Good...”

Nothing important, the usual routine news. Rio de Janeiro asking for information, Montevideo reporting on the weather, Mendoza on the plant. Familiar sounds.

“And the planes?” he asked.

“The weather’s stormy. We don’t hear them tonight.”

“Right!”

The night is fine here and starry, Rivière thought, yet those fellows can detect in it the breath of the distant storm.

“That’s all for the present,” he said.

As Rivière rose the clerk accosted him: “Papers to sign, sir.”

Rivière discovered that he greatly liked this subordinate of his who was bearing, too, the brunt of night. “A comrade in arms,” he thought. “But he will never guess, I fancy, how tonight’s vigil brings us near each other.”

IX

As he was returning to his private office, a sheaf of papers in his hand, Rivière felt the stab of pain in his right side which had been worrying him for some weeks past.

“That’s bad....”

He leaned against the wall a moment.

“It’s absurd!”

Then he made his way to his chair.

Once again he felt like some old lion fallen in a trap and a great sadness came upon him.

“To think I’ve come to this after all those years of work! I’m fifty; all that time I’ve filled my life with work, trained myself, fought my way, altered the course of events and here’s this damned thing getting a hold of me, obsessing me till it seems the only thing that matters in the world. It’s absurd!”

He wiped away a drop or two of sweat, waited till the pain had ebbed and settled down to work, examining the memoranda on his table.

“In taking down Motor 301 at Buenos Aires we discovered that ... The employee responsible will be severely punished.”

He signed his name.

“The Florianopolis staff, having failed to comply with orders...”

He signed.

“As a disciplinary measure Airport Supervisor Richard, is transferred on the following grounds...”

He signed.

Then, as the pain in his side, slumbering but persistent, new as a new meaning in life, drove his thoughts inward toward himself, an almost bitter mood came over him.

“Am I just or unjust? I’ve no idea. All I know is that when I hit hard there are fewer accidents. It isn’t the individual that’s responsible but a sort of hidden force and I can’t get at it without—getting at every one! If I were merely just, every night flight would mean a risk of death.”

A sort of disgust came over him, that he had given himself so hard a road to follow. Pity is a fine thing, he thought. Lost in his musings, he turned the pages over.

“Roblet, as from this day, is struck off the strength....”

He remembered the old fellow and their talk the evening before.

“There’s no way out of it, an example must be made.”

“But, sir.... It was the only time, just once in a way, sir ... and I’ve been hard at it all my life!”

“An example must be made.”

“But ... but, sir. Please see here, sir.”

A tattered pocketbook, a newspaper picture showing young Roblet standing beside an airplane. Rivière saw how the old hands were trembling upon this little scrap of fame.

“It was in nineteen ten, sir. That was the first plane in Argentina and I assembled it. I’ve been in aviation since nineteen ten, think of it, sir! Twenty years! So how can you say...? And the young ‘uns, sir, won’t they just laugh about it in the shop! Won’t they just chuckle!”

“I can’t help that.”

“And my kids, sir. I’ve a family.”

“I told you you could have a job as a fitter.”

“But there’s my good name, sir, my name ... after twenty years’ experience. An old employee like me!”

“As a fitter.”

“No, sir, I can’t see my way to that. I somehow can’t, sir!”

The old hands trembled and Rivière averted his eyes from their plump, creased flesh which had a beauty of its own.

“No, sir, no.... And there’s something more I’d like to say.”

“That will do.”

Not he, thought Rivière, it wasn’t he whom I dismissed so brutally, but the mischief for which, perhaps, he was not responsible, though it came to pass through him. For, he mused, we can command events and they obey us; and thus we are creators. These humble men, too, are things and we create them. Or cast them aside when mischief comes about through them.

“There’s something more I’d like to say.” What did the poor old fellow want to say? That I was robbing him of all that made life dear? That he loved the clang of tools upon the steel of airplanes, that all the ardent poetry of life would now be lost to him ... and then, a man must live?

“I am very tired,” Rivière murmured and his fever rose, insidiously caressing him. “I liked that old chap’s face.” He tapped the sheet of paper with his finger. It came back to him, the look of the old man’s hands and he now seemed to see them shape a faltering gesture of thankfulness.