Salomon shuddered when the loudspeaker summoned the Swissair passengers bound for Rome. What madness, to travel in air, aboard some contraption that was set down upon nothing at all! He stuffed his last will and testament into his pocket and rose in the wake of his cousins. At the indicated gate, a stewardess greeted them with a smile that struck him as one of condolence, and led them to the twin-engine craft, and he wondered how that ponderous mass could possibly hold itself aloft, sustained by the void. His heart failing him, he resolved to take what he called the powder of the blunderbuss, but Michaël caught him by the seat of his trousers.
“Fear nothing, my son,” said Saltiel to him, white with terror. “This aerial vessel belongs to a universally renowned company, very well built, of Swiss manufacture, very solid, all of metal.” Whereupon Salomon reflected that, since the world had been the world, the fate of a metal finding itself up in the air had always been to fall. Nonetheless, propelled by Michaël, he made his way toward death, his boarding pass in hand. “My help shall come from the Eternal, who created the heavens and the earth,” he murmured as he entered the plane.
Mattathias sat all by himself near the entrance, beside the baggage and the better to watch over it, behind a couple equipped with a howling baby of debatable usefulness, brought into the world for some incomprehensible purpose. Salomon and Mangeclous installed themselves right up at the front. Behind them took their places Saltiel and Michaël, the latter leaning over at once to murmur into the ear of the bewildered little man that they were shut up in a great luxury coffin. Mangeclous yawned, hummed the Karaite hymn, cracked the joints of his hands, and pointed out to Salomon an elegant young man who had just come in.
“The son of a lord, in all likelihood, judging by his clean nape,” said he, “but an Israelite, judging by his intelligent air. I shall go presently and offer him my Trésorine, and should he refuse, on account of the insufficiency of the dowry, I shall fall back to a position of retreat and offer him Allégrine, the daughter of Romano, pimply but twenty thousand écus well and truly counted.”
Salomon made no reply. What did marriages matter to him in this hour of imminent death? The plane’s loudspeaker ordered the fastening of seatbelts, and Salomon obeyed with nausea, wondering how he was to manage, thus trussed up, to escape at the moment of the crash to the ground. In the malevolent din of the engines, the plane took off, and Salomon, hurled forward with his forelock standing on end, attested the oneness of God so as to perish a good Israelite. But he survived.
Shortly after, the same voice announced that they were at a thousand meters and that the belts might be unfastened. Salomon, liberated, sighed. Lord Eternal, what had he come to do at a thousand meters of altitude and in the midst of clouds? Hating the advances of science, he cursed the inventor of flying chariots. Could the wretch not rather have invented a cure for the common cold? In his ears there suddenly rang out funereal cracklings. Was it his brain beginning to give way? And would that emergency door work at the moment of the fall? Go and check? But what if it opened and he fell into the clouds? Michaël pointed out the paper bags to him and explained their use, which only increased the nausea of the poor little fellow.
“We are at this moment flying over Cephalonia,” announced the loudspeaker, and Salomon held back a sob, his little hands pressed against his chest. Cephalonia was there, down below, solid and immobile, smelling so sweetly of jasmine, and he, mad traveler through the void! Mangeclous having risen and bared his head to honor his native isle in passing, an abrupt drop of the plane into an air pocket made him stagger and jostle Salomon, who shut his eyes, a reed in the tempest, but who nonetheless had the strength, the better to make a parachute of it, to open his umbrella, which Saltiel at once ordered him to close.
The plane gained altitude and that was the end of the air pockets. Salomon gave a convalescent’s smile, and Mangeclous proclaimed that he was won over by aviation. Yes, in Geneva he would take aeroplane lessons so as to go and drop a few incendiary bombs on the nose of Hitler! With a charming smile, the comely stewardess offered sweets to Salomon, who, after lifting his little bowler hat, politely took one. Mangeclous, for his part, helped himself with both hands, bulldozer-style.
“Thank you, gracious one,” said he. “I have taken a few extra for the little ones, who will be grateful to me upon my return. Permit me to introduce myself. Viscount Pinhas, but shortly Count! Earl, in English! And your given name, dear friend, that we might make acquaintance?” She replied that her name was Ilse and went off to titter in the cockpit, Saltiel paling at once to see her joking with the captain. When she came back, laden with trays, he summoned his courage: “Psst, miss! Forgive me, but it is not prudent to speak to the captain, he may have a lapse of attention!” She smiled.
Mangeclous hummed a synagogue tune before the lunch tray set down in front of him, sharpened his knife on Salomon’s knife, and declared himself comfortable in the air. What a quantity of good things! Assorted hors d’œuvres! Chicken! Fried and numerous potatoes! And even ham!
“What, you eat pork?” gasped Salomon, aghast.
“Ham is the Jewish part of the pig,” said Mangeclous. “Hold your tongue, and if you denounce me to Saltiel I’ll crush your foot.”
The tray cleaned, he snapped his fingers and lifted his colonial helmet. “My dove,” said he to the stewardess, “I repeat! A little supplement, non-porcine if possible on account of the imbecile beside me. I adore potatoes puffed up with air, in the European fashion — have you any, charming and obliging one? No matter, dear Ilse, bring whatever you have left, nothing shall be scorned!” Amused, the tall girl came back with several slices of roast beef.
“Do not conduct yourself thus before the Moabitess, you cover us with shame!” whispered Saltiel.
“Did I pay for my ticket, yes or no?” retorted Mangeclous.
Sated, he rose and went to make his wheedling proposal of marriage to the young Englishman, who made no reply and turned his head away. “No hard feelings, milord, England being a great country,” said the matchmaker, who came back to sit down, in no way troubled and amiably soaping his hands.
The rest of the journey passed without incident, the plane behaving well and indeed seeming bound to remain aloft. At last the belts were fastened once more and the twin-engine craft touched the ground, bounced, fell back, rolled, stopped.
“Rome Fiumicino,” announced the stewardess.
Salomon stretched, incontestably alive. Glory be to the Eternal!
Albert Cohen, Les Valeureux, ch. XVIII, pp. 263–267, Éditions GALLIMARD, Paris