Airships

It’s probably a well-known fact – although I can’t be sure because people don’t talk about it much – that those of us who suffer in planes tend to invest a great deal of feverish, exhausting mental activity in our role as, how can I put it, ‘imaginary co-pilots’. As I said, my fear of flying is now abating, but throughout my life I’ve spent many hours on board in a state of permanent alertness, attentive not only to any possible changes of mood in the engines, or to the plane’s recognizable or unexpected noises, or to its scheduled or unscheduled ups and downs, but also to everything else around me, in particular the air hostesses and the stewards and even the captain’s variable tones of voice over the intercom – whether he sounds calm or nervous.

I have tended to see ‘signs’ or ‘premonitions’ in the tiniest details and, given that all superstitions are arbitrary, it always used to make me feel uneasy if a passenger stood talking in the aisle for too long, especially if he or she was Japanese, don’t ask me why. Nor was I soothed, particularly on long-haul flights, by the sight of other excessively relaxed and uninhibited passengers who, far from keeping a close eye on our flight path, as is the duty of all caring and committed travellers, laughed and drank, moved around the cabin, played cards or performed other equally grave and reckless acts, or so it seemed to me. In short, I spend, or have spent, the entire journey ‘controlling’ and ‘helping’ and ‘protecting’ the whole hazardous crossing with my tireless thoughts. A four-year-old child blocking the aisle would definitely have strained my nerves. I’m not sure I would have been able to refrain from giving him a good slap.

No, I would doubtless have contained my irritation because since I reached the age of shaving, I’ve always behaved myself on board planes, unlike the callow creature I was then. I have limited myself to keeping a firm grip on an open newspaper (of the broadsheet variety, so that there’s no chance of my sneaking a glance out of the windows), either pretending to read it or actually reading it – although without taking in a single word – meanwhile fending off any attempts at conversation (one doesn’t want to become distracted and neglect one’s duty as lookout), demolishing at high speed whatever food is placed in front of me, and all the while clutching some wooden object I’ve brought with me for the purpose, since there doesn’t tend to be any wood – a major oversight – on those flying submarines.

It was a similar remark, made in that earlier article, and my subsequent confession that I’d worn out the wooden toothpicks and matches I grasped between my fingers, that provoked a charming Iberia air hostess into sending me a letter and a little wooden key ring in the form of a plane, so that, in future, I wouldn’t have to make a fool of myself abroad, holding those grubby matches and toothpicks. And that same air hostess, as well as recounting a few anecdotes from her long experience in the air, made me think of planes, for the first time, as relatively ‘humanizable’ objects, which one could, in a way, and depending on the circumstances, mentally direct. Not that there’s anything very remarkable about that. Indeed, it’s perfectly normal. She told me in her letter that whenever the plane she was on lurched or bumped about a bit or jolted, she would issue a silent order: ‘Down, boy!’ Yes, an order, an exorcism, a persuasive word.

In The Mirror of the Sea – a magnificent book I translated into Spanish several years ago now – the great Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad speaks of ships having their own character and spirit, their own norms of behaviour, their caprices, rebellions and gratitudes. Of how, in large measure, their performance and reliability depend on the treatment they receive from captain and crew.

If treated with respect, affection, consideration, care and tact, a ship, says Conrad, is grateful and responds by trying hard and giving of its best (or, rather, her best, since curiously and significantly almost the only objects that merit a gender in the English language are ships, which are always referred to as ‘she’ and not, as would be more natural, as ‘it’). If, on the contrary, the relationship between them is one of superiority, disdain or is simply too demanding, authoritarian or neglectful, abusive, inconsiderate or even despotic, ships react badly, and feel no ‘loyalty’ and fail to ‘protect’ their crews at moments of risk or danger.

Ships, writes Conrad, are ‘not exactly what men make them. They have their own nature; they can of themselves minister to our self-esteem by the demand their qualities make upon our skill and their shortcomings upon our hardiness and endurance.’ Further on, he adds:

The love that is given to ships is profoundly different from the love men feel for every other work of their hands – the love they bear to their houses, for instance – because it is untainted by the pride of possession. The pride of skill, the pride of responsibility, the pride of endurance there may be, but otherwise it is a disinterested sentiment. No seaman ever cherished a ship, even if she belonged to him, merely because of the profit she put in his pocket. No one, I think, ever did; for a ship-owner, even of the best, has always been outside the pale of that sentiment embracing in a feeling of intimate, equal fellowship the ship and the man, backing each other against the implacable, if sometimes dissembled, hostility of their world of waters.

Later still, Conrad describes the touching words, tantamount to a funeral oration, uttered by the captain of a brig that had sunk:

‘No ship could have done so well… She was small, but she was good. I had no anxiety. She was strong. Last voyage I had my wife and two children in her. No other ship could have stood so long the weather she had to live through for days and days before we got dismasted a fortnight ago. She was fairly worn out, and that’s all. You may believe me. She lasted under us for days and days, but she could not last for ever. It was long enough. I am glad it is over. No better ship was ever left to sink at sea on such a day as this.’

Conrad sums up by saying: ‘She had lived, he had loved her; she had suffered, and he was glad she was at rest.’