This Translation Tuesday, a hostile confrontation ensues when an astronaut inadvertently kills a cow—or two—during his Earth-landing. Here is translator Sarah McEleney on Serebriansky’s startling work of imagination: “This short story by Kazakhstani author Yuri Serebriansky reflects upon the indirect costs of space travel. While the story is meant to take place somewhere in Russia, Serebriansky considers it very much connected to Kazakhstan, as it was inspired by his trip to an area near the Baikonur cosmodrome. The author was traveling in the middle of spring when people were tending to their gardens in the countryside, and suddenly, he noticed shiny silvery containers everywhere, which reminded him of the tripods belonging to the aliens in H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. People had gathered parts of rockets that had fallen to the Earth and were using them instead of typical garden containers. At the time, Serebriansky already knew that these pieces of rockets emitted geptil, a rocket propellent hazardous to human health and the environment. With this in mind, a contemplation of the unforeseen consequences of space travel is embedded in “Dymov,” in which the protagonist’s thirst for personal heroism is dashed by his calamitous reentry to Earth.”
I’m a bird in a cuckoo clock. Soon I’ll jump out and say my “cuckoo!” to everyone. No. Not aloud. Because, after all, everything is recorded. The whole country considers you a hero, and you’re the next laboratory mouse in line, and everything is recorded. More important than a dog, of course. Dymov. The “cuckoo!” will be long, since I’ve got something to say. They’ll write: “he conducted experiments.” And really, I conducted them. I beat my heart when I had to, I ran blood through my veins. I was in a spaceship for three days without a spacesuit. Every one of us is the first in something. And what I am is a cuckoo bird, and also, codename “Fog”. Do I want anything else? Yes, I want to go to the moon. I want to climb out of here in a spacesuit, I want to go home. To my daughter. And to church. To Father Anisim, to Anisim.
“Fog’, we’re going to prepare for descent, put on your spacesuit, we’re checking the telemetry before braking. Everything’s in order here.”
“Got it. I’m getting back into my spacesuit.”
That impossible silence is broken. Come on, speak, guys. I’d listen to your sputtering for a century. In an airplane you at least feel the engine, but here there’s just inertia. Space. It’s a heavy word. But howl. Everything is recorded.
The cabin of the spaceship becomes more claustrophobic in zero-gravity. But what can you do? There’s a lever attached to a cord, flying like they had warned. The planet below looks astonishingly lifeless, no traces of life from here—who says that on the radio? Maybe I didn’t hear it there? The globe above the control panel seems like it was made by Neanderthals. But you have to believe in it. Falling to it out of curiosity, into the clouds, from this, not even height, but rather, void—it’s scary, comrades.
Dymov reported in. The last cycle. Brakes. Activation. He felt a jolt. Instead of his codename, the voice in the loudspeaker said,
“Zhora, the instrumentation compartment on the capsule is stuck. Like before. Report on the situation.”
There it was—“report on the situation.” All anybody ever thought about. Everything looked in place through the porthole.
“Zhora, the compartment came off. Do you see it?”
Finally, some kind of shadow passed by him, like an enormous stingray over the head of a scuba diver.
“I see the compartment. It’s detached. All is good. What next?”
Silence. Sputtering. A crackling voice.
There were no engines on the capsule, and, thus, no calming sounds of machinery, just the capsule itself, free flying near the edge of the atmosphere. A braked spiraling.
“Zhora, you’ve been spinning around, now you’re entering the atmosphere, where everything should improve. It’s going to be a ballistic entry. Report on your general state.”
“Copy that. I’m feeling fine. Preparing for landing, over.”
“Fog, have a good landing.”
“Gotcha, thanks.”
Friction started up against the edge of the atmosphere. The capsule really began to shake. Like in strong turbulence. It turned in the right direction. The space capsule’s center of gravity began to adjust in the atmosphere. Laws, never thought up by humankind, and, maybe, never intended for a situation like this, snapped into action perfectly. After all, there was no human factor here.
He could see flames through the porthole, and then it became completely dark and he felt a weight come down on his chest. The g-force. Like in a bullet on its way to the moon. Dymov thought distractedly, trying to remember what had compelled him to become a cosmonaut. Aviation. The army. Curiosity. Heroism. Vanity. Vanity in a burn barrel.
I had worked on the home front, but I wanted to be on the front lines. It had been hard in Kazakhstan, but it was far from the front—boys only dreamed about getting out, and then it was all over. Victory. That was all anyone ever talked about.
For me it was also a victory, it was just too bad that I couldn’t have done anything myself. A mannequin. Oh well, they’ll send me next time, and I’ll do something heroic. We have a lot of projects.
Dymov brought his knees up to his chest and began to count from one to five aloud. At seven there was another jolt, and the hatch above his head shot off, and the catapult ejected him from the capsule. His spacesuit didn’t let him breathe in the freezing air. Five kilometers high. The parachutes activated, and Dymov swung from the cords, examining the lines of the converging rivers below, sparkling in the sun like liquid mercury. Rivers, that in Kazakhstan, aren’t scattered like these cobwebs. The instrumentation compartment must be messing with him.
The strong wind tossed him around, carrying him downwards, but below everything looked the same. Islands of trees, rivers, watery embankments. Just anything but the water. Once Dymov had lost his plane. A test prototype. His parachute had carried him into water. It was most unpleasant getting out of that lake.
Having had tucked in his legs, he sprung them outwards, and as it turned out, he had no strength left. It was either from stress or the g-force. Dymov tumbled down on his side, and, breathing heavily, first tried to remove his glove, and then take his helmet off. He broke into perspiration. The glass became cloudy and his heart pounded.
He leaned back and breathed in the crisp smell of the grass. Bugs and mosquitos. Like on a dacha.
He closed his eyes and began to wait.
The canopies of the parachutes were good signs, but, by the looks of it, the landing area had shifted pretty far. The whirring of the wind around him and the buzzing of insects comforted him. Complete silence. How long had he been here?
“Get up, pilot! Put your hands in the air!”
Dymov looked up. Above him stood a middle-aged guy, skinny, unshaved. The man repulsively spat several times. His tongue hurriedly licked his lips. The pointed ends of a pitchfork flashed in front of Dymov’s face.
“Be a pal and give me your hand, man. I need some help getting up.”
What a shame; he’d now explain everything. But the pitchfork was unexpected.
“Get up yourself, biiiiitch.”
Dymov didn’t like this. He was clearly copying the voice of his favorite crime boss.
“Captain Dymov,” in the voice that he used to greet authority with whom he would never converse with in real life, Dymov introduced himself.
“Well, I can see you’re obviously not a bishop.”
The pitchfork jabbed him in the shoulder. Just pushing him.
“Citizen, you’re two seconds away from a serious mistake. Put your pitchfork down. I am a Soviet officer.”
“You’ve been captured for investigation, officer. Get up!”
Dymov closed his eyes tightly and thought. This was just a funny situation. It was like some kind of joke.
“Man, be a sport. Just walk away, I don’t want any trouble. I’ll just lay here a little bit longer. “
His head was buzzing. He wanted to go sit in a banya.
The pitchfork cowardly poked at him.
“Hey, do you have a banya? Let’s heat it up.”
Holding the pitchfork, the man swayed slightly, as if he were drunk. He spat several times.
“Get up and walk!”
Dymov rolled over onto his side and tried get up on his feet. It turned out that he was able to do this after gathering his breath. There was a pistol in the space capsule. It might be nearby. Dymov had landed in a meadow, along the curve of a quiet river, right next to where a row of reeds began. He wanted to wash up in the water. True, there were cow pies sprawled around, and in the sand, there were indentations—the tracks of hooves. A herd had passed by.
Dymov turned out to be a head taller than the man. He continued to hold his pitchfork, titled forward like a rifle. Behind the man’s back was a field, and even farther—a forest. There weren’t any crops on the field, just grass up to the knees. A pasture. Fifty meters from him was the space capsule, blackened from smoke. He could see the dark opening of the hatch. He just needed to get up to it.
Dymov wasn’t afraid of the man at all. But his presence was bothersome. He wanted to wait for the helicopter by himself, here by the river. After all, it was a lot nicer here than in Kazakhstan. He would have been sitting here on the steppe, in the wind.
“I’m going to bring you my documents. There’s my vehicle—just right over there.”
The man didn’t say anything and just started to pace behind him.
What was this nonsense! The space capsule appeared to be covered in dark, hardened blood. Dymov stopped. It had killed a cow. Or two.
He turned around.
“Forgive me. Honest to God, I didn’t do it on purpose. I feel bad for the cow, too; forgive me. The government will compensate you.”
The man immediately lifted his pitchfork, aiming it at Dymov’s chest.
“This is damage to state property. You need to go to prison for this. I’m going to call the police on you.”
“The situation here is actually a bit different.”
The pitchfork behind his back unnerved Dymov, but he tolerated it. His clothes had gotten dirty in the blood. He climbed out of the space capsule. He unfastened his bag and took out his pistol. He turned and pointed the barrel at this ex-con.
“Hey, drop your gun!”
The pitchfork leapt forward.
Dymov started to laugh. Above his head he heard the loud chopping of a helicopter. They both looked at the sky. The wind from the propellers practically knocked them over as the helicopter landed. The man wanted to drive his pitchfork into the ground, but he didn’t manage. A uniformed rifleman knocked him down with a kick, and didn’t even point his gun at him, but rather, jabbed it into his back. Dymov turned away.
The doctors ran up and an officer walked steadily behind them. Dymov put his gun down and saluted.
“The mission, comrade Major, has been accomplished.”
“Stand down!”
The officer cringed, looking at the pieces of flesh and blood on the space capsule. They brought a folding chair. Dymov sat in it and gave himself up to doctors for examination.
He slowly answered the questions, using mostly the word “no.”
On the right the major was talking to the man, who was lifted up to his knees by the rifleman.
“Who are you? C’mon, faster, your name. Surname, patronymic!”
The man mumbled something.
“Louder!”
“That cow gave everything it had to us… milk, its son, its own skin, flesh, and insides.”
“What did you do time for? Your surname!”
The machine gun clicked.
“Stand down!”
Dymov closed his eyes and tried not to lose consciousness. His ears started to ring. If he were to lose consciousness here, in front of the doctors, that would be it. He might not get another flight. So much for an act of heroism. He needed to get a hold of himself. His exhaustion was just from the ballistic entry into the atmosphere. It wasn’t his health, thank God.
Translated from the Russian by Sarah McEleney
Yuriy Serebriansky is a Kazakhstani author of Polish origin, literary translator and researcher in cultural studies. He is currently a PhD Candidate in sociolinguistics. His prose, poetry, and non-fiction have appeared in Kazakh, Russian, Polish, Swiss, American, Czech, and Chilean literary journals, and been translated into several languages. In Kazakhstan he was honored with the national Order of Kurmet for his work. In 2023 his novel Altynshash was awarded a national literary prize for interethnic sustainability in Kazakhstan. In 2010 and 2014, he was awarded the Russkaya Premia literary award; in 2017, his Kazakhstani Fairy Tales was recognized as the best bilingual book for a young audience at the Silk Road Book Fair; in 2019, his novel Black Star, co-written with Bakhytzhan Momyshuly (1941-2012) received the Altyn Kalam literary prize. He was Editor-in-Chief of Esquire Kazakhstan from 2016 to 2018 and former prose editor of the Russian literary magazine Literatura. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Kazakhstani Polish diaspora magazine Ałmatyński Kurier Polonijny. He participated in the International Writing Program (IWP) at the University of Iowa as a Writer in Residence. He is a member of Kazakh PEN, the Kazakhstani Writer’s Union, and Polish Literary Translators Association (Member – Candidate). He participated in the Struga Poetry Evenings festival, IWP Home/Land/S: An International Symposium in 2023 and the Moscow Poetry Festival in 2014. He has been Director of the Almaty Writing Residency program since 2022.
Sarah McEleney holds a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of Virginia and is a literary translator from Russian into English. She is interested in 20th century and contemporary Russian-language literature and cultural history, as well as other Slavic languages.
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