‘What on earth have you done!’
‘But I’m by his side …’
‘You poor, poor thing!’
Till my dying day, I’ll be grateful to Dr Guskova.
The other wives also came, but they weren’t allowed in. The mothers were with me: they let the mothers in. Vladimir Pravik’s mother kept begging God, ‘Take me instead.’
Dr Gale, this American professor. He did the bone marrow transplant. He comforted me, saying there was hope, maybe not much, but with his strong body, such a hefty guy, we still had a chance. They sent for all his family. Two sisters came from Belarus, and his brother from Leningrad, where he was serving in the army. Natasha, the younger one, was just fourteen, she was crying a lot and frightened. But her bone marrow was the best match. (She falls silent.) I’m able to talk about it now. Before, I couldn’t. I kept quiet for ten years. Ten years … (She is silent.)
When he found out the bone marrow would be from his little sister, he flat out refused: ‘No, I’d rather die. Leave her alone, she’s just a kid.’ His older sister, Lyuda, was twenty-eight, she was a nurse and knew what she was going into. ‘I just want him to live,’ she was saying. I watched the operation. They were lying side by side on the table. The operating theatre had a big window. It lasted two hours. When they’d finished, Lyuda was worse off than him, she had eighteen puncture holes in her chest and had a rough time coming round. And she’s in poor shape now, she’s registered disabled … Used to be this beautiful, strong woman. She never got married. So I was rushing from one ward to the other, from his bedside to hers. By then, he wasn’t in an ordinary ward, they’d put him in this special pressure chamber, behind a see-through plastic curtain, which you weren’t allowed past. It was specially equipped so you could give injections and insert catheters without having to go behind the plastic. It was all sealed off with locks and velcro, but I worked out how to open them up. I’d quietly move aside the plastic and sneak in to see him. In the end, they just put a little chair for me by his bed. He got so bad that I couldn’t leave his side. He kept calling my name: ‘Lyusya, where are you? My Lyusya!’ He called over and over. The pressure chambers for the rest of our guys were being looked after by soldiers, because the orderlies were refusing and demanding protective clothing. The soldiers took out the bedpans, they mopped the floors, changed the sheets. Took full care of them. Where had these soldiers come from? I didn’t ask. I only saw him. Nothing but him … And each day I’d hear: ‘This one’s died, that one’s died.’ Tishchura died. Titenok died. ‘Died …’ It was like a hammer hitting your head.
He was passing stools maybe twenty-five, thirty times a day. All bloody and gooey. The skin on his arms and legs was cracking. His whole body was coming up in blisters. When he turned his head, clumps of hair were left on the pillow. But he was still my love, my precious one. I tried joking: ‘It’ll make life easier. You won’t need to carry a comb.’ Soon they all had their hair cut off. I cut his hair myself. I wanted to do everything myself. If I could have coped physically, I’d have been with him twenty-four hours a day. I felt sorry for every minute away from him. Every minute … (She buries her face in her hands and falls silent.) My brother arrived and he was scared for me: ‘I won’t let you go in there!’ But Dad says to him: ‘You reckon you’ll stop her? She’ll climb through the window! Up the fire escape!’
I left him, and when I came back, there was an orange on the table. A really big one, pink rather than orange. He smiled. ‘Somebody gave it to me. You have it.’ The nurse motioned through the curtain that the orange couldn’t be eaten. Once it had been lying near him, you couldn’t even touch it let alone eat it. ‘Go on, eat it,’ he said. ‘You love oranges.’ I took the orange. And just then he closed his eyes and dozed off. They were always giving him injections to sleep, giving him drugs. The nurse looked at me in horror. And me? I was ready to do anything just to stop him thinking about death. Stop him thinking his illness was horrid and that I was scared of him. There’s one conversation I remember. Someone was pressuring me: ‘You mustn’t forget this isn’t your husband, it isn’t the man you love, it’s a highly contaminated radioactive object. You’re not a suicide case. Pull yourself together.’ But I was like a crazy woman: ‘I love him! I love him!’ While he was asleep, I whispered, ‘I love you!’ Walking about the hospital courtyard, ‘I love you!’ Carrying the bedpan, ‘I love you!’ I thought back to our life together in the hostel. He could only fall asleep at night holding my hand. It was his habit: he used to hold my hand while he slept. The whole night long.
And in the hospital, I used to hold his hand and wouldn’t let go.
It was night. The room was quiet. We were alone. He looked at me really closely, and suddenly he said, ‘I want to see our baby so badly. I want to know what he looks like.’
‘What should we call him?’
‘You’ll have to think of something on your own.’
‘Why just me, if there are the two of us?’
‘Okay then, if it’s a boy, let’s call him Vasya, and if it’s a girl, Natasha.’
‘What do you mean, “Vasya”? I already have a Vasya: you! I don’t need another.’
I still didn’t realize how badly I loved him! It was just him, nothing but him. Like I was blind! Didn’t even feel the kicks under my ribs. Though I was already in my sixth month. I thought she was safe and protected inside me. My little one …
None of the doctors knew I was staying with him all night in the pressure chamber. They didn’t catch on. But the nurses let me. At first, they tried to talk me out of it. ‘You’re so young. What on earth has got into you? He isn’t a person now, he’s a nuclear reactor. You’ll both frazzle together.’ But I followed them around like a puppy. I stood for hours by the door, begged and begged them. And finally they said, ‘Oh, to hell with it! You’re nuts.’ In the morning, just before eight, when the doctors began their rounds, they’d motion through the plastic: ‘Quick!’ I’d run back to the hotel for an hour. And from nine in the morning till nine at night, I had a permit. My legs went blue right up to the knees. I was so worn out they were swelling up. My soul was tougher than my body. Oh, my love …
They didn’t do it while I was with him. But when I was gone, they photographed him. He had nothing on, he was naked. Just one thin sheet over him. Each day, I changed the sheet, and by the evening it was all covered in blood. I’d raise him up and bits of his skin would be left sticking to my hands. I asked him, ‘Help me, sweetheart! Lean on your hand or elbow, as much as you’re able, so I can smooth the sheet, get rid of all the seams and creases.’ Just one little seam could injure him. I clipped my nails to the quick so they wouldn’t catch on him anywhere. None of the nurses dared go near him or touch him; if they needed anything, they called me. And they took photos of him. Said it was for science. I wanted to kick them all out of there! I wanted to scream and punch them! How could they! If only I could have kept them out. If only.
Coming out of his room into the corridor, I’d almost bump into the wall or the couch, because I couldn’t see anything. I’d stop the nurse on duty: ‘He’s dying.’ She’d say, ‘What do you expect? He’s had 1,600 roentgens, and the lethal dose is 400.’ She felt sorry too, but it wasn’t the same. For me, this was my love. My sweetheart.
When they’d all died, they refurbished the hospital. Scraped down the walls, ripped up the parquet and got rid of all the woodwork.
I remember only odd snatches from the end. It’s all a bit hazy.
I sat through the night at his side on the chair. At eight in the morning, I said, ‘Vasya, love, I’m off now. I’ll get some rest.’ He opened and closed his eyes – that meant he was letting me leave. The moment I used to reach the hotel, make it to my room and flop down on the floor – I couldn’t lie on the bed because I was aching all over – an orderly would come banging on the door: ‘Quick! Come back! He won’t stop calling for you!’ But on that morning, Tanya Kibenok was just begging me to go with her: ‘Come to the cemetery. I really need you there.’ They were burying Viktor Kibenok and Volodya Pravik that morning. Viktor and he were friends, we were all family friends. Just the day before the explosion, we’d had a picture taken together in the hostel. They looked so handsome in that photo, our husbands! So bright and smiling. It was the last day of our old life. Life before Chernobyl. We were so happy.