TANYA WOULD LIKE to explain some of this to the tired surgeon. She would like to talk about love once more, to share her experiences, but the wounds are still too raw.
She answers his question.
“I worked as a tailor’s assistant and he came in one day to get a suit adjusted.”
“And you moved soon after.”
“A while after. He was doing his military service. When it finished, then I became a farmer’s wife. A life, I’m surprised to admit, I loved. Feeding chickens. Milking cows. Who knew a city girl like me would adapt so well?”
Tanya rises quickly and takes their empty plates and places them in a plastic container. She’ll wash them later. When she returns Grigory offers her a glass and they drink and he waits for her to continue.
“Sometimes on TV they show things from the area. One night they showed people swimming in Pripyat River, people tanning themselves by the banks. The reactor in the background, smoke still coming from it. They get an old lady to milk a cow, she pours the milk into the bucket, and a man comes over with a military dosimeter and measures the radiation level, and it’s normal. Then they measure some fish on a plate. It’s normal. Everything is fine, says the commentator, life is going on as normal. In the shelter, after we were evacuated, some of the other women would get letters from their husbands at the plant. Same thing. Life is returning to normal. Everything normal.”
There is a box of matches on the next table. Grigory reaches over for it, takes one from the box, lights it, and watches it burn down to a stub in his fingers. He lights another. Then he speaks.
“I had a contact in Minsk. A surgeon also. In the earliest days I approached the hospital to tell them what was happening. There was a radioactive cloud hanging over the city. We were forbidden to speak officially of this. So, I spread the word any way I could, talked to people who were in contact with large groups.”
She sits back in her chair, folds her arms, listening intently.
“I talked to this surgeon and he was already aware of the situation. Nobody was coming in yet with radiation poisoning; that would happen in the following weeks. But there were plenty of people, many of them prominent Party members, who needed to get their stomachs pumped after overdosing on iodine tablets. So the medical staff naturally drew their own conclusions. But then he said something else. He said his friend was a librarian and that, the day after the explosion, four KGB guys came into the library and confiscated any relevant books they could find. Anything on nuclear war, radiography—even basic science primers, books to get kids excited about physics. They went to such lengths, of course people believe the propaganda.”
Tanya shakes her head.
“Did you meet any liquidators?”
He’s unsure if she wants an answer. He looks up to see how he should reply and she stares back calmly, waiting for a response.
“A lot of people volunteered. Thousands, not just locals like your husband. That first week they brought in busloads of factory workers, students. They were throwing people at the problem, offering them three, four times the average wage. Not everyone came for the money, though. Some were just put on a bus. They thought they were coming for just a weekend, a reward for their productivity. I saw people taking photographs of each other in front of the reactor, to prove they were there, as if it were a tourist stop.”
He runs a match through his fingers. He would like a cigarette.
“At first they treated it like a holiday camp. They worked of course, shovelled topsoil, dug drains, and in the evening they’d get smashed. There was plenty of vodka to go around. Although eventually that ran out and they started drinking anything they could get their hands on: cologne, nail polish remover, glass cleaner. By then they were drinking to blank out their days, to forget what they’d seen.”
“Why weren’t they replaced? Why were they made to stay for so long?”
“At first they were supposed to be there for two weeks. The initial guidelines made sense—I myself demanded many of them—but they quickly became compromised because of budgetary restrictions, or stubbornness from some senior official. Every man had a radiation meter around his neck. No one was supposed to be exposed to more than twenty-five micro-roentgen, the maximum dose the body can withstand. We gave each of them three sets of protective outfits. But my superior revoked his decision to supply washing machines; he wanted to save whatever clean water sources we had left. So the men had no way of washing their gear. After the third day, they were constantly wearing radioactive clothes. After those initial two weeks, they decided not to replace the liquidators, not to sacrifice others. In the morning planning meetings they would calculate how many lives they’d use up on a particular task. Two lives for this job, four for this. It was like a war cabinet, men playing God. Worst of all, it did no good. Those people were replaced anyway, they became too sick to work.”
“That was when you left?”
“No, even then I stayed for another few weeks. I thought I could be useful as the voice of reason, as someone who would defend the workers. Then I found out that the Party had organized protected farms near Mogilev. They were growing their own vegetables, scrutinizing the water supply. Everything was being overseen by experts, the very people who were needed on the ground, in the local villages. They had their own herds of cattle; each bullock had a number and was routinely tested. They had cows which they were certain gave out fresh milk. Meanwhile, in the stores around the exclusion zone, they were selling condensed and powdered milk from the Rogachev factory—the same stuff we were using in induction lectures as an example of a standard radiation source. That was when they had to get rid of me. I went back to Minsk and talked to Aleksei Filin, the writer. Told him everything I knew. He spoke out during a live TV interview, some literary programme. It was brave of him, he was arrested over it. He’s still in confinement, I haven’t been able to trace where they put him.”
“Why weren’t you arrested?”
“They threatened it. I was prepared to go. They were going to put me in an insane asylum. They whispered that if that didn’t suit I could find myself in a tragic accident. ‘Look around,’ I told them. ‘You’re too late.’ But irony is something the KGB can’t quite grasp.”
He looks out of the window, running a finger along the rim of his glass.
“Ultimately, they need surgeons, and I’m more useful working here than sitting in a padded cell.”
They’re silent for a few moments.
Each with their own resentments. Tanya is the first to speak.
“Andrei told me a joke, before he died, one that was going around the site.” Grigory realizes she’s looking for his assent to tell it, and he nods and she continues. “The Americans fly over a robot to help with the cleanup. So the supervising officer sends it to the roof of the reactor but, after five minutes, it breaks down. The Japanese have also donated one, so the officer sends that one up to replace the American robot but, after ten minutes, word comes back that it can’t withstand the conditions either. By now the officer is angry, he’s cursing their shoddy foreign technology. He shouts at his subordinate, ‘Send one of the Russian robots back up, they’re the only reliable machinery we have around here.’ His subordinate salutes and turns to go. As he’s leaving, the officer barks after him, ‘And tell Private Ivanov we’ve lost a lot of time, he has to stay up there for at least two hours before he gets his cigarette break.’”
Tanya smiles at the memory of Andrei telling it, his caustic humour, lips curling around his teeth, his words a combination of defiance and regret. She begins to weep.