A snowy day much like this snowy night. But he is no longer a young man. It is too late for him. He had wanted to tell Mihaly this today. He had wanted to say to Mihaly he should be happy he has a wife in whose eyes he can gaze without seeing the eyes of the deserter’s sister.
As Lazlo drove into Kiev and along Boulevard Shevchenko, streetlights on new fallen snow made it seem like daylight. Although the hour was late, he decided not to go to his apartment. Instead, he drove to the central city to visit Club Ukrainka, where he would drink wine with artists, composers, and writers. If he were fortunate, Tamara would be there. Tamara, the editor of the literary review, his true friend for so many of his years in Kiev, the last woman who had slept with him and comforted him in his loneliness and melancholy.
A woman who did not remind him of the past.
When he entered Club Ukrainka, he could hear a single saxophone playing a sad song in a minor key, a song which, if played on a violin, could have been one of the Gypsy primas played by Lakatos and his Gypsy Orchestra, a Gypsy violin crying in the night the way he had cried on his way back to Kiev.
Layers of overcoats hung on the hooks near the entrance. He could smell wet wool along with disinfectant from the single washroom. Since his last visit to the club, someone had crossed out the sign “Men and Women” on the door and replaced it with a scrawled
“Czars and Czarinas.” The smells in the club entrance reminded him of a farm. Yes, a farm in winter, coming in from the wet cold while his mother cleans walls and floors, while his mother washes his baby brother’s diapers in a tub in the kitchen.
He entered the main room of the club where the shine of the saxophone pierced the smoky air. Tamara sat at a corner table with two bearded men. Her black hair gleamed in the light from the candle on the table. Long silver earrings glittered at the sides of her face. When she saw him, she raised her eyebrows and said something to the two bearded men, who immediately left the table.
Lovely Tamara sat with her hands folded and mouthed the word
“Gypsy” with her red, red lips as the saxophone cried. When Lazlo approached the table, he sensed the heat of the room and recalled the heat of Tamara’s body against his. For an instant he felt himself more of a betrayer than his brother.
6
On Wednesday nights Juli’s roommate, Marina, worked late, allowing Mihaly to visit. Every week, as Wednesday approached, Juli’s guilt increased, making her think of it as their last rendezvous. But as soon as Mihaly left her apartment, she would begin looking forward to the following Wednesday. Sometimes she imagined she had gone to medical school as her father wished instead of becoming a Chernobyl technician and meeting Mihaly.
While waiting for the bus to Pripyat, Juli recalled the previous winter. Her father had died, Sergey had broken off their engagement, and it had been miserably cold. This winter, while waiting at the stop outside the low-level laboratory building, it seemed much milder. She stared at the stars visible above the Chernobyl towers, wishing they could provide an answer.
Mihaly’s birthday had been on the weekend. The previous Wednesday he wondered aloud what kind of gift she could possibly give him. Not something from a shop. Not something he would need to hide. In the locker room before leaving the building, she had stuffed her blouse and brassiere into her purse and worn only slacks beneath her fur coat. She could feel fingers of air slipping beneath the coat. The sound of the bus coming over the hill excited her, and she wondered if this was how a prostitute felt. For a moment she thought she might have made a mistake. The bus was coming, and it was too late to run back to the building. But if she made a fool of herself, so what? Her father was dead. Life was short.
When she sat next to Mihaly and the bus lurched forward, he decided to warm his hands beneath her coat. Her surprise for him caused a quick intake of breath. Then, during the bus ride, he whispered a description of what would happen when they arrived at the apartment.
“We’ll go onto the snow-covered balcony in the dark. I’ll kneel in the snow, and you’ll wrap your coat around me. If anyone watches from the ground or another apartment, you’ll appear alone, a woman looking up to the stars. The balcony railing will conceal me, allowing me to work. Afterward I’ll carry you inside, where we’ll travel to another world.”
When the plan whispered on the bus was finished, they rested in bed, Mihaly’s arm cradling her head on his chest. She could hear his heartbeat finally slowing to normal rhythm.
“I almost didn’t make it tonight,” said Mihaly.
Juli kissed his chest. “You did fine.”
Mihaly laughed. “I meant, something happened, and I almost missed the bus. A valve solenoid had to be replaced.”
Juli lifted her head from Mihaly’s chest. “Was the fix done before you left?”
“I stayed to watch the electrician install and test the new solenoid. Not part of normal procedure, but necessary. All the engineers agreed to take up the slack when they cut the number of safety inspectors.”
“Isn’t that risky?” asked Juli. “Depending on the loyalty of the engineers to plug holes in the safety program?”
“Of course,” said Mihaly. “But in the bureaucratic mind, transferring personnel to new units so they can be brought on-line sooner outweighs the risk.”
“Do you still think the risky tests are being done at Chernobyl rather than the other reactors?”
“I don’t know what to think. The maintenance shutdown and low power test wasn’t supposed to be until summer on our unit, but now they want it done before May Day. They’ll invite visitors from all over the union so the chief can show off. A piece of cake, as they say in America. During the test, he’ll give his speech to visitors in the control room about how the plant is simply a giant steam bath, nothing but hot water. During his speech, the informants among us will watch to be certain everyone in the control room laughs appropriately, and if someone doesn’t laugh…”
Juli touched Mihaly’s lips with her fingertip. “If someone doesn’t laugh, will the KGB be informed?”
“Who knows?” said Mihaly. “There are more strangers snooping around. Maybe the KGB is waiting for something to happen so they can cover it up.”
“Do you still wonder about your cousin possibly being an agent?”
“Yes, he kept asking about Chernobyl. He tried to get me alone.
He implied there might be something in it for me if I spoke openly.
He said the KGB followed him when he visited Budapest. Luckily Laz was at the farm, and our cousin only spent the day.”
“What is your cousin’s name?”
“Zukor, Andrew.”
“And you really think he was after something?”
“At the time I thought so. He alluded to the 1982 accident on unit one, and it’s supposed to be secret. He asked about the bunker beneath the administration building like he already knew about it. He even discussed fuel reprocessing, which both of us know is strictly off-limits.”
Juli thought for a moment. “Aleksandra talked about reprocessing and scrubbers.”
“Or lack of scrubbers,” said Mihaly. “Rather than being worried about her opinions concerning scrubbers, I think ministry officials had bigger fish.”
“Her radionuclide charts?”
“Yes,” said Mihaly. “The possibility of her telling someone about ongoing background radiation increases pissed them off.”
“Who could she tell? The Ukrainian Writers’ Union? Aleksandra had nothing to do with the stories in their journal.”
“I know. If she had, she would have disappeared sooner.” Mihaly placed his hand on Juli’s head. “She was your friend, and they treated her like shit.”
Juli thought about Aleksandra and wondered what Mihaly was thinking. Insane, the system ignores possible problems while heroes like Aleksandra are made to disappear.