Stuart Kaminsky - Fall of a Cosmonaut

Yuri wasn’t quite rich, but they lived comfortably in a dacha with three bedrooms just beyond the Outer Ring. She had her own car, a cream-colored Lada, and plenty of time and spending money.

She also had a husband who hadn’t made love to her in four months, a fact that only bothered her because she wanted to be wanted. Actually, she had no desire to spend time with her husband grunting and moaning in bed and smelling of stale cigarettes. He was, at his best, a conventional lover and certainly a frightened and indifferent one. His absence from bed was matched only by his absence from home. That absence too was not unwelcome.

She began to dress, nothing striking, nothing that would draw special attention, but something that would show her figure and draw attention to her face and hair. She moved, now wearing underpants and a bra, to the bathroom to put on her makeup. Even up close and with magnification her skin was smooth.

Vera had seen her husband’s new mistress, an actress, very young and definitely not as pretty as the face in the mirror before her. The girl was part of the act, Yuri’s pose as a creative, virile, philandering movie producer.

When she was satisfied with the face in the mirror, she got down a simple blue dress of cotton and put on comfortable white shoes with very low heels. Vera was tall, five-feet nine-inches tall, as tall as her husband when she wore even moderate heels.

She was ready. She would meet Yuri for dinner, as he had asked. She would listen to him bemoan his fate. She would be sympathetic, might even pat his hand. She would watch him smoke and eat and fret.

She would be a good wife, but she would also be a good actress, showing deep sympathy and close to tears, while she enjoyed his torment. She had married him because of his energy, money, connections to vibrant people, and the opportunity to become an actress.

Vera had appeared in a secondary role in one of Yuri’s low-budget comedies about a Bulgarian who becomes a Moscow taxi driver and can’t find any address. In addition, the other cab drivers make the Bulgarian’s life a nightmare. Vera played a model who has to get to a photo session. The part was small, but Yuri had told her she had been very good though the director was drunk during Vera’s three scenes.

Then Vera had gotten pregnant. Yuri wanted children. Yuri forced himself to work at it. Yuri worried that he could not create babies. Doctors helped. They worked out a schedule. There was no joy in the process. But Vera did find pleasure in her children. Ivan was almost ten and she prayed that he would not grow up to look like his father. He was a good-looking boy hovering between the image of his mother and father. Even if he grew to look like Yuri, she would love him. And Alla, Alla was four, beautiful, happy, definitely her mother’s child.

Though the children spent most of their time with friends or being watched by a frail young nanny from Odessa, Vera saw to it that she was with them most nights, read to them, bought them clothes and ice cream, took them to the circus and movies.

Yuri, on the other hand, spent no time with their children and was usually thinking of something else when Ivan tried to talk to him or Alla climbed into his lap.

Vera was ready now. She examined herself one last time in the mirror. Her mouth could, possibly, stand a bit more moisture, a bit more sympathetic red, but there was no time.

This was to be the first sequence in a dramatic unfilmed movie called The Death of Yuri Kriskov. It was arranged. She would see to it that it was done. Valery would play out the game they had planned and then, with the promise of having Vera, Valery would kill Yuri.

When Yuri was dead, his widow would inherit. The negative would be returned. The film would go to Cannes and make money. With luck Vera would be wealthy.

Valery was a very different lover from Yuri, but in his way almost as bad. Four inches shorter than she, homely and hairy as a bear, he would make wild sounds, cling to her till welts formed, lick her body in a way that both excited and repulsed her. He had tremendous staying power and was still many minutes away when she had long finished. And when it was over, he did not want her to leave whatever hotel room they were in. He usually wanted to talk about chess, about how life was a game of chess, a Russian game.

Yuri was a weakling. Valery was a bore.

Vera would gently get rid of Valery when all was over. She would see to it that he became an editor on a small picture and then she would set him up as a producer with his own very small independent company. She would invest heavily in the company and live up to her agreement to share in the profit and estate. She would guide Valery to other women, girls, and she would wait for him to break off their relationship. Before that, however, she could keep him at a distance, claiming that they could not do anything to draw suspicion. And then she would produce a movie of her own, a big movie, in which she would star.

Yes, she was ready for Yuri. She could stand her husband for another day.

The Yak was seated at the conference table when Porfiry Petrovich entered the office. Yaklovev waited while the chief inspector sat, opened his pad, and took out a pencil.

“Porfiry Petrovich, you are trying to find a missing cosmonaut.”

Rostnikov nodded, head down, examining the blank page before him, a bit curious about what images his pencil might find on the pale whiteness.

“You are not to pursue the unfortunate death of another cosmonaut this afternoon.”

“Murder. The two are connected,” said Rostnikov, drawing a straight line. “We began our investigation, requested a meeting with Vladimir Kinotskin, and hours later he is murdered.” Rostnikov began to draw something, a straight line.

“The murder is not ours, Porfiry Petrovich.”

There were many things Rostnikov wanted to say, but the director would know all of them. Something else was going on, and Rostnikov had no choice but to say yes.

“Then your pursuit of this death will not continue?”

“It will not,” said Rostnikov, seeing something come to meaning in the drawing.

“The newspapers, as you may know, and the television are being told that Vladimir Kinotskin appears to have suffered a stroke while standing before the boyhood home of his favorite poet and artist. The media has been told that his body will be handled with dignity and that there is no connection with his time in space and the tragedy. It seems there is a history of stroke in his family. It has been noted in his records.”

“The inescapability of revised genetic history,” said Rostnikov.

The Yak looked at him for a sign of sarcasm. There was none. Perhaps resignation, but not sarcasm.

“What is your next step?” asked Yaklovev.

The drawing was now clearly that of a man walking a tightrope, pole in hand to maintain his balance. The man had no face and was wearing a bathing suit. The task of the imaginary man was rendered impossible by the fact that he had only one leg.

“We would like to interview the three cosmonauts who brought Vladovka, Kinotskin, and Baklunov back from Mir, ” said Rostnikov.

“You think they confided in each other on a brief shuttle to the earth?” asked Yaklovev.

“No, perhaps, but something took place on Mir, something that probably accounts for this afternoon’s death, the disappearance of Tsimion Vladovka, and quite possibly the death of the third cosmonaut, Rodya Baklunov.”

“You think Vladovka is dead?”

Rostnikov shrugged. The drawing lacked something, something essential. “Iosef has made inquiries,” said Rostnikov, drawing wings on the one-legged man, large wings, the fingerlike black wings of a predatory bird. “Two of the cosmonauts on the rescue mission are in America learning English, preparing for a flight to the new space station when it is built and some shuttle missions in the meantime. They will not be back in Russia for at least a year.”