Fall of a Cosmonaut

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  The door was locked, as were all apartment doors in Moscow, so she had to rouse herself, place Baku on the floor, and make her way across the room. The first step made her dizzy and irritable. Not long ago, before two heart attacks sent her into retirement, Anna had been a procurator, a rising and respected figure in the Soviet Union. Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov had worked under her. They had all worked under her, and she had worked tirelessly to enforce the law, to bring those who offended the State to judgment.

  And now, at the age of fifty-seven, she watched women and children from her window and grew dizzy when she rose. Illness did not become her. There was a rage within her which she quelled with dreams, medication, and reading, because the rage did her no good and could, according to the doctors, actually kill her.

  “We must talk,” shouted Lydia Tkach as soon as Anna opened the door.

  The wiry, nearly deaf woman carried a plastic shopping bag from which a very pleasant odor reached out and struck the now-awake Anna. Lydia moved into the room, and Anna considered leaving the door open so that she could shoo the loud gnat from her presence, but experience told her that such would not be the case. Anna closed the door and turned.

  “Did you see him?” Lydia shouted, moving to the kitchen area and the small table to her right.

  “See? …”

  “Sasha, on the television. My son, the hero.”

  There was a bite to the word hero that required no special acumen to discern.

  “No, I have not watched television today.”

  The smaller woman was taking things from the plastic bag she had set on the table. There was a small cake, some croissants, and a large white cylinder carton with the unmistakable smell of coffee.

  “I wish I had not,” said Lydia, going to the cupboard behind her to bring out two plates, two forks, a large knife, and two cups. “Sit.”

  Anna, who had spent a lifetime giving orders, knew it was useless to argue with the woman. Besides, the confections and coffee drew her to the table. Listening to Lydia Tkach was the price she would have to pay for the guilty pleasure. “He was there, on the riverbank, right across from the Kremlin,” said Lydia, sitting and reaching over immediately to cut the cake. “Right in front, or almost, of the Hotel Baltschug Kempinski Moskau. You know?”

  “I know where the—” Anna Timofeyeva began but was cut short by her guest, who served her a slice of wondrously aromatic lemon cake.

  “Sitting there next to a madman with a gun. Hundreds of people watching, and thousands and thousands on television. He saved the life of a child. A madman—he had this child throwing moving-picture film into the river, as if the river is not dirty enough.”

  “Sasha had a child throw moving-picture film into the Moscow River?”

  The cake was delicious. The coffee was hot.

  “No, the madman had the child throw the film in the river.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Why? Why? Because he was a madman. He’s dead now. Sasha is a hero. The madman had already killed someone in a dacha outside of the city. You like the cake? I have a new baker. The old one left his family and ran away to Lithuania or someplace with one of my clerks. Why would anyone run away to Lithuania? But it was a blessing. The new baker is better, a Greek, and the new clerk is his daughter.”

  “Sasha,” Anna said, considering the wisdom of having yet another slice of cake after she finished the one before her.

  “And your Elena,” said Lydia, who had consumed a croissant and now sliced herself a generous portion of cake. “She was on television, too. Looking down from the embankment. You wouldn’t see her if you weren’t looking, but she was there.”

  Lydia Tkach consumed enormous quantities of food without apparent joy in the process. She remained pole-thin. Anything Anna ate turned to instant fat, which was a danger to her. Normally she dieted according to the order of her doctor, but at the moment she told herself that she needed to fortify herself against the intruder. Anna had gotten Lydia into an apartment on the other side of the one-story building.

  “He could have been killed,” Lydia said. “I have one son and he could have been killed. More cake?”

  “A very thin slice, and then I want you to take the cake and croissants away,” said Anna.

  “We’ll leave the rest for Elena,” said Lydia, putting an even larger slice of cake than the first on Anna’s plate.

  Infinite are the ways this woman can be my death, thought Anna, unable to resist the call of lemon and the white sugar frosting. The new baker was very good indeed.

  “So? …” Anna began.

  “It is enough,” shouted Lydia, whose outburst was certainly being listened to by the pensioner and his wife who lived on the other side of the thin wall of Anna Timofeyeva’s apartment. “I want him safe. I want him out. Sometimes I think he is suicidal. That’s what I think sometimes.”

  It was something which Anna also thought but not nearly as often as his mother. When she had been a procurator, Sasha had been a brooding young man, a protégé of Porfiry Petrovich. He had a promising career ahead of him, but Sasha could be difficult and on more than one occasion he had been drawn from his course not by bribery but by women who found the boyish brooding young man irresistible.

  “I want you to talk to Porfiry Petrovich,” Lydia said, her eyes meeting Anna’s.

  “To …”

  “To insist that he get my son off the streets. Sasha is a hero now. Heroes deserve to be protected whether they wish to be or not. You agree?”

  “Well, I think …”

  “You can’t talk to Sasha. I’ve thought of that. Sasha is on his way to Kiev, on an airplane. I don’t trust airplanes. I’ve never been on one. I think they crash all the time and no one tells us. They keep it secret. Sasha has been strange lately. Happy … he even took me to a movie about men who for no apparent reason take off their clothes. And then he is back to feeling sorry for himself. I want my grandchildren back. I made him take airplane money to bring them back. I told him the only way to get Maya to come back with him would be to get off the streets, have normal hours and a normal job where he wouldn’t get into trouble.”

  Anna sipped her coffee, which she should not be drinking. It was excellent coffee. She would resist a second cup.

  “I think you are right,” said Anna.

  “You think I am right? You never think I am right.”

  “This time,” said Anna, “I think you are right.”

  “And what will you do about it?” Lydia asked insistently.

  Anna felt like saying, “I’ll consult the neighbors and get their opinion,” but instead she said, “I will give Baku the rest of what I have on my plate and then I will call Porfiry Petrovich and ask him to stop by for a talk. I have never asked him to come visit me. He will come.”

  Lydia said nothing and then opened her mouth to speak. Nothing came out. She began to weep. As loud as her voice had been, her weeping was nearly silent. Her thin shoulders shook and she leaned her head forward. Anna had no experience comforting people. People, even her niece, had never really looked to her for comfort. Anna was large, serious, stern in appearance. When she was procurator, she always wore her dark uniform. One did not go to such a woman for solace.

  “I will do what I can, Lydia,” she said. “I will do what I can.”

  “You are going out?” asked Rostnikov, sitting across the table from his wife.

  Galina and the two little girls were watching television. The woman sat between the children, who were completely absorbed in the young men and women on very tall unicycles speeding around on a television-studio floor. The television was black and white. They could only imagine the spectrum of colorful glitter.

  “Yes,” said Sarah, finishing her coffee.

  “I know where you go each Friday,” he said softly as circus music vibrated excitedly from the television set.

  “You are a detective, Porfiry Petrovich,” Sarah said with a smile, reaching over to touch his hand. “I thought you woul
d have figured it out long ago.”

  “I did,” he said, picking up crumbs from the remains of the pastry on the plate between them and popping them into his mouth.

  “And you want to know why?” she asked.

  “It seems a logical question,” he said.

  “And an emotional one.”

  “And an emotional one,” he agreed. “Is there any more cake?”

  “No more cake,” she said. “I don’t believe in God, Porfiry Petrovich. Maybe sometime. Maybe never. I feel the need to make a connection to my history. It’s … more a meditation than a worship. I can lose myself in the ritual, the prayers, the chants. I feel as if I’m making a connection and on good days I can walk away feeling a little better.”

  “Avrum Belinsky is good?”

  “Very good,” she said.

  “He is very young.”

  “But he has studied much and been through much,” she said. “Are you bothered by my going?”

  “No,” he said. “If you want to read the Bible or something at home, I don’t mind.”

  “No,” she said, still touching his hand. “I don’t want to read the Bible at home. Porfiry, maybe someday I’ll believe in a god, some kind of god. We have talked about this very little. What do you believe in?”

  The crowd on the television set roared. Nina giggled. Laura clapped.

  “You,” he said. “Nature. Benches and spaceships and people who can move objects very slightly with their minds and dreams that sometimes become reality. Mystery. People who are not all good or all evil. Common sense.”

  “You are not really answering the question,” Sarah said.

  Rostnikov nodded and said, “You are going to be late. Would you like me to come with you?”

  “No,” she said, getting up. “I won’t be late.”

  “All right,” he said. “When the circus is over and the applause has died, I have a sink to fix.”

  “She did it,” Elena said.

  Iosef and Elena were sitting in his apartment. With the afternoon off, they were supposed to be making the final plans for their wedding. Iosef had hoped that she would be filled with ideas and that they might end the afternoon with something to eat and, perhaps, an hour or so in bed, just being together without their clothes. Iosef loved her smooth, full body. But it was clear that Elena was in no mood for food or love. She pushed her hair back, a sign, Iosef had learned, that she was agitated. This time he needed no sign.

  “I would like to go back, confront her,” Elena said, her arms folded.

  “You’ve been ordered to forget about her,” said Iosef. “Yaklovev will handle it.”

  “You know how he will handle it,” she said. “He’ll find some way to get something from the widow Vera Kriskov. He’ll probably have the movie dedicated to him.”

  “That is not the kind of thing the Yak wants,” said Iosef. “I know. Remember when …”

  “Yes, and he doesn’t want sex,” Elena went on. “Vera Kriskov is very beautiful, you know?”

  “As are you.”

  “I am not beautiful,” she said. “I have a higher opinion of my looks than I once had, but I am not beautiful.”

  “I am entitled to my opinion,” he said with a smile she did not return.

  “She will get away with the murder of her husband.”

  “She will join the legions, the thousands, who have gotten away with murder and continue to do so,” he said. “Why does this woman obsess you?”

  “She doesn’t. She …”

  Elena stopped. A realization struck her, one she could not quite put into words. “She has wealth, two children, beauty, and …”

  “You would like the same,” Iosef said, watching her face.

  “Perhaps, yes,” she said with a sigh. “He loved her.”

  “Her husband?”

  Elena smiled. “Grachev. He loved her. He died protecting her.”

  “Let us leave it as a tragic romance,” said Iosef.

  “You think like a playwright,” Elena said.

  “It is an ending out of Tolstoy. If she has guilt, she will have to live with it.”

  “Then she will live,” said Elena.

  “Feel better?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Good.”

  He leaned over to kiss her. She returned the kiss with a passion and hunger he had not expected.

  Winter was still months away in Winnipeg.

  It had taken Misha and Ivan only an hour to find a room they could share in the house of an old couple who spoke Ukrainian-accented Russian and who welcomed them as recent immigrants. They had stopped at a small restaurant and asked if there were places they might find a room. The incredibly thin man behind the counter had served them cherry pie and directed them to the old couple.

  “We need new blood here,” the old woman had said when they carried their luggage in. “New blood that won’t freeze in the winter.

  “People come from the United States. They say they love it here. They take deep breaths. The winter comes. They go home, usually at night. If they can get their car started or a ride to the airport.”

  “But,” said the old woman, “you are Russians. Are you married?”

  “No,” said Misha.

  “Then maybe … what is your work?” the man asked.

  “We are mechanics,” Ivan said.

  “Mechanics? Like cars?” said the old man.

  “Yes,” said Misha. “Like cars.”

  The old woman motioned for them to pick up their luggage. They did and followed her to a wooden stairway.

  The old man came after them and said, “My nephew, Frank. He has a garage. He is looking for help. You have papers?”

  They were at the top of the stairs now. There was something familiar about the house. Ivan thought he might be comfortable. At the moment, he simply wanted to lie down on his stomach and hope that the pain in his back and behind would lose some of its anger.

  “No,” said Misha.

  “I understand,” said the old man. “I understand. Political?”

  “Yes,” said Misha. “We are merchant marines. We jumped from our ship in Nova Scotia.”

  “The water was cold,” said the man. “Even in the summer. The water was cold.”

  “It was cold,” Ivan agreed, following the old woman into the room.

  There were two beds. Ivan felt both relief and guilt. Knowing now about Misha’s sexual preference, he was relieved that they would not have to share a bed. Knowing that Misha had saved his life, Ivan felt guilt.

  The room was large, furnished in old-country style, very simple. Ivan thought he could like it here.

  “There are snowshoes downstairs for the winter,” said the old man. “The snow comes right up to the window over there sometimes. Well … should I talk to Frank?”

  “Yes, please,” said Misha.

  “He has friends, knows people. He can get you papers, but let me talk to him first.”

  “Leave them alone to settle,” said the old woman, touching her husband’s sleeve and guiding him toward the door.

  “Yes, yes. Of course. Come down when you are ready. My wife will give you something to eat.”

  When they were gone and the door closed, Ivan moved in agony to the nearest bed, kicked off his shoes, and lay carefully on his stomach.

  “I’ll go to a drugstore, get you something for your bruises,” said Misha.

  “I—” Ivan began.

  “I won’t try to seduce you,” Misha said. “Are we friends?”

  “Yes,” said Ivan. “I owe you my life.”

  “Then we shall be just friends,” said Misha. “I have a feeling I will not lack companionship here when I feel the need.”

  “I’m too much in pain to think about sex,” said Ivan.

  Misha looked around the room and moved to the window. “I think we may like it here,” he said.

  “Misha?”

  “I think I shall now be Casmir,” said Misha. “Who would you like to
be?”

  “Ivan. There are probably thousands of Ivans here. Do you think we will ever get back to Russia?”

  “Do you want to go back?” asked Misha, sitting on the second bed.

  “I don’t know. I can’t think beyond my pain. Tomorrow I’ll think. Maybe the day after. Maybe the week after. We are rather overtrained to be automobile mechanics.”

  “Which means,” said Misha with a grin, “we will be the best automobile mechanics in Winnipeg. Think of it, Ivan. Perhaps in a few years we will have our own garage. Land of opportunity.”

  “And no rubles,” said Ivan.

  “And no rubles,” Misha agreed. “I’ll go get something for your wounds.”

  Misha rose and started for the door.

  “Will they come for us, here?” asked Ivan.

  “I don’t know.”

  “The one bent over like a V. With the notches on both ends. The seat wrench,” Rostnikov said.

  Nina searched through the gray-metal toolbox and held up the wrench.

  “This one?” she asked.

  Rostnikov looked down from the faucet on which he was working. Bending down to the toolbox was more than difficult, though he could have done it had it been necessary. The child, however, made the maneuver unnecessary. Nina handed the tool to Rostnikov, who smiled and looked at it as if she had handed him a wonderful treasure.

  She was eight years old, a pleasant-looking child though no beauty. Yet her face, like that of her older sister, showed an intelligence and curiosity that made Rostnikov think they were capable of great things. No, neither he nor Sarah wanted Galina Panishkoya and her granddaughters to move to their own apartment. Sarah had suggested that with his recent promotion, somewhat higher salary, and his connections, they might all move to an apartment with two bedrooms.

  Porfiry Petrovich had been giving this idea serious thought. At the moment, however, he was trying to ignore the irritating minor pain in his leg at the very point where it was inserted neatly into the prosthesis with which he had been trying to form a friendship.