Skybound (5 page)

I feel like a sad clown when we finally take our leave, having barely fended off an attempt to foist more food on us. We will be leaving tomorrow; Baldur is fine, and neither of us has any excuse to not be at his post.

We do attack the cognac when we get home. Baldur takes off his gloves and sits down at the piano. After not having been played in a while, some notes might very well be off, but I’m more entranced by the man in the uniform who begins fluidly, then falters, trying to remember a passage. He takes off his hat and places it on the piano to try again, from the start, with gusto.

I pour more cognac for both of us and stand near the piano with my glass and the bottle, watching his face as he struggles through playing a classical piece. His half-closed eyes and bared teeth make him look fierce and absorbed in the task, and I imagine that is what he looks like during a complicated manoeuvre.

He breaks off and slaps the keys. “Damn it. I can’t remember!” He blows out a breath and looks at me. “I haven’t played in six years.”

“After six years, I’d barely remember which part of the piano to sit down at,” I joke and offer him the glass.

He takes my wrist instead and pulls me down on the seat before the piano. “Have you ever played?”

Upon my admission that, no, I haven’t, he puts me through an improvised lesson that is as excruciating as it is funny. The piano doesn’t sound like it approves of my attempts, and by the time we’re through the bottle, we’re reduced to helpless laughter. I don’t even care that we’re laughing at my lack of nimbleness or talent. Just the laughter means elation, a lessening of the pressure mounting on us, a pressure that will have us back tomorrow and the day after and for however long it’ll take. With the things Baldur is facing once he returns, I don’t mind him laughing at me.

He turns serious and kisses me again, his taste of cognac mixing with my taste of the same cognac, and within moments we’re both stretched out on the Persian carpet, the piano’s leg close to our faces.

“This would mean some work before we can play together,” he says, grinning.

Can
, not
could
, I hear, and understand. I rub my eyes. “Since we can’t fly together.” I’m making light of what he said, but I guess I can have my revenge this way.

“I wouldn’t want you up there.” He looks into my eyes intently. “It’s bad enough that my friends are up there.”

He doesn’t understand what I feel when I see him take off, then. “Tell me about your Frenchman.”

“Jacques?” He rolls over onto his back and pulls me to his shoulder. “He wasn’t mine or anybody’s. We met a few times for a while, but he was a hard-working lad from Ménilmontant, one of the poorer parts of Paris. We met on the street one day; he smiled at me, I smiled back, and suddenly he took my arm and we walked for a while. I assumed he was a rentboy, but he wasn’t.” Baldur shrugs. “He was looking for diversion; I was looking for company, though I didn’t expect to find any, certainly not with an enemy. But he was too young to have fought against us and didn’t seem to bear anybody ill will. Then my squadron was moved to the Eastern front, and we lost contact. It was tenuous anyway. Just shared meals and companionship, and little gifts that wouldn’t have bought the attentions of anyone who was looking to receive gifts for favours.”

It is the most I’ve ever heard him speak. I try to imagine him in his uniform with his medals and finery—like he is now—trading kisses with a worker lad. “What did you do with him?”

“I took him cycling outside the city. Or we’d walk in the park. Some evenings, we’d go to a music hall for a drink and to listen to the singers. There was one entertainer—they called him the Nightingale of Paris—who had the most amazing voice. I think Jacques was very fond of him.” Baldur chuckles. “He was very pretty too, but I think one of the high-ranking
Wehrmacht
officers had already staked his claim. That’s Paris for you—so decadent she even conquers the conquerors with her wiles.” He rolls his eyes as he quotes the official propaganda. “I’d like to go back, though. Nobody cares there what you’re doing, and we could do things much more openly. I’ve heard of many such arrangements.”

“You mean, after the war?”

He looks at me, suddenly much more serious. “Maybe in another life.”

The sense of foreboding presses the air from my lungs. I’m falling again, but it’s not my place to add to his burden with my fear. I grab him and press his face against my chest, and his hands squeeze under my shoulders and hold me close. I don’t know what to do with myself, but at least I don’t cry. Not while he’s still alive.

Getting home—I mean, to the airfield—takes longer than usual. The Allied bombers have wreaked havoc on a train depot.

Our train is rerouted, and we pass through a town—I know not which one—that is still burning. Thick smoke rises and lingers like fog. Baldur coughs into a handkerchief as he peers outside, searching the skies above us for attackers. It is harder and harder to ignore the destruction all around us. Especially for Baldur, who’s been tasked to stop the perpetrators before they reach their targets. We both know the
Luftwaffe
is outgunned. I glance at the book on his lap. Still Herodotus.

Nervous tension fills me, so I close my eyes and remember how we were together last night. The kisses, the tenderness, the relief, all suspended in time. If only I could fight by his side, I wouldn’t feel as helpless as I do now.

When we arrive at the airfield, he is greeted by his
Staffelkameraden
, and I join the ranks of the other mechanics. They say “welcome back,” and I am on the next shift right away because I don’t know what else to do with myself while he’s gone.

The next morning, I see the pilots stride across the airfield to their machines. They are ready to go yet again, and I climb onto Baldur’s machine when he slides into the cockpit. I strap him in quickly, and smile briefly at him. It’s not out of the ordinary at all. I don’t look at him, just at the straps I buckle, and then I close the canopy for him. While he does a radio check, I start his engine. The others pull the chocks from the wheels, and the squadron rolls down the airfield, moving in perfect unison, the drone of the engines sounding back to us before each
Rotte
pair rises and lifts up into the sky.

That day, his squadron flies four more sorties, and the rush and pressure of activity on the airfield is the only distraction I get. Every time he lands, I’m the first at his machine, but the others follow closely after, so there’s no opportunity even for a word. I may get a reputation as some kind of faithful hound to him, but he smiles at me when he climbs out, pats my shoulder before he joins his squadron mates to be debriefed.

One evening, as I’m working by myself on a Stuka dive bomber engine in the back of the hangar, he comes closer. I recognise his shape from the corner of my eye, but I can’t stop my work with both arms up to the elbows in steel and iron and grease. I’ve made good progress on this during my free time, tinkering away to revive the plane, even if it might end up being used for spare parts.

He pauses a few steps away, and I grimace and then grin at him. “Just a moment.” I finish oiling the engine and pull my arms, covered in soot and grease, free. I wipe at my fingers with a rag, even knowing that cleaning them is futile without a generous quantity of soap.

Baldur offers me a cigarette and lights it when I nod. He slips it between my lips so I don’t have to touch it. I inhale deeply and push the cigarette into one corner of my mouth.

“Why are you still working?” he asks softly.

“Trying to get this bird back into the air as soon as possible.” I shrug over at the Stuka whose heart I’m operating on right now.

He places a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. I want to lean into him, hug him close, but I’m too concerned about blackening him all up. That would be difficult to explain.

“I didn’t want to do that to you, Felix.”

I toss the oily rag on the ground. “What?”

“I don’t want you to fear for me. I shouldn’t have revealed myself to you.”

And carry the burden alone? Oh, this is precious. “It didn’t make any difference,” I hiss, and he’s clearly taken aback. “All you did was show me that my stupid longing had hope of fulfilment.” I’m angry and I don’t even know why. He looks stricken, so I take a step closer. “And I still do. You’ve returned so far, and if it has anything to do with me, you will
keep
coming back.”

His gaze flickers to the engine. “Nothing short of witchcraft,” he mutters.

I spit out the cigarette and grab him by the collar, his Knight’s Cross digging into my raw knuckles as I do. I want to rail at him, but somehow, we end up kissing. The despair tastes like machine oil, thick and heavy, something nobody can swallow. It’s madness, and worse madness that neither of us fights the other off. He should push me away, and I shouldn’t have kissed him in the first place.

I catch a movement from the corner of my eye, and I see another pilot staring at us. It’s the tall pale Prussian, Wischinsky, Baldur’s squadron leader. I jerk away as if from an engine still hot from battle, wishing the ground would swallow me up. Baldur straightens and wipes his mouth, peers at his hand, no doubt to check if my dirt and oil have transferred to him. I’m mortified, speechless with the possible consequences. The last thing I wanted to do was dishonour him.

Baldur inhales deeply, expands his chest, and faces his superior officer. I just shrink away and peer at the man whose pale face betrays nothing in the shadow cast by his cap.

“
Leutnant
Vogt,” he snaps, eventually.

Baldur straightens up further, if that were even possible.

“You were missed,” he says, and his words might be friendly and refer to the squadron doing something together while Baldur had stolen away to see me. My heart had surely stopped and now races to make up for lost beats.

Baldur casts me a warning glance and follows his superior officer out of the hangar. I sit down, weak with relief and dread. I can’t even say which one is stronger. Everything depends now on what Baldur can explain. Maybe Wischinsky didn’t actually see us. The pause before he addressed Baldur was too meaningful for me to hope that is true. Maybe Baldur can talk him out of whatever disciplinary action he is contemplating. They are both heroes, after all,
Experten
, veterans of many years.

I spend minutes just calming my shaking fingers and smoking in silence, but it does nothing to settle my nerves.

I watch Wischinsky closely. When he walks to and from his plane, he’s every centimetre the decorated flying ace. Baldur once complained that Wischinsky enjoys the duel more than accomplishing an objective. He also never warns his squadron before he takes an action, often breaks out of formation to chase a British or American pilot when the opportunity arises.

“He acts like we’re still on the offensive. The godforsaken fool will get us all killed,” Baldur snarled once when he dropped from the cockpit.

To Baldur’s one hundred and forty kills, Wischinsky adds another sixty-four—both are legends in their own right. Yet Wischinsky is a
Condor Legion
veteran, and a test pilot for prototypes that never made it into production. He’s considered the wing’s best acrobat in the sky, and he invented manoeuvres before he asked to be sent back to the front, whereas Baldur has only ever been a fighter pilot, if a very good one.

I know it’s a competition between them, a friendly rivalry, with Baldur challenging his superior and attempting to live up to the more experienced warrior who continues to put him in his place with displays of skill alone. Though Wischinsky bears the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords, one of the highest possible decorations, I’ve never seen him pull rank on anybody. Maybe he really just loves flying, the chase and the kill—maybe he is a reluctant leader of men, elevated for his skills and ability far beyond his comfort. Of course, now he is also a very real danger for us, though I struggle to think of how he can punish us. We can’t be sent to the Eastern Front, for example. The Eastern Front is now just outside Berlin. At night, I can hear artillery boom and thunder, and it’s not ours.