A Remark on the Geometry of Elliptic Scrolls and Bielliptic Surfaces

The union of two quintic elliptic scrolls in P^4 intersecting transversally along an elliptic normal quintic curve is a singular surface Z which behaves numerically like a bielliptic surface. In the appendix to the paper [W. Decker et al.: Syzygies of abelian and bielliptic surfaces in P^4, alg-geom/9606013] where the equations of this singular surface were computed, we proved that Z defines a smooth point in the appropriate Hilbert scheme and that Z cannot be smoothed in P^4. Here we consider the analogous situation in higher dimensional projective spaces P^{n-1}, where, to our surprise, the answer depends on the dimension n-1. If n is odd the union of two scrolls cannot be smoothed, whereas it can be smoothed if n is even. We construct an explicit smoothing.