Vladimir brushed the glass from the table. The crash startled the proprietor, who came panting from the kitchen.
“Another crash!” shouted Vladimir. “Do you see it? I am that glass. I crashed too.”
“Crazy Russian,” growled the proprietor. “Pay and get out.”
“You think I am crazy? Perhaps you think I am drunk too. It is your city that crashed me, your damn’ city without a sun, without a soul. I hate it. I hate you—all of you. You robbed me of my plane. You robbed me of my life—”
“If you don’t get out this minute, I’ll call the police.” The proprietor moved to the door.
Vladimir surrendered. He threw a two-mark note upon the bar.
He lumbered up the avenue of commercialized gayety—Kurfürstendamm—where even in the mottled afternoon painted women sat together in the huge cafes, waiting. Orchestras played with Teutonic discipline one-year-old jazz, born of a primitive people and now, robbed of its abandonment, employed to stimulate these human automatons. Vladimir did not see, nor hear. He walked on.
Toward evening he found himself at Templehof—the flying field. What was he doing here? This patch of green in the wilderness of factory lands, where the flight of men began and ended, was his no longer. What matter if he knew it from the sky as other men know a beloved face? He was now an exile from the sky and from this field, which brought men to the sky. This field to him had become home when revolution had exiled him from his home. And now he had lost this too.
Even the night watchman—silly doddering old fool—had his place here. But Vladimir Uspensky, proudest of pilots, had none. Probably the night watchman knew of his disgrace, and would pity him. What irony! But wait. Perhaps he did not know. They would not tell him until the next day. Then—
The plan was born.