a fart into five parts?” he asked once.
When we said we didn’t know, he answered himself: “Fart into a glove.”
And he would burst into thin laughter. I was amazed at the positive optimism of this man, blind, paralysed, chained to a wheelchair, but nonetheless carrying out his duty and never tiring of life. There were two political instructors in the space school who were very like each other—Urchagin and Burchagin, both colonels. It was Urchagin who usually taught our crew. There was only one Japanese wheelchair with an electric motor for the two of them, so when one of them was busy with educational work, the other would lie silent and motionless, propped up on his elbow on the bed in a tiny room on the fifth floor, wearing his uniform jacket and covered up to the waist with a blanket that hid the bedpan from probing eyes. The poor furnishings of the room—a map case for writing on, with narrow slits in the sheet of cardboard laid over it, a glass of strong tea permanently on the table, the white curtain and the rubber plant—all touched me so profoundly I almost wept, and at those moments I stopped thinking that all Communists were cunning, mean, and self-serving.
•
The last member of the crew to arrive was Dima Matiushevich, who was responsible for the lunar module. He was very withdrawn and, despite his young years, quite grey. He kept himself to himself, and all I knewabout him was that he’d served in the army. When he saw the reproduction of a painting by Kuindzhi that Mitiok had cut out of a magazine and hung over his bed, he hung a sheet of paper over his own bed, with a small drawing of a bird and three words in big block capitals: OVERHEAD THE ALBATROSS.
Dima’s arrival coincided with the introduction of a new discipline into the timetable, known as “Strong in Spirit”. It wasn’t really a study subject in the normal sense of the word, although it was given pride of place on the timetable. We began to get visits from people who were professional heroes—all of them told us about their lives without a trace of sentimentality; their words were the same simple ones you heard in the kitchen at home, so the very essence of their heroism seemed to spring from the ordinary, from the petty details of everyday life, from the grey, cold air around us.
The person I remember best of all from “Strong in Spirit” is retired Major Ivan Trofimovich Popadya—a funny kind of name. He was tall, a real Russian Hercules, and his jacket was festooned with medals. His face and neck were red, and dotted all over with small white scars. He wore a patch over his left eye. His life was very unusual: He began as a simple huntsman in a hunting reserve used by Party leaders and members of the government, and his duties were to drive the animals—wild boar and bears—towards the marksmen hiding behind the trees. One day there was a terrible accident. A big male boar broke across the line of flags and fatally injured a Party leader who was firing from behind a birch tree. He died on the way to the nearby town, and a session of the supreme organs of poweradopted a resolution forbidding the leadership to hunt wild animals. But, of course, the need remained, and one day Popadya was summoned to the Party Committee of the hunting reserve, where they explained the whole business to him and then said: “Ivan! We can’t order you to do it—and even if we could, we wouldn’t, not this. But it’s something that needs to be done. Think about it. We won’t force you.”
Popadya thought hard about it all night long, and next morning he went to the Party Committee and said he agreed.
“We didn’t expect any other answer,” said the Party Secretary.
They gave Ivan a bulletproof waistcoat, a helmet, and a boar skin, and he went to work at his new job—a job which it would be no exaggeration to describe as daily heroism. For the first few days he felt a little afraid, especially for his exposed legs, but then he got
When we said we didn’t know, he answered himself: “Fart into a glove.”
And he would burst into thin laughter. I was amazed at the positive optimism of this man, blind, paralysed, chained to a wheelchair, but nonetheless carrying out his duty and never tiring of life. There were two political instructors in the space school who were very like each other—Urchagin and Burchagin, both colonels. It was Urchagin who usually taught our crew. There was only one Japanese wheelchair with an electric motor for the two of them, so when one of them was busy with educational work, the other would lie silent and motionless, propped up on his elbow on the bed in a tiny room on the fifth floor, wearing his uniform jacket and covered up to the waist with a blanket that hid the bedpan from probing eyes. The poor furnishings of the room—a map case for writing on, with narrow slits in the sheet of cardboard laid over it, a glass of strong tea permanently on the table, the white curtain and the rubber plant—all touched me so profoundly I almost wept, and at those moments I stopped thinking that all Communists were cunning, mean, and self-serving.
•
The last member of the crew to arrive was Dima Matiushevich, who was responsible for the lunar module. He was very withdrawn and, despite his young years, quite grey. He kept himself to himself, and all I knewabout him was that he’d served in the army. When he saw the reproduction of a painting by Kuindzhi that Mitiok had cut out of a magazine and hung over his bed, he hung a sheet of paper over his own bed, with a small drawing of a bird and three words in big block capitals: OVERHEAD THE ALBATROSS.
Dima’s arrival coincided with the introduction of a new discipline into the timetable, known as “Strong in Spirit”. It wasn’t really a study subject in the normal sense of the word, although it was given pride of place on the timetable. We began to get visits from people who were professional heroes—all of them told us about their lives without a trace of sentimentality; their words were the same simple ones you heard in the kitchen at home, so the very essence of their heroism seemed to spring from the ordinary, from the petty details of everyday life, from the grey, cold air around us.
The person I remember best of all from “Strong in Spirit” is retired Major Ivan Trofimovich Popadya—a funny kind of name. He was tall, a real Russian Hercules, and his jacket was festooned with medals. His face and neck were red, and dotted all over with small white scars. He wore a patch over his left eye. His life was very unusual: He began as a simple huntsman in a hunting reserve used by Party leaders and members of the government, and his duties were to drive the animals—wild boar and bears—towards the marksmen hiding behind the trees. One day there was a terrible accident. A big male boar broke across the line of flags and fatally injured a Party leader who was firing from behind a birch tree. He died on the way to the nearby town, and a session of the supreme organs of poweradopted a resolution forbidding the leadership to hunt wild animals. But, of course, the need remained, and one day Popadya was summoned to the Party Committee of the hunting reserve, where they explained the whole business to him and then said: “Ivan! We can’t order you to do it—and even if we could, we wouldn’t, not this. But it’s something that needs to be done. Think about it. We won’t force you.”
Popadya thought hard about it all night long, and next morning he went to the Party Committee and said he agreed.
“We didn’t expect any other answer,” said the Party Secretary.
They gave Ivan a bulletproof waistcoat, a helmet, and a boar skin, and he went to work at his new job—a job which it would be no exaggeration to describe as daily heroism. For the first few days he felt a little afraid, especially for his exposed legs, but then he got
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