Leonid had expected a small version of Moscow, but this, this was barely a city at all, just a group of people who all happened to settle in the same place.
The wheels pinched out a final screech, and the train halted in front of a long platform, the wood of the planks gray with age. A boxy ticket booth made of the same wood sprouted from the platform. A long, low warehouse stretched parallel to the tracks, sections of its roof patched with mismatched shingles. Leonid shut his eyes, trying to bring the reality of this place, Georgiu-Dezh, into harmony with his memory of Liski. That was a boy’s memory, a boy who had never been outside his tiny mountain village, who had never seen any human thing taller than a hut. Then came Moscow, shattering his idea of scale. And then when he watched Nadya launch, the other Nadya, the power of the rocket diminished even a mighty city to a speck.
Several men clustered on the platform, shifting back and forth, glancing at the door of one train car, then the next, then the next. They wore fine suits, or what passed for fine in a town such as this, the kind of suit bought on their one trip to Moscow years ago, now too small in the waist, too heavy for the weather, the color faded.
The first passengers disembarked, locals who headed straightaway through the gates into the outskirts of the city. Then came visitors, taking two or three deliberate steps away from the train before pausing, looking around as if for a familiar landmark, finding none, and only then moving on. Last came the families, parents herding packs of half-wild children, like trying to contain an explosion.
A hand on his shoulder drew Leonid’s attention away from the window. He had almost forgotten that Ignatius was there, and Nadya, too. The whole trip had passed in near silence.
“Let’s go,” said Ignatius, “before they start loading the next set of passengers.”
Leonid had no bags, just the coat to his uniform, which he flipped on and shrugged over his shoulders. The medals clinked together. He had forgotten some of their names and made up his own, like The Soviet Order of Exploding Stars and Little Metal Lenin Face. He followed Ignatius and Nadya outside.
The same several men were still on the platform, glancing from car to car with frantic energy. When Nadya stepped through the door, they let out a collective sigh. They were the greeting party, probably the mayor and a party representative and then other city officials with unclear titles. Leonid drew himself away from the window. He was the last person off the train, save the conductor, who leaned out the side of the engine, fanning himself with his cap.
Nadya, Ignatius, and Leonid lined up facing the greeters, the oldest of whom snapped a quick salute. Surely an old soldier, one who had seen real fighting. Leonid had learned to recognize combat veterans by the sad but respectful way they looked at his uniform. Their eyes were always drawn down to the fabric, as if it were woven from memory itself. This particular veteran focused on the epaulets, always looking just to either side of Leonid’s face.
The shortest of the men, wearing a too-small felt bowler, stepped forward and spread his arms.
“Greetings,” he said, “and welcome to Georgiu-Dezh! I’m Mayor Osinov. And this is…”
The Mayor listed off names that Leonid forgot even as he heard them. Instead, he named the men as he had his medals; there was Bear Beard and The Bespectacled Twig and Browncoat, the old soldier. Out of respect for his position, Leonid let the mayor just be Mayor.
But god, the Mayor was a talker. After the introductions, he babbled on, not allowing Ignatius time to introduce herself. He explained the lodging situation for the evening and now seemed to be regaling them with the whole history of the city, even prehistory, starting with the nomadic tribes that used to live here during the Ice Age. The Mayor spoke an excited sentence that ended with “… mastodon!” He took a breath. Ignatius jumped forward.
“Thank you so much for greeting us in person. The official dinner’s tonight, yes? After our cosmonauts visit the planetarium?” She shook each man’s hand in turn. “For now, could you please take us to our rooms? I’m afraid Leonid never sleeps on trains. Though he’s too proud to admit it, he could probably use a nap.”
She forced out an artificial laugh. Leonid did not trust such a laugh, but it seemed enough for the greeters, who joined her in laughing, all but the Mayor, who frowned, obviously ready to share more stories that he would now have to wait all the way until evening to tell.
Leonid took two strong strides forward, stopping directly before the Mayor. He shook the Mayor’s hand.
“Thank you, Mayor,” said Leonid. “I look forward to spending time with you at dinner this evening.”
The Mayor beamed, stammering in response, “Yes, yes. Of course. Yes.”
One of the men, Bear Beard, ushered Nadya, Ignatius, and Leonid in the direction of the hotel, leaving the other three men to linger on the platform. Ignatius halted and turned back.
“Excuse me,” she shouted over the clamor of the train yard. “Does this city have many stray dogs?”
THE HOTEL ROOM was barely nicer than the dormitories at Star City, which the cosmonauts referred to as the gulag, at least when the Chief Designer and the engineers of his generation were not around. Many of the engineers had spent time in actual gulags, and the rest had seen friends and family sent there, never to return. It was a joke in poor taste, yes, but the cosmonauts were doomed to the same fate. It was about more than just the shoddy construction and limited amenities of the dormitories.
Leonid sat on the creaking bed, loosening his tie and unbuttoning his collar. The room sweltered. The window was open, but no breeze entered, just the creeping heat. Leonid slipped off his jacket and discarded it on the other side of the bed. The battered armoire in the corner had no hangers inside.
Ignatius had deposited Leonid and Nadya in the hotel and then left, saying she would be back in an hour. Had it been an hour already? Leonid wore a watch but had neglected to wind it for months. Since the day of his brother’s launch. He wished he had brought a book. Giorgi was always recommending things to read, to Leonid and all the other cosmonauts, but no one ever took his advice. Besides the many manuals written by the engineers for training, the cosmonauts never read anything. None of them except Giorgi, and he seemed able to do everything all at once. Did Liski have a bookstore? Wait, the city was now called what? Did Georgiu-Dezh have a bookstore? Did the town called Liski have a bookstore that had since closed, so that one of the names had a bookstore but the other did not?
Leonid stood and walked to the window for the dozenth time. He was on the second floor. Below him was a narrow lane, sun-washed sky above. And before him, a stone wall, so close it seemed he could reach across and touch it. It was farther away than it seemed.
The door opened, and Nadya came in without knocking. She joined Leonid by the window. To someone seeing them from behind, it would appear as if they were gazing out at a great scene beyond, as if the window overlooked a breathtaking vista.
“It’s better than my view,” said Nadya.
“You’ve found a grayer wall than this?”
“My window faces the city. But it’s not really a city. It’s a town pretending to be a city. The buildings are covered with city-like façades, and the people wear clothes copied from Moscow. It’s like a child aping older siblings.”
“I was the eldest, if only by minutes.”
“Who did you copy?”
“The men of the village, I suppose.”
“Maybe our individual personalities are just the areas in which we failed to perfectly copy someone else, all individuality a mistake.”