I’m travelling, flying without layovers, resisting the temptation to sit in first class. By the way, I’m not raising all these financial questions out of self-interest — I’m not a cheapskate, I simply have to budget very carefully if I want things to end well.
But let’s put that aside for now, at least for a bit — now there’s the motherland, we’re flying above the pale border that expresses her autonomy upon the earth.
This country, The Motherland, as seen from above, resembles a lion, a compact little creature with sturdy if rather short legs and neck, taken away due to the unsuccessful diplomacy and military policies of past regimes. Almost headless, the little lion races forward, as if wanting to flop into the waves of the sea that splashes its chest.
This humble territory’s outlines don’t hint at the silhouette of a serious nation. Nevertheless, besides a certain naïve charm, there is also dignity in them. Or perhaps I’m biased — I’ve known that map for far too long, from childhood, from the school blackboard, to be able to evaluate it objectively. I think I even hear K-shev’s voice, calling from the luggage compartment:
My love for you is enough,
my love for you is everything.
I touch you through her, I embrace you,
even if you don’t love me.
Land like a volcano-woman—
But I don’t need you any colder!
I’m happy that your blood is southern,
and your chastity belt forged from iron.
I have no idea what he’s talking about, I’ve already learned to tune out his jabber.
“After all is said and done, my boy,” he continues, from the urn, “you still don’t know anything. And to be perfectly honest, I, for my part, don’t know anything anymore either, that’s what it looks like to me. Okay, for example: you fly back and forth, travel around. But in the end you still have to go back home, hrrrr,” K-shev sneezes and coughs hoarsely.
I know it’s cold in the luggage compartment.
“Yes, and there we’ll meet again. You’ll pay for your bad behavior. Yes, because we’ll meet up. I’ve laid out all the paths, my boy. Look: especially now, when I’m becoming nothing, shadow and smoke, like the shadows of the trees along the highway. Look, you can see it clearly from here, the asphalt encircles the homeland, its blue bandoliers crisscross the gardens’ fruitful breasts. I’m beyond the sunflowers, I abide in the branches’ shadow, I glow eternally at the curve in the road. The future that I’m shining from never becomes the past because:
We are at every kilometer,
and on and on — until the end of the world!
“Yes, you’re right, you’re absolutely right,” I tell him to get him to shut up. I wrap myself up in the blanket. The vodka warms me pleasantly because it’s pure and good, made by our brothers — these are former Soviet airlines, after all. Arrival in Kazakhstan: on time.
The Third Bulgarian Cosmonaut
To buy a trip to the cosmos, to pay a million and then some for it — I’m proud of this idea. But I need to be completely prepared, physically as well as financially. Medical exams, yes, and all those procedures.
The leader of the pre-launch cycle — Shatrov, Valentin Ivanovich — arrives on his bicycle, which is about twenty years old, Ukraine brand. The chain is always well greased. He carries the folders and training charts in a lovingly preserved plastic bag with the West Cigarettes logo on it and handles that have worn thin. There’s no longer any need for me to be amazed, it would be terribly impolite in any case — not by the state of his bag or his shirt or his ratty jacket with its frayed sleeves. The glasses sitting on his nose — plastic frames, a unisex model with bifocal lenses — are held together on one side by a Band-Aid wrapped around the broken rivet.
In this unchanging form, Shatrov sits behind mountains of equipment that can conquer gravity or that, under different circumstances, could set off a fatal intercontinental war. He spins in the chair, covered in plaid upholstery that sticks up here and there at the edges of the back rest. He observes the censors, fills in the charts with a cheap pen, and in that unmistakable, soft Russian way gives me directions over the microphone, which is as gray as an antique cartridge. The microphone hangs at the end of an even grayer cord — that gray left in the past along with Bakelite and tube televisions. Insulation material made fragile by time, sclerotic arteries that have lost their elasticity — they are no longer manufactured in any chemical factory anywhere in the world. They’ve been replaced by modern rubber, ultra-flexible, which doesn’t slide between your fingers even when it’s sweaty.
But I, in a jumpsuit under the spacesuit, am sweating buckets. The inside of the uniform isn’t padded, there are no ventilation holes along the seams or in the underarms or thighs. The humbleness of it all, the old-fashionedness, the wear-and-tear — it doesn’t worry me, on the contrary — it inspires me. I know, I’m convinced it’ll launch me into those dark heights over our heads with sufficient safety. And there will be so many stars up there that everything brought along from earth will lose its significance.
The old emblems haven’t even been torn off the jumpsuits. Gold letters over the blue silky image: a round planet embroidered between wreaths of wheat, with the inscription “USSR.” This reminds me of how, during the 1950s, K-shev had tried to unite us with the Soviet republics on the sly. Now, Mr. First Secretary, we can try again together.
I received a full set of clothing taken out of storage, still in rustling cellophane wrappers. I have underwear with strong seams that gives off some old smell, maybe camphor. Pure cotton, cream-colored, like ivory. Also T-shirts, with three-quarter-length sleeves. Shoes, socks without heels, and a pair for running that go all the way to the knee. The pants have little slits for attaching the small galvanized hooks at the end of the belts, which connect at the lower back to something like a seat — almost like a diaper of soft cloth, but green instead of white and as furry as an astrakhan. Thus wrapped, I sit in the hollowed-out shell of the training chair. Then in the catapult. The gray jacket is short in the waist, while its collar is rubbery, somehow alive from the tension of the elastic sewn inside. Muscles of natural caoutchouc, I catch a whiff of its stinging scent around my face. The same smell inside the space suit with the round glass helmet that my head disappears into. My body comfortably hides in the hermetic cocoon with its big, soft paws — inside I move my hands, enjoying the slow movements. My thumbs, magnified ten times over, wiggle impossibly far away from me. I’m ready to go out into the open cosmos, or at least I’m technically ready.
The pre-launch program has been reduced to a minimum. Shatrov isn’t happy about it, but what can you do? I suspect that he soothes his conscience at night with vodka. Poor guy — he probably has to buy the bottle with his own money, taken from his miserable salary. He even unscrews the cap, but only lets me sniff it—Kosmicheskaya, with three red stars skewered above a blue rocket, like a drawing out of a children’s book.
I ought to buy him a few rounds, I say to myself, I should come up with some kind of present for him once everything’s finished. Because, I assume that I’ll see him again at the end. I haven’t been completely informed regarding that question, but Shatrov has been with me continually since the very beginning, eighteen hours a day. It would seem impossible for him not to be the first one to greet me when the capsule with the landing apparatus hits the soft black earth, the wheat fields of Kazakhstan.