Colin Sheridan: Katy Perry went to space — but this cosmonaut’s silence said more than words

An Irish peacekeeper discovers his silent Russian patrol partner was once a cosmonaut — after weeks of silence

Pop star Katy Perry left the earth's atmosphere for approximately four minutes, and when she returned, she kissed the ground like Nelson Mandela coming out of Robben Island after 27 years' incarceration. Pictures: Blue Origin/YouTube/PA Wire

Some years ago, towards the end of my decorated military career, I found myself on a patrol with a Russian officer, a rather monosyllabic chap named Evgeniy. We were stationed together along the Blue Line in South Lebanon, and our job was to drive around in a white UN Land Rover and observe and report any violations on either side of this imaginary boundary between Israel and Lebanon. 

The threat level at the time could be generously described as “calm, but tense,” which basically meant we could go about our business with little fear of a Merkava tank firing at us (though, you never know) or being shaken down by a local Hezbollah rep. 

Those were long days, made longer if you were paired with somebody who had clearly taken a vow of silence before he left the monastery in Novosibirsk. To be clear, I had no evidence Evgeniy had ever been a monk, but his dedication to prolonged silences was such that one could only assume he had received some formal training in the discipline. 

Those patrols might last eight hours — that’s a lot of minutes to fill, and, like two cops in a stakeout movie, much of the time was spent parked on a hill staring into space waiting for something to happen. 

What compounded my suffering was that after shift ended, we would return to base and write our report together before cleaning up and cooking and eating dinner. Then, the day mercifully over, we would retire to bed in — yes, you’ve guessed it — a shared box room.

One day, out of nowhere, as the two of us watched a shepherd herd his goats somewhere south of Marwahin, the Russian finally broke.

“What did you do?,” he asked, his words suddenly taking on the importance of hand grenades, “what did you do before this?” 

 Stunned, I steadied myself and sought clarity.

“What do you mean? Before I joined the military, or before I came here?” 

“Before here.” 

Delighted with myself, I began to explain with great vigour my last three years' experiences as a senior officer in Athlone. The courses I had done. The KPIs I had met. The commute down the N4. So happy was I to be speaking aloud I cared little for how brutally boring the material was.

Finally, it was the Russian's turn to speak. 

“What about you?” I asked, suddenly scared I had expended all the oxygen in the car put aside for conversation. “Where were you stationed?” 

I thought of them both and rather wished there was more of the monosyllabic Russian cosmonaut in her, and the loquacious California princess in him.

He looked at me and pointed a single towards the heavens.

“Space.” 

Confused, I sought clarity. I was aware my comrade was a pilot because of the wings on his uniform, but little else.

“You fly fixed-wing or helicopters?” 

He shook his head, pointing up again. “Cosmonaut. I was on International Space Station. Twelve months.” 

Suddenly my couple of years writing performance appraisals for soldiers in the midlands seemed a tad inadequate.

I felt robbed. The man I’d sat beside in silence alongside for more hours than there were olives on the trees had lived in outer space for an entire year and opted not to tell me. Aggressively opted not to tell me. 

Every day I’d filled the vacuum between us within inane babble, humming songs and asking and answering questions myself. All the while he sat there beside me, slurping pot noodles. Then one day he tells me he lived in outer space.

“I’m a curious fella, Evgeniy,” I thought to myself. “And I’m easily impressed. You might have fucking told me.” 

No matter. The seal was broken. Perhaps his silence was a byproduct of the solitude he endured sitting in a tin can 400 km above our planet, orbiting earth 15 times a day for an entire year. In that context, his laconism was easily forgivable.

What would he tell me now? Would this rather atomic revelations suddenly open the door to a vault of profound philosophical ruminations on the insignificance of human existence? Is the sun yellow or white? Or farts really flammable up there? Can you really see Nick Faldo’s ego from space?

Instead, I had little choice but to park the pain of the betrayal lest the momentum be lost and keep things simple.

“What was it like?” 

There was a pause which seemed to last longer than the travel time between the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy and the Milky Way (about 42,000 light years). 

“It was sheeeet,” he said, a noodle dripping down his chin onto his tunic.

More silence.

“Would you go back?” I was desperate now, like Kate Winslet on the raft trying to keep Leonardo di Caprio talking to her at the end of Titanic.

“Niet.” 

We sat there watching the shepherd coral his goats down the side of a sun-scorched hill, the day unfurling in front of us like a star that had burned out 700 million years ago.

He didn’t speak again.

I thought of Evgeniy this week when I read pop star Katy Perry went to space. She left the earth's atmosphere for approximately four minutes, and when she returned, she kissed the ground like Nelson Mandela coming out of Robben Island after 27 years' incarceration. 

I thought of them both and rather wished there was more of the monosyllabic Russian cosmonaut in her, and the loquacious California princess in him.

It’s never the ones you want.