Everything is fine, Comrade Valentina Tereshkova.

When the Swedish radio amateur Reimar Stridh picked something up at 20.006 MHz on his radio, he knew where it was coming from, and he was pleased. And, when at twelve twenty-six he heard a woman’s voice saying “ya Chaika, ya Chaika,” he knew who was speaking. To anyone else in the world, that is, anyone who didn’t understand Russian or who didn’t have a radio, the sounds were meaningless, a mystery. They would have to wait to hear the good news some other way. Those who were on shift at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, a Russian-operated spaceport in Kazakhstan, were relieved to know that the woman whose call sign was Chaika—the seagull—was safe and well for the time being. Did the comrades at the base who had quietly freaked out when the transmission wasn’t working at first, the support staff and secretaries, and perhaps Nikita Khrushchev in his favourite armchair in the Kremlin, raise glasses of vodka in celebration?

Farther away, closer to the forty-fifth parallel, east of Sweden and south of the USSR, a grey morning dawned in Bucharest.

It seems Chaika had time to send other messages; she even apparently had time to sing. She hardly touched her space meal: the very first bite made her want to throw up. The bread was dry, the tube of onion paste tasted like shit and the chocolate was as hard as rocks. The preflight menu hadn’t been any better, either: veal chops, lemon slices, gel-like coffee in a tube. The view, on the other hand, was astounding, with continents, oceans, seas, forests and fjords unfolding at her feet. There was the Suez Canal, and the blue ribbon of the Nile cutting across the yellow African desert. Later she told people all she had seen, with the photos to prove it.

As Chaika soared over Europe, Adina turned on the transistor radio set precariously on the bathroom windowsill, as she did every morning. She contemplated her face, its deepening lines, fragmented in the cracked mirror. She was about to brush her teeth. She had no idea that, that morning, such an automatic act would be soundtracked by a historic announcement.

The high-pitched voice of the socialist broadcaster barked out over the gurgle of tap water running into the drain. The little box came alive with big news. “Dear comrades! Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at nine twenty-nine and twenty-two seconds, aboard Vostok 6!” The news was a day late, as usual.

A shrill, kitschy folk song followed, and Adina snapped off the radio. She was allergic to kitschy folk songs. She spat out the toothpaste foam noisily, surprised at her own lack of decorum, picked up the ivory-and-horsehair brush she had inherited from her aristocratic mother and pulled it through her long black hair thoughtfully. The whole apartment smelled like the cabbage rolls her best friend Miruna had brought over in the massive red enamelled cast-iron pot adorned with white flowers.

Adina’s mind drifted. Hypnotized by the repetitive brushing and the enjoyable tug on her scalp, she thought about the woman out in space. She envied her a little. She would have liked to be in the capsule with Valentina as co-pilot, to get away from it all, away from this enormous belly that prevented her from sleeping. Night after endless night, she couldn’t get comfortable. It hurt to lie on her back, and when she was on her side the weight of her pregnancy pulled her over, a living mountain forever in the way between her and the mattress. Cramps seared through her unexpectedly at all hours, like cleavers slicing into her muscles, paralyzing her legs. She cried out in agony in the dark and would finally fall asleep after long sessions of careful breathing. Morning brought deliverance from a world of nightmares and pain.

She was still dreaming of the infinite depths of space where she would have liked to escape, to lose herself, when she felt a warm liquid running down her thighs. Panic-stricken, her body froze, in a less-than-dignified pose. Standing with her legs apart, she started to tremble. It felt like a seizure. This was it, she knew: the inevitable, irreversible moment had come. The machine had been set in motion. What could have triggered labour? The thrill of witnessing history in the making? Luck? Just the particular day?

On her way to the hospital in the ambulance with its sirens wailing, Adina screamed and screamed. Miruna had been called over to help, and she’d arrived as quick as an arrow. She was holding Adina’s hand. The young ambulance driver, a paramedic-in-training, was getting a headache from all the screaming, but there was nothing he could do for himself or for the mother-to-be.

Valentina Tereshkova had been in orbit for some time. The interior temperature of the spacecraft was 20 degrees, she noted. After a faint rush of emotion and some predictable nausea, she felt peaceful at last, gazing out happily at the blue planet. “I’m fine,” she said, “everything is fine on board. I can see the horizon, a beautiful pale-blue band. I can see Earth.” She looked through the porthole. “Everything is going well,” she mused. A pencil floated by near her.

No one was shouting where she was, though she probably had her own worries. Her mother, for instance. Valentina had lied to her. Yes: her mother didn’t know where she was, even while the whole world was turned to the sky. Her mother only found out about Valentina’s achievement on television, after her daughter had returned to Earth. Valentina felt guilty for keeping the truth from her, but she had no choice. Perhaps she prayed for the soul of her tractor-driver father, who had died before he could celebrate his daughter’s success. Or was she disciplined enough not to succumb to that temptation? We’ll never know. What really went on inside her head will remain forever locked in the Vostok capsule, on display in the museum in Star City.

As for her secret love for Yuri Gagarin, we can only speculate. Did she think of him and sigh? Did she yearn to write him a love letter with that pencil bobbing around the cabin? One day, Yuri, no doubt under the influence of alcohol (he had been drinking copious amounts since his return from space), had touched her ear in front of everyone. An indiscreet photographer immortalized the unseemly moment. They were both in uniform—not much of a galactic Adam and Eve, dressed as twins, presented as brother and sister rather than lovers. Nikita paired her with another cosmonaut and Yuri would end up in flames, to Valentina’s great secret sorrow. But at that time, aboard Vostok 6, she could still daydream about him untroubled.

In her orange spacesuit, grey boots and gloves, wearing a white helmet marked with her country’s initials, Valentina orbited Earth. The first thing she saw from up there was an ambulance carrying two women. As soon as she spotted the vehicle with the large cross on its side door, she waved her scarf at them. She wanted to greet the mother-to-be, that heroine on the stretcher. The labouring woman was wrapped in a thick felt blanket.

Valentina turned her head. On the other side of the world, there was a man preoccupied. He was walking alone, smoking placidly. Valentina couldn’t quite make out the country, just the continent. Somewhere in Africa, a man was unaware that a girl who was about to be born in a Bucharest hospital was his daughter. Valentina turned back to the ambulance. The woman cradled her huge belly in both hands. Judging by her grimaces, she was in a lot of pain. She stopped screaming, tried to breathe. The emergency room door swung closed behind her. Then, nothing.

Valentina loved red. She even wore red lipstick from time to time. She could see a lot of red stars from her rocket ship; she could not see the blood smeared all over the body of Adina’s newborn baby. Forty-eight times, for twenty-two hours and forty-one minutes, Valentina orbited Earth. On the third day, she saw the woman emerge from the greenish hospital building holding a bundle in her arms. The new mother was no longer screaming. Valentina saw dried tears on her cheeks. Adina looked up at the sky and smiled back. She saw the spacecraft glide by overhead, the great cosmonaut inside wondering what the name of that slightly dark-skinned baby was. Valentina was dizzy from going around and around, she felt sick. And there was always a blind spot; she couldn’t see everything.

Dolores was born bathed in blood, in a river of tears. Adina was screaming as she gave birth, at the top of her lungs—the white mother from the Black Sea howling in pain and sorrow with her powerful singer’s voice. She was singing a rather extreme opera, a bit on the tragic side: Habib’s absence. Habib, the love of her life, Dolores’ father, had gone far, far away, but where? Her body and heart broken, her breasts raw, Adina kissed the little daughter wet with her hot tears and pinkish blood. Dolores.

That was my baptism—no godparents, nothing, just a cascade of sobs. The child of sorrow had blue eyes, but its salty skin was black. That was me.

It was summer, and in that part of the world, the scent of chestnut trees was everywhere. Valentina Tereshkova, in a black suit covered by a fleet of medals, shook hands with Nikita Khrushchev. He was very proud of her. For a moment, before getting into the limousine, she remembered the touching scene she had witnessed from space. And then the car door closed and Valentina disappeared from the frame. The protagonists of the story, and of history, were launched in a time machine at the speed of thought out to the four corners of the world.

One day, I’ll visit the Museum of Cosmonautics in Star City. When I find Valentina’s artifacts in the display case—her coveralls, her helmet, her boots, the model of Vostok 6—I will understand that these objects were involuntary witnesses to my origins, and I will be moved. I’m proud to have been born on a historic day, a day that began with a commonplace gesture: just a woman brushing her teeth and her hair and listening to the radio. ⁂

Translated from L’homme d’Asmara, published by Éditions Marchand de feuilles, 2010. Printed with permission from the publisher.

Ioana Georgescu is a Montreal-based artist and writer originally from Bucharest, Romania. She is the author of three novels, including L’homme d’Asmara, which this story is excerpted and translated from, and Daughter of Here, translated by Katia Grubisic.