My mother was buried there, under an expensive monument that still bore her portrait, somewhat faded after six years, much like my memories of her. As usual, I had to bribe the guard to gain access to the cemetery, which was supposedly closed for maintenance, though I suspect the sign was put up by the guards whenever they ran short of cash. Then I was allowed to rent a bucket containing a sponge and some cleaning solvent.
Following a brutal year of decline, my mother Zhanna died on March 12, 1961, one month to the day before Yuri Gagarin’s triumphant first spaceflight. At the time, we had returned to Moscow after years of what my mother certainly saw as exile in the Crimea. She was a Moscow girl who met my father at a Party gathering celebrating the Soviet nonaggression pact with Hitler. (They were both understandably coy about telling me this for many years.) My father was then a pilot junior enough to have been spared the purges that destroyed the upper ranks of the Air Force in the late 1930s; he had been stationed in the Leningrad Military District and had flown combat missions against the Finns before winning a transfer to a demonstration unit based at the Central Airfield.
My parents were married in January 1941 and settled down to the constrained but pleasant life of a junior officer in Moscow; my mother was working as an elementary-school teacher when the Nazis attacked that June. Within weeks she had been evacuated, with her whole school, to Kazan, where she discovered she was pregnant.
My father, of course, had gone to the front shortly after the conjugal visit that resulted in my conception. They did not see each other for almost two years; he only saw me for the first time when I was fifteen months old.
Reunited at war’s end, we did not return to Moscow, but moved to the Feodosiya in the Crimea, where my father was given command of a fighter squadron; then, after completing a correspondence course at the Red Banner Academy (I can remember him sitting up nights, cursing the papers in front of him), an air regiment. My mother resumed teaching. Her mother, Galina, came to live with us.
It was, I realize, a happy time. I had friends; so did my parents. The Crimea has nicer weather than any other part of the USSR. When I was thirteen, however, my father was transferred to Kazakhstan, to a remote posting at a secret base. Only my mother was allowed to accompany him there: I remained in the Crimea with Grandmother Galina for two years, until we all moved to Moscow in the year of the Sputnik, 1957.
Something had gone wrong with my parents’ marriage during those two years in the desert, though the posting had had the opposite effect on my father’s career. (He had offended someone in Moscow, or he would have stayed in the capital at war’s end.) Even though he was over the age limit, he was enrolled at the academy for general staff officers and, in due time, became a general. My mother never taught after her sojourn in the desert, made no new friends, even though she had grown up in Moscow. She spent her time nursing Galina through her last days. Even before her final year, she herself was frequently hospitalized.
Such was the outline of her life — and I knew little more than that.
I had no flowers to bring; they could not be found in Moscow that March. But I was prepared to clean the monument.
Someone had beaten me to it. The winter grime had already been cleared away, and given the visible streaks on the marble facing, not long ago, either. I looked around. Sure enough, through the trees thirty meters away, standing in front of another monument, was a stocky man in a green Air Force greatcoat carrying a bucket of his own. My father, who as far as I knew, had never entered this cemetery since the day his wife was buried.
I only took time to touch the monument — for luck, I suppose — before hurrying off, calling, “Papa!”
He turned toward me, blinking in surprise, gesturing toward my bucket with his. “You, too?”
“Every year.”
If he took that as reproach for his own years of neglect, he didn’t show it. “It’s hard to believe it’s been six years.”
“I’m glad to see you here.”
Nor did he react to my words. “My driver’s over this way.” He assumed — rightly — that I would appreciate a ride. “How have you been?”
Giving up the idea of sharing any conversation about my mother, I went ahead and told him about the end of my relationship with Marina, including the pregnancy.
That brought him back to life. “I’m glad you’re finished with that little whore.”
“Please don’t call her that.”
He grunted. “When you begin to see her more clearly, Yuri, you won’t like it much. She wrecked one marriage already, and the kind of work she does…” He stopped, shaking his head at the disgrace of it all. “How is your work?”
I couldn’t help smiling. “It makes my personal life look like a happy dream.”
He stopped and took my arm. “Have you thought about my offer?”
Yes, I had. During my frequent bus rides all over the northeast sector of the Moscow district, I had wondered what it might be like to go on active duty. I had worn a uniform during my reserve training; God knows I was familiar with the military life. “It’s interesting,” I said, “but I don’t want to wind up assigned to Baikonur for five years. Or up north.”
“Suppose I promised you you could stay in Moscow?”
Being an active-duty officer in Moscow was far from the worst job in the world. A good number of the people working at the Korolev bureau wore uniforms, and aside from that, their professional lives were identical to those of their civilian colleagues. “That would be different.”
“You know, too, that your commitment is only five years. You can transfer back to the reserve and take a job in industry then, after Artemov’s sins have caught up with him.” I laughed. Five years or fifteen — at that moment all I wanted was a change in my circumstances. Joining the Strategic Rocket Force was as close as I could come to enlisting in the French Foreign Legion. “It will also get you out of Vladimir’s clutches.”
That made up my mind. “Go ahead, then.”
He hugged me. “I’ll take care of this in the morning.”
We reached his car. Before we climbed in, I took my father’s arm. “Where were you stationed when you and Mama went to the desert?”
“Semipalatinsk. The nuclear-test range. It’s not actually very far from your Baikonur. I had given up fighters to fly Tupolevs on bomb tests. Why?” He grinned. “Don’t worry: I won’t let them send you there. In fact, I may have a surprise for you.”
“What kind of surprise?”
“Come on, Yuri! Let your father have some fun!” We got in the car. “If I told you, what kind of a surprise would it be?”
24
The Dangers Of Rocket Fuel
On Monday, all of Department 731 was bused over to Star Town for the opening of the new flight simulation building.
I had been to the center once before, when undergoing my test on the centrifuge. Visits by bureau personnel other than our Soyuz cosmonauts were discouraged — not by the military people, but by Triyanov and others in the bureau. “Why should we build simulators here, then have to ship them to the Air Force so they can pretend to control our spaceflights?” he had said more than once.
Nevertheless, a series of “peace treaties” between the Air Force, represented by General Kamanin, and our bureau, notably Artemov and Triyanov, had resulted in the construction of the appropriate simulators.
I had seen the building under construction last spring. It was a three-story structure right across from the centrifuge. We spilled out of the buses, perhaps forty of us, and stomped around in the cold waiting for whoever had the keys to the place. There were several Air Force officers milling around with us — student cosmonauts, I assumed — and one familiar face from the other bus, Lev Tselauri.