Starman_ The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin - Jamie Doran [77]
The next day Titov, Kamanin and ten others of the group packed their kit bags for departure first thing the following morning. Of course, on their last day of freedom from care they celebrated hard. ‘Then, in the evening, they celebrated some more,’ Anna recalls drily. Kamanin described quiet games of cards and chess in his diary entry for that day, but this well-behaved tableau seems improbable, given the general pace of drinking and rowdiness established over the preceding fortnight.
The journalist Golovanov’s version of events on October 3 is that ‘Gagarin was a guest of the sailors in the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol. I was with him and Gherman Titov. Then we returned to Foros, and the next day we set off to the local Pioneers [the Russian equivalent of boy scouts] near Yalta. Then we visited the vineyards at Massandra. Basically we came back from there quite warmed up. Yuri decided to visit a lady friend. But we have to say something about his good character . . .’ Golovanov re-directs the thrust of his story for a moment. ‘You know, his wife Valentina was quite a complicated woman. She protected Yuri from every kind of temptation which came as a result of his position . . . Anyway, Valentina discovered that the First Cosmonaut had disappeared, and she decided to find out where he was, and he showed the true colours of goodness and of a gentleman. He showed genuine nobility and jumped out of a window on the second floor.’
Anna Rumanseyeva recalls, ‘To avoid watching them playing and joking at the party, “Anna” had to leave the building. She said she went into a room and sat on a sofa. Yuri Alexeyevich – I don’t know what was on his mind. He was drunk. Perhaps he wanted to talk? I don’t think he had any other thoughts. Anyway he went into the room. He closed the door but didn’t lock it with a key. Valentina Ivanovna went into the room immediately after him. The door opens . . . Perhaps he wanted to say that she was mistaken, or perhaps he wanted to hide? I don’t know.’
After the incident Nikolai Kamanin interrogated various members of the sanatorium staff, including Anna, and decided on his own version of events:
Nurse Anna told me she had just gone up to her room to have a little rest at the end of her shift. She was lying on the bed fully dressed, reading a book, when Gagarin came into the room, locked the door behind him and tried to kiss her, saying, ‘What, are you going to cry for help?’ There was a knock on the door at that moment, and Gagarin jumped from the balcony.
Perhaps there was an unpleasant discussion between Yuri and Valentina, or perhaps she burst into the room and found no sign of him, just a breathless and dishevelled Anna. Perhaps Valentina demanded to know where her husband was, so that Anna had to tell her he was hiding on the balcony. Anna’s accounts of the scene are many and varied – necessary interpretations rather than outright falsehoods – but of course both women leaned over the balcony’s edge to take a look, as they had to, and saw Gagarin sprawled on the ground, motionless. ‘At that time, there were wild grapes growing on the balconies,’ Anna Rumanseyeva explains. ‘They may have caught him as he jumped. He hit a kerbstone with his forehead. It was not a good landing. On his return from space he landed successfully. Here, unsuccessfully . . . I learned this from “Anna”. Her name was also Anna. She told me.’
Nikolai Kamanin’s first reference to the incident in his diary is brief and to the point:
Under alcoholic intoxication, Gagarin jumped out of a window. It caused serious trauma to his face and a scar above his eyebrow. An operation was performed