Public Loneliness: Yuri Gagarin's Circumlunar Flight

by Brennan, Gerald

  Two days later, Sergei Pavlovich was dead.

  He’d been scheduled for surgery to remove a polyp in his colon. The minister of health himself was performing the surgery. But Korolev started to bleed profusely. They’d tried to intubate him, but since his jaw had been broken during his interrogation, the surgeons could not get the tube down into his airway.

  After his death, his identity was revealed at last. Truth made his death front-page news, and he was no longer merely the Chief Designer. He was cremated and interred with full honors in the Kremlin wall. A televised funeral with Mozart’s Requiem playing, and all the ceremony the state could muster.

  Brezhnev spoke; he gave a brief mention of Korolev’s ordeal, which surprised me, for I’d expected none. And I gave the eulogy; I scarcely remember what I said, but as I surveyed the expectant faces in Red Square, I was glad at last that Sergei Pavlovich was finally getting the praise and recognition that he deserved; he deserved it, indeed, far more than I did.

  When all that was over, several of us gathered at the apartment of Boris Chertok, one of Korolev’s chief deputies, to eat chocolate and drink cognac and reminisce. All of us were still stunned by the turn of events; Komarov in particular was insistent that there be an investigation into Korolev’s death.

  Do I believe the state killed him? No, of course not. (Unless, of course, one considers all the damage done to his health by his time in the camps, in which case they did indeed kill him, but in a rather delayed manner, like cigarettes do.) I guess what I mean is this: Korolev was hardly the picture of health when he went in for that fatal surgery; he’d had a heart attack in 1960 for instance, and the doctors had warned him to lessen his workload, but he hadn’t listened. And indeed, the official report on his death said the operation had uncovered a fist-sized cancer in his lower abdomen, one that would have killed him in a few months even if he’d never gone in for surgery.

  Still, I can’t help but wonder if they’d botched the operation, if they’d lied about the tumor to deflect attention from themselves. The state cannot afford to admit to mistakes.

  And it occurs to me that, as far as the state is concerned, a dead hero might be more useful than a live one: you can put whatever words you want into the mouth of a dead hero. You can fill his life with your own meanings.

  •••

  Morning.

  What I thought would be my last full day up here. (Now all I can say is: it’s the last day of the trip back.)

  I uncover the portholes and sunlight stabs my eyes. The craft is still rotating. Because of the angle of the windows relative to our flight path, I cannot see much of the earth—just a sliver when my head is very near the hull of the ship, and only when the wobble in the rotation is just right. But I know it is getting bigger. We are moving faster.

  After taking care of various bodily functions, I decide to call down to the control center. Unlike Hemingway’s old man, I am not alone, no matter if I feel otherwise.

  “Dawn-2, this is Cedar. Dawn-2, this is Cedar.”

  No response.

  “Dawn-2, this is Cedar. Dawn-2, this is Cedar.”

  Again, nothing.

  “Dawn-2, this is Cedar, please come in.”

  Then: Blondie! “Yura, it is good to hear you!”

  “You’re back, Blondie!”

  “They ordered me back to get some rest, Yura. I was too tired to argue.” (A crackle.) “…stole my alarm clock. I slept for twelve hours, straight through.”

  The quickness of the responses reassures me. I am indeed close to home. I grin. “Must be nice, lazy.”

  “Yura, I tried to stay on the console! I was falling asleep on my feet! They were very concerned!”

  I try to keep my voice level. “I’m sure they were, Blondie.” At last I chuckle.

  “You had me going there, Yura,” Blondie says. “You know I will stay here until I drop.”

  “I know, Blondie.”

  I do know it. For all my fretting in the night, I do know it.

  Again, I don’t know who you are, or what prejudices you may have about our system. But for all my occasional disillusionment, I must say this: the normal human bonds of friendship and family are far stronger than anything imposed by the state. I have read the banned books, not just Orwell’s 1984, but also the books it stole from, Zamyatin’s We and Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, and I know it is a staple of these stories to imagine betrayal by a friend or loved one, those closest to you. And such things do happen, here and there, but by and large it is just not the case. (Incidentally, 1984 seems somewhat narcissistic on Orwell’s part. To believe that you, as an average citizen, are worth watching by the state, for no reason whatsoever? It defies logic to believe they’d expend that much effort watching you. Me, perhaps, but not you. I’m not trying to be vain here! It’s just that the state doesn’t care about most people.) I digress. The point is, I know I’m cared for. These friendships, these relationships, all mean something.

  “I need to know the schedule for the day. What time do I cast off the instrument-aggregate compartment?”

  A delay: “Hold one, Yura.”

  Mishin comes on: “The State Commission has been discussing your situation, Yura…” (Static.) “…some debate. If you’re still not in line with the reentry corridor, it may be best to leave the compartment on. It’ll help your orbit decay faster, and if you’re up there for…” (Static.) “…it may be necessary to have it so as to not run down the batteries. We can always cast it off once it’s clear you’re going to reenter.”

  “Very well.” So it’s true, then: they don’t know how long I will be up here.

  Blondie comes back on. “There’s someone else who wants to speak to you.”

  A pause, then a voice: Kamanin. “Yuri, we may need to make an unfortunate announcement.”

  My throat catches: “What kind of announcement?”

  “Yuri, if you don’t hit the reentry corridor, we won’t know where or when you’re coming down. It could take some time for the ballistics center to…” (Static.) “…a partial orbit or an elliptical orbit, and given the inclination, it could be almost anywhere. If it’s at sea, it may be that some other country’s ships are better positioned to provide assistance. This was obviously not how we wanted to announce this mission to the world, but for your safety, it might be best to make a global announcement, so everyone is prepared.”

  I think about this. If we manage a ballistic reentry straightaway, it will send me into the Indian Ocean, and we’re prepared for that; there are Soviet ships tasked to retrieve me. And the normal reentry profile, the guided skip reentry, will bring me back to a landing on Soviet soil, like every other mission we’ve had. But this…I imagine the possibilities: Indians, Indonesians, Chinese, Chileans, Brazilians, British, Americans.

  At last I respond: “You can hold off on that announcement.”

  This delay feels long, puzzled: “Hold off?”

  “Yes. Don’t say anything until it’s necessary. When the ballistics center knows when I’m coming down, we should at least have a short notice. That’s when we should announce it, and only to whomever might be positioned to help.”

  Blondie comes back on: “You’re sure, Yura?”

  “I’m sure. There’s no need to look foolish.”

  •••

  What else is there that you wish to know about me? They say actions reveal character, and I’ve tried to give an honest account of my actions. Do you wish to know more, still?

  Again, I have told you about catastrophes, but not my own.

  Do you want to know about Foros? The truth is I don’t remember all that much.

  It was September of 1961, just a few months after my flight. Everyone knew I needed a break after the relentless touring, and Titov had just landed, so we were vacationing in the Crimea. We were boating, and we were drinking, and I injured my hand, and they patched me up. Then came more drinking, and I woke up in the hospital, and everything was explained to me, the fall and the surgery
, and the fact that I’d have to miss the 22nd Party Congress, which was coming up in a few weeks.

  I understand everyone’s explanations of my actions, but I still have a hard time believing them. The official story is that I hit my head while trying to grab my daughter and keep her from falling. I can tell you the official story’s untrue. I cannot tell you the truth, for I don’t know it. It’s possible that it happened the way it was explained to me. Still, I can’t help thinking that somehow Kamanin had engineered the whole event to discredit me, or at least to have some leverage. Certainly after that I made it a point to be better friends with the agents in my security detail!

  There was another night I recall—somewhat—from that December. I believe I was in Ceylon. The whirlwind had stopped, briefly, after Foros, but it had picked up again, and strengthened into a tropical cyclone. Titov was touring too, now, and they’d brought along my wife to keep an eye on me, but it was relentless all the same. Here I was, a world traveler—I, who had never been out of the Soviet Union before my orbit!—visiting places on a moment’s notice after last-minute changes in itinerary, places I had never heard of, places I had to go back and find on maps and globes just to know where I’d been.

  So my wife was with me, and our children were back at home with my parents, and we desperately wanted just to go out shopping, to feast our senses on all the local strangeness, the sights and sounds and smells of the bustling markets, the dark-skinned locals and their babbling tongues, the leafy palms and tea trees.

  Instead I was making speeches, planting ceremonial trees, meeting with the prime minister. Sitting on the couch for what was ostensibly a chat—as if either of us spoke the other’s language!—but was really an excuse for people to take pictures of us together.

  It was like I’d been cursed, one of those strange curses in folklore where you asked for something good but weren’t specific enough. I’d wanted to see the world; I’d seen it all in 106 minutes. And now I was seeing it again, taking a lower orbit, one that felt much faster.

  I complained to Kamanin briefly, at the end of a grueling day which was to be topped off by a reception at the Soviet embassy. We were alone in the car with Alexei driving and Venyamin riding along and my wife’s car following behind. A few precious minutes alone.

  “Is something wrong, Yuri?” he asked.

  I burst. “We need to slow this down! I’m burned out! I can’t enjoy any of it! I went to India, and I met Nehru, but I never saw an elephant!”

  “You wouldn’t have been picked if you weren’t the right man for the job.”

  “It’s too much!”

  “It’s necessary!” Kamanin exclaimed. “Do you think this is about…seeing elephants? This is necessary!” Briefly he seemed about to lose his composure. But he took a deep breath and continued. “We are…in a competition, Yuri. Our country. Another war. But we have the ability to fight this one in newspapers and on television screens, rather than on the battlefield. No death, no destruction, just…competition. Think about that! Think of all the hardships you’re saving us! We’ve already endured two wars this century. The second far worse than the first. The third, if it comes, will be immeasurably worse than the second. But if it doesn’t happen…” He stared at me. “We can keep it from happening, Yuri. You can keep it from happening. If they’re in awe of our rockets, of our technology…You are the face of that, Yuri! Nobody knows who Sergei Pavlovich is. You are the face of it! Think about that.”

  I hated to think about it. But he was right. What could I do?

  Back at the embassy, there were more photographers, more reporters. We were swept inside on the crest of a wave of people.

  I found myself seated at the head table, as usual, throwing back shot after shot with everyone who cared to come up and drink with me. I’m sure I was a little tipsy by the time the ambassador from the German Democratic Republic came up. His wife eyed me suggestively.

  “My wife wanted me to come up and drink a toast with you. But you’re already looking a little red!” Slurred but passable Russian. He patted me on the back.

  His wife added, in far better Russian: “Back home in the Western Zone, during the August crisis, they were carrying signs saying ‘Better red than dead.’”

  “We can drink to that, then!” I exclaimed, and my wife gave me an awful look. “Better red than dead!” We drank. And the ambassador’s wife looked like she’s never heard anything more entertaining.

  Soon they were swept away. And the vodka was, in truth, getting to my head, and having its other usual effects, so I headed off to avail myself of the facilities. And I was walking—one of those drunken walks where it’s as if every wall has developed its own gravitational field—and I happened to bump into the ambassador’s wife, alone this time. And I sensed that it hadn’t been an accident, that she had timed her own trip to the facilities to coincide with mine. And I’m sure I blushed a bit, but truth be told, there was some thrill in knowing she was chasing me. And I was just about at that level of drunkenness where you forget about marriages, rules, commitments—or perhaps you just decide not to care.

  And I think our dialogue went something like this:

  She said in my ear: “You look like you need to get away from all of this.”

  I’m sure I turned even redder. “They tend to keep an eye on me at these things nowadays.” I nodded towards Alexei.

  “There’s always a way to get away,” she smiled.

  “Together?”

  “I’ll go outside, you go to the bathroom, and you can climb out the window! They don’t follow you in there, do they? Come on! It’ll be like a secret mission.”

  I must have murmured some form of assent. In the bathroom, I relieved myself, standing unsteady, doing one-armed push-ups against the wall, and I wobbled back to the sink and eyed myself in the mirror, chuckling at the craziness of it all. But sure enough, I pried open the window and took off my uniform jacket with all its medals in red and gold and clambered awkwardly out, and the next thing I knew I was tumbling to the tropical grass with a thud.

  I cursed myself. Maybe this was what had happened at Foros, after all. Perhaps it was all happening again. A depressing circularity.

  Then I heard laughter. Somehow she was already outside.

  “Yuri, are you all right?” The informal you. (Granted, we’d left formality back inside.)

  Against my better judgment I, too, started laughing. “Yes, yes.”

  “Not as dignified as your last return to earth, I’m sure.”

  Again I thought of Foros. But of course she was talking about East-1. That’s all anyone talks about with me.

  “It was another adventure, at least,” I smiled. “All right, now where do we go?”

  “Why do we need to go anywhere now?” Her face was beautiful in the moonlight: pale, immaculate, pristine. “We’re outside, away from the crowd, it’s a beautiful night. What else is there?”

  She talked as if she knew me. That’s the thing about being famous: after all the press conferences and newsreels, after watching you greet so many unfamiliar situations, everyone thinks they know you. And perhaps they do. But you don’t know them.

  And yet it seemed like I did know her. That moment when you see someone and you really make eye contact in a way that energy flows between you—sometimes you have that moment right away with someone and you are instantly talking like old friends.

  “Well, let’s have a smoke at least,” I said. And I rooted about in my pockets, but my cigarettes had been crushed in the fall.

  “I’ve got a few,” she said, and pulled a silver cigarette holder from her clutch.

  And in my drunken state I said, “Do you want to go anywhere?” and she said I’d already asked that.

  I don’t know what I wanted, what I expected. You can ascribe all sorts of motives, and in truth, in drunkenness our motives so frequently get distorted and tangled and lost. But my heart was heavy, and even the alcohol hadn’t gotten rid of that. And I wanted so much. Maybe I j
ust wanted to explore the city as a normal man, to spend time as a real man, not an icon or a poster or a photo opportunity. To wander empty streets, to walk along the beach and dip my feet in tropical surf. Or to fly above it all, swoop down over the waves…

  When I lit my cigarette I took a deep breath and it all fell away. All the weight. We sat and leaned against the embassy wall in the pale moonlight and looked up at the deep blue night and the tropical trees.

  “What are those trees?”

  She laughed: a most delightful laugh. “You know what a palm tree is, don’t you, Yuri?”

  “No, I have never heard of palm trees. I am Ivan the Fool. I never left the Soviet Union before this April, and even then I just went once around the world and came back home as quickly as I could, so as to spend as much time as possible in paradise.”

  Again she laughed. “Really?”

  “That is true. I never left the country before this year. But I do know what a palm tree is. No, those other ones…” I pointed.

  “They might be cinnamon trees.”

  Now it was my turn to laugh.

  She asked what was funny.

  I explained: “When I was a little boy, before the war, my mother made tea cakes, with cinnamon. There were shortages of everything, we were poor country folk in Stalin’s Soviet Union. But she had made tea cakes, and she had cinnamon in them, for the first time in a long time. And she gave me one, but I wanted more, so I snuck back to the kitchen and I ate all of them. And my father, he was a…cranky drunk, always. And he exploded: ‘Cinnamon is scarce, Yuri! But you act as if it’s everywhere. You act like it comes from the trees!’”

  And she laughed again, a deep and hearty laugh, and I laughed too, and it felt shared and real and true and more genuine than anything.

  And the moon was full and gleaming and it occurred to me that there was nothing between it and us but distance. No walls, no barriers, no guards, just distance. What if we could go there?

  And perhaps you are wondering what was going to happen next. Would there have been something, some inappropriate romantic moment with this woman who was not my wife? Well I don’t know, either. For there came a whispered angry voice. “Yuri!” Alexei in the shadows, whispering through clenched teeth.