A surface under my hands. Warm. Smooth, except where the seam is — a ridge, stitched or welded, running north or running toward the kitchen window. My fingers follow it. The fingers do not know.
Blue-green below. Vast. The edge curves. It has always curved — the curvature of a planet or the curvature of a table where the cloth drapes over the side and the fabric bends and the blue-green falls toward the floor, toward the earth, toward.
I was six or I was thirty-four. The altitude was ninety centimetres or four hundred kilometres. Both are above. Above is above. The awe does not change with the altitude. The blue-green does not change with the altitude. A man who has seen the world from above — whether the kitchen or the Caspian — has seen it.
A sound. Steady. Mechanical or — no. A clock. Or a ventilation system. Or a refrigerator compressing. The hum of a building held together by electricity or the hum of a capsule held together by engineers. My mother hummed while she cooked. Ground control hummed while they waited. Both hummed at the same frequency and the frequency was patience.
The eleven seconds.
I woke. My hands were on a surface. I could not determine if horizontal or vertical and the not-knowing was metal on the tongue and the certainty that I was falling and the impossibility of determining in which direction. Eleven seconds. The hands pressed the surface. The surface pressed back. I was somewhere, in a room, at an altitude, and the altitude was —
The altitude was morning. I was in morning. The surface was under me. Above was above.
A woman's voice. Saying my name. Or my designation. Both sound the same in Russian — a man's name is his designation, his designation is his name, and the woman saying it could be the woman who packed my suits or the woman who laid the tablecloth and both women are gone and the voice is here.
The smell. Oil heating. Butter or fuel — both have the same sweetness at the moment before they smoke. Something is about to cook or something is about to launch. The pan. The surface. The blue-green thing below.
Eggs.
The eggs are ready. The eggs are always ready. The eggs do not care whether the man cooking them has been to space. The eggs require heat and patience and a surface and I have all three and the surface is under my hands and the hands know what to do with eggs even when the hands do not know what the surface is.
The not-knowing does not stop the eggs from cooking.
— Dmitri
A city. The altitude is uncertain. The eggs are ready.
P.S. Viktor says he is moved in Czech. I am moved in a language I cannot verify. This may be Russian. This may be wind at four hundred kilometres. I can no longer tell them apart.