by John Moralee
*
The walls closed completely in late November. Father had been to Star City supervising security and had telephoned to say he’d be back at eight. I checked train time tables and discovered the train would arrive at seven, not eight, so I had gone to meet him.
I booked a cab for the return journey and waited at the Moscow train station. The train arrived and the passengers exited. He was at the far end of the platform, and Leni was with him. I waved to catch their attention - failed - and pushed through the crowd. I was ten metres from them when Father kissed Leni, the long lingering kiss of a lover. Her arms went around him in a long embrace.
Rage filled me and I ran, ran from the platform and into the snow filled streets. I ran the mile across the city and walked frozen and exhausted into our home. Mother saw my distress.
“What’s wrong, Andrei?”
I was speechless. What could I say? She had lost Valery. I could not add to her pain with my father’s betrayal. When Father arrived home forty minutes later, I had said nothing. I merely looked at him. He knew I knew.
Mother began to drink a couple of months later ... and would have long arguments on the telephone with Father, who did not come home for weeks. She had vodka bottles everywhere. In the cupboards, under the sink, beneath the beds. All I could do was search for the bottles and destroy the ones I found.
Father had found her sleeping in the kitchen, clutching a half empty bottle. He told me to go to bed, but I - fearing he would be violent - listened at the door.
“I stopped it months ago,” his father said, “please believe me. She meant nothing. I was weak for doing it, but it’s over. I love you.”
She swore and I heard glass shatter. “You did it to hurt me because of ... Valery.”
“Don’t talk stupid.”
“You blame me.”
“You can’t go on drinking like this,” Father said. His voice was breaking, tearful. “I don’t like to see you suffer for my mistake. Please don’t put yourself through this.”
There were more curses and thuds and I stepped away as he heard Father come towards the door. From my bedroom I saw him slump in a chair, holding a handkerchief against scratches on his face. Mother entered the room, swaying, holding a newly opened bottle. “Ivan, you can go to hell!”
A week later she was found on the pavement below the apartment block, skull shattered. She had jumped off the top floor. There were pieces of a broken vodka bottle besides her body. He had to got to the mortuary and identify her. He never described to me what she looked like but he wept for a week.
The funeral was a quiet ceremony, no photographers. Mother was buried besides Valery and Father said a short prayer and left a single rose. I stood at the grave feeling burned inside, anger eating me.
After the funeral we travelled to a log cabin on the side of a great lake, stocked with salmon and trout. The water was a mirror, one I’d look at and see an empty face.
Father loved fishing. He had taken Mother on trips before they were married and had taught me the previous summer how to bait the hook and cast a line. I went along sullenly and hating him for what he had done to mother. He had pushed her to kill herself, him and his stupid affair, and now he wanted to go fishing.
“Your mother was the best angler I’ve seen. She was a natural.” Father fell into silence, walking along the water’s edge to our boat. Soon we were in the deep water, the rowing boat some quarter of a mile from shore. Father stopped rowing and lit a cigar, one given to him by Khrushchev. “Cuban,” he said. “I think you’re old enough to have one ...” His hand stretched out. I said no.
“Probably right. It’s a bad habit.”
“Could get cancer,” I muttered. “Though not everyone dies that easily.”
The words stung him but I did not regret them. “We have to talk, Andrei.”
Talk? It was too late. The damage was done. I wanted to push Father into the water and then when he surfaced push his head under, keep him there until he drowned. That is what I wanted to do.
Father sighed and dropped the cigar over the side. “I know you hate me. I hate me.” For a long time just the gentle rocking of the boat could be heard and his husky breathing. “Do you want to know why I had an affair with Leni?”
“Because-” (you hated mother?) I managed a nod, and wiped my running nose. I fought back tears. “Because ...”
“Have you ever wondered why we have such a large home? Good food? Why we meet so many powerful people?”
“Because you went to the moon.”
“Partly, but it’s not that simple.” Father was then distant, turning away to look at the water. “I didn’t want you or your mother to be harmed.”
“She’s dead and -”
“It’s my fault? I didn’t want her to find out ... please believe me. I never wanted an affair, but Leni is a Party member and KGB. She knew too much about me ... about your mother.”
“What about my mother?” I was angry and tried to stand but the boat wouldn’t support the unbalance and I fell back, spraying us in cold water.
“Before I married her she helped Jews leave Russia illegally. She was caught and would have gone to prison except that she was my fiance and I was a high profile member of the space programme. I quickly married her. There was nothing they could do then if they wanted me working for them.”
“That doesn’t explain what you did.”
“Leni knew about your mother’s past. She also knew that now that I am a lost part of history she could use it as leverage. You see, you’re mother could have gone to jail as a political prisoner if I hadn’t done what Leni wanted. Now she’s dead ... I may as well tell you everything.”
“You work for the KGB don’t you?”
Father nodded, gravely.
“I practically am the KGB when it comes to military security with regards to space developments. I’ve never worked in administration - I was the first KGB man on the moon.”
Father snapped his rod on his knee and threw it as far as he could. “I’ve done bad things, Andrei. Terrible things, mistakes I can never forget. But there is one truth in my life. I only ever love one woman and that was your mother.”
I baited my rod and swung the line into the water. About half an hour passed, neither of us saying anything.
“Andrei, can I tell you my dream?”
“I suppose so.”
“I dream that one day you can go in space. I’ll never go into space again but you can. I stay in the KGB because I don’t want to see your dreams die the same way.”
I thought of Leni at the launch of the lunar lander, pretending to be my friend. I wanted to kill her. “Leni’s ruined everything!”
Father said nothing.
I wanted to die.
In 1979 I saw my chance to end everything.
Afghanistan. I joined the army against Father’s wishes and against Deyenkov’s and everyone who stood for the death of Mother. I wanted to die and Afghanistan offered a chance to fulfil that wish.
I faced death on a transport driving to the capital, Kabul. Sixteen fresh faced troops holding Kalashnikovs, swapping tall tales of love conquests. There was no danger, the convoy carried a thousand soldiers and our transport was in the middle of the line. A mortar round, probably a lucky shot, struck the road. Something whipped my face and I tasted blood. The seventeen year old on my right had lost his head to shrapnel. It was his blood I was covered with. He had stolen the bullet with my name on.
There was a fire-fight in the hills, Mujaheddin guerillas taking shots at one of the Russian road blocks, killing two soldiers. I volunteered to root them out. My commanding officer knew I had a death wish and he didn’t want to be around when I died, so he sent me out alone. I climbed a crag, getting above the sniper. I waited for a movement, trained my assault rifle on a child, no more than twelve. He was carrying a WWII rifle. I had him in my sights for an hour. I watched him eat a meagre meal and defecate. He was just a child with a gun protecting his country. I aime
d and fired, the bullet missing. The child ran, forgetting his gun in the panic. I went down, collected the weapon and returned to the base. I said the sniper was dead, and because I had the gun and the shooting had stopped they believed me, there would be no search. The child would live another day, if he chose to pick up another rifle so be it.
My tour ended. I gave my medals away to a woman and baby I encountered at Moscow station whose husband had died in the war. Father wanted me to return with him to his new apartment. It was bigger and better, he said. I said no. Instead I lived in a one room flat that smelled of dry rot and vegetables. I worked briefly as a translator for US and English visitors. The pay was low but there was always roubles to be made on the black market selling cigarettes. I would lie awake at night, listening to the life in the walls, cockroaches and beetles in complex mating rituals, and dream.
*
I remember the Viking pictures: the bright white-pink sky; the brown rocks and boulders; the miles of alien land. They had triggered something in my unconscious mind that surfaced in dreams. A doorway had opened. I was standing on rust coloured soil and walking across Martian dunes. I was wearing an all over hard-suit, light alloy/plastics that offered freedom of movement. I could feel the EVA suit and the cold breaths of air. It was real. I’d wake knowing I had stepped on Mars; I felt the extra pull of Earth’s gravity as a palpable thing, like pulling myself out of a swimming pool.
I had to go there. I knew it as surely as Sir Hilary knew he had to climb Everest and Father had to go to the moon.
Deyenkov was surprised to see his reluctant pupil return. “Had enough of war?” he asked.
“For many life times,” I said.
I continued studying astronautics, engineering and computer science and worked on design improvements for the MIR space stations. Meanwhile the US started to look seriously at Mars. Mars offered them a way to get ahead, one Brezhnev could not ignore. The Space Race to Mars began.
*
1983. I heard that my father was taken ill. Apparently whatever he did for the KGB was better served by a younger man (or woman). KGB privileges let him live in the lake retreat permanently.
1984. Deyenkov made me his assistant. I was given access to high security files, where I discovered that our space programme had suffered a number of set backs, mainly financial support.
I learned that my father was now living with Leni. She was looking after him in his illness.
1985. Father had cancer. Some malignant intestinal variety. Incurable. It was Leni who told me over the phone he had a week left. She was crying. In a strange way I felt sorry for her. Father wanted to see me one last time. I drove three hundred miles over-night, parking at the lodge as in the early light of dawn. Leni led me inside. Father was surrounded by medical equipment and on a morphine drip. He was awake and attempted a smile, I saw the bones in his neck and the stretch of paper skin.
“Payback, son. I owe your mother an agonizing death, eh? Can’t even smoke without it hurting.”
“Dad, I didn’t know.”
“I ... didn’t want you to know. You were doing so well with your career ... didn’t want to you to play nurse maid to a dying man.” He coughed weakly. I held his hand. Leni started crying.
“Remember I love you,” I said, my mother’s words echoing.
“I’m sorry,” he said. His face distorted and he grunted with pain. “Andrei?” His eyes were blank, unfocused.
“I’m still here, Dad.”
“Never ... forget your dreams.”
“I won’t,” I promised.
Father coughed painfully. Leni adjusted the drip until he passed out. I walked outside.
*
1986. Death was 72 seconds. Francis Scobee. Michael J Smith. Ellison S Onizuka. Judith A Resnik. Ronald E McNair. S Christa McAuliffe. Gregory B Jarvis. The 51-L Challenger crew. How many others remember their names?
*
“What are you thinking about?”
I was startled from the recollection. I had forgotten about the experiment and must have wasted a good few minutes. Embarrassed, I turned and faced the speaker. It was Bachovich. Bachovich had somehow managed to creep up on me unannounced. He held onto the roof rail, using one hand to hold a juice concentrate that he sucked through the nozzle. Bachovich was the only person I knew who liked the taste of the urine coloured liquid. He asked his question again.
“I was just remembering the moon landing,” I lied. “I was ... eight years old. Seems like yesterday.”
“I wasn’t born then,” Bachovich said. “You’re a real old timer, Ruskin.”
I nodded. I was forty one but still in good condition. I had to be good to pass the tests. Bachovich was twenty. “My time in the gym is it?” I asked.
“Forgotten the schedule as well?” Bachovich grinned. “Fourteen hundred hours it’s shift change.”
“I know,” I said, “but that experiment dulls the mind.”
I unbuckled the harness and swung round towards the hatchway. Bachovich squeezed by and replaced me. Then I entered the hub and finally ‘down’ the narrow tunnel to the gym.
Henkoff was in the exercise module, grinding his leg muscles against the machine. He popped a steroid boost - to hell with hormonal imbalances - and grunted. His legs were on fire. “Hey, Andrei, you look like you need a vacation - why don’t you step outside for some fresh air, eh?”
“Those pills will put hair in places it shouldn’t be - say, between your ears.”
Henkoff puffed and increased his speed. His face was deep crimson. “Stansky used these to break nine seconds for the hundred metres, so I heard.”
“Yeah, long as the Olympics drug officials don’t. Go easy on it, comrade.”
“Huh,” mumbled Henkoff. “Have to ... keep going.”
I grabbed the arm restraints and began my aerobics session, watching the heart rate and respiratory readings as I built up speed. Henkoff started talking about the benefits of steroids (between grunts) and I tried my best to ignore him.
I finished physical training, sheathed in sweat and ready for a long shower. Unfortunately I would have to make do with an cool air-dry via vacuum hose. On my way to the chamber I looked through a view port: Mars was a day away and I marvelled at the red planet.
After ‘showering’ I went to the sleep quarters. The four bunks were empty: the whole crew was required to be active during the test phase. It was not time for the sleep period and - as we approached Mars - the next would be on the surface. No, what I sought was in my private locker: where I had the few personal possessions allowed on the payload. I removed the bronze urn - sneaked aboard in my hygiene effects - and wondered if I was being foolish for bringing it. Yes. I heard a noise and pushed the urn back into its place, closed the locker and locked it.
“So,” said Henkoff, emerging from his quarters in a clean orange uniform, “you actually remember the first moon landing?”
“I was at the parade in Red Square for when they got back. I even got to shake hands with the Khruzchev, twice.”
“No kidding? How could you do that?”
“My father was an important man.”
“I forgot - the second man on the moon and all that. Say, what happened to him?”
“Things,” I said. Bad things.
*
I have fits of depression and two-and-a-half-years on board a cramped spaceship have focused my memories, gnawing away. I considered destroying the Mars lander - a few rewired circuits would be enough. But what would death in space achieve? Just a set back and more lost lives.
I entered a NASA archive, typed access codes that opened files on the early Mercury and Apollo flights. I searched their astronauts’ logs, looking for answers. It was something Leni had said in 1969. We have to beat the Americans. The thought repulsed me. Leni, in her naivety, had summarised the problem. She had indirectly killed his mother with her misguided love.
I found what I wanted and wrote it down and practised the American phrase. I hoped a few sim
ple words would be enough to start the healing process.
Garassi, Henkoff and Bachovich had been chosen for the primary drop from the seventy cosmonauts trained for long haul flights. The MIR-2000 landing craft entered the Martian atmosphere, jerked in the turbulence. Emergency systems M289-M304 blurted out angry warnings.
“We’ve lost a heat shield,” shouted Henkoff over the noises in the vibrating cabin. “Hull temperature rising.”
Bachovich read out the temperature readings, still within the safety margins but higher than expected. Entry into the upper atmosphere had its risks but there was nothing we could do if the heat shields failed. G-forces increased and the ESM310 lit. Another heat shield had gone.
I looked at Bachovich for a report. Bachovich said we were near burn up. I responded by activating the retros and the craft juddered unhealthily against the deceleration. Then we were through the tough stuff.
I ejected the parachute and Henkoff confirmed it was working. All it required for a soft landing were short bursts from the boosters to slow the descent and the computers handled the rest. We landed at 12.04.32 Moscow time.
Henkoff and Garassi rerouted a few damaged circuits but basically it had been by the numbers.
Bachovich switched on the external monitors and the foursome stared at the red planet. We had landed in position A, one hundred metres from the automated base Colony One that had been constructed by the now idle vehicles to our right. I saw the biosphere’s outer hatchway and USSR flag waving in the Martian wind. We were so adrenalin pumped that nobody considered smiling.
“Home,” muttered Henkoff.
I connected my helmet and air tanks and took the urn from my clothes. It was just like my dream. The pink sky welcomed. Henkoff’s utterance had been correct. This was home. My three comrades patted my back and I climbed into the airlock for depressurisation. An interminably long time later the main hatch opened and bright sunlight flooded in. Checking my helmet camera I realised that the people back on Earth were seeing what I saw, billions of eyes looking through mine. I stepped forward and turned onto the rung. I knew what it must have been like for Father in 1969 - doing something never done before. I took the rungs with barely concealed hurry and stopped on the final one.