“Have you ever seen yours?” I asked.
“Many times,” Margarita said. “Mine has the figure of a small boy with pointy ears and round eyes. He is very hairy.”
Thinking of Vasyl’s blond hair, I asked, “What color hair?”
“Jet black,” Margarita said.
“When was the last time you saw him?” Katya said.
“Before the accident. I looked out the window of my apartment. My domovyk sat on the curb.” Margarita got a faraway look in her eyes. “He was crying red tears.”
“Red?” I asked.
“Bright red,” she said. “I knew that something terrible was about to happen.” She sighed. “But I never dreamed that it would be a nuclear accident.”
I was grateful Margarita believed me, and doubting her story made me feel guilty. Besides, I had experienced too many unreal things myself to dismiss the red tears.
It was almost 7 p.m., and my hunger had grown unbearable. I looked over at her kitchen counter. Her usually overflowing fruit bowl was empty except for a blue matryoshka. The pattern on the doll was of a young girl in the middle of a snowstorm. I remembered that on the night of the evacuation, I had asked my domovyk to jump into my matryoshka’s box and come with me, and for the first time in a long time, I thought of the tiny matryoshka baby lost in the woods.
“Thanks for listening. I’ve got to go now,” I said.
Margarita smiled at me. When I stepped into her arms, she folded me into her ample breasts. I breathed in cinnamon and cloves.
Chapter Thirty
ON THE SCHOOL BUS FOR THE FIELD TRIP, I held the dosimeter that I had borrowed from my father. It was a small gray box with a screen. Although the radiation levels had come down throughout the Zone, I had heard extremely high levels still existed in places. I had brought along the dosimeter to look out for these ‘hot spots.’ When the radiation rose, the dosimeter would start beeping.
Right now the screen said twenty microroentgen, a little lower than the typical reading in Slavutich of twenty-five or twenty-six, and about double that of a city in America, where a dosimeter normally registered about ten to twelve microroentgen per hour. Some places in Europe maintained higher readings because the streets were made out of stone.
I could never look at the instrument’s screen without thinking about Boris and his last night. He had climbed up on the roof of the station and gazed down at the nuclear reactor. It must have been blazing like a fallen sun. I had read that the temperature was so hot that the tar covering the rooftop had melted.
The radiation on the roof reached 20,000 roentgen an hour. One thousand microroentgen equals one milliroentgen, and 1,000 milliroentgen equals one roentgen. One roentgen is 100,000 times the average radiation of a typical city. So Boris was exposed to radiation one billion times my current reading. Near the core, levels reached 30,000 roentgen per hour. In such cases, a man would absorb a fatal dose in forty-eight seconds.[29] I recoiled just thinking about it and tried to bring my thoughts back to the present.
I had a seat at the back near the window. Excused from wearing uniforms, we were all dressed in slacks and T-shirts. Lyudmila was next to me. Three or four seats ahead of us, Sergei and Angelika sat side by side. Why had Sergei asked me on the field trip if he was going to ignore me? I wondered. Since that night in the library, I had replayed his words again and again. “Will you come?” It was the one cheerful note in these anxious days before my parents left for my father’s surgery.
To my surprise, I had to persuade my mother to agree to let me join the field trip. My father’s illness had broken the uneasy trust she had tried to maintain in the station’s safety.
Over the weekend, Papa had repeated to her the information that he overheard the station guides tell foreign scientists. Stuff like: Although background radiation up to a dozen of times the usual levels is still the norm in the Dead Zone, it’s comparable to the amount given off by the naturally radioactive sands of the Brazilian coast.[30]
Despite his support and my pleas, Mama had refused to agree to let me go. Finally, I pointed out to her that since Papa was allowed to spend twenty-six weeks a year in the Dead Zone, I should be safe for four hours. Reluctantly, she gave in.
Now, I was silently repeating these arguments to myself.
The highway to Pripyat was still well-paved, although the closer we got, the more potholes we seemed to hit. It was a peaceful drive, and we didn’t see a single other car. I was glad to be returning in the spring, but as I looked out on the green fields, I wished it was a little later in the year. It was still too early for the wildflowers.
The bus passed hundreds of transmission lines attached to rows of wooden poles. These lines carried electricity from the station to the rest of the Ukraine. Seeing that web stretch on, I realized that the station generated so much power, that the government would never allow it to close.
Many of the kids were laughing, talking and singing, but I noticed that—except for Lyudmila—those of us from the Dead Zone were quieter.
Already the bus had cleared double rows of barbed wire fencing and yellow radiation signs that announced the first checkpoint. Only a few more miles and we would reach the second checkpoint and Pripyat.
Lyudmila was flirting with Mikhail Bazelchuk in the seat in front of her. She wore her blue T-shirt as tight as our teachers would allow.
“I’m a Gemini,” Lyudmila told Mikhail. “That means I’m very friendly.”
“Who are Gemini supposed to marry?” Mikhail asked. He was not handsome. His lips were too thin; his eyes too hard; and his hair too frizzy.
As Lyudmila whispered her answer, I was grossed out when I thought I saw her pink tongue touch his ear. I wanted to warn her to leave this particular boy alone, but since she cared as little for my views on boys as I did for hers, I turned my back to them both and stared out the window.
A roadside sign caught my attention. “Open fires, mushroom and berry picking, hunting and fishing are forbidden.”[31] How I used to love every one of these forbidden activities, I thought.
Lyudmila nudged my shoulder. “I’ve figured out how we can settle our argument, Katya.”
“What argument?” Mikhail asked.
I wondered too.
“We were studying math when the policeman came to the door of Nina Ivanovna’s class. But stubborn Katya insists that it was science,” Lyudmila said.
Lyudmila was wrong. I remembered a crude drawing of the solar system on the blackboard.
“How are you going to settle that?” Mikhail asked. “Your teacher isn’t going to be in the classroom.”
“The blackboard!” Lyudmila said triumphantly. “The lesson will be on the blackboard.”
It was eerie to realize that Lyudmila could be right. I had heard that the Dead Zone had been looted, but no one would steal a blackboard. It might be exactly as our teacher left it four years ago. I felt a sharp pang of desire to return to the schoolroom. I wanted to see if my books were still in my desk. The books of the real Katya.
Angelika turned around. “I agree with Lyudmila,” she said. “We were studying math.”
Sergei frowned at her. “No, Angelika, it was science,” he said.
I grinned openly at him. When he smiled back, I felt a surge of hope.
Comrade Mokhoyida, our guide, put an end to our debate by standing up in the front of the bus. Her ill-fitting gray suit clung to her plump thighs. A helmet of brown hair framed her pale face. With a huge smile, she announced, “Thank you for your courage in coming today.”
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