Читать книгу The Memories of Dead Pilot - Yuriy Sobeshchakov - Страница 4

The promotion, along with the elevated respect of those around me and a small raise in pay, meant a large number of new responsibilities. I could no longer disappear for my two days off and spend them in Lyudmila Salnikova’s bed, or present myself to the doctor for pre-flight exam with a face puffy from vodka. Sometimes while measuring my blood pressure the doctor would say, “Popov, I wish you’d at least breathe in some other direction. Your exhaust fumes are making my eyes water.” Yes, my carefree youth was at an end. And as it happened the cause for my newfound sense of pride would be very short-lived.

Two days later I sat with all the other aircraft commanders listening to the flight assignments for the following day. The heads of the various flight services took turns reporting about what we could expect tomorrow in the way of weather, potential enemies, supply, maintenance and communications. All of this barely registered in my consciousness. To me, the high points were: tomorrow morning at 0800 hours I would take off first, and, four hours later, would return to base. In another four hours I would be drinking a beer in the officers’ mess with my friends, celebrating the successful conclusion of my first battle mission. For the hundredth time I looked over the couple of dozen nine-by-six foot placards depicting various catastrophes involving TU-16s over the past ten years and for the hundredth time was surprised by what monumental screw-ups some of the pilots before me must have been. Almost all of the crashes had been caused by pilot error or by improper decision-making: translated in official terms, “the human factor.” Poor, unlucky and unskilled bastards. There is no way to get me to fly into a hill like them. I won’t let anyone kill me. It’s no accident that I’ve been entrusted with flying on battle watch to the Aleutian Islands. I grinned at the thought.

I had flown there many times as a co-pilot, but only one thing had been part of my responsibilities then – not to interfere with anything. Now the situation had changed. But I couldn’t change. My crew and I had devoted in fact all of one hour of preparation for the flight along the American border, but then more experienced pilots from other crews approached us and we went to the sports arena of the garrison to play volleyball. The last two hours of preparation for tomorrow’s flight we spent playing cards in the doctor’s office. The doctor had hung a sign saying “Do Not Enter: Patient Exam in Progress” on the door, which was padded with cotton and covered with black leatherette. Our excited and at times disappointed cries were not audible to anyone.

On the morning of the next day I sat in the pilots’ mess and waited for the waitress Lyudmila to bring me breakfast. My little dalliance with her had come to an end some six months earlier, but until recently we had remained friends. However, when the rumor circulated around the garrison that I had got married, her attitude toward me changed sharply.

Nobody knew yet who my wife was and why a confirmed bachelor had undertaken such a big step. Returning from leave I informed the commander about the fulfillment of one of his three conditions, and he hadn’t made any secret of it. As a consequence of his lack of reserve, the service provided for my crew in the pilots’ mess had markedly worsened. The squadron humorists had missed no chance to make jokes about this.

“It’s best not to share a table with you now, Alex.” Or: “That’s it, Popov. You’re past it now. Now that you’re married, you’re gonna be last in line to eat.”

On any other day I probably would have stayed until the end of breakfast without reacting to the jests of my comrades. And after waiting for all the flyers to leave, I would have had a heart-to-heart talk with Lyudmila. But this was a special day for me. I was in a hurry to get to the pre-flight briefing, and I had no time to wipe away the tears of my erstwhile mistress. Trying to get the waitress’s attention, I first put one hand up like a diligent student, and then the other. The pilots started to turn around and look in my direction. Many of them set down their forks to await developments. And when Lyudmila passed my table by in the usual way, she said contemptuously: “Popov, you could raise your leg as well, but you’re going to be the last to eat anyway.”

I answered fairly loudly, pronouncing each word distinctly, and tried to put into each of them all the sarcasm of which I was capable: “Lyudmila, raising legs, especially parted, is more in your line, I’d think.”

The squad burst into laughter. The girl was caught out by the malicious jest, and threw the tray full of dishes on the floor. Bursting into tears, she fled to the personnel room. In a few minutes the person on duty in the mess sent over a new waitress, Veronica, who immediately came over to our table, and while we chose our breakfast took the opportunity to say to me:

“I always told her that she could expect nothing but filth from you.”