We’ve got Communism here. We live as brothers and sisters.
When the war broke out, there were no mushrooms or berries that year. Would you believe it? The earth itself could feel trouble brewing. 1941. How I remember it! Oh, I haven’t forgotten the war. A rumour went round that our prisoners had been brought here, and if you found a relative, you could take him home. Our women upped and ran off to meet them! That evening, some brought home their loved ones while others brought unknown men. But there was a bastard in our midst. Lived just like the rest of us, married with two kids. He went to the commandant’s office and informed them that some of the men we’d taken were Ukrainians. We had Vasko, Sashko … The next day, the Germans came on their motorbikes. We fell on our knees and begged them. But they led them out of the village and gunned them down with their rifles. Nine men. So young, such lovely guys! Vasko, Sashko …
So long as there’s no war … I’m terrified of war!
The officials would come, they’d shout their heads off, but we acted deaf and dumb. And we survived everything, pulled through it all.
And I’m lost in my own thoughts. Thinking and thinking. At the graveyard. Some of them are wailing loudly, some softly. Others might be chanting, ‘Open up, yellow sands. Open up, dark night.’ Well, you can call people back from the forest, but not from the yellow sand. I’ll talk to him lovingly: ‘Ivan, Ivan. What am I to do with my life?’ But he doesn’t say a thing, whether kind or harsh.
As for me, I’m not frightened of anyone: not the dead, not the wild animals, nobody. My son comes from the town and pesters me. ‘You’re all on your own here. What if someone comes and strangles you?’ And what would he take from me? There’s just my pillows. In my little hovel, pillows are all the finery you’ll get. The moment the bandit climbs in, he’ll stick his head through the window, and I’ll lop it off with an axe. Maybe there is no God, maybe it’s somebody else, but up above us, there’s someone there. And I am alive.
In the winter, an old man hung up a calf’s carcase he’d cut up in the yard. Just then, they came along with some foreigners. ‘What are you doing, old man?’ ‘Letting the radiation out.’
It really happened, people told us about it. One man buried his wife and he was left all alone with their baby boy. Took to drink from grief. He used to take the wet things off the tot and put them under the pillow. And the wife – it could have been her, could just have been her soul – would come at night and she’d wash, dry and fold the things up. Once he caught sight of her. Called out – but she just vanished. Into thin air. Then the neighbours told him: the moment you spot so much as a shadow, lock the door with the key, then maybe she won’t run away so fast. But she didn’t come back again. Now what was that all about? Who was it that was coming?
Don’t you believe me? Then tell me, where do these tales come from? Maybe it really happened? Oh, you educated types …
Why did that Chernobyl blow up? Some say it’s the scientists to blame. Trying to catch God by the beard, and He had the last laugh. And it’s us that suffer!
We’ve never had it easy. It’s never been calm. Right on the eve of the war, they were taking people in. Capturing them. Took three of our men. Came in their black cars and took them out of the fields and we never saw them again. We’ve always lived in fear.
I don’t like crying. I like hearing new jokes. They grew some tobacco in the Chernobyl Zone. In the factory, they made it into cigarettes. Each pack had a message: ‘Ministry of Health: smoking is bad for you. This is your last warning.’ Ha ha. But our old fellows are all smokers.
The one thing I’ve got left is my cow. I’d happily give her away if it would mean there was no war. I’m terrified of war!
The cuckoos are calling, the magpies chattering. Roe deer are running about. But nobody can say if they’ll carry on multiplying. One morning, I looked into the orchard and there were boars grubbing about. Wild boars. You can resettle people, but not the elk and the boars. And the water takes no notice of boundaries, it flows where it will, over the ground, under the ground.
A house can’t exist without people. Wild animals need people too. Everybody is looking for people. A stork came. A beetle climbed out. It all brings me joy.
Everything’s hurting, old girls. Oh, how it hurts! You have to be gentle. You carry a coffin gently. Carefully. No banging it against the door or the bed, no touching it against anything or knocking it. Or you’ll bring bad luck – you can expect another death. May the Lord rest their souls. Grant them the kingdom of heaven! And the spot where you’re buried, that’s where they’ll wail. Here we’ve got nothing but graveyards. Graves all around. Tipper trucks droning, and bulldozers. The houses are falling down, the gravediggers never stop work. They’ve buried the school, the village soviet, the bathhouse. Our whole world, and the people aren’t the same. There’s one thing I don’t know: does a person have a soul? What’s it like? And how do all of them fit into the world to come?
For two days, my grandad was dying. I hid behind the stove, watching to see how it would fly out of him. I went to milk the cow. Ran back indoors and called him. He was lying there, with his eyes open. Had his soul flown away? Or was there nothing? And if not, how will we ever meet up again?
The priest says we’re immortal. We say our prayers. O Lord, give us the strength to bear the trials of our lives.
Monologue on how happy a chicken would be to find a worm. And what is bubbling in the pot is also not forever
My first fear …
The first fear fell from the sky. It floated down with the water. But some people, and there were quite a few, were as cool as stone. I swear on the Cross! When they’d had a few drinks, the older guys liked to say, ‘We marched to Berlin and won the war.’ They said it like they had you pressed up against the wall. They were the victors! They had the medals to prove it.
My first fear came in the morning when we found suffocated moles in the orchard and vegetable plot. Who had choked them? They don’t usually come above ground. Something must have driven them out. I swear on the Cross!
My son rang from Gomel. ‘Do you have any cockchafers flying about?’
‘No cockchafers here, not even the grubs. They’ve gone into hiding.’
‘What about earthworms?’
‘It only takes an earthworm to make a chicken happy. They’ve all gone too.’
‘No beetles or worms is the first sign of high radiation.’
‘What’s radiation?’
‘Mum, it’s a kind of death. Talk Dad into leaving. You can stay with us for a bit.’
‘But we haven’t planted the vegetable plot …’
If everyone was smart, where could we find a fool? Okay, so it was on fire. Fires don’t last long. No one was frightened at the time. We didn’t know about all that atomic stuff. I swear on the Cross! We were living right beside an atomic power station, thirty kilometres as the crow flies, or forty by road. We were very pleased. You could buy a bus ticket and just go there. The town had shopping as good as Moscow’s – there was cheap sausage, always meat in the shops. You could choose. Good times!
But now there’s nothing but fear. Folks say the frogs and midges will live on, but not the humans. Life will go on without humans. They tell all these tall tales. Anyone fond of them tales is a fool! But there’s no smoke without fire. We’ve been hearing it for a long time now.
I’ll turn on the radio. They keep on and on about radiation. But we’re better off with radiation. I swear on the Cross! Just look: they’ve brought in oranges, three sorts of sausage, there you go! In our little village! My grandchildren have travelled half the planet. The youngest girl came back from France, that’s where Napoleon once marched from. ‘Granny, I saw a pineapple!’ The second grandchild, her little brother, was taken to Berlin for treatment. That’s where Hitler came barging in from. In their tanks. It’s a new world now. Everything is different. Is it the radiation to blame, or who is it? And what’s that stuff like? Maybe they’ve shown it in the movies? Have you seen it? Is it white, what does it look like? What colour? Some say it’s got no colour or smell, but others say it’s black. Like the earth! If it’s no colour, then it’s like God. God is everywhere, but you can’t see Him. They’re trying to frighten us! But we’ve got apples hanging in the orchard, and leaves on the trees, potatoes in the field. I don’t believe there ever was any Chernobyl, they made it all up. Tricked people. My sister and her man left. Didn’t move far, just twenty kilometres away. They’d been there two months, when a neighbour comes running: ‘Your cow’s radiation has got on to ours. The cow keeps falling down.’ ‘And how did it get on to her?’ ‘It flies around in the air, like dust. It can fly.’ Stuff and nonsense! But here’s something true. My grandad had bees, he had five hives. Well, for three days they wouldn’t fly out, not one bee. They were sitting in the hives. Waiting it out. My grandad was running about the yard: what kind of disaster was this? What the Devil was up? Something had gone wrong with nature. And as our neighbour, who’s a teacher, explained to us, their system is cleverer than ours, because they could feel it right away. The radio and the papers still weren’t saying anything, but the bees knew. They only flew out on the fourth day. The wasps … We had wasps, a nest of them over the porch, nobody touched them; then suddenly the next morning they were gone, no sign of them dead or alive. They came back six years later. Radiation. It frightens people and animals alike. And birds too. And even the trees are scared, but they can’t talk. They can’t tell you. But the Colorado beetles carry on crawling, same as before, eating our spuds, gobbling up every last leaf. They are used to poison. Just like us.