What had I expected? I wasn't sure. I still wasn't sure. We hurtled through our planet's shadow. “This is Seagull,” I told him, more plaintively than I wished to.
“The slightest push sends you in the opposite direction,” he reported, adding that he'd now been unstrapped for nearly ninety minutes.
“Do you have nausea?” he asked.
“Do I have nausea?” I said.
“Where are you?” I said.
There was a series of clicks in my ear. “I'm performing one of my procedures,” he said.
When I was a small girl, one of my evening chores was retrieving the goat that strayed to browse the garden between two tumbledown houses that frightened me. Each night, my father would say, “Oh, I'll go with you.” And then, when I waited: “Go! I'm not going.” And every single time, I'd say to myself as I went, Stupid: you took the bait. But next time you'll be smarter.
“I'm doing my stretching exercises,” Bykovsky informed me, and then his responsibilities absorbed his attention for the rest of the time we were in shadow, and I made no further attempt to distract him.
Our code phrases for communicating our condition, given that the Americans were listening, were as follows: a report of “feeling excellent” signified all was well; “feeling good” conveyed there was some concern; and “feeling satisfactory” meant that the mission might need to be terminated.
“How are you, Seagull?” Korolyov said once radio contact was reestablished. The sun broke around the bottom of the world like the arc from a welder's torch.
“I'm feeling satisfactory,” I reported.
“You're what?” he said. “Say again, Seagull?”
But I chose not to answer. There were frantic attempts to reestablish contact.
“Hawk, Hawk, please contact Seagull,” Korolyov urged, spinning toward me so far below.
“Seagull, this is Hawk,” Bykovsky said after a moment. “Is everything excellent?”
“How are your experiments?” I answered. My gloves seemed steady on the switches before me.
“I think something may be wrong with her receiver, or she may have selected the wrong channel,” he told Korolyov.
He also reported periodically that he was continuing to pay close attention to his physical regimen. In that same period of time I failed to activate my biological experiments, failed to participate in my medical experiments, and failed to keep an official log, writing for myself instead. Solovyova tried to raise me, and when she did I reached for my radio but then eased my hand back. My helmet chafed my shoulders. I wished I had toothpaste. I was supposed to photograph the solar corona but the film cassette stuck in the camera and I cracked the inner window with the lens attempting to remove the cartridge.
“Seagull, are you there?” Korolyov pleaded.
“I think she's asleep,” Bykovsky finally told him.
18 June 1963 Night
The second-day crisis was that I failed to perform a major goal of the mission: manual control of the spacecraft. Korolyov was frightened that I would be lost should the automatic reentry system fail. Nikolayev and then Gagarin himself were brought in to instruct me from the ground. Gagarin was a gentleman about it. There are two guidance systems for establishing orientation for retrofire: one uses an automatic solar bearing, and the other is manual and visual. My task was to hold the Yzor orientation viewport level with the Earth's horizon for fifteen minutes, but it refused to stop bouncing and slipped out of my crosshairs. “There it goes again,” I'd say with equanimity, while below they tried to keep the exasperation out of their responses. My eyes filled with tears and just like that the tears went away.
I had meat mixed with sorrel or oats, and prunes and processed cheese for dinner. The bread was too dry.
19 June 1963 Night
A few minutes ago I passed the lights of Rio within the blackness of Brazil. This morning I was successfully talked through the manual control by Nikolayev. I remember him as a smug and unpleasant person with jowls and the darkest razor stubble I've ever seen. Everyone is much relieved below. They're bringing me back early.
I've often considered what kind of first impression I make. I assume that I initially evoke a measure of intrigue before people get to understand me and become repulsed.
In my most recent exchanges with Bykovsky, I feel as though I've been able to detect with great precision brutality and remorse tinged with diffidence and pity. Some I haven't had the heart to report, even here. None of this should surprise me. Only my loneliness now generates fear. Otherwise I'm an uninteresting and aching surface.
During that first party for the cosmonaut finalists, I found Bykovsky and Ponomaryova holding hands as they touched an exposed wire in her portable radio set. “Come on, you try it,” they said.
1 August 1964
What else, that day, did I not do? I still remember. I failed to signal the correct working of the solar orientation system. I remained silent throughout reentry. I did not report retrofire or the separation of the capsule. I was told there was quite the panic down below throughout all of this. I focused instead on the roaring sound of the hot air, the bacon-in-the-pan sound of the thermal cladding in the reentry inferno, and the jouncing which was like a springless cart being galloped down a rutted gully. Then outside the charred porthole I saw white sky and the hatch over my helmet blew away like I'd been shelled and the ejection rockets thundered in a blur of daylight and I saw the burned capsule falling away below as I was separated from my seat.
Against regulations, I opened my visor and looked up, and was struck in the face by a piece of metal. I saw a river and some haystacks. I saw a rail line, with a locomotive. I saw small figures running to where I would land.
At the press conference we faced one hundred and three correspondents. Bykovsky had landed two orbits later. I was asked about the stitches in my face. I told the correspondents that we were proud of what our country had accomplished. I said that I'd felt no fear. Three different correspondents asked if I'd been lonely, and I answered that I'd known my loved ones were even closer than everyone thought, watching me fly. I told them that, descending on my parachute, I'd sung “My Country Hears, My Country Knows.” There were ten questions for me for every one for Bykovsky. At one point I turned to him and joked, “Oh, were you up there, too?” and occasioned a roar of laughter. I learned later that Khrushchev had been delighted with my performance.
This was before the contests with the doctors and the interviews with Korolyov — all devastated disappointment — and the honors, ending with our tour of Bulgaria, Mongolia, Italy, Switzerland, Mexico, Ghana, and Indonesia. Bykovsky asked that his wife be allowed to accompany us, but Kamanin rejected the request. It was before I received the news of my arranged marriage to Niko-layev, considered the cosmonauts' most eligible bachelor; before the first state wedding in Soviet history, presided over by Khrushchev himself; before the birth, just a few months later, of my little Alyona, a girl who provided proof that space travel interfered with neither love nor fertility.
Of course my diary had been found and read immediately upon my return. But before we were separated forever, Seagull and Hawk were allowed their one trip together around the world, chaperoned by the KGB. We had already separated — we had separated in space — but we still had our walks. On one we traversed a rough track overgrown with honeysuckle and mayweed, leaving our pursuers behind. A wolfhound, very meek and companionable, had attached herself to us. It was entirely quiet except for her panting and the calls of the KGB. We lay with our heads thrown back. Bykovsky mentioned Solovyova, who'd asked him to contact me when her letters had returned to her unopened. “Why was that, do you suppose?” he asked, when I refused comment. “Though it's none of my business,” he added. We talked about how we'd learned about sex. According to my high school friend, it took an hour, and if a couple did it for two hours, they had twins. We kissed for the last time. I asked if he would remove my virginity, and after some reassurances, he did.