Respuestas
Respuesta:
LAND OF MEN
The line
We were in 1926. I had just entered as a pilot in the Latécoère Society, which established, before the Aéropostale (the current Air France), the Toulouse-Dakar link. There I learned the trade. Like my companions, I passed the novitiate to the young men before I had the honor of carrying the post. Airplane testing, commuting between Toulouse and Perpignan, boring weather lessons at the bottom of a frozen hangar. We lived in fear of the Spanish mountains, which we did not yet know, and in respect for veterans.
We met these veterans in the restaurant, sullen, a little distant, reluctantly giving us their advice. And when any of them returned late from Alicante or Casablanca with the leather jacket dripping with rainwater, and one of us timidly questioned him about his trip, his laconic responses, on stormy days, built us a fabulous world, full of traps, hatches, abruptly rising cliffs and eddies capable of uprooting cedars. Black dragons defended the valley entrances, and bolts of lightning crowned the tops. Those veterans wisely nurtured our respect. But, from time to time, fit for eternity, one of them no longer returned.
I also remember a return of Bury, an old pilot who was later killed in Las Corbières.
He had just sat down between us and ate heavily, without saying a word, his back sagging with the effort. It was the night of one of those bad days when, from one end of the line to the other, the sky appeared rotten, in which the mountains gave the pilot the sensation of rolling through dirt, like those canyons that, broken the moorings, They crossed the bridge of the sailing ships of yesteryear. I looked at Bury, swallowed hard, and finally risked asking him if the flight had been hard. Bury, his brow furrowed and his gaze fixed on his plate, couldn't hear me. On board uncovered aircraft, in bad weather, it was necessary to lean out of the windshield to see better, and the slaps of the wind whistled for a long time in the ears. Finally, Bury seemed to hear me. He raised his head, as if suddenly remembering, and burst into a light laugh. That laugh amazed me, that brief laugh that illuminated his exhaustion, because Bury laughed little. He gave no explanation for his victory. He lowered his head again and resumed chewing silently. But among the grays of the restaurant, among the modest officials who repaired there the humble fatigue of the day, that companion with broad shoulders seemed to us clothed with a strange nobility. Beneath its rough bark, one could glimpse the angel that had defeated the dragon.
Finally, the afternoon came when, in turn, I was called to the director's office. He just told me.
"You will be leaving tomorrow."
I stood there, waiting for him to say goodbye. However, after a pause, he added:
"Do you know the slogans well?"
At that time, the engines did not offer the security of the current ones. Often they stopped suddenly, without warning, with a crash of broken china. And one looked back at the rocky crust of Spain, which offered few shelters. When the engine breaks down there, we used to say, to the plane, alas! the same thing happens to him soon ». Now an airplane can be replaced. Most important, first of all, was not to approach the rock blindly. Therefore, we were prohibited, under the most severe sanctions, from flying over the cloud seas above the mountainous areas. The pilot, as the damaged device sank into the white cotton, did not see the spikes and collided with them.
This is why, that afternoon, the slow voice of the director insisted once more on the slogan: - It is very nice to navigate with a compass over Spain, above the seas of clouds. Agree that it is very elegant, but ...
And even more slowly:
"But remember: underneath the seas of clouds ... is eternity."