Night Flight, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, with an introduction by André Gide
Translated by Stuart Gilbert,
Penguin Books, 1940 edition.
This English translation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Vol de Nuit came from a late friend's bookshelves. The Penguin edition with its distinctive orange-and-white cover, denoting works of fiction, is now 86 years old and the content very much of its time. Aviation was in its pioneering age and although the events described are tragic, the French writer, André Gide in his introduction writes "great though these risks still are, they are growing daily less, for each successive trip facilitates and improves the prospects of the next one." Sadly those diminishing risks were not realised as is apparent by another book from the same shelves—a book that survived an air crash.
Back in 2001 my friend had ordered a title on the Geology of Ireland from a bookseller in Selkirk, Scotland. The book was on board an aircraft that crashed into the Firth of Forth, North of Edinburgh on 27 February that year. Both pilots tragically lost their lives.
He had not expected to receive the book yet Royal Mail working with the Police and Air Accident Investigators were later in a position to release the mail which was on board and so it continued its journey. It was delivered with a caution to handle with care as although it had been dried out as far as possible it might yet retain traces of aviation fuel residue.
As you can see from the picture of the green-backed book above, there is obvious water damage, and twenty-five years on there still remains the feint scent of aviation fuel on the cover.
The coincidence was impossible to ignore. Here was a novella, Night Flight, about men risking their lives to carry the mail through the night, and alongside it a book that had completed its own journey only after the deaths of the pilots transporting it. The real-life tragedy lent an unexpected poignancy to Saint-Exupéry's fictional one.
Central to both events, the real and the fictional, is the sense of duty.
In Night Flight, the action takes place in the skies above Argentina and in the command station on the ground. The weather for the flight, initially fair, grows progressively worse - a thunderstorm approaches.
We meet the characters in the book: the pilot, Fabien, whose wife is worried sick about him, and the hard-driving, ground-based boss, Rivière who holds his pilots to high standards, demanding more and more from them.
Another character, Robineau is the station manager and he is instructed by Rivière on how to deal with staff:
“If they obey you because they like you, Robineau, you're fooling them. You have no right to ask any sacrifice of them.”
Yet there is also an awareness of the contradictory nature of command:
“Love the men under your orders, but do not let them know it.”
As the night wears on the thunderstorm worsens and radio contact with the plane is being lost. Rivière appears to entertain some doubts about his strict policies and reflects:
“Am I just or unjust? I've no idea. All I know is that when I hit hard, there are fewer accidents.”
He goes on:
“It isn't the individual that's responsible, but a source of hidden force, and I can't get at it without getting at everyone. If I were merely just, every night flight would mean a risk of death.”
Fabien's wife, increasingly worried when her husband does not arrive, calls at the airline office. Rivière questions himself more and more.
“To love, only to love, leads nowhere. Rivière knew a dark sense of duty, greater than that of love."
I think of the pilots on their fateful journey north of Edinburgh as a sequence of Night Flight accompanies Fabien above the storm. The passage is almost hopeful as the pilot rises into clear skies. But we know there is not enough fuel. The plunge into oblivion is not recorded, but it is certain. I imagine final moments, fictional and real.
And I think of those on the ground. For our fictional character, Rivière, duty outweighs comfort, affection and even individual happiness. His burden is to keep the service functioning despite the risks. The book concludes:
“Rivière went back to his own work, and as he passed, the clerks, cowed under his stern eyes, hurried about their tasks.” Rivière, the conqueror, bearing the heavy burden of victory.
That makes uncomfortable reading and I think that Saint-Exupéry is asking important questions about what progress costs, and who pays for it.
These questions resonate particularly because of the companion volume in my late friend's collection. The novel's lost airman and the two pilots in the Firth of Forth were separated by decades and circumstance, but united by a common sense of duty. We rarely think about the people who carry our letters, parcels and books from one place to another. Night Flight is a reminder that, in aviation's pioneering years especially, such connections were sometimes forged at tremendous cost. And the water and aviation fuel stained book is testament that risks continue and also come at enormous price.
My friend felt moved to write a letter to a local newspaper in recognition of the two pilots. He also remarked how we tend to take everyday matters such as mail arriving for granted, barely giving a thought to those who made it happen.
He concluded his newspaper letter by noting that the Royal Mail's letter to him and the newspaper report on the incident will remain forever enclosed in the book as a tribute to the two pilots who died in the course of duty.
I am now the custodian of the book and its enclosures. Each time I handle it, I will think of those courageous pilots and hold the book in appreciation of their endeavours.
