Public Loneliness: Yuri Gagarin's Circumlunar Flight by Gerald Brennan Read Free Book Online

excuse to be
petulant and pouty. (Women are of course nervous about things like
spaceflight—a judgment born of ignorance, like all judgments, perhaps. Forgive
me. Tereshkova is of course excepted, though she and her ilk are the exceptions
that prove the rule.) Although my wife didn’t know for sure I’d be going into
space, there were enough similarities with the last time that she suspected it.
She wants me to be happy with her and the kids, at home. She doesn’t want me to
be off doing dangerous things. (Unless of course I’ve been home for more days
than normal, in which case she wants me out of her hair. Surely this is how it
is for everyone! None of this should be foreign to you! Further from the eye,
closer to the heart.)
    Still nothing. No sleep.
    I watch the spot of sunlight from
the porthole as it slices a slow circular path across the inside of the ship’s
hull. Moving in phases: narrow stab wound to slender ellipse, fattening into a
circle, then waning and disappearing.
    I try again to get comfortable.
The problem of the arms is paramount. On their own, they float up, and one gets
worried about bumping a switch. And worry, of course, is the thief of sleep. I
try to tuck my thumbs under my straps, but then of course there are issues of
circulation.
    To be a real man means to
explore, to test one’s limits, to see how far one can get and still make it
back home. I would have taken my wife and our daughters with me if it were
possible, although of course it isn’t, so perhaps this is just an empty wish,
wasted words.
    I fall asleep.
    I wake up.
    I fall asleep.
    I wake up.
    •••
    As I said before, everything
changed after my flight. I was born again, deposited into a new life; my
closest connections were the same, but everything beyond them was not, and even
every interaction with them felt different.
    And my role was new: I was a
representative of the state. When they realized how my flight had captured
imaginations, not just in the Soviet Union, but in the world-at-large, they
sent me on tour. I had never left my country before my flight; now I was going
everywhere. A whirlwind tour.
    I’m proud to say I handled myself
well, for the most part.
    In Manchester, when I visited
England, it was raining severely. But people had lined up in the streets to see
me all the same! (Here and there I was being compared to President Kennedy. It
was embarrassing, but I suppose I can see why: we were both young faces for our
countries. Proof that we were moving dynamically forward into a better future.
Countries need their old faces, too—their Khrushchevs, their Eisenhowers. But
people do get bored of the past, and yearn for something new. Youth and hope
and strength and vigor. Potential. I did not expect this level of excitement,
let me assure you! It was truly humbling, and a reminder of something
fundamentally human: the desire for better accomplishments, longer trips,
progress: the relentless march away from the dustbin of history and towards a
clean and new future.)
    The trade union that had
sponsored my visit had arranged for a motorcade, a train of black convertibles
to take me through the city and give the masses a chance to see me. But they
had put the tops up on the cars, because of the rain.
    Soon, we were inching through the
rain-slick streets. I’d seen the crowds at the airport. I didn’t expect them
elsewhere. But when I wiped the fog from the car’s inside windows I saw: they
were still there! Lining the roads, despite the awful weather! Crowds of wet
people, blurry shapes in the rain—all there to see me!
    “Stop the car. Put the top down,”
I told the driver.
    Kamanin gave me a look.
    “If they’re willing to stand in
the rain to see me, I should at least return the favor,” I told him, with a
grin.
    And so we rode, open-topped,
through Manchester. The people seemed to love it. And Kamanin, in turn,
appreciated that.
    Still, it was bizarre. That was a
highlight, but there were many, many