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That’s what it felt like in the first days. We lost not just a town but a whole life.

On the third day, we left our home. The power plant was on fire. Something one of my friends said stuck in my mind: ‘You can smell the reactor.’ The smell was indescribable. But everyone has read about that in the papers. They turned Chernobyl into a factory of horror stories or, rather, cartoons. But it needs to be understood, because we have to live with it. I’ll tell you just my own story.

This is what happened. They announced on the radio: you can’t bring any cats with you! My daughter was in tears; she was so afraid of losing her beloved cat that she began stammering. Right, let’s put the cat in a suitcase! But the cat wouldn’t go in, she was struggling to get out. She gave us all a good scratch. We weren’t allowed to take any belongings. Right, I won’t, but there’s just one thing I will take. Just one! I needed to remove the door to our apartment and take it with us, I couldn’t leave the door behind. I would board up the entrance.

That door was our talisman. An heirloom! My father lay on that door. I’m not sure where the custom comes from – they don’t do it everywhere – but in our parts, according to my mother, the dead have to be laid on the door from their home. They lie on it until the coffin is brought. I sat the whole night with my father, and he lay on that door. The house was open all night. And that same door is covered in notches, right to the top. It was marked as I grew: a notch for first grade, second grade, seventh grade. One from just before I left for the army. And next to that, you can see my son growing up. And my daughter. Our whole life is written on that door, like on an ancient papyrus. How could I leave it behind?

I asked our neighbour for help; he had a car. He tapped his finger on the side of his head, indicating, ‘You have a screw loose, my friend’, but I took it. The door. One night. On a motorbike, along the forest road. I took it two years later, when our apartment had already been looted. Picked clean. The police were chasing after me: ‘Stop or we’ll fire! Stop or we’ll fire!’ They took me for a looter, of course. It’s like I was stealing my own front door.

I sent my wife and daughter to the hospital. They had black spots spreading all over their bodies. They’d spring up and then fade away. The size of an old five-kopeck piece. But nothing was hurting. They were checked. I asked, ‘What’s the result then?’ ‘That’s not your concern.’ ‘So whose concern is it, then?’

At the time, everyone around was saying we were all going to die. By the year 2000, the Belarusians will have died out. My daughter had turned six. On the very day of the accident. When I put her to bed, she’d whisper in my ear, ‘Daddy, I want to live, I’m only little.’ I didn’t think she’d understand anything. Whenever she saw a nurse in a white coat at the kindergarten or a cook in the canteen, she’d go crazy. ‘I don’t want to go to hospital, I don’t want to die!’ She couldn’t stand anything white. We even changed the white curtains in our new place.

Can you imagine seven bald girls together? There were seven of them in the ward. No, that’s it! I can’t go on! Talking about it gives me this feeling … Like my heart is telling me: this is an act of betrayal. Because I have to describe her as if she was just anyone. Describe her agony. My wife came back from the hospital. Her nerves snapped: ‘If only she’d die, rather than going through this torture. If only I could die, so I wouldn’t have to see this.’ No, that’s it! I can’t go on! It’s too much. No! …

We put her on the door. On the door my father once lay on. Until they brought the little coffin. It was so tiny, like the box for a large doll. Like a box.

I want to testify: my daughter died from Chernobyl. But they want us to keep quiet. ‘It hasn’t been scientifically proved,’ they say. ‘There isn’t enough data. We’ll need to wait hundreds of years.’ But my human life, it’s too short. I can’t wait that long. Write it down. You record it at least. My daughter’s name was Katya. My little Katya. She was seven years old when she died.’

Nikolai Fomich Kalugin, father

Monologue of a village on how they call the souls from heaven to weep and eat with them

Village of Bely Bereg, Narovlya District, Gomel Province.

Speakers: Anna Pavlovna Artyushenko, Yeva Adamovna

Artyushenko, Vasily Nikolaevich Artyushenko, Sofia Nikolaevna

Moroz, Nadezhda Borisovna Nikolaenko, Alexander

Fyodorovich Nikolaenko and Mikhail Martynovich Lis.

Ah, we’ve got guests. Good people. Didn’t have a hunch about a meeting, didn’t see no signs. Sometimes my palms will itch, and then somebody will turn up. But today, didn’t get a hunch at all. Only sign was the nightingale singing all night, meaning a sunny day ahead. Oh, all the women will be here in a trice. There’s Nadya, already hurrying over.

We survived everything, pulled through it all.

Oh, I don’t want to remember it. Dreadful. They turned us out, the soldiers did. We were swamped by army vehicles and self-propelled guns. One old man had already taken to his bed. He was dying. Where was he meant to go? ‘I’ll just get up,’ he says, crying, ‘and walk over to the graveyard. On my own two legs.’ What did they pay us for the houses? How much? See how gorgeous it is here! Who’s going to pay us for all that beauty? It’s a holiday spot here!

The place was buzzing with aeroplanes and helicopters. There were KamAZ trucks with trailers, soldiers. Aha, I thought, we must be at war. With the Chinese or the Americans.

My good husband got home from the collective-farm meeting and says, ‘Tomorrow we’re being evacuated.’ And I say, ‘But what about the potatoes? We haven’t dug them up.’ The neighbour knocked on the door and joined my husband for a drink. They had a few and started cursing the chairman: ‘We won’t go, and that’s that. We survived the war, and here we’ve just got some silly radiation.’ We’d rather crawl into the ground. We’re not going!

At first, we thought we’d all die in two or three months. They were frightening us, urging us to go. Thank God, we’re still alive!

Thank God! Thank God!

No one knows what the next world will be like. It’s better in this one. Everything is familiar here. As my mum always said, ‘Smarten yourself up, enjoy yourself and do as you please.’

We would go to church and say our prayers.

We were leaving. I took some earth from Mum’s grave in a little pouch. Knelt there for a bit. ‘Forgive us for leaving you.’ At night, I went to her and didn’t feel afraid. People were writing their surnames on the houses. On the logs, the fences, the tarmac.

The soldiers killed the dogs. They shot them. Bang, bang! Ever since, I can’t bear the sound of animals howling.

I used to be a foreman. Worked here forty-five years. I felt sorry for the people. We took our flax to the show in Moscow, the collective farm sent us. I came back with a badge and a certificate of merit. They treated me with respect here, it was all ‘Vasily Nikolaevich, our dear Nikolaevich’. And who would I be in the new place? Just some old grandad. This is where I’ll lay down and die, the women will fetch me water, warm up the house. I felt sorry for the people. In the evenings, the women used to sing on their way back from the fields, and I knew they weren’t getting paid a penny. Just some ticks in their workbooks. And they were singing away.

In our village, the people live together. As one community.

I had this dream when I was already living in the town with my son. This dream that I was waiting for death, waiting for the end. I was instructing my sons: ‘When you carry me to our graveyard, I want you to stand with my coffin by the family house, if only for five minutes.’ And I was watching from above as my sons carried me there.