Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster (3 page)

Early in the morning I go to the market, then to my friends’ place, where I make the soup. I have to grate everything and grind it. Someone said, “Bring me some apple juice." So I come with six half-liter cans, always for six! I race to the hospital, then I sit there until evening. In the evening, I go back across the city. How much longer could I have kept that up? After three days they told me I could stay in the dorm for medical workers, it’s on hospital grounds. God, how wonderful!

“But there's no kitchen. How am I going to cook?”

“You don't need to cook anymore. They can't digest the food.”

He started to change—every day I met a brand-new person. The burns started to come to the surface. In his mouth, on his tongue, his cheeks—at first there were little lesions, and then they grew. It came off in layers—as white film . . . the color of his face ... his body . . . blue . . . red . . . gray-brown. And it's all so very mine! It’s impossible to describe! It’s impossible to write down! And even to get over. The only thing that saved me was, it happened so fast; there wasn't any time to think, there wasn’t any time to cry.

I loved him! I had no idea how much! We’d just gotten married. When we walked down the street—he’d grab my hands and whirl me around. And kiss me, kiss me. People are walking by and smiling.

It was a hospital for people with acute radiation poisoning. Fourteen days. In fourteen days a person dies.

On the very first day in the dormitory they measured me with a dosimeter. My clothes, bag, purse, shoes—they were all “hot." And they took it all right away. Even my underthings. The only thing they left was my money. In exchange they gave me a hospital robe—a size 56—and some size 43 slippers. They said they'd return the clothes, maybe, or maybe they wouldn’t, since they might not be possible to “launder" at this point. That is how I looked when I came to visit him. I frightened him. “Woman, what's wrong with you?" But I was still able to make him some soup. I boiled the water in a glass jar, and then I threw pieces of chicken in there—tiny, tiny pieces. Then someone gave me her pot, I think it was the cleaning woman or the guard. Someone else gave me a cutting board, for chopping my parsley. I couldn't go to the market in my hospital robe, people would bring me the vegetables. But it was all useless, he couldn't even drink anything. He couldn't even swallow a raw egg. But I wanted to get him something tasty! As if it mattered. I ran to the post office. “Girls," I told them, “I need to call my parents in Ivano-Frankovsk right away! My husband is dying." They understood right away where I was from and who my husband was, and they connected me. My father, sister, and brother flew out that very day to Moscow. They brought me my things. And money. It was the ninth of May. He always used to say to me: “You have no idea how beautiful Moscow is! Especially on V-Day, when they set off the fireworks. I want you to see it."

I'm sitting with him in the room, he opens his eyes. “Is it day or night?”

“It's nine at night."

“Open the window! They’re going to set off the fireworks!"

I opened the window. We're on the eighth floor, and the whole city's there before us! A bouquet of fire was exploding in the air.

“Look at that!" I said.

“I told you I'd show you Moscow. And I told you I'd always give you flowers on holidays . . .”

I look over, and he's getting three carnations from under his pillow. He gave the nurse money, and she bought them.

I run over to him and I kiss him.

“My love! My one and only!"

He starts growling. “What did the doctors tell you? No hugging me. And no kissing!"

They wouldn't let me hug him. But I ... I lifted him and sat him up. I made his bed. I placed the thermometer. I picked up and brought back the sanitation dish. I stayed up with him all night.

It’s a good thing that it was in the hallway, not the room, that my head started spinning, I grabbed onto the windowsill. A doctor was walking by, he took me by the arm. And then suddenly: “Are you pregnant?"

“No, no!" I was so scared someone would hear us.

“Don’t lie," he sighed.

The next day I get called to the head doctor’s office.

“Why did you lie to me?" she says.

“There was no other way. If I’d told you, you’d send me home. It was a sacred lie!"

“What have you done?"

“But I was with him . . ."

I’ll be grateful to Angelina Vasilyevna Guskova my whole life. My whole life! Other wives also came, but they weren’t allowed in. Their mothers were with me. Volodya Pravik’s mother kept begging God: “Take me instead." An American professor, Dr. Gale—he’s the one who did the bone marrow operation— tried to comfort me. There’s a tiny ray of hope, he said, not much, but a little. Such a powerful organism, such a strong guy! They called for all his relatives. Two of his sisters came from Belarus, his brother from Leningrad, he was in the army there. The younger one, Natasha, she was fourteen, she was very scared and cried a lot. But her bone marrow was the best fit.
[Silent.]
Now I can talk about this. Before I couldn’t. I didn’t talk about it for ten years.
[Silent.]

When he found out they’d be taking the bone marrow from his little sister, he flat-out refused. “I’d rather die. She’s so small. Don't touch her." His older sister Lyuda was twenty-eight, she was a nurse herself, she knew what she was getting into. “As long as he lives," she said. I watched the operation. They were lying next to each other on the tables. There was a big window onto the operating room. It took two hours. When they were done, Lyuda was worse off than he was, she had eighteen punctures in her chest, it was very difficult for her to come out from under the anesthesia. Now she’s sick, she’s an invalid. She was a strong, pretty girl. She never got married. So then I was running from one room to the other, from his room to hers. He wasn't in an ordinary room anymore, he was in a special bio-chamber, behind a transparent curtain. No one was allowed inside.

They have instruments there, so that without going through the curtain they can give him shots, place the catheter. The curtains are held together by Velcro, and I've learned to use them. I push them aside and go inside. There was a little chair next to his bed. He got so bad that I couldn't leave him now even for a second. He was calling out to me constantly: “Lyusya, where are you? Lyusya!" He called and called. The other biochambers, where our boys were, were tended to by soldiers, because the orderlies on staff refused, they demanded protective clothing. The soldiers carried the sanitary vessels. They wiped the floors down, changed the bedding. They did everything. Where did they get those soldiers? We didn't ask. But he—he—every day I would hear: Dead. Dead. Tischura is dead. Titenok is dead. Dead. It was like a sledgehammer to my brain.

He was producing stool 25 to 30 times a day. With blood and mucous. His skin started cracking on his arms and legs. He became covered with boils. When he turned his head, there’d be a clump of hair left on the pillow. I tried joking: “It's convenient, you don't need a comb." Soon they cut all their hair. I did it for him myself. I wanted to do everything for him myself. If it had been physically possible I would have stayed with him all twenty-four hours. I couldn't spare a minute.
[Long silence
.] My brother came and he got scared. “I won't let you in there!" But my father said to him: “You think you can stop her? She’ll go through the window! She’ll get up through the fire escape!"

I go back to the hospital and there's an orange on the bedside table. A big one, and pink. He's smiling: “I got a gift. Take it.” Meanwhile the nurse is gesturing through the film that I can't eat it. It's been near him a while, so not only can you not eat it, you shouldn’t even touch it. “Come on, eat it,” he says. “You like oranges.” I take the orange in my hand. Meanwhile he shuts his eyes and goes to sleep. They were always giving him shots to put him to sleep. The nurse is looking at me in horror. And me? I’m ready to do whatever it rakes so that he doesn’t think about death. And about the fact that his death is horrible, that I’m afraid of him. There's a fragment of some conversation, I'm remembering it. Someone is saying: “You have to understand: This is not your husband anymore, not a beloved person, but a radioactive object with a strong density of poisoning. You’re not suicidal. Get ahold of yourself.” And I'm like someone who’s lost her mind: “But I love him! I love him!” He’s sleeping, and I'm whispering: “I love you!” Walking in the hospital courtyard, “I love you.” Carrying his sanitary tray, “I love you.” I remembered how we used to live at home. He only fell asleep at night after he'd taken my hand. That was a habit of his—to hold my hand while he slept. All night. So in the hospital I take his hand and don’t let go.

One night, everything's quiet. We're all alone. He looked at me very, very carefully and suddenly he said:

“I want to see our child so much. How is he?”

“What are we going to name him?”

“You'll decide that yourself.”

“Why myself, when there's two of us?”

“In that case, if it’s a boy, he should be Vasya, and if it’s a girl, Natasha.”

I had no idea then how much I loved him! Him ... just him. I was like a blind person! I couldn't feel the little pounding underneath my heart. Even though I was six months in. I thought that my little one was inside me, that he was protected.

None of the doctors knew I was staying with him at night in the bio-chamber. The nurses let me in. At first they pleaded with me, too: “You’re young. Why are you doing this? That's not a person anymore, that’s a nuclear reactor. You'll just burn together." I was like a dog, running after them. I’d stand for hours at their doors, begging and pleading. And then they’d say: “All right! The hell with you! You’re not normal!" In the mornings, just before eight, when the doctors started their rounds, they'd be there on the other side of the film: “Run!" So I'd go to the dorm for an hour. Then from 9 A.M. to 9 P.M. I have a pass to come in. My legs were blue below the knee, blue and swollen, that's how tired I was.

While I was there with him, they wouldn't, but when I left—they photographed him. Without any clothes. Naked. One thin little sheer on top of him. I changed that little sheet every day, and every day by evening it was covered in blood. I pick him up, and there are pieces of his skin on my hand, they stick to my hands. I ask him: “Love. Help me. Prop yourself up on your arm, your elbow, as much as you can, I'll smooth out your bedding, get the wrinkles and folds out." Any little wrinkle, that was already a wound on him. I clipped my nails down rill they bled so I wouldn’t accidentally cut him. None of the nurses could approach him; if they needed anything they’d call me.

And they photographed him. For science, they said. I'd have pushed them all out of there! I’d have yelled! And hit them! How dare they? It's all mine—it's my love—if only I'd been able to keep them out of there.

I'm walking out of the room into the hallway. And I'm walking toward the couch, because I don't see them. I tell the nurse on duty: “He’s dying." And she says to me: “What did you expect? He got 1,600 roentgen. Four hundred is a lethal

dose. You're sitting next to a nuclear reactor." It’s all mine . . . it's my love. When they all died, they did a
remont
at the hospital. They scraped down the walls and dug up the parquet.

And then—the last thing. I remember it in flashes, all broken up.

I’m sitting on my little chair next to him at night. At eight I say: “Vasenka, I’m going for a little walk.” He opens his eyes and closes them, lets me go. I just walk to the dorm, go up to my room, lie down on the floor, I couldn't lie on the bed, everything hurt too much, when already the cleaning lady is knocking. “Go! Run to him! He’s calling for you like mad!" That morning Tanya Kibenok pleaded with me: “Come to the cemetery, I can’t go there alone." They were burying Vitya Kibenok and Volodya Pravik. They were friends of my Vasya. Our families were friends. There's a photo of us all in the building the day before the explosion. Our husbands are so handsome! And happy! It was the last day of that life. We were all so happy!

I came back from the cemetery and called the nurse’s post right away. “How is he?” “He died fifteen minutes ago." What? I was there all night. I was gone for three hours! I came up to the window and started shouting: “Why? Why?" I looked up at the sky and yelled. The whole building could hear me. They were afraid to come up to me. Then I came to: I'll see him one more time! Once more! I run down the stairs. He was still in his bio-chamber, they hadn’t taken him away yet. His last words were “Lyusya! Lyusenka!" “She's just stepped away for a bit, she'll be right back," the nurse told him. He sighed and went quiet. I didn't leave him anymore after that. I escorted him all the way to the grave site. Although the thing I remember isn't the grave, it’s the plastic bag. That bag.

At the morgue they said, “Want to see what we’ll dress him in?" I do! They dressed him up in formal wear, with his service cap. They couldn't get shoes on him because his feet had swelled up. They had to cut up the formal wear, too, because they couldn’t get it on him, there wasn't a whole body to put it on. It was all—wounds. The last two days in the hospital—I’d lift his arm, and meanwhile the bone is shaking, just sort of dangling, the body has gone away from it. Pieces of his lungs, of his liver, were coming out of his mouth. He was choking on his internal organs. I’d wrap my hand in a bandage and put it in his mouth, take out all that stuff. It's impossible to talk about. It's impossible to write about. And even to live through. It was all mine. My love. They couldn't get a single pair of shoes to fit him. They buried him barefoot.

Right before my eyes—in his formal wear—they put him in that cellophane bag of theirs and tied it up. And then they put this bag in the wooden coffin. And they tied the coffin with another bag. The plastic is transparent, but thick, like a tablecloth. And then they put all that into a zinc coffin. They squeezed it in. Only the cap didn’t fit.

Everyone came—his parents, my parents. They bought black handkerchiefs in Moscow. The Extraordinary Commission met with us. They told everyone the same thing: it’s impossible for us to give you the bodies of your husbands, your sons, they are very radioactive and will be buried in a Moscow cemetery in a special way. In sealed zinc caskets, under cement tiles. And you need to sign this document here.