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By Root 477 0

states tackled their difficulties with greater vigour. Aeronautical purchases which further west would have required compliance with drawn-out bureaucratic regulations were here sanguinely waved through. It was possible to make an immediate downpayment on a missile system or a Soviet-era satellite, items frequently promoted with the help of short films, perhaps representing a manager’s first efforts at cinematography, and which showed machines blasting into the air to the accompaniment of a muscular American-inflected commentary. After being ignored for so long, the arts of salesmanship were now practised with unusual alacrity by people who had assiduously read translations of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Unfortunately, as in so much of the consumer world, recognisable brand names were an essential means of providing reassurance, an issue which the Volga Advanced Passenger Aircraft Company appeared to be finding no easy way to circumvent.

In search of technological breakthroughs, I made my way to a display touting a Japanese manufacturer’s new seventy-seat commuter plane, which promised significantly lowered operating costs thanks to certain improvements, whose precise nature was hard to grasp, in its wing design. A full-scale replica of the interior had been shipped to Paris in crates from Yokohama and could be toured by appointment. After an exchange of business cards, I was led inside by two diffident men, in charge of sales and marketing, who locked the door of the quasi-jet behind me, took seats on either side of the aisle and stared mutely ahead towards an imaginary cockpit. I hoped that through some piece of fun-fair trickery, the machine might now seem to fly, but it appeared that the visit (which good manners dictated would have to last a while) was to have no particular theme or focus, being designed solely to allow customers to examine the seat fittings and the galley – on whose quality I dutifully complimented my hosts, as if they had made them themselves. With the door closed, the noise of the fair had died away, causing the three of us to become uncomfortably aware of the difficulties of human communication. I began to imagine that we had in fact left the outskirts of Paris and were journeying through a part of the stratosphere informed by the purple light which washed in through the windows from the adjoining Pratt & Whitney stand. After an age, the door was reopened, we made our way out and the head of marketing handed me a set of postcards of the plane, adding that he looked forward to meeting me again – though I sensed an atmosphere of melancholy around the enterprise which made me question whether the company would ever succeed in achieving its desired supremacy in the medium-sized regional jet market.

At the stand of the world’s second-largest engine manufacturer, I spent some minutes observing an unusually attractive young saleswoman with shoulder-length chestnut hair, dressed in a beige suit, who was biting the nail of her left index finger and crossing her slender legs whilst leaning against a large fan blade. She was not the first of her type I had seen that day, but something about her appearance left me thoughtful. I had until then believed that the vendors’ frequent and deliberate reliance on feminine appeal was merely a vulgar stratagem intended to win over airline executives, through an implicit suggestion that a purchase might bring them closer to intimacy with a sales agent. Now I began to see the matter differently: it seemed obvious that no order, however lucrative, would actually render these women available to buyers, so their presence on the stands took on a more poignant and commercially effective dimension. Their real function was to serve as a reminder of the unavailability of beauty to an overwhelmingly male, middle-aged and harried-looking base of customers. The women were goading the men to lay aside all romantic ambitions and to focus instead on their business and technological agendas. Rather than seductresses, they were in truth spurs to sublimation, and symbols