Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster (27 page)

*

I heard—the adults were talking—Grandma was crying—since the year I was born [1986], there haven’t been any boys or girls born in our village. I’m the only one. The doctors said I couldn’t be born. But my mom ran away from the hospital and hid at

Grandma's. So I was born at Grandma’s. I heard them talking about it.

I don’t have a brother or sister. I want one.

Tell me, lady, how could it be that I wouldn't be born? Where would I be? High in the sky? On another planet?

*

The sparrows disappeared from our town in the first year after the accident. They were lying around everywhere—in the yards, on the asphalt. They’d be raked up and taken away in the containers with the leaves. People weren’t allowed to burn the leaves that year, because they were radioactive, so they buried the leaves.

The sparrows came back two years later. We were so happy, we yelled to each other: “I saw a sparrow yesterday! They're back."

The May bugs also disappeared, and they haven’t come back. Maybe they'll come back in a hundred years or a thousand. That's what our teacher says. I won't see them.

*

September first, the first day of school, and there wasn't a single flower. The flowers were radioactive. Before the beginning of the year, the people working weren’t masons, like before, but soldiers. They mowed the flowers, took off the earth and took it away somewhere in cars with trailers.

In a year they evacuated all of us and buried the village. My father’s a cab driver, he drove there and told us about it. First they'd tear a big pit in the ground, five meters deep. Then the firemen would come up and use their hoses to wash the house from its roof to its foundation, so that no radioactive dust got kicked up. They wash the windows, the roof, the door, all of it. Then a crane drags the house from its spot and puts it down into the pit. There’s dolls and books and cans all scattered around. The excavator picks them up. Then it covers everything with sand and clay, leveling it. And then instead of a village, you have an empty field. They sowed our land with corn. Our house is lying there, and our school and our village council office. My plants are there and two albums of stamps, I was hoping to bring them with me. Also I had a bike.

*

I’m twelve years old and I’m an invalid. The mailman brings two pension checks to our house—for me and my granddad. When the girls in my class found out that I had cancer of the blood, they were afraid to sit next to me. They didn't want to touch me.

The doctors said that I got sick because my father worked at Chernobyl. And after that I was born. I love my father.

*

They came for my father at night. I didn’t hear how he got packed, I was asleep. In the morning I saw my mother was crying. She said, “Papa's in Chernobyl now."

We waited for him like he was at the war.

He came back and started going to the factory again. He didn’t tell us anything. At school I bragged to everyone that my father just came back from Chernobyl, that he was a liquidator, and the liquidators were the ones who helped clean up after the accident. They were heroes. All the boys were jealous.

A year later he got sick.

We walked around in the hospital courtyard—this was after his second operation—and that was the first time he told me about Chernobyl.

They worked pretty close to the reactor. It was quiet and peaceful and pretty, he said. They took off the topsoil contaminated by cesium and strontium, and they washed the roofs. The next day everything would be “clicking” on the dosimeters again.

“In parting they shook our hands and gave us certificates of gratitude for our self-sacrifice." He talked and talked. The last time he came back from the hospital, he said: “If I stay alive, no more physics or chemistry for me. I’ll leave the factory. I'll become a shepherd." My mom and I are alone now. I won't go to the technical institute, even though she wants me to. That’s where my dad went.

*

I used to write poems. I was in love with a girl. In fifth grade. In seventh grade I found out about death.

I had a friend, Andrei. They did two operations on him and then sent him home. Six months later he was supposed to get a third operation. He hanged himself from his belt, in an empty classroom, when everyone else had gone to gym glass. The doctors had said he wasn’t allowed to run or jump.

Yulia, Katya, Vadim, Oksana, Oleg, and nowAndrei. “We’ll die, and then we'll become science," Andrei used to say. “We'll die and everyone will forget us,” Katya said. “When I die, don't bury me at the cemetery, I’m afraid of the cemetery, there are only dead people and crows there," said Oksana. “Bury me in the field." Yulia used to just cry. The whole sky is alive for me now when I look at it, because they’re all there.

___

Not long ago I was so happy. Why? I’ve forgotten. It feels like another life now. I don't even understand, I don’t know how I've been able to begin living again. Wanting to live. But here I am. I laugh, I talk. I was so heartbroken, I was paralyzed. I wanted to talk with someone, but not anyone human. I’d go to a church, it's quiet there, like in the hills. So quiet, you can forget your life there. But then I'd wake up in the morning, my hand would feel around—where is he? It's his pillow, his smell. There’s a tiny bird running around on the windowsill making the little bell ring, and it's waking me up, I’ve never heard that sound before, that voice. Where is he? I can't tell about all of it, I can't talk about all of it. I don't even understand how I stayed alive. In the evening my daughter would come up to me: “Mom, I'm already done with my homework." That's when I remember I have kids. But where is he? “Mom, my button fell off. Can you sew it back?" How do I go after him, meet up with him? I close my eyes and think of him until I fall asleep. He comes to me in my sleep, but only in f ashes, quickly. Right away he disappears. I can even hear his footsteps. But where does he go? Where? He didn’t want to die. He looks out the window and looks, looks at the sky. I put one pillow under him, then another, then a third. So that he could be high up. He died for a long time. A whole year. We couldn’t part. [She
is silent for a long time.]

No, don’t worry, I don't cry anymore. I want to talk. I can't tell myself that I don't remember anything, the way others do. Like my friend. Our husbands died the same year, they were in Chernobyl together, but she’s already planning to get married. I'm not condemning her—that’s life. You need to survive. She has kids.

He left for Chernobyl on my birthday. We had guests over, at the table, he apologized to them. He kissed me. But there was already a car waiting for him outside the window.

It was October 19, 1986, my birthday. He was a construction worker, he traveled all over the Soviet Union, and I waited for him. That's just how we lived over the years—like lovebirds. We’d say goodbye and then we'd reunite. And then—this fear came over our mothers, his and mine, but we didn’t feel it. Now I wonder why. We knew where he was going. I could have taken the neighbor boy's tenth-grade physics textbook and taken a look. He didn’t even wear a hat. The rest of the guys he went with lost their hair a year later, but his grew out really thick instead, like a mane. None of those boys is alive anymore. His whole brigade, seven men, they're all dead. They were young. One after the other. The first one died after three years. We thought: well, a coincidence. Fate. But then the second died and the third and the fourth. Then the others started waiting for their turn. That's how they lived. My husband died last. He worked high in the air. They'd turn the lights off in evacuated villages and climb on the light poles, over the dead houses, the dead streets, always high up in the air. He was almost two meters tall, he weighed ninety kilograms—who could kill him?
[Suddenly, she smiles
.]

Oh, how happy I was! He came back. We had a party, whenever he came back there was a party. I have a nightgown that's so long, and so beautiful, I wore it. I liked expensive lingerie, everything I have is nice, but this nightgown was special—it was for special occasions. For our first day, our first night. I knew his whole body by heart, all of it, I kissed all of it. Sometimes I'd dream that I was part of his body, that we’re inseparable that way. When he was gone I’d miss him so much, it would be physically painful. When we parted, for a while I'd feel lost, I wouldn't know what street I was on, what the time was.

When he came back he had knots in his lymph nodes, they were small but I felt them with my lips. “Will you go to a doctor?" I said. He calmed me down: “They'll go away." “What was it like in Chernobyl?" “Just ordinary work." No bravado, no panic. I got one thing out of him: “It’s the same there as it is here." In the cafeteria there they'd serve the ordinary workers noodles and canned foods on the first floor, and then the bosses and generals would be served fruit, red wine, mineral water on the second. Up there they had clean tablecloths, and a dosimeter for every man. Whereas the ordinary workers didn't get a single dosimeter for the whole brigade.

Oh, how happy I was! We still went to the sea then, and the sea was like the sky, it was everywhere. My friend went with her husband, too, and she thinks: the sea was dirty—“We were afraid we'd get cholera." It's true, there was something about that in the papers. But I remember it differently, in much brighter lights. I remember that the sea was everywhere, like the sky. It was blue-blue. And he was nearby.

I was born for love. In school all the girls dreamt of going to the university, or on a Komsomol work trip, but I dreamt of getting married. I wanted to love, to love so strongly, like Natasha Rostov. Just to love. But I couldn't tell anyone about it, because back then you were only supposed to dream of the Komsomol construction trip. That's what they taught us. People were raring to go to Siberia, to the impenetrable taiga, remember they'd sing: “past the fog and the smell of the taiga." I didn't get into the university during the first year, I didn't get enough points at the exams, and I went to work at the communications station. That's where I met him. And I proposed to him myself, I asked him: “Marry me. I love you so much!" I fell in love up to my ears. He was such a great-looking guy. I was flying through the air. I asked him myself: “Marry me.”
[Smiles.]

Another time I’ll think about it and find ways of cheering myself up—like, maybe death isn’t the end, and he’s only changed somehow and lives in another world. I work in a library, I read lots of books, I meet many people. I want to talk about death, to understand it. I’m looking for consolation. I read in the papers, in books, I go to the theater if it’s about death. It's physically painful for me to be without him—I can’t be alone.

He didn’t want to go to the doctor. “I don’t hear anything, and it doesn’t hurt.” But the lymph nodes were already the size of eggs. I forced him into the car and took him to the clinic. They referred him to an oncologist. One doctor looked at him, called over another: “We have another Chernobylite here.” After that they didn’t let him go. A week later they did an operation: they took out the thyroid gland and larynx and replaced them with some tubes. Yes . . . [She is
silent
.] Yes—now I know that that, too, was a happy time. God! The errands I sent myself on—running to the stores buying presents for the doctors, boxes of chocolates, imported liqueurs. I got chocolates for the nurses. And they took them. Meanwhile he’s laughing at me: “Understand, they’re not gods. And they’ve got enough chemo and radiation to go around. They'll give me that without the candies.” But I was running to the other side of town for some souffle cake or French perfume. In those times you couldn’t get that stuff without knowing someone, it was all under the counter. That was right before they sent him home.

They sent him home! They gave me a special needle and showed me how to use it. I was supposed to feed him that way. I learned how to do everything. Four times a day I’d cook up something fresh, it had to be fresh, and I’d grind it all up in the meat grinder, put it onto a stringer, and then pour this all into the needle. I’d stick the needle into the biggest of his tubes, and that one went into his stomach. But he'd lost his sense of smell by then. I'd say, “How does this taste?” He wouldn’t know.

We still went to the movies a few times. And we'd kiss there. We were hanging by such a thin thread, but we thought we were digging into life again. We tried not to talk about Chernobyl, not to remember it. It was a forbidden topic. I wouldn’t let him come to the phone, I'd intercept it, all his boys were dying one by one. It was a forbidden topic. And then one morning I wake him up and give him his robe, but he can't get up. And he can't talk. He's stopped talking. His eyes are huge. That's when he got scared. Yes ... [She
is silent again.]

We had one year left after that. He spent that whole year dying. He got worse with each day, but he didn't know that his boys were dying, too. That's what we lived with—with that thought. It's impossible to live with, too, because you don't know what it is. They say, “Chernobyl," and they write, “Chernobyl." But no one knows what it is. Something frightening opened up before us. Everything is different. We aren’t born the same, we don’t die the same. If you ask me, How do people die after Chernobyl? The person I loved more than anything, loved him so much that I couldn't possibly have loved him more if I'd given birth to him myself—turned—before my eyes—into a monster. They’d taken out his lymph nodes, so they were gone and his circulation was disrupted, and then his nose kind of shifted, it grew three times bigger, and his eyes became different—they sort of drifted away, in different directions, there was a different light in them now, and I saw expressions in them I hadn’t seen, as if he was no longer himself but there was still someone m there looking out. Then one of the eyes closed completely.

And what was I afraid of? Only that he’d see it. But he began asking me, showing me with his hands, like, bring me the mirror. I'd run off to the kitchen, as if I'd forgotten, or I hadn’t heard, or something else. I did that for two days, tricking him, but on the third he wrote in his notebook in large letters with three exclamation points: “Bring the mirror!!!” We already had a notebook, a pen, a pencil, that’s how we communicated because by then he couldn’t even whisper. He was completely mute. I ran off to the kitchen, started banging on the pots and pans. As if I hadn't read what he'd written, or I’d misunderstood. He writes again: “Bring the mirror!!!” With those exclamation points.