“It is.”
“When I was small, the military people told me that she went to be spy at British embassy, and was killed by this imperial diplomat. Three bullets to her back, bam, they said, by West. But when I entered the air force, they finally told me some of this truth. A heavy brown file. She was second woman to travel to Space, ever, with another cosmonaut. The space program thought they could make it to moon and back, but this was so far before such things were possible, only one year after Gagarin. The Party was thirsty to do everything before the Americans. And so my mother went up, with this man, and I was told SSP lost hearing two hours into the mission. Probably, they made it to the moon and crashed, or they choked because of oxygen coming out. Either way, this death was quick and like heroes, they said.”
“Kind assurance,” I said.
The room was hot. A malfunction caused by the Chopra dust that couldn’t be fixed, Klara had told me. At night, I would wake, thinking I had a high fever, and at last I was to die. But then Klara would arrive in the morning to deliver breakfast, and I was glad for another day.
“Well,” she said, “then this man from ministry of interior fell in love with me, and I suppose I wanted to see how things go. And one evening, after we went to kino and he was drunk, he told me that he could get this file in secret for me—a file containing truths. I made love to him that night from the excitement of possibility. I thought my mother’s heroism would, at last, take good shape. And so he brought the file, and I read it under candlelight on night when electric went out.”
She wasn’t looking at me now. She stretched out her fingertips, as if the file still rested there, and she was feeling along its edges.
“And the truth was different,” I said.
“Yes. The mission was suicide from beginning. The SSP wanted to see if a new vehicle could make full distance to Mars, unbroken, while keeping life. My mother knew this, the man knew this, and they volunteered, and they kissed their different children good-bye and they went off forever. Two hours into the mission, all is well, and suddenly, her partner starts to speak crazy. He said he could hear God in waves of universe, and he knew the world would end soon. And this God of waves was sending him and my mother to Mars to become new Adam and Eve, to begin again on different planet. He was certain this was their fate. My mother tried to talk with him, the engineers talk to him, even Khrushchev stopped by to tell him some words before complete crisis. But the man would not stop raving, and he was looking at my mother like some beast, and so she took a can opener and she sticked him somewhere, maybe throat, she would not tell tsentr, SSP, but they heard the man choking on blood, and so they guessed. After this, my mother spoke of the things she could see. She asked why so many things in whole universe were circles. Planets and stardust and atoms and asteroids. A softness to so many things. Then she choked to death. They recorded it on manuscripts. She choked so far away from Mars, still so close to Earth. Do you know how they wrote this? For this man she killed, he choked as this: kchakchakchachchchchch, and so on. Sudden bursts, like heartbeats, you know. But my mother, hers was more slow: eghougheghougheghough. They really paid attention to how many times she did this. Of course, her ship crashed, or perhaps it is still out in universe somewhere, who knows. And that was phantom mission number two.”
“But here you are. An astronaut.”
“I haven’t had to kill a man. Not yet.”
“You think of her often.”
“I think about what made her go, and what made me go. I decide this brand of madness must be in the blood. Do you ask? I bet what brings you to the sky was same duty as your father’s: that final—no, that terminal decision to serve. I find comforting there. The idea of being, I don’t know, like there is no choice, you have to be a certain person, the instinct put into DNA. It seems honest.”
I imagined Klara’s mother, the two of them perfect look-alikes, and her wonder at her crewmate’s blood spilling out like soap bubbles. The first murder of the cosmos. Perhaps she killed the man and then anticipated redemption on Mars. An alien creature assuring her, “You did what had to be done.”
Wasn’t all life a form of phantom being, given its involuntary origin in the womb? No one could guarantee a happy life, a safe life, a life free of violations, external or eternal. Yet we exited birth canals at unsustainable speeds, eager to live, floating away to Mars at the mercy of Spartan technology or living simpler lives on Earth at the mercy of chance. We lived regardless of who observed us, who recorded us, who cared where we went.
“It is hot,” I told Klara.
“Yes.”
Quietly, we ate.
DURING THE LAST MONTH of our journey, the crew of NashaSlava1 blessed me with magnificent meals. It turned out that the spaghetti I had initially been fed during my illness was the worst food on board, something they were willing to waste on a potentially dying man. Now that it was clear I would live, they brought different meals every day. General Tso’s chicken, borscht, beef stroganoff topped with sour cream, tiramisu, and bacon—that glorious memento of Lenka. These were all microwaved meals, but to a man starved down to nearly two-thirds of his original size, it didn’t matter.
Klara explained that these meals were meant as weekly treats for the crew, small interruptions to their otherwise impeccably healthy diets. Since the food reserves were too plentiful for three people and Vasily refused to eat any of the cheat meals, Klara and Yuraj had decided to make the remainder of the mission a celebration of gluttony, and had challenged themselves to empty the reserves as we reached Earth. I was happy to help, so happy that the constant pain of an infected tooth crippling half my face presented no challenge to my newfound appetite—for the food, for the Japanese tea, for the bottles of American bourbon, of Russian vodka, of Japanese beer. I spent the week eating, breathing, and looking out the observation window, making a list of everything I wanted from life. Of everything I felt I was owed.
I wanted to see the hairy belly of my friend one last time, a legless corpse.
I wanted to see God touch the universe, reach his hand through the black curtain and shake the strings on which the planets loom. A proof.
I wanted to witness giant cosmic lovers, two larger-than-life figures holding hands, picnicking on the surface of Mars, in love with craters and barren landscapes. They were so made for each other that they looked exactly alike, their sexes blurred out, indistinct.
I wanted to see Earth crack at its core, split into shards, and confirm my theory—that it is simply too fragile to earn its keep. A proof.