Читать книгу Chernobyl - Ilinda Markova - Страница 10

IN THE BEGINNING FOR each one of the children there was the defining smell of mother. A smell, which cascaded into the tiny nostrils to fill his entire being and the whole surrounding world, as if the nostrils were little trunks, which sucked the warm, damp smell of something that belonged to him by birth, something, which no one could take away from him. Because a mother was such a possession, something only yours.

Forever.

Why that forever appeared so short and elusive he didn’t know.

One day he woke and his nostrils were no longer sucking the warm and reassuring smell of mother. He wasn’t immediately worried because that had happened before, as yellow mucus collected in his little nose blocking the nostrils, later his mother had cleaned it away with a little cotton ball on a match stick and had dabbed them with something which smelt of the mint sweets which later he would love so much. The mint sweets, or as they were called “small onion heads”, were the simple and affordable sweets on the scarce market. This time the smell of mother had completely vanished and he cried so much that a lump appeared in his groin. Soon he was pronounced Chernobyl sick and sent to live by the lake in the shabby collapsing building with many other children. It could have been fun if it wasn’t for the missing smell of a mother. At least they had allowed his favourite Teddy Bear to accompany him.

In that first home all the children were trying to find and grasp again the lost smell, nothing else existed for them. This smell appeared to be different for each child. Sometimes in the evenings, when the women who looked after them left for dinner taking the choicest portion from the children’s table, they gathered in front of an old black and white TV and each child was telling about that vague memory. No one remembered a face, or a name, just the smell. Some child would say that the smell reminded him of a young apple tree where the bark was eaten by rabbits; another - of soap floating in Sweppes; a third - of a cat just given birth to kittens; a forth - of cough syrup; a fifth - of a plate. Here everyone would interrupt him and say that a plate has no smell, but the child would look at them with cunning eyes and ask:

“And when you put beans on it, has the plate no smell then?”

The children looked at each other and the cleverest said, “There is, there is, but only of beans, so then why don’t you say that the smell of your mother is the smell of beans.”

“Because it’s not. If you fill the plate with rice, then what’s the smell of it?”

“Of rice,” the children answered in choir.

“And if you fill it with quince jam?”

“Of quince.”

“And with eggplants or pastry, with stew or soup?”

“Aha. We understand.” And they did.