The Angel's Cut (4 page)

Crow had left his brother completely in charge of the second round of the day's shoot. He said that the writer, Ray Paige, would be up and sober—he and Ray better get to work on that dialogue. As Gil climbed into his Travel Air again Crow warned, ‘Careful of your turns,' and walked off toward the Mutual Aircraft hangar where he'd parked his car.

Jimmy Chan discussed his signals with the pilots he'd lined up for his ‘take-off' shots. Then he turned to Xas and said, ‘Would you help me carry my camera up the mast?'

Xas didn't really want to go into the airship, but couldn't see how he could explain his reluctance. After all, he could hardly claim to be afraid of heights.

He and Jimmy carried the camera up the zigzag stairs. Xas volunteered to be on the downhill side, since he was stronger. Jimmy stopped to catch his breath at the top, then
they clambered across the gangway from the mast into the airship's control cabin.

One of
Lake Werner
's officers came over and said, ‘You are going to have to be quick, Mr Chan. The ground crew will soon arrive. We have borrowed one hundred men from your Navy to grapple the airship down so that our passengers can come aboard as though walking into a night club. These are not people who'd take kindly to having to scale the mast.'

‘I promise to be as quick as I can,' Jimmy said.

‘Your stunt planes have been too far away to watch without the aid of field glasses,' said the officer, with a faintly accusing air.

Within the next few minutes, as Jimmy set up his shots, the Navy riggers arrived. For the moment they seemed content to sit on and around their trucks.

Xas looked down from the control cabin and saw that there was a platform already in place, covered in red carpet and festooned with bunting. It had a rail made of bronze stanchions threaded with red silk guide ropes. There was a red carpet running up to the platform, flanked by potted palms and the flags of the republics, Weimar and the United States. From above, the platform looked like a hotel lobby during a political convention, only parked in a field of self-seeded barley and alfalfa.
Lake Werner
's flattered passengers would, once they were aloft, be able to see for themselves how notional the ceremony of their send-off really was.

Jimmy began filming, while several curious Germans hovered around him.

Captain Hintersee appeared beside Xas. He took Xas's arm, and spoke to him in German. ‘When I saw you before among the stunt flyers I wasn't sure, but now—' Hintersee shook his head, apparently stunned. Then, ‘
Who are you?
' he said.

Xas realised that, in fact, he'd been waiting for his captain, that when he'd agreed to help Jimmy it wasn't just because he hadn't been able to make an excuse.

Hintersee led Xas away from the control cabin. Xas was compliant, waiting on the resources of the moment, for the moment to crack open and reveal a secret compartment and its tools: facility, goodwill, concord. And then it did, and Xas saw what he could say. He answered Hintersee in German. ‘August Hintersee,' he said, ‘I believe that my brother, Hans Ritt, was under your command?'

‘Yes. Yes, of course, you are Hans's brother.' Hintersee sounded at once relieved and dubious.

Xas's jaw was sore—which surprised him. He tried to relax it. He thought: ‘Living with these apes is making an ape of me.'

Hintersee retained his arm. He said, ‘Please join me for coffee. I'd like to talk to you.' His voice rose at the end of his sentence. He was asking Xas for a name. ‘Herr Ritt,' he added, when a name wasn't forthcoming.

Once, Xas's beloved, Sobran, had made a list of names the angel could use. ‘By rotations,' Sobran had said, ‘a new name every twenty-five years, at least.' It was a kind of game the man and angel played, the man imagining what lasting influence he might have on the angel and inventing things, like a calendar of aliases. But the game was meant
also to remind the angel to behave himself. Not to double back on a dead identity. Not to break in on the hearths of those who live in the shelter of time.

Hintersee conducted Xas to a table on the promenade deck. They were shortly followed there by a steward carrying a coffee pot and cups on a tray. The captain had the steward pour the coffee.

For a few minutes Hintersee let Xas sit and look at the view.

The Santa Monica Mountains weren't visible from the promenade deck's angled windows, only the airfield as far as the eucalyptus lining Pico Boulevard. The deck was built for taking in views from the air.
Lake Werner
's designers hadn't wanted her passengers to keep a constant eye on the weather, as those in the control cabin did.

‘Our meeting is a very happy accident, it seems to me,' said Hintersee. ‘For I hope you will be able to help me solve a puzzle that has troubled me for years.'

Hintersee was bearded. By tradition all airship officers were, and many of the men too, which in wartime had been a departure from the rules of any other service, where only officers wore whiskers and non-coms might be permitted a moustache at most. A beard helped to keep an airship man warm. It is cold at eleven thousand feet and, unlike planes, airships stayed up for days.

Xas looked at Hintersee and saw a sombre, watchful man with a thick, glossy black beard. He saw that his captain had aged well, but was nevertheless greatly altered. Hintersee seemed grim and formal—very different from the man who had commanded the raider Zeppelin. It was as if that man had
been folded up very small, like a letter a rejected lover folds and pokes into a corner of a wallet. Perhaps—Xas thought—his captain was the kind of man on whom loss makes a greater impression than any happiness before or after. Hintersee had
Lake Werner
, but remembered his lost airship. And he remembered his navigator, Hans Ritt, a young man of whom he was fond, and who had fallen from the cloud car.

‘This is most welcome, thank you,' Xas said to his captain, and lifted his cup in salute.

Hintersee said the coffee was his own private blend. Then, ‘We have some time, Herr Ritt. So—if you please—let me tell you what happened to your brother.'

On a night in 1917—said Hintersee—when there was a fog over the English Channel, his navigator, Hans Ritt, was lowered down in the cloud car to see if he could spot any ships. ‘We were in luck that night,' Hintersee said. ‘There were three ships, showing no light, but visible to Hans, who had excellent night-vision. Hans calculated their positions, and began to relay the information via the telephone line that linked the cloud car to the control cabin. I had the receiver to my ear. I was above Hans in the cabin, with five other men.'

Xas fixed his gaze on the coffee in his cup, its diminishing circle of black. He tilted it back and forth so that it caught the light and flashed like a signal lamp.

‘The line was open,' Hintersee said, ‘so I heard everything that happened to the occupant of the cloud car.'

Xas looked up from his cup to his captain. ‘Oh, Hell,' he said. From the moment the fog had ruptured he hadn't given the phone a thought.

‘Good. I have your full attention,' Hintersee said. ‘Yes—the line was open. And there was
someone else there
.'

Xas shook his head.

‘Yes,' Hintersee said, insistent. He must have read Xas's look as disbelief. He asked, ‘Did you never speak to any of the men who were in the control cabin that night? We all came through the war. Weren't you curious to hear from any of us? It surprises me that Hans's own brother didn't have enough curiosity to seek out those men and ask them what had happened.'

Xas didn't say anything.

‘Hans stopped speaking,' continued Hintersee. ‘It was abrupt. He had begun to give us the bearings of our targets. But then he just stopped and said, “
No
.” It didn't seem connected to his calculations. He wasn't saying, “No, I'm mistaken, there are four ships, not three.” It wasn't anything like that. When I heard him say “No” I didn't feel
myself
addressed—and, after all, I was the man on the other end of the phone line, the only person Hans should be talking to. But, “No,” Hans said, not to me. And then we in the control cabin felt a faint jolt as he jumped from the cloud car.'

Hintersee stopped and studied Xas's face. ‘You're angry,' he said. ‘Are you angry because I'm representing your brother's death as a suicide?'

‘No,' Xas said.

‘But you
are
angry. I can see that you are.' Hintersee waited for a response and, when he didn't get one, he simply went on with the story.

‘The cable jolted faintly as Hans jumped, then, a moment later, it jerked again and swung as though something had struck the cloud car. A shock went through the ship. The cable made a ringing noise, as though it was taking a greater weight. And then I heard the other person—the person who was there with Hans.'

‘
No
,' Xas said—in a perfect imitation of Hintersee's lost Hans—a blunt refusal.

Hintersee went on. ‘The person who spoke after Hans had jumped—
that
person addressed someone else again. I was listening, but I knew then, and know now, that it wasn't to me that he spoke.' Hintersee considered Xas's face. ‘How do I know that?' he said, as though Xas had asked. ‘I know by what he said. Do you want to know what he said?'

‘No,' Xas said again. He wanted to get up, but found he couldn't move.

‘He said: “He won't speak to me.” That's what I heard as the cable swung back and forth beneath the belly of the airship as though something heavy were clinging to the cloud car. He said: “See what he does to avoid speaking to me?” His voice was indescribable—'

‘How could you understand him?' Xas said. ‘Was he speaking German? Why would he speak German?'

‘I think it wasn't German. And I have no idea how I was able to understand him. If I were to describe the voice I would only be able to say that it was commanding—and comprehensible,' said Hintersee. ‘He finished speaking and the cloud car lurched violently. It was as if something sprang away from the car and, relieved of a weight, the
basket rebounded on its cable. It was all over in a moment. My officers were shouting at me. They wanted to know what was happening, what I'd heard. I couldn't even begin to explain. I ordered the cloud car winched up. And when it appeared it was empty.'

Hintersee sat, his hands folded behind his coffee cup, and looked at Xas. Who didn't say anything.

Hintersee checked his watch.

Xas took note of this and said, ‘You don't want to push your departure time.'

Hintersee signalled the steward. He said, ‘Fetch the officer of the watch.'

The steward went away through one of the narrow doors in the salon's wall, which was decorated with a frieze on the theme of the romance of travel—steamer trunks, paper streamers, and women with bobbed hair and long blowing scarves. Xas stared at the frieze till the door opened again to admit the officer of the watch.

Hintersee said to the officer, ‘Would you please get those riggers on the job.'

While Hintersee gave his orders, Xas steeled himself to wait the man out. Any moment now Hintersee would realise that he had told a mad story, and that Hans's brother would no longer meet his eyes. Xas resolved to stay silent, and let the man's self-consciousness well up and cover everything over again.

But that wasn't what happened. Once the officer left, Hintersee returned his attention to Xas and began to eulogise. ‘Hans wasn't ambitious,' he said, ‘but things came
to him in the same way that this sugar cube—' He picked one up between his thumb and forefinger and touched its bottom face to the surface of his coffee. The cube darkened with an audible hiss. ‘In the same way that sugar absorbs liquid, Hans could touch things and take them up.'

Xas turned away from the man. Hintersee's expression hurt him. That look of love and regret. He faced the window and, for a moment, was dazzled by reflected light. The sun had reappeared. In descending its disc had been eclipsed for some time by the lower slopes of the thunderhead over the sea. Out again now, the sun was reflecting from the ground below the airship, ground whitened by the uniforms of the Navy riggers, who were deployed on the airship's six anchor lines, pulling with gloves and grapnels. The officer of the watch was giving orders, standing well back and signalling with his bright gloved hands.
Lake Werner
began to sink. Its shadow appeared in the crowns of the distant eucalyptus; a horizon of shadow, like an inverted hill.

Even through his pain and confusion Xas could feel the wonder airships always inspired in him.
Lake Werner
had the appearance of solidity, cast a huge geometrical shadow, but was being managed in the air like a grappled cloud.

Hintersee reached across the table and touched Xas's hand. ‘Have you anything to say?' he said. ‘Have you understood what I've been telling you?'

Xas looked into the man's eyes—alert eyes, a familiar bright blue. He said, ‘What is there to understand?'

‘Everything.' Hintersee tightened his grip. ‘Please tell me what
you
think happened.'

Xas waited. The air itself seemed to shrink back from him, so that, apart from the hand gripping his, he was sitting in a shell of nothingness. After a minute of this nothingness he said, ‘Hans Ritt was attacked by an angel.' He said it to put the past behind him—Hans Ritt and his few human attachments. And what happened to Hans Ritt; the archangel he had fled, the hitherto unknown consultation over his falling form, only one side of it audible to the man listening in on the control cabin phone.

Hintersee huffed out a breath. He pulled his collar away from his throat. ‘Why would an
angel
attack Hans?' His eyes filled with tears, which Xas supposed might be tears of indignation.

Xas said, without any expression, ‘Do you remember how Hans didn't like anyone to touch his back?' Then he looked away from Hintersee again to watch
Lake Werner
's shadow settle nearer the ground. He saw that the Navy riggers had paused in their work and were all looking in the same direction, away from the officer in charge of the operation—who was also looking away—all of them turning toward the hangars, where the crash alarm had sounded.