The first jump

(The French version of this text has first been published in issue 7 of the literary review Torticolis)

There are 64 of them, 32 per door. Most are looking for a few years of respite before compulsory military service, which could – at the time – be acquired through specialised training. A handful is rather looking for proof that their balls were larger than average. Some may be there by vocation. They sing at the top of their lungs a paratrooper song to make themselves believe they are, and to forget the anguish they all feel.

While crossing the aperture
Paratrooper remember,
Yes, remember!
That one day it could occur
your fabric doesn’t open,
Doesn’t open!
That after some free-falling
You’ll no longer be breathing, la, la, la, la, la…
Chute candled in the ozone
You will fall like a stone.*

“Shut up! You’ll be less cocky in a few moments. The next one singing doesn’t jump and get punished”. They fall silent, with here and there a few awkward sniggers.

They jump eight by eight, by cables as they say. The pros would have jumped 16 at a time, but the trainers know what to expect. The first group doesn’t disappoint. The head jumper stands at the door, one hand on either side of the opening, his body outstretched. He enjoys the scenery for several long seconds before jumping. Despite his comrade’s demonstration, the second jumper misses and falls sitting on the doorstep with his feet dangling in the air. The sergeant solves the problem with a well-placed kick on the backpack, which sends the clumsy one into the atmosphere.

The third one presents a more tasty sketch. A few nights earlier, the young ones from high school had been “hazed” by the group’s older members, preparing for the military academy. Nothing too serious. Led by an angry little fellow, four idiots who thought they were tough had woken them up in the middle of the night, had overturned their beds, and uttered a few insults and threats. The loudmouth is now on the cable. At the last moment, he turns around and tries to get back to his seat. The sergeant attempts to convince him for one second to find his gonads. Our hero then collapses on his knees, sobbing. Having neither the time nor the desire to negotiate further, the sergeant unhooks the carabiner, grabs the former future Rambo by the straps of his harness, propels him in a single swift movement to the back of the plane where he remains prostrate. The launch of the cable is missed; an additional fly-over will be needed.

It’s the third group’s turn. The rehearsed choreography goes off without a hitch. He stands up, carabiner in his right hand. At the signal, he attaches it to the cable running above their heads. The first jumper is in place. He is himself in the fourth position. The pilot-controlled light comes on, and it’s “Go, go, go”. He has a brief view of the outside while the previous jumpers are jumping. Then it’s the door; the image of the ground, 400 m down. He can see all the details. Nothing like the acrobatic jumps shown on TV, where a blurred landscape of yellow, green and brown geometric shapes seems a little unreal. Here, everything is terribly clear, the runway, the barracks and even the ground personnel. Terror seizes him, and in a second, everything comes back to him.

His first swimming lesson. When at 6 years old, he found himself in the wrong group, with the third years, screaming in terror while a lifeguard – policeman when he was wearing more than a pair of swim trunks – threw him from the top of the 3 m diving board towards certain death.

All the 5 m diving boards, in primary school, secondary school, military high school; with always this atrocious fear at the pit of the stomach, the humiliation of not jumping and the shameful climb down avoided only thanks to the fear of mockery for weeks to come.

And the countless dreams, where he found himself lying on his stomach at the top of a bridge a few centimetres wide, suspended tens, even hundreds of metres above the ground, forced to crawl from one bank to the other of titanic rivers, with bubbling grey waves.

Then he falls into the void. All the lessons are forgotten. The elegant jump, so many times rehearsed on the ground, becomes just a passive response to gravity. He finds himself upside down on his back. And he slowly moves away from the vast, deafening steel bird that passes over him. The tether is 22 m long. One would think that the opening is, therefore, almost instantaneous. It is not. He has time to see two comrades leave the plane in slow motion, disarticulated puppets like him. And to realise that he is going to die. That this whole undertaking was a colossal mistake. Then comes the jolt. The strap pulls the parachute out of the bag at full speed but not instantaneously; then, after an almost imperceptible pause, it detaches and continues with the plane. The result is a sudden and violent reorientation, which sees him again head up and feet towards the centre of the globe, accompanied by the impression of a sudden ascent.

The next step involves a change in the temporal reference frame. After the past few seconds that lasted an eternity, his brain, flooded with catecholamines, decides to go on holiday. The Transall is gone; there is no more noise. He is suspended like a baby in his harness and no longer controls anything but feels safe and peaceful. He turns slowly on himself and admires the landscape. The minute and a half of descent disappear in a snap of the fingers.

The coming back to reality takes the form of anxious shouts from the men in green left on the ground. “Hey, dickhead! You’re going in the wrong direction! Pull your suspension lines!” He wakes up suddenly and realises that he has almost reached the edge of the field. He pulls on the suspension lines to orient the canvas and to skew his fall; the wrong lines. And his movement speeds-up accordingly. “But he is going to miss the field, the moron! Opposite suspension lines, you idiot!”

Indeed, he misses the field and its welcoming carpet of grass. He crosses the road that runs alongside it and now sees the tarmac of a car park rushing towards him. Can one rollover on a car park, as he is supposed to? (military canvases have a descent speed incompatible with a stand-up landing, and they have no brake handles). The question is rhetorical since he is paralysed by fear and does not make a single movement to regain control of the situation. He finally lands backwards and falls on his backside; his body then tips over at full speed, and his head hits the ground. His outer helmet encounters a pebble that pierces it. The resulting metal splinter pierces his inner helmet, scraping his scalp. The car park is that of a pub, with a few tables outside, occupied by groups of patrons roaring with laughter.

He stands up, red-faced but dignified, and folds his parachute. His ass hurts, his skull bleeds, and he’s going to get hell.

He has never been happier.

* French version https://www.musicanet.org/robokopp/french/yavaitla.htm