Page 111 of Flight of Dreams

Soon the words have stopped and he is still. The priest straightens with a weary look and searches the row of patients for the next to die. He ambles away, leaving Gertrud alone with the body of a man she barely knows.

THE CABIN BOY

The airfield is dotted with hangars of various shapes and sizes, all of them dwarfed by Hangar No. 1. It’s a glorified garage, large enough to house the biggest of zeppelins in the event of a storm, but this is not where Wilhelm Balla leads Werner.

“You don’t want to go in there,” Balla says, steering him away. “That’s where they’re taking the bodies.”

He takes the boy instead to a low-hanging, rectangular structure that looks to Werner like a barracks. Wilhelm explains to the older gentleman who greets them, in English, who Werner is and why he’s soaking wet. At the first sign of comprehension Balla hands the cabin boy over to the ministrations of this stranger and leaves. The stone-faced steward does not offer a single look or word of farewell, but Werner understands now, after all this time and after what has just happened, that it is because, once summoned, Balla has no capacity to control his emotions. The solution for him is simply to not give in to them at all.

“Come with me,” the old man says.

Werner follows, too tired to object, through the hangar, down a hall, and into a small living quarters where an old woman sits at a table with a stricken expression. The man hands him over to the care of his wife, speaking so rapidly that most of the words are lost to Werner. And then he too is gone, slipping out the door to help where he can.

The woman pulls a bundle of clothing out of a closet and sets it carefully in his arms but he can barely lift it. Werner’s arms feel as though they are weighed down with lead. And then she takes him back through the building to a long, narrow room filled with bunk beds. He changes into the dry clothes once she’s gone, then sinks into the nearest bed. He grabs the heavy woolen blanket and rolls to his side. And then the boy is gone, lost to sleep and grief and trauma before his eyes have fully closed.

THE JOURNALIST

The skin has blistered off Gertrud’s right palm, leaving the exposed flesh red and weeping. She cannot close her hand. She can’t focus on anything apart from the burning fire still cradled in her palm. It is as though her entire body has drawn inward to that one spot. She feels nothing else.

Her fingers are splayed open on her lap, her gaze still fixed on them when a young medic arrives.

“Are you badly hurt?” he asks.

“No.” She lifts her hand an inch and inclines it toward him. “Just this.”

He is remarkably gentle for such a large man. He lifts her hand in one of his own, pulling it close to his face. “It’s a bad burn. But it’s clean. I can wrap it and give you morphine for the pain, but time will have to do the rest.”

The medic pulls a syringe the size of a bicycle pump from the bag at his feet and she recoils.

“Don’t worry. It won’t hurt once the medicine hits your bloodstream.”

“No morphine. I’ve misplaced my husband, and he won’t be able to find me if I’m lying here asleep.” The medic gives her such a look of pity that she rolls her eyes. “Oh, good grief. Leonhard’s alive. He just wandered off.”

“Of course he is.” The medic pats her shoulder in pity and begins to clean her hand.

Gertrud cranes her neck in search of Leonhard instead. It’s a bad habit of her husband’s, this wandering off. She has often accused him of being part Aborigine because of his penchant for going on walkabout. Sometimes he’s gone for hours. Other times it’s no more than a few minutes. Leonhard insists it’s his way of finding time to think, to sort through a problem. But problem or not, Gertrud is getting increasingly upset about his absence.

When the medic finishes cleaning her hand and wrapping it in gauze she thanks him and slips off the table. It takes some effort but she finally locates Leonhard in a small room at the back of the hangar with Captain Lehmann. The captain is sitting on a table—like a child, she thinks—dabbing at his burns with a wad of gauze. Every few seconds he dips the gauze in a tin of picric acid, then braces himself before applying it to his skin. The medicine is astringent—the very smell burns her nose. She can’t imagine how Lehmann manages to use it on such terrible wounds. Leonhard solemnly bears witness to the gruesome ritual. He does not speak to the captain or touch him, but Gertrud knows his presence is a comfort.

After several more moments, the wounds on Lehmann’s chest and thighs are all covered with the fatty-looking yellow salve, and he turns pleading, apologetic eyes on Leonhard.

He is looking for absolution, Gertrud thinks.

Leonhard bends his head down so that his cheek rests against the captain’s. It is the closest he can come to giving his friend a reassuring embrace.

“What happened?” Leonhard asks.

Lehmann has the blank-faced expression of a man given over to shock. He offers a shrug and even that small movement pains him. Lehmann winces, pulling air through his teeth. Gertrud can see him searching for an answer, something, anything that makes sense. “Blitzschlag,” he finally says, and then doubles over in a fit of coughing. It sounds liquid and raw. She cringes at the sound.

Blitzschlag.

Lightning.

Leonhard’s shoulders begin to quiver, and Gertrud eases away from the door. He is not a man who weeps easily, and he would be furious to know she has witnessed this quiet, intimate moment between friends. There is only one thing she can do to help, so she goes in search of her medic. She finds him on the other side of the hangar, covering a body in what appears to be a wool blanket. The hand that slips out from underneath is decidedly delicate and feminine. He tucks it back under the blanket and looks at Gertrud with a detached expression known only to those who have witnessed disaster and then been called upon to tend the carnage.

“Did you find your husband?”

“I did. Do you still have the morphine?”