Lily Michailidou: The statement

My name is Yuri and I was born at the beginning of May, when the winter was still getting under the feet of spring, in 1961, about the time that the news broke worldwide that a Soviet cosmonaut (most people didn’t even know what the word meant) had, on the 12th of April, made the first manned space flight and was orbiting the earth.

This was something that many people simply couldn’t understand, like my grandfather, for example, who was never convinced and simply said “that’s not God’s work, he’ll cast them down from up there!” My father’s name is Joseph and he comes from a working class family, from childhood he worked in my grandfather’s timber yard; my mother, who was from the middle class, was called Helena and she fell in love and married my father after a complicated and tempestuous relationship, with her parents against the marriage though they finally consented when her belly was swollen with me. Overjoyed at the news because of his leanings towards the then Soviet Union, my father gave me the name of the cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin; my grandparents were brought down to earth with a bang.

I live on my own in an apartment at the foot of the Acropolis, from before the neighbourhood became so trendy, in Tenedou Street, number 2, and I’m lucky because today the area has become desirable thanks to the marvellous new museum and so I’ve gone up in value too… That’s why I’m surrounded by women. It’s not a big apartment, but it’s cosy, with kitchen, living room, study and one bedroom, and it has white marble floors and ceilings painted by some artist whose name I don’t recall.

It overlooks the Acropolis. I don’t close the shutters at night because I want to make love and see it lit up and, in the morning, when I open my eyes the first thing I see is the sun embracing and kissing it.

What happened prior to the accident?

That time between the final fluttering of the birds in the leafage and the presence of the first bats, such a short time lasting but a few minutes, stifles me every day and I remain irresolute before surrendering myself to the power of the darkness and finding myself again. It was in such a moment that Nefeli and I surrendered ourselves to the frenzy of the wine that led us to a vision of escape that we called a trip.

And so there we were, drinking in the bar, watching the birds in the leafage above our heads, and talking of all and everything, like the things described by the great Argentine poet, things strange and weird, stories of unknown places, stories written by maimed hands which, nevertheless, wielded a fertile pen, stories entrusted to yellowed, crumpled and dog-eared pages, about people who were forgotten over the course of time because no one remembered them anymore.

Dozens of candles in bottles were on the high tables all around us. Uncontrolled, our wineglasses emptied and filled and the alcohol flowed in our veins like the ink in an uncontrolled poem. The faint light and the shadows created a mystagogical atmosphere and made it easy for our hands to slip into and caress the other’s, while the artificial light lent to Nefeli’s skin a soft and desirable texture and the music transported my gaze through her flimsy dress.

Then came the melodious sound, like a whisper, of Melina’s voice with its invitation “Let’s take a stroll to the moon” 1, we gazed into each other’s eyes; they were full of longing; “shall we then?” we both said at the same time. I took Nefeli by the hand, my legs were like lead; I stumbled like a drunk. No, I wasn’t drunk. Tight, but not drunk. Nefeli was amused by it, she laughed and began singing “paper moon…”2. She leaned on my shoulder, hugged and kissed me and I had to cling to her to keep my balance.

The sounds from out of the darkness and our submersion in the dizziness of the moment had taken hold of us.

Let’s get to the accident, describe the drive leading up to it

Thankfully, the car wasn’t far away. We got in and I sped off, part of the pandemonium that exists on the city’s main roads in the early hours when everyone is going home after the evening’s excesses. An impulse took hold of me fuelling my longing for an unknown, unplanned drive and I reflected that that night was unlike any other and I’d keep it forever in my heart.

Excited, Nefeli was sitting beside me, “I want to soar, to soar, to soar up high,” she whispered in my ear. She leaned forward to take out a cigarette and before she could put it to her lips, I had flashed a match in front of her. I gave her a light and, throwing the extinguished match out of the window, I saw the city below us, in the drab of darkness, not a very nice view if you take into consideration that in all the photos taken from above, the city looked exceedingly beautiful.

The whole city was immersed in people’s winged dreams, a big gulp of wine to make you heady. The truth of the city is hidden behind closed doors, beneath the hard slabs of the pavements, in the sewers, in the eyes of its beggars. This is the truth that comes out at night to have fun and to soften the burdens and the hardships of the day.

I put my foot down on the pedal – fortunately I had filled the tank the previous day – and I remembered the saying that “speeding is a strange habit that people have when they’ve lost their way…”3 and also the words of Michael Schumacher that “I can’t not do some things out of fear that I might get hurt…”4, but there was no way I was going to reduce speed, and I felt exhilarated, with Nefeli’s fingers running through my hair, her lips on my neck, her eyes twinkling like stars. Everything round about us was so weird, cracked, full of chaos, creating a feeling like when you enter a forest with lush vegetation and you can’t see any pathway out.

And I suddenly felt the sky, clouds and stars hurtling towards us; an instantaneous heraldic reflection of time. And I felt that we were like the angels, immaterial, with the stars like boats tossing to and fro around their anchors.

A plane whisked past us leaving behind a trail of smoke. And we were whirling among the stars, the flashes of which fell like rain and flickered in the clouds. Yet our mood was more than just light; it was unsure, dazzlingly heavy and unsure. The clouds were groaning in the exhausting darkness and the consummate perspiration of alarm began to creep over my body.

At breakneck speed we entered a starry universe, gazing, with glass eyes like those of telescopes, at the bright planets, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, the Pleiades, which according to the tradition of the Indians are the seven Indian virgins being pursued by the bears, and at the moon, which surpasses in brightness all the other stars of the night sky, and one thing was certain: things were completely out of our control.

The panic didn’t look like abating and my head was throbbing with a terrible headache, my ears were buzzing with demons, my thoughts dissolved like paper in a rainstorm and the car was speeding along. Amidst the panic I began to sing “tears in heaven…” by Sting, and everything around us was transformed into an enormous garden with cool water flowing between the flowerbeds and with a breeze blowing from the north, the north-west, the north-east, it doesn’t matter, and with us laughing and hoping, hoping that something good would happen and that we would go on laughing, laughing till… BANG, a loud sound was heard, a celestial jolt, BANG, BANG! an unusual celestial jolt and millions of tiny sparks shot out, falling like countless clusters of perseids into earth’s atmosphere, before settling gently, like words of love, over all the expanses of the earth and the oceans.

At every spot, there blossomed a microscopic, light, noiseless, ethereal moon that slowly rose into the sky, and they all joined together forming an enormous perfectly round moon that people called a Full Moon.

That evening the TV programmes were interrupted by special news bulletins “scientists are investigating this stellar phenomenon… the complete disappearance of the moon for an entire night…” and the next day they talked of “… the appearance of a full moon the like of which has never been seen in the history of space investigation…”. There were those who talked of a sign from God and others who talked of the end of the world.

Do you want to add anything that might help the jurors?
Their verdict is due in a couple of hours…

…Silence please… The Jurors unanimously condemn you, sweating, agony, sweating like a river… they condemn you lifelong in love!

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1,2. Paper Moon, music by Manos Hajidakis, lyrics by Nikos Gatsos. The song was written for Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire”, staged by the “Theatro Technis” of Karolos Koun (1948-49) with Melina Mercouri as Blanch Dubois.

3. Rollo May, 1909-1994, American psychologist.

4. Michael Schumacher, German Formula 1 driver. He was seven times world champion, more than any other Formula 1 driver.