Letter 32

May 1933 Berlin

Wrong! It isn’t either Berlin or Munchen, but Flughafen. The plane is full, but there may be a place left vacant at the last moment. I can’t make up my mind whether I shall be relieved or disappointed. I think the latter as I have keyed myself up to the effort – yes – scared! Scared stiff!

Sensations in an aeroplane! Talk about ships at sea – Whoops! Mercy, that was more like a rapid lift than anything. The view here is magnificent – that must be Potsdam in that direction where all the lakes are, and the black patches of fir trees. I’m the only lady, and I have taken the place of a pilot (!!) who was not able to go. There’s versatility for you. You didn’t know I practised piloting in my spare moments, did you? Excuse blots! But every now and then the thing jerks and my pen fountains. It must be the low air pressure acting on the valve (don’t say I am going to be sick – no, I am not. The Nazi in front has opened the window) Coo! We are ever so high. Those are houses, not an untidy heap of red match boxes. I wonder where we are now? I daresay the edge of the Mark – it is very thickly wooded. I am a good deal excited and still rather scared. I think perhaps I won’t get into the habit of flying. Every now and again we drop violently a few feet and I leave all my insides in the air. (Here I open my window and let in a frightful din. Gosh! It is rowdy – whether the window is shut or open) Those fields, they would be a perfect design for a curtain.

We are just coming down in Leipzig. I am as deaf as a post. BUMP and we are on the ground! We terrified that hare, and this machine has awful springs. We have taken 50 minutes and now a ten minute rest while I recover my equilibrium. I think I shall go outside a moment as everyone else has.

Nurnberg and time uncertain. I am having a cup of coffee as we have 25 minutes on land. I feel rather grand, but also rather bored. It is much pleasanter to go through such country in a train. The ploughed fields look like corduroy, and the whole country like those lovely bumpy maps that one sometimes sees under a glass case. To my huge delight a cloud is just as knobbly when one is up beside it as when one gazes at it from below. We sailed through them leaving them in shreds with our propellors and they went careering below in raggedy streamers.

But even so such amusements pall. I’m glad the next stop is Munchen.

Munchen

I will just finish my little essay from yesterday before proceeding. By far the most amusing part of the flight was between Nurnberg and Munchen. We ran into a streaming column of rain and right at its source. It looked like a long fawn-coloured curtain swaying slowly over the earth below and at its fringe, brushing the tops of the trees in a perfect inverted rainbow. Further on a rainbow arched across two clouds, and away to the right a brilliant section shone for a minute and then faded. As the sun got lower and it still rained I saw an all but perfect circle. And behind the rain storm looked wonderful. And always it was difficult to tell which were mountains and which were valleys – only sometimes the trees sprang up at one, and sometimes they dropped away into the distance. Coming down we banked so steeply that it really looked as though the earth had upended like a great plate. One thing, Russell, nothing will convince me that the world isn’t a huge mushroom shaped thing – probably supported underneath by Yggdrasil, the tree of life, as the old Scandinavian mythology has it. Sometimes it was difficult to tell whether the fields were infested with cows, sheep – or lice. Now we will skip out of the plane, and stroll across the aerodrome in a lordly manner, as though flying were our most ordinary mode of travelling. Did I tell you that the usual fare is 70RM and that I paid 25RM 70pf? John, looking indecently healthy, met me at the booking hall and we exchanged the usual hearty cousinly kiss, while a couple of Nazis “heiled” each other with superb solemnity.