London, England—1964
Leonid felt weighted down. As if the wool coat of the uniform had not been heavy enough, now it was festooned with such an assortment of medals and ribbons as he had never seen before. The Order of the Hero of the Soviet Union. The Order of the Hero of Socialist Labor. Pilot Cosmonaut of the USSR. Many more medals he could not name and a dozen ribbons of similar anonymity. Even the ones he knew he often mixed up. Long ago, his boyhood slouch had been trained out of him, but he felt bent forward by the weight of the symbols on his chest. The medals tinked together as he walked into Earls Court. Beside him, dressed in the same clownish regalia, Nadya inspected the far corners of the room, oblivious to the hundreds of reporters gathered there.
They had been to so many cities on the tour that Leonid often forgot which crowd in particular he was addressing. First it had been what seemed like every city in all of Eastern Europe: Minsk, Tbilisi, Riga, Tallinn, Budapest, Warsaw, Prague, Sofia, Bucharest, even tiny Tirana. Then they crossed the imaginary line to the West: Rome, Paris, and now London. He had learned a little English as part of his training. This would be the first time since they left the East that he understood what anybody was saying to him without Ignatius providing translation.
From outside, Earls Court was a massive structure, and it seemed somehow even larger on the inside, soaring ceilings and broad spaces broken up only by widespread columns and the freestanding walls that divided the exhibitions. The Soviet exhibition presented a caricature of Russia, as if everyone worked on a communal farm or built rockets. The whole rest of society was absent. A nation of farmers and scientists. Suspended from the ceiling in the center of the exhibition was a large device, supposedly the Vostok capsule, but instead of the simple orb of the actual Vostok, this one was done up as much as Leonid’s uniform. Giant fins swooped toward the back of the conical ship. Convoluted antennae sprouted from all over like saplings. The surface was so shiny Leonid was sure it had to be plated in silver. A crimson hammer and sickle took up one whole side of the fuselage.
Leonid was greeted by British dignitaries, including the Queen and a boy he assumed to be a prince. The boy almost gaped at Leonid, and only stepped forward with a gentle shove from the Queen. Leonid knelt and shook the boy’s hand, a small thing like the paw of an animal. The boy grinned, revealing a row of lopsided teeth. Leonid smiled back, and a camera flashed. He stood, saluted the Queen, and made his way to the dais in the center of the room, directly under the fake Vostok.
There were about two hundred reporters crowding the dais, as Leonid estimated it. Before the tour, he had never been around so many people all at once. If someone had told him that there were tens of thousands in attendance at his first appearances, he would have believed them. Any number more than a handful seemed to him countless. Now, though, after dozens of such events, he was beginning to recognize the size of a crowd for what it was. Afterward, Ignatius would always give him an estimate, then jot it down in a notebook she kept in a pocket of her leather jacket. Leonid’s estimates usually aligned with hers.
He stepped to the cluster of microphones atop the podium and addressed the crowd in halting English. His arm lifted into a wave without him having to think about it.
“Greetings from outer space to our friends in Great Britain.”
Dozens of cameras flashed, but he hardly noticed them anymore.
The usual barrage of questions followed: What does weightlessness feel like? What does Earth look like from space? Were you scared? On to the more specific questions. Can you describe the launch process? How do you navigate the capsule? What is the next mission? When can we expect the next launch? Who is the next cosmonaut?
Leonid gave all the rehearsed answers, Ignatius helping with the English when he got stuck on a word. The same answers he had given to reporters across the whole continent. The words felt even more meaningless in a language not his own.
The questions petered out, like the drops of rain at the end of a storm. Leonid recalled watching Nadya’s press conference in London years ago. He had huddled around the small television in the barracks with the other twins at Star City. The questions to her came in torrents that seemed like they would never cease. She answered in clipped, awkward phrases, always in Russian. An interpreter, standing so close to Nadya that she held equal share of the podium, translated every question and translated back every answer. Leonid did not know why Nadya would not answer in English. She had always spoken it much better than him. It would not be until her return to Star City that Leonid found out that she was not the Nadya he had known, but her twin, trained to pilot Vostok 1, not to answer questions from foreign press. Leonid still felt guilty that he had not known right away.
A reporter in the third row asked a question, but Leonid had not been paying attention.
“Could you repeat, please?” he asked.
“What does it feel like to be a hero, not just to your own country but to the world?”
“I am no more hero than any Russian worker.”
That was the rehearsed line. Ignatius, standing just to his side, smiled.
Leonid continued, “And I am less hero than some.”
He looked at Nadya, standing by the dais, still looking around the hall at the many wonders of the Soviet Union, tractors and plows and spaceships, toiling workers with insane grins stretched wide across their plastic mannequin faces. Ignatius pulled him by the shoulder away from the podium, and offered a quick thanks to the press. As they moved toward the exit, Ignatius leaned close and whispered, “A fine improvisation, comrade,” but she did not sound like she meant it.
THEY TOURED LONDON followed by a cadre of photographers. The color of the sky reminded Leonid of winter in Star City, but it was not cold at all. It smelled different, too. Passing the Thames, salt and brine wafted with the mist. Leonid had only first seen the sea the previous week, and now here was that smell again. It was a smell like catching the sunset back in his home village, when it fell right in the V of the valley, as if the light funneled directly to the core of the Earth.
Sometimes the photographers would ask Nadya and Leonid to stop in front of a landmark. The cosmonauts posed, backs bolt-upright, chins slightly raised, Leonid flashing his smile. Nadya would try to pull her face into a shape other than a scowl. The picture snapped; they moved on.
Leonid did not recognize any of the places where they took photos, though he found many of them beautiful, the architecture a far cry from the Soviet utilitarianism of Star City. Things here felt old, as if wandering the city was actually touring a memory. In the Eastern nations, tours had always focused on factories and modern museums. Here, though, and in Paris and Rome, every other building they paused to inspect was a church, some small and old and others massive and older still, surfaces adorned with angels and saints, swathes of stone interspersed with colorful windows depicting even more angels and more saints. Back in his home village, the church had been made of old stacked logs and capped by a thatched roof, later shingled by a team of Soviet carpenters. The only decoration was two branches left over from the church’s construction, tied together in the shape of a cross and hung over the unraised altar. Over time, the crosspiece had gone aslant, slipping halfway through the binding. The shape that remained was more mystic rune than crucifix, but no one ever thought to repair it. Probably by now the twine had rotted to nothing, leaving just a vertical stick nailed to the wall.