Free Byzantium Endures by Michael Moorcock, Alan Wall Page A

past in the hope that this would, accordingly, simplify the present which so bewildered them and was so much at odds with their over-rationalised creed. If I had been a Communist or a member of their revolutionary youth or some such thing, the story would be quite different. As it was there was more than one worm in my apple. I was pulled out of the river by some soldiers who had seen me fall. I awoke briefly (the propellor had dropped forward and stunned me as I landed in the water) to hear one of them laugh and say: ‘The little Jew was trying to fly!’
     
    My last words before returning to oblivion were: ‘I am not a Jew. And I did fly.’ Of course it was a strange coincidence, I suppose, that so many Jewish souls were to fly to Heaven from this very gorge where the Germans set up their notorious death-camp during the Second World War. It is worth noting here that it was by no means only Jews who died in Babi Jar: Slav soldiers and civilians were killed in their thousands, as well. As usual, of course, the Jews receive the full credit for martyrdom while the others are forgotten. They are masters at publicising their miseries.
     
    Esmé, sliding down the gorge and tearing her dress in an effort to save me, found the soldiers lifting me from the water. It was she who told them where I lived and they carried me back to my mother who immediately fainted and had to be revived by an already somewhat intoxicated Captain Brown, who, a few moments before, had been enlisted to search for me.
     
    One piece of good luck was that the motor was undamaged and was recovered an hour or two later by Sarkis Mihailovitch. I had sustained a broken head, a broken arm and a broken ankle. But I was elated. I had flown! I had proven myself. I would try the experiment again as soon as possible, though next time I decided to employ a smaller child - who would be lighter than myself - and train him to attempt the flight. In that way I could observe what happened if anything went wrong.
     
    During the first days of my confinement to hospital I was visited by Esmé and, anxious to be reassured, asked her to confirm that I had indeed flown. I was delirious and could not trust my own memory. Esmé passionately affirmed the fact that I had achieved the first powered flight without use of an airframe. I stand by her word and the news in the papers which appeared again many years later in a British magazine, Reveille, and an American newspaper called The National Enquirer. I wish I had the original Russian reports, but they were lost with so much else. Not everyone had faith in me, even then. I was to learn only after some weeks that Sarkis Mihailovitch, alarmed by my borrowing the motor, had decided to dispense with me, partly, I gather, to placate the bakery. My mother said nothing during my period of recuperation. Herr Lustgarten was called in on occasions to keep me in touch with my studies and my mother spent most of her ‘leisure’ time writing long letters to relatives, no matter how distant, concerning my further education. She was selfless beyond common-sense where her own good was concerned and, when it came to my well-being, there was nothing she would not try.
     
    Esmé was allowed to visit me and it was to her that I described my plans for a modified ‘bird-man’ machine. Speaking to her of those who remained sceptical of my achievement, I mentioned the soldiers’ claim that I had merely tumbled down the gorge. She was indignant. ‘Of course you flew. Of course you did. You flew for miles and miles. All over Kiev!’ This was an exaggeration, naturally, from loyalty, but Esmé was well known for speaking the truth and was called ‘the little saint’ in our neighbourhood, for the way she looked after her father.
     
    When Esmé was not there (as all too often she could not be) I contented myself with reading in various languages and drawing up improved plans for my ‘flying infantry’. I wrote letters to our War Office,