Half a Life

by Kir Bulychev

translated by Bill Bowler

Nadezhda Sidorova has survived WWII, endured the death of her husband in a car crash, and is struggling to raise her little girl Olya while working as a nurse. Nadezhda has paid her dues, more than her share, and seems now finally on the verge of finding a better life with the kind and loving Timofei. Events suddenly jolt Nadezhda onto a new and unexpected course. She faces a greater struggle than any she has yet endured or could even have imagined.

Chapter 6

conclusion

He sat together with Sophia Petrovna by the window. She was drinking lemonade; he, beer. The beer was good, dark, and the knowledge that it was all right to drink, that he was on leave, and that it was three months until the next medical check-up sharpened the sweet sensation of a small, excusable transgression.

“Are you allowed to drink beer?” asked Sophia Petrovna.

“Yes,” said Pavlysh tersely.

Sophia Petrovna shook her head. She was sure that cosmonauts were not allowed to drink beer. And she was right.

She turned from Pavlysh and looked out at the vast field, and the whimsical silhouettes of the interplanetary rockets against the background of the orange sunset.

“It’s taking a long time for some reason,” she said.

To Pavlysh, Sophia Petrovna seemed boring and fastidious. She most likely excelled at her own business, thought Pavlysh, teaching the Russian language to children, but it was doubtful her students loved her, gazing at her gray hair, combed flat and collected in a bun.

“Why are you staring at me?” asked Sophia Petrovna, not turning back towards him.

“Professional habit?” Pavlysh answered with a question.

“I didn’t understand you.”

“A teacher must see everything that goes on in class, even if it goes on behind her back.”

Sophia Petrovna smiled only with her lips.

“And I thought you were looking for some resemblance.”

Pavlysh did not answer. He had been looking for a resemblance, but he didn’t want to admit it.

A noisy group of cadets in blue flight suits occupied the neighboring table. They could have taken off their flight suits once they reached the hangar, but the cadets liked wearing them. They had not yet had time to get used to the suits or the caps with the gold emblem of the interplanetary service.

“They seem to be late,” repeated Sophia Petrovna.

“No.” Pavlysh glanced at his watch. “You could have waited at home.”

“It didn’t feel right at home. It seemed as though someone were about to come in and ask me, ‘Why aren’t you going?’”

Sophia Petrovna’s speech was correct and slightly bookish, as if she was always mentally writing the phrases and correcting them with a red pencil.

“All these years,” she continued, lifting her lemonade and gazing at the drops on the surface of the glass, “I have lived in anticipation of this day. It might seem strange, how I tried not to show my continual impatience. I waited until they could decipher the blocked content of that ship’s memory. I waited for the day when an expedition would be sent to the planet of those creatures that my grandmother called slugs. I awaited the return of the expedition. And the day has come.”

“It’s strange,” said Pavlysh.

“I know how disappointed you were at our first meeting, when I did not display the emotion you expected of me. But what was I supposed to do? I knew my grandmother only from a few old photos, from my mother’s stories, and from the four medals that belonged to my grandmother from the time she was a nurse at the front lines.

“My grandmother was an abstraction to me. My mother had already passed away. And indeed, she was the last person for whom the combination of words “Nadezhda Sidorova” signified not just old photographs, but living memories of my grandmother’s hands, eyes, and words. From the day my grandmother disappeared, almost one hundred years has passed.

“I felt my connection to her only later, after you had left. No, it was not because of the newspapers and magazines with articles about the first person into space. The reason was in my grandmother’s diary. I began to measure my own actions against her patience, her isolation.”

Pavlysh inclined his head in agreement.

“I’m not such a dry bird as you suppose, young man,” Sophia Petrovna suddenly said in a completely different voice. “In our school theater productions, I always play the wicked stepmother. And the students love me.”

“I never thought otherwise,” Pavlysh lied, and raising his eyes, met with Sophia Petrovna’s smile. Her taut cheeks had reddened. Lifting her glass of lemonade, she said, “Let’s drink to good news.”

Dag rapidly strode between the tables, having seen Pavlysh and Sophia Petrovna from some distance. “They’re landing,” he said. “The dispatcher has received confirmation.”

The three of them stood at the window and watched as, on the horizon, the planetary shuttle descended, and the fliers, multi-colored in the sunset, raced towards it.

The three of them went below because Dag was a good friend of the chief of the expedition, Klapach, and hoped he could speak with him before the journalists.

Klapach emerged first from the flier. He paused, gazing around at those there to meet him. A snub-nosed little girl with very blond hair, like Klapach’s, ran up to him, and he lifted her in his arms. But his eyes never stopped searching for someone in the crowd. And when he came up to the doors, he saw Dag, Pavlysh and Sophia Petrovna. Klapach lowered his daughter to the ground.

“Hello,” he said to Sophia Petrovna. “I was afraid you might not come.”

Sophia Petrovna frowned. She was out of sorts from the sensation of being watched by television cameras and photographers.

A microphone resembling a big bumblebee was waved in front of Klapach’s face. Klapach brushed it away.

“Did she make it to the planet?” asked Sophia Petrovna.

“No,” said Klapach. “She perished on board the ship. Pavlysh was right.”

“And... nothing?”

“We didn’t have to inquire after her for long. Take a look.”

Klapach unbuttoned the pocket of his dress uniform. The flight crew always changes into dress uniforms at external bases. The rest of the crew stood behind Klapach’s back. All were silent on the plaza before the cosmodrome.

Klapach took out a photograph. The lens of the TV camera descended toward his hands, and the photo filled the television screens.

It was a photograph of a city of low-built cupolas and long structures resembling cylinders and chains of spheres.

In the foreground was a statue on a low, round pedestal, a statue of a thin woman in a sack-like garment, her hair combed close to her head — very much resembling Sophia Petrovna — seated and holding on her knees a strange creature that looked like a large slug.

“Pop,” said the snub-nosed girl who was bored waiting, “show me the picture.”

“Here,” Klapach handed it to her.

“A worm,” said the girl, disappointed.

Sophia Petrovna lowered her head, and with short, precise steps, walked back toward the cosmodrome building. Nobody stopped her. Nobody called to her. One of the journalists started to follow.

Pavlysh took him by the sleeve.

Dag took the photo from the girl.

He looked at it and saw the dead ship, tumbling through the cosmos.

After a minute, the cosmodrome plaza was buzzing with voices, laughter, and the normal, joyful hubbub that accompanies the arrival in port of a ship or the return to Earth of cosmonauts.

to Challenge 412...