Chernobyl Murders (56 page)

Shopping for clothes! A suite at the Vienna Intercontinental!

And all of this after days and nights on the run during which a mil-dewed tent or a straw-filled barn had seemed precious shelters.

Lazlo was in the bedroom on the telephone. Because there was no telephone at the farmhouse, Lazlo had left a message at the office of the Ulyanov collective’s chairman. A few minutes ago, the operator rang with a call from Kisbor. Although she could not hear what he said, Juli heard Lazlo’s voice coming from the bedroom, calm and controlled. Lazlo had not asked her to leave the bedroom during the call, but she wanted Lazlo to be able to speak with Nina in private. It was hard enough to talk knowing the PK might be listening.

This morning, when Juli had called Aunt Magda, she had been careful not to mention anything about how she and Lazlo escaped.

Aunt Magda assured her everything was fine in Visenka and also gave Juli a message from Marina and Vasily. They planned to marry soon and had moved to a resettlement apartment near Kiev. The news was not all good, however. Vasily’s mother and sister were sick from the high radiation they received, and both were being treated at a Kiev hospital.

When Lazlo’s voice stopped, Juli closed her eyes. She heard the door open, and Lazlo sat beside her, putting his arm around her.

When she opened her eyes, she saw Lazlo smiling. The scar on his upper lip from Komarov’s beating made his smile seem crooked.

But soon, according to the doctor in Budapest, his smile would be straight again.

“Everything is fine at the farm,” said Lazlo. “The KGB never returned after they took us away. Nina and the girls are being checked periodically at a hospital in Uzhgorod. No organ damage, but the girls especially will have to be watched. Nina’s decided to stay in Kisbor. Bela wants to help her build a house next to his.”

Juli reached out and touched Lazlo’s chin with her finger. “Your smile is gone.”

“Did I have one?”

“When you first sat down.”

“I wish there was something I could do for Nina.”

“You did, Laz. You went to your family when they needed you.”

“And you came when I needed you.”

Lazlo stood and went to the window. He looked east, his profile so sad when he wasn’t smiling. “Earlier you mentioned your friend Aleksandra Yasinsky, who was taken away when she spoke openly about radiation dangers. It made me think again about the man named Pavel, and also about the Gypsy on the Romanian border. We’ve left so many people back there, Juli. I hope leaving is the right thing to do.”

Juli went to join Lazlo at the window and held him close. “You said it yourself, Laz. We can help more people from here.”

“I know. I simply need to consider these things occasionally.

It’s part of my melancholy. By the way, before Nina called, I spoke with Dr. Szabo.”

“What did he say?”

“He’ll pick us up in the morning for the meeting. He said we should consider relocating, perhaps to the United States. He’s arranged for visas and contacted a medical facility in New York.”

Juli and Lazlo stood together looking east, Lazlo’s arm around her, his hand resting on her abdomen.

In the distance, beyond the green of the park and the blue of the Danube, the horizon was a thin line of colorless land and sky. It was like any horizon, a magnet to any Gypsy, a reason to keep moving.

As they stood at the window, they both felt the baby’s kick.

Four months after the unit four RBMK-1000 reactor at Chernobyl exploded, Soviet officials joined with scientists from throughout the world at a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. For the most part, delegates were pleased with the openness displayed by the Soviets in detailing the causes of the accident.

Although there seemed to be many indirect factors leading to the accident, the main cause was reported to have been an ill-planned experiment at the reactor.

Design flaws were also discussed at the meeting, and Soviet officials outlined corrective measures to be performed on the other RBMK-1000 reactors in operation. Although the Soviets said some designers and high-level engineers were at fault, they praised the heroism and bravery of those who were at the site when the explosion occurred.

At the end of August 1986, the official death toll from the Chernobyl accident stood at thirty-one, and hundreds of thousands of people who had been forced from their homes faced a high risk of developing cancer in their lifetimes.

Kiev, Ukraine

The Chernobyl Museum (Ukrainian National Museum “CHOR-NOBYL”) is housed in a converted fire station on Khoryvyj Pereulok Street. The museum is a plain, two-story building with arched fire-station doors. A garden memorial near the entrance has a single iconic statue seemingly in prayer. Inside, the museum feels like a church or funeral parlor, with unhurried footsteps and muted voices echoing from various exhibit rooms. Some rooms have sections of girders and metal on the ceiling, simulating the destruction inside the destroyed reactor. There are photographs of the reactor before and after the explosion, and photographs of the sarcophagus. There are photographs of the city of Pripyat and of people who were relocated, especially children. There are photographs of hundreds of vehicles abandoned in the exclusion zone. And finally, there are photographs of victims, many of whom were firemen and liquidators.

One exhibit area has a display of various protective gear used during the rescue and cleanup operations. The protective clothing is primitive by modern standards—rubber gloves, hard hats, face masks, lead vests, boots, and rubberized suits. Several face masks hang on the wall, and two are on mannequins in rubberized suits.

The face masks are made of rubber with the pallor of dead flesh.

Snouts with downward-pointing screw-on filter canisters make the mannequins into prehistoric creatures not yet ready for the technology assaulting them. Round glass eyes shine like mirrors to the souls inside the suits.

Two caretakers, a man and a woman, walk slowly from exhibit to exhibit, announcing the closing of the museum in soft voices.

The noise in the hallways increases as visitors head for the exit, walking briskly on shiny tile floors. In the main hall near the exit is an exhibit of Soviet newspaper stories from the year of the explosion. Most of the headlines concern Chernobyl. But one newspaper from January 1986 has a photograph of the U.S. Space Shuttle Challenger crew killed in the shuttle explosion. The photograph of the crew in black and white, blown up and grainy on the front page of the newspaper, is reminiscent of many other photographs in the museum. Faces from the past full of optimism and trust in twenti-eth century technology.

Little Ilonka is no longer a little girl. A quarter century has passed since she fled with her mother, Nina, and her sister, Anna, from Pripyat. As Chernobyl Museum visitors parade out the main entrance, several men of various ages glance her way. Perhaps it is a combination of Ilonka’s beauty and a reaffirmation of life that makes even women smile at her before heading down the path to the exit gate.

Lazlo and his niece Ilonka sit on a bench near the garden with its commemorative statue and silent bells. The bus from the Chernobyl tour is due in an hour, and they are early. Before coming here, they stopped for a cool drink along Khreshchatik Boulevard. It was hot when they arrived, but the late-afternoon sun has gone lower, hidden by buildings. Although the bench is still warm, the shade is welcome. Lazlo had taken off his jacket and tie earlier in the day, planning to put them back on before dinner. The red, white, and green tie, which Ilonka immediately recognized as representing the Hungarian flag, is draped on his jacket on the bench.

Ilonka is in her late twenties, a professor of mathematics at Kiev University. On their way here, she had admired Lazlo’s Sox cap so he bought her one, saying it would not only show she was a fan, but would also protect her head from the sun. Ilonka’s hair is very short.

At first he worried she had undergone recent chemotherapy, but Ilonka said she had shaved her head, along with several other university staff members, to support a physics professor who had cancer.

Ilonka’s whisper-quiet voice is a result of having her thyroid removed years earlier. The surgeon did a fine job on her sister, Anna, but when it came to Ilonka, the surgeon nicked both vocal cords. According to Ilonka, it causes no handicap, especially since she has begun using a wireless microphone and amplifier during her lectures.

Besides the Sox cap, Ilonka wears a short skirt, white blouse, medium heels, and sunglasses. Lazlo is like a proud father as he watches the passing men admiring her. During their walk to the museum, they shared family news. Ilonka’s mother, Nina, is happy on the farm in Kisbor. Anna, Ilonka’s sister, although married to a farmer in town some years back, has decided not to have children because of her radiation exposure in Pripyat after the explosion.

Bela and his wife are grandparents, the mother, Lazlo recalls, a baby during the episode at the farm in 1986. Times are hard in western Ukraine, but it is much better than it was under Soviet rule. The packages Lazlo sends from the United States are appreciated.

Although Lazlo feels more like a proud father than an uncle sitting beside Ilonka, he is not a father. A stepfather, yes, but never a father. During their walk here, he explained the details of his relationships, Ilonka saying she was much younger when she heard about Uncle Lazlo’s adventures and wanted to hear the entire story once again, especially since it involved her father, Mihaly.

In 1986, when she was a technician at Chernobyl, Juli Popovics had an affair with Lazlo’s brother, Mihaly. After Mihaly’s death at Chernobyl, Juli and Lazlo escaped from Ukraine, pursued by a mad KGB officer named Komarov. Juli carried Mihaly’s child, a girl born shortly after Lazlo and Juli married in Vienna. Lazlo and Juli named the girl Tamara, after Lazlo’s longtime friend who was murdered by Komarov. Lazlo and Juli moved to the United States and lived a happy life until Juli died of cancer at the turn of the new century. After Juli’s death, Lazlo visited Ilonka’s mother, Nina, several times. Although they were fond of one another, Nina had her life in Kisbor, and Lazlo had his sadness for his loss of Juli. Lazlo also had a life in Chicago. Raising his stepdaughter, Tamara, and watching her grow into a woman gave his life meaning.

After repeating to Ilonka things she already knew about him, Juli, and her father, Lazlo told her something she did not know. She asked how he got his nickname, the Gypsy. When they were little girls, he told Anna and Ilonka his militia friends gave him the name because he liked Gypsy music. Today he told Ilonka the real story about a boy of nineteen in the army, given the job with his friend Viktor picking up deserters near the Romanian border. The deserter who played the violin even as they approached the house in the farm village. The deserter, whose nickname was Gypsy, asking to bring his violin with him, but removing a pistol from the violin case. The boy of nineteen, who had survived recruit hazing with Viktor, shooting the deserter before he could put another bullet into Viktor … or into him. Finally, the name Gypsy given to him by others in his unit, the name leaping from the soul of the man he killed to avenge Viktor’s murder. The name burdening him with guilt because he should have known better than to allow a Gypsy access to his violin case. Stupid boys. Ignorant boys, with their feet still in their mothers, killing one another.

It was a long walk to the museum this afternoon. After Lazlo told his niece about Viktor and the Gypsy, Ilonka told about a girl-hood friend from Pripyat. Svetlana had settled with her family at another collective a day’s drive from Kisbor. She had corresponded with Ilonka for several years, then there was a delay, then a letter from Svetlana’s father saying she had died from Chernobyl disease.

While walking to the museum, Lazlo leaned in close to Ilonka so he could hear her whisper above the noise of the street. “I was a very sad little girl, Uncle Laz. How could a little girl understand that Svetlana didn’t get enough potassium iodide and I did? At the time I thought about you always seeming sad. I wanted to be like you from then on. It seems I have wanted to be sad my whole life.”

“Are you sad now?”

“Half of me is; the other half is not.”

“I am the same, Ilonka. The half spending an afternoon with you is content. My contentment will continue into tonight after we retrieve Tamara and Michael from their tour of Chernobyl.”

“Where will we dine?”

“I made reservations at Casino Budapest. I wanted to see a striptease or two.”

It is after sunset, and the bus from Chernobyl is late. Streetlights have come on around the museum, and other relatives and friends of Chernobyl tourists mill about waiting. With the museum closed, traffic has eased, and it is quiet, allowing Lazlo to hear Ilonka’s whispery voice without leaning in close.

“Mother waited until we were teenagers before she told us we were stepsisters to Tamara. Because you were married to Juli, we naturally assumed you were Tamara’s real father. Mother said Juli spoke of cancer often, saying many would get it. I was so sorry when it happened.”

“Do you remember much about Pripyat?”

“I remember being happy, the playground outside the apartment building, the lights of the Chernobyl towers out our window.

I remember you visiting.”

“What about the evacuation?”

“We got a ride to the plant in a car, then a bus took us past apartment buildings and away from Pripyat. The bus driver wore a handkerchief over his nose and mouth and drove very fast. I remember looking up at the apartments and seeing bicycles stored on balconies. I remember wondering what would happen to all those bicycles. Anna, on the other hand, always said she remembers dogs chasing the bus. She said dogs chased the buses their owners were on for many kilometers until they gave up or died. Later, the dogs were shot by soldiers because they picked up radiation during their search for food and for their masters.”