She walks down the metal steps and makes her way to her bench, and her working day begins. She tells herself that this is a good morning. She’ll keep telling herself this, even if she doesn’t believe it.
Chapter 13
Once again Grigory walks this flat landscape with the pale evening light drawing down, his only respite from the plain, hastily constructed buildings that are now his home. He came to this resettlement camp three months ago, when swathes of corn covered the fields and combine harvesters traced the land, supported by locals who tied the straw in bundles, standing it on end to dry and be taken home later for their horses. Rows and rows of them inching forwards, like a local mob whose intent was to beat the land into submission. A year before, this would have been a sight to take pleasure in, to watch a community reap their harvest, but Grigory has developed a suspicion of all types of agriculture, all signs of growth. He knows the dangers that lurk in the most innocuous things.
When he left Chernobyl they were harvesting too. Men from the clean villages on the outer rim of the exclusion zone would enter their neighbours’ evacuated farms and pluck beets or potatoes from the earth. Often they’d take their children out of school, bring them along; their wives also. These were men who had always trusted the soil; it had never failed to provide for them. How could they believe the earth had betrayed them when vegetables were growing in front of their eyes? They would ask why they were allowed to work their own farms and yet their neighbours were forced to move because of some imaginary boundary. If their cattle needed feed, their neighbours wouldn’t begrudge them. The feed sits in sacks—how can it be contaminated? Even the kolkhoz offices endorsed this view. They posted signs saying it was permissible to eat salad vegetables: lettuce, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers. There were instructions for dealing with contaminated chickens. They advised people to wear protective gear and boil the chicken in salt water, to use the meat for pâté or salami and pour the water down the toilet.
In his final weeks there, when all of his authority had been stripped away, Grigory drove from farm to farm at the perimeter of the zone, showing his credentials, advising people of the dangers they were in. None of them believed him, until he took out the dosimeter and the machine beeped shrilly: 1,500, 2,000, 3,000 micro-roentgen per hour—hundreds of times the level of natural exposure. It was a method he’d adapted when it became apparent that all Vygovskiy’s grand statements about a new beginning, about a thorough, methodical cleanup, had been quashed by one phone call from the Kremlin.
THE DAY AFTER the evacuation, reports came in of a radioactive cloud that hung over Minsk. Grigory approached Vygovskiy about it. His superior nodded: “I’ve been informed.”
“And they’re evacuating?”
“They’re doing everything they can.”
A few hours later he realized that supply trucks were still arriving from the city. Again he approached his superior.
“They haven’t evacuated, we’re still getting supplies from there.”
“They don’t have the resources yet.”
“We have spare troops here, men sitting around waiting for instructions. What are they waiting for? We know every hour is crucial.”
Vygovskiy gestured towards the stacks of paperwork on his desk, the ringing phone.
“I have a power plant to clean up, Grigory. I have a team of nuclear engineers arriving any moment. There are men taking care of it.”
“What men?”
“Good men.”
Grigory returned to his office and called the general secretary of the Central Committee of the Belarusian Party. They wouldn’t connect him: the man was on another line. Grigory was incredulous. He waited five minutes and called again. He reminded them forcefully who he was, where he was calling from, under whose authority he worked. Still no connection. Eventually, after a half hour, he got through.
When he mentioned the accident, the line went dead.
He walked into Vygovskiy’s engineering briefing and gestured to speak to him outside. The group was arguing over procedure. Vygovskiy waved him away. Grigory remained until the group fell silent. Irritated, Vygovskiy followed him into the corridor, then indicated they should go to Grigory’s office. Neither of them spoke until Vygovskiy closed the door.
“The KGB are suppressing our calls. I can’t even speak with the Belarussian general secretary.”
“Why are you speaking to the general secretary?”
“Because there’s a fucking radioactive cloud hanging over his capital.”
Vygovskiy spoke in a pointedly calm tone.
“They have orders to contain the information, in order to avoid a mass panic.”
“The KGB?”
“The KGB. The general secretary. Everyone.”
“So there’ll be no evacuation?”
“No. It’s a direct order from the highest levels in the Kremlin.”
Grigory sat down at his desk. Vygovskiy remained standing in front of him, as though he were the inferior. He adjusted his tie.
“It’s a direct order. What do you want me to do?”
Their voices rising in steady progression.
“I want us to do what we said we’d do. I want to deal with this situation openly, properly, with accountability. I’m getting reports that the city has background radiation of twenty-eight thousand micro-roentgen per hour.”
“That meeting in my office. The engineers are figuring out a way to get the water out from underneath the reactor. If uranium and graphite get in there, a critical mass will form and we might be dealing with an explosion of maybe three, four, even five megatons. If that happens you’ll have to evacuate half of Europe. Should I get on the phone to the Polish premier, to Berlin? Fuck it, why not Paris?”
“Why not? They could help. There would be more resources, more expertise.”
“More hysteria. And that’s not even taking into account what it would mean for our international profile.”
“You’re talking like a politician, Vladimir.”
“This has international consequences. This is our most critical moment, politically, since the war. We both know this. Of course politics comes into it. Politics comes into everything. Now, if you’ll excuse me, comrade. I’m getting things done.”
He strode out the door, slamming it after him.
Grigory picked up the receiver, then put it down again in its cradle.
He grabbed his jacket and a dosimeter and found Vasily in one of the medical tents, checking exposure rates amongst the soldiers.
“Come with me—that can wait.”
Grigory had one of the soldiers drive them to the apartment blocks. They walked up a staircase and into one of the apartments.
“Can you tell me what we’re doing here?”
Grigory looked around and found the phone and carried it to the dining table, the cord straining to reach.
“There’s a radioactive cloud over Minsk. We need to make some calls.”
He got on his knees and, dipping his head to search under the sofa, found what he was looking for. He dragged out a phone book.
“Who are we calling?”
Grigory threw the book towards the table. On landing it thudded and skidded along the vinyl covering.
“Everyone. Pick a letter and start from there. It’s a lottery. See who lives according to their surname.”
Vasily placed his hand calmly on the book, flipping the corners of pages with his thumb, a rasping sound.
“This is ridiculous, Grigory. What are we doing here? Someone’s apartment? You have an office and an administrative staff.”
“The KGB are monitoring our calls. I can’t talk to anyone in the city or there’ll be consequences. Not that I’m worried about that, but they’ll cut us off immediately. We can’t get anything done that way. I’ll be next door, doing the same.”