Planes glide through the air like fish
Before I knew why airplanes stayed up, I thought they glided
through the air like fish through water. Later I found out it wasn’t
like that at all, a fish can’t fall to the bottom of the lake because it
has a pocket of air inside it, but a plane stays up because it moves.
Sharks don’t have a pocket of air, they must keep moving or they will
fall to the bottom like an airplane falling from the sky.
We lived by a lake, whose clear water revealed the bottom six or
more feet down. The fish were dark slashes against the grey green silt,
or a swift gleam of silver as they turned. In the mornings and evenings,
the fishers went out on the lake to set and fetch their nets.
The fishers stood up in a long flat bottomed boat, leaning and
straightening as they pumped the square-bladed oar, he tall and stooped
in the stern, she short and round in the bow. They’re shovelling water, I
thought, I didn’t understand how that could move the boat forward. The
fishers stuck the small fish onto pine splints which they ranged in the
smoke house chimney. The smoked fish tasted salt and sweet at the same
time when one gnawed them off the wood.
I watched the fishers mend nets, watched their hands and fingers
move out and back with a twist as they fed and knotted the line with a
flat, narrow piece of wood. I didn’t see how the line could make a knot
with only one end free. The nets hung on frames made of pine poles,
moving in the wind like waves on the water, bleached white and soft by
the sun.
Many years later, in another country, I learned Bernoulli’s
equations and Boyle’s law, and understood how air moving over the wing
made the wing lift the plane. For a few weeks I understood the equations
that defined drag and turbulence, too. Now I understand only their
meaning, a lovely interplay of velocity, pressure and viscosity, with
which the airplane designer and pilot co-operate.
I learned a lot of other things too, I understood the engineer’s
and metal worker’s craft, their exquisite skill lavished on the bombers
that glided through the sky, making death beautiful and distant.
The bombers looked like fish against the sky, gleaming silver, but
not like fish, sliding across the blue air, steady and inexorable, and
making a sound you felt in your bones, a sound that struck across the
sky and flowed into the earth and came up through your feet and made
your teeth buzz. Then black flowers bloomed on the horizon where the
railway junction was. Many years later I saw pictures of black
chrysanthemums, they bloomed like smoke against a blue sky. My friend’s
mother died among the roots of one of those flowers, but that was before
he was my friend, before we even knew of each other’s existence.
One day a plane came in low over our house, and fell into the lake,
trailing a black and orange flag that stretched out behind it, longer
and longer as the plane fell towards the water. My mother said my
brother could see the pilot’s face, I must have seen it too as I stood
next to my brother, but he can remember it and I can’t, I wonder if
that’s why he hides his melancholy. I hide mine too, but not in the same
way, he bursts out in sudden attacks of craziness, roaring like a
monster, pretending to be Grendel, or the giant that ate an Englishman
and ground his bones for bread. My Grandpa read us that story, I loved
the bits where Jack steals the gold and the hen and the harp, and runs
to the beanstalk along the winding cloudy road. The harp betrayed the
thief, an early lesson on the deviousness of artists.
I tell people I’m fine, when they ask. I ask them, too, and they
tell me they are fine. We tell each other we are fine, making up a fine
story about how fine the world is, and what a fine time we are having
this fine afternoon, while we eat a fine meal made on a fine barbecue in
a fine garden owned by a fine neighbourly neighbour.
For several weeks, I understood the equations that explained
airplanes, then we wrote a test and I forgot them. I didn’t forget what
they explained. Whenever I look at a plane I see the air flow over its
wings, faster on top and slower underneath, holding up the plane, a
plane that weighs more than the largest steam locomotive ever built, and
as the jet climbs into the sky like a man going up a flight of stairs, I
know that if the air peels off the wings in unseen swirls and
whirlpools, the plane will crash, but we won’t make a white splash in
the water because there’s no lake under us, just grass and asphalt. A
black and orange flower will bloom in the field at the end of the
runway.
When the fishers pump the oar, eddies and swirls peel off it and
press against the blade, and that presses the boat forward. What brings
down the plane moves the boat. Nature has her ways, if you work with
her, she rewards you with flying planes and gliding boats.
My cousin and I used to go into the park next to our house. The
oaks and beeches and maples and pines and firs and sycamores made it a
quiet place, the only sounds the rustle of the leaves high above us and
the scuff of our feet in the duff. We thought of it as a secret place,
known only to us, a source of treasure, a landscape of adventure. Once
we saw the wreck of an airplane caught high in the branches of the
trees. We took one of the transformers that had come loose and fallen to
the ground, and for a long time after we had fine copper wire to play
with, varnished a rich mahogany red. My cousin told me we could make
snares and catch fish, or make electrical stuff, if we wanted. Just
thinking about the possibilities hidden in the coils of fine, dark red
wire was enough, it made us happy. We hid the transformer in the gazebo
and took it out to relish the technical perfection of its windings, fine
as hair.
A day or two after we found the transformer we were forbidden to go
into the park, a prohibition we could not understand until we heard
talk among the grownups about the dead pilot of the airplane hanging in
the branches of the sycamore tree. We waited for our chance and crept
back into the park but the wreck had been removed. As usual, the
grownups had spoiled our fun, but we were used to it, and went about our
business.
When it rained, the snails came out of the underbrush, their shells
banded yellow and black and sometimes orange. The shells gleamed in the
wet. I gathered up the snails and set them on the pine-log railing of
the gazebo and waited for them to race each other. The snails came out
from their shells, waving their antennae, testing the air for danger.
They crawled over the curve of the railing and fell into the grass and
disappeared.
One day the sirens moaned while I was building forts and jetties
with the rocks at the edge of the water. I ran up the slope to the road,
a cyclist rushing home knocked me over. The wheels of his bike scraped
my bare belly, there was no other injury. My mother dressed us in two
layers of underwear, and two layers of overcoats, the topmost one made
from a bright red blanket. We must have looked like little red snowmen.
The woollen vest itched, I cried with vexation in the cellar. We heard
the bombers fly over, they seemed closer this time, perhaps the cellar
magnified their sound, it came out of the ceiling and the floor and the
walls. When the bombs hit the railway yards, we felt the thump, and a
small cloud of dust drifted down from the ceiling. The lights flickered
and went out. One of the grownups lit a candle, the light made a
boundary around us like a wall. We huddled up next to Mother, and felt
secure. But the vest still itched.
When I hear sirens in a war movie these days, something grabs my throat and squeezes tears from my eyes.
I visited the lake again recently. The mountains that stood on the
opposite shore still stand there, self-sufficient and silent. High above
them, a con trail divides the sky. I can’t see the plane, but I know it
glides through the air like a fish glides through water.
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