Vietnam Airlines, Flight from Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City
Scene 12
As a frequent flier one does not experience the sense of wonder that it is to dart over the clouds with a glass of white wine in your hand.
Maille just closed his eyes and attempted to emphathize with the aircraft – quite in the same way that one feels a sense of warmth in some parts of one's body by concentrating during an autogenous training session. It worked, and soon he began to feel the tiniest gap in the air, the slightest tremble of the machine and every shake of the propeller. It caused him no anxiety; on the contrary, it induced a sense of security: he felt quite as though he was lying in a large cradle, with its steady sway soothing the body and its mechanical hum serving as a lullaby. While his brain hovered in the pleasant twilight zone between sleep and wakefulness, in which his thoughts rose from and set behind the horizon like sun balls, Maille tried to make sense of the text he had found. One of these stars had the form of the city of Brasilia, which had the basic outline of an airplane – the cradle of a young new nation.