“Everyone could refuse and there were instances of people saying, ‘I’m afraid, I’m not going in,’ but we were the experts and we were the ones who knew the plant, so most of us went in,” Mertz explained.
“Heroes,” Natalia Ivanovna repeated. She got up and walked slowly toward two burlap bags in the corner of the kitchen. One bulged with potatoes, the other with carrots.
“I grew them myself,” Natalia Ivanovna said, her statement full of pride. “They’re clean.” I learned what clean meant from Ira. I occasionally shopped at the Bessarabskyi Market at the junction of Khreshchatyk and Taras Shevchenko Boulevard. Sometimes lettuce, tomatoes, mushrooms, cucumbers, berries and a whole host of local produce spilled over stalls. Often though, tabletops stood bare, displaying only pickled garlic and jars of pickled tomatoes. On one good day, I came home with a sack of fresh fruit and vegetables. Ira was horrified and made me promise not to shop at the market again.
“Those old babas are probably from the Chernobyl region trying to sell you dirty food,” she scolded. I had noticed other shoppers asked where food was grown. The names of the regions meant nothing to me, but others must have known which ones were contaminated from the Chernobyl fallout. Ira equipped me with a list of items never to buy. This included nearly all the food that I had purchased.
“Mushrooms and berries are the worst,” she insisted. “They suck up radiation.” I mentioned this to Yaroslav. He told me that he had a Geiger counter, an instrument to measure radiation levels. “But you have to incinerate the food before you can test it,” he said.
Natalia Ivanovna stood at the counter and cleaned her “clean” potatoes. I heard peelings drop into a small bin lined with newspaper.
“Go to bed,” she urged. “You have a busy day tomorrow. Have soup for breakfast before you go.” She pointed at a pot that already held broth and would soon also be filled with potatoes.
I wished her “Spokoinoi nochi [good-night]” and walked out of the kitchen into a dark vestibule, turned right and entered Ira’s wing of this large apartment that was really two combined in one. Kotyonok lazed in a corner of Ira’s kitchen. Her hamster, which she kept in an aquarium, had saved enough of the bread crusts Ira fed her to make a small ladder. I caught her climbing it, trying to escape. I picked the hamster up, held her for a while, and when I thought she might have forgotten about the ladder, dismantled it. I did not have the heart to take all the bread crusts away and deprive this hamster of her dreams of freedom.
In the morning I walked down the hill to the Dnipro Hotel where the Swiss scientists stayed and boarded their chartered bus for a trip to the “forbidden zone.” This thirty-kilometre radius around Chernobyl was no man’s land. All the villages had been evacuated and checkpoints surrounded the perimeter to keep everyone out other than those still employed at the Chernobyl plant.
I worried about radiation. In Kiev I studied maps of radioactive fallout. I avoided patches of the city that had been contaminated and also never sat on grass. I dreaded invitations to picnics. Green fields no longer seemed inviting, just potentially toxic.
I discussed radiation safety with the Swiss scientists. They assured me a day trip into the forbidden zone posed no health hazard.
I boarded their bus and sunk into a plush, padded seat. I found a lever to adjust the angle of the back. I tilted the seat as far as it would go in both directions and settled on a position in between. I rested my feet on a conveniently placed metal bar. I swivelled the overhead air vent until the temperature felt just right for me. I had grown accustomed to trips on the trolleybus, with all the accompanying disadvantages for short people like me. I often stood asphyxiated in the crowds under some taller person’s armpit. Deodorant was not widely available, or used, in Kiev.
The chatter on board diminished to a hush as we passed through the checkpoint and barbed wire fence into the zone. Signs stamped Forbidden Zone and No Entry Permitted hung on the fence. Soon after crossing into the zone some scientists asked the bus driver to stop. He opened the door and we all stepped down onto the road. I stayed there as the scientists ventured into nearby fields and forest to collect samples. I heard the clicking sound of Geiger counters all around. Some beeped shrilly at highly radioactive spots.
One scientist returned earlier than the others. He showed me samples of grass and bark that he stored in special plastic bags. He ran his Geiger counter over the specimens. The piercing beeps told me all that I needed to know.
“Follow me,” the scientist said.
“Is it safe?”
“Yes, the ground here is perfectly fine. Look,” he said as he waved his Geiger counter over the earth. The instrument emitted slow evenly spaced clicks that indicated near normal readings.
“Now listen to this,” he said.
He wandered a few paces to the right and waved the Geiger counter again. It let out fast, high pitched beeps. Ground so close by was radioactive even though the patch on which I stood was not.
When all the scientists had returned with their plastic bags filled with flowers, grass, soil, insects, mushrooms and berries, we continued to a nearby village. In such beautiful sunny weather on board a bus full of excited Swiss visitors, I stopped worrying. We drove through the centre of the village to the local administrative building. We all disembarked and climbed the stairs to a reception room.
The organizers invited us to sit at tables draped with white cloths. Several bottles of red wine stood on each. I had not seen wine since an ill-fated video evening. A dozen of those hard-to-come-by bottles had lined my host’s hallway that night. We entered the living room. I saw my first video player since arriving in Ukraine and looked forward to a romantic comedy. Although there was scope for error with my patchy Russian, I am certain my host, whom I already suspected worked for the KGB, had not said that we would watch a Swedish porn star perform X-rated acts with a champagne bottle. When he lunged at two of us and held us in a grope and grip that could not be broken, I had visions of blackmail. Headlines flashed through my mind: Alcoholic, porn-addicted journalist evicted from Ukraine after ménage à trois. I fought off these memories and focused instead on the local mayor, who now gave a speech.
He explained that his town had been slated for evacuation but that funds had run short, so he and all the residents still lived here. He did not appear to be concerned about radiation, though he ended his speech by telling us that he had chosen to serve red wine instead of vodka because it provided a good antidote to radiation. He urged us to drink as much as we could.
I left before the end of the meal to take a short walk. One block from the building, I met a group of local women.
“A foreigner,” one of them shouted.
“How did you know?” I asked.
“Your shoes!” They wore plastic sandals. I had leather loafers. They clustered round me and seemed to speak all at once. I heard:
“They promised to evacuate us. They lied.”
“My son doesn’t understand radiation. I beg him not to climb trees. I say, ‘Ivan, you must never eat apples from those trees.’ He always promises but he’s mischievous. I find out from others that he and his friends have been in the orchards, eating their fill.”
Another woman said, “My mother is the worst. She tells the children, ‘I lived through the Second World War. What is this radiation? Where is it? I don’t see any. It can’t kill you like a bullet or a bomb. Don’t listen to your mother, there’s no need to worry.’”
I stood there and listened, upset by what I heard. I saw scientists board the bus. I waved goodbye to the women and ran to join the tour. The bus engine was already rumbling. The door slammed shut behind me. The driver took us to Slavutych, about fifty kilometres away from the Chernobyl plant. The town was newly built for Chernobyl evacuees.