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A Bleriot XII nestles under a Bleriot 125 on the Bleriot stand at the 1930 Paris Air Show. Foreground shows a SPAD 91 biplane.

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Gaito Gazdanov's Paris / 43

The flyer

It was a Saturday evening. The taxis were lined up outside the entrances of dance halls. In tront of the Hotel Lutèce I saw a driver who had attracted my attention for a long time: a little old man with an enormous white moustache.

This caricature made me smile in spite of myself each time I met him. This evening I spoke to him for the first time. His accent revealed that he was originally from Grenoble.

As long as we talked about work he responded in monosyllables, but at the mention of an aeronautical exhibition that was held a few days earlier, he livened up.

“Oh yes, they’ve made some progress, but it doesn’t amount to much. They aren’t concentrating on what’s essential.”

“Which is?”

We were standing apart from the other drivers, who were gossiping about their customers. It was three o’clock in the morning, the street lamps lit up the deserted sidewalk.

The old fellow stood in front of me, flanked by the wings of his formidable moustache, worthy of a turn-of-the-century grenadier; I was struck by his serious and resolute look.

“The essential thing is that each man can and must fly.”

I looked at him without saying anything. He repeated:

“Yes, sir. Can and must fly.”

“Must, perhaps, even though to tell the truth, I’m not sure about that. But he can’t do it. That’s the problem.”

“Yes, sir, he can. I’ve studied the phenomenon for a long time, and sooner or later I will fly. You’ll see.”

He told me that he had invented a special machine, equipped with wings and a system of gears and pulleys.

As for his family, they had no idea of the importance of his task and this obliged him to work under very unfavourable conditions.

“They won’t allow me to have a workshop,” he moaned, “I have to work in public toilets. It’s very inconvenient. First, I’m often interrupted; then the ceiling is so low that I’m forced to stay in the same exact position. After a while I get back pains and pains in my rear end.

“A flight involves three stages. The first is like this:” – without moving from where he stood he flapped his arms a few times – “it’s taking off into the air. The second is like so:” – he repeated the same movements, but more rhythmically and slowly.

“The third is what we in aeronautics call gliding, like this.” He leaned over on his left side, spread out his arms so that they described a straight line, and suddenly began a series of running jumps along the sidewalk in short, quick steps. With his head pressed against one shoulder he nearly brushed the ground with one hand.

This spectacle was so comical, and so unexpected, that I could not suppress a roar of laughter.

At the end of his flight he came back to me in a fit of anger.

"You’re stupid, you don’t understand anything."

I couldn’t answer him: I was laughing so hard I was crying. Afterward I often recalled his frail silhouette, leaning over at an angle and crossed by two parallel lines: one formed by his arms and the other by his moustache.

He was an inoffensive and peaceful madman; his colleagues at the garage told me about him. [231-232]