Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster (10 page)

“My nephews would come during the summer. The first summer they didn’t come, they were afraid. But now they come. They take food, too, whatever you give them. ’Grandma,' they say, ‘did you read the book about Robinson Crusoe?’ He lived alone like us. Without people around. I brought ha!f a pack of matches with me. An axe and a shovel. And now I have lard, and eggs, and milk—it's all mine. The only thing is sugar—can’t plant that. But we have all the land we want! You can plow 100 hectares if you want. And no government, no bosses. No one gets in your way.”

“The cats came back with us, too. And the dogs. We all came back together. The soldiers didn’t want to let us in. The riot troops. So at night—through the forest—like the partisans.”

“We don’t need anything from the government. Just leave us alone, is all we want. We don’t need a store, we don’t need a bus. We walk to get our bread. Twenty kilometers. Just leave us alone. We're all right by ourselves."

“We came back all together, three families. And everything here is looted: the stove is smashed, the windows, they took the doors off. The lamps, light switches, outlets—they took everything. Nothing left. I put everything back together with these hands. What choice did we have?” “When the wild geese scream, that means spring is here. Time to sow the fields. And we're sitting in empty houses. At least the roofs are solid."

“The police were yelling. They’d come in cars, and we’d run into the forest. Like we did from the Germans. One time they came with the prosecutor, he huffed and puffed, they were going to put us up on Article 10. I said: ‘Let them give me a year in jail. I'll serve it and come back here.' Their job is to yell, ours is to stay quiet. I have a medal—I was the best harvester on the collective farm. And he’s trying to scare me with Article 10."

“Every day I'd dream of my house. I’m coming back to it: digging in the garden, or making my bed. And every time I find something: a shoe, or a little chick. And everything was for the best, it made me happy. I'd be home soon . . ."

‘'At night we pray to God, during the day to the police. If you ask me, ‘Why are you crying?' I don’t know why I’m crying. I’m happy to be living in my own house.’’

“We lived through everything, survived everything . . .”

“I got in to see a doctor. ‘Sweety,' I say, ‘my legs don’t move. The joints hurt.' ‘You need to give up your cow, grandma. The milk’s poisoned.' ‘Oh, no,’ I say, ‘my legs hurt, my knees hurt, but I won't give up the cow. She feeds me.' "

“I have seven children. They all live in cities. I'm alone here. I get lonely, I’ll sit under their photographs. I’ll talk a little. Just by myself. All by myself. I painted the house myself, it took six cans of paint. And that’s how I live. I raised four sons and three daughters. And my husband died young. Now I’m alone.”

“I met a wolf one time. He stood there, I stood there. We looked at each other. He went over to the side of the road, and I ran. My hair stood on end and my hat rose up, I was so scared.”

‘Any animal is afraid of a human. If you don't touch him, he’ll walk around you. Used to be, you’d be in the forest and you’d hear human voices, you’d run toward them. Now people hide from one another. God save me from meeting a person in the forest!”

“Everything that’s written in the Bible comes to pass. It's written there about our collective farm, too. And about Gorbachev. That there’ll be a big boss with a birthmark and that a great empire will crumble. And then the Day of judgment will come. Everyone who lives in cities, they’ll die, and one person from the village will remain. This person will be happy just to find a human footprint!”

“We have a lamp for light. A kerosene lamp. Ah-a. The women already told you. If we kill a wild boar, we take it to the basement or bury it ourselves. Meat can last for three days underground. The vodka we make ourselves.”

“I have two bags of salt. Who needs the government? Plenty of logs—there’s a whole forest around us. The house is warm. The lamp is burning. It’s nice! I have a goat, a kid, three pigs, fourteen chickens. Land—as much as I want; grass—as much as I want. There’s water in the well. And freedom! We're happy.

This isn’t a collective farm anymore, it’s a commune. We need to buy another horse. And then we won’t need anyone at all."

“This one reporter said, We didn’t just return home, we went back a hundred years. We use a hammer for reaping, and a sickle for mowing. We flail wheat right on the asphalt."

“During the war they burned us, and we lived underground, in bunkers. They killed my brother and two nephews. All told, my family lost seventeen people. My mom cried and cried. There was an old lady walking through the villages, scavenging. ‘You’re mourning?' she asked my mom. ‘Don't mourn. A person who gives his life for others, that person is holy.'"

“Chernobyl is like the war of all wars. There’s nowhere to hide. Not underground, not underwater, not in the air."

“We turned off the radio right away. We don't know any of the news, but life is peaceful. We don’t get upset. People come, they tell us the stories—there’s war everywhere. And just like that socialism is finished and we live under capitalism. And the Tsar is coming back. Is that true?”

“Sometimes a wild boar will come into the garden, sometimes a fox. But people only rarely. Just police."

“You should come see my house, too.’'

“And mine. It’s been a while since I had guests.’'

“I cross myself and pray: Dear God! Two times the police came and broke my stove. They took me away on a tractor. And me,

I came back! They should let people in—they’d all come crawling back on their knees. They scattered our sorrow all over the globe. Only the dead come back now. The dead are allowed to. But the living can only come at night, through the forest.”

“Everyone’s rearing to get back for the harvest. That’s it. Everyone wants to have his own back. The police have lists of people they’ll let back, but kids under eighteen can’t come. People will come and they’re so glad just to stand next to their house. In their own yard next to the apple tree. At first they’ll go cry at the cemetery, then they go to their yards. And they cry there, too, and pray. They leave candles. They hang them on their fences. Like on the little fences at the cemetery. Sometimes they’ll even leave a wreath at the house. A white towel on the gate.”

“The only time I don’t cry is at night. You can’t cry about the dead at night. When the sun goes down, I stop crying. Remember their souls, oh Lord. And let their kingdom come.”

“If you don’t play, you lose. There was a Ukrainian woman at the market selling big red apples. ‘Come get your apples! Chernobyl apples!' Someone told her not to advertise that, no one will buy them. ‘Don’t worry!’ she says. ‘They buy them anyway. Some need them for their mother-in-law, some for their boss.’ ”

“There was one guy, he came back here from jail. Under the amnesty. He lived in the next village. His mother died, the house was buried. He came over to us. ‘Lady, give me some bread and some lard. I’ll chop wood for you.’ He gets by.”

“The country is a mess—and people come back here. They run from the others. From the law. And they live alone. Even strangers. They're tough, there's no friendliness in their eyes. If they get drunk, they're liable to burn something down. At night we sleep with axes and pitchforks under our beds. In the kitchen next to the door, there's a hammer.”

“There was a rabid fox here during the spring—when they’re rabid they become friendly, very friendly. But they can't look at water. Just put a bucket of water in your yard, and you’re fine. She'll run away.”

“There’s no television. No movies. There's one thing to do— look out the window. Well, and to pray, of course. There used to be Communism instead of God, but now there’s just God. So we pray.”

“We're people who've served our time. I'm a partisan, I was with the partisans a year. And when we beat back the Germans, I was on the from. I wrote my name on the Reichstag: Artyushenko. I gave the shirt off my back for Communism. And where is this Communism?”

“We have the best kind of Communism here—we live like brothers and sisters . . .”

“The year the war started, there weren't any mushrooms or any berries. Can you believe that? The earth itself felt the catastrophe. 1941. Oh, how I remember it! I've never forgotten the war. There was a rumor that they'd brought over all the POWs, if you recognized yours you could take him. All our women ran over! That night some brought home their men, and others brought home other men. But there was one scoundrel . . . He lived like everyone else, he was married, had two kids—he told the commandant that we’d taken in some Ukrainians who weren’t from our village. There were Vasko, Sashko, and others. The next day the Germans came on their motorcycles. We begged them, we got down on our knees. But they took them out of the village and shot them with their automatics. Nine men. And they were young, they were so good! Vasko, Sashko . . .”

“The boss-men come, they yell and yell, but we’re deaf and mute. We’ve lived through everything, survived everything . . ."

“I don’t have my own to cry about, so I cry about everyone. For strangers. I’ll go to the graves, I’ll talk to them."

‘‘I’m not afraid of anyone—not the dead, not the animals, no one. My son comes in from the city, he gets mad at me. ‘Why are you sitting here! What if some looter tries to kill you?’ But what would he want from me? There’s some pillows. In a simple house, pillows are your main furniture. If a thief tries to come in, the minute he peeks his head through the window, I’ll chop it off with the axe. That’s how we do it here. Maybe there is no God, or maybe there’s someone else, but there’s someone up there. And I’m alive.”

“Why did that Chernobyl break down? Some people say it was the scientists’ fault. They grabbed God by the beard, and now he’s laughing. But we’re the ones who pay for it."

“We never did live well. Or in peace. We were always afraid. Just before the war they’d grab people. They came in black cars and took three of our men right off the fields, and they still haven’t returned. We were always afraid." “But now we're
free.
The harvest is rich. We live like barons."

“The only thing I have is a cow. I’d hand her in if only they wouldn't start another war. How I hate war!"

“Here we have the war of wars—Chernobyl.”

“And the cuckoo is cuckooing, the magpies are chattering, roes are running. Will they reproduce—who knows? One morning I looked out in the garden, the boars were digging. They were wild. You can resettle people, but the elk and the boar, you can't. And water doesn’t listen to borders, it goes along the earth, and under the earth."

“It hurts, girls. Oh, it hurts! Let’s be quiet. They bring your coffin quietly. Careful. Don't want to bang against the door or the bed, don’t want to touch anything or knock it over. Otherwise you have to wait for the next dead person. Remember their souls, oh Lord. May their kingdom come. And let prayers be said for them where they're buried. We have everything here—graves. Graves everywhere. The dump trucks are working, and the bulldozers. The houses are falling. The gravediggers are toiling away. They buried the school, the headquarters, the baths. It's the same world, but the people are different. One thing I don't know is, Do people have souls? What kind? And how do they all fit in the next world?"

“One old woman, she promises that we're immortal. We pray. Oh Lord, give us the strength to survive the weariness of our lives."

My little daughter—she’s different. She’s not like the others. She’s going to grow up and ask me: “Why aren’t I like the others?"

When she was born, she wasn’t a baby, she was a little sack, sewed up everywhere, not a single opening, just the eyes. The medical card says: “Girl, born with multiple complex pathologies: aplasia of the anus, aplasia of the vagina, aplasia of the left kidney." That’s how it sounds in medical talk, but more simply: no pee-pee, no butt, one kidney. On the second day I watched her get operated on, on the second day of her life. She opened her eyes and smiled, and I thought that she was about to start crying. But, God, she smiled!