Chernobyl Murders (18 page)

“I can’t tell if you’re melancholy from the music or simply relaxed,” said Tamara.

“Relaxed,” said Lazlo.

“The last time we were together you acted this way. Initially you measure our time together with a stopwatch. This morning I expected Olympic judges to rush in and tell us we were late for the gold-medal ceremony.”

“It’s my bachelor life,” said Lazlo. “Our first time together after so long makes me act like a boy on his first encounter.”

Tamara touched her chest above her breasts. “Some boy. Last night you seemed a dozen boys making up for lost time.”

“How do you put up with me?”

“I know you,” said Tamara. “I enjoy our seasonal visits. But you should see other women, Lazlo. Life is too short to wait for what you want.”

“What do I want?”

Tamara laughed. “Like me, you don’t know what you want. We are urban Gypsies, you and I. Instead of traveling from one place to another, we stay in one place. But we still have the need to roam. So we let our desires roam. What do you think, Laz? Is it a good theory?”

“The best I’ve heard.”

“Did you ever come close to marriage?”

The candle on the table reminded Lazlo of church, of candlelight glowing on perspiring faces, of the wedding of Mihaly and Nina. “The closest I ever came to marriage was when I was best man for my brother’s wedding.”

Tamara laughed. “You are a strange man. You fill your life with melancholy. Militia work is like many of our ministries. Gloomy places. The gloominess overflows even into the streets and parks where babushkas sweep sidewalks and watch for unjustified laughter.

But here in your home, you are supposed to shed your gloominess.”

“There must be times when I’m cheerful. I simply don’t show it.”

“Are there times you are able to forget the boy on the Romanian border?”

Lazlo stared into Tamara’s dark eyes. “When I’m with you, of course.”

“I’m serious. Think about it. When are you truly happy?”

He stared into Tamara’s eyes and thought about it.

“Listen to Lakatos on the violin. The way each note stretches to its limit as if he’s reluctant to let go and face silence. Call it melancholy, or blame the incident on the Romanian border. But it’s more complicated. Tonight, for some reason, the silence at the end of the song seems closer.”

Tamara’s eyes glistened in the light of the candle as she stared at him. They stayed this way for several minutes, holding hands and staring as if they could read one another’s thoughts.

Then Tamara blew out the candle and led Lazlo past the phonograph where the violin of Lakatos cried in the darkness. They danced, swayed in one another’s arms until the record was over.

They went into the bedroom where the breeze from the south made the sheets cool and moist and fragrant.

After dark, with windows and even the space beneath the door sealed with damp towels, it was impossible to tell what the weather was like outside. The apartment was warm and stuffy. From her bed Juli saw Marina outlined against the faint glow of night light from the patio door.

“Are candles still lit in windows?” asked Juli.

“Yes,” said Marina. “It reminds me of Christmas.”

“Can you see smoke?”

“No. The sky is too dark.”

“I wonder if it’s still burning.”

“If so, it can’t be as bad as this morning when we could see the glow of flames.” Marina let the parted curtains close and sat on the edge of Juli’s bed. “It’s so quiet. Everyone who has a car has probably left. Do you think it’s still dangerous to be outside?”

Juli touched the dosimeter on the night table. “I looked a few minutes ago. It’s going up about a millirem every hour. Outside it must be higher.”

“Should we shower again?”

“No. Save the water in the tub.” Juli sat up, put her arm about Marina’s shoulder. “Save it for Vasily and his mother and sister because the water pressure is dropping. They’ll be here, Marina.

Vasily knows how to take care.”

There was a rapid hammering above, which grew louder and louder.

“Another helicopter,” said Marina.

“They’re dumping something onto the fire,” said Juli. “At least something is being done.”

Suddenly there was a pounding at the door. Marina lit a candle.

“It must be Vasily.”

But it was not Vasily. It was one of the women from the courtyard. The woman who had assured tenants the church would not burn palms before Palm Sunday. Instead of wearing nightclothes, the woman wore slacks, boots, a coat, and a head scarf.

She looked past Marina to Juli. “My name is Svetlana Alexievich.

I have children … I wanted to know if you knew anything more.”

Juli got out of bed and went to the door. “Are the children in your apartment?”

“Now they are. I did as you said last night. I closed the windows and sealed beneath the door. But later in the morning other children were going to school. One of the teachers is in the apartment next door. She said school was open, so everything must be fine. I let the children go, and now I’m worried. They gave the children pills. My other neighbor says there are buses lining up outside the city. She says we’ll all have to leave. She saw the militia station captain driving out of town and said the plant might have been sabotaged. Why would they have school if it were dangerous? My boy says his friends rode their bicycles to the plant to look at the fire. I don’t understand why some say everything is fine, while others …”

“Please listen,” said Juli. “Keep your children inside. If buses come to take us, it’s best to go. It would be temporary, I’m sure. But children, especially, should not be exposed unnecessarily. Did the school give them extra pills?”

“Yes,” said Svetlana. “They take them every three hours. We have enough for two days.”

“Good,” said Juli.

Svetlana stared at the candle Marina was holding and licked her lips. “The air … it smells like my husband’s clothes from the machine works.” She paused, looked about. “My neighbor says some residents are burying money and valuables in case we have to take the buses in a hurry. Why do we have school on Saturday? Simply to be different from America? Always to be different, always to surpass the Americans. So, if the buses come, we should leave?”

Juli stepped closer to Svetlana. “Even if the officials are overreacting, it would be best.”

Svetlana held both Juli’s hands for a moment, then disappeared down the hall.

After closing the door, Juli replaced the wet towel at the opening beneath it, went to the night table, picked up the dosimeter, and held it up to Marina’s candle. When she went into the bathroom and began vigorously washing her hands in the water they had saved in the sink, Marina watched in horror. And when the sound of another helicopter vibrated the glass of the windows, Marina began to cry.

The buses, having waited outside Pripyat, lined up one after another on Lenin Street in the center of town and shut off their engines. A driver with a handkerchief tied over his mouth and nose got out of his bus, ran to the bus ahead, and boarded. This driver also had a handkerchief over his mouth and nose.

“What did he have to say?” asked the driver from the bus behind.

“Who?”

“The soldier with the Kalashnikov who just got off your bus.

You’re first in line, so I thought he might have told you something.”

“He said it’s the end of the world.”

“You are always the comedian, Yuri.”

“He was trying to find out if I knew anything. He said earlier today he caught a bunch of kids who had gone to the station to watch the fire. They were outside the fence. Crazy kids. I asked when we would load up and get the hell out of here. He said he hadn’t gotten the order yet and didn’t know whether it would be tomorrow or the next day. He said we have to wait.”

“Why the hell did we speed up here if they’re going to wait until Sunday or Monday?”

“What kind of food did you bring?”

“Sausage and bread.”

“I snuck in a bottle under my seat. If you would like to bring your sausage to my bus …”

“I’ll be right back.”

At the crossroads where the roads from the towns of Chernobyl and Pripyat joined, more buses were waved through. Militiamen, who had not covered their faces earlier, did so now. A few even had masks with filters.

The militiamen stopped the flow of buses momentarily to allow through several fire trucks heading for the plant.

“Did you see the insignia on the last fire truck?” said a militiaman wearing a scarf over his mouth and nose.

“Where was it from?” asked a militiaman wearing one of the filter masks.

“It said Borzna. That’s on the other side of the river.”

“They’re coming from all over,” said the filter mask. “I wonder if the KGB guards over there in their car know something.”

“They always do,” said the militiaman, tightening the scarf across his face.

Viewed from the far side of the cooling pond, a flicker of flame could be seen through thick smoke coming from the skeletal remains of Chernobyl’s unit four. A helicopter with lights shining through the smoke dropped a load of sand and sped away. On the ground near the fire, floodlights illuminated several figures in iridescent silver body suits manning hoses trained on the fire and on surrounding buildings. In the distance, the lights of more helicopters appeared.

They looked like airliners lined up for landing at an airport.

It was after midnight, Sunday, April 26, almost a full twenty-four hours since unit four exploded. Waterfowl had settled in for a night in the shallows of the cooling pond. Some waterfowl seemed perfectly healthy, while others appeared disoriented.

13
Because it was early Sunday morning, the absence of Kiev’s buses went unnoticed. Spouses or partners did not think it unusual for a driver to be called in for special duty. It happened sometimes.

A spring shower had cleansed Kiev’s streets during the night, the sun filtered through thin wisps of cloud, and smells of rainwater and greenery and breakfast were in the air. Russian Orthodox Palm Sunday had brought out several pedestrians who managed to find a service. They carried palms as they headed back to their apartments.

Lazlo and Tamara walked to a combination cafe and bakery a few blocks from his apartment. They sat at a small table sipping strong coffee and munching on an assortment of strudel while patrons purchased crackling white bags of sweets at the counter.

The proprietress behind the counter was a short, plump woman with skin as white as the powdered sugar abundantly sprinkled on the pastries in the windowed case. Every few minutes the baker, who was the woman’s husband, came through a swinging door to replenish the supply in the case. He was skinny, his baker’s cap making him look as if it might tip him over on his head.

Tamara had pinned her hair atop her head and wore a sweater and short skirt, which attracted glances from the men who came into the bakery. Her earrings, with gold stars dangling from chains, swung from side to side as she chewed.

“I like the cheese filling best. Which is your favorite, Laz?”

“Poppy seed.”

“I don’t usually eat breakfast. Nothing but coffee when I get to the office. Most of the poets who contribute to the journal are skinny as hell. I should bring them here, fatten them up.”

“They’d write poems about pastry instead of politics,” said Lazlo.

Tamara licked cheese from her fingertip. “Ode to a strudel.

Much healthier than politics. Poets are a lot like you, constantly brooding. Sometimes I think they’d all like to go to a labor camp to die the way Vasyl Stus died.”

“How did he die?”

“He was typical of many poets who search for connections between the specifics of politics and the universals of life instead of simply enjoying the here and now.”

“I’m enjoying myself now.”

“And last night?” asked Tamara.

“Metaphorically, last night was like eating a thousand strudels.”

The number of carryout patrons increased, and the baker made more trips to keep the case full. The cheeks of the proprietress reddened despite her doughy complexion. A middle-aged man at the counter placed his order in Ukrainian instead of the usual Russian.

“Will your family be able to eat all this?” asked the proprietress.

“My family has doubled,” said the man. “My brother-in-law and his family came unexpectedly in the middle of the night. Woke me up saying they had to abandon their home.”

“What happened?”

“Some kind of accident at the nuclear plant where he works. He said many have abandoned the area because the air and water may be poisoned.”

“The air and water?” said the proprietress. “Where is this?”

“At Chernobyl, to the north. My brother-in-law lives in Pripyat.

He said there’s no problem here because of the distance. But up there he says people are panicking.”

Lazlo felt cold, as if he had been thrust back into the wine cellar with Mihaly last summer on the farm, Mihaly warning of danger at Chernobyl.

Lazlo left the table, stood behind the man at the counter.

The man continued with the proprietress. “My tiny apartment is like a metro station. My brother-in-law has two teenaged daughters. They have already taken over the bathroom.”

“Has there been anything on the news about this?” asked the proprietress.

“Nothing. We watched the early news and listened to the radio.

I was beginning to think my brother-in-law’s moving in with us was part of some clever scheme. But this morning a neighbor heard of another family on the next block whose relatives also arrived last night.”

The man picked up his packages. “I’ll probably see you again tomorrow. These relatives will eat me out of house and home.”

The man tried to leave, but Lazlo stepped sideways, blocking his path. He spoke in Ukrainian. “Excuse me, comrade. I couldn’t help overhearing you.”

“What do you want?” said the man, eyeing Lazlo suspiciously.

“My brother lives in Pripyat. Please tell me, did your brother-in-law give any details about the accident?”