Byzantium Endures: The First Volume of the Colonel Pyat Quartet Page 7

  As well as studying literature, languages and mathematics, I learned geography and basic scientific principles. A true scientific education was beyond the kindly German’s range. I read a good deal and was particularly impressed by an American book, obtained from one of my Odessa cousins, describing current methods of building flying machines. Those were the days when one could not only learn to fly without need of special instructors or licences, but one began by constructing one’s own aircraft. The book was full made line-drawings, complete with hand-lettered captions which would be mysterious to anyone not aufait with the modern flying machine: Optimum Angle of Incidence Centre of Gravity—Centre of Drift—Wash-in to Offset Propellor Torque—and so on. That book was also a victim of Revolution and Civil War. From it I could have built an entire aeroplane (with the exception of the engine), from frame to the treatment of the canvas.

  By the time I was thirteen-and-a-half Herr Lustgarten was beginning, he said, to despair of teaching me more. I suppose I had exhausted his learning. In the years just prior to the Great War the Kiev Technical Institute (where logically I should go to continue my studies) was a hot-bed of radicalism. My mother was reluctant to send me there, in spite of my assurances that I wished only to learn. I could never have been infected by the nihilistic emotionalism of those young men who, rather than gain knowledge of the world, would change it to make it accept their ignorance. The institute’s ‘quota system’ was too liberal. There was also the question of identity papers. My dead father’s hand continued to hamper my career. I believed the application-board to be fair-minded, but Mother thought I should be prepared for certain specialised oral entrance examinations before contemplating application. This decision was reached after her final conversation with Herr Lustgarten, when possibly he warned her that the board would find me ‘too clever by half’. It is certainly no advantage to have more than an average share of brains in this world. To temporise, it was at last agreed I should ‘cram’ in the evenings, with the special object of preparing for entrance to the Institute, and that during the day I should get what Herr Lustgarten called ‘practical experience’. I was to go to work for Sarkis Mihailovitch Kouyoumdjian.

  This was the name of a well-known local mechanic whom at first I greatly despised. He was a Russianised Armenian, originally from Batoum, and a Christian. He had been a ship’s engineer. He had met a Ukrainian girl in Odessa and eventually settled in Kiev, working first for the river-boat company, later for the tram company, and finally for himself. He could deal with almost every kind of machinery, from electrical generators, steam-engines, compressors, internal combustion engines, to factory equipment owned by the many small industrial concerns which flourished in Kiev. Most of his clients were Podol Jews, with their horrible, grimy little factories. He was cheap and he was optimistic. I suppose he was what the English would call a bodger. He was not paid to service new machinery. He was paid to keep old machinery running at the lowest possible cost. He lived in his own ramshackle house a couple of streets to the east of ours, off Kirillovskaya. It was a wooden house full of bits of discarded machinery and various ‘inventions’ which he had begun but failed to complete. He never listened to my suggestions, which were even then eminently sensible. He did not really possess the imagination of a great engineer. He was the last of his family, he told me. The rest of his relatives, men, women and children, had been amongst the hundred-and-fifty thousand Armenians whom the Turks had marched into the desert to die at the beginning of the century. It is fashionable these days to treat the Nazis as the originators of modern genocide, but they could have learned a great deal from the Turks, who rid themselves of their Armenian problem with far less fuss and at far less expense. We of the Ukraine learned to fear the menace from the East long before we found ourselves at war with the West.

  ‘Turk’ was the strongest curse I ever heard Sarkis Mihailovitch utter, but the word sent a chill through me more than any other oath.

  It did not suit me to become an apprentice to an Armenian jobbing mechanic but my mother insisted I learn the trade. Thus, in June 1913, I became Sarkis Mihailovitch Kouyoumdjian’s ‘mate’, going with him on almost every assignment, even doing small, simple tasks on my own, and gaining my first familiarity with the nuts and bolts of engineering. My mother had been right. I began to enjoy my job. It was a beautiful summer. Even the Podol ghetto was alive with greenery and blossoms.

  In one respect however it was difficult to learn from my first boss. He never gave praise and he never offered blame. His small, dark face was always set in a slight smile, his black eyes bore an expression of private amusement, no matter what the situation, as if he lived permanently in the back of his head. He was neat, swift and skilful; he was economical in everything. He rarely spoke to a customer, but would listen carefully to the problem and then purposefully set to, there and then, to tackle it if he could. In a struggle with a machine he never refused a challenge and he usually emerged the victor (even if some of those victories were only temporary). No matter how hard the job or how easy, he would devote the same grave, smiling attention to it. His expression and his manner could be irritating. People thought he displayed contempt, or at least irony. Frequently he would be shouted at by irate owners telling him not to take a job if he didn’t want it. He would ignore them, set to with his spanners, screwdrivers and more specialised tools, and sooner or later they would be rewarded. Then Sarkis Mihailovitch Kouyoumdjian would wipe his hands, still smiling, indicate that I should pack the tools, work out his charges in his head, and laconically name a price. Very rarely did even the most argumentative customer quarrel over that price. Sarkis Mihailovitch knew he was cheap and, unlike any other Armenian I have known, he hated to haggle.

  I came to realise that Kouyoumdjian was enormously shy. He was a kindly man. He showed considerable patience with me and he gave me an insight into the positive qualities of Armenians. Naturally, in spite of my theoretical aptitude, I made more than one practical mistake. No sardonic word ever escaped his lips. He would gravely show me the correct way of doing the thing and that would be that.

  Through him I became familiar with all Kiev’s industrial districts, although Podol was chiefly where we worked. Ukraine at that time was ‘booming’. As well as being the richest-developed part of the Empire in terms of agriculture, it was also the most heavily industrialised, with coal and iron mines feeding the factories of Yuzivka, Kharkov (where the great locomotive works are based) and Katerynoslav, as well as many other towns which had grown around the new mines and engineering plants. I should make it clear that I was not alone amongst young Ukrainians in being inspired by the wonders of modern technology. Sikorski, inventor of the helicopter, was born in Kiev and conducted his early experiments a year or two before my own. I did not, like him, have the benefit of a wealthy and influential family. Thousands of us were the first generation to see and understand the Future and in the years to come were to supply the rest of Russia and the world with many of her greatest engineers. We Ukrainian Cossacks have been described somewhere as ‘Russia’s Scots’, and in this respect, as in others, the comparison is fairly made. Kiev, however, was by no means one of the most heavily industrialised cities. It was still mainly involved in trade and banking. At this time in my life I never got to see any of the larger factories. Most of my experience was confined to light-engineering works, textile plants and so on, usually consisting of no more than one or two sheds. But in no other city would I have had the opportunity of working for a man like Sarkis Mihailovitch, who specialised in no particular field. Thus I became familiar with auto-engines, steam-pumps, dynamos and mechanical looms. This broad education was to stand me in good stead in later years, though again there was to be a disadvantage, for some would think me a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none.

  Working for the Armenian brought out all my imaginative and inventive gifts. In his employ I began properly to develop my own ideas, based on things I had read in Pearson’s and similar journals. It seemed to me that
I could develop a one-man flying machine which dispensed with the conventional fuselage and used the human body itself in this function. The Centre of Gravity would be determined by the position of the engine, rather than the position of the pilot. While Sikorski aimed at larger and larger planes such as the Ilya Mourometz, I dreamed of a kind of ‘flying infantry’. Each man would be equipped with his own wings and engine. Wings would be fitted to his arms, a motor on a frame would be strapped to his back, to allow clearance for the propeller. Tailplane and rudder would be attached to his feet.

  I described my design to Esmé, who by now was looking after her ailing father full-time, and she was greatly impressed. She wanted to know when the first men would be seen flying over the domes of St Sophia’s Cathedral. I promised her that it would be soon; that it would be me and that she should witness my very first flight.

  Having made the boast, I became determined to fulfil it. I could not bear to make a fool of myself in Esmé’s eyes. She was by now a most beautiful young woman, with long, fine golden hair and huge blue eyes. She had pale skin, and that strong, full body typical of Ukrainian women. Yet I still did not see her as anything but an old and trusted friend, though I was by no means free of sexual desire. My main excitement lay in ambling along Kreshchatik at night and ogling the expensive whores who strolled up and down the boulevards. Alternatively I could go in the afternoons to Kircheim’s Café, a famous emporium of coffee and cream-cakes, and look at the young beauties who came there for treats with their mothers. There was more than one dark-eyed schoolgirl who returned my impassioned glances, yet there was none to compare with my wonderful lost Zoyea. A yearning for her still took me to the gorges where the gypsies had once camped; but they camped there no more.

  Since I first conceived the idea of a flying man, similar projects have been successful, but in those days the principles of power-weight ratio were not fully understood. Moreover the engine I was to use was not properly suited to the task. I had promised Esmé that I would make my first flight by the next Sunday. I did not tell my boss, who had laughed at me when I had proposed the invention, but the only engine available at this time had come from his workshop. It was part of a repair: a small petrol engine normally used to drive a motor-tricycle belonging to one of Podol’s largest bakery concerns. The motor was in excellent working order and had only been removed while Kouyoumdjian made some adjustments to the chain and rear wheel. A minor job. I now realise that it was completely wrong of me to borrow the engine, particularly one belonging to so important a customer, but my promise to Esmé was paramount in my mind.

  When Sarkis Mihailovitch left me to lock up, as he often did, on the Saturday night, I took a small trolley and went to fetch the rest of my equipment. I had prepared the frame which would strap onto my back and give proper clearance for the air-screw. This propeller was fitted over the existing driving-cog on the motor. My greatest aesthetic thrill had come after I had finished carving it. I had built the frame of wood, covered in treated canvas, for wings and for the double tailplane section which would fit on my feet. By keeping my ankles together I believed I could perform the function of a conventional tailplane. I tested the engine and had the satisfaction of seeing the screw spin properly. It was gone midnight, so I left everything ready for the morning and returned home. My mother was in a state of great excitement. She had become convinced I had been murdered. She worried so much about me because there had, in fact, been a child murdered quite close to us. It had been a ritual murder performed by a band of fanatical Zionists and I do not believe they ever caught the Jews responsible. The body had been hidden in a cave in a gorge and its discovery, as I recall, had resulted in a particularly rigorous pogrom. I very much regret the grief I caused my poor mother with my escapades, but she never could understand that certain sacrifices are required not only of those who themselves advance the cause of science, but of those who share our lives.

  Early on the Sunday morning I met Esmé and took her to the workshop. There she helped me load all my equipment onto the handcart and we trundled it to the Babi ravine, which, being wide, was the most suitable for my experiment. I had to reassure Esmé several times that the flight would be quite safe. There was a certain amount of danger, of course, because this would be the first test, but I expected no real problems. With her help I struggled into the frame and strapped on the wings. I stood at the top of the cliffs, on a path which led to a small ledge and a bench where courting couples would often stop. I planned to run along the path until I came to the ledge and thus give myself a good launch over the gorge (which had a small river going through it). It was a wonderful morning. Esmé wore a white dress and a red pinafore. I wore my oldest clothes. There was mist coming up from the ravine and the sun shone through it. Above us the sky was a perfect, pale blue, and in the distance the smoke from Podol’s tireless factories drifted across the glinting domes and spires of the churches. The morning was very still. As I instructed Esmé how to throw the propeller into motion, the Sunday bells of all our places of worship began to ring at once. I made my first flight to the sound of a hundred pealing tunes!

  I remember the way the motor’s shriek drowned the bells. Then I was moving. I ran in long strides down the path. Esmé kept pace with me for part of the way, but fell back. Then I had reached the ledge and had spread my arms, brought up my feet—and began to fall …

  The fall lasted only a few seconds. A movement of my hands and I was gaining height again. I rose higher and higher above the gorge until I could see the whole of Kiev before me, could see the Dnieper stretching back into the steppe, could see it rushing down towards the Zaporizhian rapids on its way to the ocean. I could see forests, villages and hills. And, as I floated downward again, I saw Esmé, red and white, looking at me in wonderment and admiration. It was Esmé’s face which distracted me. Somehow I lost control. The motor stopped. There was the noise of rushing air. There was the sound of a scream. Then the bells began to toll again and I was dropping helplessly towards the river at the bottom of the gorge. My thought before my body struck the water was that at least I was to die a noble death. A second Icarus!

  TWO

  THE NEWS OF MY FLIGHT had appeared in all the Kiev papers. I had soared over the city for several minutes. This flight was witnessed by many people on their way to Church that Sunday morning. Until the Bolsheviks conquered Ukraine my achievement was a matter of record: I had dived and pirouetted in the clear sky; I had been seen over St Andrew’s, St Sophia’s and St Michael’s. I remember a drawing of me in one of the papers, in which I was shown as perching on the green central dome of the Church of the Three Saints. These records were destroyed by the Cheka’s mad desire to simplify the past in the hope that this would, accordingly, simplify the present which so bewildered them and was so much at odds with their over-rationalised creed. If I had been a Communist or a member of their revolutionary youth or some such thing, the story would be quite different. As it was there was more than one worm in my apple. I was pulled out of the river by some soldiers who had seen me fall. I awoke briefly (the propeller had dropped forward and stunned me as I landed in the water) to hear one of them laugh and say: ‘The little Jew was trying to fly!’

  My last words before returning to oblivion were: ‘I am not a Jew. And I did fly.’ Of course it was a strange coincidence, I suppose, that so many Jewish souls were to fly to Heaven from this very gorge where the Germans set up their notorious death-camp during the Second World War. It is worth noting here that it was by no means only Jews who died in Babi Jar: Slav soldiers and civilians were killed in their thousands, as well. As usual, of course, the Jews receive the full credit for martyrdom while the others are forgotten. They are masters at publicising their miseries.

  Esmé, sliding down the gorge and tearing her dress in an effort to save me, found the soldiers lifting me from the water. It was she who told them where I lived and they carried me back to my mother who immediately

  fainted and had to be revived by an alre
ady somewhat intoxicated Captain Brown, who, a few moments before, had been enlisted to search for me.

  One piece of good luck was that the motor was undamaged and was recovered an hour or two later by Sarkis Mihailovitch. I had sustained a broken head, a broken arm and a broken ankle. But I was elated. I had flown! I had proven myself. I would try the experiment again as soon as possible, though next time I decided to employ a smaller child—who would be lighter than myself—and train him to attempt the flight. In that way I could observe what happened if anything went wrong.

  During the first days of my confinement to hospital I was visited by Esmé and, anxious to be reassured, asked her to confirm that I had indeed flown. I was delirious and could not trust my own memory. Esmé passionately affirmed the fact that I had achieved the first powered flight without use of an airframe. I stand by her word and the news in the papers which appeared again many years later in a British magazine, Reveille, and an American newspaper called The National Enquirer. I wish I had the original Russian reports, but they were lost with so much else. Not everyone had faith in me, even then. I was to learn only after some weeks that Sarkis Mihailovitch, alarmed by my borrowing the motor, had decided to dispense with me, partly, I gather, to placate the bakery. My mother said nothing during my period of recuperation. Herr Lustgarten was called in on occasions to keep me in touch with my studies and my mother spent most of her ‘leisure’ time writing long letters to relatives, no matter how distant, concerning my further education. She was selfless beyond common-sense where her own good was concerned and, when it came to my well-being, there was nothing she would not try.