All Faculty Excerpts

The Days of Miracle and Wonder: Stories

The following is an excerpt from a story in Irene Zabytko's forthcoming collection, The Days of Miracle and Wonder.

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The Cosmonaut's Tale: The Sea of Dreams

The last time we saw Yuri Gagarin was in a banya, the only birch hut sauna left in Star City that had a solid roof because we were sick of the sky. We all sat naked and bored and supposedly got to display our true peasant souls once out of our filthy Red Army uniforms. But mostly, we were there because some alcoholic fuck forgot to turn on the hot water at our barracks, and when he did, the damn pipes burst. It was cold enough that winter for us to crave huddling our fat Soviet asses together, pressed in that stink on those hard benches where at least we all got a fair swig from the bottles that nudged a rib or thigh before being passed around.

We were waiting for the steam from the wood stove and the horilka to mellow us enough before we egged on the Great Gagarin to shoot his mouth off again and tell us what a big Soviet hero he was. What a number one Bolshevik, what an impeccable Proletarian. What an ass wipe he was then.

He was an ass wipe before. I was his roommate and fellow cosmonaut in training, and I will say without one ounce of modesty that I was the better space pilot! I excelled in everything, including not once feeling motion sickness in simulated space voyages. Unlike our boy Yuri who threw up the moment he stepped into the little pretend space capsule.

But our benevolent government chose him for the first orbital space flight and not me. Not me, the Ukrainian, the khokhol from the provinces. Why? Because my family was sent to the gulags? Because they could never allow an inferior Ukrainian to represent Mother Russia?

That and because Yuri was much better looking. Even I had to admire and be forever envious of that smooth-shaven, boyish grin and puppy-dog eyes. The bastard. And yes, he did look better on a commemorative postage stamp than I ever would.

The last time I saw him was in 1968, just seven years after his big solo-once-in-a lifetime-for-him-and-only-him launch into space—beating those smug-shit cowboy Americans. Gagarin and I trained together as cosmonauts in Star City. Soon after the big space event, I used to tell the others how Gagarin had changed from the pretty boy Komsomol pet to having the weight of the planet perched on his white, puffy shoulders.

He was unrecognizable from the official Pravda photos everyone remembers when he was trim and handsome and had more hair on that conceited head. Women would stand in lines longer than the ones for the food co-op just to fondle his crew-cut and golden-boy face. Not anymore, because there in our homey little banya that stunk of garlic dill pickles and rancid pork, Gagarin looked like a typical Slavic pudge. Just like the rest of us.

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Reprinted with permission from Galiot Press. You can learn more about Irene and her work here.