The Winter Garden (2014) (15 page)

The terminal building of Tempelhof airbase in the south of the city was a showpiece for the new Germany. Built by Ernst Sagebiel, the same man responsible for the monumental
Air Ministry, its sprawling hangars fanned out in a gigantic arc, intended to resemble the spread wings of an eagle in flight. It was the largest freestanding building in the world. Beneath it, in
five levels of underground tunnels, fighter bombers were being assembled and above, the mile-long roof was arranged in tiers with room for eighty thousand spectators to observe aerobatic displays.
The whole place felt less like an air terminal and more like a cathedral devoted to the twin gods of aviation and the Third Reich.

Clara had never been anywhere so big. Standing in the cavernous Hall of Glory, still not completed, she was completely disorientated. The place was so vast, the distances between each point of
focus so great, that she felt disembodied, all her senses adrift. It was like being trapped inside a Cubist painting with perspective going in all directions and an incipient dizziness from looking
too hard.

Arno Strauss was striding towards her. The withered twist of his face startled her afresh, and it was hard to tell if his tense expression was mere disfigurement or if he was regretting his
offer of a flight. He had goggles pushed back on his head and a cigarette clamped between his fingers.

‘Good morning, Fräulein Vine.’ He looked askance at the black polo-necked jumper and trousers she was wearing. ‘You’re going to freeze like that. Take
this.’

He shrugged off his leather jacket and draped it around her shoulders. It was sleek brown leather with epaulettes and a simple winged eagle on the breast pocket. The weight of it was comforting,
as was the warmth of his body still contained in its rabbit fur lining.

‘Still want to come? Not nervous, I hope?’

‘Only a little.’

She had been sick with nerves from the moment she woke up. Indeed she had barely slept. Silly really, she told herself as she brushed her teeth and made a black coffee. People fly in aeroplanes
all the time. And this man was an expert. One of the top pilots in the entire Luftwaffe, Udet had said. Why should the prospect of flying be enough to terrify her? Nonetheless, she had been unable
to eat any breakfast. That was probably a wise precaution.

‘Just so you know,’ he remarked shortly as they headed out of the hall, ‘I’m bending the rules a little here.’

‘Not too much, I hope.’

‘Let’s just say, for official purposes you don’t exist.’

They walked out onto the tarmac, a sharp wind blasting against their faces, forcing them to raise their voices to a shout. The plane was standing ready for them, a sleek, angular, grey-blue
machine, nose tilted upwards like some great rook poised to lurch forward and creak heavily into the air. As they ducked under the wing, Strauss reached up and his forefinger brushed a swastika
painted on the underside.

‘I always touch one for luck.’

‘Do you need luck?’

‘We all need luck. Though I’ve probably had more than my share already. We may have to rely on yours.’

The cockpit was barely big enough for one person but there were two seats, one behind the other, and Strauss propelled her into the rear, threading the buckles of a parachute harness over her
shoulders and handing her a sheepskin-lined cap and goggles. His face was rigid with concentration as he fitted first her parachute, then his own. He smelled of leather, grease and petrol fumes.
When he bent close to fasten her buckles she caught a whiff of alcohol, which added to her jittery nerves.

‘So have you flown this plane often?’

‘First time, in fact. This one’s a prototype. A Henschel Hs 126. It hasn’t entered service yet. They’ve made ten for us to try out. The idea is it’s able to go
fairly slow.’

‘Is that a good thing?’

He gave a gruff laugh.

‘Good for our purposes. Though it won’t seem slow to you, I promise.’

He settled in front of a curved dashboard, slammed down the glass hatch over their heads and began to run his eyes over the instrument panel. Through her goggles, Clara looked uncomprehendingly
at the blur of levers and dials. Strauss’s perfect, undamaged side was towards her and she was so close to him, she was practically breathing into his neck, her knees folded up into her
chest.

‘Who usually sits back here?’

‘It’s the camera bay.’

He flicked a switch, gunned up the engines and the plane began to whine, a deafening high-pitched squeal that sent a shudder through the entire fuselage. Below them Clara saw a man run out to
remove the chocks beneath the wheels and the plane crept forwards, taxiing slowly and bumpily down the runway which stretched seemingly endlessly ahead of them, lit by a narrow avenue of lights.
Then it gathered speed and she felt her intestines sink within her as the plane rose with a loud thump into the air.

As the force of acceleration pressed her body back into the bucket seat, Clara thought how uncomfortable it must be for a grown man to cram himself into this tiny steel space. The dashboard had
come alive now, a bank of wavering needles and glowing lights, and she saw the set of Strauss’s jaw, the flinty eyes narrowed as he pulled the stick towards him and they hurtled upwards into
the dense air.

Below them the city was dwindling to a quilt of red roofs and chimneys. Just outside Tempelhof, she could see a patchwork of allotments, little grids of cabbage and leeks, like a bar chart in a
child’s schoolbook. Around the green spaces the crossword puzzle of streets and blocks extended and on the outskirts of the city braids of smoke from factory towers twisted into the sky.

Thinking of herself and Strauss suspended so perilously high above them, Clara’s heart caught in her mouth. Why had she agreed to his invitation, she asked herself, yet she knew the answer
already. Some instinct within her, ingrained too deeply to eradicate, meant she was never able to refuse a challenge. Their father had instilled it in childhood, setting sister against brother,
making every game of chess a competition, every outing an opportunity to test their own resources. On holiday in the Scottish Highlands, where the children would follow his austere, forbidding
figure as they laboured with knapsacks through the drizzle, he would set each child a task. They would be left in a distant location equipped with only a ball of string, a compass and a shilling.
That was all they required, he would say, to hike their way home. Somehow, Clara had always managed it. From an early age she had learned never to show fear and never to reveal reluctance.

As the plane climbed higher the map turned into a tapestry, with dark green forests, thick as fur, wedged between the patchwork of fields. A flash of river, like mercury. They flew through a
fleece of clouds, moisture beading the outside of the glass, and out again into the empty sky. As Clara breathed in the air, sharp and cold as a knife, she felt a rush of exhilaration. Suddenly she
understood the addiction of flight. How wonderful it must be to have this heart-stopping excitement in your life, to feel that in an instant you could soar above the city and leave your landlocked
life behind you.

‘That’s the rate-of-climb indicator.’ Strauss jabbed a finger at the instrument panel. ‘The boost pressure indicator, the speed indicator, the altimeter. The maximum
speed of this plane is three hundred and sixty-five kilometres an hour.’

None of the dials meant anything to her. Crouched behind Strauss, Clara felt like Sinbad on the back of the eagle, though her every sensation was governed by the penetrating cold. Her attempt at
dressing warmly had been hopelessly inadequate. The cold burned her face and even with Strauss’s jacket she felt as if she might freeze to the steel seat. She wondered how Strauss was
managing without it, though she could see he was wearing fur-lined boots and a thick sweater swaddled over several layers.

They were much higher now, unimaginable thousands of feet, and below them Brandenburg spread out to the faint line of the horizon, purple with the wrinkle of the hills.

‘Hold on!’ shouted Strauss.

From its great height, the plane flipped in a graceful somersault, tumbling through the cloud cover before swooping downwards. Banking and turning, it rolled over and over so she could no longer
tell whether they were up or down. To her horror, it seemed that the propeller had cut out and the engine was dead. As they hurtled towards the earth, trees and grass and buildings came into view.
Clara could scarcely breathe from terror. A searing pain drilled in her ears and the air was knocked from her lungs as she gripped the sides of the seat, wanting to scream but unable to make a
sound. The propeller was still not functioning. She squeezed her eyes shut. For several seconds they continued downwards until at the last moment, when they had dipped so low they almost touched
the grass with one wing, the plane swung violently to one side, Strauss opened the throttle and the ground leapt away from them as they ascended steeply into the air.

‘That’s called a Dead Stick landing,’ he shouted, pulling the plane into a rapid climb. ‘Our friend Ernst has the copyright on that.’

For a moment she did not grasp what he was saying, until she comprehended that the terrifying plunge was intentional, and that Strauss had performed a dangerous stunt without warning her. When
she understood, fury and fear mingled in her as the plane thrust its way upwards, every inch shuddering as the propeller blades, working again, sliced through the cold, white air. She was going to
be sick, she knew it.

Above the cloud bank the plane dropped speed a little, levelled out and they drifted high through the sparkling morning. The ground beneath was obscured by vapour so they were entirely alone,
suspended between earth and heaven. Spokes of sunlight streamed through gaps in the clouds.

Strauss brought the plane around in a vast, lazy loop as though it was performing its own graceful ballet in the air. Then he seized the throttle and brought it down forcibly so that the sky
reared up towards them and the plane was almost at ninety degrees. Clara wanted to beg him not to perform another stunt but the breath was knocked out of her, as though she had been winded, and the
rushing air pressed against her lips. She formed the word ‘Please!’ but it did not emerge from her mouth. When she felt the plane level and then tilt nose down, she knew it was already
too late.

The scream of the engine was too high for her to speak, and she was consumed by a panicky vertigo. The ground was rushing towards them crazily fast. Nine thousand feet, eight thousand, seven
thousand. The air speed indicators on the dashboard wheeled excitedly round in their glass cases. Wind whipped through the fuselage and red lights glowed on the dashboard. What was he thinking of,
trying a stunt like this? Strauss’s face revealed nothing, but his jaw was clenched as he grappled with the controls. The fuselage was juddering so violently she was certain the plane was
about to come apart. They were hurtling towards earth in a steel coffin, about to sink like a stone into the hard ground. Strauss seemed to be wrenching the throttle while they continued to
accelerate steeply down. She felt the nausea rising in her, and looked for something to vomit in. How awful to be plunging to your death and looking for a sick bag.

Just as they seemed certain to die, Strauss made a sharp movement with his foot, jerked the throttle lever towards him and the plane tilted ninety degrees, throwing them both bodily to the left
as they rose again. Through her jangled brain the comment of Goebbels came to her.

‘I think you have a taste for danger, Fräulein.’

Goebbels was wrong. She had no taste for danger. But danger had a way of seeking her out.

It took a few minutes for the plane to bank and turn again and make a slow descent towards the Tempelhof runway. Strauss taxied to a halt and the engine grunted and stuttered before it died and
the propeller blades flapped to a halt. Taking off his hat he sat still for a moment, his lips compressed into a mirthless grin. Beads of sweat stood out on his brow. His eyes were dark and
unfathomable, like a pool of oil.

‘Were you frightened?’ he said.

‘No.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘OK, I was terrified.’

He laughed. A short, joyless bark. ‘So was I. I lost control there, you realize? I thought we were for it. The throttle locked at high altitude. I almost gave up. Luckily I managed to kick
the stick with my foot in the nick of time.’

He helped her climb out of the plane and they walked back across the tarmac. They had spent no more than fifteen minutes in the air, yet she felt like a lifetime had passed. Her legs were
shaking as though she had just got off a ship and her thoughts were a maelstrom of confusion. Had Strauss deliberately risked her life, as well as his own? Was he telling the truth when he said he
lost control?

‘How do you feel?’

Instinctively, as ever, she suppressed the anger and confusion churning inside her.

‘I feel like a cocktail that’s just been shaken,’ she said lightly.

He looked at her in astonishment, but even as she said it, her mood changed. It was true. She was euphoric that she had not died. She had cheated death and was about to continue an ordinary
Berlin morning, going about her ordinary, earthbound life. Did every pilot have this intense, searing sensation of being alive, every time he returned to land? If so, it was almost worth the fear
you went through to achieve it.

‘Well, I need a smoke.’

Strauss stopped, reached over to the pocket of the jacket she was wearing, freed a packet of cigarettes, and lit one for her and one for himself. His fingers, she noticed, were trembling.

‘Sorry to frighten you.’

‘I thought you said the conditions were perfect.’

‘The conditions were fine. It was the throttle that misbehaved.’

‘I hope you mention that throttle in your report.’

‘I certainly will.’

‘There is one thing I wanted to ask. When we were up there. You said you almost gave up. So why did you not?’