Voices From Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster (7 page)

I measured the radiation. Once it got dark, these guys would pull up at our little station in cars and start giving us things: money, cigarettes, vodka. Just let us root around in the confiscated stuff. They'd pack their bags. Where'd they take it? Probably to Kiev and Minsk, to the second-hand markets. The stuff they left, we took care of it. Dresses, boots, chairs, harmonicas, sewing machines. We buried it in ditches—we called them “communal graves.”

I got home, I’d go dancing. I'd meet a girl I liked and say, “Let's get to know one another.”

“What for? You're a Chernobylite now. I’d be scared to have your kids.”

*

I have my own memories. My official post there was commander of the guard units. Something like the director of the apocalypse.
[Laughs
.] Yes. Write it down just like that.

I remember pulling over a truck from Pripyat. The town is already evacuated, there aren’t any people. “Documents, please.” They don't have the proper documents. The back has a canvas cover. We lift it up, and I remember this clearly: twenty tea sets, a big dresser, an armchair, a television, rugs, bicycles.

So I write up a protocol.

I remember the empty villages where the pigs had gone crazy and were running around. The collective farm offices and clubs, these faded posters: “We’ll give the motherland bread!" “Glory to the Soviet worker-peoples!” “The accomplishments of the people are immortal.”

I remember the untended communal graves—a cracked headstone with men's names: Captain Borokin, Senior Lieutenant . . . And then these long columns, like poems—the names of privates. Around it, burdock, stinging-nettle, and goose-foot.

I remember this very nicely tended garden. The owner comes out of the house, sees us.

“Boys, don't yell. We already put in the forms—we’ll be gone come spring."

“Then why are you turning over the soil in the garden?" “That's just for this fall."

I understand, but I have to write up a protocol . . .

My wife took the kid and left. That bitch! But I’m not going to hang myself like Vanya Kotov. And I'm not going to throw myself out a seventh-floor window. That bitch! When I came back from there with a suitcase full of money, that was fine. We bought a car. That bitch lived with me fine. She wasn't afraid.
[Starts singing
.]

Even one thousand gamma rays

Cant keep the Russian cock from having its days.

Nice song. From there. Want to hear a joke? Guy comes home from the reactor. His wife asks the doctor, “What should I do with him?" “You should wash him, hug him, and put him out of commission." That bitch! She’s afraid of me. She took the kid.
[Suddenly serious.]
The soldiers worked next to the reactor. I’d drive them there for their shifts and then back. I had a total-radiation-meter around my neck, just like everyone else. After their shifts, I'd pick them up and we'd go to the First Department—that was a classified department. They’d take our readings there, write something down on our cards, but the number of roentgen we got, that was a military secret. Those fuckers! Some time goes by and suddenly they say, “Stop. You can’t take any more." That's all the medical information they give you. Even when I was leaving they didn't tell me how much I got. Fuckers! Now they’re fighting for power. For cabinet portfolios. They have elections. You want another joke? After Chernobyl you can eat anything you want, but you have to bury your shit in lead.

How are doctors going to work with us? We didn't bring any documents with us. They're still hiding them, or they've destroyed them because they were so classified. How do we help the doctors? If I had a certificate that said how much I got there? I’d show it to my bitch. I'll show her that we can survive anything and get married and have kids. The prayer of the Chernobyl liquidator: “Oh, Lord, since you’ve made it so that I can’t, will you please also make it so I don’t want to?" Oh, go fuck yourselves, all of you.

They made us sign a non-disclosure form. So I didn't say anything. Right after the army I became a second-group invalid. I was twenty-two. I got a good dose. We lugged buckets of graphite from the reactor. That’s ten thousand roentgen. We shoveled it with ordinary shovels, changing our masks up to thirty times a shift—people called them “muzzles.” We poured the sarcophagus. It was a giant grave for one person, the senior operator, Valery Khodemchuk, who got caught under the ruins in the first minutes after the explosion. It’s a twentieth-century pyramid. We still had three months left. Our unit got back, they didn't even give us a change of clothing. We walked around in the same pants, same boots, as we had at the reactor. Right up until they demobilized us.

And if they'd let me talk, who would I have talked to? I worked at a factory. My boss says: “Stop being sick or we'll have to let you go." They did. I went to the director: “You have no right to do this, I’m a Chernobylite. I saved you. I protected you!" He says: “We didn't send you there."

At night I wake up from my mother saying, “Sonny, why aren’t you saying anything? You’re not asleep, you’re lying there with your eyes open. And your light's on." I don’t say anything. No one can speak to me in a way I can answer. In my own language. No one can understand where I've come back from. And I can't tell anyone.

I’m not afraid of death anymore. Of death itself. But I don't know how I’m going to die. My friend died. He got huge, fat, like a barrel. And my neighbor—he was also there, he worked a crane. He got black, like coal, and shrunk, so that he was wearing kids’ clothes. I don't know how I'm going to die. I do know this: you don't last long with my diagnosis. But I'd like to feel it when it happens. Like if I got a bullet in the head. I was in Afghanistan, too. It was easier there. They just shot you.

I clipped an article from the newspaper. It's about the operator Leonid Toptunov, he was the one on duty that night at the station and he pressed the red accident button a few minutes before the explosion. It didn't work. They took him to the hospital in Moscow. The doctors said, “In order to fix him, we'd need a whole other body." There was one tiny little non-radioactive spot on him, on his back. They buried him at the Mytinskaya Cemetery [in
Moscow],
like they did the others. They insulated the coffin with foil. And then they poured half a meter of concrete on it, with a lead cover. His father came. He’s standing there, crying. People walk by: “That was your bastard son who blew it up!"

We’re lonely. We’re strangers here. They even bury us separately, not like they do other people. It’s like we're aliens from outer space. I’d have been better off dying in Afghanistan. Honest, I get thoughts like that. In Afghanistan death was a normal thing. You could understand it there.

*

From above, from the helicopter, when I was flying near the reactor, I could see roes and wild boars. They were thin and sleepy. like they were moving in slow motion. They were eating the grass that grew there, and they didn’t understand, they didn’t understand that they should leave. That they should leave with the people.

Should I go or not go? Should I fly or not fly? I was a Communist—how could I not go?

Two paratroopers refused—their wives were young, they hadn’t had any kids yet. But they were shamed and punished. Their careers were finished. And there was also the court of manhood, the court of honor! That was part of the attraction— he didn’t go, so I will. Now I look at it differently. After nine operations and two heart attacks, I don't judge them, I understand them. They were young guys. But I would have gone anyway. That’s definite. He couldn’t, I will. That was manhood.

From above the amazing thing was the hardware: heavy helicopters, medium helicopters, the Mi-24, that’s a fighting helicopter. What are you going to do with a Mi-24 at Chernobyl? Or with a fighter-plane, the Mi-2? The pilots, young guys, all of them fresh out of Afghanistan. Their feeling was they’d pretty much had enough, with Afghanistan, they’d fought enough. They’re sitting in the forest near the reactor, catching roentgen. That was the order! They didn’t need to send all those people there to get radiation. What for? They needed specialists, not a lot of human material. From above I saw a ruined building, a field of debris—and then an enormous number of little human shapes. There was a crane there, from East Germany, but it wasn't working—it made it to the reactor and then died. The robots died. Our robots, designed by Academic Lukachev for the exploration of Mars. And the Japanese robots—all their wiring was destroyed by the radiation, apparently. But there were soldiers in their rubber suits, their rubber gloves, running around . . .

Before we went back we were warned that in the interests of the State, it would be better not to go around telling people what we'd seen. But aside from us, no one knows what happened there. We didn't understand everything, but we saw it all.

___

My first scare was—some mornings in the garden and the yard we’d find these strangled moles. Who strangled them? Usually they don't come out from underground. Something was chasing them out. I swear on the Cross!

My son calls from Gomel: “Are the May bugs out?"

“No bugs, there aren’t even any maggots. They’re hiding." “What about worms?"

“If you could find a worm in the rain, your chicken would be happy. But there aren't any."

“That's the first sign. If there aren’t any May bugs and no worms, that means strong radiation."

“What's radiation?"

“Mom, that’s a kind of death. Tell Grandma you need to leave. You’ll stay with us.”

“But we haven’t even planted the garden.”

If everyone was smart, then who’d be the dumb ones? It's on fire—so it’s on fire. A fire is temporary, no one was scared of it then. They didn’t know about the atom. I swear on the Cross! And we were living next door to the nuclear plant, thirty kilometers as the bird flies, forty on the highway. We were satisfied. You could buy a ticket and go there—they had everything, like in Moscow. Cheap salami, and always meat in the stores. Whatever you want. Those were good times!

Sometimes I turn on the radio. They scare us and scare us with the radiation. But our lives have gotten better since the radiation came. I swear! Look around: they brought oranges, three kinds of salami, whatever you want. And to the village! My grandchildren have been all over the world. The littlest just came back from France, that’s where Napoleon attacked from once—“Grandma, I saw a pineapple!" My nephew, her brother, they took him to Berlin for the doctors. That’s where Hitler started from on his tanks. It’s a new world. Everything’s different. Is that the radiation’s fault, or what?

What's it like, radiation? Maybe they show it in the movies? Have you seen it? Is it white, or what? Some people say it has no color and no smell, and other people say that it's black. Like earth. But if it's colorless, then it’s like God. God is everywhere, but you can’t see Him. They scare us! The apples are hanging in the garden, the leaves are on the trees, the potatoes are in the fields. I don't think there was any Chernobyl, they made it up. They tricked people. My sister left with her husband. Not far from here, twenty kilometers. They lived there two months, and the neighbor comes running: “Your cow sent radiation to my cow! She's falling down." “How’d she send it?" “Through the air, that’s how, like dust. It flies." Just fairy tales! Stories and more stories.

But here’s what did happen. My grandfather kept bees, five nests of them. They didn’t come out for two days, not a single one. They just stayed in their nests. They were waiting. My grandfather didn't know about the explosion, he was running all over the yard: what is this? What's going on? Something's happened to nature. And their system, as our neighbor told us, he’s a teacher, it's better than ours, better tuned, because they heard it right away. The radio wasn’t saying anything, and the papers weren’t either, but the bees knew. They came out on the third day. Now, wasps—we had wasps, we had a wasps' nest above our porch, no one touched it, and then that morning they weren't there anymore—not dead, not alive. They came back six years later. Radiation: it scares people and it scares animals. And birds. And the trees are scared, too, but they’re quiet. They won’t say anything. It's one big catastrophe, for everyone. But the Colorado beetles are out and about, just as they always were, eating our potatoes, they scarf them down to the leaves, they're used to poison. Just like us.

But if I think about it—in every house, someone's died. On that street, on the other side of the river—all the women are without men, there aren't any men, all the men are dead On my street, my grandfather's still alive, and there’s one more. God takes the men earlier. Why? No one can tell us. But if you think about it—if only the men were left, without any of us, that wouldn't be any good either. They drink, oh do they drink! From sadness. And all our women are empty. Not all of them managed to give birth in time.

What else will I say? You have to live. That’s all.

And also this. Before, we churned our butter ourselves, our cream, made cottage cheese, regular cheese. We boiled milk dough. Do they eat that in town? You pour water on some flour and mix it in, you get these torn bits of dough, then you put these in the pot with some boiled water. You boil that and pour in some milk. My mom showed it to me and she’d say: “And you, children, will learn this. I learned it from my mother.” We drank juice from birch and maple trees. We steamed beans on the stove. We made sugared cranberries. And during the war we gathered stinging-nettle and goose-foot. We got fat from hunger, but we didn’t die. There were berries in the forest, and mushrooms. But now that’s all gone. They don't let you eat the mushrooms or the berries. I always thought that what was boiling in your pot would never change, but it’s not like that.

Anna Badaeva, re-settler

___

I’ll get down on my knees to beg you—please, find our Anna Sushko. She lived in our village. In Kozhushki. Her name is Anna Sushko. I’ll tell you how she looked, and you’ll type it up. She has a hump, and she was mute from birth. She lived by herself. She was sixty. During the time of the transfer they put her in an ambulance and drove her off somewhere. She never learned how to read, so we never got any letters from her. The lonely and the sick were put in special places. They hid them. But no one knows where. Write this down . . .