The Laughter of Carthage (59 page)

Privately, of course, I blamed myself for the whole unfortunate business and continued to defend my partners even at police headquarters where I was asked to make a formal statement and was afterwards interviewed by the press. But the next day’s headlines, needless to say, were not favourable to Roffy and Gilpin. I received some sympathy but ironically they were branded ‘villain’ just as I had been in France. I suppose Kolya defended my name as vociferously as I defended theirs, with equal lack of effect. Once the press makes a scapegoat it will not relent. The case in point was Adolf Hitler, of course. Nobody ever writes about the benefits he brought to Germany; they merely reiterate the bad things. Such injustices become all too familiar when one has lived as long and seen as much as I. They cease to be worthy of comment. The world falls into Chaos. Justice is a fantasy, soon to be forgotten, as the white race which invented it is forgotten. Anyone will tell you I am a man of feeling, of intellect, of unusual moral strength. I am prejudiced against no race or creed. But when me and mine are threatened by a blood drinking brute, what shall I do? Say nothing? Make no defence? In their moment of trial the two old men fled. If they had remained they might now be heroes, statues in Overton Park. Yet, as it was, their decision was to prove of considerable benefit to others, though they would never receive public recognition for it. They ran away from the devastated dream which had been so close to achieving enduring reality and left me with no choice but to accept at once the Imperial Wizard’s commission. I would fly to Atlanta and from there would take up my banner, marching side by side with noble knights in a mighty crusade whose aim was nothing less than to rescue sanity, justice, decency and freedom for the whole world. I reached my decision within a day of my partners’ disappearance. A certain element in Memphis seemed determined to cast doubt on my credentials, my sincerity, my very honour. Twice I was harassed in the street. Mr Baskin arrived to give me notice to quit my apartment. Even Mrs Trubbshaw, who I thought at first had come to offer me consolation, had some ludicrous claim that she had lent Mr Roffy $2,000 and insisted I had a ‘moral duty’ to pay it back to her on his behalf. Time alone would show who bore false witness and who, in fact, was the victim of deceit!

As ancient saints and heroes turned from selfish and material concerns upon receiving a sign from God, so I took all these events as a sign I should go forth into America, to spread our message across every square mile of that great and vital nation. Within a year I would become so famous the matter of one small factory and an insignificant municipal airport would seem a petty concern indeed. I had been given the opportunity to conquer the entire New World with my genius. A strong, scientifically advanced America would be the most powerful country on Earth. Once celebrated here, I would automatically come to influence the world. Then at last Russia, my old, spiritual Russia, could be rescued from the Bolshevik scavengers. The steppe would grow green and beautiful again; the wheat-lands would bloom, the forests retain their tranquil profundity and new golden cities would arise, the cities of reborn Byzantium.

I am not so vain as to claim God Himself created the circumstances driving poor Gilpin and Roffy from Memphis, releasing me to fulfil His work through the medium of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. However there is no doubt in my mind that what originally seemed a disaster actually set me on my proper path, to use my God-given powers of prophecy in direct service of the Christian faith. As Paul the Greek was chosen to become Christ’s envoy to Rome, so might it be said I, inheritor of the Greek ideal, was to be envoy to this New Rome. Having made my decision, I was at once suffused with joy. My confusion died away. I no longer waited desperately for news of Esmé, Kolya or Mrs Cornelius. I should see them again in the fullness of time. I knew, with every atom of my being, that I had at last found my true vocation.

I departed from Memphis the next day, into the sky above the old Park Field air training base. I left sad friends and scowling critics alike, amidst the noise of a great crowd which gathered to witness
The Knight Hawk
slip her moorings. We would ascend into a terrible sky, in which black clouds rolled and streamed against a ground of deep, greenish blue. A storm was coming. A storm was gathering in the South. A storm was coming to sweep the whole United States. And her prophets would stand on the decks of flying cities or the platforms of gigantic airships to cry their warnings, as if from Heaven itself:
beware the heretic, the infidel, the pagan! wake up, america, to the perils which face ye. wake up to the vision of the alien sword which cuts you down as you sleep; the alien voice which seduces your children; the alien creed which robs you of your religion.’ wake up, america, in the name of christ, wake up to your peril and your salvation.
The Storm carries God’s prophet on noisy wings; the thunder and the lightning herald his coming. Out of the South, out of Memphis, which was once in Egypt, he shall come as Moses came to lead the children of the New World towards a glorious future, their rightful scientific inheritance. From fertile Florida to frozen Alaska, where the Tsar once raised his standard, where the two-headed eagle cast his eyes upon the land and saw at last an ally with whom to build Christendom afresh, he shall be heard. Wake up, America! The ship of the prophet is seen in the sky and his sign is a fiery cross, the cross of Kyrios the Greek. Thus did the Greek give name and substance to His knights.
Kuklos:
a circle.
Kuklos:
the Circle of the Sun. The Circle and the Cross are One!
Kyrie Eleison!
Christ is risen! Christ is risen!

The Knight Hawk,
free of her moorings, rose steadily into the air above the field. Strong winds hurled their power against her hull. She shuddered and slewed with every blow. I gripped the side of my cockpit, watching the crowd fall away from me. The winds were so strong I feared we must crash, but Major Sinclair had handled this type of ship many times since the War; he held fast to her wheel while operating height and trim levers with graceful expertise. The Rolls Royce engine whined to full power. We began to push forward until we were directly over the great river and her anchored steamboats. Memphis, with her steel and concrete centre, her brick and wood outer zones, her bridges and her railroad tracks, gradually lost identity, meaning no more or less than a dozen other urban settlements along the riverbanks. I leaned over the lip of the cockpit, studying Major Sinclair’s techniques with the controls. The wind slapped at my face, tugged my clothes, threatened to rip helmet and goggles from my head. Our gondola was vibrating so violently I thought the rivets must soon be shaken out of her. Everything aboard not absolutely rigid or completely flexible rattled vigorously, yet Major Sinclair was plainly not in the least alarmed. To him all this agitated commotion was so familiar I doubt if he was greatly conscious of it.

Later, when he had reduced the power and there was a lull in the wind, the major shouted above the engine’s whine: ‘These smaller blimps don’t have enough power, so can’t keep their course as efficiently as the big ships. In decent weather they’re a lot easier to handle.’ The altimeter in my cockpit showed we were now a thousand feet up while my speedometer indicated forty-five knots. At first I had felt uneasy in my stomach but the sensation was forgotten as I peered through the windscreen at wide fields and strips of trees. Immediately below were the railroad tracks which, as was normal in those days of primitive instruments, Major Sinclair followed. Soon I was enjoying the spectacle of a long freight train moving like a fire-breathing snake across the brown and yellow ground. Occasionally there would be a tiny car or, more commonly, a horse-drawn buggy on a dirt road, a small farm, a collection of shacks, a mansion, still doubtless the core of some great plantation.

The sky remained lively, the sun was frequently obscured by garish, unstable cloud. Major Sinclair planned to put down in Little Rock for the night. There he could also refuel, complete his business in Arkansas, then head South East for Tuscaloosa and more benzine. From there, he said, it would almost certainly be a direct flight to Atlanta. He usually carried a rigger with him, but the man had been caught drunk by the police in Knoxville some nights ago and was in jail. (Major Sinclair no longer had any use for him. ‘He can let me down and I’ll give him a break. But I won’t let him drag the Klan under. He knew what would happen to him.’) Our job in Little Rock was chiefly to ‘show the flag’. We would advertise the newspaper by taking a few turns over the city, drop some leaflets, drive home the fact that the Klan was not the mob of disaffected farmhands and backward manual labourers people claimed. Then we would land just outside the city and take delivery of funds for the central treasury in Atlanta. Personally, I would be glad to be heading east again. At that moment we fought headwinds. If they remained constant they would help us when at last we turned towards Georgia. Major Sinclair constantly had to correct course while I, checking map and compass, acted as observer. Great stretches of land were virtually featureless to my unfamiliar eyes and I prayed I correctly identified the few rivers and small forests, the tracks and plantations which occasionally appeared below.

As we crossed deeper into Arkansas on the Western banks of the Mississippi I noticed less land under cultivation. There seemed to be more virgin forest. We had entered a country of smallholdings and cropsharers and consequently found still fewer features by which to steer. The wind gradually reached its former strength. Major Sinclair was forced to give his whole attention to controlling the ship while I desperately scanned the ground for landmarks even remotely resembling those on my map. Soon it began to rain and I could see little of the terrain. Eventually we were flying entirely by our compass. The rush of sleet and wind on the hull overhead, the roar of our engine, the whining suspension rigging made it impossible to hear anything else. My goggles streamed with water. It was difficult even to make out Major Sinclair’s head and shoulders in the forward cockpit. This extreme discomfort and uncertainty was frequently the most familiar aspect of the ‘romance of flying’ in those days.

Almost at the moment I had managed to adapt myself to all this, the wind suddenly hit us like waves. It pounded us with enormous force. Our gondola began to bounce dramatically in her cables. I was certain we must either be flung out of our cockpits or be wrenched piecemeal from the battered gasbag. I saw Major Sinclair shaking his head urgently and signalling with his hand. We were going down. I was convinced we were crashing. My shaking body at once became still. Calmly, I prepared myself for death.

The machine’s nose already dipped towards the ground; the gondola had begun to swing from side to side, like a crazy pendulum. As Major Sinclair valved out gas for a rapid descent, the engine’s noise was lost behind us. We had hardly been in the air for five hours. I thought it ironic that, with all my dreams of magnificent flying liners, I should die in this ramshackle government surplus antique. But then the ship eased out of her descent and I knew Major Sinclair had regained control. I hoped we were close to Little Rock. It was more likely my friend wished to get below the worst of the storm to check our bearings. The gusting rain continued to swing us from side to side and I was still fearful our hawsers must snap. Gradually I was recovering my nerve when without warning the engine cut out.

The ship was thrown helplessly backwards and sideways by the wind. I could understand nothing of Sinclair’s gesticulating yet it was plain we had no choice but to land. I had no idea how he planned to accomplish this. Normally there had to be people on the ground to take our mooring lines. My friend was probably hoping to find a small town or large farm able to supply a party of men large enough to pull us to earth. I was experiencing at first hand the real disadvantage of the small airship over the light aeroplane. Moreover, without wireless equipment
The Knight Hawk
had no means of requesting assistance.

The rain gradually became lighter and the air much calmer by the time we had drifted low enough to make out a dismal panorama of waterlogged fields, a scattering of thin trees. In the grey light it seemed the whole world had been turned into a wasteland of yellowish excrement. For a moment I thought we were already dead, condemned to Limbo. Then Sinclair shouted and stabbed his left finger at the starboard horizon. Emerging from the mud, almost like a natural formation, were buildings little different in colour to their surroundings. Again the major concentrated on his engine, cursing to himself, forced to stop every few moments as he shook water from his arm or wiped his face. Then, shuddering in its frame, the engine spat rapidly, let out a series of unhealthy coughs, and came to life. Sinclair was yelling to me; the propeller spun, we lumbered forward. I could not hear him. Urgently he signalled for me to lift our grappling hook out of the spare cockpit to my right. With this, as he had earlier explained, he hoped to effect a temporary mooring. Once I understood, I leaned over to obey him; whereupon the gondola swayed sickeningly. I was only able to save myself from being pitched out by driving my knees into the side of my compartment. Busy with his control vanes, Major Sinclair could not help me. The rope was curled on top of my surviving suitcases. Sweating and close to panic I finally grasped an end, drawing it in towards me as the gondola resumed a relatively normal angle. For a second or two I sat back, taking enormous breaths, then I prepared the grappling hook in my right hand, ready to drop it over the side.