Public Loneliness: Yuri Gagarin's Circumlunar Flight (14 page)

But at last, upstairs, we
presented it to him, and there were tears in his eyes, and we knew our efforts
had been worthwhile. Few men truly get to know that their life’s work has made
a difference; we wanted to make sure he knew that we knew that he was the one
truly indispensable man in all of this, in all of our lives and careers and
explorations.

His apartment filled up—engineers,
cosmonauts, family, servants. I remember meat and cabbage pies, and cognac. We
drank many toasts, and we ate so much that it did not matter how much we drank.

And when at last everyone had
gone, all the servants had retired and Korolev’s wife had gone to bed, and we
were finally going to leave, Korolev motioned for us to stay.

And he started to talk. He spoke
with the looseness and freedom that, in our country, only comes late at night
among close friends when one is drunk.

“You men have been chosen by the
state to receive tremendous things.” His voice was strangely serious. “All the
honors and accolades that the country can offer. But the state only gives what
it has the power to take away.”

Blondie and I glanced over at one
another. Neither of us said anything.

“I’m sure you see me as a good
Soviet man. A perfect member of the state. Humble and anonymous, content only
to build the rockets and let the state have the glory. I suppose that’s how I
want to be seen.”

He motioned for a cigarette. He
did not normally smoke. I provided him with one and lit it, and he kept on: “In
1938, the NKVD came in the night to get me. They were rounding up a lot of
people in those days, but it was the sort of thing people only talked about in
whispers. They came for me in the night and did not even give me a chance to
bid my family goodbye.”

“Before I knew it, I was in some
dank holding cell in some subterranean jail. They saw to it that I did not
sleep. Periodically they took me in for questioning. I lost all track of time.
They tortured me. At one point, they smashed a pitcher of water against my head
and broke my jaw. And I did not even know why I had been arrested until they
brought me in for my so-called ‘trial.’”

“When it was time for the
‘trial,’ I felt a little better, for I knew the men running it. There was a
troika of judges, led by a party official named Voroshikov, whom I’d met
socially on several occasions. But that day there was a deadness in his eyes;
it was as if he’d never met me. He handed me a paper alleging that I had
funneled funds from an agricultural institute to set up a new design bureau for
rocketry. He asked me if it was true, and I said, ‘No.’ Then one of the other
judges said, ‘All these bastards say they’re innocent. Give him ten years.’”

“From there I was shipped to
Kolyma, to the gold mines. A long journey by train, east across the country in
boxcars, shitting and pissing in pots. Then by boat across the sea of Oshkosh,
north to this godforsaken spot of far Siberia. It was awful work, exhausting
work. Clearing trees and mining. Watching one’s fellow prisoners get thinner
and thinner and thinner, and realizing it was happening to you, too, that the
skin was drawing tighter over your bones, and the shape of your skeleton was
becoming evident.”

“I was there for a year. And I
would have died, had I spent another year there. The fact that I lived is
somewhat providential. I am not a religious man, but there were several
unlikely factors which saved my life.”

“First, it became apparent to
those in power that they should not be sending talented people to slave away
doing manual labor in gold mines when they could instead make us slave away
doing engineering work for the aircraft industry. So I was recalled to Moscow.”

“Of course, the camps were a
great distance from the port—far off in the back country. So I had to hitch a
ride by truck back to Magadan. The driver only took me when I gave him my boots
in exchange for his worn-out shoes. We got back to Magadan in the afternoon,
and it turned out that the last ship of the season had sailed that morning. I
later found out that that ship had sunk with all hands. Again, fate had spared
me. Or God. Whatever you prefer.”

Blondie and I sat there, rapt.
Time and tiredness melted away. All that remained was the story.

Korolev continued: “Of course, I
was on my own for food and shelter. The truck driver had gone, and I certainly
wasn’t about to go back to the mines. I stumbled about on the outskirts of
town; I was hungry and out of my mind and nearing collapse. And I found a loaf
of bread by the side of the road. A fresh, pure, new loaf of bread. I wolfed it
down and gained strength to go on and eventually snuck in to another camp, into
a worker’s barracks. And I told them about the bread, and they laughed. They
thought it was impossible. In that part of the country, bread was more precious
than gold. Nobody would have just dropped a loaf by the side of the road.”

“In the springtime I finally
caught a ship to Vladivostok. Conditions at the worker’s barracks were better than
the mines, but it still had been a miserable winter. I was famished, gaunt and
skeletal, and my teeth were falling out from scurvy. The authorities put me on
a train back to Moscow, but I was taken off halfway because it was feared I
might die. And it just so happened that there was a healer in that town, a wild
man who lived in a cave on a hillside. Some old lady summoned him, and he
rubbed herbs on my gums and fed me broth, and in a week I had my strength
back.”

“I spent the rest of the war in a
compound near Moscow, working on projects for the state and for various
bureaus. We were still prisoners, but at least we were well-fed, and working
with our minds, rather than our bodies. And the war ended, and they needed
people with knowledge of rocketry to go to Germany and figure out what the
Germans had done with the A-4. And I went, and I made myself useful. So the
next thing I know, I was made a colonel. My past was forgiven.”

“Because of my accomplishments in
that field, I became valuable to the state. I was not officially rehabilitated
until 1957, but I was at least valuable. I could not help but sense that I had
been saved by divine providence, though, saved for a purpose, saved to help
accomplish this grand goal, of sending man into the heavens. All that
Tsiolkovsky dreamed about and wrote about and researched, I was to bring to
fruition.”

“But of course, the state kept me
anonymous. The Chief Designer. And they did not let any of us publish under our
own names, nor did they praise us publicly. I’m told that the Nobel Prize
committee even asked Khrushchev for my name; they wanted to give me the Nobel
Prize for physics. And Nikita Sergeyevich told them that it was an
accomplishment of the whole people. They have circulated their reasons for all
of this, all those paranoid Stalinist fantasies about foreign agents and
saboteurs waiting to assassinate us should our names be publicly known. But
other names have been known. Kurchatov was the father of the atomic bomb, and
everyone knew who he was before he died. So I cannot help but think that, in my
case, there is another reason: the state cannot afford to admit to mistakes. If
there is officially no God, then the state must appear to be infallible.
Otherwise people will look elsewhere for their peace of mind.”

Blondie and I looked at one
another. Neither of us had heard any of this. What was I feeling? Anger?
Frustration? Sadness? Perhaps many things at once. But one also must grow numb.
There were many things we could have said, but we became aware of our tiredness,
of the lateness of the hour. We left in a somber mood.

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.”