ster with the entrance commission and then go receive the
"inventoried items".
On account of warm weather the entrance commission was sitting in a
Chinese-looking open-air gazebo. It was actually three officers who were
drinking beer to the eastern music that played quietly on the radio and
distributing pieces of paper with numbers in exchange for the documents we
gave them. Then they led us to the edge of the stadium which had been
overrun with waist-high weeds (it was obvious nobody had been playing
anything on it for ten years at the least) and presented us with two
military tents -- we were going to live in them during the exam session. The
tents were tightly packed sheets of multilayer rubber, and we had to pitch
them on the wooden poles stuck in the ground. We all got acquainted while
lugging the cots into the tents; we made bunk beds out of them, the cots
were ancient, very heavy, with nickel-plated balls that you could screw on
top of the posts when they weren't connected to the upper bunk. These balls
they gave us separately, in special bags, and when the exams were over I
sneakily removed one of them and hid it in the same cigarette pack that
housed the Play-Doh pilot with a foil head, the only living witness of that
unforgettable Southern evening.
It seemed like we spent a very short time in those tents, but when we
took them off we discovered that under them a thick, vigorous and
disgustingly white pillow of weeds managed to grow out. I don't recall much
about the exams themselves, only that they turned out to be quite
uncomplicated, and it even upset me not to be able to fit on the exam sheet
all the graphs and formulas into which the long spring and summer days spent
poring over the textbooks have been distilled. Mityok and I got the points
required for admission effortlessly, and then there was the interview which
we dreaded most. It was conducted by a major, a colonel and some old-timer
with a jagged scar across the forehead, dressed in well-worn technical
forces uniform. I said I wanted to be in the cosmonaut detachment, and the
colonel asked me what is the Soviet cosmonaut. I was scrambling for the
right answer for so long that finally the faces of my interviewers began to
reflect deep grief, from which I concluded that I was about to be shown the
door.
- All right, - said the old timer, who was silent until then, - do you
remember how you first thought of becoming a cosmonaut?
I panicked, because I had absolutely no idea what the right answer to
that question was. Motivated, apparently, by utter despair, I began to
relate the story of the red Play-Doh figurine and the cardboard rocket with
no exit. The old timer perked up instantly, his eyes began to glow, and when
I came to the place where Mityok and I had to crawl along the corridor in
the gas mask, he grabbed my hand and burst into laughter, which made the
scar on his forehead turn purple. Then he suddenly became somber.
- Do you know, - he said, - that this is not your average daily chore
-- flying in space? What if your Motherland asks you to give your life for
it? Then what, eh?
- Well, I'm as good for it as the next guy, - I said, furrowing my
brow.
Then he stared straight into my eyes, and looked at me for what seemed
like three minutes.
- I believe you, - he said finally, - you can do it.
When he heard that Mityok, who wanted to go to the Moon since he was a
kid, was also applying, he scribbled his name on a piece of paper. Mityok
told me later that the old man was grilling him on why it had to be
necessarily the Moon.
The next day, after breakfast, they pinned the lists with the names of
those accepted to the columns of the clubhouse, Mityok and I were there next
to each other, out of the alphabetical order. Somebody dragged himself to
the appeals committee, the others were jumping for joy on the asphalt
criss-crossed with white lines, or running to the phone booth, and above all
of that I remember a white swath left by a jet in the faded sky.
Everyone accepted was invited to the meeting with the
instructor-teaching staff, the professors were already waiting for us in the
clubhouse. I remember the heavy velour drapes, a table across the entire
stage and the officially-austere officers sitting behind it. Leading the
meeting was a youngish lieutenant-colonel with a pointed gangly nose, and
all the time while he spoke I was imagining him in the flight suit and
helmet, sitting in the cockpit of a MiG, camo-striped like an expensive pair
of jeans.
- Guys, I don't wish to frighten you, I don't want to start our talk
here with scary words, right? But you all know -- we don't choose the times
we live in, it's the times that choose us. It might be inappropriate on my
part to give you this information, but I am going to tell you anyway...
The lieutenant-colonel interrupted himself for a second, leaned over to
the major sitting next to him and whispered something in his ear. Major
furrowed his brow, tapped the end of his pencil against the table,
apparently deciding something, and then nodded(21).
- All right, - the lieutenant-colonel started again softly, - recently
at a closed meeting of morale officers(22) the times in which we live were
defined as pre-war period!
Lieutenant-colonel became silent, expecting some kind of reaction --
but the audience apparently did not get it. At any rate, Mityok and I
definitely did not get it.
- I'll explain, - he said even more softly, - the meeting was held on
June 15, right? So, until June 15 we were living in the after-war period,
and since then -- a full month -- we live in the pre-war period. Clear now?
For several seconds there was complete silence.
- I am not telling you this to scare you, - the lieutenant-colonel
continued, now in his normal voice, - it's just that you have to understand
the kind of responsibility put on our shoulders, right? You made the right
choice when you came to our Academy. I would like to tell you now that our
primary goal here is not to simply make you into pilots, but to make you
into real men, right? And when you receive your diplomas and military ranks,
you can be sure that by that time you are going to become Real Men, with the
capital M, as capital as it only can be in the Soviet country.
The lieutenant-colonel sat down, adjusted his tie and caught the edge
of the glass with his lips -- his hands were shaking, and I could swear I
heard his teeth clanking almost inaudibly against glass. The major rose.
- Guys, - he said in a sonorous voice, - though it would be more
correct to call you cadets now, but I still would like to address you in
this manner -- guys! Recall the famous story of the legendary character
glorified by Boris Polevoy! The one whose name our academy proudly bears!
He, who after losing both of his legs in battle, did not surrender but
instead soared as Icarus into the sky to continue pounding the Nazi beast!
Many have told him it was impossible, but he always remembered that he was a
Soviet man! Don't you forget that either, never forget that! And we, the
instructor-teaching staff, and I personally, the flying morale officer of
the Academy, we promise you -- we will make real men out of you in the
shortest possible time!
Then we were shown our bunks in the first-year dorm, where we were
being moved from the tents, and led to the mess. Hanging on threads from its
ceiling were dusty MiG's and Il's, resembling giant islands suspended in the
air among the fast squadrons of houseflies. The dinner was not particularly
tasty -- soup with small star-shaped noodles, boiled chicken with rice and
stewed dried fruits for desert. After the meal we immediately felt like
sleeping, Mityok and I barely dragged ourselves to our cots and I fell
asleep at once.
5
Next morning I was awakened by a moan right over my ear, a moan filled
with deep pain and disbelief. In fact, I must have been hearing noises
through my sleep for some time, but I was jolted into the full consciousness
by only this, particularly loud and tormented cry. I opened my eyes and
looked around. On the cots everywhere there was some kind of slow groaning
motion, I tried to prop myself on my elbow but couldn't, because I was
apparently locked in place with several wide straps, like ones used to keep
together overstuffed luggage; the only thing I could do is turn my head
slightly from side to side. From the nearby cot a boy named Slava from the
Siberian town of Tynda, whom I met yesterday, was looking at me, his eyes
full of intense suffering, the lower part of his face hidden under some kind
of tightly stretched cloth. I wanted to open my mouth to ask him what was
going on, but found out that I couldn't move my tongue, and moreover I did
not feel the lower half of my face at all, as if it fell asleep. I figured
that my mouth was gagged and bound as well, but did not have time to get
surprised over it, because I felt sudden horror: in the place where Slava's
feet were supposed to be, his blanket stepped sharply down instead, and the
freshly starched sheet there was bearing fuzzy reddish blots, the kind you
see watermelon juice leave on white kitchen towels. The most frightening
thing was that I couldn't feel my own feet and couldn't raise my head to
look at them.
- Fifth deta-ach-mint! -- the deep booming voice of the sergeant at the
doors was unusually full of subtle intonations and replete with innuendo, -
bandage time!
Right away about a dozen of second- and third-year students (or to be
more precise, cadets of the second and third year of duty, I figured that by
looking at the patches on their sleeves) entered the room. I never saw them
before; officers told us they were "on potatoes"(23). They were wearing
strangely rigid high boots and moving about awkwardly, steadying themselves
now and again against the walls and bedframes. I noticed unhealthy pastiness
in their faces, also bearing the marks of prolonged suffering which have
molded into some kind of unspeakable readiness, out of place here as it
seemed, and in that moment I recalled the words of the pioneer salutation
that Mityok and I repeated along with everybody else in the pioneer camp, on
that faraway plot of asphalt -- I recalled it and finally understood what it
was that we actually meant when shouting "Always ready!"(24), deceiving
ourselves, our comrades at the rally and the clear July morning.
One after another they rolled the cots out into the corridor, with
moaning and thrashing first-years strapped to them, and then there were only
two cots left -- mine and the one by the window on which Mityok was lying.
The straps did not allow me to look at him, but out of the corner of my eye
I could make out that he was awake and lying quietly.
They came for us in about ten minutes, turned me around feet first and
started rolling along the corridor. One of the cadets was pushing the cot
while the other was pulling it backing up, it appeared as if he was trying
to contain the cot that was gaining on him. We maneuvered into a narrow long
elevator and went up, then the second-year backed away from me again through
another corridor and we stopped before the door covered with black imitation
leather, with a large brown sign on it which I could not read because of my
uncomfortable position. The door opened and I was wheeled into the room,
under the enormous crystal chandelier in form of a bomb; the top of the
walls had a figured ornament of alternating hammers, sickles(25) and vases
wrapped in vines.
The straps were taken off and I propped myself on the elbows trying
hard not to look at my feet; ahead of me in the room's depths was a massive
desk with the a green lamp on it, illuminated by the grayish light filtering
sideways through the tall narrow window. The man sitting behind the desk was
obscured from sight by an issue of "Pravda"(26), a kind wrinkled face with
glowing eyes looking straight at me from its front page. The linoleum
squeaked and Mityok's cot came to a halt right beside mine.
The pages being turned rustled several more times, and then the paper
came to rest on the table.
We were facing the same old man with the scar across the forehead who
was grabbing my hand at the interview. He was now decked in a
lieutenant-general uniform, complete with golden brooms on the
shoulders(27), his hair carefully combed and his gaze sober and clear. I
also noticed that his face seemed to copy the one from the front page of
"Pravda" which had been looking at me the previous moment, so that it was
almost like in that movie(28) where they show you one icon at first and then
it is slowly replaced by another one -- the images similar but not exactly
the same, and because the actual moment of the transition was glossed over
the icon appeared to be morphing in front of your eyes.
- Since we are going to be working with you guys for a long time now,
you may call me "comrade mission chief", - said the old man. -- I would like
to congratulate you -- based on the results of the exams and especially the
interview (he winked as he was saying that) you have been enrolled directly
in the first year program of the secret cosmonaut academy under auspices of
First Department of the KGB(29). So you will have to become Real Men some
other time, and right now get your stuff -- you're going to Moscow. We'll
meet you there.
I got the full meaning of those words only when we were back in the
empty dorm room, wheeled there again through the same long corridors,
linoleum singing something soft and full of nostalgia under the tiny steel
wheels of the cot, prompting me to recall all of a sudden a long-forgotten
July afternoon by the sea.
Mityok and I slept through the rest of the day -- I guess they spiked
our yesterday's dinner with some kind of drugs (we were really sleepy the
next day, too), and in the evening we were visited by some merry
straw-haired lieutenant in shoes that were squeaking as he walked. He
wheeled our cots, one after another, with jokes and laughs along the way, to
the asphalt platz in front of the cement shell of an open-air stage, where
several top generals with kind intelligent faces were sitting behind the
table, our comrade mission chief among them. We could, of course, get there
on our own, but lieutenant told us that this is the standing order for the
first-years and asked us to lie still so as not to confuse others.
Because of the multitude of cots standing side by side the square
resembled the yard of a car factory or farm equipment show, and above it,
following a convoluted trajectory, a stifled moan was fluttering;
disappearing from one place, it reappeared in the other, then the next one,
like a giant mosquito darting over the cots. On the way there the lieutenant
said that the graduation ceremony was now going to take place, combined with
the final exam.
Soon he, first among several dozen lieutenants just like him, pale and
anguished but still with inimitable grace, was dancing the "Kalinka"(30) to
the deliberately sparse accompaniment of the flying morale officer's
accordion. Lieutenant's last name was Landratov, I heard it when he was
presented with a small red booklet and congratulated on his diploma. Then
all the others were performing the same dance, and finally I got bored
looking at them. I turned my head towards the stadium field that started
right at the edge of the platz and suddenly came to realize why it was so
overwhelmed with weeds.
I was looking at them swaying in the wind for a long time, and imagined
that the cracked, peeling gray fence with barbed wire on top, running behind
the decrepit goalposts, was in fact the Great Wall, and despite all the
pickets that were either hanging loose or missing altogether it still
stretches as it did for millennia from the rice fields of the faraway China
right down here to the town of Zaraisk, imparting the ancient Chinese spirit
to everything around it -- the lacy gazebos where the entrance commission
sits in hot weather, decommissioned rusted-through fighter, and antique
military tents I am staring at from my cot, holding fast under the covers to
the small nickel-plated ball I screwed off the bedpost.
The next day a truck was carrying Mityok and I through the summer
forest and the fields, we were sitting on our backpacks against the cool
metal truck bed. I remember the swaying canvas awning above us, the tree
trunks and withered gray poles of an abandoned telegraph line rushing past.
From time to time the trees would give way and allow the triangles of pale
gloomy sky to peek through. Then we had a short stopover and five minutes of
blissful silence, interrupted only by heavy faraway thuds, which the driver
(who had to go into the bushes) explained to us were large-caliber machine
guns coming in short bursts at the firing range of the nearby Matrosov(31)
Infantry Academy. Then the incessant jolts resumed and I dozed off, waking
for just a few seconds when we already reached Moscow, in time to catch a
glimpse of "Child's World"(32) arches, as if a reminder of some
long-forgotten summer school vacation.
6.
When I was a kid I would often imagine the newspaper spread, still
smelling of fresh ink, with a large portrait of myself in the middle (with
the helmet on, smiling), titled:
"Cosmonaut Omon Krivomazov reported in excellent spirits!"
Hard to understand why I wanted that so much. I guess I always wanted
to live part of my life through the eyes of other people -- those who would
look at that photograph and think of me, imagine my thoughts, feelings, the
delicate fabric of my soul. And most importantly, of course, I wanted to
turn into one of those other people myself, stare into my own face composed
of the typographic dots, think about what kind of movies this man likes, who
his girlfriend might be, and then suddenly realize that this Omon Krivomazov
is in fact me. Since those times I have changed, in a subtle and unhurried
way. I stopped caring about opinions of others, because I realized -- the
others would never care about me, and they are going to be thinking about my
photograph, not even me personally, with the same indifference as I think
about photographs of other people. So the news that my heroism was to remain
hidden and unknown was not a big blow for me; the big blow was that I was
going to be a hero.
Mityok and I took turns visiting the mission chief the next day after
our arrival, right after we were outfitted with black uniforms like the ones
in other military academies -- only the shoulder patches were bright yellow,
with mysterious letters "BKY"(33) on them. Mityok went first, and about an
hour and a half later they sent for me.
When the tall oak doors swung open before me I was a little stunned by
the degree to which the view unfolding before me copied a set of some war
movie. There was a big table in the middle of the room, covered with a
yellowish map and surrounded by several people in military uniform -- the
mission chief, three other generals who looked nothing like each other but
at the same time all very much like a popular author and playwright Borovik,
and two colonels, one short and stout, his face a shade of purple, the other
-- lean and thin-haired, resembling an aged sickly boy, wearing dark glasses
and sitting in a wheelchair.
- The chief of Flight Control Center, colonel Halmuradov, - said the
mission chief pointing at the fatso with the purple face.
He nodded.
- Morale officer for the special cosmonaut squadron colonel
Urchagin(34).
The colonel in the wheelchair turned his face towards me, leaned
forward a bit and took off his glasses, as if to study me closer. I
shuddered involuntarily -- he was blind, eyelids of one of his eyes fused
together, between the lashes of the other one I could make out the
glistening whitish mucus.
- You may call me Bamlag(35) Ivanovich, Omon, - he said in a
high-pitched tenor. -- I hope we're going to be good friends.
For some reason the mission chief did not introduce the generals, and
they did not by their manner demonstrate that they even saw me. On the other
hand, I thought I saw one of them at the final exam in the Zaraisk Academy.
- Cadet Krivomazov, - the mission chief introduced me. -- Shall we
begin now?
He turned to me, resting his hands on his stomach, and started talking.
- Omon, you probably read the newspapers, see movies and so on, and you
know that Americans have landed several of their cosmonauts on the Moon, and
even drove around there in a motorized conveyance. This would seem like an
entirely peaceful endeavor, but that depends on how you look at it. Imagine
if you will a common hard-working man from a small country, let's say in
Central Africa...
The mission chief scrunched his face and imitated rolling his sleeves
and wiping sweat off his brow.
- Then he sees that Americans landed on the Moon, while we... You get
the picture?
- Yes sir, comrade lieutenant-general! -- I answered.
- The principal goal of the space experiment for which you, Omon, are
now beginning to be prepared is to demonstrate that in technology terms we
roughly match the capabilities of the Western countries, and that we are
also capable of sending missions to the Moon. To send there a piloted,
returnable craft is beyond our means at this point. But there is another
possibility -- to launch an automated vehicle that we won't have to bring
back.
The mission chief was bending over the relief map with protruding
mountain ranges and minuscule crater holes. Right through the middle of it
there was a bright-red line, like a fresh scratch from a nail.
- This is a section of the Lunar surface, - said the mission chief. --
As you well know, Omon, our space science is mostly concerned with the dark
side of the Moon, in contrast to the Americans, who prefer to land on the
visible side. This long line is the Lenin Fault, discovered several years
ago by our domestic satellite. It is a unique geological formation, and in
that region we have recently dispatched a automated expedition to obtain
samples of the Lunar soil. According to results of the preliminary analysis,
there formed an opinion concerning the need for further exploration of the
fault. You are probably aware that our space program is oriented chiefly
towards the use of automatic devices. Let the Americans risk their own human
lives; we only endanger mechanisms. And so there is now an idea of sending a
special self-propelled vehicle, so called lunokhod(36), that will drive
along the bottom of the fault and transmit valuable scientific data back to
Earth.
Mission chief opened a drawer in the desk and began grasping inside
while keeping his eyes on the table.
- The combined length of the fault is a hundred miles, but its width
and depth are insignificant, measuring mere yards. We assume that the
lunokhod will be able to travel along it for fifty miles -- this is how long
the batteries should last -- and then place in its center a pennant with a
radio beacon, which would transmit into space the words "PEACE", "LENIN" and
"USSR", encoded in electromagnetic impulses.
His hand appeared from under the table clutching a little red-colored
car. He wound it up with a key and placed it at the beginning of the red
line on the map. The car began crawling forward with a whir. It was just a
child's toy: a body very much resembling a tin can, sitting on top of eight
small black wheels, with "CCCP" painted on its side and two bulges in front
that looked like eyes. Everyone stiffly followed its progress, even colonel
Urchagin was turning his head in sync with the others. The car reached the
end of the table and fell over.
- Something like that, - the mission chief said contemplatively and
shot me a glance.
- Permission to address the senior officer! -- I heard myself saying.
- Fire away.
- But the lunokhod is automated, comrade lieutenant-general!
- Absolutely.
- So what do you need me for?
The mission chief lowered his head and sighed.
- Bamlag, - he said, - your turn.
The electric motor of the wheelchair whirred softly, and colonel
Urchagin drove out from beside the table.
- Let's go for a walk, - he said, approaching me and grabbing my
sleeve.
I turned quizzically to mission chief. He nodded. I followed Urchagin
into the corridor and we started along it -- I was walking and he was
driving beside me, controlling the speed with a lever crowned with a
homemade little pink plastic ball, containing a figured red rose inside.
Several times Urchagin would open his mouth, attempting to say something,
but he shut it again every time, I started thinking that he probably does
not know where to start, and then he grabbed my wrist in a very precise
movement with his slightly damp narrow hand.
- Listen to me closely, Omon, and don't interrupt, - he said
intimately, as if we had just finished singing a song together by a
campfire. -- I am going to begin from a distance. You see, the fate of
mankind consists to a very large extent of things that are convoluted,
seemingly absurd or unnecessarily bitter. You have to be able to see very
clearly, very distinctly, to keep yourself from making mistakes. History is
never the way they write in the textbooks. There is dialectics in the fact
that Marx's teachings, directed towards a prosperous country, took hold in
the most backward one instead. We communists just did not have time to
formally prove the validity of our ideas -- too much effort spent on the
war, too long turned out to be the struggle with the remnants of the past
and the internal enemies of the state. We could not defeat the West
technologically. But the struggle of ideas is the field where you cannot
take a rest for even a split second. It is a paradox, and it is again
dialectics, that we are aiding truth with deception, because Marxism is
bringing the all-conquering truth with it, while that for which you are
going to give your life - formally represents a deception. But the more
deliberately...
I felt cold in the pit of my stomach and reflectively tried to snatch
my wrist away, but colonel Urchagin's hand seemed to have transformed into a
small steel cuff.
- ... more deliberately you are going to accomplish your heroic feat,
the greater degree of truth it will actually attain, the greater
justification your short but beautiful life will acquire!
- Give my life? What feat? -- I asked in a croaking voice.
- The very same, - replied the colonel very-very softly, almost as if
he was frightened, - that more than a hundred of boys just like you and your
friend have already accomplished.
He fell silent, and after a while continued in the normal tone.
- Have you heard that our space program relies on the use of automatic
devices?
- I have.
- Well, right now we're going to go to Room 329, so you can find out
what our automatic space devices look like.
7
- Comrade colonel...
- Comrade co-olonel! -- he shot back mockingly. -- They asked you in
the Zaraisk Academy quite clearly if you were ready to give your life,
didn't they? You remember what you answered, huh?
I was sitting on a metal chair that was fastened to the floor in the
center of the room, my arms were strapped to the armrests, my feet -- to the
chair's legs. The heavy drapes on the windows were drawn shut; there was a
telephone without the dial standing on a small desk in the corner. Colonel
Urchagin was sitting across from me in his wheelchair, smiling and joking as
he talked, but I could sense that he was dead serious.
- Comrade colonel, please understand, I am just a regular guy... You
seem to be mistaking me for someone else... And I am absolutely not the one
who...
Urchagin's wheelchair whirred, he moved from his place, drove up to me
very closely and stopped.
- Now wait, Omon, - he said. -- Wait just a moment. This is where you
go wrong. You think our soil is drenched in what kind of blood? Non-regular?
Some special blood? From some uncommon people?
He stretched his hand towards me, felt my face and then struck with his
dried-out fist against my lips -- not hard, but enough for me to get a taste
of blood in my mouth.
- It is drenched in this exact blood. From normal, regular guys, like
you are.
He patted me on my neck.
- Don't get angry, - he said, - I am now like a second father to you.
If need be, I can even punish you with a belt.
- Bamlag Ivanovich, I don't feel I'm ready to be a hero, - I said,
licking the blood off. - I mean, I feel I am not ready... I think I'm better
off returning to Zaraisk than this...
Urchagin bent over towards me and started talking softly and gently,
stroking my neck:
- You silly boy, Ommie. Just understand, my dear, that this is
precisely the essence of heroism, that the hero is always someone who is not
ready for it, because heroism is a thing that is impossible to prepare for.
You can, of course, be trained to run to the firing slot very quickly, you
can get accustomed to throwing yourself onto it, we are teaching all that
stuff, but the spiritual act of heroism cannot be learned, you can only
accomplish it. And the more you wanted to live before it, the better for
heroism. Heroism, even invisible, is essential for the nation -- it
nourishes that principal force which...
Suddenly a loud screech reached our ears. A black shadow of a large
bird flying very close to the window darted by the drapes, and the colonel
fell silent. He contemplated something for a minute in his wheelchair, then
switched on the motor and rolled out into the corridor. The door slammed
shut behind him, then opened again after a minute or two, and a straw-haired
Air Force lieutenant with a length of a rubber hose in his hands entered the
room. His faced looked familiar, but I couldn't quite place it.
- Remember me? -- he asked.
I shook my head. He approached the table and sat on top of it, his feet
in shiny black boots hanging down; one look at them was enough for me to
recall where I have seen him -- it was that lieutenant from Zaraisk Academy
who wheeled our cots onto the square. I even thought of his last name.
- Lan... Lan...
- Landratov, - he said, flexing the hose. -- They sent me here to have
a talk with you. Urchagin did. What are you, nuts? Do you really want to go
back to the Maresyev's?
- It's not that I particularly want to go back, - I said, - but I sure
don't want to go to the Moon. To be a hero.
Landratov chuckled and slapped his hands against his stomach and
thighs(37).
- That's rich. Listen to him - he doesn't want to. And you think maybe
they're going to leave you alone now? Let you go? Or return you to the
Academy? And even if they did return you -- do you have any idea how it
feels to get up from the bed and take your first steps on crutches? Or the
way you feel when there's a rain coming?
- No, I don't, -- I said.
- Or maybe you expect that when you legs heal it's going to be peaches
and cream? Last year we court-marshaled two guys for treason. Starting with
the fourth year, we have the simulator training -- know what that is?
- No.
- Well, in short it is very much like the real thing, you sit as if in
the cockpit, got all your controls, pedals, but you look at a monitor
screen. So these two are conducting the exercise, and instead of practicing
immelman turns they just fucking take off to the west at extreme low
altitude. And no response to the hails. So then we pull them out of there
and ask: what's with you, guys? What the hell were you thinking? And they
just stand there. One did answer, though. Later. He said: "Just wanted, you
know, to find out how it feels, you know. For just a moment..."
- So what happened to them afterwards?
Landratov slapped the hose hard against the table he was sitting on.
- What's the difference, - he said. -- Main thing is -- you can kinda
really feel for them. You always hope that you will eventually start flying.
So when they tell you the whole truth... Think about it: who needs you with
your prosthetics? Besides, we only have a handful of planes in the country
anyway, they fly along the border so Americans can snap pictures of them,
and even those...
Landratov fell silent.
- "Even those" what?
- Never mind. Here's what I'm saying -- you don't really believe that
you are going to traverse the skies in a fighter jet after the Zaraisk
Academy, do you? Best case -- you'll end up in the dance ensemble at some
Air Defense regional command center. But most likely you'll just dance your
"Kalinka" in restaurants. A third of our guys drink themselves to death,
another third, the ones for whom the operation goes badly, simply commit
suicide. How do you feel about suicide, by the way?
- I don't, - I said. -- Never thought about it.
- I did. Especially in the second year. Especially one time when they
were showing Wimbledon on the TV, and I was on guard duty at the clubhouse,
with the crutches and all. That got me really depressed. And then I got
better, you know. You see, you have to decide something here for yourself,
then it all becomes easier. So be careful, when you get those thoughts you
just don't give in to them. Think instead about all the cool stuff you'll
see if you really haul your butt to the Moon. These motherfuckers aren't
letting you out alive anyway. Get with the program, OK?
- You don't like them very much, do you?
- What's there to like? They won't say a word of truth ever. This
reminds me: when you talk to the mission chief, never mention anything about
death or even that you're going to the Moon. You are to talk exclusively
about automatics, understood? Otherwise we'll be having another talk in this
room. I have my orders, you know.
Landratov waved the hose in the air, took a pack of "Polyot"(38) from
his pocket and lit up.
- That friend of yours, he agreed right away, - he said.
When I finally got out into the open air my head was spinning slightly.
The inner patio, isolated from the city by the enormous brownish-gray square
hulk of the building, resembled very much a piece of a suburban subdivision,
cut out in the exact form of the yard and transferred here intact: it had
the crooked wooden gazebo with peeling paint, a gymnastics bar welded from
steel pipes that now supported a green rug, apparently someone was beating
the dust out of it, left it hanging and forgot about it; there were rows of
vegetables in the ground, a chicken coop, a training circuit, a couple of
ping-pong tables and several tires dug in halfway and arranged in a circle,
evoking images of Stonehenge in my head. Mityok was sitting on the bench
near the exit, I came closer, sat beside him, stretched my legs and looked
down at the black britches of my uniform -- after my meeting with Landratov
I couldn't chase away the feeling that those weren't my legs inside them.
- It cannot all be true, can it? -- asked Mityok quietly.
I shrugged. I did not know what exactly he was talking about.
- OK, about the aviation I can believe, - he said. -- But nuclear
weapons... I suppose you could make two million political prisoners jump at
the same time in '47. But we don't have them anymore, and nuclear tests --
they're like every month...
The door that I just came out of opened and colonel Urchagin's
wheelchair rolled out into the yard, he braked and traced the yard several
times over with his ear. I understood that he was looking for us, to add
something to the things he already said, but Mityok fell silent, and
Urchagin apparently decided not to bother us. The electric motor started
whirring again and the wheelchair took off towards the far section of the
building; passing in front of us, Urchagin turned his head with a smile and
seemed to look into our souls with the kind hollows of his eyes.
8
I assume most of the inhabitants of Moscow know full well what is
beneath their feet during the time they spend in endless lines of the
"Child's World" or pass through the "Dzerzhinskaya"(39) station, so I'm not
going to waste my time here(40). Suffice it to say that the mock-up of our
rocket was real size, and there was enough space left to put another one
next to it. Interestingly enough, the elevator was really ancient, pre-war,
and was descending so slowly that one had time to read a couple of pages
from a book.
The mock-up was thrown together quite roughly, in places the lumber
showed through, but the workstations for the crew were exact replicas of the
real ones. All of that was designed for practical exercises, which Mityok
and I weren't supposed to begin for some time. In spite of that, we were
transferred and assigned quarters deep below, in an expansive room with two
pictures on the wall depicting windows opening to the panorama of Moscow
being built. There were seven cots inside, so we figured we were going to
get company soon. The dorm was separated from the training facility where
the model of the rocket was located by a three minute walk through a
corridor, and a weird thing happened to the elevator: where it was very
slowly descending just recently, it now turned out to have been ascending,
just as slowly.
But we weren't going up very often, and the best part of our free time
was spent inside the training hall. Colonel Halmuradov was teaching the
course in basic theory of rocket flight, using the mock-up for
clarifications. While we were studying the hardware the rocket was just a
learning aid, but come evening the floodlights were turned off, and by the
dim glow of the wall fixtures the mock-up would turn into something wondrous
and long-forgotten for a few moments, sending to Mityok and me the last
salute from the childhood.
We were first. Other guys who formed our crew gradually appeared later
on. Syoma Anikin was first to arrive, a short sturdy fellow from Ryazan
region; he was enlisted in the Navy before. He looked great in the black
cadet uniform which made Mityok look like a clothes hanger. Syoma was very
quiet and composed and spent all his time practicing, a habit we all would
be better off picking up, even though his task was the simplest and least
romantic. He was our first stage, and the young life of his (as Urchagin
would say with his penchant for transposing words in a sentence to
underscore the gravity of the moment) was designed to be cut short after
four minutes of flight. The success of the entire mission depended on the
preciseness of his actions, and were he to make even a slightest mistake we
would all meet a swift and pointless demise. He seemed to take it very close
to heart, so he was practicing even when left alone in the dorm, trying to
make his movements completely automatic. He would squat, close his eyes and
start moving his lips -- counting to two hundred and forty, - then turn
counterclockwise, pausing every forty five degrees of the arc, performing
elaborate manipulations with both his hands. Even though I knew that in his
mind he was undoing the latches that fast