparently a victim of the violent storm that struck the area without warning. All four crew members and the thirty-six passengers on board are presumed dead. Among them is the well-known English publisher, Sir Edward Destry. . . .”

  Leaving nothing behind, I might add. No widow, no descendants, no literary work. Nothing. What is the death of a sterile man, after all? Like the death of a withered fig tree. Good riddance. The only person who will shed a tear or two will be my secretary. Maybe my godson Peter, too. Peter still needed me; I had seen to that as well.

  The captain came onto the loudspeaker and urged us to remain calm. Keep your seat belts securely fastened. We had to be patient, ride out the storm. We had plenty of fuel, enough for us to keep circling for over an hour, he assured. Now and then through a break in the clouds, we could see the airport lights below. The delay gave me plenty of time to go over my plans for revenge. I needed to feed my feelings of resentment, more than ever now, for in the next few hours I was going to drop the bomb that would wipe out my esteemed friend and colleague, Nicolas Fabry. Just a few more hours and I would be redeemed.

  That is, if the heavens were willing!

  For me the war and early postwar blend into a kind of single, grayish, slightly ill-defined sketch. In 1945 I exchanged my windowless horizon for a view on a university courtyard, my underground desk at the Dorchester for a seat in the poorly heated amphitheater of a dilapidated university, where the survivors of an earlier war dispensed their presumed wisdom with a boredom that permeated the entire institution.

  With my master’s degree in hand, I went forth into the big world, ready to make my mark. I was convinced that I had not shown my true mettle during the war, but now I would. Now I would distinguish myself in the world of literary creation. In no time at all my genius as a writer would be remarked and appreciated. My brain was ablaze with noble subjects to write about, my mind crammed with a welter of dark and mysterious plots and scintillating dialogues. Poems, fully rhymed, came to me as easily as bright water flowing over cool mountain stones. I was in turn a poet, a novelist, a playwright, an essayist. And in each guise I was fully aware of my enormous talent. The only problem was, when I put these roiling fantasies to paper and published them in the university literary reviews, their mediocrity became glaringly apparent. My style ranged from the artificial to the forced. It was as flat and redundant as the Yorkshire moors and just as empty.

  My beautiful revolts, my grand rebellion, soon became little more than the convulsive movements of a fish out of water. . . . Then, crucified by the evidence, I realized what the problem was. Yes, it was I and I alone who had sentenced myself to mediocrity, to punish myself for the death of Yasmina. I had in a way created my own fate, and as long as this fate held me prisoner, I might indeed have perfect pitch in the abstract, but when it came to the real world I sang out of tune.

  Having come to that conclusion, seeing clearly for the first time, I abandoned my literary ambitions and made up my mind to go into
publishing. You cast your net and hope it comes up with a decent fish. Mine did, in that I had the good fortune to meet an elderly publisher, blessed with brains and erudition, an eccentric man looking for a colleague with a good head on his shoulders and an excellent critical sense. I grabbed the opportunity and went to work for Turner Press with an enthusiasm and dedication that soon earned me the paternal affection—and, I may say, admiration—of Archibald Turner.

  If the poor man had had any idea to what use I would later put the knowledge I was storing up, especially that gleaned from the training course he obliged me to take at a local printing plant, he would have been horrified. Me too, for that matter.

  It was not long before I became completely caught up in my new profession, though I confess that as I was reading the manuscripts of others, and seeing their books through to publication, I had to suppress a jealousy that would overcome me now and then. I was the nursemaid, raising other people’s children. I guided them, I corrected them, I helped improve them. It was my way of repressing the throbbing pain I felt on many occasions that the works published did not bear my signature, no matter how much I had contributed to their success editorially.