I got back from the cemetery and quickly rang up the nurse on duty: ‘How is he doing?’ ‘He died fifteen minutes ago.’ No! I’d stayed with him the whole night long. I’d only been gone for three hours! I stood by the window and screamed: ‘Why? Why this?’ I looked up at the sky and screamed. Screamed the building down … People were frightened of coming near. I got a hold of myself and realized: I could see him! One last time! I tore down the stairs … He was still lying in the chamber, they hadn’t taken him. His last words were ‘Lyusya! My Lyusya!’ ‘She’s just slipped out, she’ll be back any minute,’ the nurse comforted him. He gave a sigh and was gone.
This time there was no dragging me away. I stayed with him right to the grave. Though I can’t remember the coffin, just a big plastic sack. That sack … In the mortuary, they asked, ‘Do you want to see what he’ll be wearing?’ Yes! They put him in his dress uniform, with the service cap on his chest. They didn’t pick any shoes out because his feet were too swollen. He had balloons for legs. They had to slit the dress uniform too, they couldn’t pull it on his mess of a body. All just one gory wound. The last two days at the hospital, I’d lift his arm and the bone would be all wobbly, hanging loose, the tissue falling away from it. Pieces of lung, lumps of his liver were coming up through his mouth. He was choking on his own innards. I’d put a bandage on my hand and slip it into his mouth, scoop it all out … You can’t describe it! There are no words! It was too much to take. This was my sweetheart, my love … Not one pair of shoes would fit him. They put him in the coffin barefoot.
Right before my eyes they shoved him in his dress uniform into the plastic sack and tied it up. Then they put the sack in a wooden coffin. And they wound that coffin in another plastic sack. It was transparent plastic, but as thick as oilcloth. Then the whole bundle went into a zinc coffin, they could barely squeeze it in. Just the service cap was left on top.
Everyone came to Moscow, his parents and mine. We bought black headscarves in the city. We were seen by the emergency commission. They told everyone the same thing: that they couldn’t give us the bodies of our husbands and sons, they were highly radioactive and would be buried by some special method in a Moscow cemetery. In sealed zinc coffins, under slabs of concrete. And we had to sign some paperwork, they needed our consent. They drummed it into anyone who was unhappy and wanted to take the coffin back home that the dead were now heroes and no longer belonged to their families. They were public property, belonged to the state.
We got into the hearse, us relatives and some army men. There was a colonel, with a walkie-talkie. We could hear someone’s voice: ‘Await our orders!’ For two or three hours, we were driving around Moscow, round the ring road. Then we came back into town. Over the walkie-talkie, we could hear: ‘Access to the cemetery is denied. The cemetery is besieged by foreign journalists. Continue to wait.’ Our parents kept quiet. My mum was in a black headscarf. I felt like I was about to faint. I had hysterics. ‘Why do you have to hide my husband? What is he – a murderer? A criminal? A convict? Who is it we’re burying?’ My mum said, ‘Shush, love.’ She stroked my head, held my hand. The colonel radioed: ‘Request permission to proceed to the cemetery. The wife is hysterical.’ At the cemetery, we were surrounded by soldiers, had to walk under escort. The coffin was carried under escort. No one was allowed to say their farewells, only the relatives. They immediately started filling in the graves. ‘At the double!’ an officer ordered them. They didn’t even let me embrace the coffin. And then we were bundled into buses.
They quickly bought and gave us our tickets home for the next day. The whole time, we had a man in plain clothes with us, carried himself like a soldier, wouldn’t even let us leave the hotel room to buy food for the trip. God forbid we should start talking to anyone, especially me. As if I was in a fit state to talk: I couldn’t even cry. When we left, the hotel attendant counted all the towels and sheets, put them in a plastic bag. They must have burned them. We paid for the hotel ourselves – for all fourteen days.
Fourteen days in the radiation sickness clinic. It takes fourteen days to die.
Back home, I fell asleep. I went into the house and collapsed on the bed. I slept for three days straight. They couldn’t rouse me. They called an ambulance. ‘No, she isn’t dead,’ the doctor said. ‘She’ll wake up. It’s just a horridly long sleep.’
I was twenty-three.
There’s a dream I remember. My dead grandma is there, she’s wearing the clothes we buried her in. And she’s decorating a New Year tree. ‘Granny, why have we got a New Year tree? It’s summer.’ ‘That’s just how it is. Your Vasya is joining me soon.’ He grew up by the forest. I remember a second dream. Vasya is all in white, and he’s calling Natasha’s name. Our little girl, who still hadn’t been born. She is big already, and I am puzzled at how she’s grown so much. He is tossing her up to the ceiling; they are laughing. I am watching them and thinking how simple happiness is. How simple! And later there was another dream. Vasya and I were wading through water. We kept walking on and on. He must have been asking me not to cry. He was sending me a sign from there. Up above. (She is silent for a long time.)
Two months later, I travelled to Moscow. Went straight from the station to the cemetery. To see him! And right there in the cemetery, my contractions started. The moment I began speaking to him. They called an ambulance, I told them the address. I gave birth in the same place. In Angelina Guskova’s department. She’d said back then: ‘When you go into labour, come to us.’ And where else could I have gone? I gave birth two weeks early.
They showed me: it was a little girl. ‘Natasha,’ I said. ‘Your dad named you Natasha.’ She was healthy enough to look at. Tiny hands and feet. But she had cirrhosis, her liver had had twenty-eight roentgens. And congenital heart disease. Four hours later, they told me my little girl had died. And for a second time, they wouldn’t let me have her! What do you mean, you won’t give me her! It’s me who won’t give her to you! You want to take her for science, but I loathe your science! Loathe it! First, your science took him away from me, now it’s back for more … I won’t give her to you! I’ll bury her myself. Next to him. (Her voice drops to a whisper.)
What I’m telling you, it’s not coming out right … The words are all wrong. Since the stroke, I’m not meant to shout. And I’m not meant to cry. But I want … I want people to know. I’ve never opened up about all this. When I refused to give them my little girl, our little girl … Then they brought me a wooden box: ‘She’s in there.’ I looked inside, and they’d swaddled her. She was lying there all swaddled up. And then I started crying. ‘Lay her at his feet. Tell him it’s our little Natasha.’
The grave doesn’t say ‘Natasha Ignatenko’. It only has his name. She still hadn’t been named, she had nothing. Only a soul. I buried her soul there.