dani

please help me for translating this text, I don't manage it!


During the summer of 1939 I was to go overland to the Gilf Kebir with Gough, pack up the base camp, and Gough would leave by truck. Clifton would fly in and pick me up. Then we would disperse, out of the triangle that had grown up among us.

When I heard the plane, saw it, I was already climbing down the rocks of the plateau. Clifton was always prompt.

There is a way a small cargo plane will come down to land, slipping from the level of horizon. It tips its wings within desert light and then sound stops, it drifts to earth. I have never fully understood how planes work. I have watched them approach me in the desert and I have come out of my tent always with fear. They dip their wings across the light and then they enter that silence.

The Month came skimming over the plateau. I was waving the blue tarpaulin. Clifton dropped altitude and roared over me, so low the acacia shrubs lost their leaves. The plane veered to the left and circled, and sighting me again realigned itself and came straight towards me. Fifty yards away from me it suddenly tilted and crashed. I started running towards it.

I thought he was alone. He was supposed to be alone. But when I got there to pull him out, she was beside him. He was dead. She was trying to move the lower part of her body, looking straight ahead. Sand had come in through the cockpit window and had filled her lap.