Public Loneliness: Yuri Gagarin's Circumlunar Flight (16 page)

And I could have hit him, but I
did not want to press my luck. Even in my drunken state I knew there were
things I could not do. I thought of Nelyubov. I did not want to end up like
Nelyubov.

I wobbled, looked around. The ambassador’s
wife had disappeared.

But the ambassador was there and
I clapped him on the back. And perhaps I thought of Kamanin and how it’s best
to smooth these things over. I think I told him that there had been a great
misunderstanding, but drinking was the answer to our misunderstandings. And he
said: Then come now, comrade, let’s have a drink. And we stumbled off,
crunching spent flashbulbs under our shoes and nearly tripping over the rolls
of exposed film that were strewn across the wooden floor like party streamers.
And I asked why people wanted to take pictures on a night such as this? What
was the point of such a night if you couldn’t forget what you wanted to forget?

And I wanted to make nice with
him and relax and bond with a drink. But I was still curious about where his
wife had gone, and I believe I was looking about for her, and he said something
to the effect of: What are you looking for, comrade? There is nowhere to go.
And I was still somewhat mad at him for being such an ass, and I think I spotted
his wife across the room, and it occurred to me that I did not even know her
name…

And…well, I would love to tell
you how the evening ended. But it appears there is no more film in the cameras.

•••

And now we are coming to the
end—the end of the planned mission, at least.

I have eaten my lunch and my
dinner. Our projections had me landing at a total mission time of 6 days, 18
hours, 24 minutes, give or take. And we are closing in on that.

I am strapped in to my seat,
ready to reenter if we catch the atmosphere and slow down enough. The
instrument-aggregate compartment is still on, but I must be ready to cast it
off at a moment’s notice. (The base of the descent module—its all-important
heat shield—is covered by the instrument-aggregate compartment, and if we do
not discard that once we’re in the upper atmosphere, then the craft may tumble,
may reenter wrong-end first and burn up.)

I can see the earth filling the
porthole at last. All of you—dear people!—all of you are down there, and I have
taken the most magnificent photograph in history, and I desperately want to
show it to you, if only I get the chance.

And outside the window I think I
see the barest whiff of orange-pink plasma. I think I see it, but I cannot be
sure, and perhaps I just think I see it because I’m hoping for it. And I wait
for the furnace, I wait for the forge. But nothing happens.

In these moments, I am excited,
alive, pulse pounding, full of anticipation. But as it becomes clear that I am
not reentering, that feeling falls away, and in its place comes a great
weariness.

Before long I am passing into
orbital night. I crane my head and catch a sliver of the sunset. I do not know
how many more I will see before I fall to earth. I have enough food and oxygen for
a few more days. As for what will happen when that runs out—well, I don’t want
to dwell on that.

It is time to report in, at
least.

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

No response.

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

“Cedar, this is Dawn-2.” Blondie.
“You’re still up there.”

“I am still up here. Temperature
and pressure and electrical readings are all normal.”

“The State Commission is
convening to discuss your situation, Yura. They may make an announcement of
some sort depending on how the discussion goes. But they are waiting on
calculations from the ballistics center to determine your current trajectory.
You’re in a highly elliptical orbit. We don’t know how soon it will decay.”

“Understood, Blondie.”

“I talked to Mishin before he
left. He mentioned the possibility of turning on your interior camera and
having you make a statement.”

“Live or taped? Who is the
audience?”

“I’m not sure what they’re going
to allow, Yura. We could do a public statement and a private one. But think about
what you might want to say and who you might want to say it to. And we’ll see
what they permit. Rest assured we won’t forget about you, Yura. We won’t rest
until you’re home.”

“I know, Blondie.”

“How are you feeling?”

“I am tired. I didn’t sleep well
last night. I may need to take a rest period.”

“Very well, Yura. We should have
more answers for you on your next pass.”

“If I’m awake.” I smile.

“Very well, Yura, We won’t wake
you unless it’s urgent.”

“Very well. That is all for now.
I do need to sleep, Blondie.”

“Very well, Yura.”

My body’s tired, but my mind is
spinning through possibilities. I tell myself it’s time to relax. Everything
that can be done has been done, for now. There is some peace in that, at least.

For a few seconds, in fact, my
tiredness falls away and I see everything exactly as it is. There is a
sharpness and a sense of reality to everything. I scan the instruments.
Everything is not as planned, but perhaps it is all as it’s supposed to be. And
everything—every panel and switch in the old familiar cabin—suddenly looks
clear and real and new.

I look up at the perfect circle
of the camera lens. Its cold dead gleam. The illumination source is of course
turned off. Will they have me make a statement? What is there to say? I can
think of a few things, but I will keep them to myself for now.

I turn off the interior lights. I
leave my makeshift porthole cover off. I feel confident that the sunlight won’t
wake me when we pass out of earth’s shadow.

What am I thinking? I’m sure
you’d like to know. And I’m sure you’d prefer certain things, depending on your
beliefs and biases. Am I cursing the system that put me up here? Angry that
they sent me to the moon in what turned out to be a flawed spacecraft, all
because they were hoping for one more feat of desperate glory? Or am I grateful
to that system for at least giving me these experiences in the first place? Am
I saying a prayer for my eventual safe return? Or do I trust that it will
happen through some other means—orbital mechanics or atmospheric drag, or a
final trick with the reentry thrusters? Perhaps I’m hoping for one more chance
to speak to my wife, my children. You can imagine what you will. Far be it from
me to contradict you.

Perhaps I’m thinking of Maresyev,
and how I may be sacrificing more than him, at last. A cold comfort, but there
is something like satisfaction in the thought. Perhaps I’m thinking of
Hemingway’s old man. The old man went very far out to sea, and when he did, he
caught the biggest fish he’d ever seen, but because he’d gone so far, he could
not bring it home intact.

I told Blondie that I needed
rest, and it is true. I wanted someone to talk to; I wanted to tell my story,
and to know what it means. (And I have been telling it! And I trust that you
are hearing me, somehow.) But I’m getting tired of storytelling. And I still
don’t know who you are. And a man needs privacy at certain times, after all.

And it occurs to me: perhaps you
already know how the story ends! Maybe you have read newspapers or seen
television reports telling of my safe rescue by the Chilean Navy; perhaps you
have seen a photograph of me climbing a ladder onto one of their ships,
flashing my famous grin. And you may have already seen my photograph, the
unimaginable beauty of the earth rising above the moon.

Or perhaps I fell to earth too
late. You may have seen footage of the state funeral, or possibly you watched
the broadcast live: the somber crowds, the stern men carrying an urn with my
ashes to a final resting place in the Kremlin wall with the heavy notes of
Mozart’s “Requiem” playing all the while. Perhaps they told you the truth. But
maybe they had no reason to do so. The spacecraft might have come down on
Soviet soil, or tumbled on reentry and disintegrated. Perhaps they simply told
you I died in an air crash.

Then again, I might still be up
here. That, too, is possible. Again, I don’t know who you are. Perhaps all of
this is still happening.

Outside I can see the field of
stars moving as my spacecraft slowly turns. A tremendous amount of stars, an unimaginable
number, stars like you have never seen them—bright and dim and near and far.
And far below there is a dark hole, an arc of a circle where the earth is
blocking them out. I can tell it is getting smaller, and farther and farther
away by the minute.

I start to count the countless
stars.

I fall asleep.

I wake up.

I fall asleep.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many thanks to
Francis French for his enthusiasm and support, and his commentary on the
finished manuscript.

Dr. Asif
Siddiqi’s two-volume set
Sputnik and the Soviet Space Challenge
and
The
Soviet Space Race with Apollo
remains the definitive English-language
history of the Soviet space program, from its curious roots in postwar Germany
to the bitter frustration of the failed N-1 program. It’s everything history
should be: readable, authoritative, well-sourced, and insightful. Not only was
his book an invaluable resource, but he also took the time to chat, to read my
end product, and to correct a few of my mistakes. I’m very grateful for his feedback
and corrections.

Dr. Andrew
Jenks’
Yuri Gagarin: The Cosmonaut who Couldn’t Stop Smiling
is perhaps
the most insightful English-language biography of Yuri Gagarin, as well as an
excellent insight into his place in Soviet and Russian culture. Jenks takes a
difficult task—digging deep to find the truth of a man who’s been shielded in a
cocoon of myth—and succeeds admirably. It was the single most valuable source
in helping me get a feel for Gagarin as a character; one of the anecdotes in
the book even provided me with my title.

Into that
Silent Sea
and
In the Shadow of the Moon
by Francis French and Colin
Burgess did a wonderful job of portraying the relatively unknown personalities
who flew Soviet rockets into space—it’s a great look at the people behind the
posters.

Two Sides
of the Moon
by Dave Scott and Alexey Leonov was a wonderful dual memoir. In
particular, the latter’s reminisces about his friend and comrade were touching
and moving, a strong reminder of the essential humanity of the man behind the
myth. (He also discusses Gagarin’s love of
The Old Man and the Sea
in
some detail. Though there are some issues with his recounting—he claims to have
met Hemingway in Cuba some time after the author’s 1961 suicide—this still was
an invaluable thematic contribution to my story.) He’s also the main source for
the anecdote about Korolev’s description of his arrest and exile during
Stalin’s Purges

Boris
Chertok’s
Rockets and People
was an excellent and candid memoir about
the trials and tribulations of the Soviet Union’s rocket scientists. His
description of their problem-solving methodology was interesting enough that I
reproduced it here; his book also pointed me towards several important
linguistic discrepancies between American and Russian/Soviet nomenclature.
Lastly, it had some great insights into the interplay between Soviet strategic
rocketry and space exploration.

James
Harford’s
Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America
to the Moon
is a great biography of the towering and vital man at the
center of it all.

Soyuz: A
Universal Spacecraft
by Rex Hall and David Shayler contained some
tremendously valuable information about the Soyuz and Zond spacecraft systems
and interiors, as well as some very helpful technical descriptions of in-flight
malfunctions on various missions.

Kosmos: A
Portrait of the Russian Space Age
is a wonderful visual portrayal of the
people and places that made the Soviet Union the world’s first spacefaring
nation. Adam Bartos’ photographs are witty and wonderful, and Svetlana Boym’s
accompanying essay gave valuable insights into the nation’s space culture.

Starman:
The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin
by Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony
is an entertaining and informative biography that captures the Gagarin magic
while also getting at the contradictions that cropped up in his life in later
years. While they perhaps give too much credence to some of the thinly-sourced
stories about the Soviet space program, it’s still a worthwhile read.