by Zach Powers
Giorgi was the sixth cosmonaut, brought in later, the only one who did not have a twin, who prepared to both fly and return to Earth. He had no idea the cosmonauts he knew now were not the same ones he had trained with for years. He had no idea that his five closest friends were dead. Four dead, thought Leonid, with one who might as well be.
A black radio receiver was built into the back of the Zil’s passenger seat. Ignatius fiddled with the knobs, cycling through static and squeals, until she found the robotic ghost of a voice. She tweaked the tuning until the voice came in clear. It was Yuri Levitan, announcing Leonid’s arrival in Moscow, directing the populace to Red Square and telling them which streets Leonid would traverse on the way there. Levitan’s rich voice, thick with a Moscow accent that Leonid still sometimes had trouble understanding, filled up the whole cone of the little radio’s speaker, the loudest words, always Leonid’s name, Vostok, or socialist, popping on each hard consonant.
The city began in fits and starts, buildings clustered instead of standing alone, the distance filling with the gray outlines of taller structures. Here and there, a group of Muscovites waited by the side of the road to wave as the Zil sped past. These people still wore an older style of clothes, not much different from the shapeless tunics and baggy pants that Leonid wore as a boy. Traveling from the outskirts to the city was like following a time line, the old ways evolving to modernity.
As the Zil entered the avenues of old Moscow, the crowds grew, though nothing like Nadya’s procession years before. It seemed then as if all of the city’s five million citizens had packed into Red Square, flooding the streets, slowing her car’s progress to a crawl. Men pressed against the window and proposed to her. Parents, cheeks streaked with tears, held out babies as if Nadya might bless them. Children followed the car, sometimes for blocks, surely out of sight of their families. Nadya was the first, though, and the crowds had shrunk with each subsequent launch. Leonid, being fifth, had doubted that anyone would show up at all.
Two police cars joined the Zil, one leading, one following, their blue lights flashing but faint in the midday sun. Ignatius rolled down the side window.
“Greet your admirers,” she said to Leonid.
He did not much feel like waving, but as soon as the window was down, his hand metronomed back and forth without him having to think about it, as if powered by the inrushing air. His training had included whole classes on how to emote. He could shake hands and bow and hug with professional acumen. He waved and waved. He imagined that his hand actually belonged to his brother.
The convoy passed behind the Kremlin, up to the short road that entered Red Square from the northeast. The police escort peeled off, one car in either direction. The Zil halted near Lenin’s tomb, where an armed soldier opened the door from outside. Ignatius exited and Leonid followed. By the time he was standing, however, Ignatius had merged with the crowd that pressed toward the car from all sides. The whole of Red Square was paved or laid with brick, and the sound of so many people echoed back onto itself, amplifying every clap and holler and clomp of foot. A semicircle of soldiers held the crowd back, but Leonid felt as if he were about to be crushed. As a boy, he had seen landslides tumble unstoppable down the mountainside. Then Nadya was beside him, taking his hand and pulling him along. They mounted the raised platform in front of the mausoleum.
Khrushchev waited there with a small entourage, politicos and military officers, all huddled against the back wall, where they could not be seen from below. Leonid recognized one of the officers as Marshal Nedelin. He had been forced to learn Nedelin’s face from photographs, but he could not remember why Nedelin was important. Leonid saluted, and Nadya followed suit a beat later. Instead of returning the gesture, Nedelin strode forward and gripped Leonid by each shoulder. Leaning close to Leonid’s ear, Nedelin spoke, “A good show, son. A good show, indeed.” He released Leonid and moved to Nadya, gripping her shoulders in the same fashion. She smiled, just slightly, and Leonid could not be sure but thought he saw the faintest red of a blush.
Khrushchev beamed at Leonid, a gap-toothed grin bunching his supple cheeks. Leonid had never met the man before, and was surprised by how short he was. The cosmonauts were not so tall themselves, but still Leonid looked down at the top of Khrushchev’s head, the pate sprouting a few final wisps of white hair. Khrushchev embraced first Nadya and then Leonid, deep hugs of real affection. Leonid lifted his arms, but despite the many times he had been forced to practice hugging could not return the embrace. He patted Khrushchev’s back instead.
“They’re waiting,” shouted Khrushchev, motioning in the direction of the crowd. He shoved Leonid forward. “You first.”
The roar crescendoed as the peak of Leonid’s cap came into view. By the time his whole upper half was visible, a sort of pandemonium took hold. Leonid was sure that the people were damaging their throats with such screams. The violence with which they waved their arms seemed sure to dislocate shoulders. Some hopped in place. He had expected a small crowd, but there were thousands, fanned out from in front of the mausoleum through the far reaches of Red Square. He scanned the faces for anyone he might know before realizing that the only people he knew were right there beside him or back in Star City. Maybe there was a chance to spy Ignatius, but she seemed able to disappear even within a closed room. His hand waved without him having to think about it.
Nadya took her place beside Leonid, and the roar exploded, louder still. She would always be the favorite. Russia’s first daughter. The Soviet ideal personified. The only noise to which Leonid could compare this new cheering was the launch of a rocket. The platform trembled beneath him.
When Khrushchev finally took his place alongside the cosmonauts, the cheering had abated somewhat. He did not seem to mind that there was no new ovation for him. He smiled wide and squeezed Leonid’s shoulder over and over. Several random generals shook Leonid’s hand and then Nadya’s and then waved to the crowd.
Khrushchev produced a slim felt-covered box from his inside jacket pocket. He opened the lid, revealing the glinting pentagon of a medal, Pilot Cosmonaut of the USSR. Khrushchev plucked the medal from the box as if picking a flower. It was such a tiny thing, thought Leonid, but Khrushchev held it up to the crowd as though it could be seen even from the far reaches of Red Square. Leonid had seen at least one person in the crowd with binoculars. Gripping Leonid by the lapel, as if he were about to take a swing at him, Khrushchev deftly pierced the pin of the medal through the fabric over Leonid’s chest, in and then back out again, and secured the pointed end in the clasp. Khrushchev stepped to the side and took Leonid’s arm and raised it. A new wave of cheering. Besides the man with the binoculars, Leonid doubted that anyone there knew exactly what they were cheering for.
Someone gripped Leonid’s arm and pulled him away. It was Ignatius. She had changed clothes, and now wore the uniform of an air force officer, freshly pressed, the blue unfaded. He tried to identify the medals on her chest, an ostentatious showing, but he did not recognize a single one of them. Sometimes he thought of adding random strips of fabric and scraps of metal to his own uniform to see if anyone noticed. Ignatius continued to pull him down the steps. A black Volga sedan waited near the bottom.
“You have a winning smile, comrade,” she said.
He touched his face and felt the smile there. He did not much feel like smiling. He willed his face to relax.
“I thought you were an agent of Glavlit,” he said, “not an officer in the air force.”
She tugged at the sleeve of her uniform. “You know better than any the importance of appearance. I simply . . . borrowed this uniform so I could blend in.”
“It suits you more than it suits me.”
She opened the door to the Volga. Nadya passed between them and entered the car first. Her uniform showed signs of wear, the fabric pilling, unable to hold a crisp crease. She had worn it for probably a hundred appearances. The uniform alone mi
ght have traveled farther than her sister’s single orbit.
Leonid looked back over his shoulder. The crowd crested toward him, like it would overwhelm the mausoleum, sweeping away the car and him and Nadya and Ignatius and Lenin’s waxy corpse. He wanted to join the crowd, blend his face with a thousand others. He wanted to be a blur. If he stepped into the throngs now, there was no way Ignatius could follow. He would shed his uniform jacket. He could hear in his head the sound of the medals impacting the concrete. But where would he go? Where could he? For a moment, he envied his brother.
“Get in the car,” said Ignatius. “The public isn’t done with you yet.”
He stooped into the car and sat beside Nadya. Ignatius closed the door from the outside.
* * *
• • •
THE CHIEF DESIGNER was not allowed to display his medals, dozens of them at this point, stored instead in their original boxes in a footlocker back at Star City. He wore a plain tan suit and a white shirt with no tie, huddled with a few of the other engineers beside the platform, trying to accept the roar of the crowd as his own even though not one person there knew who he was. Sometimes his title ended up in Pravda, but never a name, and certainly not a picture. What a joke of a newspaper was Pravda. What truth did it ever report? Still, he was happy. The cosmonauts were like his children, and of what is a father capable if not pride?
Mishin and Bushuyev stirred beside him, grumbling something, one of them to the other, though he could not tell which had spoken.
“What is it?” asked the Chief Designer, but he saw the answer even as he asked.
The General Designer strode in front of the mausoleum, directly below Leonid, before all the cheering thousands. He was a tall man, equal in height to the Chief Designer, though only half as broad. His gray suit was cut wide in the shoulders, forming points like a hanger was still left inside. He shuffled his feet as he walked, barely lifting them for each step.
His gaze fixed on the Chief Designer. Mishin, or was it Bushuyev, muttered a curse and the two walked away. The General Designer stopped and faced the Chief Designer, standing much too close. His breath, tinged with the meaty scent of a recent meal, blew across the Chief Designer’s face.
“Another success,” said the General Designer, shouting to be heard over the crowd and the band that played an endless loop of “Aviamarch.”
“Nothing less,” said the Chief Designer.
“But what’s next? Surely even you must grow weary of these endless orbits.”
“The Earth has been orbiting the sun for all of human existence, and no one complains about that.”
“I think you equate your own complacency with that of everyone else.”
“Of all the things I’ve been called, this is the first time I can add complacent to the list.”
The General Designer leaned in and spoke the Chief Designer’s real name, a name he should not have known.
“You won’t long be the only star in the sky,” said the General Designer, “nor the brightest.”
The Chief Designer grasped the upper arm of the General Designer and pushed him away, holding him at arm’s length.
“The Americans are already there,” said the Chief Designer, “and that’s the only competition I care to consider.”
“As do I, comrade,” said the General Designer. “But ask yourself, are you really the one in the best position to win it?”
The General Designer shrugged off the Chief Designer’s grasp and strode back in front of the mausoleum. He stepped into the crowd on the other side. The Chief Designer watched his head bob in and out of view until he lost sight of it.
Mishin and Bushuyev stepped forward.
“What a dolboeb,” said one of them.
“Doesn’t he have a point?” asked the Chief Designer.
“You’re a Soviet hero, Chief Designer. Until the General Designer’s rocket launches, until his capsule reaches the moon, he’s nothing but a pretender.”
“We pretend, all of us,” said the Chief Designer, and then to himself, “that the only ones who know my name should be adversaries.”
He thought just then of Leonid. Not the one here on Earth, but the one still in orbit, the one whose every breath drew him nearer to the last. That was a real hero. One without body, survived only by his name.
* * *
• • •
THE CAMERAS FLASHED as soon as Leonid entered the room. He paused just inside the doorway and blinked away the spots, only to have the first round of flashes followed directly by another. The photographers, snapping pictures every few seconds, stood along the back wall of the room. In front of them, in low wooden seats, sat the reporters. The seats looked as if they had been made for children. Leonid’s hand waved without him having to think about it.
Ignatius entered behind him and ushered him to a seat beside the podium. At least a dozen microphones blossomed from the podium’s top, many labeled with letters from other alphabets. Nadya lagged in last, looking around as if she had entered the wrong room. She took the seat next to Leonid.
A man Leonid did not know took the podium first, talking about the space program as if he were somehow involved with it, though Leonid did not think the man was one of the Chief Designer’s engineers. Certainly not one important enough to be speaking in such grand terms. The man pontificated about the importance of conquest and about the exceptional dedication of the individuals who made it possible. He spoke of the pride of the nation as if it were his own personal emotion. He seemed to be able to pause and smile just before every camera flash.
“It’s now my honor,” said the man, “to introduce to the world one of the heroes of the Soviet Union, the fifth cosmonaut to leave the surface of the Earth and to safely return.”
The cameras popped again from the back of the room as Leonid took the podium. He had spent most of his life preparing for this moment, but none of the training had included the flashes. He felt dizzy and blind. Leaning forward, he went too far and bumped his chin into one of the microphones. Ignatius squirmed in her seat. The sight of her discomfort somehow comforted him. He laughed and flashed a grin. A grin he had rehearsed in the mirror every night for months—his signature expression, Ignatius called it. His lips felt both strange and familiar. He rubbed his chin where it had bumped the microphone.
“I guess,” said Leonid, “I’m still not back to being familiar with the feel of gravity.”
Members of the Soviet press laughed, and then a moment later so did the international reporters.
“Let me start by saying how honored I am to have been part of this historic achievement of the Soviet Union.”
Leonid followed the script of his introductory remarks, words that he had rehearsed nearly as much as his grin, rehearsed to the point of meaninglessness. He did not even recall the content of what he spoke. It had taken him only a few readings to realize that there was not much content to it, anyway. When he had expressed this concern to Ignatius, she laughed. “You’re not supposed to say anything,” she had said, “just something.”
Now Leonid snuck another glance at Ignatius, leaning her elbows on the low table beside the podium, watching him, and she nodded her approval.
He inflected the right words of the speech. The gloriouses and exceptionals and superiors. He had read the speeches of the previous cosmonauts, and he knew these same words had been spoken at similar podiums many times before.
The first, expected questions came from the Soviet reporters. Leonid related the made-up details of his life, from his name to his parents to his home commune, where his parents had worked the land and exemplified communist ideals before untimely deaths. He could barely remember his real parents, and sometimes even he confused the stories with the truth. His name, even that was false. About the only truth he uttered was the fact that he was Ukrainian. He suspected that if not for his accent, of which he had ne
ver been able to completely rid himself, the Chief Designer would have insisted on changing his heritage as well. When Ignatius took over his publicity training, just a few months ago, the first thing she had done was give him speech lessons. He could hide his accent for a time, but it always reemerged the longer he spoke. Eventually, Ignatius had accepted it and said the Soviet people would, too.
The first international reporter asked a question in what sounded like French.
Ignatius translated, “What is it like to be weightless?”
“At first like falling,” said Leonid, “and then you float.”
It was the answer Nadya had given, the other Nadya, the one who rode that first rocket and died. Mars had communicated with her the whole time she was in range of the radio receiver, chatting as if the two of them were at a cocktail party, not separated by thousands of kilometers. The transcripts of those conversations had been used by all the other cosmonauts, the twins who remained behind, to describe space.
“What did the Earth look like?” asked a German.
“One is struck by the size, of course,” answered Leonid, “but also by the smallness. I could see so much more of it, the whole thing in a matter of hours. And all around it is boundless space.”
An American spoke next, “Does the Soviet space program have plans for the next mission?”