Public Loneliness: Yuri Gagarin's Circumlunar Flight (12 page)

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.