Public Loneliness: Yuri Gagarin's Circumlunar Flight

by Brennan, Gerald

  Everything is, as the Americans say, up in the air. Beyond up in the air, even. Komarov and the control center are projecting a certain optimism, but they’re also refusing to make firm predictions. And I understand. We are beyond the outer limits of what anyone thought possible, so there is no use asking for certainty or even probability.

  They read up the new procedure and I copy everything down in my logbook. I wonder in passing: are the Americans and the British still listening? Surely this will be of interest to them. Will they tell the world about my troubles before we do?

  “It’s a good thing this is all just a communications exercise,” I joke.

  A delay. Then: “Repeat your last, Yura.” Komarov is slow in both ways today.

  “Dawn-2, I said it’s a good thing this is all a communications exercise, and not a real mission. Otherwise I would really be in trouble.”

  The situation is too serious for laughter but Komarov does at least chuckle. “Indeed, Yura.”

  Once the yaw thrusters have been deactivated I rotate the craft to get the sun in the alignment telescope crosshairs. Then I translate along the rotational coordinates they have provided, keeping a careful eye on my instruments.

  “Good luck, Yura,” Komarov says.

  “Go to hell, old man.”

  I fire the thrusters. Feel the spacecraft’s gentle push. I watch the counters turn. Far too soon, they stop.

  •••

  I have talked about disasters, but I’ve only hinted at my own.

  If I’m speaking more truthfully about my past, I should at least talk about my time in the whirlwind, the strangeness and dislocation I felt when everything was out of my control.

  Flashbulbs, motorcades, flashbulbs, microphones. There were moments, like the ones I’ve already described in Moscow and Manchester and London, where I feel like I handled everything very well indeed. And again, on the whole, I’m proud of my conduct.

  But there were also moments where I felt like I was being blown about by forces far greater than me, like in those first few parachute jumps when you step out into the slipstream and you feel your body violently jerked about, pulled and pushed and buffeted, a victim of pure physics.

  My mind sometimes felt like that. Particularly at the receptions.

  It was strange walking through the room at the receptions. It was as if there was some electromagnetic force field around me; people oriented themselves toward me like filings on paper when you pass a magnet underneath. I would move through the room and the whole human content of the room would move around me. Here and there I was uncomfortable; I’d want to go to upstairs to my room, to find some privacy and relax. While they were content to just be in my presence, smiling.

  And yet there was still that barrier—the paper between the magnet and the filings. Or perhaps it was a glass wall. For I could see them, and there was still the effect of the magnet passing through the barrier, but I felt a separation from them. I felt strangely isolated in those crowded rooms.

  (Also there was this—a real man discovers his worth in overcoming difficulties. And certainly I had overcome them in flying school, and as a pilot. But in the mission itself? I had been nothing but a passenger. Even during the reentry: if, hypothetically speaking, I had panicked, it all would have gone the same way. I had done nothing beyond the capabilities of any pilot in our air force, but I was being treated like something else entirely.)

  So what else was there to do but drink? I had been keeping myself well-behaved up to that time—for fear of turning out like my father, it must be said—but now, after having gone farther and faster than anyone, after accomplishing something no one else had ever done, what reason did I have not to? So many of the leaders did, after all. Plus, they were toasting my health at every turn. So it would have been rude to refuse.

  So I drank, at every function. And it made me feel like the glass wall was gone for a moment—like I had a true connection with the people lining up to see me. But—I suppose I can admit to this now—when the glass wall fell, it made the whirlwind worse. For I was fully exposed.

  (Am I mixing metaphors here? Providing too many images? It must be done. Words and images are less exact than equations, less precise in modeling our behavior.)

  Still, I’m not comfortable talking about it. I have spoken in a general sense; you can perhaps imagine the specifics.

  (Surely you’re not surprised by that! Surely that’s the natural way of things. It is human nature to look up to some and look down on others, and the natural consequence of that is that people try to be someone that others will look up to.)

  The only exception to that rule, at least among people I know, is Vladimir Vysotsky. Vysotsky is of course an artist, a singer and actor. And as such, he must put his flaws on display, which has in turn led to considerable popularity. (Surely you already know all of this!) He has not found official favor, but he certainly has made it out to many unofficial parties of officials, at the dachas of the mighty out in the birch forests around Moscow, and even at our communal apartments in Star City. In fact, we’ve had him over a few times, most recently a few months back.

  That party got off to a rather raucous start—cosmonauts and pilots tend to be punctual, even in our partying! And he of course was ninety minutes late, but he showed up, guitar in hand, perhaps a bit drunk already.

  “You’re late, comrade!” I exclaimed as Valya opened the door.

  “He has to get soaked!” Blondie yelled from behind me. (We’d instituted a tradition in the cosmonaut corps of dunking late guests in the bathtub, which perhaps contributed to everyone’s promptness.)

  “He doesn’t have to get soaked,” I said. “Come in, comrade, come in.”

  “I am not late,” he said in his famous gravelly voice. “I have been partying for the appropriate length of time, just not here. Nor am I a comrade. I am fast on my way to becoming an official scoundrel, regardless of who is listening to me in private. Which is perhaps the way I want it.”

  “Well, we’ve been listening,” my wife exclaimed. “You’ll have to play us a song.”

  “No hello, even?” he asked with a grin, then gave her the customary kisses on the cheeks. “Aren’t you glad to see me?”

  “Of course we’re glad. Now play us a song!”

  “Yes, play us a song,” I echoed.

  Here he looked suddenly reluctant. “Sure, if you fly around the moon!”

  I’m sure I gave him a look.

  He explained: “This is a party. Nobody is asking you to do your work!”

  “But you’re an entertainer,” Valya said.

  “So I must work while you are having fun.” Now he sounded deadly earnest, and I wondered if we’d overstepped our bounds. To Blondie he raised his voice: “Do you see why I took my time getting here?”

  “But…you brought your guitar…” Valya said, confused.

  He looked down at the guitar case at the end of his hand as if this was the first time he’d seen it. “The guitar came of its own accord. It hitched a ride on my hand. I am so used to seeing it there that I paid it no heed until now.”

  Valya looked truly baffled. I suppressed a chuckle.

  At last, Vysotsky smiled. “But since it is there, I suppose I should play something. As long as you get me a drink first.”

  Valya prepared him a drink, and he made the rounds of the room: Blondie and his wife, old man Komarov and his, Popovich, Tereshkova, Nikolayev, and assorted other cosmonauts and engineers in various stages of inebriation. And there was some chaos and confusion, the normal disorientation of a disruption to the party, and there was discussion of where he should play, and he disappeared into the bathroom for what seemed like a long while, but at last he emerged and Valya had placed a chair in the center of the room, and he sat down to play. And the room went quiet; everyone’s conversations ended as they turned to face him.

  And he sang a new song, one I’d never heard, but it sounded instantly familiar, perfect and true, as if it had somehow always
existed:

  I am an exotic man, to put it mildly,

  My tastes and my demands are rather strange,

  I can, for instance, nibble glasses madly,

  And read the works of Schiller for a change.

  I have two selves in me, two poles of planet,

  Two absolutely different men, two foes,

  When one is eager to attend a ballet

  The other straight off to the races goes.

  I don't take liberties, when I turn out

  To be myself, going the whole hog,

  My other self will frequently break out

  Appearing as a rascal and a rogue.

  And I oppress the scoundrel's intrusion,

  My life! I've never known such distress.

  Perchance (I am so scared of confusion),

  I'm not that other self whom I oppress.

  When in my soul I open up the facets

  In spots where sincerity should be

  I pay the waitresses, on trust, in assets,

  And women give me all their love for free.

  But suddenly all my ideals go to grass, as

  I'm impatient, angry, rude and such a bore!

  I sit like mad, devouring the glasses,

  And throwing Schiller down upon the floor.

  The hearing is on. I stand and speak austerely,

  Appealing to the jury, showing tact:

  "It wasn't me who'd smashed the window, really,

  It was my other wicked self, in fact.

  Do not be strict to me. You'd better

  Give me a chance, but not a prison term.

  I'll visit court-rooms just as a spectator,

  And drop in on the judges as a chum.

  I won't smash windows any more, distinctly,

  Nor fight in public—write it in your scroll!

  I'll bring the halves of my split, sickly,

  Disintegrated soul into a single whole.

  I'll root it out, bury it and quench it;

  I want to clear and reveal my soul.

  My other self is alien to my nature,

  No, it is not my other self, at all.

  He looked straight at me as he sang the last two verses, and I wondered if he was singing to me or at me. (For surely this is the power in such a work: you hear it and assume it is about you!) And no one else was singing along: the room was a complete standstill, and I wondered if they, too, thought the song was about me. And perhaps I self-consciously touched the scar on my eyebrow, the one from Foros, the public proof of my secret shame.

  But Vysotsky said nothing. And it occurred to me that nobody had sung along because they didn’t know the words, either, for it was a new song. So Vysotsky just launched into a couple other songs, familiar ones that got everyone singing and clapping.

  Finally he said, “I’m thirsty. Has the state released me from my performing duties?” And I smiled and gave him a hug, and he set the guitar down and we went over to the kitchen to fix more drinks. And I told him, “You’re too hard on the state, my friend,” and he said, “I’ve just made a different choice than you.” And I did not know what he meant, but later in the party I asked him, and he said: “Honest, intelligent, loyal to the state. God loves trinity, but we are a godless state, so we cannot have all three. Which two do you choose?” And I said, “You’re talking like a degenerate,” and he said, “At least I know that’s what I am!”

  I was furious—why was he making such a scene? But Blondie came up and clapped us on the backs and then everything changed, all was forgotten, and it all started blurring together at last in the usual happy drunken way, and it occurred to me that perhaps he was trying to be brave, by his own absurd standards.

  In the harsh Sunday morning light, when Valya and I were cleaning up, I came across the lyrics to the song. They were sitting there in the middle of the dining room table where we could hardly miss them; they were scribbled in a drunken scrawl, which (given his lifestyle) did not necessarily mean that he’d written them down last night, but I couldn’t help but think that he had, that he’d wanted me to have them.

  I threw them away. But not before I’d memorized them.

  •••

  Lunch passes in melancholy silence.

  The ballistics center has been running more calculations. They’re projecting that we are close to the upper end of the reentry corridor, but they are not willing to define “close.” The controllers and I know there is very little we can do to adjust our trajectory now, except to attempt to fire the reentry thrusters once we cast off the instrument-aggregate compartment. But the reentry thrusters are only meant for rotation, rather than translation—usually when one fires, the one on the opposite side of the craft fires in the opposite direction—so they have to figure out if we can even use them this way. Also, the compartment’s meant to be cast off right before reentry; it holds the solar panels and most of the oxygen tanks, so once it’s gone we will have a very limited amount of power and oxygen left—enough for reentry, plus reserves. Not enough to last very long if I’m stranded in orbit.

  In the meantime we get to work on more immediate issues. We still need to be rotating about the solar axis, steadily turning so as to even out the heating and cooling on various sides of the craft. We had to stop the rotation to attempt our course corrections. But now that the instrument-aggregate thrusters are exhausted, we don’t have a good way to start it back up.

  What’s worse, the voltmeters indicate that the current’s erratic now: the panels are angled in relation to the sun, and they of course cannot draw full power that way. This is what forces us to act. We’re still far enough from earth that we can’t get back there on the buffer batteries. We have to restart the rotation before the ship starts dying.

  “Dawn-2, this is Cedar. The current from the panels is low. Do you have a plan to restart rotation?”

  I wait. The transmission delays are getting shorter.

  “Cedar, Dawn-2.” Komarov, again. “We’ll have to do it with the reentry thrusters.”

  “Understood.” We have no other choice: technical specifications and the simple laws of physics have barricaded us into a narrow path.

  “This will be a tricky burn, Yuri. Since it’s only the reentry thrusters, we’ll need to fire the pitch thrusters as well to cancel out the pitch moment.”

  The reentry thrusters are only on the descent module. Because they’re only meant to be fired when the instrument-aggregate compartment’s been cast off, they’re lined up with the descent module’s center of mass, so as to impart rotation along only one axis. But with the instrument-aggregate compartment attached, the roll thruster will cause the combined spacecraft to rotate along more than one axis. There will be a pitching motion as well, which they need to cancel with the opposite pitch thruster.

  “Do you have instructions?”

  An awkward pause: “We would prefer to do it under ground control, Yura.”

  “Very well.” I press the buttons to allow them to take over, and I settle back. I know when it’s time to do what I’m told. “Ground control enabled.”

  Since these thrusters are directly attached to my module, I can feel the vibrations as they fire. I watch the instruments. Soon the voltmeters show more current coming from the solar panels—the normal rise and fall as the panels go broadwise, then edgewise, then broadwise.

  “Cedar, this is Dawn-2. Confirm you are rotating again.”

  “Dawn-2, there is a little wobble, but it’s as good as it can be. Thank you much.”

  “Thank you, Yura.”

  Soon it is the dinner period. I eat halfheartedly.

  I close the working porthole cover and place the temporary paper shield over the other. I can shut out the sun but cannot turn off my mind.

  The sheer number of technical issues on this mission seems to defy all logic and probability. The problems with the stellar alignment telescope, and the unnecessary waste of propellant because of it. The S5.53 failing. The problem with the stuck thruster that ca
used us to consume most of the rest of the propellant.

  When you are awake, your thoughts are ordered and rational, logical and smooth like glass. But in the night the clear glass shatters and everything is sharp and strange and chaotic.

  •••

  I find my mind wandering back to Komarov, to the launch that had been scheduled for late April.

  There had been problems developing the Union. Everyone knows it is the craft of the future—even my moon ship is derived from it—but it was not quite ready back then. The unmanned test craft had failed.

  It seemed they were planning on launching anyway. But there was a technical report detailing ongoing issues with the craft that needed to be resolved. Was I influenced by what Vysotsky had said about the state? Was it some other factor, some defiance that had been growing in me? I do not know. But I saw to it that the right people saw this report. Never mind how—I made sure that the State Commission didn’t rubber-stamp the approval for Komarov’s mission. Instead they decided on an additional test flight—during which the parachutes failed, necessitating a redesign of the parachute compartments.

  Given these disruptions, and given the desire to do something undeniably more spectacular than Gemini, the circumlunar flight became more and more appealing. But I cannot help thinking that I made some enemies during all of this.

  In my rational mind, I know these thoughts don’t make sense. People are not quite that evil in real life, only in the movies. And Komarov saw to it that they executed the solar rotation burn very competently. Still there is that nagging thought: would anyone be happy if I don’t come back?

  •••

  Usually I look at the hammer and sickle and see it as it’s supposed to be: a symbol of the revolution. Workers and peasants united. And yet the two can be understood differently.

  You probably haven’t heard of Nelyubov. I won’t go into details, but suffice it to say he was an alcoholic, and he disgraced himself. And after his night of disaster, and before they sent him off, he described the hammer and sickle in this negative sense. He said: The state has to cut you down to size, and it has to hammer you into line.