“Who would?” Keith said, his voice moving out into those same stars. At drift. Drifting.
“The astronomers at Golosiiv observatory. They would know.”
“Are you still in touch with them?”
“No.” There was a pause and then he added, “Not so much anymore. When I first was here in America, yes, but then not anymore.”
“Lost touch?”
“No reason to bother them. I was not help to anyone by calling. They are busy people. And I have nothing to add here.”
“The telescope you worked with in Kiev was a big one?”
“You do not know Golosiiv?” Peter said, a hint of incredulity in his voice.
“No,” he said. “Should I?”
“I do not know.” He paused, then said, “Maybe not. It is famous for me, but I forget you are no astronomer but engineer.”
“True,” Keith said.
“Astronomy is important to me,” Peter said. “It’s most important thing that I can do. More important than stacking boxes at Target.”
“Most things are.”
“This is right, Astronaut Keith Corcoran.” Peter paused for a long time now, then looked through the eyepiece, then stepped back and looked up at the stars. “I went to university in Ukraine. I mean I have education.”
“I figured as much.”
“Education but not degree. Luda came along and then Marko and then Nadia later. Hard then to keep going when there is feeding family.”
“I’m sure,” Keith said. He sipped at his beer. The crickets chirped somewhere in the field. Everywhere.
“There is famous observatory south of Kiev in Golosiiv Forest. Famous in Ukraine. Very beautiful forest with paths and trees. Most beautiful when night is coming and shadows are in trees. Everything so green and beautiful. And in winter when snow comes. Everything quiet then. Like bird comes and is over everything. Like white bird. Like whole forest is nest for white bird.”
Keith was smiling in the darkness, his head back on the sofa, eyes straight up and staring into the stars, Peter continuing to talk somewhere as if the voice was being narrated by someone who was no longer there, as if on the soundtrack of a film about this moment with two men in the darkness staring up into space, each in their own world and that world the same.
“And there is Main Astronomical Observatory there. Right there in forest.” Peter paused, lifted his pipe again and Keith could see his face lit by the orange glow of his lighter and could hear him breathe in the smoke and hold it as the glow disappeared, once again a silhouette as if made of some darker matter than that of the universe around him, around them both. “I wish you could see this as I did. It is magnificent. Not like this little thing but beautiful thing with forest all around. You see what I am saying?” He paused and once again the orange glow of the lighter, the inhaling of smoke and holding, then the exhale. “A place you could dream about if you are like me and you spend your nights looking at books about stars and you read about stars and planets and you go to university to study. And then they give you job as assistant. And it barely pays but maybe you are not caring because you love.”
There was a long pause now, long enough that Keith lifted his head from the back of the sofa and looked over at Peter there, at his silhouette in the darkness. He wanted Peter to keep speaking if only because there was a story being told that was not his story and so did not involve the tiny cul-de-sac of his own life. There were other lives and other stories and he had forgotten this simple fact until this moment, in this night. “Must have been incredible,” he said and he hoped it would be enough because he did not want to speak; he only wanted to loll his head back on the sofa and drink his beer and feel the aftereffects of the painkillers as they mixed with the alcohol and drifted through him as he floated on the surface of Peter’s story like a man in a moonlit boat on a flat and silent sea.
“Yes, incredible,” Peter said. “The work was, but nothing else. We lived in apartment in Teremky, west of city. I took municipal bus to Golosiiv and sometimes this bus would not be there and I would have to walk mile to train. And pay is terrible. Luda was home whole time in apartment and she did not know what to do. Her family was across city. There was no car for us, so hard to get anywhere. Sometimes buses regular like clocks and other times they do not come, sometimes for days. You could walk under road in tunnel and you could even take baby carriage up and down stairs but maybe not two of them. Not by yourself. So you cannot get anywhere then. Not by yourself with children.”
And Keith could see it: the tunnel under the road, graffiti covering the walls. The concrete stairs. The rush of people coming and going.
“I would go to university in day and then Golosiiv and would work there in night with astronomers and in beginning I’m helping only with putting data in computer. There is little office there with very old computer and some equipment. No windows even, but I do not care. Dr. Federov there was in charge of data and I work for him for year and they think I’m doing good job and I keep asking questions and learning always and taking classes in daytime. Dr. Vanekov sees and recommends me to Dr. Kuzmenko and so I am work then for him and it is with telescope then. That is what I wanted. Dr. Kuzmenko even publish paper and thank me by name in this paper.”
“That’s great,” Keith said.
“Yes, I was very proud. That was later, after I was there for long time already.” Peter puffed at his pipe again and then stood in the cricket-filled silence that was no silence at all. The stars spinning around them. “It is difficult thing to keep going to school and to work when you have two small children.”
“I can understand that.”
“Yes, very difficult. Impossible for me, I think.” Quiet then. Peter returned to the sofa and sat.
“You want a beer?” Keith said.
“Yes, I will have beer.”
Keith reached down and pulled a bottle from its cardboard container and handed it across to Peter and then sipped at his again and leaned his head back.
The sounds of Peter opening his own beer and drinking. Then: “They made some discoveries too when I was there. Things I helped with. Dr. Kuzmenko worked on very new galaxies and he found blue dwarf galaxies, not very far away, and I helped him on finding that. Markarian 59 and 71. That is what they are called.”
He rested his head on the sofa again. The North Star high and Cassiopeia below its point but his eyes gazing straight up at the blaze of stars directly above. Peter’s life in the forest with the telescopes and dwarf galaxies that even now glow faintly somewhere in the night sky all around them. “So why did you leave?” he said at last.
“Ah, because of Luda and children.”
“She asked you to?”
“No, she would not do this. But I knew this is better. First university I had to stop because it took all daytime and then job at Golosiiv was not really job. It was like … how do you say … like assistant or something.”
“An internship?”
“Yes, like internship. But I knew I was good at this and I knew more than most who might have been hired there, but still they could not really hire me and then when they found out that I had quit university they could not keep me there anymore. So that was end of Golosiiv as well.”
“Shit,” Keith said.
“Yes, shit,” Peter said. “That is what this was. Fucking shit.”
“Fucking shit,” Keith repeated.
“Yes,” Peter said, as if considering. “They liked me there, I think. Dr. Kuzmenko tried to keep me on but this needed to be official. He could not change rules for me. I had no diploma for working. So someone else came in and works there for me.”