When A Man Loves A Woman

If my mother wanted to put my father in his place, she would tell the story of how they met, and how I got my name.  For some reason, that always made him squirm.

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After Artur displayed his lack of respect for the Communist party for the second time, the outcome was the same.  He ended up in the cell in solitary.  However, this stint only lasted an hour.  When Artur heard the lock opening, he also heard Sergei Korolev’s voice.  

He crawled out of the cell and stood up.  His boss gave him a hug, then spoke.  “Arti, you look almost as bad as you smell.  You’ve impressed everyone with your bravery, but you are fighting a battle you cannot win.  Luckily for you, the project is stalled, stuck on our propulsion issue.  I convinced Popovich you are the only chance for a solution.  I reminded him what it would mean to his career if he was seen as standing in the way of progress.”

Artur said, “I’ve already come up with the solution.”  He pointed to door.  “It’s inside, on the walls.”

Sergei climbed into to the cell, then asked the guard to hand him a flashlight.  Through the door, Artur could see the shadows move around as the man looked over his equations.  After climbing back out, Sergei said “I’d give you another hug if you didn’t smell so bad.  Let’s get you a shower and some food.”

Korolev was passionate about rocketry, and felt like he was on the verge of realizing the dream he had chased since he was a young man.  He wanted to build rockets that could carry men into outer space, then return them safely.  

He was a supreme optimist, and exuded confidence everywhere he went.  Yet, he was worried.  He had many enemies and in the toxic political environment that was the USSR, it would only take one slip to bring him down.  He had not forgotten what prison was like.  

He needed every member of his team at 100%.  He needed Artur Wlodarski.  He had to do something to distract this young man from the fact that he was held prisoner, guilty of nothing more than being brilliant at math.

A few days later, the solution to Korolev’s problem walked through the door at the propulsion lab.  In the form of a new employee, a Russian fuel technician named Ekaterina Leonova.  Sergei saw the look on Artur’s face when she entered the lab.  Who wouldn’t stare a little too long at a slender blonde with big blue eyes?  

Sergei hit Artur with the mother of all sucker punches.  He fixed him up on a date with Ekaterina.  It was like the time Artur crashed into the bridge piling, swimming across the Vltava River.  The tall blonde knocked the breath out of the mathematician.  With coaching and encouragement from Sergei, Artur proposed to Ekaterina six months after they met.  She said yes.

Between the mathematician and Popovich, a compromise was reached.  Korolev convinced Popovich to give up on getting Artur to join the Party.  He got Artur to agree to not antagonize Popovich when he was around.  

Sergei convinced Artur that Ekaterina was a traditional Russian lady who would be embarrassed if her husband was seen as a troublemaker.

Now sufficiently distracted, Artur’s life began to fall into a routine at Gorodomlya.  He spent his days in meetings, crunching numbers with his slide rule, and participating in an endless string of tests.  

Beyond that, life on the island was primitive and everyone had to pitch in to survive.  Arthur weeded the garden in the spring and summer, chopped wood in the fall, and shoveled snow in the winter.  He didn’t mind the outdoor work.  It reminded him of the time he spent in Glashütten with Hans and Bertina.

He was totally unprepared for marriage.  Mathematicians yearn for an orderly universe that obeys quantifiable rules.  Artur found out that relationships are nothing like that.

With advice from Sergei, Artur gradually got a handle on being a husband.  His life had become too busy for him to dwell on his status as a prisoner of the USSR.  The years began to roll by.

Just when Artur thought his life was settled, uncertainty crept in.  

While the Germans at Gorodomlya were doing good work, they had competition not far away, in Moscow.  A separate team of Russian scientists were also developing long range missiles.  They weren’t locked inside a small compound on a remote island.  They had better funding and more sophisticated facilities.

Because of politics, the research at Gorodomlya was doomed.  Talk about closing the facility began in 1952.  By the end of 1953, most of the Germans had been sent home or assigned elsewhere.  Artur had a choice.  He could return to Poland if he wished.  But Ekaterina refused to go.  Arthur chose to stay with his wife.  Sergei was relieved.  He didn’t want to lose his mathematician.

While the Soviets were phasing out the work at Gorodomlya, they were planning a new, permanent site where the research would transition to the next phase.  The exploration of outer space.  Sergei had managed to navigate the tricky political waters, and was to be the technical manager at the new facility.

In late 1954, Korolev made his first visit to Kazakhstan, where the Cosmodrome facility would be built.  He brought Artur with him.  For the purpose of getting him excited about the space program.  You don’t defy gravity without math. 

Sergei had nothing to worry about regarding Artur’s desire to participate.  By then, the mathematician had been infected by Sergei’s passion for space travel.  As the two men walked across the desert steppe, Artur said, “Baikonur Cosmodrome.  I like the way that sounds.”

What Sergei didn’t count on, when the team moved to their new home a year later, was a renewed conflict between Artur and the Communist Party.