LIFE AFTER MIR

By GARRY TRUDEAU

"This is my second trip to the Mir, and I judge it a success because I am alive." --Russian cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev

Although she was quite devoted to him--and certainly overjoyed to get him back--Larissa Tsibliyev couldn't help wincing when she heard her husband equate mission success with personal survival. Vasily had made it sound as if he had gone up to Mir on a dare, like riding the roof of a prewar elevator. And now the family had been shamed, and the neighbors would snicker and cluck and throw at their windows whatever rotting turnips could be spared in these difficult times.

The following evening, reunited in their snug Star City quarters, Larissa Tsibliyev watched mournfully as her husband slowly ladled turnip puree onto his dinner plate.

"How many times have I told you, Larissa Tsibliyev?" said Vasily, shaking his head. "We cannot afford turnips."

His wife gently changed the subject. It was true there were many bills to pay, and there would be no bonuses from this mission. Unlike their American counterparts, Russian cosmonauts are paid bonuses when they do something right. A successful orbital flush, for instance, could mean a down payment on a toaster or a bribe for a telephone, while a high-profile docking could send a child through college. Larissa wasn't sure whether there were corresponding disincentives for failure, but she (and of course the neighbors) couldn't help noticing how vague Vasily had been on the subject of who had accidentally disconnected Mir's power cable. Why hadn't he simply blamed the American? His humiliation seemed so pointless.

"The problems were not of our making!" Vasily declared suddenly, banging the table so violently that Larissa's wineglass toppled into her dinner. For a moment he sat transfixed as the purple stain spread through her mashed potatoes.

"The problems are on earth," he added quietly. Vasily stood and reached over the dinner candle to retrieve the upended glass, lightly singeing the underarm of his nylon warmup suit.

Larissa Tsibliyev sighed deeply. She knew her husband's dark moods and had learned to read the signs, like the way he would melodramatically groan and clutch at his heart when he was under stress. But in all the years of his service to the motherland, she had never seen him look so troubled.

"It's everything," Vasily continued, "our economy, our affairs, our poor lives." He pushed himself away from the table, yanking the end of the tablecloth he had mistaken for a napkin and tucked into his trousers. As plates flew through the air and exploded on the floor all around him, a wheel of black bread bounced onto its edge and rolled slowly out the kitchen door.

"It's the factories, you see," said Vasily, as he looked for his cigarettes. "They don't work, or have insufficient supplies, or they ask for, excuse me, crazy prices." Abruptly calling off his search, Vasily got up to make tea. He switched on the hot plate, shorting it out and starting a small fire near the sink. As his wife rose to extinguish it, the cosmonaut grew ever more morose.

"It is our tradition in Russia to look for scapegoats. Listen to this!" Vasily picked up a copy of Pravda and started to read: "'Why fortune declared war on this crew is unclear, but something spooky is going on here.' What rubbish!" Vasily angrily wadded up the paper and tossed it out an open window, not noticing that one edge had caught fire from the hot plate. Determined now that he would indeed have tea, he filled the kettle and jammed it into the oven, extinguishing the pilot light with spillage from the spout.

Larissa Tsibliyev knew better than to interrupt her husband, so it was hard for her to speak up when Gagarin, the couple's beloved terrier, keeled over from the oven fumes. Too, she held her peace when the water sprinkler finally kicked in, knowing that the fire department would eventually turn the system off when it came to fight the blaze Vasily had started in the trash bin under the window. Larissa felt it was her duty not to criticize at home when things were going so poorly at work.

Vasily pushed his wet, matted hair out of his eyes as the emergency vehicles pulled up in front of his apartment. "You know," he said bitterly, the rising smoke starting to sting his eyes, "we should have abandoned the station, but we never thought about jumping ship. Not once."

Across the courtyard, astonished neighbors began appearing on their balconies. One of them, an expatriate Chechen, started hurling insults at the fire fighters for disturbing his sleep and fell silent only when a panicky police marksman brought him down with a misplaced warning shot. Later that evening the Chechen delegation walked out of the Russia-Chechnya peace conference in protest, an event the Tsibliyevs might have seen on the news had their television survived the deluge in their living room. But none of this mattered to Larissa Tsibliyev. As she slipped into unconsciousness, she was content simply to note that her husband was finally sipping tea.