There was a storm of applause. He was shoved and pulled back up to the platform for an encore. With tears in his eyes and his back to his comrades, he recited “Three Old Troopers, Round the Hearth of Heaven.”

He was assured afterwards that he’d never been more a part of the Jasta. The next day he made firm his resolution to desert. He would fly to Switzerland, crash his machine, and absent himself from this war.

On the appointed morning, he remarked to the squadron blabbermouth before run-up that he was having trouble with his compass. Upon take-off, with his Jasta he headed west, and like his friend Allmenröder, he pitched into a cloud and was never seen again. He flew south-southeast, headed for Andermatt. He was over Switzerland in a matter of hours, flying over lofty woodlands and deep vaporous valleys.

He descended through veils of mist. Moisture hung in the air. In some valleys lines of hedges bordered fields. He picked out a gentle downward slope at the end of which was a thicket. He brought in the Albatros with a calculated excess of speed, and bounced it along the snow until the thicket tore off its bottom wing.

He switched off the engine. It sputtered and stopped. Nearby, he could hear a cowbell. The engine ticked and pinged as it cooled. He unfastened his seat harness and climbed from the cockpit.

The snow crunched underfoot. To the south, he could see cleared fields and a village. Crows were cawing somewhere.

Art’s many paths lay before him, unrestricted. He had to make up his mind, had to focus his ambition, in order to achieve peace and quiet in his sleep. He had to choose and stick to a path. He had to be hard. He had to hoard his sorrow. Existence would have more to teach, and he’d listen to its secret instructions.

The war was drinking the blood of millions. Allmenröder was gone. Hans was gone. The war had taken his partner in sadness and, before that, his lover. What warmth he experienced from their memory felt like the last efforts of a solitary, struggling against the closing of the box.

But he had his work, whatever it would be. Already he could no longer think what he liked; moving images substituted themselves for his thoughts. His experience in the Air Corps had exploded his old homogeneity of vision. From that day onward, he would be free of human immobility. He would be in perpetual movement. He would approach and draw away from things—rising up as if with aircraft—to fall and fly at one with bodies falling and rising through the air. He would re-create those moments of extraordinary power: the freeze of the dive-wind on their faces; the constant swallowing, at altitude, to stop the deafness; the smell of the varnish; the moonlight shining in their struts; the stars between their wings.

Berlin, 1921

BERLIN, 1921