“Why are you sad?” he asked.
“Quite the opposite,” she said. Her voice carried a tone that had been long absent. “You two will leave the village.”
“I don’t understand. What about you? And Mykola? And Kasha?”
“Hush,” said the younger Leonid.
The older Leonid looked at his brother. He felt like he was standing in the center of a secret he did not know the smallest part of. Even the dog seemed to understand. Her growling had silenced. That moment reminded him of the quiet at a funeral as the dirt was replaced in the hole.
Pulling himself out of Grandmother’s embrace to look into her face, the younger Leonid asked, “Who’ll pray with you?”
“My only prayer is answered. I don’t have much else to say to god, if he’s even there.”
Tsiolkovski held up his hand and snapped his fingers. Two soldiers entered the cottage, squeezing through the doorway on either side of him. One of the soldiers, a female officer, gripped each Leonid by the shoulder, firm but not unfriendly, and led them out the door. Tsiolkovski turned to follow, paused, and turned back.
To the other soldier he said, “And the dog. Filthy as it is, we might have use for it, as well.”
The soldier pushed Mykola away and lifted Kasha. The soldier seemed surprised at how light she was, how much of her was made of fur and how little flesh. Kasha, for her part, did not so much as squirm. She was the only one to look back, the last of the three to see the cottage.
As the officer led them away, she bent down and whispered to the twins, “One rare and exceptional deed is worth far more than a thousand commonplace ones.”
The older Leonid tried to look up at her, but no matter how he craned his neck, the officer’s face stayed out of view. There was something about her, though, that reminded him of Grandmother. He regretted the thought even as he had it.
Kharkiv, Ukraine—1964
The quadruple props of the Antonov An-12 whirred once and then came the thump of landing. Leonid rode in the cargo compartment at the back of the plane, sitting on a bent metal bench beside Giorgi’s casket, Kasha curled asleep in the space beside him. The compartment stank of oil and grease. There were seats up front, where the Chief Designer, Nadya, Mishin and Bushuyev, and other engineers had remained for the whole flight. Even Yuri and Valentina were there. The two of them had left the program so long ago that they seemed like strangers. The broader world had seeped into them. Their life extended beyond the Star City campus.
Ignatius had come back once during the flight with a canteen. Leonid accepted a few sips. He handed back the canteen and she left, never speaking. Every time the plane had hit turbulence, the casket would lift several inches from the floor before slamming back down. Leonid tried to tighten the straps that secured it, but they were as tight as they could go. The last half of the flight he spent leaning on the casket’s lid, holding it steady in the rough air.
The Antonov taxied to a stop. From the front cabin came the sounds of the other passengers disembarking. A few minutes later, the rear ramp lowered. The sun shot streaks through the cracks. There were no windows in the cargo bay, only pale yellow lights that flickered every time the pilot had throttled the engines. The sunlight seemed like the first flare of an explosion. Kasha roused and sprinted down the ramp to Nadya, who had been the one to insist on bringing the dog. The Chief Designer for his part did not argue against it.
Six soldiers in full dress uniforms ascended the ramp. The one nearest Leonid saluted him. These men were junior officers, and Leonid, according to the insignias on his own uniform, outranked them. The young officer held his salute until Leonid returned it, and then took position on one corner of the casket. The soldiers hoisted the casket onto their shoulders, an action they had obviously rehearsed many times before. Leonid wondered if that was all they did, whole days spent practicing with empty coffins. The soldiers marched their burden out the back of the plane. Leonid followed.
Outside, the other passengers stood in a line that led to the airport terminal. It was only after reading the name of the airport that Leonid realized they were in Ukraine. He had never known Giorgi was Ukrainian. Giorgi spoke such perfect Russian, no hint of an accent. Leonid had never thought to ask him about his hometown. Or his family. The twins all had stories they told, but they were fabricated. It never occurred to Leonid that someone might have a real life, real stories to tell.
Ukraine! The reality of the soil beneath his feet hit him. He had not been to his own country since Tsiolkovski took him and his brother and the original Kasha from Bohdan. This was the opposite side of the country, and he had been closer to the village on his tour through Eastern Europe, but still, knowing he had crossed the border made this feel like home, no matter how imaginary the line of a border might be.
The soldiers loaded the casket into the back of a Chaika hearse waiting by the tarmac. It was the same kind of car that the cosmonauts often rode in parades, though without the retractable roof. The back of the car had giant fins like those on the models of space capsules that were shown to the public. Pure decoration. Polished chrome ornamented the car’s every seam and angle. A black-clad driver revved the engine and drove away.
Closer to the terminal, a line of black state vehicles idled, their drivers standing by open back doors. Leonid watched everyone else from Star City choose a vehicle and funnel inside. No one entered the last car in line, so Leonid chose it for himself. The driver, an older man but not elderly, bone thin and twitchy, seemed relieved to actually have a passenger. Thankfully, he did not try to strike up a conversation. Kasha slipped into the backseat with Leonid just before the driver closed the door.
Leonid watched out the windshield as the convoy snaked in front of him, undulating as the cars rounded curves, bouncing in sequence over bumps, compressing as the lead car slowed, expanding as it accelerated. To the right, the city sprawled. To the left, dense forest. The road angled just slightly toward the city, growing the buildings with every kilometer. The highway hummed under the tires.
“Is it hard to drive?” asked Leonid.
The driver looked at him in the rearview mirror, thick eyebrows scrunched over sagging lids. His eyes were a gray long since faded from pale blue. Below, a long nose protruded over a mustache that hid the whole of his mouth.
“Drive?” Leonid held his hands in front of him and moved them as if he were steering.
Looking back at the road ahead of him, the driver said something that Leonid could not understand. It sounded like gibberish. Slowly, though, the gibberish turned to words in his head. Ukrainian. He had not spoken it since he was a boy, though sometimes his thoughts still came in his native language.
Leonid asked the question again, this time in Ukrainian. “Is it hard to drive?”
The driver looked at Leonid in the mirror again. His expression shifted from confusion to shock. Apparently, Soviet officers did not speak to him in Ukrainian very often.
“I don’t think about it,” said the driver. “It’s just something I do. You don’t drive yourself?”
“Giorgi taught me the basics once, on the roads of… the place where we worked. Giorgi is the man in the casket.”
“I’m sorry,” said the driver. He glanced back again in the mirror. “Surely, though, you can master driving. You’ve flown a spaceship, after all.”
“I’m not sure the two are related,” said Leonid.
“Was he also a cosmonaut? This Giorgi?” asked the driver.
“He was a friend, more like a brother.”