He was drifting silently, his cockpit just above a limitless expanse
of white clouds. The sky was a soft luminous blue, and far above him a
long streamer of a cloud streaked into the distance. The bitter dogfight
that he had just been a part of seemed a lifetime in the past.
Was he dead, or was this the result of exhaustion in his struggle
to live?
A seaplane rose from the white expanse of clouds to his right. The
placid face of his dearest friend stared skyward from the cockpit.
"Berlini! You're here too?"
The seaplane drifted higher and higher into the silent sky. Marco's
cry went unanswered. Tears began to well in his eyes, and a sudden panic
seized his heart as he realized what had happened to them. His plane stayed
in the clouds while Berlini's continued to rise.
"Berlini! Please! What about Gina?! You can't leave her like this!"
A German seaplane rose out of the white plain of clouds around him,
followed by two Italian planes. Marco watched their props spin lazily
against the deep blue sky as the aircraft floated higher above him.
Berlini's plane was almost to the strange cloud far above him.
He could now see what the cloud was. Aircraft. Thousands of planes
flying soundlessly above him in a long narrow swath reaching to the
infinity of either horizon, their props turning in slow lazy circles as
they cruised towards a destination beyond sight. More planes from the
dogfight rose around him to join the formations above.
"Berlini! Don't go!" Marco cried again. "I'll go in your place!"
Berlini was gone now, lost in the formations of the dead.
Marco's plane began to sink back into the vast white sea of clouds,
the long trail of planes and their pilots fading high, high above him. His
hands reached out for that impossible gulf of silent blue sky that separated
his plane from the others, as if by touching them, he could join them.
"Berlini!!!"
________________________________________________________________________
J. Austin Wilde and Fission Park Press proudly present:
PORCO ROSSO:
Wings of a Pig
By J. Austin Wilde, K.B.C.S.
Super Critical Reactor Axe Man
Fission Park Press
wildeman@psn.net
http://www.psn.net/~wildeman
The characters and situations of PORCO ROSSO
are the creation and property of the great
Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli.
________________________________________________________________________
CHAPTER ONE
"Two hundred rounds of .30 caliber machine gun," Federini announced,
placing four rectangular boxes on the counter. His face was a mask of
unease at the sight of his customer.
Marco grunted in reply and placed a wad of cash on the counter next
to the ammunition.
Federini took the money with a sweep of his hand, trying to ignore the
face of his customer. His wife was hiding in the next room, assured that
Marco Paggot was cursed by none other than the Devil himself. Marco's
present occupation only reinforced her beliefs.
Marco was a bounty hunter. A hired gun paid to sweep the Adriatic Sea
of piracy and lawlessness. Some considered his kind to be little better
than the criminals they pursued. But that wasn't what made him so feared
and reviled.
Marco Paggot, formerly a hero of the Italian Air Force, was also a
pig. In the dark, or from behind, you would never suspect this; for he
stood like a man, dressed like a man, and talked like a man. It was only
when you saw his face, with its unmistakable (though mustachioed) snout
and pig's ears, that you had to believe the stories of the fishermen and
seaplane pilots of the Adriatic.
"Thanks, Federini," Marco grunted. "Be seeing you."
He took the boxes of ammunition and stuffed them into the volumnous
pockets of his greatcoat. The shells rattled with a satisfying sound as they
settled. Federini might not have liked the way he looked, but he still sold
him the good stuff.
The screen door of the shop closed sharply behind him with a tired
creak of the rusty springs. He stepped out into the night air, drawing in
a deep breath and tasting the salt. The sea wall glowed in the moonlight.
The sea itself was low and rolling, glittering and radiant in its own deep
way. Tonight would be a good night for flying low over the waters.
His faithful seaplane bobbed gently at the quay, a bi-wing Savoia S.12,
painted bright crimson red. The S.12 was an old model, for the first one was
built in 1912 -almost seventeen years ago. This one had treated him well.
There was no one to tend to the plane at that late hour, but that was
fine. People didn't like to look at him anyway. It was a mutually agreeable
arrangement as far as he was concerned. He took the mooring line off the
rusty cleat and threw the loop into the cockpit.
A hard shove of his foot pushed the seaplane away from the quay. He
stowed the rope properly in a small compartment in the fuselage as the plane
drifted. With a grunt he hoisted himself up onto the upper wing.
The wood creaked with his weight as he leaned over to hand crank the
engine's lubricating oil to all of the bearings. He turned on the crank
again and again, feeling the sudden resistance as the pump primed with oil.
After several more turns he was rewarded with the sight of thick syrupy
black oil in a small sightglass at the forward end of the engine, meaning
that it was fully lubricated for starting.
The fuel dipstick in the cockpit read half-full. It would be enough to
get him north, to the Adriano Hotel at least. He could buy more gasoline
there. The price would also be better.
Marco set his choke and throttle settings, then stood up in the
cockpit to turn yet another crank -the starter. This one was rough, for he
had to turn the entire engine over in the process. Beads of sweat formed in
the cool night air and trickled down his neck to soak his shirt.
The engine began to whine. Gasps of air burst from the exhaust headers,
tinged with the whiff of fuel. There was a cough, a shake, as the engine
started to fire. Marco grunted louder as he turned the crank with all of
his might.
The old Fiat engine shook once again as the cylinders began to fire.
Marco released the crank as black puffs of smoke erupted from the headers,
followed by brief spurts of flame. The propeller began to spin faster now,
pulling the seaplane further out into the water.
He settled into the cockpit now, pulling the straps over his shoulders
and checking them tight. He goosed the throttle and released the choke,
letting the engine run wild for a moment before reigning it in for a
controlled take off. The Savoia began to nose down as it scooted across
the water on its floats.
Marco could feel the water resistance through his stick as the plane
bucked and tore at the sea, fighting for the freedom of the air. He nudged
the rudder pedals gently, pivoting the red seaplane around until it faced
into the easy wind. The aircraft's motion became tamer now, and with a
final goose of the throttle, the Savoia leaped into the dark sky. Spindrift
misted on his goggles before the rush of air swept them dry.
He was free once again.
The Savoia's engine was a steady thrum above him as he glanced over
each shoulder to the sparkling brilliance of the moonlight on the wavetops
below. He dipped his left wing, turning northwest, and feeling the air flow
over his wings through the feedback of the control column. The Savoia felt
good in his hands.
* * *
He caught sight of the Adriano Hotel's beacon far ahead of him, just
on the horizon. With the night sky so clear, visibility was forty kilometers
or better. There were no other planes in the air that he could see; no other
engine sounds than the steady drone of his Fiat reached his ears. On a night
like this the noise from another engine would carry for many kilometers.
Marco's eyes narrowed as he spotted a long luminous trail of
phosphorescence in the water below. He followed the soft green glow until it
was drowned in the yellow and red light of a ship's fantail. White smoke
scudded from her single stack and swept abeam of her in the light wind.
He soared over her moments later, observing the colors which flew from
the foremast rigging. A Greek steamer yacht, no doubt seeking port after a
holiday in the Mediterranean. A lookout waved to him and flashed a signal
lamp in greeting. Marco waggled the Savoia's wings in reply.
The Adriano was busy tonight. As he circled over the tiny island he
caught sight of at least twenty seaplanes at anchor. A small launch
illuminated by a single red lantern below him trolled out to a recent
arrival to take them to shore. He grit his teeth as he recognized the beat
up Dornier Super Albatross.
Mama Aiuto.
Mama Aiuto was one of the larger gangs of pirates in the Adriatic. That
wasn't to say they were the most successful. They weren't. Quite frankly, if
the Italians actually cared about the air pirates that infested the region,
Mama Aiuto would have been wiped out or imprisoned long ago.
He had tangled with them fairly often, either rescuing their intended
victims or retrieving the booty they had stolen. Sometimes he just got paid
to shoot at them. It was a fairly bloodless rivalry; he'd shoot out their
engines or put some holes in their control surfaces to force them down, and
they'd try (woefully unsuccessfully) to kill him. It would have been a
simple matter to annihilate the entire lot of hirsute knuckleheads, but
then if he actually killed them all, where would his easy bounty money come
from? No, he went to great pains to make certain that Mama Auito were never
beaten so badly that they couldn't make a comeback. He wondered if those
idiots ever realized that.
The Savoia circled once more to take in the sight of the hotel and
surrounding gardens. The entire six-hundred meter circumference of the
island was shored up by stonework walls, leaving not one scrap of beach.
Two finger piers for guests were filled with seaplanes, but the private
pier for the owner of the hotel was vacant.
He eased back the throttle slightly and cranked his flaps to full,
flaring out over the water at a liesurely thirty knots. The skids brushed
the wavetops, nearly pitching the nose down if not for the iron grip Marco
maintained on the control column. A brief burst of power and a deft nudge of
the elevons righted the seaplane and put her firmly in the water. The Savoia
slowed to a crawl as Marco taxied her to the vacant pier.
There was a pierhand half-asleep in a wooden folding chair on the quay.
He came to his senses enough to shine a bullseye lantern at the seaplane as
it approached. The pierhand quickly spied the red, green, and white tricolor
and the coat of arms for the city of Genoa on the tail, and waved the plane
in.
The Savoia pulled alongside the quay. Marco closed the throttle and
let the engine run dry, coughing and spitting until it died. The pierhand
tossed him a monkeyfist attached to a length of rope, which he caught
without looking, busying himself instead with last minute adjustments to
his plane.
The pierhand tied the seaplane fast to the quay. Marco tossed him a
coin, and proceded along the cobblestone paving to the brilliantly lit
Victorian style hotel. The Concierge caught sight of him as he stepped into
the plush lobby and politely offered to take his coat. Marco declined, as
he always did, and proceded to the caberet.
An unusual feeling of comfort and security swept over him as he
entered the smoky little club down a winding set of stairs. Paintings and
photographs of pilots; war aces, bounty hunters, and pirates alike, adorned
the walls side by side with wooden propellers, Italian flags, and ceiling
fans turning slow circles from the rafters. The usual gang of idiots were
clustered around a group of tables close to the piano. The rest of the
cabaret's patrons were guests of the hotel; no doubt enjoying the local
color provided by the brash air pirates. The bartender looked dapper in his
gartered white sleeves, red velvet vest, and black bow tie as he poured fine
brandy for him into a gilt rimmed leaded-crystal glass.
He wondered why the place felt so right. Perhaps it was because the
cabaret was the same way every time he visited; even to the point of the
assorted guests taking on the vaguely familiar resemblances of old
acquaintences whose names he couldn't quite recall.
It hit him as he eased against his usual barstool: the cabaret was
the closest thing to a home he had known in nine years.
Mama Auito extended their traditional greeting to him, a drunken
chorus of "hey Pig!!!" followed by overblown laughter and those attempts
at low brow humor that their tiny minds could manage. He grunted an
obscenity through his teeth as he smiled thinly at them and turned back
to the exquisitely carved mahogany bar.
He swigged at his brandy, letting the warmth slide down his throat
and wash away the traces of unburned fuel and smoke in his mouth. His
palate cleansed, he let the second drink swim in his mouth for several
moments. The alcohol's slow burn melted through him as he let his subtly
trembling body unwind from the droning vibrations of the plane he had flown
for the past three hours.
The murmur of the bar died away as a tall brunette woman in an elegant
black evening dress and elbow length gloves stepped in from a side door.
Her brown eyes glittered in the candlelight of the tables as she made polite
and interested small talk with the patrons. Even the buffoons of Mama Auito
settled down and cooed like schoolchildren for her as she chided them for
being 'vicious' air pirates.
"Gina," Marco muttered to himself. Still as radiant as ever.
A middle-aged and balding man named Bertolo stepped up to the piano and
began to play a moody Bela Bartok piece before shifting flawlessly into some
equally sanguine American jazz by Gershwin. Marco knew the routine, and
he knew what the next piece would be. His feet began to shift uneasily,
wanting to take him out of the cabaret before it came to that next song.
Gina cast a single look at him as she made her way languorously to
the piano. Her expression was unreadable. Perhaps it was a welcome to an
old friend. Perhaps it was more. Marco didn't want to find out, but Bertolo
began to play for her before he could bring himself to leave.
Gina began to sing. It was an old song, one Gina often sang from time
to time, and a song that Marco wished she would forget.
"Quand nous chanterons le temps (When we come to sing of the time
des cerises, et gai rossignol of cherries, both the jolly
et merle moqueur seront tous en nightingale and the mocking
fete!" blackbird will celebrate!)
She walked around the tables, casting wistful longing looks to the
patrons as she went. The air pirates returned bashful and adoring glances
as small children would to their mothers. The clatter and clack of glass
in the cabaret was gone with all attention riveted on her.
"Les belles auront la folie en (The pretty girls will have folly on
tete, et les amoureux, du soleil their minds, and lovers will have
au coeur! Quand nous chanterons the sun in their hearts! When we
le temps des cerises, sifflera come to sing of the time of
bien mieux le merle moqueur!" cherries, the mocking blackbird
will whistle much better!)
Her wistful looks became sorrowful with a sidelong glance to Marco's
corner of the cabaret. He turned away, unable to meet her eyes for even a
second. Not while she sang this song.
"Mais il est bien court le temps (But they are short lived, the
des cerises, ou l'on s'en va de happy times, where one goes
cueillir en revant des pendants daydreaming to gather ear-pendants.
d'oreilles. Cerises d'amour aux Cherries of love with the same
robes pareilles tombant sous la dresses hanging under the leaves
feulle en gouttes de sang." like drops of blood.)
Another glance, and yet again, Marco ducked away into the shelter of a
glass of brandy.
"Mais il est bien court le temps (But they are short lived, the happy
des cerises, pendants de corail times, coral hangings that one
qu'on cueille revants." gathers dreaming.)
At last, Marco could bear it no more. Gina watched him out of the
corner of her eye as he stepped through the door to the kitchen. Fighting
back the sudden stinging in her throat, she continued to sing.
"J'aimerai toujours le temps des (I will always love the time of
cerises, c'est de ce temps que cherries, it is from those times
je garde au coeur une plaie that I hold in my heart an open
ouverte..." wound...)
CHAPTER TWO
Marco stepped through the noisy kitchen to a small back room with a
window that overlooked the garden. Two plates of spaghetti and mussels in
a steaming garlic and cream sauce sat awaiting diners. A bottle of white
wine stood open next to a wicker basket of crusty bread rolls and two empty
glasses.
He reached over the table and poured a glass. The wine was cool, not
chilled, but crisp and dry with a tart finish that faintly reminded him
of green apples. Gina had good taste in table wine.
The food beckoned to him, and so he sat down to eat. As the first
forkful of dripping pasta reached his lips he saw the photo on the wall.
The fork dropped to the plate with a clatter, the food untouched.
**Damn her,** he thought bitterly. He rose from the table, the chair
groaning against the hardwood floor as he rocked back to stand.
It was a photo from before the war, dated 1912. All his old friends,
now long dead, grinned for the cameraman while clustered around a seaplane.
In the cockpit, giving the camera a wan smile, was a nineteen year old Marco
Paggot. An equally young Gina sat next to him, wearing a fashionable hat
from Paris.
In the photo, Marco Paggot was human.
Disgust and anguish welled within him simultaneously. Like the song,
the photo was something Marco wished would just go away and leave him alone.
They were parts of his life that no longer mattered. He was no longer the
man in the photo.
He was no longer a man. He was no longer part of the world of men.
He was a pig.
Without thinking, he reached into his pocket and withdrew a stubby
pencil. The point was quite sharp, ideal for his purpose. He began etching
a series of hard lines over the face of the Marco Paggot that no longer
was, not caring if he rent the photo in the process.
"Marco! Stop that!"
Gina's voice, angry and hurt, stopped him cold.
"Don't you dare do another thing to that photograph!" she continued.
"It's the only one I have left of you before your change!"
"One more reason to see it go," Marco replied dully.
"Enough," she demanded. "Now go sit down and eat."
He grit his teeth and took his seat once again.
"I never see you anymore, Marco," she said, joining him. "When I do,
it's only for a few moments in the cabaret. Let's at least enjoy a quiet
supper together and talk."
Marco filled her glass with wine.
"Talk about the old days?" he asked.
"If you like," she offered.
"I'd rather not."
"Same old grumpy Marco Paggot," Gina sniffed with mock sadness.
Her frown melted into a warm and friendly smile. "It's good to see you
again."
She raised her glass to him, and he clinked it in a silent toast.
"How are things in the bounty hunter business?" she asked him as he
set his glass down and attacked the pasta.
"The usual," he replied between bites.
She rolled her eyes. He was going to be his usual outgoing self this
evening. At least this way she was sure he was getting fed. With a sigh,
she began to eat. Time passed by the moon's slow progress across the
sky through the window.
"Let's have another toast," she said at length.
Marco looked up from his plate.
"Anything in particular you want to drink to?" he asked, sensing
that Gina did indeed have something in mind.
Her eyes drifted to her left hand, and where there should have been a
golden ring.
"It's been a year today that Angelo died," she said quietly.
"That long?" Marco gasped. Had it been a year already?
"More or less," Gina replied. "They can only guess when his plane
crashed in the Atlantic. He never told anyone he was leaving France before
he left."
Her voice drifted off as a wave of bitterness rolled over her at
the thought.
"Foolish man... Who did he think he was, Charles Lindburgh?" she spat
softly. "Trying to cross the Atlantic on a non-stop solo flight..."
"Is that why you chose to wear black tonight?" Marco asked after a
pause.
"No," Gina replied, eyes softening in the candlelight. "I've *mourned*
for him longer than I was *married* to him. It's as far behind me as I can
put it."
"Is that why you aren't wearing the ring?"
Gina smiled wanly. "I'm seeing someone new."
Marco's ears perked up.
"Oh?"
Gina listened to his voice as he replied. Was that a tone of
disappointment she heard, or was it just wishful thinking? She decided to
continue and see where things went.
"Yes. Unfortunately my luck hasn't changed with men."
"He's a pilot then," Marco guessed.
"Worse than that," Gina corrected dryly. "He's a *seaplane* pilot."
"A fate worse than death," he observed.
"I know," Gina agreed. "But I seem to have a weakness for the type."
Her eyes held his for a moment. Marco looked away.
"Is it that serious?"
Gina sighed. "Maybe."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"It means maybe," she answered curtly. "Who knows, I may find someone
else."
Marco gulped down the last of his wine.
"Good luck to you," he muttered.
Her eyes crossed in ire for an instant before she regained her
composure. "Did you know that you are the most insensitive clod?" she asked
him archly. "There are fellows in Mama Auito with more tact and feeling
than you."
"That's a human failing," Marco observed. "A pig has no need for tact."
Gina rose from her chair.
"If that's what you believe, than a pig is all you'll ever be, Marco."
Marco poured another glass of wine.
She watched him drink half the glass at a gulp before she turned to
leave.
"Henri returns from Malta tomorrow night. You should come and meet
him."
He looked up from his glass.
"Maybe."
Gina began to close the door behind her. She shook her head in disgust.
"Good night, Marco," she said over her shoulder. The door closed with a
soft click.
Marco stared at the empty place across the table from himself.
"Damn."
END OF TEASER
Author's Notes.
1. Gina's Caberet song credits: "The Time of Cherries" (The good old days?)
TRANSLATION BY: Adrienne, Sarah, and Gordon, last names unknown.
REVISED BY: Pascal Janin, August 15, 1993.
ORIGINAL CREDITS: "Le Temps des Cerises" (Lyrics: J.B. Clement; Music:
A. Renard)
2. Like Miyazaki, some of my aircraft featured here are fantastical creations.
Porco's Savoia S.12 is a real aircraft, but the Dornier Super Albatross is made
up.
